Feast

by Merrie Destefano

  Stories about monsters with shadowy wings. Creatures that wanted to steal your dreams. Creatures that apparently only I could see.

  My fingers tightened around the barrel of my flashlight. Both of our beams of light swung to the right now; they crossed each other, searching the empty pockets where trees refused to grow. A small figure darted through the woodland gloom, a charcoal silhouette against forest green. A fox or a rabbit, visible only for a moment, a flash of red eyes, and then gone.

  “You were hiking down here by yourself?” Kyle asked.

  “Yes. Stupid idea.” The moon stared down at us through black filigree branches. I saw his shoulders rise in a brief shrug. “You think I imagined the body?”

  We passed a berry briar and the scent of wild raspberries swirled around us.

  “No, ma’am, it’s just—”

  He hesitated. One hand tumbled through the air as he searched for the right words.

  “—visitors don’t always understand what it’s like out here. Kinda surprised me too, when I first transferred from L.A. The locals claim that this place is a sanctuary, protected from things like that.” He continued as we tramped through autumn leaves. “I can’t remember the last time anybody got murdered, either in town or in the woods. Haven’t had any problems with coyotes or bears either, not like they do up in Lake Arrowhead or Big Bear. It’s like there’s something out here that watches over folks.”

  I gave him a sidelong glance. Welcome to Mayberry. “What about your local legends? Somebody at the vet’s office told me he’d seen a chupacabras.”

  “Chupacabras, huh?” He let out a short laugh. “You must have been talking to Joe Wimbledon. His family’s been seeing and talking about those damn things for almost a hundred years.”

  “I thought chupacabras have only been around for about twenty years.”

  “The Wimbledons used to call ’em something else.” He focused a white-hot shaft of light across the thicket, through trees that wavered and shadows that danced. “Can’t remember what. Not vampires or werewolves—”

  “Shape-shifters?”

  He scratched his chin, inadvertently tossing the light into the branches above us, making it look like we were in a cavern of interlocking branches. “Yeah. That’s it.”

  “But nobody else has ever seen one.”

  He grinned. Even in the darkness I could feel it. “You mean besides you? Every couple of years somebody claims they see something ‘funny’ in the woods or outside their house. Pretty standard for a mountain community surrounded by thousands of acres of forest. Usually happens about this time of year. Right around Halloween, when everybody’s already looking for ghosts and goblins. But nobody’s ever gotten hurt. I take it back—there was that time when a group of Joe’s poker buddies decided to play a practical joke on him, so they tied a big bat-like dummy outside his bedroom window. Joe’s wife nearly had a heart attack when she saw it. But that’s the only time. Honest. It’s possible your guy fell and hit his head, then died from exposure.”

  “Yeah, and then a steamroller ran over him.”

  I stopped, swung my light over the ground. There, to the left of the trail was a lumpy, misshapen pile of leaves, dusted with snow. I bent down, picked up a long stick, maybe even the same one I had used before, then swept it through the leaves.

  A haze of flies and gnats rose up.

  I froze. This was it, I was sure of it. A quick flash of light revealed all the landmarks I remembered.

  But it couldn’t be the right place.

  Because the body was gone.

  Chapter 38

  Skin Like Chameleons

  Ash:

  I watched Thane and River spin through October skies until they finally landed on the lawn before the Driscoll mansion. They would be gone soon, though not soon enough. Pain surged through my gut, stubborn and incessant, horrid beyond bearing.

  “We must hide the dead human,” Sage warned.

  At least, I thought she said something like that. I wasn’t sure. The knife blade had gone in a hundred years ago, but the pain had never left. My wings curled in spasms of agony.

  I tried to latch one hand around a nearby tree trunk, but failed.

  “Ash!” my sister cried.

  One feeble gasp and then, suddenly I was tumbling to the ground, weakly grasping at branches as I fell, a rustling thunder of pine needles and leaves, and the cracking of bone against wood. Sage tried to catch me, tried to soar faster than my descent, but couldn’t reach me in time.

