Feast

by Merrie Destefano

  “You smell that?” she asked.

  I nodded. I didn’t want to admit it, but there was something dead up ahead. A fresh kill. I’d done enough hunting to recognize the stench.

  “Be careful,” I said. There was a chance that whoever kidnapped Agnes might still be down here in the gulley. I gestured for us to spread out. Now our lights overlapped, crisscrossed.

  “Agnes?” I called her name. “Agnes, you out here?”

  My words echoed across the canyon, returned empty and hollow.

  The smell of death got stronger as the trail leveled out onto an old dried-up riverbed. I heard something moving up ahead, scratching and snarling. I pulled out my weapon and motioned for Rodriguez to do the same.

  “Agnes!” One last shout as we continued to move forward through the shifting white gloom, reality changing with every step. First a fallen log, then an outcropping of rock that jutted into the riverbed, finally a mound of leaves and twigs driven here by the recent rains.

  Up ahead, something yipped and howled.

  I flashed the light and it reflected back in four sets of glowing eyes.

  Coyotes.

  I fired a shot in the air.

  Blood dripped from their jaws. The closest one stared at me, head lowered. Then it turned and loped away, revealing a small pack behind it. About six coyotes total. In a second, the pack scattered.

  That was when we both saw a body, curled on its side in a nest of leaves and bramble.

  It was Agnes. Dead. I approached, swept her from head to foot with the white light. Aside from the recent carnage by the coyotes, this was almost exactly what Madeline had described, back on the Ponderosa Trail. Agnes’s body was flat.

  Like all of her life had been mysteriously drained out.

  Chapter 67

  Outsiders

  Maddie:

  Joe Wimbledon’s front door hung open, the tide of cold air unending and time seemed to hold still. Finally, Ash stepped into the room and the front door closed on its own. In an instant, the heat returned, the curtains fluttered and a soft sigh moved through the living room and into the hallway, as if the house itself was glad to have him here. I watched him, couldn’t stop watching him. It was as if no one existed but him right now.

  He sat in an overstuffed chair.

  Maybe human. Maybe not.

  Pale skin, chin-length unruly black hair. Ash—the name fit him perfectly. What didn’t fit was the way my heart skipped a beat when he entered the room or the way I forgot to breathe until he looked at me.

  “It’s time for the Legend,” he said, his voice both compelling and chimeral at the same time. Dark eyes reflected an even darker light.

  I sat back, my muscles finally relaxed, and I realized that I was going to hear everything I needed to know. Everything about this village was going to be revealed. I glanced at Tucker, saw that he was leaning forward, eyes wide, eager for whatever was coming—both he and the dog had taken the same positions they always did when I told them bedtime stories. Samwise curled on the floor beside the fire, tail thumping with anticipation, eyes on the man who had just walked in.

  “Tell them,” Ash said with a glance at Joe.

  Joe hesitated. “But Mr. Ash, they’re outsiders—”

  “Not anymore,” he answered. “Start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”

  Then sparkles drifted from the ceiling, almost like the snow outside. An enchantment had been cast, time was standing still, and we would have as much time as we needed to hear the whole story.

  All tales begin somewhere.

  This one started with a whispered mountain legend, nearly a century ago.

  Chapter 68

  The Best Legend Keeper

  Ash:

  The engine roared to life at the same moment that Joe started telling the Legend. The two events weren’t connected and yet they would change the destiny of Ticonderoga Falls. I could feel a shift in reality, like summer wind on naked flesh.

  Welcome and uncontrollable.

  The story flowed from Joe’s lips, caught in his rough mountain cadence and transformed into something almost holy. He was the best Legend Keeper of them all.

  It was too bad really. This would be the last time he would tell the story.

  I didn’t know what was coming, still I could feel it like a tsunami, building someplace far, far away, one unseen event that would lead to another and then another. If I stopped the story at any point in time, then the ending would have remained the same.

  Everything in this village would have remained the same. Almost forever.

