Songs of Love & Death (27 page)

She began to unbutton her blouse. It was cream-coloured, still flecked with splatters of ink. “What’s the first thing you actually remember? Not something
you were told you did. That you really remember?”

“Going to the seaside when I was three, with my mum and my dad.”

“Do you remember it? Or do you remember being
told
about it?”

“I don’t see what the point of this is… ?”

She stood up, wiggled, stepped out of her skirt. She wore a white bra, dark green panties, frayed. Very human: not something you would wear to impress a new lover. I wondered what her breasts would look like, when the bra came off. I wanted to stroke them, to touch them to my lips.

She walked from the chair to the bed, where I was sitting.

“Lie down, now. On that side of the bed. I’ll be next to you. Don’t touch me.”

I lay down, my hands at my sides. She said, “You’re so beautiful. I’m not honestly sure whether you’re my type. You would have been when I was fifteen, though. Nice and sweet and unthreatening. Artistic. Ponies. A riding stable. And I bet you never make a move on a girl unless you’re sure she’s ready, do you?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t suppose that I do.”

She lay down beside me.

“You can touch me now,” said Cassandra.

I
HAD STARTED
thinking about Stuart again late last year. Stress, I think. Work was going well, up to a point, but I’d broken up with Pavel, who may or may not have been an actual bad hat although he certainly had his finger in many dodgy East European pies, and I was thinking about Internet dating. I had spent a stupid week joining the kind of Web sites that link you to old friends, and from there it was no distance to Jeremy “Scallie” Porter, and to Stuart Innes.

I don’t think I could do it anymore. I lack the single-mindedness. The attention to detail. Something else you lose when you get older.

Mr. Postie used to come in his van when my parents had no time for me. He would smile his big gnomey smile, wink an eye at me, hand me a brown-paper parcel with “Cassandra” written on in big block letters, and inside would be a chocolate, or a doll, or a book. His final present was a pink plastic microphone, and I would walk around the house singing or pretending to be on TV. It was the best present I had ever been given.

My parents did not ask about the gifts. I did not wonder who was actually sending them. They came with Mr. Postie, who drove his little van down the hall and up to my bedroom door, and who always knocked three times. I was a demonstrative girl, and the next time I saw him, after the plastic microphone,
I ran to him and threw my arms around his legs.

It’s hard to describe what happened then. He fell like snow, or like ash. For a moment I had been holding someone, then there was just powdery white stuff, and nothing.

I used to wish that Mr. Postie would come back after that, but he never did. He was over. After a while, he became embarrassing to remember: I had fallen for
that.

So strange, this room.

I wonder why I could ever have thought that somebody who made me happy when I was fifteen would make me happy now. But Stuart was perfect: the riding stables (with ponies), and the painting (which showed me he was sensitive), and the inexperience with girls (so I could be his first) and how very, very tall, dark, and handsome he would be. I liked the name, too: it was vaguely Scottish and (to my mind) like the hero of a novel.

I wrote Stuart’s name on my exercise books.

I did not tell my friends the most important thing about Stuart: that I had made him up.

And now I’m getting up off the bed and looking down at the outline of a man, a silhouette in flour or ash or dust on the black satin bedspread, and I am getting into my clothes.

The photographs on the wall are fading too. I didn’t expect that. I wonder what will be left of his world in a few hours, wonder if I should have left well enough alone, a masturbatory fantasy, something reassuring and comforting. He would have gone through his life without ever really touching anyone, just a picture and a painting and a half memory for a handful of people who barely ever thought of him anymore.

I leave the flat. There are still people at the wine bar downstairs. They are sitting at the table, in the corner, where Stuart and I had been sitting. The candle has burned way down, but I imagine that it could almost be us. A man and a woman, in conversation. And soon enough, they will get up from their table and walk away, and the candle will be snuffed and the lights turned off, and that will be that for another night.

I hail a taxi. Climb in. For a moment—for, I hope, the last time—I find myself missing Stuart Innes.

Then I sit back in the seat of the taxi, and I let him go. I hope I can afford the taxi fare, and find myself wondering whether there will be a cheque in my bag in the morning, or just another blank sheet of paper. Then, more satisfied than not, I close my eyes, and I wait to be home.

New York Times
bestseller Marjorie M. Liu is an attorney who has worked and traveled all over Asia. She’s best known for the Dirk & Steele series, detailing the otherworldly cases of the Dirk & Steele detective agency, which include
Tiger Eye, Shadow Touch, The Last Twilight,
and
The Wild Road.
She also writes the successful Hunter Kiss series, which includes
The Iron Hunt
and
Darkness Calls.
Her latest books are
In the Dark of Dreams,
the tenth Dirk & Steele novel, and
A Wild Light,
the third in the Hunter Kiss series. She lives in Indiana.