  The forest walls became a rushing tunnel of pain. I instinctively tucked my wings around myself, but couldn’t stop the jagged rips or brutal blows, each delivered with purpose and intent.

  I could feel it—even the forest was angry with me.

  With a wicked thump that echoed and reverberated, I hit the ground. Crumpled in a ball. Spine striking earth. A cloud of dirt and fallen leaves exploded around me.

  For a second, I thought I might never breathe again.

  Then oxygen came rushing back and with it, every pain and every blow the forest had given. Still, the worst was the ache in my side, that damnable hole that would never heal. I masked it with a Veil when around other Darklings, I couldn’t have them know how easily I could be defeated in battle.

  And yet, somehow Thane had found it.

  The world around me wavered and faded, turned into a ghost horizon.

  My sister was holding me in her arms, but she was as transparent as the fog.

  “Can’t have them run away,” I murmured. “The humans always run away when they see my wound—”

  “Lie still,” Sage said. “Your old wound is ripped and torn.”

  Leaves and evergreen needles still fell in a rain, blanketing me, burying me just like the dead human who lay a mere wingspan away. I tried to straighten my limbs. Unable to stand, unable to move, and yet, through it all, I could hear the song of the moon, somewhere overhead, a song like ambrosia—fragrant, healing, powerful. But not strong enough.

  “Drink this.”

  I shuddered, then realized that my eyes had opened and Sage had lifted a vial to my lips. A thick, rich liquid flowed down my throat—a fresh harvest. I could taste the tang of wild berry and russet leaves, could hear the song of summer wind through green branches. Could feel strength returning to weak limbs.

  Already I was growing stronger, muscles sleek, flesh glowing. The distilled dreams of a hundred Sleepers warmed my belly through the elixir that Sage had poured down my unwilling throat. The Nectar of the Hunt stirred the old hunger within. For the first time in almost a century, my desire for the old dreams vanished.

  My sister had won. She had lured me back into the Land of the Living.

  “Did Thane hurt her?” I asked, my voice weak. My cousin had been hunting Maddie, I knew it.

  “No.” Sage paused, some unwilling bit of news on her tongue. “But he marked her.”

  I sighed and glanced away.

  Then Sage placed a firm hand on my wrist. “We must hide the dead body. Quickly. The sun has departed. They will come stumbling through the wood soon, with their bright lights and their weapons of sulfur and steel.” She lifted her head, caught a scent on the wind. “One of them is here already, a man who wears the stench of oil and death.”

  We stood at opposite ends of the dead human, lifted him gently, ceremoniously, both chanting a holy requiem poem. Then, wings flapping, we carried the body into star-spun skies, shifted our skin like chameleons, and we sailed to the boundary of Ticonderoga Falls.

  But the Legend followed me, even there. When the moon rose in the heavens, and we mourned the human’s death, joining the hymn offered by the birds—at that very same moment, the Legend sang in my ear. Maybe a mother was telling her children a story as she tucked them into bed. Or maybe one teenager was daring another to walk through the shadowed wood.

  The curse descended and his human disguise cracked and fell away, it seared and turned black. Because of it, he is no longer a beautiful mythica
l creature in a wooded glen. He is now a monster who slinks through darkened corridors, someone who haunts your dreams . . .

  Chapter 39

  A Wintery Nightmare

  Elspeth:

  I woke and shook off a wintry nightmare, bits of it still glowing around me as I opened my eyes. In my dream, light had spattered through silver trees and fragrant blue snow filled the fields—I had been standing barefoot in a snowdrift, toes burning and tingling from unbearable cold. But now, the dream melted and changed back into my father’s room. Armoire in the corner, carved chest against the wall, a massive four-poster bed where I now stretched.

  It felt strange to be on this side of a dream. Disoriented, groggy, still remembering snippets of another landscape and the disjointed story that went with it.

