Unmasked (Rise of the Masks Book 1)

by Kaplan, EM

  "You do exist," he said, his mouth widening into a smile.

  "I could say the same," she said, a little less elegantly than she'd hoped. Her heart was pounding uncomfortably, but she couldn't calm herself. And it seemed unimportant to do so at the moment. She didn’t want to ask him why he had come to the keep. She wanted to remain ignorant and hope that he had come back to find her.

  At first he looked like he was afraid to touch her, but then he took her hand and said, "Come with me a little way. Just outside." She went with him out to the garden in a daze from just the contact of his roughened hand, but when he stopped at some wooden chairs by the lawn, she shook her head and led him to the seclusion of the garden maze. They stopped at the first clearing where there were benches, and he sat down looking up at her. It took some skill for her not to lose her balance on the uneven turf, so she first kicked off her shoes.

  "Stupid things," she said lifting off her mask and headdress as well. "Although I kind of like the mask. It's nice to hide sometimes. And feathers are not bad. I don't have anything against feathers. Birds are strange things though. Flapping all the time. All scaly and beaky." She stopped to gasp for a breath. Somehow talking and breathing were mutually exclusive, though she'd been doing it with success her whole life. She was nervous almost to the point of wanting to run away. She still hadn’t decided not to.

  He slipped an arm around her waist, to her surprise, and guided her onto his lap. "The bird hunting the hunter this time." He laughed about that.

  "You smell good," she said, relaxing when she realized that he wasn’t going to push her away, feeling like she'd had too much wine though she hadn't had any. He smelled so very good, just the same as she remembered. Except, now she didn’t have to think about it because he was right here. The real man, not the memory.

  She slid her arms around his neck and drew his face close to hers. She stared intently into his eyes, then leaned in, dipped her head slightly, and pressed her cheek against his, smooth, freshly shaven face. She nuzzled him behind the ear with her nose and delicately took his earlobe between her lips. His breath came in short gasps on the side of her neck. She felt his hand sliding up from her waist along her back. Her silken dress felt like skin under the heat of his hand. Then she took his face in her hands and kissed him gently, small soft kisses on his lips until it seemed he couldn't stand it. With his hand cradling the back of her head, he kissed her back until she lost her breath.

  He broke away to breathe as well, but when she leaned toward him again and lifted the bottom of his shirt to sneak her hand against his skin, he shied away and stopped her. "Wait."

  "What is it?"

  He smiled, still out of breath, panting warm puffs of air, the corners of his mouth curling upward. "Your name. I want to know your name."

  She gave a smile, too, though with a twinge of anxiety. "My name is Mel," she said, stopping there. No further explanation.

  "I'm Ott." His voice was low, roughed by the moment, and it won her over again. She liked its deep timbre, his northern accent with its gently slurred sounds. He seemed oddly shy and formal for someone she had just kissed so feverishly.

  "I'm very pleased to meet you, Ott," she said, kissing him again. She was lost again for some moments. Gradually, for the first time since she arrived at the Keep, even the sounds of all others faded away. The trees vanished. The Keep itself blurred. Only the two of them existed, and the blood pounded throughout her body, flooding her head and chest and in her ears, drumming against every part of her, her fingers, her neck, her toes, up the insides of her legs to where she sat on his lap. Every last part of him seemed to be for her, his mouth, his eyes, his mind, and his skin.

  He broke away, looking dazed. She leaned closer, or maybe fell toward him, gravitating toward him.

  "What kind of name is Ott?" she asked. "It's a nickname? Is it short for something?"

  He smiled. "I have to know you at least five minutes more before I tell you how I got my nickname."

  "Perhaps you're related to the infamous Otter family?" When had she learned to joke, to tease? When had she ever wanted to?

  "Weasely water-dwellers, the lot of them," he said. She liked the creases at the corners of his eyes. He had sun freckles across his nose. She strove to memorize every detail of his face in the dim garden light. Not much of a moon. The night was testing what little ability she could master with her poor concentration.

