The Stolen

by Celia Thomson

  Afterward they were silent.

  “I have a scent!” one of them hissed. She had yellow eyes, orange hair, and a round face that resembled Sergei’s but a cool, high forehead and neck that could have easily gotten her on the cover of a fashion magazine. She wore a tank top and had tattoos of leopard spots ringing her upper arms.

  They all cocked their heads, sniffing the air. Chloe did, too, and when the faintest breeze changed directions, she had it: a musky scent that made her think of herbivores, even though she wasn’t sure she had ever precisely smelled anything like it before.

  A deer. They were going to run down a deer.

  The redhead who’d first caught the scent pointed and the rest began running, following the direction of her finger. Chloe paused, thinking about the mountain lion attack on a jogger that she and Brian had argued about just a few weeks before. He had insisted the lion should be put down for attacking a human; she had suggested the unfairness of humans moving in and destroying the lion’s habitat.

  Now she wondered if the attack had been by a lion at all.

  The air tickled her nose again: the deer was farther away. Getting away.

  She ran. Her companions were rarely visible: once they descended off the top of the hill and into the edge of the woods, the Mai darted in and out of shadows, keeping a more or less straight line along the scent of the deer but out of sight of anyone or anything that might be watching.

  Clouds raced across the sky as fast the hunters beneath them. They slipped from the moon, and the blanketing shadows parted for just a few seconds: the bushes and trees went from gray and purple to white and silver-green, then faded back as the foggy curtain closed again. Chloe felt her legs pumping smoothly below her. Her arms moved at her sides as though they were pushing the air behind her to speed her up. Her lungs felt like bursting, but the air was light, inspiring her to run harder. Chloe leapt over a bush and laughed. This is what it’s supposed to be like. Running with a purpose, running with her pride.

  She paused for a moment to smell the air again and continued: they were catching up. Even though they were two-legged, they were running down a deer. A cat’s growl sounded behind her. Chloe didn’t answer. She went where her senses told her: to a clearing up ahead, a long field in the open. Chloe could feel the closeness of the brambles begin to give way to something that was open to the stars.

  She came out suddenly, before she could stop herself. Momentum caused her to almost tumble over the rock she paused at—a beginner’s mistake. She saw the deer. It, too, had paused and was flicking its long ears left and right. It seemed to look right at Chloe with big dark eyes, but she knew that if it actually saw her, it would have begun running again; the Mai were downwind from it. The deer was beautiful, and Chloe could barely wait for it to begin running again so they could resume the chase.

  The deer must have heard something; it suddenly turned and leapt, a beautiful four-legged spring from a standstill that Chloe had only seen on nature programs. The smell of the terrified animal hit her nose with a slap, and before she knew it, Chloe was running again.

  She saw her companions emerge from the bush and silently nodded at them in greeting as the pack drew up into a close formation, the redheaded girl taking up the rear. The deer flashed into darkness and the six women plunged after it into the woods, where Chloe could hear nothing but her own breathing and heartbeat, not a footstep of those around her.

  They shot out into the bright moonlight again—the doe was only twenty feet in front of them. One woman pulled ahead with a series of springs and leaps that were so far from human that anyone watching would have been hard-pressed to recognize her as a form of sentient life.

  Chloe suddenly realized what was going to happen.

  They were on a hunt. There was the deer, there was the hunter.

  She stopped running and turned her head, covering her eyes.

  The girl before her let forth a cry—it was Valerie, Chloe realized, a little stunned. She put her hands over her ears and waited, unwilling to experience anything of what she knew had to come next. Her chase lust vanished.

  “Hey, not a bad first hunt, eh?”

  Chloe opened her eyes. One of the other women approached her, speaking gently. She was in her late thirties, as fit and taut as a circus performer. Her long hair, tied back for the chase, now swung freely to her waist. Her accent was pure Californian; she must have been here even before Sergei. “No rabbits, not a lot of blood—are you okay?”