In the taut and suspenseful story that follows, she takes us to a postapocalyptic future, one of people just managing to scrape out a meager living from the soil, where every shadow has teeth and very real and deadly Things That Go Bump in the Night lurk in the darkness, kept at bay only by the strangest of alliances—and by the power of the blood.

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig

and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips…

—P
ABLO
N
ERUDA

I didn’t have time to grab my coat. Only shoes and the shotgun. I had gone to sleep with the fanny pack belted to my waist, so the shells were on hand and jangled as I ran. I had forgotten they would make noise. Not that it mattered.

No moon. Slick gravel and cold rain on my face. Neighbor’s dogs were barking and I wished they would shut up, but they didn’t, and I kept expecting one of them to make that strangled yip sound like Pete-Pete had, out in the woods where I couldn’t ever find his body. I missed him bad, nights like these. So did the cats.

The cowbell was still ringing when I reached the gate, and I heard a loud thud: a hoof striking wood. Chains rattled. I raised the shotgun, ready.

“They’re coming,” whispered a strained voice, murmuring something else in German that I couldn’t understand. “Amanda?”

“Here,” I muttered. “Hurry.”

Hinges creaked, followed by the soft tread of hooves and wheels rolling over gravel. Slow, too slow. I dug in my heels, hearing something else in the darkness: a hacking cough, wet and raw.

“Steven,” I warned.

“We’re through,” he said.

I pulled the trigger, gritting my teeth against the recoil. The muzzle flash generated a brief light—enough to glimpse a hateful set of eyes. And then, almost in the same instant, I heard a muffled scream. I fired again, just for good measure.

Steven slammed into the gate. I ran to help him set the lock—one-handed, shotgun braced against my hip. I heard more coughs—deeper, masculine—and got bathed in the scent of rotten meat and shit. All those unclean mouths, breathing on me from the other side of the fence. A rock whistled past my ear.
I threw one back with all my strength. Steven dragged me away.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered, breathless—and gave the boy a hard look; his body faintly visible, even in the darkness. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Steven let go. I couldn’t see his face, but I heard him stumble back to the horses. I almost stopped him, needing an answer almost as much as I feared one—but I smelled something else in that moment.

Charred meat.

I stood on my toes and reached inside the wagon. Felt a blanket, and beneath, a leg.

When?
I wanted to ask, but my voice wouldn’t work. I clung to the edge of the wagon, needing something to lean on, but that lasted only until Steven began leading the horses up the driveway. I followed, uneasy—trying to ignore the sounds of rocks hitting the fence and those raw hacking coughs that quieted into whines. Sounded like dogs crawling on their stomachs, begging not to be beaten. Made me think of Pete-Pete again. My palms were sweaty around the shotgun.

Steven remained silent until we reached the house. Lamplight flickered through the windows, which were crowded with feline faces pressed against the glass. It felt good to see again. Steven dropped the reins and walked to the back of the wagon. He was a couple inches taller than me, and slender in the shoulders. Just a teen, clean-shaven, wearing a dark wide-brimmed hat. His suspenders were loose and his pants ended well above his ankles. A pair of old tennis shoes clung precariously to his feet.

“They hurt him bad,” said the boy, unlatching the backboard. “Even though he saved their lives.”

“He didn’t fight back?” I asked, though I knew the answer.

Steven gave me a bitter look. “They called him a devil.”

Called him other things, too, I guessed. But that couldn’t be helped. We had all expected this, one way or another. Only so long a man could keep secrets while living under his family’s roof.

I tried to hand my gun to the boy. He stared at the weapon as though it were a live snake, and put his hands behind his back.

“Steven,” I said sharply, but he ducked his head and edged around me toward the back of the wagon. No words, no argument. He did the job I was going to do, taking hold of those blanketed ankles and pulling hard. The body slid out slowly, but the cooked smell of human flesh curdled through my nostrils, and I had to turn away with my hand over my mouth.

I went into the house. Cats scattered under the sagging couch and quilt, while kittens mewed from the box placed in front of the iron-bellied stove. I
left the shotgun on the kitchen table, beside the covered bucket of clean water I had pulled from the hand pump earlier that evening, and grabbed a sheet from the line strung across the living room. I started pulling down panties, too, and anything else embarrassing.

