Less than twenty-four hours later Elspeth had expired, and though Alexander had been denied the full pleasure of her passing— the full enjoyment of its immediacy at his own hand, thereafter he had often fantasized of looking into her eyes as the life vacated her body; of being the final face she saw, a face filled with contempt and loathing and it had been those imaginings that had stirred within him an insatiable desire to turn such dreams into reality.
Yes, there had been a time when Alexander had been a weak, pathetic little boy. But on the day he had pushed Elpseth over the cliff's edge, he had become a man. A man destined to hold the balance of life and death within his grasp. In relation to the debate over nature vs nurture, Alexander had become quite convinced over the years that his instinct, his aspirations to greatness, to preeminence, had lain within him since birth. The driving imperative to transcend had lingered with him always, but like the wolf in the lycanthrope, until Elspeth and that day on the cliff, it had merely slept.
Chapter Five
It was in the dark place again.
It hated the dark place. It wanted to run free. It wanted to feed. To hunt. It tried, every time, to get free. No escape.
Voices. Others. Coming closer…
Come. Closer.
A sound. Shatter sound. Voices above.
“Look around. Gotta be somethin’…”
Noises. Feet. Others walking. Others are food. Others are drink.
“Check the bedroom.”
“I’m tellin’ you he ain’t here.”
Smells: smoke, pine, Other-smells.
“Psst! Over here!”
“Thick-ass door.”
More noise. So close.
Wait.
“Locked.”
“Why lock it unless you got somethin’ to hide? Told you! Bust it!”
Loud noise. Light. The Other-smell strong now. Closer.
“See what’s down there.”
“You see!”
“Get in there, pussy! Nothin’ gonna get ya!”
Feet. An Other coming into the dark place. Light moving.
Feed…
“Looks like an old fruit cellar. Been tore to shit. Other than that I don’t—”
Now.
“Oh Jesus, what the fuck is—”
Flesh. Blood. Blood is life.
“Dale! Dale, what the fuck’s—”
“Aaagh!!!”
“Holy shit, did you see—”
“Dale!”
“Holy Christ, close it! Go! Go! Go!”
Blood is life. Blood is good. Others are good.
Others are food.
***
Brandon shot bolt upright in bed. If there had been anyone else awake in the room, they would have seen that his eyes were glowing gold.
He looked over at Ginny, who was snoring softly. He remembered her saying what a heavy sleeper she was.
Good.
He flipped the covers off of him, swung his feet over and stood up, still shaking off the dream. No, nightmare. Not just a nightmare, as in something his mind had conjured from nothing, but a memory. A haunting reminder of his darkest hour. The one memory from his time as the beast that his mind did not black out, no matter how often he wished it would. The first and only time he had fed on a human.
Rubbing his face, he stood looking out the glass doors and onto the moonlit waters. After the night in the truck, after confronting and accepting the impossible (ain’t nothing impossible in this damn crazy world, boy), Brandon set about a life of isolation. Throughout Northern Montana he had lived off the grid, a real-life Grizzly Adams. During this time he had experimented with various methods of caging the beast. It wasn’t like in the movies. A few padlocks and some chains didn’t do the trick. At one point he actually did buy a manacle… he had locked it around his wrist and chained himself to a tree. When he had come to, he had been five miles away, naked. He had returned to find the manacle snapped at the hinge. Only dimly had he recalled the turning, and the profound pain that had accompanied it.
The beast would remain confined in a locked vehicle. Why the animal would not smash through the windows, Brandon could not say—he felt sure that it was strong enough to do so—but the wolf would destroy the whole of the interior, and Brandon had been unable to afford the cost of replacing cars and trucks, even used ones. After a bit of trial and error he had come to realize that the safest confinement was simply a locked room: no windows, only one thick, padlocked door. The various mountain hovels he had rented, though isolated, were still inadequate. What he had really needed was a house. Nothing fancy, just a hideaway of his own where he could manage his affliction.
And so he had trapped, and hunted, and over many years he stowed away enough money to finally buy a cabin, far and away from any other human beings, at the edge of Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness. No electricity, no running water, no furniture beyond a mattress and an old Hibachi stove, but what had made the cabin ideal was its fruit cellar. Accessed by a trapdoor, the dank space had been a gloomy, mildewy spider hole, but he had been capable of locking the door from the inside. It was safe, and for years it was effective…
Until the night of July 14th, 1998.
They had arrived earlier that day, five of them riding the world’s loudest dirt bikes up and down the forest game trails within a mile of the cabin.
Brandon had posted several signs reading NO TRESPASSING and KEEP OUT, but the interlopers had chosen to ignore these. In the years since, Brandon fully realized how naïve it was to post the signs, as he fully understood that the surest way to draw attention to a thing or a place was to tell people to stay away from it.
He had run out to confront the men, telling them that they were on private property.
“This ain’t all your property,” the biggest of them had said. Brandon asked if they had seen the signs.
“Sure did,” one of the others had answered. “What you hidin’ out here, you need all o’ them warning signs for? You growin’ pot?”
