“And I have become one of those terrors, Madeline.”
He embraced her. Her face pressed into the warm crook of his neck, his long hair enveloping her. She felt sharp claws sprout, digging into her back. “I never feel more alive,” he said, “than when I’m tasting someone, devouring their being. I learn what life meant to them. What scared them, what made them love. Through their flesh I experience their childhood, their first love, marriage, and talents … oh, the talents. Those are the best part. Being able to play the violin like a virtuoso, or map any sea route you could want to take, to know the heavens as if you’ve spent a lifetime studying them as a Mayan astronomer, to understand the secrets of the universe as the Newtons and Einsteins of this world do.”
He pulled back, watching her again, his eyes no longer green but deep red and reflective, with no pupils in the scarlet pools. They flashed with an inner luminance and ancient power. “I know darker secrets, too, Madeline. Some secrets I’ve almost forgotten. And some secrets I’ll never forget for what they’ve done to my body.” He lifted his right hand, the fingers grown into sharp, black claws.
With his other hand he continued to hold her, breathing in her scent. “You could know me,” he said, eyes flashing again. His right hand became scaled, reptilian, skin there a multitude of greens and grays. Then the olive skin returned, the claws withdrew to long fingers. “I want you to know me.”
Intoxicated, she stayed there, next to him, filled with a passion that suffused her being.
But somewhere in the recesses of her mind, the murdered ranger swam into view, bleeding body hanging over the rafters. Noah followed that image. Noble Noah, who had hunted the creature tirelessly. Obsessed Noah. She thought of his sandy blond hair, kind green eyes. Of those last desperate hours before he’d completely lost it. He’d been trying to stop a killer. Her killer. What was she doing here then? What was she thinking? “Noah …” she whispered, wondering if he’d ever regain himself again, fight and crawl his way back to sanity and once more find purpose.
“Your thoughts are still with him? After all the terrible things he said to you?”
Madeline tried to find words. Couldn’t.
He grasped her hand. “You and I are closer than he ever will be to you. He could never understand your depth. He’s old, yes, but he’s single-minded. He has thought of nothing but revenge for the last two hundred years.”
She looked away to where the sun sparkled on the river.
“I can give you so much more. You’re already so powerful. I can add to that power.”
She looked at him questioningly.
Sensing her unasked question, he said, “I can give you the eternity of youth. The ability to heal. The freedom to change forms in a single moment.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’d never want to be like you.”
The corner of his mouth turned up in a smile. “And you never will be like me. We’re far too different. And you’re too determined to do the ‘right’ thing. But I can live with that.”
For a moment she let him take her down this proposed road that lay in a shadowed future not too far from here. Not only would she be a freak for her visions, but she’d be infinitely more so for her ability to sprout fangs and claws. Sounded like a real promising future. And she’d even have a newfound friend complete with cannibalistic tendencies. Cannibalistic if he was ever even human, that is, she thought grimly.
But the ability to change? To be a chameleon? She wondered how powerful the ability was. Would she be able to turn into mist? To fly? Before she’d only thought of the creature’s terrifying capability once her gift was his own. Now she pictured herself with those skills. A shape-shifter, a psychic—there would be no end to what she could do. Her life wouldn’t be filled with the horrors of crimes or hours spent with the police poring over cold cases, hoping for a lead. And it wouldn’t be filled, because it never could be filled. The richness of that life hit her powerfully. She could travel the world over as anyone she wanted to be. She didn’t have to be the “Weird Girl.” Anonymity, true and abiding, could finally be hers.
“You’re intrigued,” he said, sounding encouraged, watching her mind churn over the possibilities.
“Offer someone the fountain of youth, and they’re bound to be intrigued.”
“True, but that’s not the part that fascinates you, is it?”
She met his gaze, trying not to let herself fall back into that dizzying place of potent desire. Her lips burned to kiss him, hands ached to roam over his body. But it was just chemicals. She had to resist. She bit the corner of her lip, and he smiled.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, stepping closer, tongue lashing out to lick the corner of her mouth.
She was about to say “Don’t,” about to place a hand on his chest to keep him at bay. But instead her tongue met his, and she kissed him, his irresistible taste flooding into her.
No. She stopped, lowering her head, letting the luxuriant cloud dissipate around her. Pheromones. Nothing more. It wasn’t magic. Wasn’t love. It wasn’t anything more than chemistry, issuing from a killer, no less. A beast with a thousand forms, none of which she could trust. All of which could tear her apart and eat the soft insides.
He took her hands in his and looked at her with desire, his eyes flashing. “I hunger for you,” he said. “But not in the way you think. Not like I did up on the mountain, before I … experienced you.”
Madeline’s mind crashed back to that terrifying day, running down the mountain, frozen and soaked with river water, teeth chattering. She thought of the night she spent crammed into the rock crevice. Could this really be the same creature who hunted her that night? That black creature made entirely of shadows, with red saucer eyes that gleamed in the dark? He’d seemed so alien that night, so outside of anything she’d experienced. Yet now she’d felt inside him. She thought of her race to the ranger’s station, and of what she found there in the bathroom, slung over the rafters: the creature up there with the corpse, cracking bones between its teeth. What had it gained from eating that person? Intimate knowledge of the backcountry. Especially of that particular area. An efficient predator indeed.