  “I’m just, uh …” Chloe wasn’t sure what she wanted. “It’s all a little, uh …”

  “You feel better than you did before—the night you tried to sneak out?” She said this with a grin.

  Chloe opened her mouth to snap back at her, but now that she thought about it, Chloe realized she really was a lot more relaxed. She still wanted to see her mom, but the insane urgency was gone.

  “Yeah,” she answered slowly.

  “Here.” Valerie came by with a bottle and handed it to Chloe. “To the hunt and your health!”

  Chloe eyed the rim carefully, looking for bits of blood. Then she tipped it and took a huge swallow of the ice-cold, perfectly smooth vodka. The women’s laughter rose on the smoke of the campfire up to the stars above them.

  They returned to the mansion at seven or eight the next morning. It was like nothing Chloe had ever experienced before. The six of them spent the night laughing, talking, singing, passing around the vodka, and cooking deer steaks. It was like one of those New Age women-power touchy-feely weekend getaways she had seen in movies or in ads for antihistamines, completely unselfconscious and natural. She had tried a little bit of the deer—it was very different from the venison she’d once had at a restaurant her mom had taken her to, tougher and more gamey tasting. Nothing she would go out of her way to eat again, and now that the chase lust was gone, she couldn’t help thinking about the doe’s eyes and face right before they’d killed it. It made her feel a little sick or, at the very least, not so hungry.

  Some stayed up all night and some—like Chloe—had dozed off. She should have been cold, but the campfire was warm, and she found she could just pull her arms into her shirt and retain her heat that way. She thought about the desert in her dream and how cold it must have been at night.

  When she awoke, she had the feeling that there had been lions in her dream again, but she couldn’t remember what had happened. There was just a vague lingering presence of a familiar warmth and coarse, honey-colored fur.

  When they came in the next morning, Chloe felt achy but good, like she had hiked a mountain or had a really good workout. A couple of the women brought the rest of the deer into the back and finished butchering it or doing whatever it was they had to do, but Chloe went straight to the kitchen for coffee and a muffin—she was starving.

  Kim was there, blowing delicately on a mug of green tea. Chloe wondered if there was anything the girl did that wasn’t healthy, pure, or proper.

  “How was the hunt?” the other girl asked politely.

  “Great … I think,” Chloe added. “I’m surprised you didn’t come along—it seems right up your alley.”

  “I’m not sure what I think about it.”

  Chloe looked at her in surprise. The girl with the cat ears, slit eyes, and claws didn’t know what to think about a hunt?

  “I have given the matter a considerable amount of thought and prayer and meditation,” the girl explained, seeing Chloe’s expression. “We are hunters, yes—but the time of needing to hunt for food is over. Should we still do this and kill? Or would the gods consider it a waste?” Kim shook her head. “I don’t have an answer yet.” And she padded silently out of the room.

  Chloe frowned, more confused than ever.

  Amy and Paul were at his house, actually studying together for once. Amy sat on his tiny twin bed, Paul on the floor next to her, her legs often wrapped around his shoulders. Sometimes he would lean over to kiss her calf … and another half hour would disappear before they g
ot back to work. But on the whole they were fairly productive. The room was quiet, much quieter than in Amy’s household, and Mrs. Chun came up occasionally with a plate of cookies and to “make sure they weren’t doing anything”—although she was obviously kind of hoping they were. Compared to his cousins, Paul was an extremely well-groomed, hygienic, cool dresser … and Mrs. Chun was a fanatic devotee of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. She’d come to her own conclusions about her son, concerned that the divorce was somehow screwing him up.

  Everything was still very neat in Paul’s house but light: things were missing that Amy couldn’t quite put her finger on, some essential furniture or spirit seemed to be gone. The Chuns were polite and amicable when it came to dividing up their possessions, but the whole place was a testament to their separation. Depressing.

  Paul’s iMac made some backward-sounding music noise, recognizable only to Amy as a tune by Siouxsie and the Banshees. “Mail for me!” she cried, leaping up and almost taking Paul’s head off as her feet hit the ground.

