Gathering Black (Devilborn Book 2)

by Jen Rasmussen

  The chair was angled to give her a view of both the window and the stairs, so I saw her in profile. She was so small and thin that at first, I mistook her for a teenager. But beneath her stringy blond hair was the face of a full-grown woman. Her mouth was thin and petulant.

  Because she’s hungry.

  I felt the pull of that hunger, and it made me feel almost as much pity for the woman in the chair as revulsion. I wanted to help her.

  I wanted to feed her.

  yessssss please feed meeeee

  “Cooper.” My own voice sounded almost as raspy as hers did in my head. I turned to find him staring at the woman in the wheelchair. “Can you… hear her?” I asked.

  “What do you mean? She didn’t say anything.”

  hungreeeeeeee

  I had no idea how she’d created this connection to me. Or was I simply overhearing her connection to someone else? She’d said—thought—the name Alex, hadn’t she?

  I moved toward her. “Hello?”

  She didn’t move. As I got nearer, I saw that she was staring outside, although the filthy window blurred the view.

  “Not too close!” Cooper stepped forward to take my elbow.

  His voice and touch made me jump a little. I’d been almost dazed, I realized. Or maybe almost hypnotized by her.

  pleeeeease

  I wanted to climb into that chair with her, put my neck against hers. And let her feed. Just as Kestrel Wick had once fed from me.

  Yes, and I still have nightmares about Kestrel.

  But this woman needs me. She’s so hungry.

  Too hungry. She’ll feed until I’m gone.

  But she’ll starve if I don’t. She’ll die.

  “Verity!”

  Cooper’s voice snapped me out of my internal argument. I stepped back and turned away so I couldn’t see her anymore. But I could still feel her desperation, her hunger.

  I want to feed her.

  I swallowed, then bit the inside of my cheek, hard enough to draw blood. Maybe pain could keep me awake, keep me from giving in to what I was certain were not my own wishes.

  “Lily?” I asked, then reached out with my mind.

  Lily?

  please hungreeee

  “Don’t let her touch you,” Cooper warned.

  I’d taken another step forward. I forced myself—with no small amount of effort—to turn away again. I looked at Cooper, focusing only on his face.

  “Lily?” he repeated, in a louder, steadier voice than mine.

  No sound came from behind me. I didn’t dare look around again to see if she’d reacted to the name.

  “That’s got to be her,” I said, swallowing hard, willing myself to concentrate. “She has a Wick nose, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know who else it would be,” said Cooper.

  I marshaled my strength and pushed back, outward with my will, trying again to connect to Lily as she’d connected to me.

  Lily? Can you understand me? My name is Verity.

  neeeeed

  Can you answer some questions for me?

  But it seemed her communications only went one way.

  hungreeee neeeeed

  My feet twitched, and I almost turned around and walked toward her again. I couldn’t afford to keep my mind open to her. I gave up, and concentrated instead on shutting out her pleas.

  “What should we do with her?” I asked Cooper.

  He shook his head, but we were spared trying to figure it out by a noise below: someone had opened the closet door, and was now climbing the steps.

  Cooper and I backed up to the wall again, standing side-by-side as he leveled his pistol at the staircase.

  “Lily? I’m back, sweetheart. I brought you some—”

  By the time Alex Blackwood’s head came into view, Cooper was pointing the gun at it.

  “Steady, there,” Cooper warned.

  Alex quickly contained his surprise at finding that Lily had visitors, and finished coming up the steps without taking his eyes off the gun. He carried a laundry bag over one shoulder, and a small paper bag in the other hand. He slowly set both down on the dusty floor as soon as he came fully into the room, then raised his hands, palm out, facing us instead of Lily.

  “Let’s all stay calm,” Alex said.

  “Alexss,” Lily rasped out loud, the only time I would ever hear her physical voice.