“You’re a killer,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
She thought again of Noah, of how long he had tracked the creature. Of his despair and hopelessness when he’d lost the weapon he’d carried for so many years.
“And your greatest hunter now has no way to kill you.”
“I was growing tired of being hunted.”
She remembered him saying the same thing the night in the cabin when he’d pretended to be Noah. She’d forgotten that till now, assuming at the time that he’d been her rescuer from the mountain.
“It’s hard to sleep,” he said, “knowing someone’s out there with the ability to kill you, and they’re drawing ever nearer, tracking your every move.”
She almost laughed at the hypocrisy. “Don’t you understand, then, how your victims must feel?”
“Yes, I do. And I think it makes me all that more of an efficient hunter. It lets me know how people are likely to react, lets me remember fear.” His hand came up under her chin, lifting her gaze to his own. “But all that commiseration is over now. Noah no longer has the weapon.”
“And that means you’re unstoppable?” she asked, scrutinizing him.
He didn’t answer, just continued to look at her.
“Are you?” she asked again, fear tugging at her. She glanced up and down the path, wondering how she was going to get out of this. No one had come by in awhile.
“Would you take up his sword?” he asked her.
“Will you continue to kill?”
His unspoken answer filled his eyes, red flashes of hunger, the gleam of victims yet to be explored and devoured.
And in her heart burned her own answer: Yes. A great floodwater broke within her. Years of reluctance to use her gift washed away before a newfound determination.
He sensed it, and she knew he did. He’d
offered her something amazing and terrible, and she stood before him, not only refusing, but fighting him.
He pulled away, dark hair fluttering in the breeze. “You would destroy me when I offer you so much?”
“Would you destroy me if I turned you down?”
He crossed his arms, a puzzled expression on his face. After a long, strained moment of silence, he said, “Well, I can’t have you trying to stop me.”
Her mouth went dry, feet sinking into the ground, suddenly heavy as boulders. She was stupid. Stupid. Should have played along. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe if she said the right thing, she could think of an advantage.
“I wouldn’t go following you, Stefan. I just want to go home, regain some semblance of the normal life I had before all this.”
“And your talent?”
She raised an eyebrow. “What of it?”
“Are you going to waste it?”
She didn’t answer, though she knew now she’d use it.
“Because I certainly wouldn’t.” He uncrossed his arms, slouched forward slightly. “Waste it, that is.”
So there it was. If she didn’t use her gift, then he’d kill her for it. But she couldn’t very well tell him she’d use it for good … could she? “I won’t waste it. I’ve seen what I can do with it, what I want to do with it.”
He laughed, taking her off guard. It was no laugh of malice, but of genuine amusement. “We could be a pair! Can you imagine? Me taking lives, you saving them. Century after century. The wonders I’ve seen just since I’ve known your friend Noah. The waltzes of Strauss. Swing music. Two world wars. Photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope. Think of what lies ahead.”
She did think of it. But the road was darker than the one he painted, filled with the wraiths of his future victims. Perhaps he could overlook her saving lives as a whimsical facet of her personality, but she could never overlook his murdering innocent people. And what of guilty people? she suddenly thought. Do they not count? You’re not very broken up about the guys who tried to attack you. But murder in the defense of someone else in no way made up for all, or even a majority, of the creature’s kills. She knew that.
“Stefan,” she said, watching him closely. “Those men you killed near the cabins. Did you do that so you could be the one to kill me?”
He didn’t answer right away, looking up and down the path. The breeze blew his hair across his face, and he moved it aside with his hand. Then he met her gaze, the red flash gone from his eyes as they returned to green. “No.”
She waited for him to expand. The burbling song of the river filled the silence between them. “Why did you then?”
He exhaled. “I killed them because they were pathetic swine,” he answered, his tone so abrupt it surprised her. He was angry. The muscle in his jaw clenched. “People like that kill and break things because they’re stupid, bored, and impotent. They have no concept of the power, the wonder of life. They seek only to take it away because they themselves can’t feel it. They seek to destroy people from the inside out but don’t even have the consciousness to understand why.” He fisted his hand. “I killed them because the world was no more the poorer for it. And those who enliven the world would be freer for it.”
She stared, unable to find words. “It’s terrible, and maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I’m glad you were there that night.” She stepped forward and took his hand. His skin was hot under her touch.
“Let me tell you something about death,” he said. “Humans have shaped this world to revolve around them. They talk of the tragedy of earthquakes or floods. But natural forces aren’t tragedies. What humans forget is that they are just another animal that can drown, or freeze to death, or yes, even be eaten.
