by Pati Nagle
“She’ll come back for me.”
Understanding crystallized. Without daring to think it through—for that would be to risk losing his insight to the cold bonds of logic—he turned and ran back toward the hospital, crossing the open fields and panting as he climbed the slope toward headquarters once more.
It was late. No sounds issued from within the hospital tent save the haunted moans of dreaming wounded. Mr. Parker paused in the doorway, glancing toward the soldier’s bed where he’d met Miss Tamer, and froze at a sight that struck straight to his gut.
Miss Tamer, seated gracefully beside the bed with her dark skirts flowing about her, had taken the boy’s hand in both of hers and brought it to her lips. They sat motionless, the wounded boy smiling dreamily up at his nurse, the lady’s dark lashes veiling her eyes as she pressed her kiss deep into his palm. Mr. Parker’s loins responded at once to the sight, and a soft moan escaped him.
She heard, though it was only the tiniest sound. Her head shot up, eyes flashing anger, pale cheeks flushing even as she rose and flung the boy’s hand away in a single movement. She moved to the aisle and ran away down it, her skirts flitting over the feet of the wounded like the shadow of a cloud.
“Wait,” called Mr. Parker, his voice jarring in the stillness as he stumbled after her.
By the time he reached the spot where she’d been, she had vanished behind the fearful screens of the surgeons’ domain. He glanced down at the farm boy, whose white face still wore its beatific smile. The eyes gazed blankly upward, and Mr. Parker realized with a sudden surety that he was dead.
His gaze traveled to the hand which Miss Tamer had honored with her caress. In the palm a little pool of dark blood had welled.
Mr. Parker’s stomach did a slow flipflop. He looked at the wall of screens, questions rising, scraps of legends remembered, too fantastic to be credited. He strode toward the screens and stopped there.
Surely there was some rational explanation. The thought died as quickly as it had sprung, replaced by the gut knowledge that he had found something truly rare—so rare few could accept it—a creature of myth walking the sacred soil of Virginia.
He stepped through the screens, past empty surgeon’s tables stinking of blood, out the back of the hospital into the darkness. She was waiting for him now, he knew. It was almost as if he could hear her thoughts. She was waiting to kill him.
Deep into the woods he followed. She was no fool, she would draw him far away from the hospital before she struck.
Bad luck to journalists, he thought, understanding now her dislike of the press. But he was no ordinary journalist.
The night was old, it would not last two more hours. From the direction of the road he heard the army’s rumble and clatter, then a sudden shatter of rifle fire announced a fresh battle. He turned toward it, though the formless pressure in his mind protested. By effort of will he continued walking south, attempting to force her to meet him.
His thoughts became jumbled, battered by what he now knew was her summoning and by the sound of the fighting. Fires were burning in the dry forest, sparked by the rifles, licking at young trees and old skeletons from the previous year’s battle.
A spent ball hissed past him and thudded into the earth. The cries of the wounded drifted among the bare branches. No hell could be more ghastly.
“I want to talk to you!” he shouted, and suddenly there was a deeper darkness before him.
She stood clothed in shadows, pale face, dark lips, bright eyes glinting. “Still?” she said, mocking hatred in her voice, and a sneer showing sharp, white teeth.
“Yes,” Mr. Parker managed to say.
“Then you’re even more a fool.”
“No,” said Mr. Parker, struggling to gather his thoughts. “I want to know why.”
She took a step toward him, fire-tossed shadows of bare trees dancing across her face. His body responded to her approach with a very real physical excitement. He knew he should flee, but his feet remained rooted.
“Why do you work in the hospitals?” he said.
“Obvious,” she answered. “Ease of supply.”
“No,” said Mr. Parker. “If that were all, you would keep to the battlefields. Less risk.”
“I am no carrion eater,” she said sharply.
She was very near, now. Mr. Parker’s heart jumped as she reached up to brush his cheek. Her eyes, veiled by long lashes, followed her hand’s journey down along his throat.
