Madison's Song

by Christine Amsden

  “I’m sorry,” he said before thrusting painfully into her.

  She bit her lip to keep from crying out. She turned her head to the side so he wouldn’t see the tear sliding down her cheek. It wasn’t for the pain, though the loss of her virginity had hurt the worse for her lack of readiness. It was for the words he had spoken to her, the words that had shattered an innocent girl’s fantasy that a man like Scott would truly want her: I’m sorry.

  He withdrew from her long before she had fully wrapped her mind around what was happening. She felt raw. Used. The evening had been one shock after another – life, death, and the loss of innocence in so many senses of the word.

  It wasn’t over yet.

  She thought she heard him crying. Gathering her last shreds of courage and dignity she peeled herself off the worn beige carpeting and approached him on her hands and knees, past the box of abused board and card games.

  “Get back!” he barked.

  She froze, paralyzed, unable to bear what was happening to him and unable to look away. His face was twisted with pain, but she dared not approach to lend comfort.

  His change came neither quickly nor slowly. He melted into the wolf, limbs bulging and shifting, his form elongating, fur sprouting in tufts. The new form tore away the shirt he had not yet removed.

  He looked at her one last time in the instant before the beast took over, something unfathomable in his yellowing eyes. Whatever it was disappeared. Then he was gone.

  The wolf wasn’t really a wolf, though the beast did have something of the look of a canine in it. It walked on all fours, it had tufted ears, and its muzzle was the right shape. But it was too big, too fierce, too strong, and simply … unearthly. Its fur was pure black, with none of Scott’s coloring, its eyes a golden yellow.

  It wasn’t him. He had told her it wouldn’t be, but until she looked into those eyes she hadn’t realized what he meant. Scott was gone. Only the wolf remained, and the wolf looked at her as if she were dinner.

  She scrambled backwards, away from the creature. It growled its menace, but didn’t initially turn its attention on her. Instead, it turned to David.

  The wolf was much larger than Scott had been. Fleetingly, she thought it looked as if he could swallow David up in a few bites. As if her thought brought actions to life, the beast sank its teeth into one meaty thigh and pulled away a strip of flesh.

  Madison screamed.

  The carnivore is often given an exalted status in Western mythology, revered for the simple beauty of the hunt and the kill. The reality before Madison at that moment was something entirely different. Whatever else David had been, he had been a man. Now a monster was eating him, bit by bit.

  She tried to close her eyes, but every time she succeeded, they would pop open again. She couldn’t look away from the blood and the gore and the intestines spilling onto the floor. The beast tore into the guts with relish, lapping up the feast it found there. And still, she couldn’t look away. This was beyond anything she had imagined or could have dreamed.

  An eternity later, the beast turned away from its feast. It looked at her, blood and a bit of something unidentifiable dripping from its muzzle, then it stalked her.

  Already flat against the wall, Madison had nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. The beast loomed over her, staring at her with those great yellow eyes, and for a moment she knew she would end up just like David. Only he had been dead first. Would the beast kill her first, or eat her alive?

  It sniffed her. She reached out a hand to try to push it away but it growled, a sound low in its throat, and snapped at her. She pulled her hand back.

  It went back to smelling her. It took its time, starting at her feet and moving upward. When it reached her belly, full of fresh cuts and blood, she was sure it would bite her, tearing her open. It likes the intestines the most, she thought, as it lowered its muzzle.

  The beast growled again, but it didn’t attack. Slowly, it backed away, finally sitting on its haunches. Then it looked at her. She had no idea what went through its primitive mind, though when it went back to David’s body and picked through the remains for any meat it might have missed the first time, she had an idea. It was hungry. It was angry. It might even have been confused, but she accepted she might have been projecting her own emotions onto the beast.

  It stayed with her all through that night – the longest of her life. If she moved, it growled. She longed to adjust her position, to soothe her stiff muscles, but fear held her captive. Each minute that ticked by could turn out to be her last. Any second, the beast could decide she wasn’t worth keeping alive. Or that it was too hungry.