  A look of pain crossed his face at her desperate tone. “I’m here, sweetheart. I’ve got some food.” Alex looked at Cooper, then nodded down at the paper bag. “Can I bring her something? You can see she’s not well.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cooper said. “I really am. But I can’t let you near her. I can’t let her touch anyone.”

  neeeeed I neeeeed

  I steeled my will and spoke too loudly, even though I knew I could never drown her out. “Is she this starved because of the illusion?” I asked, filling in some blanks. “Magic like that has to take a lot out of a girl.”

  Alex sighed. “Why couldn’t you have taken one more day? I never expected Blackwoods to move this fast, to tell you the truth.” He lowered his hands, slowly, still looking at Cooper and the gun. “One more day, and she’d have been fed and happy.”

  “And then she could have watched for us,” I said. That window might be dirty, but I knew it looked out on the parking area and the long, winding driveway below. Maybe it even offered a glimpse of the road beyond—a road that didn’t get a lot of traffic. “She could have made sure everything was just right by the time we pulled up. Both of you could have.”

  “You know,” Alex said, his tone relaxed and conversational, “I really would have made that deal. Given you the East Seed, and we’d all have gone our separate ways. Each one of us a winner.” He gave me his version of the Blackwood smile, then fixed it on Cooper, too. “No reason we still couldn’t.”

  Cooper didn’t look charmed. “A Wick, Alex? Really? You know what she is.”

  Alex’s eyes got hard. “And I’m supposed to blame her for that? Every creature under the sun has to eat to survive, so don’t you get self-righteous with me. I’m sure the pigs and cows think you’re a monster, too.”

  “But we’re not talking about pigs and cows, are we?” asked Cooper.

  No, I was quite sure we weren’t. I was still thinking about how much vitality a spell like Lily’s illusion must take. Cillian Wick had once told me he liked a cookie as much as anyone, but I had a feeling, judging by Lily’s palpable yearning for it, that whatever was in that paper bag was something more complicated than baked goods.

  “How have you been feeding her, Alex?” I asked.

  “From myself, mostly,” said Alex with a shrug. “She feeds, I regenerate. As long as we’re careful, it’s actually a pretty perfect arrangement. You know, what-do-you-call-it. Symbiotic.” He looked at Cooper, his expression intense. “It wouldn’t have to be like it was, you know. In the old world. We could help each other this time, feeders and vitals together. We give them vitality, they give us magic. Between us we could have more power than any humans ever could. We could—”

  “We could what?” Cooper interrupted. “Conquer the world? Listen to yourself! How did world domination work out for the feeders the last time they tried it?”

  “So we would learn from the past. If we worked together—” Something in Cooper’s face must have told him how futile that particular approach was, because Alex stopped and raised his hands again. “Okay. I can see you’re not in a visionary mood. So how about we stick to the original deal, then? This doesn’t have to change anything. I’ll give you the East Seed, and all you have to do is walk away. Forget you saw Lily. Leave me be.”

  neeeeed now alexxxxx please

  I shook my head, a childish attempt to eject Lily’s voice from it. The desire—the mandate—to go to her was almost too much to withstand. Was this what Alex lived with all the time? No wonder he seemed at least half mad.

  “And you’ll give up the seed, just like that?” Cooper was a
sking. “Even with all those dreams of world domination dancing around in your head?”

  “Weren’t you listening?” asked Alex. “We don’t need the seeds, not when we have each other. If I cared about growing a sapwood forest, I’d have given that seed to the Wicks already. But Lily and me, we don’t need trees, and we don’t need anyone else.” He smiled at Cooper. “I promise, you can trust me to stay out of your life, if I can trust you to stay out of mine. What do you s—”

  He was still smiling when he was interrupted by a gunshot, so loud and sudden that I couldn’t help but scream.

  A moment later, Alex Blackwood was on the floor, dead from a precise shot between the eyes.

  “Sorry,” Cooper said. “No deal.”

  “Cooper!”

  I stared at him in disbelief. Had he really just killed a Blackwood? An unarmed, defenseless Blackwood?

  But I had no time to ask questions. Lily shrieked in my head, so loudly that I couldn’t bear it. I wanted to tear out my eyes just to release the pressure from my skull. Pain stabbed at me, and my vision went white. It almost brought me to my knees.

