Voracious

by ALICE HENDERSON

  She stepped forward, bringing the chair down as hard as she could on his head. His hand went limp from the shock of the blow, and she kicked the knife out of it. Then she stabbed her pocket knife into his heart. Grasping the handle, he pulled it out, and she brought the chair down again, knocking the pocket knife out of his grasp. It skittered across the floor, landing under the dresser.

  His hand lunged out to retrieve the flaying knife at his feet as she brought one leg of the chair down onto his hand. The sharp metal leg drove deeply into his flesh there, and she heard the distinct snapping of bones. Not having time to grab it herself, she kicked the knife across the room.

  Stefan rolled over on his back, taking her in.

  She brought the chair down hard into his face, one leg entering his eye. He screamed, thrashing, his legs kicking her where she stood. She stumbled, fell to one knee, her weight slamming down onto the chair. For a brief moment Stefan lay nailed to the floor, the leg of the chair embedded deeply in his skull.

  Metamorphosing, clawed hands reached up and grabbed the chair leg, gripped it firmly, and wrenched it out. He cast the chair to one side with Madeline still leaning on it, and she rolled harshly to the side, banging her head against one leg of the bed.

  In an instant Stefan was on his feet, standing over her. She rolled over, clutching her head and stared up at him in a daze from the blow. He lifted a leg and drove it down on her knee. She heard a sickening pop and excruciating pain flooded through her. She grabbed her ruined knee, struggling to sit up. His clawed hand closed around her neck and forced her to her feet.

  Her knee screamed in protest as her weight hit it. Stefan stared at her in fury, one eye destroyed and streaming with blood, the other glowing fiery red and widening into a luminescent disk.

  She brought her fists up in a flurry of powerful blows, connecting with his gut, solar plexus, throat, and ruined eye. Then she drove her thumb into the eye socket and, screaming, he released her. Her knee buckled, and she stumbled but regained her balance, staggering back against the metal bed frame. She grabbed the metal eagerly, trying to remain standing.

  The chair lay just to her left, and she grabbed it again before Stefan had a chance to recover. Swinging it high in an arc over her head, she leaped forward and struck him once again on the head, then brought it up, uppercutting his chin and then shoved it forward, driving him against the wall. The same sharp leg that had claimed his eye now slid into his abdomen.

  He stared at her, disbelieving, from the other side of the chair.

  With all her weight, she bore into the chair, driving it deeper inside him.

  His eyes narrowed, and a solid, bony spike erupted from his chest, rib cage deforming and re-forming into a single lethal blade. Reaching up, he grabbed her hands where they gripped the chair, and he pulled her toward him with tremendous force. The chair legs pierced through him and drove into the wall beyond, raining bloody plaster over the carpet.

  She felt a terrible rip in her being, a searing, hot penetration that pierced her skin and entered her chest, punching through ribs and ripping into a lung. The lung collapsed, and she gasped for air as the blade drove further, breaking ribs in her back before bursting through on the other side. Her mouth opened, eyes involuntarily shuttering in the back of her head as blood bubbled up and dribbled down her chin.

  The creature, now just inches away, licked the blood from her face with a single, long stroke of his tongue.

  He pushed her away, and the agony reached an unbearable level. As the bony spike withdrew from her, so much blood entered her lungs that she coughed and sputtered, no longer able to breathe.

  When she was at arm’s length, he yanked her forward again, the spike entering her abdomen this time, tearing destructively through her organs with unimaginable force, snagging on her diaphragm and jerking the last breath from her one good lung.

  Madeline fought off a wave of unconsciousness, then realized with a panic that it was actually death sneaking up on her, not blissful unconsciousness at all.

  Stefan pulled her nearer, the bony spike piercing her kidneys before it burst through her back once more. Hot liquid streamed down her back, and the stench of bile and urine filled her nose. Images of the Sickle Moon Killer devouring the skin of his victims reeled in her head. What had always repulsed her could save her now. She could do it herself for an entirely different reason. But she wasn’t going to vomit Stefan’s blood and flesh back up like the Killer had done. She had to devour him. Become one with him.

