Bates makes a dash for the stairs, but Astraea heads him off. He stumbles in our direction, but I draw my sword and smile. Shrieking, he turns and does exactly what we want him to do, moving in the only direction he has left: he grips the spikes atop the stone wall edging the cliff and tries to heave himself over.
Halfway up, he hangs suspended, his feet kicking ineffectually, and for a moment it looks as if I’ll have to give him a hand. That’s a big load for an out-of-shape fanatic to hoist. But a few swipes of Delphi’s claws across his capacious backside and he’s over the top.
I’m expecting a final scream trailing off into the distance, followed by a significant spine-splintering thump, but instead there’s more sputtering and mumbling. Across the wall, amazingly, Bates’s face is still visible.
I sheathe my claymore again, stride over, and look down, the cats snarling and pacing about my legs. There’s a tiny ledge between the overlook wall and the precipice, about a foot across, on which Bates is balancing. Quite a feat, considering the size of that belly. His pudgy, sweat-greased fingers clasp the wall-top spikes. Prayers all run out, he’s utterly silent, save for an overweight panting.
And I will have a more immediate vengeance after all. The gesture is appropriate, one used by faith healers on television. “Heal,” they howl, slamming their palms against the supposed sufferers’ foreheads.
Angus’s blood seeping into the soil beneath the standing stones, Matt’s blood streaking his temples. Unsmiling, I shove the heel of my hand against Bates’s brow and launch him out toward the treetops. Like the cell phone before him, he strikes a few outcrops before there is that last satisfying thud and the screaming abruptly stops.
The girls in the photographs are all younger than sixteen. They are all naked, and each one of their faces is flushed with shame. Some of the photographs are stuck together, the Charleston Gazette reporter gingerly notes as he shuffles through them. Who left the manila folder on his desk? He has no idea.
Tourists taking in the overlook vista at Hawk’s Nest State Park notice the circling buzzards first. Probably a dead deer, someone notes, as a carrion reek rises from the woods below. Mountain breezes briefly disperse the stink. Then the odor crowds in again, and tourists flee the cliff edge in disgust. Pity the poor park ranger ordered to investigate.
Why did they decide to come forward? ask the social workers. Because of the dreams, the girls admit. In their dreams, a dark lady told them it was safe to tell the truth. He was their preacher; they looked up to him. Then he touched them. He took pictures of them. He told them the devil would drag them to hell if they told.
“So, La Clairvoyante, you sent me dreams as well then?” I ask Cynthia at the Halloween feast.
It’s taken Bob and Lara only one week to become best buddies, enthusiastic swappers of recipes and gossip. The big candlelit kitchen of Mount Storm is full of the rich scents of their culinary collaborations: roast pork, baked acorn squash, cabbage rolls, Scottish stuffed chicken, bacon-braised kale, maple-nut biscotti. After the Samhain ritual, Bob, Kurt, Lara, and a host of pagan Bears are celebrating the season in grand and fattening style, while I treat Cynthia to some Clos du Bois merlot by the fireside.
“I do have a precognitive streak. I knew Matt was in danger. I could see what his fate would be, without someone’s intervention. Sending you visions seemed to me to be the most graceful—and vivid—way to nudge you. Images are often so much more convincing than words. And I knew you’d relish being his Knight in Ebony Armor.”
I refold the several Gazettes we’ve been snickering over. GIRLS COME FORWARD. INCRIMINATING PHOTOS IN POLICE POSSESSION. MINISTER’S BODY FOUND IN WOODS: APPARENT SUICIDE. And, in smaller print, “Belle Church Suffers Invasion of Copperheads,” accompanied by a priceless photo of the reptiles swarming out the front door of the rapidly emptied church.
“Oh, yes, a knight he’ll have nothing further to do with.” I sip my merlot and sigh, rubbing my silvering beard. Lately I haven’t had much appetite, and, without a recent meal, my age is catching up to me.
“I know, I know, you’re obsessed with that boy’s goatee and chest hair. What a fur fetishist! Matched only by your passion for sadomasochism!” Cynthia teases, then falls silent. A hard wind is worrying the edges of the old house, whining about the eaves and rattling the casements. By Yule the snows will have set in.