  When my eyes cleared again, Cooper was moving toward Alex, although I couldn’t imagine what else he wanted to do to him.

  “The bag moved,” he said.

  “The bag—” I couldn’t understand him. I couldn’t understand anything. I was overcome by Lily’s panic and sorrow. She was frantic now.

  noooooo alexxxxx food he brought fooood I neeeeed

  Cooper walked past Alex’s body. Then past the paper bag. He knelt down and opened the laundry bag behind it.

  And pulled out a little boy, of maybe seven or eight years old.

  “What’s your name?” Cooper smiled gently at the boy, rubbing the kid’s wrists where they were red from the duct tape they’d been bound in. Another piece had covered his mouth. Now that it had been removed, the boy’s sniffles and cries filled the attic.

  But still I could hear Lily’s voice in my head.

  hungreeeeeeee

  Even in her grief over Alex, she was reaching still, desperate, deranged with how much she wanted that boy.

  How much she wants to suck him dry.

  If we hadn’t come here, she would have killed him.

  Eaten him.

  The pity I had felt for her curdled in my stomach, and for a second I thought I might be sick. But I was able to close my mind to her cries, after that.

  “Ryan,” the boy hiccupped.

  “Ryan, I’m C— Carl,” Cooper said. “And this is my girlfriend Sara.” He put one hand alongside his mouth and whispered conspiratorially, “Isn’t she pretty?”

  Ryan tried to give me a wobbly smile, but it died on his lips. I knelt beside him and pushed aside the hair his tears had plastered to his face.

  “Can you tell us what happened?” Cooper asked. He was crouched purposely between Ryan and Alex, his body blocking the dead man from view, but Ryan gestured in the corpse’s general direction.

  “That man put a rag over my mouth.” The poor kid’s obvious effort to get himself under control, to be brave, was heartbreaking. “Then I woke up here.”

  “Well, I think you’re awfully brave.” I leaned forward and matched Cooper’s hushed tone from a moment before. “I’m pretty sure I would’ve peed my pants.”

  This time Ryan’s smile was slightly more successful. Only the tiniest bit, but it was something. Cooper smiled at me over the boy’s head.

  “Okay, Ryan,” Cooper said. “Sara’s going to take you out to our car, and in a few minutes, we’re going to make sure you get back home, okay?”

  Ryan looked suspiciously from Cooper to me, no doubt thinking he’d already had a bad enough day, without the addition of getting into a stranger’s car. But he seemed to decide we were his best option, because he finally shrugged. “Okay.”

  I wasn’t quite so obliging. “And what will you be doing, while I take him to the car?” I asked Cooper.

  “Looking around quick.”

  “We already did that.”

  “Yes, but in light of this new information, I need to look again.” Cooper gave the boy a pointed nod that I was too slow to understand. Perhaps Ryan wasn’t the only one slightly traumatized by the day’s events.

  “I don’t like the idea of splitting up,” I said.

  Cooper was looking at me like I was an idiot, which at that moment, was a perfectly fair assessment. “We need to split up for this.”

  And then I got it.

  He thinks there might be others.

  I forced a smile and took Ryan’s hand. “Come on, let’s get out of this smelly attic, what do you say?”

  Ryan nodded.

  We left Lily there by her window, still hungry. I didn’t look back at her.

  “What will we do about her?” I whispered to Cooper as we walked back through the house.

  “Just give me a minute,” was all he said.

  Ryan clutched my hand tightly all the way out to the car. He seemed nervous about being left alone in the back seat, so I decided to flaunt what I knew of safety regulations, and let him sit beside me in front. Once he was buckled in, I drove around the barn and down to the driveway to wait.

  There was a beat-up gray sedan in the parking area that I hadn’t seen, or hadn’t noticed, in my brief glimpse out the grimy attic window. If it was Alex’s car, he couldn’t have had an easy time, carrying Ryan all the way up to the house in a laundry bag.

  “Is that the man’s car?” I asked. “The one who took you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ryan. “I was asleep after he put the rag on my face.”