  She tried to remind herself that this wasn’t Scott. That Scott wasn’t a monster so long as the moon wasn’t full. The bestial eyes focused unwaveringly upon her didn’t look like Scott’s so it shouldn’t have been hard to separate the two. Only she remembered how easily and remorselessly Scott had killed. And, unfairly, she remembered how he had hurt her. Even if he had done it to save her life.

  Although, come to think of it, how had he known to do that? Why had he come here tonight? The question kept circling through her mind, but Scott was in no position to answer.

  The night drifted endlessly on, a nightmare from which she could not wake. After a while, her body went numb, her brain seeming to lose touch with the stiff muscles she could not bend or flex. The fear shifted into something else, something less immediate. It hadn’t gone, it was more like emotional overload had placed her panic on mute. At that point her mind was able to leave the present, to drift backwards and remember how things were supposed to have been.

  She’d first noticed Scott at the Fourth of July concert when, for the first time in her life, not one but two men had suddenly shown an interest in her. She hadn’t known what to do with either Scott’s rugged appeal or Nicolas’s boyish charm, but she knew which called to her. She hadn’t even cared if he’d only noticed her because she had revealed her songbird gift to the entire town. He had overwhelmed her, but that was a normal feeling for her. Deep down inside, where nerves and shyness couldn’t penetrate, she’d been secretly thrilled.

  She’d asked about Scott since then. Everyone had said the same thing: Stay away from him. He’s dangerous.

  Dangerous didn’t half describe it. Every time Madison shifted, every time she twitched, the werewolf growled and she knew it would bite her. No, it would eat her alive. But time and time again it returned instead to the bloodied remains of David McClellan, where it gnawed on the bones.

  Dawn came. Miraculously, unbelievably, the night came to an end and the beast melted into Scott in a reversal of what had happened the night before. The wolf didn’t bear its pain as silently as Scott had. It howled during the long minutes it took to transform, leaving Madison with no recourse save to close her eyes and press her hands against her ears.

  Her entire body spasmed when something touched her back.

  “It’s okay,” Scott said. “It’s over.”

  She took a few deep breaths to steady herself then turned to face him, finding only marginal comfort in the return of jade green eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, repeating the words that had hurt her a lifetime ago when she’d hoped he might have wanted more from her than her safety. Now, she felt too numb to care.

  “You did save my life,” she whispered. “Twice, apparently. I owe you.”

  “I won’t ask you for anything. Last night …” He paused, darting a quick glance at the body in the corner. “At least it worked. I won’t touch you again.”

  Madison didn’t have the will to respond. It was all too much. She needed to think. She needed to get clean. She rose on shaking feet, half expecting Scott to stop her. Half hoping. He didn’t say a word as she hobbled to the bathroom, where she began the work of cleaning her body. But no amount of washing could clean the debris from her heart or her soul, and the terror of that night would follow her into her dreams for years to come.

  Chapter 1

  Two
years later …

  MADISON CLUTCHED HER CELL PHONE AS, for the dozenth time in less than a week, her call went to voicemail. Her younger brother’s too-cheerful voice started to ask her to leave a message, but she hit “end” before it finished.

  “Where are you, Clinton?” Madison wondered out loud. It had been a month. An entire month since the last time they’d spoken on the phone. Sure, he was in college, young and having fun, but he had never been irresponsible. He had never gone this long without at least sending her an email. And while he wasn’t a Facebook regular, he would normally have posted something about the end of finals. That, more than anything, had led to the frantic flurry of phone calls this week.

  The school year was over for Madison as well. She had brought her fifth graders to tears when she had sung them a final good-bye that afternoon. There hadn’t been a dry eye in the room, not even on the stonier faces of the tough boys. She hadn’t meant to do it. She was normally very conscious of the power her songbird voice had to evoke emotions in those who heard it, but she had been distracted. Not thinking clearly. The prospect of a lonely summer loomed ahead, her fifth graders would move on to middle school where she would never teach them again, and worst of all, her anxiety over Clinton grew stronger as each new day passed without a word.