  Then she was back next to Stefan, impaled on the jagged spear, lips inches from his throat. Those haunting images would work for her this time. She had done this before, reliving the Sickle Moon Killer’s memories countless times, and she knew she could do it again. Only this time it would not be to cause pain but to end it. With her last bit of strength, Madeline strained forward, the spike driving even deeper inside her, tearing a wider hole in her back. She closed the last inch separating them and brought her mouth to his throat.

  Biting down hard, she shook her head, tearing a gash in his neck. But she didn’t let go, though parts of his skin and muscle tore off in her mouth. She swallowed them. Sucking powerfully, she drew his blood into her mouth, taking full, deep swallows of the hot liquid.

  He twisted beneath her, tried to angle his neck away, but she clung on, taking in gulp after gulp, resisting the urge to vomit.

  He pushed at her, the bony spike withdrawing back into his body, re-forming into his rib cage. She sank her teeth in tighter, sucking and consuming as much blood from his veins as she could physically swallow.

  He shoved her away. Her teeth took a large swath of skin with them as she stumbled backward. Bringing her hand up to her mouth, she shoved the skin inside and chewed it, forcing the hot, meaty mass down her throat.

  A dizzying warmth spread through her body, a tingling fire that swept over the pain and drowned it out completely. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed, spilling onto the floor. The warmth spread, singing to her in a chorus of sweet voices, extending to every part of her being.

  She could no longer see. Her vision made out only a brilliant glow, and she lay in ecstasy as the song filled her body, entered her bloodstream, her breath, the synapses of her brain. She closed her eyes.

  And visions filled her head.

  Beyond the magnificent gates of the Sumerian city, the olive-skinned young man standing above the strange, dark void, seeing the flash of movement, something wet and sinuous, down in the depths. Reaching in to touch it and hit with a fiery light that knocked him hundreds of feet through the air …

  Awakening, later, no longer human, but a thing that could change shape …

  Wandering, lost and alone through a desert, starving …

  Stumbling upon a band of nomads and falling into a feeding frenzy, ripping them apart and devouring the soft insides, drinking their water, stealing their clothes …

  Later, stunned that the memories and experiences of the nomads were now his own, the knowledge of desert survival and so much more, he becomes addicted, desiring to eat more, vowing to eat more …

  Learning to control the changes, to heal superficial and grievous wounds alike, to appear as anyone the creature desires, to manifest weapons from his very body …

  Madeline’s eyes snapped open. She rose to her feet.

  Power surged through her. With every pulse of her heart, the creature’s blood coursed through her veins. And with each heartbeat, her body touched that blood. Her psychometric gift could feel everything about the creature, all of its experiences and memories, all of its abilities. She knew every terrifying and wondrous detail. Knew so much that she didn’t know where she ended and the creature began.

  Every muscle in her body tightened with that knowledge, her mind focused on the creature across the room. She lowered her head and brought her arms up. Healing surged through her, closing her wounds in a single instant.

  Still standing against the wall, the chair embedded deep
ly in his body, Stefan struggled. He gripped the chair’s seat and pushed forcefully, freeing the legs from the wall. He tossed the chair to the side and stepped forward.

  Two long, gleaming spikes emerged from his arms, ending in vicious points.

  Madeline didn’t move. She no longer knew fear, only power and purpose. Focusing the fiery energy singing within her, she lifted her hands higher, breathing out, flesh transforming instantaneously to reflective silver, the metal sweeping down her entire body until she was solely comprised of the deadly alloy.

  As the creature swung one speared arm, she ducked to the side and thrust her hands forward. Each metallic finger detached, hurling into him at high velocity, disappearing deep within his flesh.

  He staggered back, one arm spike returning to flesh as his concentration severed.

  Fresh metallic fingers surged out, replacing the old. She extended an arm up and summoned a sharp saber, its hilt and her hand joining in a single mass. She lunged forward, driving the sword into his belly. He howled in agony, stumbling backward. Her hand severed from the blade, leaving it embedded inside him.

  She summoned a second, matching sword, and as Stefan’s body crashed onto the floor, she drove the blade into his chest, crunching through ribs until she struck the wooden floor beneath. Her hand separated from the blade.

