One of the shadows made a sudden violent movement and there was a flash of silver gleaming with moonlight. Sap oozed, weeping from the trunk of a sapling like blood from a fresh wound. Leaves crunched, then rustled.
And then the field was silent once more.
▪▫▪▫▪▫▪
It was the coldest night of the year, with many colder ones to come. Though it was only late October, the leaves feathered with a gleaming latticework of bristly hoarfrost. Her breaths rose in a frozen plume up towards the gibbous moon as she walked back to the dorm.
Seeing Jade had left her feeling emptier.
She had been looking at the calendar ever since their first awkward date. Counting the days, the weeks, wondering when she would finally be forced to sleep with him. Each passing day meant that she was a day closer to that momentous decision.
She liked Jade, found him attractive even, but the idea of him naked, in a bed, with her, made her feel vaguely repulsed. Nauseated, almost. She had realized that, when she felt his erection dig lightly into her stomach as he kissed her.
A cold wind rustled the leaves of the nearby trees. To her left was a little enclave replete with picnic tables and willow trees arched in a graceful swoop. To her right was a knot of juniper and cypress, and she could smell the piney scent from here, so pungent it stung.
Somewhere behind her, a twig snapped. Val froze, stock-still, tilting her head towards the sound. She was standing outside the grove of cypress with small chattering creatures rustling from within the juniper.
Too small to make a sound like that? She quickened her pace, drawing her coat more tightly around herself. She was a little over halfway back to the dorms, she reasoned, and therefore moderately safe. There was a campus police station just down the street, and several of the classrooms nearby were still lit. North Point was a very safe campus. Everyone said so.
But all statistics had outliers. She was not aware of the arm at first, feeling it only as a pinching sensation at her midsection as if she had run into the bar of a gate. By the time she realized what it was, she was whirled around, with one of the rough mulberry tree trunks digging into her lower back.
Her assailant's face was in shadow, but she knew who it was. Knew even before that blade gleaming with stolen starlight was at her throat, knew before she heard his voice, dark and deep, full of anger veiled in mockery.
“Going somewhere?”
“N—”
He forced her up against the tree with the flat of the blade. “That was a rhetorical question. You are going nowhere.” He ran the back of his hand down her cheek and then, with a neat twist of his wrist, cupped her beneath the chin to raise her head. “Do you understand?”
Val brought up her knee. He crushed his pelvis against hers, pressing her into the gnarled wood, hurting her, and kissed her there, cloaked in the seclusion of the shadows.
Scorching and carnivorous, his bruising kiss left a minty taste that prickled and stung like the rime on the leaves. She struggled against him, trying to scream, and stilled when the knife bit into her skin.
“I warned you not to run.” At this angle, she was forced to look him in the eyes. Her bared throat made her conscious of how easily he could kill her, here, with only darkness standing witness.
“You should have come to me, willingly, when you had the chance.” Her lungs tightened and coiled in her chest, and she wondered if they might not spring from her mouth like a morbid jack-in-the-box.
“I'm not stupid.” “A fine impression you do.” He tilted her head with the knife to study something that had caught his attention, and said, “My, my, my—what have we here?” She stared at him, mouth working as his leather-bound fingers brushed her skin. “Who is he?”
“No one.” “Yet you still let him mark you. That means you're either a liar—or a whore. Which is it, Val?”
She remained silent.
His hand settled at her waist, stroking the inch of bare skin between hem and waistband. “You are far too unskilled to attempt the latter, so it must be the former, at which you are only slightly better.” He leaned in as if to kiss her and she turned her head away. “Tell me his name.”
“He's…nobody. He doesn't have anything to do with this.” “I asked for an answer. Not an excuse.”
“Please. Don't hurt him.”
His grip on her tightened. “You,” he said, in a cold imperious voice, “will demand nothing from me.” He moved her face back towards his. “The name, Val. I won't ask for it again.”
She winced away from the knife. “Jade.” “How…appropriate.”
Val averted her eyes. “What do you want?” “Forgetful as well as fickle. Why am I not
surprised?” He wiped his hand on his jeans. Like he'd touched something filthy. She could sense his fury as if it were a tangible force, coated in ice and bitter as the wind. He leaned closer, until she felt his breath hot against her frozen cheek, and said, “It was a year ago, to this very day, that you tried to kill me.”
There was a heartbeat of shocked silence as her brain did the calculations. Then she lurched forward. He seemed to have expected this exact response, though, because his arm locked around her middle almost before her body moved and then her backside was flush against his front.
“I wasn't pleased with you,” he continued, as if there had been no pause and this was just an ordinary conversation between two perfect strangers, as if he weren't holding a knife to her throat, “in fact, you could say I was rather put out.”
Val thought this was an extraordinary understatement. “I thought I'd laid matters to rest. Well, perhaps this is a blessing in disguise. I was forced to deal with you rather hastily before—and fate does not often gift us a second chance. But what form should vengeance take, hmm? There are so many options. I even put a few of them into practice, but that was a pale imitation of what I wanted: you. Your suffering.
“And now, I have you.”
