Husk: A Maresman Tale (21 page)

Something gurgled and groaned to his right—Sheriff Tanner, naked, sweat pouring down his hirsute body. His hands covered his crotch, and spurts of blood gushed up between his fingers.

A sigh to his left made Jeb spin back. The scent of honeysuckle hit him, then warm flesh pressed against him. Insistent hands pulled his face to a breast, and he sucked and licked like it was air to a drowning man. His heart clamored in his chest, and lightning coursed through his veins. He grabbed a handful of hair and yanked the woman’s head back. She had no face, save for the contours of her cheeks, the ridge of her nose, the gaping void of her mouth. She pulled against his grasp, slowly, inexorably leaning in till her hot breath tickled his lips.

Pressure surged within him, and he stepped back, pushed her head down, and gasped. A cloying chill took hold of him, set his stomach writhing, as if it held a nest of icy serpents. He shoved her away and dropped to his knees. Snakes wormed their way into his chest, his throat, and he vomited them forth in an endless stream.

His eyes snapped open, and he wiped the filth from his face, wincing at the rank taste in his mouth.

Straw.

He was lying on straw.

In the dark, he could just about make out the bars on the window, the line of buckets on the floor.

A door bolt was thrown back, and Jeb froze. The image of Sheriff Tanner bleeding out between his fingers shot to mind. The second bolt clunked, and a key scratched in the lock.

More than likely, Tanner was ducking beneath the law he so highly esteemed, and coming at night to get the job done on the quiet. Either that, or the Maresmen had arrived.

Jeb scuttled back against the far wall, started to get his feet under him.

The lock clicked, and the door inched open. It clanged when it struck the stone of the wall. Someone moved into the doorway, silhouetted against the soft glow of an oil lamp in the room behind. By no stretch of the imagination could it have been Tanner.

“Oh, you threw up,” Maisie said, though her twang was gone. “Poor dear. It’s the effect I have on people.”

Jeb swallowed down his pounding heart. He tried to look past her, into the adjoining room. “Where’s the sheriff? What have you done to him?”

“Done? Me? Why nothing. Sheriff Tanner is just being accommodating.”

A likely story, Jeb thought. Last impression Tanner had given was that he was gonna bring her in, dead or alive.

“Between you and me, I think he has a thing for Maisie,” she said, and flicked her hair back. “Of course, going by her memories, the attention wasn’t exactly welcome.”

“And the other one?”—the man who’d brought his food.

“Not my type, darling.”

Jeb scoffed. “Still alive, then.”

“They both are. What do you think I am, a monster? I’ve just persuaded them to take a break. They work so hard, you know, what with being the only two law men in town.”

“You expect me to believe Tanner just let you walk in here? What, did he tell you to let me go, too?”

Maisie—he couldn’t bring himself to call her anything else—rolled her eyes and pouted. “He’s given us time together, darling, that’s all. Let’s not talk about him; let’s talk about you. This sickness has me worried. You can’t blame a mother for caring.”

“It was nothing. Just a bad dream.”

“I know, dear. I know.” She started to walk slowly around the walls, keeping her eyes locked to Jeb’s, trailing her fingertips across the stone behind her. “But it wasn’t all bad now, was it?”

Jeb got to his feet and circled away from her. When she stopped, so did he. He glanced at the open door, tensed for a sprint, but something about her easy smile stopped him. He was fast—faster than most—but he had no idea what she was capable of. She’d already entered his dreams, he was certain of that. Already worked her spell on him.

“Don’t worry,” she said, tilting her head to one side and batting her eyelids. “Your weak stomach is proof you’re immune, and in any case, I would never harm you. Not ever.” She shot the last at him like an arrow. The words almost palpably hit Jeb between the eyes, and all the while her gaze tracked him, gauged his reaction.

“Then why? In the dream—”

“Blood calls to blood. You felt it before, remember, and you were awake then.”

“And you didn’t?” Feel it, he meant.

She narrowed her eyes and frowned.

“You walked away, at the Crawfish,” Jeb said.

“Well, what do you expect? I lay with you, I have to kill you, Jebediah Skayne.” She annunciated each syllable of his name as if she were speaking a foreign language. “I won’t do that. Not to you. Not to my only child.”

“Only?” He was going to say, “I’m sure you have more,” given the number of men she’d taken—and those were just the ones he knew about from recent weeks. Shog only knew how many others there’d been over the years. Before he could say more, though, she cut across him.