Just in time. Steven trudged inside, breathing hard—dragging that blanket-wrapped body across my floor. He didn’t stop for directions. Just moved toward the couch, one slow inch at a time. A cat peered from beneath the quilt and hissed.

I helped sling the body on the couch. A foot slipped free of the blanket, still wearing a shoe. The leather had melted into the blackened skin. Steven and I stared at that foot. I wanted to cry—it was the proper thing to do—but except for a hard, sick lump in my throat, my eyes burned dry.

“What about you?” I asked Steven quietly. “They know you brought him here?”

“I put the fire out,” he replied, and pulled off his hat with a shaking hand. “Don’t know if I can go home after that.”

I rubbed his shoulder. “Put the horses in the barn, then take my bed. This’ll be awhile.”

“Our dad,” he began, and stopped, swallowing hard. Crumpling the hat in his hands. He could not look at me. Just that blackened foot. I stepped between him and the couch, but he did not move until I placed my palm on his chest, pushing him away. He gave me a wild look, haunted. I noticed, for the first time, that he smelled like smoke.

But I didn’t have to say a word. He turned and walked out the front door, head down, shoulders pinched and hunched. Some of the cats followed him.

I stayed with the body. Sat down at the bottom of the couch, beside that exposed foot. It took me a long time to peel off the shoe. Longer than it had to. I wanted to vomit every time I touched that warm, burned skin. I peeled and pulled, and finally just cut everything away with a pair of old scissors. Steven passed through only once, from the front door to my bedroom. If he looked, I didn’t know. I ignored him.

I unrolled the body from the blanket. Worked on all those clothes—and the other shoe. Stripped off what had been hand-sewn pants made of coarse denim, and a shirt of a softer weave. The beard I knew so well was gone. So was that face, except for blackened skin and exposed bone. His mouth was open, twisted into a scream so visceral his lower jaw had unhinged.

“Stupid,” I whispered to him, rubbing my eyes and running nose. “You had nothing to prove.”

Same as me. Nothing to prove. Nothing at all.

I had brought in a knife with the scissors—sterilized in boiling water and wrapped in a clean rag covered in some faded drawing of a black mouse in red pants. I did not want to touch the blade, but I did. I did not want to hold my arm over that open mouth, but I did that, too. Sucked down a deep breath. Steeled myself. Cut open my wrist.

Nothing big. I wasn’t crazy. But the blood welled up faster than I expected. My vision seemed to fade behind a white cloud, and I almost lay down on that burned body. But I took a couple quick breaths, grit my teeth, and stopped looking at the blood.

Just that mouth. Just that mouth I held my wrist over. Swallowing all those little drops of my life.

It took a while. I didn’t want to make a mistake. This was the worst I had ever seen. So bad I began to wonder if this was the end, the last and final straw. Got harder to breathe after that. My throat burned. Cats pawed my legs and took turns in my lap, butting my chin and kneading my thighs with their prickly little claws. One of them licked a charred finger, but didn’t try to chew, so I let that go.

My wrist throbbed. So did my head, after a time. I kept at it. Until, finally, I noticed a little color around his lips. A hint of pink beneath the blackened skin. I closed my eyes, counting to one hundred. When I looked again, it wasn’t my imagination. Pink skin. Signs of life.

I pressed my wrist against his burned mouth and felt his lips tighten just a hairsbreadth. Good enough for me. I was exhausted. I didn’t move my wrist, but stretched out on the couch beside him, ignoring the smell and crunch of cooked skin. A cat walked up the length of my hip, while another perched on the cushion above me, licking my hair. Purrs thundered, everywhere.

And that mouth closed tighter.

I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

I
WOKE CHOKING
, water trickling down my throat.

But there was also a hand behind my head and something hard on my lips, and both flashed me back to the bad days. I sat up fighting, heart all thunder. My fist slammed into a hard chest.

A naked man squatted in front of me, gripping a cup of water in his hand. Scared me for a moment, terrified me, part of me still asleep—but then I took a breath and my vision cleared, and I saw the man. I saw him.

He was bald, scorched, raw. Not much better than a half-cooked chicken, and certainly uglier. But his eyes were blue and glittering as ice, and I smiled
crooked for that cold gaze.

“Henry.” I wiped water from my mouth, trying not to tremble. “Aren’t you a sight?”

“Amanda,” he replied. But that was it. Only my name. That other hand of his still held the back of my head. I looked down. My wrist had been bandaged. I saw other things, too, and dragged the quilt from the couch to toss over his hips. His mouth twitched—from bitterness or humor, I couldn’t tell—but he leaned in to kiss me.