“And by Yule, you will have heard from him, Derek,” she whispers.
“You! Missy! Get out of my mind!” I knock back the last gulp of wine, toss another log on the fire, and pace a bit before asking with what must sound like a child’s voice, “Really?”
“Mark my words.” Cynthia is all confidence. “Meanwhile, I have a charming lark planned that should distract you till you have that beefy guitarist around to rope and ravish again. Do you remember the ridiculous name Cofferdilly?”
Dark water swirls silently around the base of the great boulder, here at the foot of Gauley Mountain, at the confluence of the Gauley and the New. Both streams are swollen with weeks of cold November rains.
This island I once visited before, during one of my many solitary wingings over the state. Tonight I am not alone. Cynthia is with me, and two axes, which we are sharpening with whetstones as another autumnal drizzle begins, speckling our leather jackets.
“It’s turning to sleet, I think.” I’m working with slow, patient strokes, the way my father taught me. Cynthia’s axe is double-headed, appropriately. A labrys.
“Heavy frost due in this weekend. It will take its cue from your beard, I think. Are you on a starvation diet, Derek? Your hair is quite gray.”
I smile sheepishly, run my fingers through the fur on my face. “I plan to meet a biker down in Lost River in a couple of weeks. That should spruce me up. Are you ready?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve been touching myself for weeks at the thought of this. Now please take your time. This is work to relish.”
Cynthia swings first. The steel sinks deep into the cheap wood, and soon she’s got an expert notch going in the side of the cross. It creaks and topples over. I follow suite with the second. We take leisurely turns on the largest of the trio, bringing it down with only a few strokes apiece. The crossbeams we break into fragments with our bare hands and toss out over the water piece by piece.
The shards, painted yellow and light blue, are swept downriver, toward Kanawha Falls and Charleston, toward the Ohio and the Mississippi, toward the Gulf of Mexico.
We sit on the rock in silence for a few minutes, watching the midnight river rush by. On the far shore, lights have come up in a few houses, someone’s shouting. Roused by the sounds of our axes, I gather. What I wouldn’t give to see their faces in the morning, gazing across the water at a great boulder returned to its original state. For faith, the unadorned earth should be sufficient fact.
“Next week? That set of crosses near Buckhannon?” Cynthia asks, tugging affectionately on my beard. “Then we can start on the others along I-79.”
“It’s a date.” As we rise to gather up our axes, the drizzle becomes a downpour.
It is the season of Death, and I am one of the dead. The winds that beat down upon Mount Storm are freezing now, though I do not feel discomfort as I sleep in my chilly coffin or sit alone in starlight among the standing stones. Frost forms slowly on the windows at night, and I am there to study that patient art, to watch the coming winter sketch ferns and flowers on the glass. The nights are longer and longer, and in the tower room I rock, marking the moons as they come and go. Sometimes I descend, to sit by the fire fueled by logs Bob and Kurt have felled and split. I sip Tobermory single malt, the waters of Mull distilled into fire. I brush my snowy beard across the back of my hand and try to remember the scents of the men I have loved.
Imagine them, the millennia of Yule celebrations, scattered across continents and centuries. The great holiday marked by Stonehenge and Newgrange, by the rough dolmens of Mystery Hill. The return of the sun. When the God of the Waning Year is vanquished by th
e God of the Waxing Sun. When the gray days begin to lengthen.
Bob and Kurt have gathered mistletoe with its seminal berries, holly with its blood-drops, clubfoot moss and white pine to decorate the mantelpiece. Bob and Lara are pulling out hand-scrawled family recipes for mulled wine and stollen, for crown roast, for Polish hunter’s stew and Scottish shortbread.
By Yule, she’d said. But less than a week remains, and my hope is running out.
In my fireside dreams, Matt is the Lord of Light. He who was sacrificed in high summer is now the Yule priest, and it is I, manifestation of darkness, who am wrestled naked to my knees, then bound to the cross amidst the standing stones. When I close my eyes, I can feel the silver chains about my neck, wrists and ankles, the wood of the cross against my bare shoulders. A leather strap across my brow binds my head back, and all I can see are stars. Scorpio and Sagittarius. And Orion the Hunter. Hunter become the prey.
