Feast

by Merrie Destefano

  Part 2

  Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

  —Henry David Thoreau

  Chapter 21

  Back in the Wood

  Thane:

  The evening slipped away. One moonbeam after another slid through black branches, teasing and calling, until finally, the Mistress of the Night disappeared. I slumped against the wall, one curved claw absently drawing patterns in the dust on a side table. The time for hunting was over. The shelter of sweet black night gone. Still the moon continued to call to me, even after her sister, the ever-brilliant sun, crested the nearby hills.

  A breeze circled through the woods, a moan and a sigh of wind, then it swept back toward the Driscoll mansion, carrying with it the stench of death. It seeped through windows and doors, curled down corridors until it found me. Standing alone in the front parlor.

  I closed my eyes.

  It was the dead human in the woods. Already his body was beginning to decompose, to cast the foul odor of rotting meat into passing air currents.

  I heard a soft footstep approach, cautious, hesitant. A familiar face loomed in the narrow doorway. River.

  “Do you smell it?” my brother asked, keeping his voice low. He glanced behind him to make sure no one else was about.

  “Of course I do,” I replied, bitterness in my voice.

  And then another voice drew near, singing morning poems, clear and sweet.

  Sage.

  “Good morrow, lads,” she said, opening drapes, then walking through sunbeams as if they were paths of butter, never a grimace of pain when the searing light touched her flesh. She was more cunning than she seemed on the surface, just like her brother. “Just one more day of sun. The Hunt begins tonight.”

  She smiled at both of us before shifting her skin, until she became little more than a shadow, the same shape she had been most of the evening. Then she slipped off into another room, near invisible, her scent masked and her heartbeat stilled.

  She was watching us, had been ever since she spotted us in the wood last night.

  “Fair and square,” I cursed. It wouldn’t be long before one of the Blackmoors discovered the moldering heap we had left back in the wood. But I couldn’t let that happen. Not yet.

  Chapter 22

  White Shadows

  Maddie:

  Mists rolled over the landscape, laid on top of each other like sheets of tissue paper, muffling sound and replacing the night with eerie white shadows. The sun tried to break through. One part of the sky seemed slightly brighter, seemed to say, yes the sun still exists. But the mists won the battle. They moved and shifted, curled around the cabin and blocked out any connection with the outside world. The only thing I could see from the kitchen window was the wrought-iron weather vane that perched atop the Ticonderoga Falls Bed and Breakfast.

  I tried to warm the cottage with a fire in the living room and the thick fragrance of scrambled eggs and bacon. Apparently it worked. My son stumbled to the small kitchen table as if summoned from the dead. He yawned and scratched his head while I poured him a glass of orange juice, then loaded his plate with food. Everything was fine, for a few minutes. He was eating, drinking, waking up.

  Then he looked around, as if something was missing.

  “Where’s Samwise?” Tucker asked between bites of jam-laden toast.

  “Outside. Finish your breakfast, sweetheart.”

  “He should come in,” he said, sliding from his chair, then heading toward the door.

  “No! I mean, not yet.”

  Tucker stopped in the middle of the living room, stared out the window at the dog, his leash tied to one of the porch rails. “Why can’t he come in? And why is he wearing his muzzle?” He whirled around, looked at me with a concerned expression. “Did he see a mailman? Mom, I told you, Sam never bit the mailman. He just barks a lot and acts like he might, but he never does—”

  “I know. He didn’t see a mailman. Finish your breakfast.”

  He opened the door to the porch, stood in the doorway. “I wanna see Sam.”

  “No!” I raced across the room and slammed the door closed. “I need to—he got in a fight with a wild animal last night, and he’s been acting funny this morning. We have to take him to the vet after we eat.”

  “What wild animal? Is he okay? Is he hurt?”

  “Tucker—”

  “I don’t want any breakfast!” He was crying now, putting on his shoes and his jacket. “I wanna go to the vet and make sure Sam is okay.”

