She wondered if she should go right then and looked toward the path that led to the cabins. No one walked on it. The desolation of that shady trail invited doubts to gnaw at her, and she decided she’d just wait until George got there. It wasn’t worth definitely risking her life now to avoid possibly risking it in the future. She’d wait until more people filled the path or until George arrived. Preferably both. To find her future address, the creature would have to go to the cabin, find her wallet, dig through it, and recognize the importance of the slip of paper she’d written her address on. She hadn’t marked it “My future address” or anything. It was just a number and a street. She looked with uncertainty at the path again. Still empty. No, she would wait. But she definitely wouldn’t leave without it.
And when she went back, she could also grab her pocket knife. Her mom had given it to her when she was five, after the incident with the wildfire. It had bailed her out of several tough situations in her life. Once she’d used it to scare off a creepy guy who had followed her home from the diner in Mothershead, and another time she’d used the little magnifying glass to start a small fire when she was in danger of hypothermia in the backcountry of the Canadian Rockies. Plus she’d used it endless times to make repairs on her backpack during overnight hikes. Though it wasn’t very big, it was the one sharp weapon she had, and it made her feel safer. The knife held much sentimental value, and had been with her on every trip. She was superstitious that way.
Stepping off the parking lot onto the pebble-strewn incline that led to the beach, Madeline veered for the log. She sat down on the smooth spot with her back to sun and opened her new book.
Three hours dragged by, with Madeline checking her watch every ten minutes, reading, and staring at tourists. The book was amazing and fascinating, though, filling the three hours with gripping accounts of hikers and hunters mauled by grizzlies, almost all surviving the attacks. In the past, Madeline had always played it smart with grizzlies, making noise while hiking, getting the hell out of an area if she stumbled across the carcass of a game animal, backing slowly away quietly the two times she’d come across a grizzly on the trail. The gigantic omnivores couldn’t afford more problems with humans. Montana’s population of the bears had greatly dwindled since the arrival of settlers from the East, and she didn’t want to be another reason to get one shot.
The book gave her even more respect for the gigantic omnivores and had some very helpful tips to avoid confrontations with grizzlies. But the most interesting part had been the attitude of the victims. They didn’t wish harm on their attackers but instead had a sense of awe for nature and for the sheer power of the bears. She found it fascinating.
So fascinating, in fact, that at one point she realized her butt had long since fallen asleep. She shifted on the log, her back muscles groaning in protest. Finally she stood, stretching, and looked out over the lake. The sun was far lower in the west, and the photographer with the large-format camera was busy changing plates.
She looked at her watch. Less than an hour until George got there.
She held the book up, looking at its cover, a close-up of a snarling grizzly’s face. She knew then why she’d chosen this particular book. She’d been looking for some insight into the mind of a survivor who had faced a powerful predator and lived. She wanted to know what they’d done to survive and how they’d dealt with the incident after the fact.
But what she’d come away with didn’t help. It didn’t even pertain to her situation. These people had faced grizzly bears, powerful creatures indeed, but seldom predaceous, and then only when desperate for a meal or threatened beyond reason. Most of the time when a grizzly attacked, it stopped when the person played dead or was no longer a threat. In only very rare cases had grizzlies eaten people.
A powerful force of nature, a symbol of a healthy ecosystem, the grizzly didn’t make it personal when it attacked. It hadn’t selected its victim from a series of newspaper articles, or from word of mouth as people chatted with each other about friends with extraordinary abilities. The victim mauled by a grizzly wasn’t selected at all but just happened to be the unlucky person who stumbled across a mother grizzly and her cubs or a big male eating a moose carcass.
But the creature she faced was no bear. It was undeniably predaceous and calculating, selecting each victim for the precise purpose of devouring the person’s flesh, for acquiring a talent or gift.
It had specifically selected her. And it wouldn’t stop when she played dead. It would keep coming, teeth sinking into her, devouring her flesh. And then it would have her “gift.” The power that would give the creature staggered her. It would know intimate details about its victims, where they were going, their routines, their deepest fears. It would twist and compromise her ability, finding endless, horrific uses for it; it would contort the “gift” into a thing of evil, extending it to a place of darkness she herself never would have taken it.
She glanced around nervously, scanning the lake’s edge, the gift shop and lodge, feeling oddly possessive of her gift. She may not have asked for it, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to see it used for evil.
She wondered where the creature was, why it hadn’t even made a single appearance since the night before. Here she was, sitting alone, and though she was among a swarm of pulsing, vibrant tourism, she thought at least she’d feel its eyes burning into her back or catch a glimpse of furtive movement in the trees at the lake’s edge. But she’d seen nothing in her three hours of reading and watching.
The extent of its injuries had been considerable. It might still be healing, though it had been well enough to rip out the underside of her car. Still, no ordinary weapon had torn the gashes into the creature’s flesh, and if Ffyllon’s journal had been correct, then those wounds took longer to heal.
She continued to glance around, briefly watching a couple in their fifties holding hands and strolling along the lake’s edge.