  “Who is this? You’ve been checking your mail all evening. You got another boyfriend or something?” Paul asked, straightening his shirt and looking back at his book. Amy clambered onto the stool in front of the two-by-three-foot wood board that passed for his desk, kept immaculately clear of the hundreds of books, records, and CDs that crowded the rest of the room. She hit enter twice: her account had no password on his computer; she had no secrets.

  Her eyes widened when she saw the address of the sender.

  “It’s from Brian.” She took her purple pen and wound it through her hair, sticking it down the middle of the knot to keep it all up off the back of her neck.

  “Brian who?” Paul asked, not really interested. Then he looked up, realizing. “Brian who?”

  “Chloe’s Brian.”

  He couldn’t see her face, but Amy flinched, waiting for the inevitable.

  “Why is he e-mailing you?” He put his book down and got up to stand behind her and read over her shoulder.

  Amy, you and Paul need to STAY OUT OF THIS. You’re safer not knowing any more than you already do. Your lives could be endangered.

  I don’t know where Chloe is, but I’ve had word from her that she’s safe.

  Brian

  P.S. Don’t talk to Alyec about this anymore either.

  “Where did you get his e-mail address?” Paul asked, wanting to solve that mystery before he tackled any of the other number of issues this missive brought up.

  Amy sighed. “I cut out of school early on Wednesday and went over to Chloe’s house. I broke into her computer. I also e-mailed him from there.”

  “You did what? Why?”

  “Because Alyec won’t talk, Chloe’s still missing, and we still don’t know anything!” she said, beginning to feel less defensive and more pissed off. Her blue eyes flashed and she stood, putting her hands on her hips. It would have been a far more effective gesture if the pen hadn’t chosen that moment to pop out of her hair and fall to the ground.

  “Besides that message from Chloe herself, two people have already told us she’s safe—two people close to her. What more do you want?” Paul said, his voice also rising.

  “What do you mean, ‘two’?” Amy asked, frowning.

  Already caught, Paul didn’t have time to retreat into his blank look.

  “What do you mean, two?” Amy repeated, pushing her face closer into his. “Brian and who?”

  “I talked to Alyec,” he finally admitted, “after you totally accused him of everything. I talked to him calmly and rationally, and he told me that she was fine, and he would tell her that we were worried about her.”

  “Oh, so that’s how it is?” Amy shrieked. “You approach Alyec all man-to-man like after your hysterical girlfriend screws everything up and he just tells you everything?”

  “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Assuming he’s even telling the truth. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about your little breaking-and-entering routine?”

  They both fell silent, staring each other angrily in the eyes. Then they both looked away. The answer to both the questions was the same: they were afraid the other was going to disapprove and freak out over it.

  Which was exactly what had happened.

  Then Paul laughed. “I can’t believe you actually broke into the Kings’ house.”

  “I know where the key is,” Amy admitted sheepishly, also smiling.

  They were quiet again, too full of their own thoughts to say anything, for the second time that evening—and for the millionth time that week.

  “When I was there? At Chloe’s?” Amy began, quietly and more calmly. “It was weird—like it hadn’t been lived in for a while. Nothing was messy, but it just had this stale feeling. A little dusty or something.” She screwed up her eyes, trying to think about the last time she had been there, before they’d walked across the bridge, the last time they’d seen Chloe. “I don’t think the glasses near the sink were washed,” she hazarded, “but I’m not sure.”

  “Too bad they have voice mail,” Paul said with a wry smile. “You could have seen if the answering machine light was blinking out of control with all the calls we left her. I don’t suppose you have their password for that, do you?”

  “No,” she pouted. “If I did, there are a lot of messages I left over the years that I would have erased an hour later, when I calmed down.”

  Paul smiled and ran his hand up through her hair at the base of her neck. Amy closed her eyes and pushed her head back into his hand.