  I glanced out the window, saw the dog stare at me with pleading brown eyes, tail thumping so hard I could feel the vibration on the floor. I sighed, then took my car keys and handed them to Tucker. “All right. But you have to listen to me, understand?”

  He nodded, wiped his nose on the sleeve of his jacket.

  “Go out the side door and unlock the car. Get in the passenger seat. I’ll get the dog and put him in the cargo area—”

  “But he never rides back there—”

  “Tucker. You’ll have to stay home if you don’t do what I say.”

  “Fine! But there’s nothing wrong with him. I know it. Just look at him.”

  He went out the side door, slammed it behind him, then jogged to the car. I opened the front door, edged my way onto the porch, gingerly untied the leash from the railing and held the dog at arm’s length as I led him to the car.

  Just look at him.

  But that was the problem. I couldn’t. Not since this morning when I woke up and found him prowling through the house, hackles up, sniffing imaginary tracks and growling. Then he had stopped in front of the window, the same window I had left open last night, and raised himself up on hind legs, paws on the windowsill. At that moment the eerie morning mists had crept into the room, surrounded the dog, and like a shadow he had grown—until he was almost as big as that thing I had dreamed about last night.

  It all had to be a dream, right? The winged creature, the dog turning into something that looked like a werewolf, the blood on Samwise’s muzzle, the way he kept prowling through the house. Looking for something or someone like he wanted to rip the flesh off its bones.

  I had cried out his name, fear in my voice, and instantly he had changed back, turned around and run to me, faithful dog ready to protect.

  But was he the same? Was it all my imagination?

  I swung open the rear door to my Lexus SUV, made sure the cargo net was stretched and secure so Samwise wouldn’t be able to get in the passenger section. This was the part I had been dreading. For the past year the dog had been unable to jump up into the car because of hip dysplasia. I always lifted him in, all eighty-five pounds of him.

  He stood alongside the rear bumper, tail wagging, looking just like the dog I had raised from a puppy.

  But what was going to happen when I took him in my arms, when his face was right next to mine? Even though the dog was wearing a muzzle, I was terrified.

  “Come on, boy,” I said, holding my arms outstretched.

  Instead of walking into my arms, he just laid his head on my hand and stared up me. It was the move that could get him anything he wanted, whether it was a bite of hamburger or a walk on a rainy day, it always worked.

  It was as if he was trying to tell me that he would never hurt me, not me or Tucker. He was still the same old Samwise that I had rescued from the pound, that I sang to sleep when he was a puppy.

  “I’m sorry, boy,” I said.

  Then I lifted him into the car and closed the door behind him.

  The Lexus eased through winding two-lane mountain roads, headlights carving twin beams of light in the heavy fog. A surreal village appeared house by lonely house, then disappeared as soon as the SUV lumbered past. Just yesterday, I had driven into town to get groceries, and now today everything looked completely different. Ominous. Quiet. All the Halloween decorations that I thought looked cute yesterday looked almost spooky today. Carved pumpkins lined the porches, scarecrows and skeletons hung in the trees.
Someone had dressed up their front yard to look like a miniature cemetery with Styrofoam headstones. A trio of ghosts made out of gossamer fabric swung in the damp breeze.

  “Maybe we should get some candy while we’re in town,” I said. Tucker just stared out the window, his hair sleep tousled. I hadn’t realized until now that he was still wearing his pajamas.

  I wasn’t going to win any Mom-of-the-Year awards today, that was for sure.

  “There it is.” A small whitewashed building appeared, with a sign out front that read Tooth and Claw. Strange name for a vet. I parked on the street. “Stay in the car.”

  “No.” Tucker was already hopping down from the seat to the ground.

  I sighed, wishing that my son behaved as well as the dog. Then I got out, went around to the back of the car and opened the tailgate. There was Samwise, ears down like he’d been a bad dog, tail wagging, begging me to please, please forgive him for whatever he had done. I felt like a monster as I lifted him to the ground, then took the leash in my hand—but I had to do this, had to make sure that he hadn’t been infected with some unknown wild mountain strain of rabies. Or worse.