She looked again at her watch and thought about George. He didn’t know what was going on. If she asked him to go to the cabin, she’d be endangering him. She looked at the path to the cabins. Presently, quite a few people strolled on it. If she hurried there now, she’d be in public and could get her wallet and knife.
Tucking the book under her arm, she set off down the path, nodding at families as they walked by, surreptitiously watching them for any suspicious behavior.
Then suddenly she did feel someone watching her. Peering around, her eyes fell on a dark figure in the trees behind her, some two hundred feet away, just at the edge of the riverbank. A man, definitely watching her, stood there silently, unmoving. She tried to make out his face, but he was too far away. She looked closer, peering intently. He didn’t react at all to her noticing him, and this made her nervous.
Normally when you caught a stranger staring, he looked away.
The cabin area wasn’t too much farther. Madeline decided just to continue casually in that direction. She walked down the path, chancing a glance over her shoulder. The figure was closer. Much closer. Only a hundred feet away now, though she hadn’t seen him move at all.
She turned around fully now and walked quickly backward, not taking her eyes off him. He vanished behind a cluster of hemlock trees. She continued her backward progress, watching for his reappearance. Branches swayed a mere twenty feet away. When he did reemerge, he was only ten feet away. She took in the familiar features: the long black hair falling in waves about his shoulders, the olive skin, the lithe, muscular body.
Voices startled her, and she backed into someone. “Sorry, darlin’,” said a man with a Texas accent. She spun, muttering apologies, and realized she’d stumbled into a group of retired tourists, all of whom wore matching T-shirts that read Sunshine Tours.
They filed past her, and the last tourist, with a kind, wrinkled face, smiled at her. “Young love,” she said. “I can remember being distracted myself. And who can blame you? He’s a handsome one.” She winked and continued on.
Madeline tu
rned, intending to see how close the figure was. Instead, she bumped into someone else. Intense, green eyes stared down into hers. Handsome face with high cheekbones.
The creature.
He wore a dark red shirt and black jeans, and Madeline wondered whom he’d killed for the outfit.
She started to backpedal, her feet moving before she’d even told them where to go. Stefan reached out quickly, gripping her upper arm. “No,” he said. “Wait.” He held her fast, and she jerked her arm free, wanting to tear away from there. He bore no mark of the fight the night before. At least, none that she could see. The gashes in his chest from the weapon could still be there, beneath the shirt, but his face had completely healed.
Adrenaline flooded into her, making her hands shake, and her breath came up short. If he wanted to tear her to pieces right there, would the presence of other people stop him? She couldn’t kill him, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to go down without a fight. If he did attack her, she’d fight with everything in her: tear at his throat, his eyes, till nothing but a bloody pulp was left. He would live through it, but it would still hurt like hell.
More voices on the trail caught her attention, but she didn’t turn in their direction. A couple in their twenties walked by, arguing about where they would eat that night, the man complaining about being “out in the middle of nowhere.” The creature stepped forward, suddenly wrapping his arm around her as they passed. She wanted to cry out to them, ask them to help her, but there was nothing they could do. Except die.
The creature wasn’t the least bit interested in them. He didn’t even look as they filed by. Instead he studied her face intently, his other hand moving along her jaw. The couple was so caught up in their argument they didn’t even acknowledge Madeline or Stefan.
She let the creature pull her head toward his own, and he kissed her temple. She realized he wanted the couple to think they were the same, just two normal people out for a romantic walk in the woods. Not hunter and hunted. Not predator and prey.
She felt his strong hand on the back of her neck, her breath barely coming. This close she could smell him, and the power of that scent crashed into her. Her breathing slowed even more. That powerful, alluring scent washed over her, the same one that had made her so heady the night before, that exotic, sensual smell. She drank it in, leaning closer, her head feeling light, fingertips buzzing and trembling.
The couple continued down the path, and though they were far away now, she didn’t move, didn’t pull away, but instead stayed close, lips slightly parted, breathing in the scent of him.
He said nothing, moving his fingers through her hair. His other hand curled around her back, and a heavy sensation of anticipation crept into her belly. His lips traced down her face to her neck, teeth lightly grazing her skin there.
Still she didn’t move. She didn’t want to. He felt so good. Smelled so desirable.
Somewhere in the logical side of her brain, a niggling feeling pestered her to pay attention. But the feeling wasn’t strong enough to push through. She couldn’t even concentrate on it.
It didn’t go away, either, and she thought she remembered something from biology class. Something about chemical attractants.
So attractive.
Pheromones. Yes, that was it. Powerful chemical attractants. Is that what this was?
Her head felt muddled and light, as if she had drunk too much wine. Most of her didn’t even care. His lips reached her collarbone, kissing along the sensitive skin there. Her skin broke out in chills.
He eats people, the voice continued. And now his pheromones are lulling you into complacency so you don’t notice when he starts to tear out whole chunks of flesh.
I’d notice that, she countered the voice, as he began to move his lips upward again, over her jaw, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. His lips brushed her own, and she could feel his skin burning. Then they kissed, a deep, drunken kiss that sang in her mind, her body tingling with pleasure. She’d read it in a ton of hokey books before but had never experienced it till last night, but he tasted sweet, like apricot or honey, a rich, fruity taste that conjured images of a tropical paradise.
