She stopped and listened into the murkiness of the midnight fog, but the noise had faded.
She waited and listened.
Growling, she doubled back and tried to pick up the sound where she’d heard it last.
Come on, she thought in frustration. It’s got to be here. I’m so close.
She turned, and then turned again.
As she crept through a thick stand of trees and bushes with low, twisting branches, she used her whiskers to find her way.
The pulsing, rhythmic buzz of the forest’s night insects surrounded her now. She could hear dew dripping from the trees, and the whistle of a whip-poor-will in the distance. And then she heard something much softer just ahead, the touch of small feet moving tap-tap-tap across the autumn leaves.
She crept forward, ready to pounce.
The fog began to clear in front of her. The clouds overhead were thinning. And the silver light of the crescent moon shone down into a small meadow.
The fur on the back of her neck tingled.
And then she finally saw it.
The creature was standing there, perfectly still, in the center of the moonlit meadow, its head turned toward her. It was staring at her with its black, otherworldly eyes.
It was a small white deer.
She gazed at the deer in awe.
At first she was too startled, too shocked by the sight of it, to understand what it meant. But then it slowly began to sink in.
That night with Braeden had been real.
She hadn’t dreamed it.
She hadn’t imagined it.
An immense sense of relief, almost euphoria, poured through her body.
It had all been real.
The white deer stood in the middle of the meadow and stared at her. Serafina was surprised that it wasn’t frightened of a panther watching it from the edge of the forest. Did it somehow recognize her? Did it know she and Braeden had helped it?
For a long time it did not move. But finally, it walked into the cover of the trees on the other side of the meadow and disappeared.
Serafina felt her heart sink.
Why was it here, on this ridge, in this part of the forest, at this moment?
She knew now that Braeden had definitely come home, but where did he go?
I just wanted to see you one last time, he had said that night. She remembered the tremor in his voice when he said it, the loyalty, the fierceness, but there had been a twinge of sadness and resignation as well.
Did he know all along that he was going to leave again the next morning? Is that what he had been trying to tell her?
But what did the white deer have to do with it all?
With all the peculiar things that were going on, why would Braeden leave without saying good-bye? She couldn’t help feeling a hole in her heart, like something that should have happened didn’t happen. Stay bold, he had said the night before. Had that been his good-bye?
She realized that he hadn’t seen many of the peculiar things that she had. It was possible that he had returned to New York without realizing what was happening here. Life at Biltmore had been safe and peaceful for months, so maybe he thought everything was still all right.
But it isn’t all right, she thought, feeling an ache in her chest, it isn’t right at all.
As she turned to go back to Jess, she looked around at the trees and vegetation and realized that she didn’t know which way it was.
Her sense of direction was normally very strong in the forest. But now she was confused, uncertain of the path back.
She took a few steps to see if she recognized one of the trees or a jagged rock, or if she could get her bearings in some other way. But nothing looked familiar.
A bout of panic and irritation rippled through her. What’s going on? This never happens to me. What if I can’t find Jess?
As she went deeper into the forest, she looked for any sort of sign or detail that might help her find her way back to her friend.
She felt a slight itching on the back of her neck. The cringing sensation of being followed crept into her shoulders.
She stopped and listened behind her.
For a moment she thought she heard the faint sound of rustling leaves, but whatever was following her stopped the instant she did. When she resumed, it resumed as well, the leaves rustling in the distance.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t just following her but hunting her.
She moved more quickly now, slinking quietly and rapidly through the underbrush.
Whatever was behind her moved just as fast she did, staying right with her, closing the distance between them.
The air rushing in and out of her panther lungs got louder as her breathing became heavier.
She went one way through the forest, and then the other, desperately trying to throw off her pursuer. But at the same time she had to find her way back to Jess.
Finally, she spotted a rock she recognized. She ran in that direction, and then saw a familiar tree.
But as she returned to the area in the forest where the hunters had been killed, her gut tightened with the memory of what happened there, the white-eyed fear of the horses and the bullets flying past her. She remembered the screams of the men and the barking of the dogs all around her.
In the cloud of anger that had boiled up inside her during the battle, and all the confusion of what was happening, had her darkest and most vicious instincts driven her to claw and bite and kill?
Was she transforming more and more into the panther part of herself, just like her mother had, more wildcat than human?
She didn’t want to see their faces and the blood, so she skirted carefully around the dead bodies of Colonel Braddick, Mr. Turner, Mr. Suttleston, and Isariah Mayfield.
When she finally reached the spot where she had left Jess, Serafina stared at the empty patch of ground.
Serafina’s chest tightened. She looked all around. She circled the area looking for her, but found no sign of her, not even footprints.
She sniffed the ground, searching for Jess’s scent, but couldn’t find it among the dead humans and trampled earth.
She went farther out into the forest. She searched for hours. But Jess was gone.
Serafina felt an almost overwhelming sense of hopelessness, like the more she tried to help, the worse things got. The more she tried to understand, the more incomprehensible things became.