  And I would have remained alone.

  She needed to hear all of it before she would believe.

  In my mind, I could see images, pictures of Professor Eli Driscoll. But they were mere interruptions. Just more of Driscoll’s incessant cry for freedom and peace.

  All humans wanted it, didn’t have any idea that they told their own horror stories in silence. I don’t like to gaze inside their minds during the day, for all the darkness they carried. But during the night, that is an entirely different matter.

  So I refused to react. Instead, I sat there, listening to the Legend, watching the expression on Maddie’s face, while Driscoll cast out secret messages like a blackjack dealer tossing cards.

  Chapter 69

  Paintings of Lily

  Driscoll:

  I cringed. The car engine growled, a loud, steady rumble. Surely Ash could hear it and he would come flying through night skies at any moment, would pounce on the hood as soon as the car backed out of the carriage house. I waited for a long time, until finally, the motor settled to a soft purr, and the exhaust fumes cleared. Then I rolled down my window, hoping the cold air would invigorate me, give me courage and resolve. It didn’t work. Instead the car filled with the smells of lumber, old tires and linseed oil. Moonlight poured in the open carriage doors, illuminating canvases stacked against the far wall, more evidence of my father’s visitations over the years.

  Paintings of Lily.

  The most haunting one had managed to find its way to the top again, despite my efforts to keep it buried.

  She stood posed as a turn-of-the-century little girl, her disguise perfect. The only way I could tell it was her was by the eyes: no human had eyes that color. She stood inside the mansion, surrounded by other children, though they all paled next to her in detail, in composition, in beauty.

  It was the night of the birthday party. The night of the curse.

  Of course, I hadn’t been born yet—my own father had been just a boy—but I’d heard the tale so often that it was embedded in my DNA. It was my curse now.

  But not if I could get away. All I had to do was cross over the border of the old Ticonderoga Falls purchase, the piece of land bought by my great-grandfather. As far as I was concerned, the map of the world suddenly shrank, all of the boundaries were now defined by this village called Ticonderoga Falls. It stood like an invisible cage that had held me too long.

  One hand on the steering wheel, I looked over my shoulder, pressed my foot ever so gently against the gas pedal, and began backing the car out of the carriage house.

  Inch by inch, heartbeat thundering louder than the howling wind, I ventured forth, every bit of me as excited and terrified as Magellan.

  This was going to be my journey into the New World.

  Chapter 70

  Moon and Sky

  Ash:

  I could feel the rip, like an umbilical cord being sliced with a knife, as Driscoll embarked on his escape. As expected, the curse forced every dark emotion to the surface—revenge, hatred, guilt—and yet tonight, they were mysteriously quelled as I listened to the Legend. I studied Maddie’s face—rapt with the story, the tale of my fall from grace, my exile in this backwoods town. I found myself surprised that she didn’t see what a horrid creature I truly was. Some other emotion seemed to emanate from her.

  But I couldn’t tell whether it was empathy or pity.

 
Meanwhile, the story coiled about us, rich as music, all the notes in just the right order, all the chords dissonant and minor, as they should be.

  Driscoll’s car pulled onto the highway. He was running away. The grandson of the Great Murdering Beast was trying to escape.

  Maddie glanced at me.

  In the story Lily had just run into the library, had seen the men coming back into the room. My wife then lost her true disguise in the panic, unable to remember what skin she’d been wearing—it had happened to me before, I knew what a dreadful experience it could be.

  To be exposed. To be vulnerable.

  Driscoll’s car roared, eager to tame the wild road. The forest rose and fell away; one hill after another rolled ever onward. Moon and sky. Black and white. The serpentine road buckled and skipped, as if alive. A thin layer of sweat beaded Professor Driscoll’s forehead as he struggled to make sense of the curving black ribbon that tried to throw him off. He tried to hide his thoughts from the Beast. But it wasn’t working.

  Just like Lily hadn’t been able to hide from the net that caught her.