  "Or maybe it's just an imperative. I 'ought' to learn more about a young man before I kiss him." She dipped her head down as she said the last part, embarrassed suddenly. But he lowered his head as well and met her mouth with his own. He was very gentle at first, but his urgency escalated until her mouth felt bruised. His tongue laved hers until the blood roared in her ears.

  When he pulled away again, his face was flushed, as she was sure hers was as well. He traced his thumb from her earlobe to chin. "I’m glad you told me where to find you.”

  “I’m glad you found me,” she said. “I thought maybe I had . . .” She didn’t want to say scared him. Repulsed him.

  “Intrigued me?” he asked. “Infiltrated my very thoughts ‘til I couldn’t get you out of my mind?” She blushed wholeheartedly then. “I still don’t know what you are. Or rather, who you are. But I knew I had to find you before I lost my chance. Tomorrow you leave the Keep?" he affirmed, having learned so from a local townsman. When she nodded, he asked, "And you'll go where . . . ?"

  After a moment’s pause, she said simply, "Home.” She knew he could sense her evasiveness, but she couldn't tell him more. She had to concentrate to keep herself separate from him even for simple conversation. She felt like she could easily lose sense of time, of herself.

  "And will you let me know where that is?" he asked, which she answered with silence, not able to meet his eyes. His breath still came rapidly, now with his own anxiety. "Are you promised to another?"

  She couldn't lie to him to say either yes or no. In a sense, she was promised to the Mask, much like believers took to their religious cloaks. More so, in fact. Her very nature determined her course. Zealots of all types often said they felt a calling or a compulsion. Mel was obligated by genetics, by the very cells and composition of her body, her earthly shell. If she did not comply, wasn't she, in fact, denying her usefulness as person, her existence as human? Yes, she was human. But not human like this man, like Ott. Her future was with her people and was not hers to choose. She wasn't the owner of her destiny or her future. And at that very moment, she was incapable of acting.

  She sat mutely, miserable, as she struggled. It would be easy to stop his questions by covering his mouth, by distracting him. But that kind of a kiss was as good as a lie; it was not a kiss out of love's sake. And to kiss him again would be telling him that she belonged to him. To turn away would be lying as well, because she was his, forever as she saw it. No matter where she was from here on, till the day she died, till the day he died, she would always be his. Together or apart. The pounding of the blood in her head was terrible. The weight of an entire world was hammering her skull from both inside and out, combatants in a battle to win her will. What should she tell him? How could she have him but not keep him?

  The first screams that came from the Keep made them both jump to their feet. They stood, poised, eyes open wide, staring at each other, but straining to hear and to understand what was happening. The ground under them shook and rumbled, as if the very hill under them were coming loose and falling down. She was trying to grasp the cause and effect. At first, she thought that her own horrible indecision had caused the Keep to shake. She shook her head at her own self-absorption. Ridiculous to think that their soft, protected bubble of warmth had anything to do with the rest of the world. The rest of the world moved on, with or without them.

  Chapter 8

  "The earth quakes," Ott said. He held his arms out for balance as another tremor rippled under the lawn.

  "No. Something else," Mel said. She had caught an acrid smell in a gust
of air coming across the lawn. Fear, fire, and something else terrible from under the earth that was very, very old. Mud, decay, and anger. Noise of an explosion, of rocks and fire, came from the ballroom. They were showered with debris, a curtain of rocks and dust.

  Together they ran toward the Keep across the lawn that now was dotted with chunks of smoldering rock. Mel was barefoot; she had left her shoes in the hedge maze. She lost Ott in the rubble as she broke through the outer wave of smoke, but she forged ahead, pushing moisture to her eyes. Tears ran down her face, but she could open her eyes without having to fight the dust.

  She first saw Ott's big friend, a gash on his forehead, carrying a limp, bloodied body, a girl still masked and in costume, someone so covered in soot Mel didn't recognize her. He couldn't see Mel in the smoke though she could see him, she realized. She was hidden in shadows and clouds of soot. He knelt and put the person roughly on the grass. The girl's arm fell away from her body almost bonelessly. Mel could not see a pulse on her neck, could not detect a heartbeat from where she stood. Ott's friend was limping, and blood ran from his shoulder. He turned to go back into the Keep, raising his good arm to shield himself from another spray of flying rock and dust. The Keep tower swayed dangerously above them, its singed flags snapping in the wind.

