American Quest (36 page)

Hedon nodded. “Yes, master.”

“So. Let’s hear what you’ve come to report. Tell me about these skirmishes. Any of Kolt’s Pravus armies involved?”

He listened to Hedon recount the events of late. He smiled as he heard of the swiftness with which Hedon’s troops squashed Kolt’s traps and those laid by the other Maculs. Incompetent fools, his brethren.

But even as Hedon spoke, Enervata’s mind wandered to Gloria and the silken skin of her neck. His need for her body had neared an overwhelming fever when he’d carried her to her bedroom. How he longed to take her by force. Such a sad joke that in order to manifest the power of the bond-recherché, she had to engage in the seduction willingly.

It almost seemed worth the sacrifice of opportunity to overpower
her, to imbibe her fear as he tasted her flesh. The imagined sound of her screams caused an ache in his groin that brought water to his brow. Yes, it would almost be worth sacrificing the bond-recherché just to let his first taste of Gloria be one of exquisite domination and terror.

Almost.

But no, it was out of the question. To enslave humankind was itself an achievement, but oh, to lord over his fellow Maculs! As if they were little more than a team of stout-backed horses to drive at his bidding and then leave to nibble sprigs while he feasted at the banquet of the Earth. That was a plum of honeyed nectar.

In particular, he looked forward to seeing Kolt nibbling sprigs. The very idea was ecstasy.

In truth, he would relish taking a woman like Gloria, even if she were willing. Almost especially if she were willing. At least at first. And when he grew bored of that, he would keep her alive a little longer and then he would enjoy her in a context of fear and physical pain. He could have it all.
Would
have it.

“. . . coming into place nicely, isn’t it, master? How do you wish for me to proceed, then?”

“Hmm?” He’d barely heard a word of Hedon’s report. Something about the hordes of Pravus armies circling. But so close to success—days, possibly even hours away—the threat seemed just shy of moot. Enervata could hardly be troubled.

He shrugged. “Oh, yes. Proceed at your discretion. You’ve managed well, Hedon.”

“At my discretion?” Hedon gawked, a cocoon of onion and kidney lolling about his tongue.

“Do you feel unequal to the task?”

“No! Certainly not! I’m just not accustomed to your being so . . .”

“Just do it! And advise Isolde to report to me the moment she is back in contact.”

Jamie left, thank God. Outside this hospital room, away from him, she would probably be safer. Bruce needed to face this on his own.

She took so much on her shoulders, his little Tinkerbell. He’d never known a more caring or giving person on this Earth. He’d wanted to tell her as much as she lay next to him, but the battle with Ichabod had drained every ounce of his strength. He’d barely been able to get any words out at all.

Besides, he needed whatever reserve of strength was left to him to face the canteshrike.

She grinned at him from beyond the mirror. Openly, not in glimpses through a kaleidoscope of reflections. She watched, motionless, in a dead-on, yellow-eyed stare. Bruce remembered her musical voice from his dream in the backseat, when she instructed Ichabod to crash the van and all of its living cargo. Now she had come to this hospital room to finish things herself.

And with Bruce laid out in bed in a thin, polka-dot nightie, no sign of his shorts laying around, he wasn’t exactly feeling on top of his game. But now was not the time to back away from a fight. As long as Gloria was in danger, Bruce was ready to face any challenge.

“Hello, canteshrike. Come to kill me in my sleep?”

The beast narrowed her eyes. “Though your mind does creep, you hardly sleep.”

“True, I’m not asleep. But you can hardly call this a level playing field.”

Her grin widened to reveal sharp, gleaming canine teeth at the corners of her mouth. “It matters not if the fight is fair. Even at your physical best, you’d not compare.”

That might be true
, Bruce thought.
Then again, it might not be
. He thought about his confrontation with Ichabod. That battle seemed unwinnable, too, didn’t it?

The canteshrike advanced closer in the mirror, although she existed nowhere in the room.

“Where’s the other guy?”

The beast advanced closer, saying nothing.

And though Bruce knew his life was in jeopardy—that the quest was in jeopardy—his eyelids failed him. A wave of exhaustion hit him and he shut his eyes. When he tried to open them again, he found he couldn’t.

He could hear the canteshrike breathe. And then, God, he could smell her! The warm blood beneath her skin like the scent of laundry that had been hanging in the sun. He heard her laugh.

And then slowly, in alternating waves of color and black, once again he saw her. Not in his hospital room, but in the murky tunnels inside his mind. Standing again atop clustered pillars on a craggy California beachfront. Bruce was there with her. Her spun-silver hair tumbled down the length of her wings to the backs of her thighs, and it danced upward again with the sweep of the wind. Her body was naked, with silver skin shimmering in the reflected ocean’s sparkle, feathers rippling from the sea breeze. Her eyes were like cognac.

“Where’s the other canteshrike?” he said again. “There was a male, wasn’t there?”

Her lips parted in malice. “She too asked that question, as you just did. A pointless query, misunderstood. You need only one of us to spill your blood!”

Bruce breathed in the salted green air that billowed over him. “Well if you’ve come to kill me, canteshrike, you’ve certainly picked a scenic place for it. It would’ve been a drag to go down in that hospital room.”

She shrugged. “This venue sprouted from your own mind. It stands outside of place and time.”

Bruce looked down the dizzying length to the shore below, where mighty waves slammed into the base of the pillars. The sea had left its mark in hidden pictures on the columns, here what looked like the shape of a heart, there a swirling treble clef.

“Outside of time. It’s nice to think of it. Then you don’t mind if we talk a little first? Or maybe, just stay here awhile.”

She did not reply, but instead lifted her head to the north. It seemed that she too indulged in the rich oxygen and rolling sunshine.