“Someone will find me,” she said hoarsely. “I doubt that.” His laugh made her flinch; she could feel the rumble of it against her back, like the thunder heralding a storm. “I don't plan to settle matters here.”
I am 'matters.' He has reduced me to a thing, an object. There was a name for that. Dehumanization. It was the first step one took when committing oneself psychologically to murder. She tried again. “My roommate is expecting me.” “Yes, I'm sure you've taken every precaution. For
today, at least.” He tugged at a lock of her hair, hard, and she let out a small gasp. “But what about tomorrow?”
“I—I don't know what you mean.” With the hand holding on to the knife he slipped something into her hand. Her fingers tightened around the object, which yielded in her tight grip.
Paper.
A card.
“What's this?”
“Read it.”
She looked down, with effort, as the knife dug into her throat once more. She saw what looked like a hotel's room number printed in laborious script. There was also a time.
Val swallowed. Her tongue felt like a lead slab. “Pennyroyal. Is that—” she wet her lips “—is that a hotel?”
“Inn, actually.”
“I—I've never heard of it.”
“You wouldn't.”
“What—”
“Pennyroyal means 'flee' in the language of flowers. Victorian, you know. Quite appropriate, I thought. I suggest not fleeing too far, lest I feel compelled to come after you.”
His arm fell away from her waist and he took a step back from her. “Mustn't keep the roommate waiting.”
“W-what are you going to do?”
“One or two things do spring to mind.” Unexpectedly, he smiled. It was a cold smile, hard and forgiving, and yet almost salacious. “I don't suggest going for help. You will receive little from that quarter, and only make me angry.”
He rocked forward, head tilted up in thought. “A few of them were still alive when I used this.” He lifted the knife for her contemplation. Over the
sharp blade, he regarded her with eyes only slightly duller by comparison. “If you do turn to the police, I might use it on that little paramour of yours. I think I'll start with his face.”
Val flinched, stumbling back against the tree. “You're psychotic.”
“Mm, yes, and twisted, and sadistic, and cruel— isn't that right?”
She flinched again upon hearing her earlier words flung back at her. He was there. “You cannot pin me down with words, my dear; you cannot pin me down at all.” The knife disappeared back into his jacket pocket. He began to walk away, pausing only to look back over his shoulder and say, “If you do come, come alone. But as I said before, it's only a suggestion.”
(Don't make me hurt you.
Don't make me hurt your friends.)
He was wrong.
It was a threat.
(Only if you make it one.)
▪▫▪▫▪▫▪ Jade glared at his computer screen.
His roommate's annoying friend was over and apparently he couldn't take a hint or five because he was talking Jade's ear off about some dumb chatroom where he spent all his time arguing in the forums with other butthurt-dwellers half his age.
Jade closed his eyes and wished he could do the same thing with his ears.
Where the hell was Mitch? This was his guest. A thump drew Jade's attention to the door. He got up, grateful for a polite excuse to walk out on the monologue about memes and their various origins.
“Hello?” He frowned when no response was forthcoming. A prank? Some of the other freshmen were inclined to play a bit of ding-dong-ditch, but they were usually unable to contain their drunken snickering and their stampeding could be heard clear through the wall.
He opened the door slowly, some instinct making him keep the safety latch fastened. The corridor was empty save for a small brown box sitting in the doorway. The box looked innocuous enough but there was a wrongness about it he couldn't quite put his finger on, brought on by countless warnings from bus terminals and airports about unattended baggage.
Not that he thought it was a bomb, but still, what was it doing there? Mail and package deliveries were handled by Student Services at the front office. They certainly didn't do door-to-door. So who had left it? And why? Was it a prank, or something more sinister?
Post-9/11 paranoia, he thought. You are acting afraid of a box. Man up. Casting a final look down both sides of the hall, Jade carefully picked up the box and shut the door behind him. He set it down on his desk, next to his computer, his half-finished essay still on the screen.
If it is a bomb, that essay will be the last of your problems. Mitch's friend peered over his shoulder as he opened the box. “Dude, sick.”
For the first time all evening, Jade completely agreed with him.
Inside the box was a small plastic object Jade eventually recognized as a chess piece. A bishop, he thought, since it was too long and detailed to be a pawn. Its length had been reduced dramatically, however, due to the fact that it was cleaved in two.
As Jade tilted the box down to better look, the top half rolled down, leaving trails of paint in its wake. The entire box was splattered with it, in a color chosen to approximate blood.
“Somebody hates you, dude,” said Mitch's friend. Jade barely heard him.
There was a note taped to the lid. He peeled it off carefully, not wanting to get any of the paint on his hands. Not while it was still wet. He was too creeped out to be embarrassed about revealing such fastidiousness. The paint just looked a little too much like blood, and there was something fucked-up about this whole situation. Even the drunkest of frat-boys wouldn't find this nasty little gag funny.
He flattened out the paper on his desk, hoping it would offer some sort of clue—some reason—why he, out of everyone—had been selected as a recipient. It did. In gleaming ink the same color as the paint in the box, Jade saw these hastily penned words:
Stay the fuck away from Valerian Kimble. Chapter Ten
Tiger Lily
Pennyroyal Inn. Sequoia Avenue. 3 o' clock. Room 217.