  Clinton was, after all, the only family she had left. The only one who had never hurt or betrayed her. If anything happened to him …

  Her mind started sorting through possibilities once again, but nothing made sense. She was Clinton’s “in case of emergency” contact at school, at work, and on his phone. If he had gotten into an accident, she would know. Which left what, exactly? That a straight-A student had suddenly dropped out of school and joined a rock band?

  It was probably nothing. He had probably been busy. They didn’t hang out in the same circles, she wasn’t his mother, and for all she knew he could have dropped his phone in a toilet. Weeks had passed between calls before – rarely.

  But she had nightmares. These days, she almost always had nightmares. Madison knew better than most what sorts of dangers lurked in the night, but Clinton had always been separate from all of that. On the outside. He, unlike her, was the product of two normal people having a normal child.

  She dialed again, this time calling Clinton’s housemate, who had always struck her as being irresponsible. She wasn’t surprised when he didn’t answer her call, nor that he hadn’t responded to the three messages she had left for him. She did not leave another.

  Now what? The sun had set, but the moon had not yet risen. It wouldn’t be full tonight, but it was close enough to make her shudder with remembered fear.

  There was one final call she could make, one she had been putting off making for days. She had not spoken to her adoptive father, Phillip Carter, since the day he had betrayed her – selling the identity of her biological father to that man’s enemies for the bargain-basement price of $10,000. In the end, that was how much she’d meant to him.

  But she and Phillip (she sometimes still thought of him as Dad, but she was getting better) had one thing left in common: Clinton.

  She did not have Phillip’s number programmed into her phone, but she dialed it from memory, her fingers automatically jumping from digit to digit. Those fingers stayed curiously still and calm as she waited through four rings. Then she heard the familiar gravelly voice for the first time in over a year.

  “What?” he demanded without preamble.

  Her breath caught, something got lodged in her throat, and it was a moment before she managed a “Hi.” Stupid girl. Why do you still care?

  “What do you want, Madison?” Phillip asked in the clipped, distant tone he’d always used when she misbehaved.

  “I haven’t heard from Clinton in almost a month. I was wondering if you have.”

  “No.” There was a pause. “I’m worried.” He probably was. Clinton, he cared about. Clinton was really his son. Clinton had never even accidentally brushed up against the world of sorcery.

  Madison might have felt jealous, but Phillip didn’t know how to show affection to anyone, not even his son. Which was why Clinton often agreed with Madison that they were all the family each other had.

  “I’m going to drive to Springfield tomorrow to look for him.” She hadn’t made the decision until she’d said it, but now she knew it was her only choice. Maybe she was overreacting, but if that was the case then so be it.

  “Have him call me when you find him.” That was it. Phillip didn’t want to hear from her, only from his real son. Otherwise, she could turn right back around and go to the devil, where she’d been heading.

  Well, what had she expected? A sudden change of heart? A declaration of love?

  “I will. Bye, Da–” Madison just stopped herself. Old habits. “Bye.”

  Phillip ended the call without saying another word.

  Madison tried to push thoughts of Phillip from her mind as she prepared for bed. She called Clinton one last time, not because she thought he would suddenly pick up the phone but because she wanted to leave one last voicemail telling him she’d be making the two-hour drive from Eagle Rock, Missouri to Springfield in the morning. Then she set her phone on the nightstand and started humming to herself.

  The tune was a familiar one, a song she’d been working on for years. She had the melody right, but she still had not found the words to go with it. The song needed words full of hope and love, but nothing in her life had inspired that kind of poetry lately.

