Voracious (16 page)
Authors: ALICE HENDERSON
“Help me catch him. With your gift and my knowledge, we could stop him. I can feel it.”
She shook her head, her gut wrenching at the thought. “No. I’m just a college student. I’m no vigilante.”
“But how can you ignore your gift like that? Especially after you already caught one killer?”
“My
gift
?” she spat. “It’s no goddamn gift. It’s not some knitted handbag my grandmother gave me. It’s made my life hell. You think I wanted to see those terrible things the Sickle Moon Killer did to those men?” She threw her toothbrush and the little tube of toothpaste into Noah’s backpack and stalked away. If that thing weren’t out there, she would have stormed out of the cabin right then.
Fear. Plain old mind-numbing fear swept over her.
“Madeline,” he said. “I know you’re hurting. I know it’s been hard. I’m just saying that this is your chance to turn that ability around, make it work
for
you.”
She exhaled sharply, turning to look at him. “This is exactly what I
don’t
want. What I came out here to avoid. Don’t ask me to do this. That thing almost killed me! You can’t expect me to go up against it!”
He shook his head. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I asked too soon.”
“Too soon?” she raised her voice again. “No, please don’t ask me again. I’m sorry, Noah, but I just can’t. I came out here to try to scrape together a semblance of a normal life. Now my life is in danger and frankly … I’m terrified.”
He stared at her, then his eyes narrowed, and he went into the bedroom, leaving Madeline outside with her ghosts of Ellie and the Sickle Moon Killer. Before he shut the door, he said quietly, “I can see you’re terrified. But if you could just think about it—I can take you to his latest hideout, a cabin near here. You could touch his belongings.”
Madeline felt so opposed to the idea that she was shaking her head before he even finished.
“Please,” he said. “Think about it.”
Then he shut the door between them.
With Noah breathing softly in the bedroom, Madeline lay in the main room, unable to sleep. Why had she insisted on taking the foldout bed? Her face still felt flushed in anger at his request. She’d never escape this cursed ability. For a while she’d felt almost like a normal person with Noah. Now her “gift” loomed between them, just like every other relationship she’d tried to have.
Her mind wouldn’t rest, kept sweeping over the story he’d told her.
Noah was over two hundred years old.
She thought of the old journal she’d found in his backpack. At the time, she’d never dreamed it was his journal, just some keepsake he’d picked up on his journeys. The temptation to peek inside now was overwhelming. She glanced over at his backpack, which still sat on one of the chairs. But she couldn’t invade his privacy like that.
Throwing a worn, yellow blanket aside, a blanket she suspected had been living unwashed on that couch for nigh on thirty years and had probably developed its own rudimentary sense of logic and arithmetic, she crept to Noah’s bedroom.
“Noah?” she whispered when she got there.
He stirred.
“Noah?”
“Yes?”
“Sorry to wake you.”
“No problem.”
“It’s just I …” She faltered.
From the light filtering in from the main room, she could just make out his shadowed form on the bed. The sheets draped over his body, and he propped himself up on one elbow.
“Your journal … is it a record of hunting the creature?”
He nodded. “A spotty record. I’m not very good at journaling. When I first began, I wrote almost every day. Now I write once a decade if I’m lucky. Two hundred years, and I never had to buy a second book.” He smiled.
She felt uncomfortable, nosy. “I know this is a terrible thing to ask, but I was curious to look at it. Just to get a better idea of what we’re dealing with.”
“Hmmm … well … I guess that would be all right. Just don’t pay much attention to the whole ‘girl in every city’ theme. And that barmaid in France? It was just a fling.”
Madeline began to doubt if she wanted to read the thing after all.
“And the herd of goats in Greece was really more of a roll in the hay. Heh.”
She rolled her eyes.
“I’m kidding. There was no barmaid. No girl in every city. I may look as dashing as Captain Kirk, but I don’t have a gorgeous alien lover on every planet. Not even on this planet.” He stared at her from the shadows, a thin slice of light falling across half of his face. “But suddenly I’m not opposed to the thought of being with someone again …”
Their eyes locked, and she smiled.
“The journal is in my backpack. Have at it.”
She could think of two things at that moment she’d like to have at but opted for the journal. It was a little less daunting and would give a clearer idea of the other thing if she read it.
He winked devilishly at her, and she turned away with difficulty, intent on at least making it to the backpack. When she reached inside and her fingers closed around the diary, though, a great sadness swept over her, the same as on the mountain.
She returned to the sofa, climbed under the nearly sentient yellow blanket, and began to read.
July 14, 1763
Mountains above Vienna
I feel that I should keep a record of my tribulations so that, if I am found dead, and someone else takes up the cause, they will at least know something of the creature which I pursue relentlessly, and will be better armed with information in order to stop it.
I find it too painful to relate the details of how I came to be on this desolate mountain trail, weary from exertion, following a killer. Perhaps later I will be able to write about it. But suffice it to say that Stefan, this thing, this terror, killed my beloved, and I will stop at nothing until he is destroyed.
For days I have been tracking the vile beast. I spotted the fiend in an alleyway in Vienna and have been following him ever since. Now I trail far behind, however, the high elevation of this mountain pass robbing me of my stamina. My head pounds, chest heaves. I am not used to moving so quickly, carrying so much weight, or steadily climbing upward across slippery, gray talus slopes and melting snowfields.
The crumbling slope to the right of my path is nearly vertical, leading down to a steep valley far below. On the other side of the narrow, tree-filled ravine lie more peaks, the snowy Alps stretching to the horizon.