His tongue met hers, his legs moving closer until their bodies pressed flush against each other. Madeline didn’t even raise her arms. She continued to stand, hands at her sides, as if in shock.
A distant part of her whispered warnings, begged her to pay attention.
But her lips moved, her tongue met his, and she drank him in.
18
THE creature’s kisses grew passionate, fiery. Hands on Madeline’s arms, he backed her up against the trunk of a tree just off the path, the boughs draping down over them. He moved against her, their bodies pressed tightly together. Her hands reached up, tangling in his long, black hair as their tongues touched. The merest hint of a spark surged through her with every touch, and she closed her eyes against the pleasure.
His hands ran down her sides to her hips, and he grasped her there, pulling her into him, rhythmically pressing against her.
Her hands clasped behind his neck, his dark locks framing their faces as they kissed. His bare skin there was deliciously hot—
A young archaeologist, laboring in the hot sun at the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur, looking up, startled, then terrified as claws and fangs rend him apart, tongue darting into the spurting throat and red cavities filled with warm, soft organs. Sweet knowledge of ancient times, intoxicating power.
Madeline’s eyes snapped open as she jerked her hands away violently. The very tongue she touched had tasted the flesh of that archaeologist. Stefan’s dark eyes watched her curiously.
“I can feel what you see,” he breathed, closing his eyes in ecstasy, bringing a hand up to her face. She knocked it away harshly. He remained close, still pressed against her.
She turned her head away, fighting with a fog that surrounded her senses, dulling some sensations and stoking others feverishly. Putting a hand on his chest, she tried to push him away, but he brought his hand up and closed it over hers. The warm olive skin was callused, and he stroked her hand.
The phenomenal scent swept over her, filling her head, singing to her mind and body. She tried to shake it away, but it engulfed her in a voluptuous cloud, like the smell of an incense-laden Buddhist temple. He bent his head closer, breathing her in. His arms wrapped around her back, one hand gripping the tree behind her.
Closing the distance between them, his lips brushed against her cheek, then her lips. His scent effused her very being, and she couldn’t concentrate on what she’d just seen, could barely remember it. The exquisite haze drifted around her, luring her until her fingertips ached to touch him, and she trembled with desire.
The red cotton shirt he wore buttoned down the front, and she slid her hand inside, feeling the muscles of his chest move as he held her.
In the vast white expanse of the Arctic, a French-Canadian explorer running desperately across jagged ice, slipping in smooth spots, sharp edges slashing through his boots. Behind him drips of blood trail across the pale surface of the ice. The creature, running close behind, licking blood from the ice, breath frosting in the frigid air, alive with the hunt, excited as it draws to a close. It leaps on the explorer’s back, ripping through the fur coat, the shrill cries of agony music to the predator’s ears. Biting deeply into hot, steaming flesh, tongue lapping up the coppery blood. Dragging the body off to enjoy, to digest, to ingest knowledge, the explorer’s memories of the far corners of the earth.
Madeline shoved the creature away. He lost footing on an exposed root, stumbled, and righted himself a few feet away. Drawing the back of his hand across his mouth, he looked at her with hungry eyes.
“What are you doing to me?” she asked, bringing a hand to her forehead.
Still, the dizzying mist swam around in her head, clouding her judgment. Chemical attractants. That’s why she found him so irresistible. He was a killer. A violent predator who devoured his victims. And through her visions, she’
d seen him do it, felt him do it.
“You’re a murderer,” she said, feeling so light-headed she had to grab the tree to stay standing.
“Yes,” he said, straightening up. He walked back toward her.
“I’ve seen your victims.” She shook her head lightly, trying to dispel the cloud.
He closed the distance between them. The exquisite scent of him filled her senses again, called out for her to touch him.
“And that’s just it,” he said softly. “At first I desired your ability. Can you imagine the power? I would know where my victims would be next. Stalking them would be all the easier. I could know what they were thinking, when the best time for attack would be.” He brought a hand up, stroked her hair. She pushed him away, but war erupted within her, half of her repulsed and the other inexorably drawn. “But that night on the road, you amazed me. I had no idea how … fine-tuned your gift was. You saw things I had done, places I’d been and even I’d forgotten. I could feel you filling me, feel your thoughts, your visions, as forgotten memories ignited inside me. You drew those experiences out of me. The power of your mind was unequaled to anyone I’d tasted before.”
He kissed her feverishly, cradling her head in his hands. He tasted so good. It couldn’t just be chemical attractants, could it? Could they be this powerful? She wanted him. In the core of her being, she wanted him. Her body ached, throbbed at the thought of it.
He pulled away, eyes sinking into hers, peering into her. “I’ve been alive for a long time, Madeline. Traveling from country to country, century to century. Even I don’t remember all the places I’ve been or the people I’ve known. I’ve acquired so many memories that talking with people has grown painful for me. I’m so aware of how much younger they are. They’ll never know everything I know, never be on a par with my experiences. They don’t have a chance in hell of ever understanding or even knowing me. I’m so old that sometimes I feel insane, filled with the world and its wonders, its terrors and tragedies.
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