  “Maybe it’s time we called Mrs. King at work,” he suggested quietly, picking up the phone.

  Amy looked at him in surprise, then at her watch. “It’s ten after five—she’ll definitely be there.”

  He dialed and Amy pressed her head to the other side of the phone.

  “Greenston and Associates,” the receptionist said in a deep, interested, expensive-receptionist voice.

  “Hello, can I speak with Anna King, please?” Paul spoke in an even voice. His tone might have been youthful, but the sound was polite and professional, something Amy never could have accomplished.

  “No, I’m sorry, she’s away on vacation this week. Can I help you or direct you to another lawyer?”

  Amy and Paul looked at each other.

  “Uh …” Paul cleared his throat. “Where did she go?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t divulge that kind of personal information,” the receptionist said regretfully. “I hope it’s someplace warm.”

  “When will she be back?”

  “She has a lot of vacation time saved up, so I’m not exactly sure precisely which day—would you like her voice mail? She often checks it when she’s away.”

  “Uh, thanks anyway. It’s nothing urgent. I’ll call back in a couple of weeks.”

  “Thanks for calling.”

  He slowly hung up the phone. Both of them stared at it.

  “Now can we do something?” Amy finally demanded.

  This was a different sort of dream, restless and real. It was daylight and silent; Chloe’s feet made no sounds in the harsh grass beneath her feet. The broad blades cut into her soles, but it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the hunt. She saw her quarry on a rolling hill below her, a familiar doe who paused to watch a plane overhead. There was something wrong with that, but through her thickened mind Chloe couldn’t figure it out.

  With two powerful leaps she flew over yards of scrub, landing in the middle of the perfect road that separated her from the kill. The pavement was velvet black with solid yellow lines and seemed to focus all of the sun’s heat on her. She prepared to leap again.

  The deer turned toward her, as if it had known she was there all along.

  “Chloe,” it said, in an achingly familiar voice.

  Chloe froze and screamed, but no sound came out.

  She sat up suddenly in her bed—no, the couch. It was the middle of the night—no, s
he checked her clock and it was only seven thirty. Another nap, she realized. Chloe had drifted off to sleep again while she tried to plow through The History of the Mai. It was Bible thick and combined all of the confusing names of a Russian novel and the deadly dullness of a badly translated history text. She fell asleep fairly easily these days; if she was full, warm, and not immediately occupied, it seemed like sleep was the inevitable next step.

  Chloe rubbed her temples with her knuckles. The doe in her dream had spoken with her mother’s voice.

  It was the scariest nightmare Chloe had ever had.

  Just a few weeks ago she’d been fighting with her mom, making up, going to work, and hanging out with her friends. And now she was … not. She fingered the soft, richly colored velvet spread she had slept on. She squinched one eye shut, noticing how she could suddenly see all of the individual furry threads in different shades of ruby, like through a magnifying glass. Then they turned darker and matted down, sucked up into the weave of the fabric, as her tear was slowly absorbed by it.

  She sat up again.

  “I have to get out of here,” she said aloud. “I want …” She couldn’t quite figure out what she wanted. She ran a hand through her hair. A haircut? Some new vintage clothes? She leapt up and ran out of the room, suddenly terrified by the silence.

  Out in the hall she slowed herself down, embarrassed by her behavior. Then she pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket and turned it on. Technically she didn’t need to use it for this phone call—no one cared; in fact, they probably encouraged her speaking to Alyec. Only an eighth of a battery left and she had to talk to him now.

  “’Alloo?” he asked, accented, as if he expected someone Russian to call.

  “I need to go out,” she said without preamble.

  “Chloe!” She could hear the happy boyish grin on his face. Simple, just glad that she had called. “Didn’t you just go out on a hunt?”

  “I don’t want … ,” she growled, shaking her hands in frustration. If she couldn’t make Alyec understand, she was doomed. “I just want to go out and do something normal. Fun. You know? Fun? Like a date?”