Growling with frustration, she flexed her claws and began to run, just to get away from the place where the men had died. She ran and she kept running.
Driven on by the anguish roiling in her heart, she made her way toward the abandoned cemetery where so many events of her and Braeden’s lives had occurred. She didn’t even know why she was going there, except to find some sort of refuge, some sort of protection and understanding.
She crossed through the swampy marsh, then entered the old graveyard, which had been overgrown by the creeping, dripping-wet forest decades before. Black strands of vines strangled the crooked trunks of the gnarled trees. And thick carpets of choking leaves toppled the gray, weathered gravestones to the ground. Over the course of withering years, the roots of the trees had taken grip on the coffins beneath the earth, twisting them and breaking them and wrenching them to the surface, while long beards of grayish-green moss hung down from the branches above.
She shifted into human form as she walked into what she and Braeden had named the Angel’s Glade.
Deep in the forest of the graveyard, the glade consisted of a small, open area of perfect, bright green grass encircled by a ring of graceful living trees with leaves that never fell. Surrounded by the death and decay of a long-abandoned world, this was a place of everlasting life.
In the center of the glade stood a magnificent statue of a winged angel holding a sword. She was dark green with age, and spots of lichen and moss covered many of her surfaces. She had long, flowing hair and a beautiful face, but the stain of weeping tears dripped down her cheeks li
ke rain.
Standing in the glade, in front of the stone angel, Serafina lifted her eyes and looked up at her.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said, her voice pleading, but the angel did not reply.
As Serafina gazed around at the Angel’s Glade, it didn’t seem as if its grass was as bright green as it normally was. And the trees around the glade weren’t as alive. This had once been a place of such awe-inspiring power and glittering magic, but not now. It felt cold and lifeless and alone, as if it too was gone from her world.
There were just so many questions swirling in her mind.
She crumpled to the ground.
In the center of the glade, she lay on her back, with her shoulder pressed up against the stone pedestal of the angel, and looked up into the night. The mist had gone and the air was clear, but very high up in the sky, a thin layer of silver-gray clouds shrouded the stars. She couldn’t see the belt of Orion, the blue glow of Pleiades, or any of the stars that she had seen with Braeden. She missed them, her brothers and sisters of the night.
But as she kept looking, she saw a single persistent dot of light directly above her. Not a star, but a planet—the small, glowing orb of Jupiter, shining through the thin layer of clouds, like a valiant friend.
That’s my Braeden, she thought, and suddenly her heart felt as if it was drowning.
“I’m in trouble here, Braeden,” she cried out, her voice trembling. “I need your help. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what to do. I might have done something real bad. Come home now, just come home, as soon as you can. Please, I need you here. Just come home.”
She knew it was impossible, but as she said the words, it almost felt as if he could hear them, as if at that moment, he woke from his bed, looked out into the nighttime sky, and imagined the sound of her voice.
She had to believe that he was safe, that he was up in New York like he was supposed to be, that their bond had not been broken, and that somehow, someday, he would return to her.
As she lay there alone with no idea where she could go or what she could do, it was only the glowing light of Jupiter that kept her from despair.
More tired than she had been in a long time, she wanted to sleep here in the faint but steady light of distant Jupiter, lying on the ground at the base of the stone angel, just as he had done for her in this very spot so long ago, calling her name into the darkness.
But she knew she had to go. She hadn’t known the four men well, and she despised what they were doing out here, but the truth was that four human beings had been killed. And Jess was still missing. She had failed Jess! She had lost her! For all she knew, she had actually killed her with her own claws, or at least spooked her horse and caused it to throw her. One way or another, her friend was gone!
She didn’t know the how or the why or the who. But the rock-hard truth was that she had failed to protect Jess and the hunters from evil—whether it came from her or from somewhere else. She didn’t understand this evil. Or how to fight it. Was it inside her? But one way or another, with or without Braeden, she had to do it. She had to go back to Biltmore. And she had to face whatever was to come.
She pulled herself up onto her feet, wiped her eyes, and began the journey home.
As she walked across the courtyard toward Biltmore’s front doors, her mind was consumed with what was going to happen when she stepped inside. But she spotted her little orange cat, Ember, running between two of the large terra-cotta planters and then darting out of sight. It was unusual to see Ember outside. And even more unusual that Ember didn’t come running to greet her. It was as if she was chasing something. Or being chased.
Serafina went over to the planter, uncertain.
“Ember?” she said, but the cat did not come.
When Serafina took a few more steps forward and looked behind the planters, she found a small hole that Ember must have slipped down into.
“It appears that you’ve found a rat,” Serafina said, thinking that maybe Ember had finally begun to take her job seriously.
But as she went inside and crossed through the Vestibule, she looked over and noticed scratches on the wall.
She stopped. She didn’t remember seeing scratches there before. Had they been there all along and she’d never noticed them?
She took a step closer to them.
