“Thank you,” he said. Going purposefully to the dresser, he removed his tiger’s eye amulet from the top drawer. She remembered seeing it that first night on the ferry, hanging around his neck. Now it dangled from his hand, glinting in the soft lantern light.
“This may help,” he said, breathing heavy from his recent exertion.
“Look,” she said, gripping his arm. “I’m sorry for what I said. You’re in no shape to have any part of this.”
“No, you were right. I have to face this. I set it free on these poor people who intended to help me. I won’t let them die in vain. It must end here.”
He went to his chamber door and pulled. Nikki reached quickly to stop him but it was too late. The door was open.
Raising the tiger’s eye amulet, Adam forged unsteadily into the hall. The amulet twirled in the air, catching glints of light. At just the right angle, the amulet flashed in the corridor and elicited a defiant roar from the black leopard.
Nikki clutched the door of Adam’s room, using it as a shield. She peered around the edge. The sleek creature was crouched in the shadows at the end of the wide stone passageway. One of the fellow “patients” of the castle, the goth girl named Raven, stood with her back pressed against her door, staring down the corridor in disbelief.
In the gathering darkness, all they could see was a silhouette of the creature as it lifted its head from a gory pile of carnage. The savaged body was that of the older man, Ben, with the tobacco-stained mustache. Lying on the floor, touched by the edge of the nearest lantern’s glow, his head was turned at an impossible angle, his eyes wide but flat with death. His white beard and mustache were streaked with blood. One arm lay sprawled, but his torso was a wet pile of torn flesh and entrails.
The black creature reared up from its kill. At first, the parts of the creature that emerged from the blackness looked very much like a huge cat, a savage creature of the wild. But then its head kept rising. Instead of rising to stand on all fours, it moved to stand awkwardly erect.
It lurched into the dim light.
The upper body of the thing was indeed a panther, or sleek black leopard, but its lower half was mostly that of a man. The black fur of the body’s upper half thinned at the pelvis. The long, thick penis of a man hung between twisted human legs. The bare feet on which it balanced were large and soaked with blood as it stepped through the grisly remnants.
The bizarre creature approached. Its upper arms pawed the air, shredded flesh dangling from blood-soaked claws. The feline eyes glinted, catching an inner red glow that immediately reminded Nikki of when she’d seen that same look in Adam’s eyes last night.
The man-leopard continued to come closer, moving unsteadily through the hall. A purring growl vibrated with menace in its chest.
Across the corridor, Raven pressed even harder against the door, obviously wishing she could somehow melt into it and become invisible. Her eyes were ivory white and wide with terror. Raven looked across at Nikki, who still held tightly to the edge of Adam’s chamber door, watching him as he went to meet the creature, unstable on his own mutated legs.
“Look!” he yelled harshly, brandishing the amulet. “The symbol of our ancestors. You are me…I am you! Come now, beast, and let us be one again! End this pointless killing. We will hunt again with purpose, live as we once did.”
The black leopard paused and cocked its massive feline head. It halted in its slow gait. When they were only ten yards away from each other, the aberrant creature roared. The sound filled the corridor with harsh vibrations. The sound lowered into a growl, settling into that menacing purr, then rose again into a lionic roar. They could see its glistening fangs, long and sharp.
Beneath her fear, Nikki reasoned that the strange mix of sounds coming from the beast sounded almost as if it were trying to communicate verbally, but had no vocal cords capable of human speech.
“Come,” Adam said to it. He stepped carefully toward his counter-half.
As he neared the savage creature, Nikki took a quick intake of breath and hissed quietly, “Adam, stop!”
Adam furiously shushed her warning.
“That’s it,” he continued. “Come now, let us be joined again.”
Behind the leopard creature, someone hurried up the spiral staircase and surged into the distant end of the corridor. The new figure paused at the pile of carnage. Then, silhouetted by the light that glowed from downstairs, the figure raised a rifle to its shoulder and aimed at the shambling man-leopard.
They understood what was happening too late.
Adam focused on communicating with his lost half, but Nikki and Raven saw it all too well.
It was Isaac who’d come up the stairs and saw Ben’s mutilated body.
Isaac aimed at the creature and fired.
“No!” Nikki yelled, as much afraid of him disrupting the communication that was taking place as she was of Isaac missing the creature and gunning down Adam with a rain of lead.
The rifle blast was like cannon fire in the stone corridor.
The barrel flashed. The bullet ripped through its shoulder, rocking the upright leopard creature back on its haunches. It roared as its body folded and went down on all fours. It turned toward Isaac and loped like a primate with its unaccustomed back legs. Isaac had just enough time to jump from its path before it barreled past him and ran down the staircase to the castle’s main floor.
Isaac pressed against the wall, trying to breathe.
Adam was enraged.
“You fool! Couldn’t you see what I was doing? Did you see—?”
“He…i-it…killed Madsen!” There were tears in Isaac’s eyes, glistening in the gloom. The edge in his voice said he was sodden with grief, and instantly Adam’s anger abated. Madsen must have been the young man who helped Isaac around the castle, Nikki thought. The one who’d helped them get settled and carried her bags.