  Mel found a girl lying on the floor, unconscious, partly crushed by a fallen stone. Certain that no one could see her, Mel focused, diverting all her strength, pushing it up the backs of her legs, into her back, through her arms, and into her fingers. The stone gave a little and moved off, and Mel saw it was Liz. The girl gave a faint moan, blood streaming down her face from under the dust-covered curls on her forehead. A quick assessment with gentle fingertips revealed broken ribs, but worse, a crushed hip that hid catastrophic injuries behind it. Liz's silken shift was in shreds. A gray sheen of dust covered her, though it ran in black rivulets where her eyes, nose, and mouth streamed with tears and blood.

  Mel carried her outside and gently laid her on the grass under the sky where a breeze blew in cleaner air. There was less shouting here. Mel held Liz’s hand and stroked her sooty forehead until she calmed. Pain, terror, and fear: all of it, Mel drew out of Liz's body through her skin, through the hand that she clasped, soothing her. The pain came like a tendril of smoke at first, uncoiling into Mel's body, spreading through it. Mel took it all, ate it, digested it with heaving gasps until she had all of it. Liz's jaw unclenched. Then her breathing stopped. Mel sat for a minute longer listening for another sound, a heartbeat, a gasp, a sigh, some small sign of life, until she knew for sure there was nothing. Shouts still rang out around her. Smaller explosions still shook the ground. Then Mel let her go.

  Numbly, Mel re-entered the wreckage with little more than a dim hope of finding Rav or any of the others. The sulfurous smell choked her. It was much worse now, but she couldn't determine its composition or source. People, still costumed but covered with gray powder like ghosts of the revelers they had been, stumbled blindly into her. She guided them toward the door, linking them hand to hand, their desperate fingers grasping one another’s, so they would not be alone when she left them. She had lost Ott, but heard his voice calling to his friend Rob outside, which shored up her courage.

  Another explosion shook the foundation under her bare and bloody feet. She bent her knees to ride out the tremors as a shower of dust and rocks pelted her head and shoulders. A wall of putrid odor blasted over her. She squinted. An enormous hole had opened up in the ballroom floor. The ground had disappeared right out from under the room. Her heart pounded as she stared at it. And then, hulking, dark forms swarmed out of a hole toward her and in all directions. It was the beast from the forest in multiple, and then more of them than she could count, pouring out of the hole in the ballroom floor. Gray, leathery skin and that nauseating smell. They carried weapons, hammers, picks, and axes like the one she'd seen before. They snarled, teeth exposed, the whites of their eyes bright and shocking in the gloom. Cries and moans of the wounded turned into screams as the creatures began dragging bodies toward the hole, taking the wounded and the dead underground.

  Mel blinked, her head swimming as she lost her bearings. The same dizziness overtook her, the same as when she'd been attacked in the carriage and dragged into the woods. Only now, the sickness felt magnified, even stronger than before. Her eyes darted around the room for Rav, for Ott, for anyone, but now the moisture in her eyes had dried up. She blinked, hardly able to breathe, and the rocks under her feet cut into her skin. All of her abilities were gone, swept away in a gust of foul air. Another explosion rocked the Keep, and shrill screams sounded from somewhere beyond the ballroom. Blasts of sulfurous gas and smoke stung her eyes. Flames licked up the curtains and the murals that hung on the walls. More of the beasts were coming, spilling out across the lawn, hacking with their enormous axes and broad swords at bodies, wood, and whatever was in their path. Mel could do nothing but cough weakly and stumble in the haze.

  Would-be rescuers fled. All the humans, the ones who were still mobile, ran from the Keep. She was alone except for the creatures. She backed away and ran, leaving bloody footprints on the floor as the hallway collapsed behind her.

  Then, the stone walls crumbled on her.