“Compassion,” he said, his voice tightening. “You care about them.”
The dark eyes flickered. “What nonsense. I consume them, Mr. Parker.”
Her hands on his neck were warm. Almost hot. He so wanted to close his eyes, and abandon himself to the pleasure of her touch.
“That boy,” he said, struggling to speak. “He died happy.”
“As will you,” she murmured.
“What if I told you I am no threat to you?”
“Ah, but you are a professional liar.”
“What if I said I—admire you? I do,” he insisted. “In all ways.”
The dark eyes rose to meet his, glinting amused surprise. The fires were getting nearer and he could see her face quite clearly now.
“I could help you,” said Mr. Parker. “I could travel with you, keep the gawkers away. I could offer you my name—”
She laughed. “I tired of that game a century ago.”
“Or not, then,” said Mr. Parker. “Give me a chance to prove my esteem for you.”
“You esteem an illusion, Mr. Parker. You esteem what you want me to be, not what I am.”
“Do you not abhor pain?”
“Pain and I are old acquaintances.”
“You once caused it, perhaps?” said Mr. Parker, conscious of her fingertips, which had come to rest in the hollow of his throat. “And now you make up for it by easing the deaths of the doomed. By saving them pain.”
“What pretty stories you tell,” said Miss Tamer. “And what a pity—”
A wail climbed into the smoky sky above their heads. Miss Tamer’s eyes widened at the sound: a human voice, raised in inhuman terror and pain.
“You do care,” whispered Mr. Parker.
“Oh, God, help me!” cried the voice. “Help me, I can’t! I can’t—”
Miss Tamer’s eyes flitted, searching the woods, now hazy orange-lit by fire and smoke. Mr. Parker looked past her to the edge of the blaze, where a dark lump was heaving on the ground.
“Over there,” he said, nodding.
She glanced at the figure, a wounded man, unable to walk, unable to escape the fire that now lapped at his clothing. Her eyes flicked back to Mr. Parker.
“It would take too long to kill me,” he said softly. “Let me help instead.”
Her lips parted. “I could kill you in an instant,” she whispered, the words perfectly clear in his ears despite the fire’s roar. Then she spun away from him and hurried toward the struggling soldier.
Run, he thought, but could no more have left her than struck her. That in him which admired her now moved him to follow, to see what he, too, could to do help the suffering soldier. It occurred to him, as he put up a hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the fire, that he would never have done so before.
Miss Tamer knelt at the man’s side, heedless of the furnace-heat. She took his face in her two hands and murmured to him as Mr. Parker joined her.
“Here, let me lift him.”
“No!” she said fiercely, eyes remaining locked on the man’s face. “He is too badly wounded,” she said.
Mr. Parker glanced at the soldier and saw she was right. His skin crawled at the sight of the man’s leg, nearly severed, the ground beneath it soaked in blood yet still smoldering with the stink of burning flesh.
The man’s face was serene. He no longer cared that his body was slowly being consumed by the flames. All he cared for was the tender touch, the soft voice which he could not possibly have heard over the fire, the sweet dark eyes. Mr. Parke
r saw bliss in the poor fellow’s gaze, the moment before a sharp twist of his head ended his life.
An expression of satisfaction flooded Miss Tamer’s face and sent chills down Mr. Parker’s spine. Stumbling back, he became aware of the wild pounding of his heart and the oppressive heat of the fire. All around them the woods were ablaze.
“We’re trapped,” he shouted to Miss Tamer, then coughed.
“No.” She rose and brushed her hands, unconcerned. “You are trapped.”
She thrust her arm toward a blazing tree nearby, and the flames shied away. Mr. Parker stood sweating, eyes streaming, choked by smoke.
Fool, he thought as she slowly walked toward him. This is how the others died.
He wondered fleetingly if the hospital staff knew. He felt certain they did not. Too many god-fearing Christians among them, they would not have tolerated Miss Tamer had they known.