Adam leaned against the wall. Nikki went to him, touching his shoulders. Adam stiffened against her touch. She sensed his exhaustion.
Behind them, Raven didn’t move from her place in the doorway until now. She stepped out, tentatively joining the group at the top of the stairs.
They looked down on all that remained of Ben-with-the-tobacco-stained-mustache’s body. There wasn’t much. His throat was ripped in wide gashes. His abdomen had been torn open, his guts strewn in a widening pool of blood.
They heard the creature’s anguished yowl from somewhere deep in the castle keep.
Adam closed his eyes, as if in pain.
10
Later that night they gathered in the grand library of Masterson Castle. It was a high-walled affair lined with mahogany shelves packed with books, some new, most very old. A couple of bay-window alcoves with tall panes looked out on the sea, long purple velvet drapes hanging on each side. An oval table was in the middle of the room. A stack of old books that had gathered dust sat on one end of the table. In two corners of the room were smaller study tables, lamps on them, plush chairs set to each side. In two of these chairs sat a bleak Eleanor Masterson and a grim but determined-looking Dr. Falkenstein. Isaac paced across the room, never straying far from his shotgun. Adam and Nikki sat in chairs near the giant oval table. The girl Raven leaned against the edge of the table nearby. Nikki noticed the faintest traces of needle tracks up and down her arms.
“So what the hell are we waiting for?” Raven snapped.
The huge, banded-oak doors to the library were suddenly pushed open from the other side.
“Them,” Dr. Falkenstein said, in delayed answer to Raven’s question.
Five men of various heights came into the room. At least, Nikki guessed they were men based on their general build and statures; she could not see their features. Each of the mystery men wore cloaks with deep cowls pulled over their faces. There was a distinct leader, who came in first. She couldn’t be sure, but she believed he was the same man she’d seen earlier talking to Dr. Falkenstein, hiding his face with a high collar and low, wide-brimmed
hat instead of a hooded cowl, as he did now.
The leader of the cabal drifted like a wraith to an aisle of books near Dr. Falkenstein.
The doctor hung his head—beads of sweat shone on his bald pate. He dabbed it with a handkerchief. His hand trembled as he did so.
Three of the four remaining hooded figures stood near the door. The last one of them sat heavily in a nearby chair, cowl still hiding his features. He had a peculiar scent about him.
Nikki looked across the table at Adam. They exchanged looks that said plenty. The arrival of the faceless figures didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
“Dr. Falkenstein,” the lead figure said. The voice was deep, elderly, but strangely layered, almost as if two people were talking at once. “What has happened here?”
Falkenstein dabbed his head with the handkerchief again and gave a nervous grin.
“Well, it appears the experiment with Mr. Ross, the therianthrope”—he nodded across the room at Adam Ross—“didn’t go as planned. We have a problem, I’m afraid.” Falkenstein’s grin faltered.
The faceless figure turned and acknowledged the others in the room for the first time. He looked at each of them closely, his unseen eyes lingering on Adam Ross a little longer than the others.
“When the siphon engaged Mr. Ross, it began to draw out his ailments. Unfortunately, the spiritual ailments could not be entirely separated from the essence. Apparently it was too closely knit with the physical form to separate as energy—”
“Please omit the speculation.”
“Sorry, of course…well, when the siphon attached its appendages to Mr. Ross, the pod formed, but I’ve never seen anything like…” The cowled man shifted. Nikki heard a menacing grunt of impatience from the imposing figure. “Anyway, instead of simply gathering the ‘bad’ energy as they usually do, the pod somehow formed into the extracted beast, which then tore wildly from the vine and escaped. Mr. Ross collapsed and we rushed in to retrieve him. That was when the creature attacked Marie and slipped out into the hall…” Falkenstein’s voice hitched, choked with emotion. Nikki had to wonder if Marie had been a close acquaintance of his.
As the doctor was overcome with grief, the massive figure turned to everyone in the room. He walked toward Adam, stood before him, staring down. Nikki closely watched the darkness in the cowl. She thought she could make out some facial features but couldn’t be sure. In addition to that layered voice, something else seemed strange. The features too dark to make out in detail, and yet something struck her as entirely wrong about them. The big man turned toward her and practically snarled. It was the first time any man other than her father had ever scared her with such a simple gesture. He loomed over her, and the eight-year-old child in her cowered in fear.
The figure turned back to Adam.
Adam stared up at him without any discernable emotion.
The big man finally spoke again.
“We’ll have to capture the beast. Then you and the beast both must return to the siphon vines. It’s your only chance for survival. You”—he looked at Nikki and Raven—“all of you—and the beast are now tied to the thing below. We’ve called it ‘the siphon’ for many years, for lack of a more fitting term. Of course you all know now it’s much more than that.”
Raven, the young goth, was sassy. Or foolish. In either case, the encounter with the beast upstairs emboldened her where the robed men were concerned. Even Nikki was surprised by the way Raven spoke to the strange man that had addressed them.
“So, the siphon,” she said, an edge in her voice at the term, “a.k.a. that tentacled thing in the basement, drank our bad energy.”
The tall man changed his focus to her and remained impassive, unresponsive.