“Sounds odd, all together.” She pronounced his name again, then let out a light, tinkling laugh. “I still think of you as Little Jeb. I never liked the name, but it was your father’s; just thought I owed it to him.”

For an instant, a flash of anger drove back Jeb’s fear. “For killing him?”

“It was more than that. He was special. He was the one who seeded me, and I needed nourishment so you could grow. You were—are—everything.” Her voice quavered, and she dropped her gaze to the floor.

Jeb shut his eyes against what he thought she’d just said: she’d eaten his father to feed his growth in her womb? Borrowed womb, he reminded himself. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Mortis had said as much, hadn’t he?

He tried to gather himself, glean what he could while there was still the chance. With an effort, he steered the conversation in another direction, but even as the words left his mouth, he knew they were the wrong ones.

“What was he like, my father?”

“Chicken,” she said, more to herself than to him. Then, abruptly, she looked up. “Oh, you mean as a person? No idea. I picked him up, we mated. Nothing more.”

“Except you ate him.”

“Are you so ungrateful?” Her eyes narrowed to slits, and when they widened again, the sclerae were veined with red. “How else would you have come to term? If he had lived, you would not have. It’s as simple as that, Little Jeb. This is what we are, our purpose.”

“Yours, not mine,” Jeb said.

“I didn’t mean you.” It came out as a sneer, but she swiftly exchanged it for a cloying smile. “I mean, it is what we succubi do. We inflame men, and for our efforts, every so often, we are rewarded.”

“With a child?”

She nodded, and drew in a shuddering breath. Her eyes welled up, and she turned her head away.

“And my mother?” Jeb said. “My real mother.”

Maisie flung him a wide-eyed look. “That’s me. What do you—?”

“Sure didn’t look like you.” He grew bold, approached her, and grabbed a handful of auburn hair. “She was blonde, for one thing.”

Her mouth worked soundlessly before she found the words. “There was no other way, darling. You have to see. We have no substance of our own.”

Jeb let go of her hair and retreated a step. “So? Get used to it.”

“You feel the lust,” she said. “Don’t deny it. I’ve seen it in your eyes. It’s the same for me, only with mine, there’s a purpose. There’s a…” Her chin trembled, and she blinked back tears.

“What?” Jeb said. Were they real tears, or was it just an act? He met her bleary gaze with barely concealed hatred.

“You, of course,” she said, as if it were obvious. “You were my purpose.”

The thought that he had anything to do with her, that he had her… essence made his stomach clench. “Not what I meant,” he said. “What’s with the tears?”

In an instant, she regained her composure. She wiped her eyes dry in one sharp motion and threw her hair back with a tilt of her chin. The action reminded Jeb of Dame Consilia, but when Maisie dropped her head to one side to study him, she had more the feel of a snake.

“Nothing,” she said, then pressed her lips into a tight line.

The red veins had left her eyes, but now, around the irises, Jeb could make out a thin corona of yellow.

“Nothing?” Jeb muttered. “I see.”

She held his gaze with such intensity, Jeb thought she was about to pounce. He curled his fingers into fists, shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet. He took a sidestep toward the door, but she mirrored him, her lips curling back and somehow managing to make Maisie’s perfect teeth seem sharp and dangerous. Pressure grew in Jeb’s lungs from where he held his breath, and his ribcage shuddered each time his heart thumped. Without warning, her shoulders sagged and she sighed.

“Oh, Jeb. Jeb, darling, what are we to do?”

“Good question,” Jeb said. “One I’ve been wrestling with.”

“And so have I. Since the Crawfish, when I realized who you were.”

“When’d you figure?” he asked. “At the bar?”

She smiled and leaned back into the wall, pressing her heel against it like she’d done in his room that time.

“I suspected. Hoped, even, but I wasn’t sure till your blood was fired, when you leaned over me…” Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and she angled her head away from him. Her cheeks—Maisie’s cheeks—had a rosy flush to them.

“But you didn’t… I mean, you didn’t let anything—”

Her head snapped back round. “I’m your mother!”

“No,” Jeb said, shaking his head. “My mother’s dead.”

“I,” she said, thumping her chest. “I am your mother. That… thing… that body you remember was a shell, nothing more. It was me that animated it, me that used it to give you life.”