  Tucker opened the door to the vet’s office. Two other people already waited inside. One had an old white dog with patchy fur, while the other had something inside a box—scratching and sniffing, a cat maybe, or a rabbit. Samwise lifted his head toward the box and took a whiff. Curious to see what was inside, he strained at the leash, dragging me across the slippery floor.

  “No!” I said, doing my best to maneuver the dog toward the counter. I suddenly regretted thinking that the dog minded me better than Tucker. Neither one listened to me very well.

  The woman at the counter raised her eyebrows. “Does he bite?” she asked, looking at the muzzle.

  “Not unless you’re a mailman.” Then I lowered my voice. “I need to see the vet. Something got into my house last night, a raccoon or a bat or maybe a bear—”

  “A bear?” The woman repeated the words in a loud voice.

  So much for a low profile. “Well, I don’t actually know what it was. Could have been a flying monkey for all I know. I only saw it for a second, but my dog bit it and there was blood and I think—”

  “Sounds like chupacabras,” the man holding the box-animal said. “But there wasn’t a full moon last night. They only come out during a full moon, that’s what I say. Every other day of the month is—”

  “—That’s enough, Joe. No need to scare the tourists away.” Then the receptionist pointed to an open door. “Take him in there. The doctor will be right in. But you better wait out here, young man,” she said to Tucker. “Just in case your dog needs a shot.”

  I settled into an uncomfortable molded plastic chair, hoping I wouldn’t have to wait long. Surprisingly, only a couple of moments passed before the doctor came in. He gave me a half smile and closed the door. He was unshaven, his clothes were wrinkled beneath his lab coat and he looked exhausted. Didn’t anybody in this town get any sleep?

  “I’m Dr. Ross Madera,” he said as he shook my hand. “I understand you think your dog bit someone last night?”

  “Something. He bit something.”

  “Right. I’m sorry. That’s what I meant.” He flashed a charming grin. “I guess I think animals are people. Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  “I woke up last night and there was this big, I mean really big, animal in the living room, with wings and claws”—I expected him to laugh at this point, but he just nodded his head—“and then my dog came running out of the bedroom, growling and barking, and he jumped up and bit it. Whatever the hell it was.”

  “I see. Are his rabies shots current?”

  “Then it just disappeared—” I paused. “What?”

  “His rabies vaccinations, are they up to date?” He smiled again.

  “Yeah. But then this morning, the dog started running around the house, growling and sniffing—”

  “Was there blood on the floor?”

  “No, just a little on his muzzle. But I wiped it off.”

  “He could probably still smell the blood and thought that the animal, whatever it was, was still in the house.”

  “That’s all? He was smelling the blood?” I sank back into the chair, felt the tension flowing out of my body, hadn’t even realized that there had been a knot in the back of my neck. “I thought he was rabid or something. Believe it or not, I even—I even thought that I saw him turn into a shadowy monster himself. As big as a werewolf.”

  “No.” Dr. Madera gave me an astonished look, then he glanced down at the dog. “That’s impossible. That couldn’t happen.”

  I laughed. “Which part’s impossible? That a monster broke into my house or that my dog turned into a werewolf?”

  He didn’t say anything, almost as if I had caught him off guard. Then suddenly some idea flashed in his eyes. “Did you go for a hike down by the creek recently?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s possible that you wandered into a patch of deadly nightshade. It used to grow down by the falls. I’m not saying it’s common, but it could have gotten onto your skin or in your nasal passages. Nightshade’s been known to cause hallucinations.”

  “Really? So my dog’s okay?”

  “We’ll give him a round of antibiotics, just to be safe.” He wrote something on a chart, then stared down at my paperwork for a long moment, silently mouthing a few words. My name. I’d seen this before—that strange flicker of recognition, the connection with my pen name, although it usually happened at sci-fi conventions. And it was almost always a teenage boy, teetering on the awkward precipice of manhood.