A third had asked how much for an ounce of weed. Brandon had told them in no uncertain terms that he was not growing marijuana and to get the fuck out of there.
They had ridden off, and Brandon hoped he had seen the last of them. But later that night, they had returned. It had been a full moon, and Brandon had locked himself in the cellar just before sundown. The trespassers must have been watching the house for a while after that, peering through the windows, and after assuming no one was home, broken in. After they had busted open the cellar door, one of the stupid bastards was unlucky enough to descend into the wolf’s lair.
When Brandon had awoken three miles from the cabin the following morning, he hadn’t immediately recalled the slaying. As he had walked back home, however, snippets flashed through his mind. It couldn’t be, he had told himself. It had to be some nightmare and not a real memory. He never remembered anything he did as the wolf. Then he had arrived to see the broken glass in the door, and walked inside and was faced with the open cellar. Already his guts had begun to twist. His rational mind had told him to run, but he had to know, had to see for himself. Maybe he had scared them all away…
He had retrieved a flashlight, stepped to the edge of the cellar and shined the light down… onto a gruesome scene, something out of a charnel house. The remains of a man, dismembered and eviscerated, butchered, the surroundings awash in blood. Brandon had vomited the contents of his stomach onto the wooden floor. He had reeled and felt his heart shrivel inside his chest. It had finally happened. A human being was dead because of him. There was no turning back the clock, no denying his fault.
Even as his heart and mind spun, a detached and rational part of him had said he should torch the cabin, burn away any evidence. The devastated, accountable part of him said he should turn himself in immediately.
For that moment, the more rational side had won out and he had run. He had collected all of his belongings (which fit into a single duffel bag and a wooden trunk) and fled without setting the c
abin to flame. There would be time, he had told himself, a month before the next full moon, to surrender himself to authorities without risking another life.
The man’s body had not been discovered right away, and the other trespassers from that day had not reported the incident. Two weeks had passed before a forest ranger finally stumbled onto the scene.
Over the course of those two weeks Brandon had sunk into a profound depression. Hiding out in a small town near the Canadian border, he had been unable to come to terms with his guilt. He had considered turning himself in, but what atonement might be had by consigning himself to a jail cell, where the affliction would become public knowledge? And what then? Would the world truly be ready to know that such things as he existed? If incarceration was not the answer, perhaps elimination was.
Though he had possessed few items of any worth, he sold a pocket watch that Papa had given him during a fishing trip in the early 1960s, and used the money to buy a gun. It had been cheap and unreliable, but he would only need it to work once. If the legends were true, he had thought, would a bullet even kill him? Didn’t it have to be made of silver? Surely that had been a myth made popular by comic books and movies.
In a rent-by-the-hour motel room on an otherwise unremarkable night, Brandon had sat in a cold bathtub and put the gun barrel in his mouth. He had never been a religious man, but he had whispered words of contrition to whatever force for good might exist in the universe, damned whatever cruel powers had cursed him with the beast, and he had pulled the trigger.
Fifteen minutes later he had awakened. No pain, aside from a discomfort in his throat. He had felt the back of his head: still intact. When he had stood before the mirror, mouth open wide, he could find absolutely no sign that a .45 caliber bullet had been fired into his gullet.
Later that evening stomach cramps had wracked him with pain, like a boa constrictor twisting in his gut. Before noon the following day, the deformed bullet had come out in his shit.
Brandon had hit a complete emotional dead end. Meanwhile, the investigation had gone into full swing. Brandon’s cabin had been purchased under a fake identity, of course, but a reasonable likeness of him still circulated in the form of a police sketch, based on a description given by the previous owner of the property. This would be it; he was sure of it. He would be caught. It was just a matter of time. Someone would recognize him… and that would be okay. He had been unable to get the hunger out of his mind. He had acquired a taste for human blood, and the beast had wanted more. Much more. It had been somewhat akin to the craving Brandon would get when he hadn’t had a cold beer in a good long while, but far more intense. Blood and bone had seemed to occupy his every thought.
So… he had thought maybe getting arrested was the best solution. They would lock him up, and if they did, maybe he would never kill anyone again. What else might they do? Study him? Whatever, it didn’t matter. It would be penance for the life he had taken.
Resigned to his fate, Brandon had waited. In retrospect, he would look back and realize that the police sketch was of an average Caucasian male: average height, average weight, no scars or tattoos. The suspect had resembled millions of men all around the United States. Needless to say, no one had recognized him.
Then, exactly three weeks after the incident, he had been in a corner shop in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, when the hairs had stood up on the back of his neck. When Brandon was not close to the turning, his sense of smell was only slightly above that of a normal human. But he had detected a… singular odor in the store. At first it had set him on edge, but the more he had taken in that scent the more pleasant it became.
Then he had seen her, the most gorgeous woman he had laid eyes on in a long, long time. There had been a languid sense of purpose in her movement, and when she matched eyes with him, it had been impossible to acknowledge anything else. She had walked straight up to stand before him, her long pitch-black hair stirring with the speed of her advance, and said: “I know what you are. You and I… we’re the same.”