“She was a person,” Jeb said. “Before you came along, she was a person with thoughts, and feelings, and memories.”

She tapped the side of her head. “All still there, while I gave life to her body. Just a new pilot at the helm, is all.”

“Like with Maisie?” Jeb said. “Her ways, her mannerisms, even her twangy accent—when you don’t forget. All there at your beck and call.”

She nodded vigorously, like she thought he was getting it at last. “Yes, Jeb. Yes. That’s what I do. What I am. It’s the curse of the succubus: to have no substance, and yet yearn for nothing more than to spawn new life.”

“But it’s not the same,” Jeb said. “Not the same life. When dogs breed, they make more dogs. You… You—”

“By ourselves, we can do nothing. We just are. We live, but what is living without feeling? And so we feel through the flesh of others; but what is it to feel a heart’s beat, to draw in breath, to touch, eat, make love if there is nothing to show for it? I teeter on the brink of the Void, Jeb, aware of being, but always a hair’s breadth from oblivion.”

“Save for when you kill,” Jeb said. “Because it sure ain’t fingernails like that doing the rending. Sure ain’t Maisie’s pearly teeth, either.”

“But only that,” she said, dipping her head. “The power to destroy, but never to create, never to put something new into the world. That’s why we do it, Jeb. Why I do it. I need the humans in order to create; in order to feel… real.”

“So, Maisie’s life is sacrificed, just so you can feel real,” Jeb said. “How’s she feel about that? Did you even bother asking her?”

She shut her eyes and sighed. “Maisie has gone, Jeb. All that remain are the impressions left within her body, her brain, like footprints in the sand. It was the same with your… with the host that birthed you.”

“And you use them—these footprints,” Jeb said, not trying to keep the bitterness from his tone, “to disguise yourself, so you can live and play and work among their families and friends, until you’re ready to kill again.”

“No!” Her voice was a whiplash that stunned him into silence. “No, it’s not like that. Not for that.” She took a couple of deep breaths, the strain evident in her face as she tried to keep her voice even. “It’s so we can raise our children; so no one will suspect. Until you were fully grown, Jeb. I was to stay with you until—”

“But they came for you, didn’t they? The Maresmen.”

Air hissed through her teeth, and she let out a low growl. “Mortis. You know who I’m talking about. Head of the hunters. He’s the one you should be angry with. He’s the one who killed her—the body that birthed you; sent me fleeing back to Qlippoth without my son. Without my son, Jeb! Do you have any idea what that was like?”

“Do
you
have any idea what it was like for me?” Jeb said. Old wounds reopened deep down inside, and the buried memories that only surfaced during sleep started to dig their way out of their graves. Uncle Joe at the foot of the stairs; Aunt Mary bleeding out on the kitchen table. “Mortis—”

“Came for you when you were older? I knew he would, once he found you. Once your nature started to blossom. He would have killed us both if he’d discovered you as a child, but I hid you, Jeb.”

“Uncle Joe,” Jeb said flatly. “Aunt Mary.”

She nodded. “Good people, by Malfen’s standards. I did the best I could.”

“But who were they?”

“Your flesh and blood, Jeb. The host that bore you—Uncle Joe was her brother. They were suspicious, knew something was wrong with me, but they did their duty, and only just in time. Mortis was close, and within days of me leaving you, he found me. You have to understand, Jeb. What Mortis did was far worse than killing you. He kept me from you, and then, just when you were discovering who and what you really were, he made you a killer of your own kind. He turned you against me, Jeb. Against
me
.”

Jeb broke off from her and wandered back to the window. The dark beyond the bars had lightened into gray, and the first red streaks of dawn were bleeding over the horizon.

“So, this is about revenge,” Jeb said. “Hunting down Maresmen.”

“Not just Maresmen,” she said. Her fingertips drummed on her belly.

“The Outlanders? What did they ever do to you?”

She flinched.

He ignored that and pressed harder. “What about the men down by Carey’s Hostelry?”

She flopped forward from the waist and hung there limp as a ragdoll.

“Were they just for fun? For pleasure? Is that part of what you are?”

“No!” she screamed. Her dangling torso swayed, and her arms shook. Slowly, vertebra by vertebra, she straightened up. Auburn locks covered most of her face, but through them he could see her eyes, wild and bright. She ran stiff fingers through her hair and grimaced.