“It takes out all our bad stuff—our addictions and our hate and everything else that’s eating us and every other sorry fucker who’s wandered through here since the beginning of time—and it stores it or feeds on it or something? Transfers it to those pods?”
“More or less,” Doctor Falkenstein said quietly from across the room. He was still distracted by his misery, staring bleakly at the floor and dabbing himself with the handkerchief.
“So, if the plant keeps the bad stuff, wouldn’t killing the plant also kill this…thing that came from Adam here?”
The men in cloaks visibly bristled at the suggestion of killing the tentacled plant creature. The tall man spoke from the darkness of his hood. “If you kill the siphon, you all could become seriously ill, or even die.”
Raven’s jaw dropped just the slightest bit. “What the fuck for?”
Nikki raised her eyebrow at the kid. She had spunk, that’s for sure, but not one iota of tact. Still, Raven was at least managing to extract some information from the cloud of mysteries. She silently cheered her on.
“You don’t think”—the voice of the cowled man was thick with irritation—“that you just have your energies extracted and go on unburdened by your sins, do you? There is a price, young woman. There is always a price.” The tall man paused and now Nikki thought she sensed a grin. Over the musty smells of moldy books and wet stone, Nikki caught a whiff of something foul and thought it might be his breath. “There is a life force inside each of you comprised of your darker passions. That life force dwells in your souls and has to exist in some form on this plane for you to continue to exist on Earth. Energy never disappears, it only changes form. And this particular kind of energy—the energy that all of you came here to leave behind—is an intrinsic part of your being. Yes, you leave here with it drained from your corporeal bodies, unburdened by it in your day-to-day lives, but it continues to exist, continues to be tied to your spiritual energies. It is only contained by the siphon, so that none of you may continue to suffer from it in your physical forms.”
Raven’s black eyebrows brunched in concern. Her jaw dropped slightly at an obvious loss for understanding. “So, just cut off his vine,” Raven insisted. “The one that birthed that thing.”
“You cannot kill one part without killing the whole.”
Nikki thought she was grasping the concept, and the realization was sinking its teeth into her in a grim and awful way.
“So,” Nikki said, “what you’re saying is, if the plant is destroyed, then parts of us—the parts of us that it drank—are destroyed as well. And even though the siphon absorbed these ‘darker passions,’ all this stuff that made us broken people, they remain critical parts of our life force that ultimately make us tick. Is that about right?”
The leader’s nod of assent was barely perceptible. He looked at Nikki, his perceived stare lingering longer than she would have liked.
“Destroying the siphon is not an option,” he said. “Destroy the siphon, and you, and everyone else who’s ever been helped by it, run the risk of dying as well.”
Nikki stared into the darkness of the man’s cowl. She swallowed her fear, held the trembling eight-year-old deep inside her in-check, and gave the man her hardest, most determined gaze. She knew from experience it was a damned sexy look that won her fans in every city in the nation, but this man, if a man he was, remained unmoved.
What are you hiding under there? she thought. And if you can’t even show your face, how much can you be trusted?
The tall man turned away.
“We must capture the therianthrope’s manifestation,” the leader said to the other robed men. They nodded their assent. The man who’d been seated now stood. Bones cracked in his joints as he moved. The leader turned back to Adam one last time. “If we can capture the beast, you both must go back down with the siphon. Naturally, there is no guarantee of your survival, but going back down, to attempt to be rejoined, is your best chance.”
Adam nodded as if deferring to royalty.
“I understand.”
The robed man nodded to the others. All five of them headed toward the door of the library, headed out in search of the beast.
“Grandfather,” Eleanor Masterson suddenly said. “Can we help?”
&
nbsp; Grandfather? Nikki thought. Looking across the library at the old woman, Nikki did some quick math. If Eleanor was over seventy—and surely she was—that would make her grandfather about one hundred and twenty years old or more. And looking pretty damned stalwart for that.
“Yes,” the tall man with the strange voice said. “You can keep everyone in their rooms, safe behind closed doors.”
Eleanor nodded as the group of men left the room. After they were gone, bleak silence settled over the library.
Raven said what Nikki was thinking.
“‘Grandfather’? How is that even possible?”
“Actually,” the kindhearted Eleanor said, “He’s my great-grandfather, the man who discovered the siphon and built this castle to protect it. He’s the reason you’re all here. The reason so many have been helped over the years.” She smiled, proud of the legacy, but devastated at the recent turn of events. Disappointment rimmed her eyes with tears she refused to shed. “He’s a good man,” she told them. “He is the driving force behind the Midnight Order.” She looked at each of them earnestly. “They handpicked each of you to be here, though I don’t expect you to understand how or why.”
Adam’s eyes narrowed. He was hunched over, cold in his sickly frame. Nikki watched Isaac pause in his pacing, going to the windows to look out at the rushing tide, white caps of waves glowing with moonlight.
“They’re good men,” she said, standing with obvious difficulty, with obvious pain, both physical and emotional. “Isaac.”
Isaac came to her and took her arm, providing support.
“Your rooms are probably safest for now.”
Nikki thought Adam couldn’t be anything more than full of dread, no matter how it went, either way.
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