Stalking Tender Prey

by Constantine, Storm

  Aninka regarded him thoughtfully. Half of her didn’t want to believe what he’d said, yet he spoke with such simple sincerity. Lahash did not seem like Enniel and other power holding Grigori she had met, tight with secrecy and veiled insinuations. Lahash said little, but when he did speak, his words made sense.

  ‘You are looking at me as if I’m mad,’ Lahash said. ‘Do you think I’m making this up?’

  Aninka shook her head. ‘No, of course not. But it just seems so... incredible. What happened to this woman, Helen? Was she killed?’

  Lahash shrugged. ‘I don’t know. That is, she survived Lammas night, but having once entered the flame, I wonder how much longer she could have carried on living a normal life afterwards. Anyway, it’s irrelevant. She was human, and her knowledge was limited. Kashday and Helen were hung up on the old stories, the romance of them. They must have seen themselves as Shemyaza and Ishtahar, and believed their communion possessed the same power. The instinct to re-enact such a cycle must be strong in our family’s genetic blueprint. Kashday and Helen’s love for one another ruined them both, ruined the family and the lives of many villagers down there, too.’

  ‘And Peverel Othman arrives at the site of this devastation,’ Aninka said quietly. ‘What a coincidence!’

  ‘It’s obvious Othman has sniffed out the residue of the flame here, and is attempting to resurrect it. We left guardians, and quenched the flame as best we could, but now...?’ Lahash looked around himself. ‘You can feel it, can’t you? A pressure of impending power.’

  Aninka shuddered in the oppressive heat. ‘That’s an amazing story, Lahash.’

  He smiled. ‘Well, what I’ve told you is very condensed. There was more to it than that.’

  ‘One day, I would like to hear it all.’

  His smile widened into a pleased grin. ‘Then one day, I will tell you, but it would take some time.’

  Aninka reached out and briefly touched one of his hands. ‘Let’s hope we have it, then.’

  He stood up. ‘We will.’ He lifted the binoculars to his face once more, his voice distant, as if sucked away from them, down the hill to the village and the silent, looming house of his exiled family. ‘We will go a restaurant together, and we will drink expensive wine and enjoy good food, and I shall tell you all my stories.’

  ‘And afterwards?’ Aninka asked.

  He laughed. ‘I’d have thought you’d had enough of Anakim to last you a lifetime.’

  ‘You are not Anakim,’ Aninka said.

  Lahash turned to look at her, the binoculars held at his chest. ‘Your guardian may not approve of your plans.’

  ‘I’ll tell him I want to hire you as a bodyguard.’ She affected a dramatic posture. ‘I’ve been through so much. I’m afraid of being alone now.’

  Lahash shook his head. still grinning, before resuming his inspection of the surrounding countryside. She knew she had pleased him.

  Lily stood in the hall of Long Eden, looking around herself in wonder and fear. I am inside, at last. I am really inside. The house seemed removed from reality, utterly still and silent, permeated only by a dingy light which leaked through the murky greens and golds of the stained glass window over the stairs. There was a sweet, musty smell of age, common to old houses, mixed with a faint mushroom tang of dry rot. It was hard to imagine anyone having ever lived there. Raven stood patiently as Lily walked around touching the panelling on the walls, gazing up at the great metal chandeliers high overhead. Her footsteps echoed, even though she was only wearing rubber-soled pumps on her feet. She felt as if time was hanging suspended in the dusty air. What was she supposed to do? Just look around? There seemed no message for her there; no sense of welcome, or even of attention. If the house watched her, it did so covertly.

  Raven said nothing, and when she addressed questions to him, he remained silent, as if he’d said all he was ever going to say to her. She did not like looking at him directly, because his appearance was too unearthly. Gazing at him would only force her to admit that the world she had inhabited since childhood was a fragile, friable thing. Monsters could walk out of the shadows at any time to alter perceptions for ever.

  How could I have been so unaware of all this? Lily wondered, her fingers running over an intricate carving, sticky with old wax. It has always been part of me. Why couldn’t I feel it? She peered at the carved pictures on the panelling, saw men and women with wings and fringed robes marching sideways towards a spoked globe. She touched the globe lightly. They entered here. They entered into it... She wished she knew the meaning of her thoughts.