  Like I couldn’t hide now from the gaze that Tucker cast at me, eyes tender, almost weeping. He looked so much like the boy who had lured Lily back at the train station, so many years ago.

  Ever since the beginning of the curse, Driscoll and his family had been the cattle on the Beast’s thousand hills.

  I had been the Beast.

  Driscoll could feel my presence now—though far away—probing his mind. Searching. Watching to see which way the car turned, how fast he was going. His fingers clamped the steering wheel, knuckles white.

  I closed my eyes and tried to ignore Driscoll’s frantic heartbeat. In the Legend I had just entered the Driscoll mansion. Too late to save her.

  Day and night. Good and evil.

  Moon in the heavens, full and commanding.

  Driscoll pushed the gas pedal to the floor. He was near the edge of Ticonderoga Falls now, pressing against the silver woven net that spread like gossamer magic, created from my flesh and blood, from the wound in my side that would never heal, from the broken heart that would never mend—

  Maddie stared at me, tears in her eyes. Listening. Heart thundering.

  Maybe my heart could mend.

  If I could only let go of the past.

  Driscoll’s car tore through the invisible barrier, borne into freedom in an instant, in that moment when I contemplated the possibility of falling in love again.

  “No!” Joe stopped telling the story, he cried out.

  I smiled. Joe knew what was happening and it was already too late to stop it.

  Moon spinning overhead, hypnotic and impulsive. Driscoll fleeing down the mountainside like a dog with the backyard gate left open. Me suddenly crumpling to the floor, unable to speak, unable to move, just like the night Lily had died, wound in my side that matched hers. We had been so in love, so linked in soul and flesh, that the wound that killed her had almost killed me too.

  And now a sound like the world being destroyed was rocketing overhead. It began somewhere deep in the valley, then traveled through the village, rushing toward the top of the mountain. An unbearable ripping sound surged through Ticonderoga Falls.

  On the floor, I curled in agony, my wound made fresh again, my blood spilling in a red-black pool.

  Chapter 71

  Fabric of Reality

  Maddie:

  The room spun with enchantment and magic, then the Legend ended abruptly. It felt as if I’d been startled awake and, all around me, a dream was dissipating. The image of Lily’s death faded, along with it the image of Ash flying to the rooftop and casting a curse on all of Ticonderoga Falls; the sparkles that had been hanging in the air faded, and the century-old vista that I had been staring into—the Victorian landscape of the nineteenth century—disappeared. In its stead I saw the bungalow living room, Tucker in a corner chair, and Samwise still curled before the fire. Just then Joe Wimbledon scrambled to his feet.

  “No!” he cried out. “You can’t let Driscoll go.”

  A horrific noise, almost like the world itself was being pulled apart, screeched overhead and rumbled beneath my feet. It even vibrated on my skin. I reached out to pull Tucker into my arms, shielding him in case the ceiling began to crumble down.

  Then I saw Ash, slumped to the floor, a strange wound in his side and his blood flowing.

  The wound in his side, that place where the light shined through, revealing that he wasn’t human.

  Ash was the Darkling in the Legend. And he was the creature who had protected me in the woods when I was a little girl. All of my feelings changed in an instant. I was no longer afraid or curious, I was no longer searching for a story.

  A friend of mine was wounded, possibly dying, right in front of me.

  I leaped from my chair to kneel beside him, pulling Tucker with me, making sure my son was still safe. Then I ripped Ash’s shirt open so I could see the wound better.

  “Get some bandages!” I cried to Joe. Meanwhile, I tried to stop the flow of blood with part of Ash’s shirt.

  “Don’t let him go, Mr. Ash, please—” Joe said, shaking his head.

  “Look, I don’t know what you’re babbling about,” I said, “but he needs help. Now! Tucker run to the bathroom, grab a couple of clean towels!”

  Tucker dashed off. I wadded the shirt fabric into a lumpy ball and pressed it against Ash’s flesh, his pulse racing beneath my fingertips. A scorching heat poured from him, almost too hot to bear, but I forced myself to remain, despite blistering fingers.