  Stefan twisted on the ground, screaming. His body passed through torturous changes, forming into victims past, then lumps of bone and sinew, then arms flailing in a bloated mass of bleeding tissue, finally returning to his original form once again. Then he fell still, one tremendous disk eye forming and blinking in shock. It withered and returned to a human eye as he gulped for air. A single tear pooled and spilled down his face. And then he was gone.

  The metal in her body receded, revealing flesh once more. She looked down at herself, her body completely healed, untouched. No hole in the chest. No ragged wound in the abdomen. Even her knee was perfect.

  She rushed over to Noah, who still hung on the wall. He looked up at her with tearing eyes, intense pain clenching his jaw shut.

  Carefully, she cupped her hands under his arms and lifted him up off the hook, amazed at her own strength, but at the same time already knowing she had it. She could feel every ability of the creature just waiting for her to use it.

  Gently she laid Noah on the bed. The creature had stripped all the skin off his chest, but Noah’s back and face luckily suffered only superficial cuts. Blood seeped into the linens as he lay back on the sheets.

  Tenderly she moved each strip of skin back to its original place while Noah cried out and shuddered in agony.

  “Just lie there,” she told him when she was done, “and you’ll heal.” She kissed him on the lips. “Just like always.”

  Before her eyes, the skin began to knit back together over the muscle beneath. She sat down next to him on the bed, holding his hand. In an hour, though the cuts were still deep and evident, the skin had completely reattached itself. In another hour, the cuts were only deep red lines in his skin. Wolves began to sing in the darkened forest beyond.

  In the third hour, he reached up and curled his hand behind her head, pulling her down to kiss him.

  Noah and Madeline dragged the creature’s body out to the middle of a meadow and dug a deep hole, working through the small hours of the night. They dumped him inside it, still full of metallic spears, and threw dirt over him. Then they rolled several large stones on top of the location to mark it in case they ever needed to go back.

  But both of them hoped they’d never have to.

  Then they climbed into George’s car and drove back down to West Glacier, talking excitedly and holding hands the entire way. Noah didn’t know what to do with his life now. He was free, and so giddy about it that a few times his bouncing in the passenger seat almost made Madeline drive off the road.

  She felt the world differently now; new abilities within her waited to be explored, and she looked back on the experience in the cabin with a mind full of wonder.

  At the gas station in West Glacier, they found George sitting miffed on the hood of Madeline’s Rabbit.

  It was 4 a.m.

  “There weren’t any vacancies in any hotels around here, you know,” he snarled, but only after he hugged her so tightly she thought her ribs would break for the second time that night.

  Noah and George shook hands, and she convinced Noah to return to Mothershead with them.

  “Why not?” he said, throwing his arms around her and kissing her. “We can do anything we want!”

  They climbed back into the Toyota, George driving this time. As she got into the passenger seat, George looked over at her and said, “You seem different.”

  She smiled. Her eyes flashed red in the dark, and George jerked in alarm. “If you thought I was a freak before,” she said, “wait till you see me now.” Seeing his surprise, she clasped her friend’s shoulder, reassuring him.

  Hesitantly, he turned and started up the car. “Now that you’ve beaten me up twice and stolen my car and returned with a mystery boyfriend and glowing red eyes, you sure as hell need to give me a better explanation on the way home.”

  Noah leaned forward and clasped their shoulders from the backseat. “Do you want to hear it from the beginning? ’Cause that might take a while.”

  “Even longer than you think,” she said to him over her shoulder, thinking of the ancient Sumerian city and the black, encompassing void.

  George looked at his watch. “We’ve got five hours,” he said, “not including stops for snacks.”

  “Snacks!” Madeline cried. “Oh, yes. Please. I’m starved for some good, old-fashioned junk food.”

  “I hope that’s the only kind of food you’ve got an appetite for,” Noah said, arching one eyebrow.

  She turned to face him. “So far,” she said, running her tongue over teeth gone sharp.

  Alice Henderson has long been enchanted by Glacier National Park, the setting of Voracious. She holds a master’s degree in folklore and mythology, and revels in tales of supernatural creatures and mysterious places. She lives in San Francisco, where she is at work on her next novel. Please visit her at www.alicehenderson.com.

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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