I shift in the chains, and the links clink together softly. I suck in cold air, exhale, and my breath draws a gray veil across the constellations. Frost, like the weight of years, is silently silvering my black chest hair. There’s a drum throbbing somewhere, and the flicker of torches. The smell of heaped snow. And the scent of Matt, standing beneath me. Matt, who brushes his goatee across my belly and hipbones, gently bites my flanks, then takes me between his lips. I grunt and shove into him. I bite down on my tongue, and my own blood fills my mouth.
Long Nights Moon, they call it, riding above German Valley. It fights its way through snow clouds tonight. A blizzard predicted for the Potomac Highlands, with even more storms on the way. Bob’s stocked in provisions and has corn chowder simmering. From my study window, I watch the pines bend beneath hard wind before pouring out some Scotch and turning on the computer.
Only two days are left till Yule. For weeks, the e-mail I’ve hopefully checked every evening has consisted of nothing but notes from my New York publishing minions.
I’m thinking about spring in San Francisco when the message comes up.
Derek,
We got to talk. I’ll be at the Glen Ferris Inn till Saturday
morning. Job retreat. Can you meet me tomorrow night? The
dining room at 8?
Matt
Bob is in the study in three breaths. He’s never heard a vampire yell yeee-haw.
I leave the snowstorm behind at Elkins, and by a quarter to eight, I’m flapping over the rock Cynthia and I recently cleaned of crosses and soaring downriver. There, below, almost immediately, spreads the curved susurrus of Kanawha Falls, white in the moonlight, and beside it stand the columns and yellow-lit windows of the inn.
I’m in a hopeful and playful mood tonight, so I dive-bomb a family in the inn’s snow-scattered parking lot. The children scream, the woman herds them toward the car, the man fumbles with his keys. They’re inside with admirable rapidity. I bump the windshield once or twice, showing my long teeth, before bidding them adieu as they rocket out of the parking lot and down Route 60.
Outside one window and then another I hover, searching. There he is. Through the steamed glass of the dining room, I can see Matt sitting alone in the corner. He’s drinking red wine, brooding. A candle on his table flickers across his face. He finishes his glass and orders another. He needs to be half-drunk to face me.
How handsome he is. What purpose has my life save devouring beauty? Literally, metaphorically. Whatever is possible, whatever is allowed. There’s a several-days’ shadow of stubble across his cheeks. His hair is longer than before, spilling over his shoulders. His goatee is even bushier. The sleeves of his rag-wool sweater are rolled up, and his forearms are thick with muscle. He buries his face in his hands for several seconds, then brushes his hair back from his eyes and takes another swallow.
The parking lot is now pleasingly free of witnesses, so there I shift before striding in among the pillars of the front porch and through the door. I haven’t been here for over a hundred years. What a picture Mark Carden was, peeling off his gray wool uniform in that room upstairs.
The dining room is dim and almost empty. An elderly waitress, the aroma of fried seafood, a few quiet tables of hotel guests. Busy wallpaper, antique furniture, Christmas lights and plastic greenery strung along the mantelpiece.
“Matt.”
He looks up. His face flushes. His heart is pounding, and, by Cernunnos, his scent is the same. It makes my head swim.
“Derek. Sit down,” he says, looking away, grabbing his glass and knocking back what’s left of his wine.
I slip off my black duster and slide into a chair. Our knees bump. He jumps and moves his leg away.
There’s a mist smearing my vision. The cataracts of lust. I should have fed earlier this evening. The appetite I’ve lacked for months has come rushing back. I mustn’t touch him tonight, even if he invites me, but, considering his body language, there’s not much likelihood of that.
I try to meet his eyes, with no success. “Matt, why did you want to see me?”
He hesitates, staring at his empty glass, and sighs. “Don’t know. I’ve been dreamin’ about you every night. In some of ’em, you kill me. With an ice pick, with an awl, with your bare hands. In others, you’re fuckin’ me. No. Makin’ love to me. Real rough, and then real tender. I wake up to . . . well, I’ve been runnin’ through the Kleenex. So I figured the only way I could make sense of thangs was to see you again.”