  I shivered, then realized that a stiff, cold wind was blowing in from the open door to the widow’s walk. My mouth was dry and my limbs stiff. I sat up slowly, then glanced down at the bandage on my arm, remembering the previous evening and my encounter with that dog. With a flick of my thumb, I peeled off the gauze.

  The wound had healed, completely.

  I flexed my muscles, felt a slight twinge.

  Voices outside, laughing and joking, stole my attention. I crossed the room, padded out onto the small balcony, then peered down. Just across the road stood a small herd of humans—young boys. Most of them were younger than me, but at least two looked like they could be my age.

  Just then one of them turned, glanced up in my direction.

  I immediately shrank back into the shadows. But in my mind, I studied what I had seen—their clothes, their hairstyles, the shade of their skin—and then within a few moments, I made a new skin for myself. I didn’t look exactly like they did; I knew I had to change a few details or they would grow suspicious.

  You can’t show up at a party looking exactly like the host.

  I kept my long black hair, but lightened my skin, rimmed my eyes with black, put on tight blue pants, red plaid sneakers, a black sweater and a short black leather jacket. For a finishing touch, I added a tattoo on my left hand.

  Then I retreated back inside the mansion, opened the door to the hallway and peeked out. A heavy silence claimed the house. Head cocked, I picked up on a heartbeat—in the room down the hallway, Driscoll’s room. I could feel him, crouched and silent, hiding, probably hoping that we would all leave soon.

  The door swung closed behind me with a soft whoosh as I crept down the stairs toward the foyer. All the adults were gone. They had left for the Hunt without me. For a moment, I felt a pang of regret, I had really wanted to hunt at my father’s side this year. Maybe I could still catch up with him later tonight.

  But right now, more than anything I wanted to go outside and play.

  With the humans.

  Chapter 40

  Indulgences

  Driscoll:

  The sky darkened, the air sizzled with electricity and carried a stench like burned hair. They were folding reality. Breaking reality was probably more accurate. I huddled in the bed, my back to the wall, a pillow on my lap. Sometimes I buried my face, trying to block out the sounds and the images in my head. From where I sat I could see both the door and the window, so none of them would be able to sneak up on me.

  Not this time.

  Compared to the rest of the house, this room was stark, with bare wooden floors, an iron bed and one chair in the corner. The only indulgences I had allowed myself were the paintings that covered the walls—oils done by my father, watercolors of my own, most mounted in gilt-edged frames, although a few simply hung by tacks. I followed the paintings around the room, my gaze lingering on each for a few moments, allowing myself to remember.

  The most beautiful one hung directly across from me. Done by my father at the age of fifteen, it didn’t have the execution he would achieve later in life, but the subject matter was unique.

  It was Lily. In the forest, pretending to be a faery.

  She hovered over a patch of northern shooting star, their slender stems bending beneath the weight of delicate lavender flowers. The background deepened to a wall of coulter pine and incense cedar, sprinkled with weathered rocks and juniper moss. But the most lovely part of the painting was Lily, herself. Pale skin, a halo around her face, her wings iridescent and translucent. If you stared at the picture long enough, you could almost see her wings move, blurring in the afternoon shadows.

  Whenever I looked at this image, I could understand how my father had been so easily enchanted. I found myself wishing that she had been the one to keep me here, that hers was the curse.

  It was my own private faery tale, the one that kept me grappling at the edge of sanity.

  But then my gaze drifted, as it always did, and I saw the rest of the paintings. All induced by the Darklings: that odd muse-like quality they had, leaving traces of inspiration behind like dusty fingerprints after they had stolen your dreams. I had counted the paintings once. Not including the one of Lily, there were somewhere around forty total—all of the same subject and yet all different.

  They were all of Ash, the Great Beast, wearing a variety of skins throughout the past century. Most showed the Darkling with spine erect, shoulders back, chin tilted with an arrogant gaze—as if he dared the viewer to see past his façade. But a few of the paintings captured his torment, bowed stance, gaze lowered, expression unreadable, as if he were trying to remember exactly what he had lost, where it might be, so he could recover it somehow. All the skin tones were different, and the hair as well, sometimes curly, sometimes straight. Still, the look in his eyes always remained the same.