The words were seared into her visual cortex. She saw his spidery writing even when she closed her eyes.
Mary was still being cool to her, though she had thawed enough that she asked, “Where are you going?”
Val froze. This was the moment. The moment when she could redeem herself, when she could turn it all back. And then she thought of James, and Jade, and all those young girls, and the words would not come. “To see a friend,” she said weakly.
Mary did not say, I didn't know you had any friends, but the words hung unspoken between them like an open secret. “Well have fun, I guess.”
Val was not sure whether she wanted to laugh or scream. She kept her mouth shut and nodded. Look at you—you really are his pawn.
Or maybe, his puppet.
She hopped on the inter-city bus, the onefourteen, the same one she had gotten on by mistake on her very first day. Rain began to fall, as it often did in western Washington, and each drop made her flinch as they pelted against the glass in machine-gun bursts.
“Sequoia Avenue was what you wanted, right miss?” The bus driver gave a grotesque smile, or maybe her imagination made it that way. (You still have one, don't you?) “This is it.”
Yes, she thought, this is it—for me. He gestured towards the street sign, conveniently stationed outside an old-fashioned building that said Pennyroyal Inn in flowing script on the cream and white awning flapping ominously in the rainy October wind.
Her heart plunged into her stomach like an anchor.
The building itself was innocuous enough. Coated in white paint with yellow trim that had faded from years of bipolar weather, it was reminiscent of an English cottage. Completing the image were yellow roses, growing on either side of the stone steps leading up to the boutique-style doors. The frosted windows were covered with whorled designs that prevented her from catching a glimpse of the interior, but she suspected it was no less opulent inside.
Val looked up at the curtained windows on the second floor, both open and closed, and couldn't help wondering which one was his.
How strange, to go from doubt to such rigid certainty. But it certainly looked like the type of place he would choose. The roses alone could seal the deal. She remembered Gavin telling her, in what here and now seemed to have occurred in an entirely different lifetime, that yellow roses signified infidelity and dying love.
A ripple of terror melted her spine and turned her legs to rubber. For a moment it seemed as if she might throw up on the granite steps, or perhaps her whole body would putrefy into a quivering mess of terror.
Suddenly, his words, all of his words, took on a new and sinister context.
Those women—no, some of them had been girls —had not died quickly.
Some of them had been raped, first. Still others had been dismembered. (People will find me.)
He might kill her.
(I doubt that.)
He might do worse.
If she did not go, he would cut Jade…and carve up his face as if he were a piece of fruit.
Or so he says.
No. That she believed. Look at what he had done to Lisa—to Blake—to Jason—to all those innocent girls whose only crime had been being born with a rare phenotype.
I could get back on the bus. No one would know. Val half-turned towards the street only to see the bus pulling away from the timed stop and back into traffic, merging onto the turn that went to Poinsettia Boulevard. She watched it disappear from sight and knew without checking the schedule that the next bus would not be coming for another hour.
The rain continued to fall.
She imagined that she saw one of the curtains on the second floor shift.
As if somebody from above were watching her down below on the sidewalk.
Making sure she didn't run. Val gulped and leaped up the steps, avoiding the fallen rose petals. She opened the doors and the smell of incense nearly knocked her over—heady and dark, and sav
agely male: the sweet, musky scent was so cloying that Val could scarcely breathe.
Dragon's blood. It was thick and viscous when burned, but in crushed form it had a distinct crimsonbrown color that looked eerily similar to dried blood. Val remembered reading somewhere that dragon's blood had a history of being confused with cinnabar, the lethal crystals of mercury that formed sometimes near volcanic hot springs. She wondered why that thought was coming to mind now.
Sitting behind an enormous desk that looked like polished rosewood but probably wasn't was an old receptionist of Indian descent. He glanced up, spectacles flashing, as the bell over the door signaled her arrival.
“Can I help you?” he inquired, looking her up and down. His clipped tone bore no trace of an accent.
Val wondered how she looked to him—a very pale girl with choppy black hair pulled back for a ponytail, dressed for the autumn chill in jeans and a pea coat. Did she look like a guest? Like she needed help? She was far beyond any hope of the latter.
“I…no.” She headed for the direction of the stairs. “Are you one of our guests?” The helpfulness had
disappeared from his voice; now it was laced with suspicion. “If not, I am afraid I must ask you to leave.”
“W-what?”
She was afraid she hadn't heard correctly—and even more afraid that she had. She hadn't expected a reprieve. Certainly, she hadn't expected one just to be handed to her as though on a silver platter.
But the man continued. “There is no loitering in the lobby, although you are welcome to return if you decide to make a reservation.” His voice let it be known how remote he thought this possibility.
Hope swelled inside her, so abundant that it seemed to make her chest expand. She felt buoyant with it. She could have kissed the cantankerous turtlelike man. “Okay,” she said, breathy with relief. “I'll leave. I'm sorry.”
“See that you do.” He looked as relieved as she felt when he turned back to his paperwork. Like a man who believed he had escaped what might be a very unsavory situation.
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