“You asked why I work in the hospitals,” she said as she approached. “I will tell you, Mr. Parker. I abhor waste.”
Darkness flowed about her in a sphere. The smoky flames looked pale and sickly through the thick air around her. As she neared him, Mr. Parker felt its coolness envelop him.
“A-and pain,” he stammered.
“Pain does not interest me,” she said. “I outgrew the need for such thrills long ago. Pain is also a waste.”
“So you feed on the doomed in order not to waste the living,” he said, struggling to conceal his fear. “That sounds like compassion to me.”
“I have no such noble motive, Mr. Parker. I like my comfort as much as anyone. No one is suspicious of wounded men’s dying in hospitals.”
“I cannot believe that is your only reason,” said Mr. Parker.
If he could keep her talking, he might yet escape. He dared to turn away, guessing she’d prefer to kill him face to face. The fire’s heat smote him, but he took one step away from her.
“Why can you not believe it?”
There was annoyance in her voice as she came up beside him, bringing her cool shadow with her. Mr. Parker’s heart leapt with fearful joy. He took another step forward.
“You are too powerful,” he said, not daring to look at her. Another step; she followed. “You need fear no mortal authority.”
“You overestimate our strength.”
They were walking now, strolling through the inferno, two acquaintances conversing, with flames flickering out beneath their tread and springing to life again after they passed. Mr. Parker fought down an hysterical urge to laugh.
“I think it would be difficult to overestimate you,” he said. “I think you do not credit your own good. You comfort more than you kill. I spoke with a sick man who said you visited him daily.”
“I would hardly escape notice if I did not assist in the wards.”
“Hard work for one who likes her comfort.”
“Consider me a shepherdess, Mr. Parker. Not one of those dainty, lacy creatures in the paintings, but a real herder who sees her flock for the resource they are, and who doesn’t weep on butchering-day.”
Mr. Parker thought he saw the flames thinning ahead. It took an effort of will to maintain his slow stroll.
“The soldiers would not adore you so if you were as cold as you say.”
“Simple men are superstitious,” said Miss Tamer. “They know I ease the pain of dying, and that is all they want to know.”
“They call you an angel.”
“Does that shock you, Mr. Parker? Do you think it blasphemous?”
“No. Were you a nurse—before?”
“I was like you, Mr. Parker, very much too curious for my own good. It was my downfall, in fact.”
A strange lurch of his heart made Mr. Parker stop walking. Against better judgement he turned to face Miss Tamer, unable to form the question in his mind.
“Do not fear,” she said with a slight, sad smile. “I am not bitter and I have no desire to spread my disease.”
Mr. Parker felt something too close to disappointment for his liking. He turned away again and was surprised to see the hospital ahead, a mass of canvas against indigo sky. They had come out of the worst fire. Here it only licked at the trees through clouds of black smoke. If he ran—
“But you know I cannot let you live,” said Miss Tamer behind him.
Mr. Parker felt a sudden wave of cold wash through him. He could not take another step. He scarcely had the strength to breathe.
“At least I can look forward to a pleasant death,” he said in a whisper as she came up beside him once more.
“That’s your good fortune. I’ve no choice in that respect.”
A voice was raised in the hospital, a steward calling for assistance. Miss Tamer’s eyes narrowed.
“Come.”
She took hold of Mr. Parker’s wrist. Her hand was cool and dry, and very strong. She drew him away from the blaze and the hospital, to a clearing in the woods at the foot of a small hill.
A thin, bluish haze of smoke softened the lines of bone-white trees. Flowers bloomed here, a scene worthy of the beribboned shepherdesses Miss Tamer had scorned. Mr. Parker saw that she was frowning slightly.
“I do not like doing this,” she said. “If I thought I could trust you—”
“You can,” he said, “but you cannot trust the others. They’ll keep coming, and you will have to kill the ones who figure it out. You really don’t like killing, do you?”