  “Don’t you see, you just can’t let Driscoll leave,” Joe pleaded as he sank to a weary kneeling position beside Ash. “The magic’s ripping apart, we won’t have no more protection from the wild ones—”

  “You can’t stop it,” Ash said with a rough gasp.

  Then Tucker came back with an armful of towels. I pushed the linens against the wound, tried to stop the blood flow, but they just soaked it up, turned scarlet, fabric singeing at the edges, smoke mixing with the coppery smell of blood.

  Ash moaned and writhed from the pain. He glanced up at me, eyes like those of a trapped animal. Then I saw something else in their depths. A hidden emotion, finally revealed. Something I hadn’t seen in a man’s eyes for so long that I almost didn’t recognize it.

  He turned his face aside and pushed himself to a sitting position, then leaned against one of the chairs, the flow from his wound finally slowing. He lifted his head and roared, his voice echoing through the treetops, soaring all the way to Cedarpine Peak and then falling off the precipice into the blue-black valley below.

  “I release you!” he cried.

  And a still emptiness echoed back, with just as much power as the magic. It slivered through the room, pierced every chest, made every one of us stop and be still.

  At that same moment, the hole in Ash’s side began to miraculously mend, knitting together, silver threads of light stitching the edges of flesh and bone in a hundred lightning-quick sutures. It must have been unbearable, for he cried out again, then gasped for air, his face contorted in pain. Finally, with a shudder, he fell into a heap on the floor.

  Outside the clouds whirled about the moon and the heavens roiled.

  And somehow I knew that yet another chapter in this dark mountain legend was about to unfold.

  Chapter 72

  Until Now

  Elspeth:

  Magic sizzled through the air. It bristled across my arms and made the base of my hidden wings ache. I held hands with Jake as we joined the rest of the trick-or-treaters, and the touch of his flesh made me lightheaded. The laughter of a large crowd filled the junkyard as I shimmied through the broken gate. A chain-link fence surrounded the area, guarded by a few deserted buildings, windows boarded over, doors hanging limp on broken hinges. Everything was broken here and the trees were set back, so far away I could barely smell them. Part of me wanted to leave. I didn’t like being separated from the woods. They’d alway
s provided protection, a place to run and hide when I felt like I didn’t fit in.

  The way I’d felt my entire childhood.

  Until now.

  Jake smiled as he led me down the narrow path between yesterday’s cast-offs: past towering heaps of fenders and hubcaps and the rusted-out shells of old battered cars, past wire box springs and a ripped-up sofa, past heaps of toasters and blenders and microwaves. And underneath it all cracked a broken sea of cement, tufts of wild grass peeking through.

  I’d never been anyplace like this before. No dirt or water nearby. Even the wind seemed to have abandoned this corner of the universe. Still, there was one who never left me, whether I wanted her to or not.

  The moon.

  Slipping from behind thick clouds to taunt me, to whisper and remind me of the Hunt. As if I had forgotten, as if I could think about anything else when Jake walked so close, his leg brushing against mine as we continued to wind through the rubble, fire rushing through my limbs the longer I denied the call to harvest.

  Finally, we found our way into a large open space.

  Here, the area was painted with flickering flames and the smell of smoke hung in the air, everything and everyone now dressed in shades of red and yellow and orange. A large bonfire snapped and crackled in the center, devouring beams of old lumber and wooden pallets. Other young people milled about with masks hanging loose, some already dipping into their cache of Pixy Stix and Good & Plenty, jaws chewing slowly, mouths creased in sugary grins.

  That was when I caught a glimpse of myself in a cracked mirror. I gasped, retreating into the shadows. My own mask had unintentionally slipped during the course of the evening. Now many of my Darkling features were more pronounced: slender pointed ears sticking out of long dark hair, my eyes reflecting the firelight with a silver glow. I turned away from the others, adjusted my appearance and hastily glanced back in the mirror. Completely human again.