  Not for the first time, Madison wished her songbird gift would work on herself – that she could sing a joyful song and draw that song’s happiness into herself. But that was not how it worked. In fact, she didn’t make people feel the song’s emotions as much as she made them feel her own. The melody and lyrics helped set a tone she could embrace, but she had once managed to make someone cry singing, “If You’re Happy and You Know It.”

  Today was that kind of day. Music was her refuge, but tonight worry followed her within its sheltering embrace. She gave up by nine o’clock, thinking she should at least try to get a good night’s sleep before setting off in the morning. She only prayed that her nightmares would give her respite.

  * * *

  She is scared and hurt, but not alone. Before her stands the man who saved her life. He is only a few inches taller than she, but so broad and powerful that he seems much larger. His arms ripple with well-defined, sculpted muscles that she knows he can use to kill. His face is not classically handsome, but it is rugged and beautiful to her. She loves his eyes most of all. Those jade green eyes that carry the weight of the world within their depths. They say eyes are the windows to the soul, so she tries to peer inside to see.

  He looks back, giving her the sense that he sees her as no man ever has before – as a woman. He extends a hand to her and she takes it, feeling the thrill of contact. This is it. This is what it’s supposed to feel like when a man touches a woman. She is pure sensation, all flutters and tingles. She wants this man, if he’ll have her. She is afraid to hope that he might.

  Suddenly, he shifts. In those soul-deep eyes he betrays a flash of pain, then his body jerks and flexes. Hair begins to sprout even as his bones contort. He looks like he is fighting the transformation, but he is fighting a losing battle.

  For one last, lingering second he looks on her with the green eyes she knows. Then he is the wolf, and when she looks into its eyes, Scott is gone. The beast has yellow eyes, without so much as a spark of humanity left.

  The beast growls, baring its teeth. It lunges for her, sinking long, sharp canines into her throat. She cannot scream. Her heart is trying to escape her chest. Her throat works again and again, but the scream will not come.

  She can smell the blood. It’s everywhere. The beast is going to eat her alive. It lowers its muzzle to sink its teeth into her belly and tear out her intestines – the part it likes best. She knows what will happen next, and there is nothing she can do about it.

  If only whoever is
calling her on the phone could help her. If only...

  * * *

  Sweat drenched Madison’s sheets when she finally managed to pull herself away from her recurring nightmare long enough to understand that the phone truly was ringing at two in the morning. She fumbled with several objects on her nightstand before finding the phone, but she had long-since missed the call. Her blood ran cold when she saw that it had been Clinton who’d phoned in the dead of night.

  No word for a month and now this? A phone call at two in the morning?

  Madison crawled out of bed, removed her sweat-drenched night shirt, then fumbled through her drawer for another. She wanted a shower. She wanted to change the bed. She settled for a dry shirt before taking a seat on the floor near the foot of her full-sized bed and returning her brother’s call.

  He answered on the first ring. “Oh, thank God.”

  Madison’s pulse jumped. “What’s going on?

  “I need your help.”

  “You’re in trouble.” It wasn’t a question. “What do you need? Money?” Although, now that she thought about it, if he needed money he could have picked a more reasonable hour to call.

  “I don’t need money.” Clinton drew in a deep breath, as though steeling himself for something. “I need magic.”

  Magic? Madison sat up straighter, the last tendrils of sleepiness melting away as if they had never been. Sure, she had a little bit of magic, but Clinton knew how she felt about using it. And even if using magic didn’t make her feel somehow tainted, the fact remained that she really couldn’t use it. Magic required a combination of potential, effort, and study. She had little potential, didn’t care to put out much effort, and had only studied enough basics so she wouldn’t hurt anyone with what little potential she did have.

  Unless … “What do you mean by magic, exactly? Do you want me to sing for you?” Most outsiders didn’t understand the distinction – Madison herself had only started to understand in the past year or so – but a gift was not the same thing as magic. Her songbird gift was tied to the soul and was as instinctive as breathing. She almost couldn’t not do it, which was something she had never been able to explain to Phillip.