  Part 2

  Return

  Chapter 9

  "What’s your name?" the townspeople kept asking Mel. Faces, one after another, appeared in her line of vision and faded out. She forced her mind to focus, her vision to clear, and she looked around. She was weak, very weak, caught in a malaise left behind by the creatures that specifically affected her. They had poisoned her with their presence. Now they were gone, yet she still felt ill. The townspeople were writing names down on a list. They had three lists—one for people like her, another for the dead, and a third for the missing, which was the longest of the lists. She shook her head mutely, and they pinned a piece of colored cloth to her sleeve so that they would remember to ask her again later.

  They were efficient at categorizing. Born collectors of data. They might have made good librarians. They had red cloth for the hurt, white for gravely injured, and blue, like hers, for minor wounds. No serious wounds, but God, she was weak. Something was wrong inside her, in her head. They had brought her to the village inn. For the first day, she could do nothing but lie on a cot and stare at the knotted beams of the ceiling. She was a tiny thought rattling around inside her head, inside a body that was as vast as a world. She was too small to inhabit her body. She was too shaken even to take comfort in sleep.

  Mel had been carried away from the destruction with the other victims down to the local town where the people took them in, washed them, and cared for them. The quiet little town had become a makeshift hospital that continued from building to building; pub flowing into home into market into bakery. Doors were thrown open. People stopped at the thresholds only to scrape their feet before entering. She didn't remember being pulled from the wreckage. She came back to consciousness while they were carrying her, while being gently jostled in someone’s arms. She couldn't remember the face of the person who had held her. She had been taken to the triage at the local inn where they sorted the survivors.

  She received warm food, drink, and anonymous kindness that she could not comprehend, only accept. People she didn’t know touched her hands and her face. A bandage circled the top of her head again, but she didn't remember having been hurt. The names of her friends swirled around in her head—Liz, Rav, and . . . Ott. Even now, thinking about him brought back the phantom of his unique scent. The memory made her chest tighten and the blood rush to her aching head. But she heard nothing more of her friends and the others who were missing. Poor Liz, Mel despaired, with a clenching in her belly that she did not try to control. She curled up on her narrow cot. Had Liz's body been dragged away by those beasts, those killers? After a day’s time, the last few survivors straggled in, but none of them were those for whom she waited. Like her, they sat on the pub benches and cots in a stupor, bandaged and bleeding, numb
ly taking what was handed to them.

  Her fingernails were dirty and broken. One nail on her left hand was gone. She looked at it with detachment, as if it weren't her hand on her wrist at the end of her own arm. She was swimming around in someone else's loose, ill-fitting skin. She was not the only one of the survivors who could or would not give her name. Unlike the other victims, however, she unwound the bandage from her head, unpinned the fabric from her sleeve, and, when no one was looking, she got up from her cot. She stumbled away, marginally steadier with each step. She was clean, and they had given her clothes to wear. She looked like anyone.

  She began to ask people what had happened. Did they know what had happened? She wanted their stories. She soaked them up. Each person had a little bit to add, another embellishment that made her frown. She asked another, then another. Slowly, they pieced together the events for her. They filled in some of the blank spots, the things she couldn’t remember. Beautiful girls, beautiful young men, and a steady, age-old tradition—all were torn apart. As swiftly as the beasts had invaded, crawling up from the bowels of the earth through their hole, they had retreated back into the ground, leaving destruction behind them.

  "But what did they want? Does anyone know?" Mel asked, just as others were asking. But no one had an answer. They shook their heads, shrugged their shoulders with a mixture of sorrow and apology. Plenty offered speculation.

  An older man, stout and still strong of spine, told her, "They took the women alive. That can mean only one thing. And it's no good for the ones they took." He shook his head, no doubt thinking about the girls, the lovely ones who had spent all summer floating in white cotton dresses and learning court etiquette only to be taken by savages to be raped and worse. Mel felt sick, too. Even the petty gossips among the Cillary women she knew didn't deserve the agony, the terror, the abysmal ending to their short lives. And the good ones among them, the sweet ones, the strong ones like Rav . . . It wasn't fair, and Mel wondered if anyone could be called into account. Could the missing be rescued? Could they be saved?