  I nodded, and watched as Cooper came outside and walked around the side of the house, to the bulkhead cellar door I’d noticed on the way in. He hit something—an old lock, maybe, or just a stuck handle—with a rock, then opened it and disappeared inside.

  I cleared my throat and gave Ryan another forced smile. “So. You must have been at school?”

  Ryan frowned. “It’s Sunday.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  He looked out the window, his lip trembling. “I was supposed to stay where my mom could see me. She’s going to be really mad.”

  “She’ll be so relieved you’re okay, she won’t mind,” I assured him.

  But Ryan shook his head. “I’m allowed to go to the kids’ section while she’s in the line, but only if I stay where she can see me.”

  “The kids’ section where?” I asked.

  “The Barn O’Books. I can look at the books or the fish tank, but I have to stay on the blue rug because I know she can see me there.”

  Cooper came back up from the basement. I was too far away to see his face, but something about the way he was carrying himself made me nervous.

  “That seems like a good rule,” I said absently.

  “I’m too old for that rule,” said Ryan, a little resentment creeping into his voice. “But it’s because of Gordon.”

  Cooper started to climb the front steps, hesitated, then went back around the side of the porch, where he crouched down and ripped off some of the latticework. He lowered himself further, and peered at whatever was underneath.

  “Who’s Gordon?” I asked.

  “The boy who went missing from school at recess. They didn’t find him. You’re going to take me home, right?”

  When Cooper stood again, I did get a glimpse of his face, grim and pale.

  I swallowed. “You’re going home,” I said to Ryan. “I promise.”

  Cooper went back inside the house.

  “Was Gordon the only boy who disappeared?” I asked.

  “He was the only one who went to my school,” said Ryan. “But there were kids from other towns, too. A policeman came to my class to talk to us about it. I knew I wasn’t supposed to, but I still went off the blue rug.” His voice got shaky again, as if he was fighting tears. “And now my mom’s going to take away my games.”

  There was one brief flash of light in the attic window. Barely ther
e, but I was sure I saw it.

  The kind a gunshot might cause.

  I bit my lip to keep from crying out. Ryan didn’t seem to have noticed it, in his worry over getting in trouble at home. I squeezed his hand, and struggled to keep my voice steady. “I’m sure that’s not true. I’m sure your mom will be so grateful you’re okay, she won’t even think to punish you. She’s probably blaming herself right now, you know.”

  “But she didn’t do anything,” Ryan said. “She just went to pay for the books.”

  Cooper came outside, and stalked down the hill to the car. He didn’t meet my eye. When he saw Ryan in the front seat, he got into the back without a word.

  His face was wet with tears.

  I didn’t ask any questions, not yet. Nobody spoke, in fact, as I searched the navigation system for the nearest police station, and drove into town.

  When we got there, I pulled over to the curb and squeezed Ryan’s shoulder. “You go inside and tell the first officer you see your name. He’ll take you to your parents.”

  “You aren’t coming with me?” Ryan’s voice wobbled, but I didn’t want to risk going in. Especially if Cooper had just committed a murder.

  “We’re… not allowed inside,” I said.

  “Are you criminals?”

  I laughed a little, in spite of everything. Nerves, I supposed. “No. It’s complicated. But I promise, you’ll be okay. I’ll watch until you’re all the way inside, and the police will protect you. Your parents might even be in there.”

  I dug around in the glove compartment for a pen and a scrap of paper. “This is the address, where we were,” I said to Ryan as I wrote it down. “Give it to the policeman, okay? That way he can look for clues there.”

  “Will he arrest the lady in the wheelchair?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, hoping my voice didn’t falter too much. “That’s up to the police.” I gave him a hug. “You were very brave. And you’ll be fine now. Go on.”

  Ryan looked back once, before he went inside. I gave him an encouraging nod and a wave. As soon as the station door closed behind him, I drove away.

  And kept going. Cooper stayed in the back and kept quiet. When we switched cars in Syracuse, he slid into the passenger seat beside me, but he still didn’t speak.