  Something moved at the back of the hall. Lily thought she saw a brief flash of muted white in the shadows. An echo of female laughter moved the air, set the chandelier swaying overhead. Now the house had flexed its bones, woken up. It would present its ghosts to her.

  ‘Mum?’ Lily moved towards the shadows, thinking she should be afraid, but feeling only curious and, in a way, impatient.

  A corridor at the rear of the hall led off to the left. Lily cautiously peered around the corner, conscious of Raven still standing motionless nearby. The corridor appeared lit by a subterranean looking, blue-green light, but there was no indication as to its source. ‘Should I go down here?’ Lily asked aloud.

  Raven did not reply, but swiftly walked past her, his tall shape diminishing quickly down the corridor. Lily felt she would rather remain with Raven, despite the absurdity of his appearance, than be left alone. She followed him.

  There was no furniture in the corridor, not even a painting on the walls. The floor beneath her feet was of bare tiles, whose colours were now indiscernible through the dust and grime that had collected over the years. Lily was a little disappointed by what she saw around herself. Everything was so bare, everything had been removed. She had hoped to walk into a shrine to the Murkasters, with the furnishings neatly covered in white sheets, simply waiting for people to come back and live there once more. Now, just by being there and breathing the dead air, Lily knew in her heart that the Murkasters never intended to come back. All they had left behind them were the phantoms of their lives. There were no physical treasures to be uncovered. I should be dancing along these halls, in the dark, dressed in bright silks with ancient gold around my throat, Lily thought. They should have left something behind for me, a skin to wear, a looking-glass reflecting only history... The house wove a spell over her, as if melancholy dreams drifted down from the cobwebbed corners.

  Ahead of her, on the left of the corridor, a door swung silently open, spilling a wan light over the floor tiles. Raven halted in his tracks without looking round, and Lily paused. The doorway stood between them now. She thought she could hear a sound, and strained her perceptions to decipher it, but it ebbed and flowed in her mind like a badly tuned radio. Voices, they are voices. Once Lily had identified the sound, it became clearer. She heard a low conversation, men speaking quickly.

  ‘What does this woman mean?’

  ‘He is out of his mind.’

  ‘But the flame, the flame? What about the flame?’

  ‘Can he do it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes. He might.’

  ‘It could be the end of all our work.’

  ‘Or the harvest of all our work.’

  Lily hurried past. She felt if she lingered too long, her presence would be registered, even though she knew she was only hearing a replay of something that had happened a long time ago.

  The corridor opened out into a circular hall, where a mosaic pattern on the floor depicted a brace of male peacocks with their tails intertwined. A skylight in the ceiling picked out what remained of the colours of the tiles: ruby, indigo, blue and gold. Here the air smelled faintly perfumed, as if a woman had walked through it wearing Oriental scent, or once a sweet incense had been burned. Raven stood in the centre of the peacock design, his arms folded on his breast. All Lily could see of his face were the lambent embers of his burning eyes. She hesitated before him. Where now?

  A s
ound came, like someone opening a window with rusty hinges, followed by a muffled crash; something falling, shattering. Then, the distant laughter, and more clearly, the low, sultry tone of a woman singing. Lily could not make out the words. Perhaps they were in a foreign language. The song called to her, invited her body to sway to its rhythm. Lily felt as if the song could carry her away, lift her bodily from the floor, so that she could float around in the air, brushing the ceiling with her fingertips. She lifted her arms high, standing on tip-toes, waiting, waiting, for someone to take her hands and lift her up.

  A flickering white shape flitted past her, and abruptly the singing stopped. Lily gasped, and nearly fell, as if she really had been floating just above the ground. Someone stood just behind and to the left of Raven: a woman in a summer dress, her long hair flowing over her shoulders. She was smiling, but there was something flat and flickering about her appearance, as if she was merely a projection of an old film, playing upon the shadows.