The waitress pauses by our table. “No, no, ma’am. No more wine. Just put it on my room tab, okay? Derek, I gotta get some air. Let’s go outside.”
I’m relieved and amazed that he would consider being alone with me. Matt rises unsteadily and shoulders on his leather jacket. I pull on my duster, and we’re out the door.
The garden behind the inn overlooks the river. The flowerbeds are dusted with day-old snow and full of the withered stalks of last summer’s blooms. Above us loom a bare-limbed sycamore and a black walnut. In the darkness just upriver, the Kanawha Falls continue their constant subdued rushing, the same sound I drowsed to upstairs with Mark in my arms. Long, long ago.
Matt sits down on a small concrete bench and almost immediately rises.
“Shit, that’s cold! I don’t need ice on my ass.”
The moon, veiled till now, slips from behind a cloud, and for the first time tonight, Matt looks me full in the face. His eyes widen with shock.
“Derek, what’s happened to you? Your beard is white!”
I turn from him, touch the smooth white bark of the sycamore beside me, then settle heavily onto the bench, my wintry flesh matching the concrete chill for chill.
“Let me explain that circuitously. I’m glad you asked me to meet you here. I have some pleasant memories of this inn. Many years ago I spent a few sweet nights here with a soldier. That room right up there. I loved him almost as much as I love you.”
Matt stares at me. He groans and turns abruptly toward the river, takes a few strides forward. For a second, I fear he’s going to jump in rather than contemplate being loved by a killer. But then he stops and, back to me, stands in silence.
The moon disappears again, swallowed by what must be snow clouds, to judge by the scent of this brisk breeze sweeping over the garden.
Matt shivers and turns his collar up against the cold. “You love me?” The tone of his voice is a mixture of strained disbelief, and oddly, relief, as if something’s been decided.
“Yes. Yes, I love you. Yes, I drank your blood. Yes, given your permission, I will strip you, tie your hands behind your back, make love to you and then drink your blood again.”
He turns toward me. Light from the inn windows illuminates that combination of emotions I’ve come to expect after three centuries: terror and longing.
“Did you hear that, Matt?” I ask softly. “With your permission. I will not hurt you.”
“You really think I’d let you touch me again? After you killed those guys in that alley?”
“I did that to protect you. You might as well kno
w I also disposed of Bates. Again, to protect you. Because of him, you almost died. I made it look like suicide. He needed killin’—that’s the Southern expression, I think. I’ll kill anyone who threatens me and those I love.”
“Jesus, you killed Bates?!” he gasps. I can’t tell whether he’s horrified or impressed. He shakes his head and looks out toward the falls’ distant white curtain. “Man, you’ve been busy.” Then, softly, begrudgingly, “Cain’t say I’m sorry Bates is dead, though.”
Matt kicks at a fallen sycamore twig, then mutters, “So what about that guy you mentioned? The soldier you slept with here. You still love him?” There’s the tiniest edge of jealousy to the question, and that gives me hope.
“As much as one can love the deceased. Mark Carden is long gone. He was a Confederate soldier. He died at the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863. And I . . . I died in Scotland, in the year 1730.”
“You’re insane, Derek.” He faces me again, eyes wide, and starts backing up.
And I’m losing my patience. “It’s a little bit more complicated than that. Watch.”
The shimmer begins around my head, then cascades over my shoulders. Next my figure goes translucent, and the edges dissolve. Now Matt is alone, save for the sound of the falls and an eldritch mist which eddies around him before drifting over to the trunk of the sycamore and slowly regaining human form.
I’ll give it to him. He’s as brave as he was in that alley, tearing into those punks. Instead of running away as fast as he can, he stands stock-still, his face as pale as mine. Then his knees begin to quiver and he sits on the bench, its cold forgotten for the moment.
“Sorry to be such a show-off. It was the fastest way to convince you.”
“So you’re what? A ghost?” he manages shakily. “No, shit, I should know better than anyone how solid you are. You . . . my blood on the sheets, that night at your farm . . . you didn’t use an awl, did you?”
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