“They’ve hunted all of their natural predators nearly to extinction. They’d like to believe they’re invulnerable, on top of the food chain. And what has this mentality done for them? Disease, overpopulation, war. Humans aren’t separate from nature; they’re a part of it. Everything they do impacts the very natural processes they’d like to ignore.
“Humans are meat for the predator as surely as cows are meat for them. Without natural predators, overpopulation is inevitable. Thousands of years have shown me this. I’ve seen the world grow from a few pockets of people to cities, to civilizations, to one continuous stream of concrete and roads, towering buildings, and mass destruction wreaked with the push of a button—nature plowed under and destroyed in humanity’s wake.
“I am not the monster. My prey is the monster.”
She stood silently, his words striking her. He gripped her hand tightly when she tried to back away. The scariest part was that he made sense to her.
He looked down at their hands, then brought hers to his lips. “My name,” he said, lips brushing her fingers, “is not Stefan.”
She gazed back, puzzled.
“That’s just the name Noah knew me by in Vienna.”
“What is it then?” she asked, forcing herself to talk, to crawl up out of the tumble of thoughts his words had left her with, struggle to act through the veil of delicious energy between them.
He laughed. “Practically unpronounceable. But it’s not Stefan.”
She thought again of the sheer sense of ancient she’d felt that night on the road and wondered what the name could be, what culture he was from—if he was ever human, as Noah had speculated, sometime long, long ago.
They stood there together in silence for several minutes, and Madeline’s mind raced over everything that had led up to this moment. Her escape into the backcountry from her tiny town of gossip and ostracism. The creature stalking her in the wilderness. Noah begging her to help him. This very moment next to the river. She frowned. Everything hinged on her psychic ability. If she wasn’t psychometric, she wouldn’t be out here in the first place. The creature wouldn’t be stalking her. Noah wouldn’t have enlisted her help. The creature wouldn’t be trying now to seduce her.
Her whole life she’d been measured by her psychic prowess. Either she was too weird to have friends, or people wanted her close in order to take advantage of her ability. This moment was no different. The creature was no different. And now he was telling her that if she didn’t use her ability, he’d alleviate her of it at the expense of her life.
A long-simmering anger that had been building since childhood reached boiling point. Wasn’t she worth knowing without her ability? Who would ever bother to find out? She was so much more than psychometric. Her soul itself had been crying out for twenty-one years, and no one had heard it. And now this creature threatened to squelch that soul in order to get at the very thing that had made her life miserable. Her ability. Her “gift.” Her soul, personality, vibrancy, and life would fall to the wayside so this shape-shifting thing could get another advantage.
The anger flared into rage, which threatened to overflow. The creature stood before her, still holding on to her hand, clawed fingers laced in her own.
A seething, bubbling primal force of fury welled up within her, and she brought her other hand up, shoving the creature away violently. Quickly she raised her foot high, connecting with his stomach with a sickening thunk. She kicked hard, shoving him back, where he stumbled over the exposed root, this time too quickly to right himself. Careening backward, he crashed into a ten-foot granite boulder, head connecting with a sharp corner. He cried out in surprise and pain as it bit into his skull with an audible crack.
She ran forward as his body jelled, and he fell limply to the ground. Grabbing his hand, she pulled him up, adrenaline flooding through her veins, rage straining in her neck. She could feel the muscles standing out there and uttered a low, angry roar as she dragged him to his feet and shoved him back again, where he stumbled onto the path.
Groggy from the blow to his head, he brought his hands up ineffectually, and she knocked them away, landing another solid kick to his gut.
“You can go to hell!” she screamed, spittle raining from her mouth. “I’ll kill you!”
The world fell away, narrowing to a tiny beam of focus before her. The creature. The roaring river behind him. There teal waves crashed over huge granite boulders slick with algae. Stefan brought his hands to his head, disoriented, as blood streamed down his forehead, dripping from his hair. She kicked him hard in the head, then shoved his chest with her hands, knocking him back inexorably toward the water.
To her horror, he grabbed onto her arms with the last shove, trying to take her with him. But she brought her hands up lightning fast, connecting with the underside of his chin. His hands came free, releasing her as his head snapped back.
She dropped low, kicking her leg out, and delivered two shattering blows to his knees. He staggered back, stumbled, and fell, arms windmilling in the air, until he hit the water hard.
His body disappeared in the foaming white water. She ran to the edge of the river, eyes searching. She saw him bob up limply a few feet away, swiftly borne on the current, his head connecting sharply with the edge of a slimy rock. Blood frothed in the water, and he cried out in surprise.
She thought of his long fingers pulling her under in the flash flood. He’d been scared then, a creature not at home in the frigid, tumbling water.
She’d just put him back in that unforgiving place, and turning, ran away as his body flopped helplessly downstream.
19
MADELINE looked at her watch. Five p.m. George would be there in just a few minutes. Once the creature crawled out of the river, though she hoped he’d be swept far downstream by then, the cabin was one of the places he knew he could find her.
If she was going to get her wallet and keep the creature from knowing her future address, this was her only chance.
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