So maybe this was a dream. Or a sort of dream. Lucky for him. She had a lithe, muscular body. A warrior’s body. She looked as though she could shred him in an instant.

Not knowing what else to do, Bruce turned to face the sea and settled down on the smooth stone. It felt good, being outside of place and time as she put it, because he was outside of his exhaustion as well. He took a moment to consider it and realized that he felt strong. Very, very strong. He looked out on the water again. Were the waves forming in the shape of hands clasping? It certainly seemed that way for a moment.

He turned and lifted his gaze. “Can you tell me about her? You’ve seen Gloria, haven’t you? Is she safe?”

The canteshrike did not answer, but a change in her expression hinted that Gloria was at least alive and unharmed.

“Is she afraid?”

The yellow eyes flicked toward him. “She seems not to listen to what fear divulges; a stranger whose company she hardly indulges.”

He laughed. “That’s Gloria. She wouldn’t be scared for long, would she?”

“Confusion surrounds her, and anger as such. But mostly there is sadness. Though fear, not so much.”

“Yes, I figured that.” Bruce paused, scrutinizing that yellow gaze. “It sounds like you’ve come to know her fairly well. You must have spent a lot of time with her lately.”

“I met her but once, and then for mere moments. I’d watched you together though you both sensed my presence.”

“When you talk, it’s like you’re singing.”

He looked over the ledge to the base of the pillars. They protruded from black rocks that glistened in the spray, slicked with green algae and studded with cone-shaped limpets. The waves were shaving matter from the surface of the pillars at a rate so tempered that not even a halfcentimeter of stone would wash away in a year’s time. And the seemingly motionless limpets were ever-so-slowly polishing the black rocks.

Bruce felt so alive. Why hadn’t the canteshrike killed him yet?

For someone who claimed to have only observed Gloria from afar and actually met her once, this canteshrike seemed to know her quite well.

“I get the sense that you . . . admire Gloria,” he said softly.

There was no reply.

Bruce pushed himself up to a standing position and faced the canteshrike. “She reminds you of yourself, doesn’t she?”

“She resembles not the thing I’ve become. Though my former self is to me long unknown.”

“Long unknown? You mean you weren’t always a canteshrike?”

“A quondam maiden, my pre-assonantal. Ensnared within a Macul’s portal. A bargain left me changed, immortal.”

Bruce gave her a long look. That posture, the swivel of chin. The sharp-hewn thoughts. Yeah, she was a lot like Gloria. And he’d be willing to bet the canteshrike thought so, too.

He nodded at her. “So you were a maiden before. And you do remember it.”

Her face darkened. “Long centuries, laden. The memories faded.”

“Bullshit!”

Her eyes flashed and she turned toward him.

Bruce shook his head. “You remember. I don’t care if it was a thousand years ago. I bet you remember exactly who you were before you became this . . . this Pravus.”

Her teeth gleamed. “You know nothing of my strife! You’ve barely lived one single life.”

“You know what I think? I think you and the other canteshrike love each other. You look at him and you feel like your lungs fill at the same pace. That when you touch, your thoughts and hopes and everything you care about tangles together like ivy. And I think you look at me and Gloria and you maybe know what it means to be so connected to another person.”

“Stupid fool!” she said venomously. “Don’t misconstrue all this as empathy for you. Your bond means nothing, your life even less. It’s all a trifle, love and death.”

“Oh? It means nothing to you? And who exactly
are
you? The ‘quondam maiden’ from before, or the thing you are now, the Macul’s pet canteshrike?”

Her pupils constricted to pinpoints. “You dare address me with that tone. I’ll shuck the flesh from you insolent bones.”

She maneuvered sideways as if preparing to strike.

Bruce held his ground. “I don’t think you will, canteshrike. Because
I’ve figured out why you came to see me. You hate him, don’t you? When you told that boogeyman fortune-teller to wreck the van, you were going against orders. I heard it. You could have killed me then, but you ordered
him
to do it instead. You could have killed me in that hospital room, or five minutes ago, or even now, but you’re not doing it. You haven’t made up your mind what you want to do.”

She quaked with rage, and for a moment Bruce felt sure that she was about to strike him down. He wondered how she would do it. His eyes dropped to the talons, those sharp, hooked trident feet. His pulse slowed.

He would fight her if he had to. He might have little chance against her, but he would throw everything he had into this battle.

She didn’t strike, though. Bruce’s frustration boiled.

“What do you want from me?” he shouted, and the words echoed down the cliff and collided with the waves.

And then, searching her face, he repeated it, this time quietly: “What do you want?”

Suddenly, he imagined her centuries ago, as though that fresh young maiden were Gloria. And he saw the hatred-fueled beast she’d been forced to become, a defiled perversion of her former self.

“You . . . you want . . .”

Beyond the violence in her eyes, Bruce saw pain. Gouging, suffocating anguish. He saw it so distinctly that he found his heart softening for her.

That’s when he understood.

“You want revenge.”

The canteshrike stared at him, and her hands flexed. Her lips parted.

“And the other canteshrike—something must have happened. Is he . . . is he dead?”

She drew in a deep, faltering breath.

“He is. And you loved him. And now you want revenge against Enervata.”

Her eyes shone. “If I kill you, the Macul’s power’s lost. My vengeance cometh at such small cost.”

“My God.” Bruce let the air flow in and out of his lungs. It never occurred to him before. “I should have realized this earlier, but now it
makes perfect sense. If I die, Enervata loses his chance at that power. And Gloria . . .”

His mind ratcheted forward. If Bruce were dead, Enervata would no longer have any use for Gloria. He’d kill her then. He certainly wouldn’t just shrug and let her go.