  ‘Mum!’ Lily reached out to this apparition, but it had already disappeared. Behind the spot where Helen had appeared, a door swung open, and a white light came out, as of bright daylight. With it came a scent of gardens, strawberries and red wine. Raven took a step to the side and turned to look into the light. Taking this as encouragement, Lily cautiously moved closer to the door. Had Helen passed this way?

  Inside, the room was furnished. Heavy tapestries covered the walls, depicting tall winged figures in robes, similar to those on the panelling in the main hall, but here more majestic and stylised. Lily was reminded of Egyptian wall paintings found only, she presumed, in tombs. The room was dominated by a colourful painting, which hung above the great hearth, where no fire burned. Lily looked at the painting and recognised her own face, even though the woman depicted there appeared to be of ancient Middle Eastern origin, dressed in the robes of a priestess and adorned with gold. Lily was drawn by the painting and stepped across the threshold. As she did so, she realised the room was not empty and that a man was sitting at an enormous desk, his head in his hands. As she entered the room, he looked up. ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘My tormentor, my love.’ His dark red hair was tied back at the nape of his neck, but poured forward over his shoulders. He was perhaps the most beautiful man she had ever seen, other than Peverel Othman. He wore an expression of cynical resignation. He reminded her of Owen.

  ‘Father!’ she said, and suddenly there was a great flapping and chirring of wings about her head. Lily threw up her hands to protect herself and the haunted cry of a peacock echoed throughout the empty house. When she lowered her hands, the room was bare: no furniture, no painting, no phantom of Kashday. Even the carvings on the panels had become indistinct, only an arm reaching out here, the corner of a robe visible there. Lily retreated into the corridor, and saw Raven walking away from her, an unnaturally tall darkness gliding through the shadows. ‘Raven, wait!’ She ran to catch him up, but the cat-man neither slowed his pace nor turned around to beckon her. The corridor flashed past as Lily ran along it. How could she run so fast? It seemed as if the house was moving, while she was running on the spot.

  Then, abruptly, the walls on either side of her came to a shuddering halt, and Lily realised she had stopped running. She had reached the end of the corridor.

  Raven too had halted and now stood before a door, which was closed. Its panels were decorated by carvings of long, sweeping wings. Lily ventured forward cautiously and put her hands flat against the panels, feeling the ridges of the carvings beneath her palms. The wood felt warm and pliable, as if it was alive. She rested her cheek against it, and thought she could hear a faint, humming sound coming from beyond the door. If anything still lived in Long Eden, it was across this threshold. Lily wished another vision of her mother would appear to guide her, or that Raven would say something. But the cat-man remained silent, and no ghosts beckoned from the shadows. Summoning her courage, Lily put her hand upon the door knob and tried to turn it, but it was locked. She shook it a few times, to no avail, and then stepped back with a sigh. Glancing at Raven, she enquired. ‘Can’t I go in here? You’re a key, aren’t you? Will you open the door for me?’

  Raven’s eyes were a glowing amber. He said nothing, but opened his red mouth and uttered a fluting yowling sound.

  ‘What?’ Lily said. ‘I don’t understand. Speak!’

  Raven simply repeated the note.

  This was too frustrating for words. What was he trying to convey? Lily understood the language of cats only to the extent of being able to provide food, caresses or entrance to a closed room. Raven’s cry had not sounded like a demand. Lily reached out and shook the door handle again, and uttered a soft sound of alarm when Raven’s clawed hand shot out and gripped her wrist, pulling her away from the door. ‘So what else can I do?’ Lily said.

  Slowly, Raven shook his head. His eyes seemed to burn into Lily’s own, demanding her to recognise the instruction he was giving. Softly, the cat-man repeated his musical cry. Lily detected a note of exasperation in it. Are you so stupid, girl? Listen!

  Wondering whether she’d interpreted the message correctly, Lily hummed the same note. As she did so, she thought she could hear another woman’s voice joining hers, singing an identical tone. Raven blinked at her in the way that cats signify approval. Encouraged, Lily drew in her breath and sang the note once more, more loudly. As before, another female voice, which seemed to echo from somewhere deep within the house, mingled with her own. The weaving duet reverberated throughout the bricks and rafters of Long Eden, until Lily’s hair began to lift on her neck. She felt a great joy build up within her, and her song climaxed as a scream. Something seemed to tug away from her, a sense of release, of power. All fell to silence.