“None of us likes killing, Mr. Parker. Why do you think so many inflict pain? It is an expression of our own agony.”
“You don’t inflict pain.”
“It stopped when I stopped fighting what I am.”
“So you do have a choice.”
His hand came up to touch her face. The skin was soft and cool. His fingers traveled to her hair, smooth and neat, as if she hadn’t just walked through a maelstrom. She was almost pretty, here with spring flowers at her feet and the dawn’s early light just touching the treetops above her head.
Mr. Parker froze, staring up at the golden light flickering among new, green leaves. Morning had stolen upon them, cloaked in smoke and fire.
Miss Tamer’s gaze followed his, then her head whipped around to the east, where rays of light spread upward from the hilltop. The shadow in which they stood was a twilight island in the sea of morning that flooded the forest, rising second by second.
For the first time he saw fear in her face. She turned on him, dark eyes flashing.
“Very clever, Mr. Parker!”
He felt sick. He glanced around in desperation, then looked back at her angry, accusing stare.
“Hide!”
She looked astonished, then laughed. “Where?”
Sunlight touched the hem of her skirt. She flinched away toward the center of the hill’s shrinking shadow.
“It is too late,” she said.
“I didn’t—”
“Go back to the hospital.”
Unnatural stillness had returned to her face. It was as if a door that for a moment had begun to crack open was suddenly closed again.
“Tell them to move the ward, or they will lose it to the fire,” she said calmly.
Mr. Parker seized her hand, tears stinging his eyes, but she pulled away from his grasp. She snarled, sharp teeth glinting in the growing light.
“Go!”
She turned her back on him and stepped up to a sapling, wrapping her strong fingers around its trunk. She stood facing west, where the forest was blue-gray and hazy with smoke. She had turned her head away, yet he still heard her whisper.
“Do not watch.”
But he was a journalist. And, she was dying because of him. How could he not watch?
Rifles crackled in the distance. Mr. Parker felt the sun’s heat strike his shoulder, and clamped his teeth on his lip as the light spilled over the hilltop.
She turned her head toward him at the last moment, dark eyes afire with bitter amusement. Then he was blinded; a flash of light followed by a hair-raising skriel. When h
e could see again he ran forward, but found nothing, only a snowfall of ash drifting against the sapling’s bark in the sunlight.
~
It was many hours before he found the time and the courage to approach the little A-tent beneath its gnarled tree. He was bone-weary, having spent the day helping move the hospital away from the fire. Now he intruded once more on Miss Tamer’s tent.
Silent, empty. Bare cot—she must never have used it—and the trunk.
Mr. Parker broke the lock, and was not surprised to find that it contained merely earth. He had thought there were no more tears in him, but one fell on the soil as he leaned over it to place a handful of battered peach blossom—stolen from the headquarters trees—inside.
An approaching rumble made him hasten to shut the trunk up again. Stepping outside he saw a wagon lumbering to a halt. The teamster climbed down and gave him a suspicious glance, then pushed past him into the tent.
“Go along,” said the man. “You’re not wanted here.”
“Where are you taking that?” Mr. Parker asked as the man lifted one end of the trunk and began to drag it out of the tent.
“Never you mind. Damned nosy busybody.”
“She won’t be there.”
“I follow my orders, damn you. Either help, or get out of the way.”
Mr. Parker stepped aside. Useless to attempt explanation, just as it was useless to think any story he could write of Miss Tamer would ever be believed.
Yet—
Mr. Parker helped the teamster lift the trunk into the wagon. Then he sat beneath the tree, reached for his case and pulled out his pocket notebook.
It didn’t matter, after all, whether his story was believed. He knew what his readers wanted, and the last thing any journalist would do was to let a good story go to waste.
Kind Hunter
The hunter paused near the end of the tunnel, gathering himself against emerging. He had not been to this place before, but he knew he would not like it. Already the unnatural smells and the roaring, constant cacophony were hammering at his mind. Had his quarry not been here, he would never have come.