Brandon had broken eye contact just long enough to glance at a stunning pendant that hung from the woman’s neck: rectangular, a pristine white stone, perfectly circular, set against black gold. It had looked exactly like a full moon. Stunning, just like the woman who wore it. He had gazed again into her sky-blue eyes and had been once more taken by the primal intensity of her stare.
“My name is Celine Armistead,” the woman had said.
Chapter Six
The Rapture arrived in Skagway at seven o’clock. At least, Ginny assumed it did. She sure as hell wasn’t awake to see it. She felt slightly odd when she first opened her eyes, then realized it was because she wasn’t used to sleeping naked. She looked over, relieved to see that Brandon had stayed the night. The two of them barely fit on the bed. Nevertheless, he was there, lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. Even in just the last twenty-four hours, his beard had filled in and now covered most of his neck. Her eyes traveled down…
Judging by the seven-inch tent pole under the sheets, Brandon had slept naked as well. When she looked back up, those bright eyes were shining on her, and there was a lustful desire in them. She smiled and said: “Good morning.”
Her pussy was still sore from the previous night. Never before had she taken that kind of pounding during sex. She wanted him; more than anything she wanted him inside her again right then and there. But she also needed some time to recover. More than anything, she found that in this particular moment, she wanted to please him.
Looking back downward, she saw a wet spot spreading on the sheet from the tip of Brandon’s covered dick. Ginny could feel heat rushing south, was aware of the slippery wetness between her legs.
Not yet, girl. Live to fight another day, V.
Without a word Ginny pulled the sheets off of his flagpole, rubbed her finger over the moist tip and then gripped it in a tight circle just under the head, working it in long, slow motions. Brandon’s breathing quickened. Pre-cum glistened and beaded.
A sound welled up from within him, not from his throat, but much deeper. It wasn’t exactly a moan; it was more like a growl.
Ginny’s pace quickened. Brandon’s hands clenched the bed, actually ripping holes in the fabric. He leaned over, lapping first one of her nipples and then the other. Then he pulled away and sat up slightly, stomach muscles flexing. His legs straightened, toes arching back as the first thick glob shot from him and smacked into the mirror above the half-wall that served as their headboard. The second and third damn near hit him in the face, landing just beside his head on the pillow. More followed, pattering his chest, and more, until there was a deep, white reservoir in the gulley of his pectorals and the hollow of his solar plexus. The final discharge dribbled down over her hand and into the small forest of hair at the base of his dick.
Jesus Christ, this guy’s a human fire hose.
Brandon exhaled long and slow, eyes closed as he lay his head back on the pillow. Ginny stared for a moment at the mess he and she had created. You would think this guy hadn’t gotten laid in a month, much less since last night.
Cupping her left hand under her right, Ginny pulled her hand away and swung her legs off of the bed to go wash in the sink.
There was a whole lot of cleaning up to do before they would be ready to face the day.
***
Skagway was located on a northern tip of the Alaskan Panhandle, near the Canadian border. In the late 1880s a German-born steamboat captain, Billy Moore, settled the region with his son, convinced that the mountains would yield gold. The prediction was accurate; gold was discovered in Canada’s Yukon territory in 1896, and prospectors began arriving in droves to make the arduous trek into Canada. What Billy didn’t foresee was having his land stolen and sold out from under him by some of those very same miners.
Billy might not have known what he was getting into, but he did put the first stake in the ground for what would become, during its heyday, Alaska’s largest city (as well as a magnet for crime, mu
rder and prostitution). By 1900, however, the Klondike gold rush was trickling out, and Skagway was in decline. Now it was a historical landmark and tourist destination.
The air was crisp and the sky was overcast, but for Alaska (or at least what Ginny had read of it), the weather was spectacular. There was a small coffee shop a short distance from the cruise dock. They sat, eating pastries and drinking java—mocha for her, a straight black cup o’ joe strong enough to topple a horse for him.
“The stimulant’s good. Counteracts the sugar coma from the bear claw,” she said. Brandon looked at her somewhat quizzically.
“My brother was a chemistry nerd for a while.”
Sitting here with this gorgeous man, in the midst of this stunning land, still seemed too good to be true. And of course it was. Neither of them had spoken about the black cloud looming over it all: that Brandon intended to stay in Juneau, where they were scheduled to arrive tomorrow. He would leave, and he would not come back. The thought left a hollow pit in Ginny’s stomach.
She talked about their plans for the day. Putting their money together, they had purchased two shore excursions: Liarsville and the White Pass Railway. Ginny was so excited she could hardly stand it. But Brandon had seemed… distracted all morning. Of course, that made Ginny nervous. He sure as hell had seemed to enjoy the handjob. Still, his silence bothered her.
Maybe he was just thinking about Juneau, about the fact that this would be their last full day together. That was probably it, right?
Stop being so fucking paranoid. Just let the cards fall as they may.
Right, that was the smart thing. Let him sort it out. Everything’ll be fine.
***
Sal and Vera Spears had been more than happy to chat about their new friends, Ginny and Eric, Alexander mused as he sat drinking a single malt.
The Turning Page 7