  A guarded expression.

  And an unquenchable hunger.

  I wondered if he looked at everyone that way, or if he saved that particular gaze for his prey.

  I walked to the window and glanced down. A small crowd of teenagers huddled at the end of that woman’s driveway, that Madeline MacFaddin. Like they were waiting for her. I wondered why.

  She was going to be my distraction. I knew it already, could feel it thumping through the floor when I saw how Ash had stared at her when she returned for her credit card earlier.

  It was the same look he’d had when he gazed at Elspeth’s mother.

  I should have warned her. I sighed. But whenever I had tried to say anything, Ash would freeze my vocal cords. Still there might have been a way. Too late now.

  Too late for her.

  Not too late for me.

  I lifted the bedspread, peeked beneath the bed, just to make sure it was still there, that I hadn’t imagined it. Another long sigh, then I sank back and sat on the floor.

  My suitcase, all packed. Ready and waiting. Gas in the car. A pocketful of cash.

  As soon as they were all distracted, I was going to escape.

  Chapter 41

  A Ravenous Glare

  Thane:

  The Driscoll mansion grew larger as I approached, until it consumed the horizon, six gables and towering turret, mullioned windows and wraparound porch. It was a dark, faceless silhouette, all features erased by the fast-approaching night—all save the yellow glow, warm as a fire on a winter night, that came from an open window upstairs, Ash’s bedroom.

  The room where Elspeth slept.

  Anger and humiliation shivered across my skin as I crossed the threshold, as I shook the short flight out of my wings with a hasty snap. River at my side, we both paused in the lobby, lifted our heads to sniff the air.

  I was supposed to leave—some swaggering threat of banishment that my father would fight and lose in the twisted Darkling court, another dark stain on my family crest that would be traced back to me. We were all supposed to leave, but I couldn’t—not when the Hunt was so near, when the moon hung in the sky like a temptress, demanding obeisance. I glanced out one of the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the cavernous room.

  At that moment, the moon wooed me with a dark song of harvest, wrapped about me with smoky tendrils, enveloped me with an ache t
hat sank all the way to my marrow.

  As always, she was perfect, mesmerizing, demanding.

  “Sienna!” I called. The syllables of her name echoed, touched every corner of the massive Queen Anne like probing fingers. A soft sound, almost like a kiss, answered, followed by heavy silence.

  My sister was here, feeding, trying to mask herself.

  With a thunderous flap of wings, I soared to the upper stair landing, then pulled my wings tight against my back as I stalked down the hallway. Head tilted back, nostrils flared, I drank in the scents that drifted through the massive house. Coffee from this morning, shoe polish in a cupboard, wild peony on the dining-room table, starch on a laundered shirt, sweat dripping from a brow, lavender soap on the kitchen counter—

  I stopped.

  Sweat. Human sweat.

  A nearby door stood almost closed, open a mere hand’s breadth. I peered inside. Something moved, a flash of arm and legs and then I caught the sweet fragrance of harvest, of fresh dreams. For half a second I closed my eyes, analyzed the flavor.

  “Bad dreams,” River whispered at my side.

  “Aye,” I answered.

  We could both see her then, standing in the slivered opening—Sienna, almost drunk from harvest, her mouth still wet.

  “Go away,” she said, her voice low as a growl, a territorial glimmer turning her golden eyes dark.

  “We’ve been banished,” I told her.

  “Because of what you and River did,” she answered. “I’m not leaving.” Without moving, with just a whispered chant, the door slammed shut.

  “She’s got the human that belongs to Ash in there, that doctor with the nightmares,” River said.

  “Aye, she does.”

  River flinched when I started to laugh, a thick booming sound that ricocheted down the hallway, that bled down the stairs and made the windows rattle. Then I cast a ravenous glare at him. “I’m not leaving either! What do you say we have a light meal?”