  “Madeline MacFaddin.” He lifted his head. “You wouldn’t be Mad Mac, would you?”

  I was going to smile, maybe flirt just a bit, but that was when Samwise decided he’d had enough. He jerked the leash out of my hand and lunged for the door. With a fierce head butt, he shoved it open and then scrambled into the reception room.

  “Sam, no!” I jumped from my seat and tried to grab the leash, but it was already out of reach. The dog was skating across the highly polished floor like he was on a mission. That was when I realized that the animal-in-the-box, a long, furry, weaselly-looking creature, had just pried its way out of the box and was now scrambling up the desk. The receptionist stared at it wide-eyed, then it leaped toward her head. The woman screamed and ran. As if that was exactly what it wanted, the creature scurried down the hallway after her.

  And now Samwise bounded after both of them.

  “Stop! No! Stay!” I tried every command I could think of. “Sit! Get over here, right now!” Tucker jumped up from his chair and together we both chased after the dog. “Leave it, stop, down, sit, sit, sit!”

  Finally, one of the commands took hold.

  The dog lay down at the end of the hall.

  One paw on top of the ferret, holding it in place.

  We drove through foggy tree-lined corridors, over a swift flowing black road, past postcard-perfect nineteenth-century bungalows. Only a few cars were out this morning, white beams of light that appeared suddenly, heralding the approach of another living being. Then the other car would pass and the dreamlike landscape would once again turn gothic, almost as if the entire village had slipped back in time. Once we were finally back inside the cabin everything was normal, raucous and chaotic and normal. Sam bounded from room to room, playing with Tucker, chasing a ball, stopping to drink from his bowl and then dashing off again. All was forgiven. The horrid muzzle had been taken off. Tucker laughed and tumbled and almost broke a lamp.

  Just like it used to be.

  Before.

  I made lunch for Tucker, then paused beside my laptop, glancing at the papers on the desk. I stared at the splash-panel sketch of that creature in the woods. Could this be the same beast that had broken into the cabin last night? Whatever it was, it had never actually hurt me or the dog. Scared me witless, but that was all.

  Could it be the same creature I had seen whe
n I was a little girl?

  I grabbed my iPhone and shot some photos of my sketches, then attached them in an e-mail to my agent. The description of the project was brief, just a hook and a few potential titles. Nightshade. Nightwing. They’d probably already been used, but it was a start. Then I took a closer look at the drawing. The trees weren’t right. Neither were the bushes or the undergrowth.

  I glanced out the window.

  It was almost one o’clock. The fog had thinned a bit and it didn’t look like rain or snow. I could hike down to the creek, take some photos of the surrounding woods, get a better idea of the setting, and still be back in time to make a late lunch for myself.

  If I was really lucky, I might see that thing again.

  Might even get a photo of it this time.

  Chapter 23

  River of Black Silk

  Ash:

  Down in the human world—where the seasons spin like an unending wheel—there, a car drove through the fog, headlights like glowing eyes. Tires crunched gravel, a door opened, then closed with a hollow metallic thud. It was like the sound of battle armor, chain mail and clanging swords, reviving violent ghosts of the distant past.

  They were home. Maddie and her boy and their dog.

  There had been no rabies. No dangerous strain of wild venom flowed through my daughter’s veins. I knew that already, had made Driscoll search for the papers before the moon finished her journey. Elspeth was safe.

  For now.

  My daughter lay curled on her side, wounded arm propped on a pillow. Her Darkling skin faded while she slept and all of her features turned human: pink flesh, dark lashes, lips the color of poppies, hair like a river of black silk. Right now she looked almost exactly like her mother—a human that I should have avoided. Instead, I had given in to my hunger and drunk so deeply of her dreams that no one else had been able to satisfy me.