  Raven turned towards the door, and Lily saw that it now stood open, revealing a long flight of steps going downwards beneath the house. The note had been the key. Lily stepped forward. ‘Must I go down?’

  Raven again said nothing but began to descend the stairs. Hurrying, Lily followed him. She had to feel along the walls so as not to fall, because there was no light at all. Raven soon became invisible in the darkness ahead of her. Lily’s pumps slipped upon the stairs; she dreaded losing her footing and plunging down into the darkness. ‘Raven!’ Her voice was muffled; there was no echo.

  Down, down. The stairs seemed to have no end. Lily fought a sensation of panic and claustrophobia. When she looked back, she not could see anything above her. Just as she was about to give in to her terror, turn back, and scrabble her way to the doorway, she noticed two amber lights hanging in the air ahead of her that she recognised as Raven’s eyes. She heard a whispering voice murmur, ‘Don’t stop,’ which she wasn’t sure came from Raven or someone else. She went towards the eyes, noticing as she did so that the floor had levelled out. Groping, with her arms held out in front of her, she encountered Raven’s body. Briefly, he put his long, furred arm around her shoulder, and then a weak light came to illuminate the short corridor in which they stood. Raven had apparently pushed open another door. Lily went towards it. Across the threshold lay an enormous room. Again, there was no visible source of light, but the whole place was illumined by a soft, yellowy radiance. Here, at last, were things that the Murkasters had left behind them in their flight.

  Tentatively, Lily ventured into the room, which stretched away for as far as she could see. It was filled with tables, benches, shelves and cupboards, all of which bore strange machinery and models. Enormous books, as tall as Lily herself, lolled in a bookcase against the wall near the door. Nearby stood what appeared to be the skeleton of some extinct saurian, except that it looked more like a bird than any dinosaur Lily had seen in books or films. Some of the apparatus in the room was huge, brushing the ceiling with jointed, metal arms, supporting globes, a few of which had spikes. Lily thought this might be astronomical machinery, representing planets and stars. On the walls, reflecting the positions of the astrolabes, were great maps of the heavens, marked with red and purple lines of ink. Marve
lling, Lily walked slowly to the nearest table, which was covered in metal balls that shone with many colours like oil. Some of the balls were as small as marbles, others the size of doorstops. Lily picked up a palm-sized ball; it was warm to the touch and lay heavy in her hand. What was its purpose? She became aware of faint sounds at the edge of her perception: soft, whispering voices, liquid bubbling, the clack of wood against metal and a swishing noise like a broom being brushed across the floor. She put down the ball and turned around quickly, but the sounds ceased immediately.

  On another table, Lily found trays of metal instruments that looked disturbingly surgical. She picked up an object that seemed to be a strange hybrid of scalpel and pincers, and the faint noises of activity pushed against her ears once more. She smelled burning, something like charred hair. Lily dropped the instrument quickly and again the sensory impressions ceased immediately. Unnerved, Lily stood with her back to the table, looking around herself. Here, she felt very uneasy, the atmosphere was tense. Also, Raven was clearly visible in the light. He stood with arms folded some feet away, terrifyingly alien, yet weirdly familiar because of his feline features. He blinked at Lily, as if to reassure her. ‘You’re strange!’ Lily said nervously. ‘I want to get used to you, but it’s difficult.’

  Raven merely blinked again, but the brief communication helped to alleviate Lily’s unease. She walked down an aisle between two rows of tables, Raven following.

  ‘This must have been where the Murkasters conducted their secret work,’ Lily said. ‘Did you ever work here, Raven?’ She did not expect an answer. ‘I don’t suppose Raven’s your real name, is it? If I knew your real name, would you speak to me again?’

  A low, rumbling sound erupted in Raven’s chest. Lily realised with some amusement that he was purring. Was that supposed to make her feel better? So loud a purr sounded distinctly threatening. ‘Owen would love to see all this,’ she said. ‘I wish he was here.’