Just my cheek. Slow and deliberate, lingering with our faces pressed close. I slid my arms around his neck and held tight.

“Don’t make me cry again,” I whispered.

Henry dragged in a deep breath. “How did I get here?”

“Steven.”

He leaned harder against me. “Did anyone see him?”

“We haven’t talked about what happened. But I’d say yes.” I pulled away, speaking into his shoulder: a patchwork of pink and blackened flesh. “He said you saved lives.”

“I gave in.” Henry’s fingers tightened in my hair. “I killed.”

“Monsters.”

“I killed,” he said again, shivering. “I violated God’s rule.”

You did what you had to
, I wanted to tell him, but those were cheap words compared to what he needed; and that was more than I could give him.

Bedsprings creaked from the other room. I glanced toward the window. Still dark out, but it had to be close to dawn. I heard birds, and the goats; and farther away, that dog barking. I tried to stand. Henry grabbed my wrist. “You need to rest. What you did last night—”

“I’m fine,” I lied, blinking heavily to keep my vision straight. “Stay here.”

But he didn’t. He wrapped the quilt around his hips and limped outside with me, followed by several cats, bounding, twining, pouncing in the grass. Little guards. Cool air felt good on my face, and though Henry did not take my hand, our arms brushed as we walked.

I had built the rabbit hutch inside the barn. Horses stirred restlessly when we entered, and so did the goats in their dark pen, but the chickens were quiet. I felt all the animals watching as I undid the latch and reached inside for a sleek brown body. The rabbit trembled. So did Henry, when I handed it to him.

“I wish you wouldn’t watch,” he murmured, but almost in the same breath he bit the rabbit’s throat. It screamed. So did he, but it was a muffled, relieved sound. I looked away. All the other rabbits were huddled together, shaking. I could hear Henry feeding, and it was a wet sucking sound that made my skin
crawl and my wrist throb.

I counted seconds. Counted until they added up to minutes. Then I took another rabbit from the hutch and held it out, head turned. Henry took it from me and walked away. No longer limping. I heard the rabbit scream before he reached the door.

I did chores. Freshened the water for the goats, brushed the horses down with handfuls of hay and the palms of my hands. Thought, again, about building a pen for some pigs and how much I’d have to trade upriver for several in an upcoming litter I’d heard about in town. I wanted to get set before winter. Trees needed cutting, too, for firewood. I had been putting that off.

When I left the barn, I found Henry near the garden, digging a hole just large enough for two dead rabbits. Soil was wet and smelled good, like the tomatoes ripening on the vines. I saw light on the horizon.

“I’ll finish that,” I said. “You need to get inside.”

“I need a walk,” he mumbled. I realized he had been weeping. “I don’t want to see Steven.”

“Too bad.” I crouched, taking his hand. His skin appeared healthier, burn marks, fading. “You may be all he has now. Besides, it’s too close to dawn for a walk. Don’t be stupid.”

“Stupid,” he echoed, and pulled his hand away. “You should have seen how my dad—how
they
—looked at me. How they’ll look at Steven now. My fault, Amanda. I was too weak to leave.”

The rabbits were still warm, but hollow, flattened. Drops of blood coated their throats. I dropped them into the hole Henry had dug and pushed dirt over their bodies.

“Staying was harder than leaving,” I said, but that was all. The house door creaked open, somewhere out of sight, then banged shut. Henry tensed. I backed away. I doubt he noticed. Too busy watching his brother, who strode down the path toward us—just a shadow in the predawn light, shoulders hunched, hands shoved deep in his pockets, hat tilted low over his eyes.

I left them alone. Went back to the house for my shotgun and a coat, and then headed down to the fence. Looking for monsters.

Cats followed me.

T
HE LAND HAD
been in the family a long time. Long enough for stories to be passed down, stories that never changed except for the weather, or the animal, or the person: stories involving my kin, who were neighbors and friends to the Plain People. Or the Amish, as my mother had called them, respectfully.

She was dead now, gone a couple years. She and my father had both survived the Big Death, though cancer and infection finally killed them. Mundane, compared to what had destroyed most everyone else: a plague that struck cities, a virus that killed in hours or days. My brother was lost that way—gone to college in Chicago, which didn’t exist anymore. It was for him that I didn’t like hearing stories about the Big Death, though some refugee survivors seemed to get kicks from the attention they received when telling the tale. Blood in the streets, and riots, and the government quarantining the cities and suburbs with tanks and barricades, and guns. No burials for the millions dead, no burials for the cities.