The striations almost looked like something Smoke and Ember would do, but they were far too thick, and the limestone walls of the Vestibule were far too hard for their little claws.
Serafina wondered, but she knew she couldn’t linger here or follow this path. She had to go inside.
As she opened the doors and entered the Main Hall, the house was in turmoil, servants running, guests crying, dozens of men on the move, many with knives at their sides and hunting rifles in their hands.
“Serafina,” a stern voice called.
She turned to see Mr. Vanderbilt stepping away from the group of men he had been talking to and striding toward her.
“I need to talk to you right away,” he said. “Some sort of wild animal attacked the hunting party last night.”
Serafina stood before him, and tried to keep breathing, but she could barely look at him. She hated the grim tone of his voice, and the desperate look in his eyes, like the world was coming apart at the seams and he had no idea how to stop it.
“From what we’ve pieced together,” Mr. Vanderbilt said, “Colonel Braddick and several others were tracking a mountain lion, and there was some kind of…apparently it…the mountain lion turned on them and attacked. Some of the men are saying there were actually two mountain lions.”
As he spoke, Serafina felt her lips tightening and her eyes watering. She could hear in his voice all the sadness and confusion churning inside him.
But underneath all of it, she could hear something far worse: the creeping edge of doubt.
Doubt in her. And why not? She doubted herself.
Finally, she took a hard swallow and began to speak. “You’re right that the hunters and their dogs chased two mountain lions,” she said. “They treed them out on the North Ridge.”
Mr. Vanderbilt looked at her with his eyes wide, clearly startled that she’d been so close to what had happened that she could actually confirm it.
“Did…” he began to ask her. “Did you have something to do with this, Serafina?”
She didn’t even know where to begin to answer his question. She had everything to do with it!
She wanted to run away, to hide, to get away from it, but she knew she couldn’t. Mr. Vanderbilt needed her help. That was the only thing she could cling to. Even as she was, he needed her.
“I helped the mountain lions to escape,” she admitted.
“And the mountain lions came back and killed all those men?” he said in amazement and dismay.
“No, sir, that’s not what happened,” she said emphatically. “The mountain lions did not come back. I know that much for certain.”
“Then what was it? What killed those men?”
“There was a dense fog,” she said, shaking her head, “so much confusion, fighting and gunshots, all the horses panicking, the dogs running around. I was there. But I do not know what happened. I truly don’t.”
“Did something attack the hunters?”
“Yes, but I do not know what it was.”
“And did you see Colonel Braddick’s daughter?”
The question hit Serafina hard. “I…” she began, but then faltered.
“Tell me what happened,” Mr. Vanderbilt urged her. “We must work together if we’re going to deal with this.”
She nodded, knowing he was right, and appreciating the way he said we, as if at least a little part of him still believed in a little part of her.
“I saw the bodies of the dead hunters in the forest,” she said. “When I found Jess, she was injured, thrown from her horse, but she was still alive.”
“Then what happened? Did you try to help her?”
Wh
en Mr. Vanderbilt asked her this simple question it was as if he were stabbing her in the heart. She knew that it was what she should have done. She should have helped her friend. But the anger had been boiling inside her, and then she got so lost and confused when she tried to return to her.
“I heard a noise that I thought was the attacker,” she said. “I tried to follow it, but I lost track of whatever or whoever it was. And then, by the time I got back to Jess, she was gone.”
“What do you mean she was gone?” Mr. Vanderbilt said.
“I thought she must have woken up and stumbled away. I looked for her for a long time in the surrounding forest, but I couldn’t find her. She’s a very observant and capable girl, and she’s used to being outdoors, so all I could do was hope that she made it home.”
“She did not,” Mr. Vanderbilt said, his hand pressed in worry to his mouth.
And then, for a long time, he just stood there thinking, absorbing all that she had told him.
“It’s a terrible thing,” he said as he stared at the floor, and then he lifted his eyes and looked at her. “But whatever happened out there, Serafina, we need to protect the occupants of this house. Mr. Doddman and Lieutenant Kinsley are organizing the men. They’re going to find and kill whatever animal did this. And they’ll be searching for Miss Braddick as well. But for now, you need to rest. You look exhausted. And then you’ll rejoin us.”
Serafina’s heart lurched. She knew what find and kill whatever animal did this meant to the men out there. They were going to ride out into the forest and shoot whatever animal they saw—most especially her brother and sister.
“I can’t rest,” she was about to say to Mr. Vanderbilt, but at that moment, Lieutenant Kinsley strode abruptly into the house and walked up to them, his manner brusque and filled with purpose.
He was no longer in his dress uniform, but wearing rugged outdoor clothing for riding, and he had exchanged his long officer’s dress sword for a sheathed knife and a holstered sidearm. He glanced at her, and his eyes seem to flicker with something—relief, concern, irritation, she wasn’t sure what it was—but then he spoke directly to Mr. Vanderbilt.
Serafina and the Seven Stars Page 9