I struggle on, stomach rumbling with hunger. Repeatedly I attempt unsuccessfully to rearrange the uncomfortably heavy assortment of objects on my back: a clunky pot, a heavy bag of rice and coffee beans, an unwieldy canvas tent and its splintery wooden stakes. It is really just a lean-to at this point. I had to abandon the wood for its frame when I lost a handcart wheel over the edge of a precipitous section of trail yesterday. Realizing I would have to leave the handcart behind, I piled what I could into the tent, transforming it into a makeshift pack for my back and continued on, trying to follow the creature’s footprints in the mud and melting snow.
Today as I stumbled across the crumbling stones of a rock field, the sharp whistles of some nearby rodents caused my head to snap violently in that direction. I know they are just rodents, watching me from their hiding holes in the rocks, but my nerves are frayed. Any sharp noise has me starting anxiously.
I am not used to such hardship. An English aristocrat raised in the heart of London, whose parents moved me to Vienna at the age of 22, the most arduous task I have ever undertaken before this was stumbling home dead drunk from Herr Grusschen’s pub, the Heart and Feather, on Bär Strasse. One night two rogues tried to rob me as I tripped and swayed over the cobblestones on a darkened street. I brandished my sword, nicked one of the seedy, bearded perpetrators, though more through drunken clumsiness than skill, and managed to drive them off by spewing a stream of slurred obscenities at them and threatening to call for the authorities.
At the time I bragged about the encounter, embellishing the story without mercy, telling my friends about the murderous fiends I had driven off that foggy night.
That life feels a thousand miles away now. I was so carefree, so naive. What did I know then of “murderous fiends”? Nothing. My entire lesson on murder has been taught by the creature, on that dreaded night two months ago when he tore out my love’s throat and nearly ended my own life on the cold, tiled floor of her manor house, as unknowing friends slumbered peacefully a floor above.
The rodents whistle again. I think I am growing accustomed to it. I know nothing of alpine fauna, though it would be nice to catch a juicy, fat rodent and cook it up. I am so tired of rice. My life was once the symphony, the opera, the taverns. I have never hiked this high before. Certainly never carried my own baggage. My feet ache and are covered with blisters, my hands callused and covered with deep, bleeding cracks from the dry air.
July 17, 1763
Mountains above Vienna
Earlier today a rock shifted beneath my feet. Off balance, I leaned forward to compensate, but instead swung forward heavily under the weight of my pack and pitched toward the ground violently. With a painful crunch, I landed face-first in the field of stone, edges of sharp rock cutting gashes in my freezing hands.
I did not rise immediately. I lay there, face pressed against the cold, sharp points, and tried to catch my breath. I am growing so weary, getting clumsy in my fatigue. I have to stop to rest.
It is too dangerous up here to take any chances with exhaustion. I must find a sheltered spot up next to a granite outcrop and set up my pathetic lean-to for the night, even though it is only early afternoon.
I have not been able to sleep. Oh, what I would give for some beefsteak and a stein of ale. Instead I have only salted meats, which I am dreadful sick of, and the never-ending rice.
I must stop now and make a fire, melt some snow, boil the rice … My stomach growls now at the thought of it.
July 20, 1763
Mountains above Vienna
Night comes close behind, blanketing the eastern mountains in darkness, while above the clouds burn bright gold, and then intense pink. On the highest peaks, alpenglow shines, painting the mountains an intense shade of magenta and scarlet.
Too exhausted to go on, I have been watching the brilliant play of light. How beautiful it is up here. How I would love to have watched this sunset with Anna.
But I will never have the chance to. That sudden sickening realization presses in on me. My whole life will be filled with moments like this, beautiful moments made hollow by the lack of her presence. There will be a countless stream of things I will never do with her: picnics in the country, carriage rides in the heart of Vienna, making love beneath a canopied wedding bed.
The brilliant red fades to gray on the peaks. A few minutes ago, I clenched my teeth so hard I bit myself severely. Then unable to control myself I screamed, blood spilling from my mouth and flecking the stone beneath me.
I have not seen signs of Stefan in days. I fear I may have lost his tracks for good. How ever will I find him now?
At least I still have plenty of rice, though I am so sick of it I sometimes feel like pitching it over the mountainside and dancing about like a madman.
I have been feeling stranger and stranger as of late. Whereas first I was full of many aches and pains and cuts, I now find I do not have a scratch on me and though tired, I no longer ache. Perhaps I am just growing fitter, or more careful not to cut myself on the sharp rock, but it feels more than that. I feel braver, stronger, more fearless. And ever more mad than the day before. I fear for my sanity.
July 22, 1763
Mountains above Vienna
An amazing thing happened today. I had all but given up hope of catching up to the creature. I was ready to head back to civilization, eat a real meal in a tavern, when I came upon a narrow crevice in the cliff face along which I was traversing.
A putrid smell issued forth from the shadowed recess, and I peered inside. I gasped. Lying there in a stripe of sunlight was Stefan, or what I thought at first was Stefan.
On its back, pure black as it had been the night it attacked Anna and me, sprawled a dead thing with tremendous claws and hideously pointed teeth. The clothes of an aristocrat adorned the body. I bent low, sure it was my quarry.
The killing blow had come from a ten-inch gleaming stake protruding from the creature’s belly, pinning it to the ground below.
I touched the weapon, a smooth metal spike that felt cool to the touch.
I shall never forget the visage of that dreadful creature there in the crevice. Its eyes (what were left of them, as one had been partially eaten by some animal) were opened wide as if in terror, and the mouth lay open and twisted as if in a scream.
For a long time I stood in the entrance of the crevice, staring down at what I was sure was the murderer of my Anna, feeling at once relieved he was dead and also intensely curious as to what had killed him.
Was this metal spike made of the very same metal Anna swore was able to injure the creature? If so, who had carried such a weapon?
I leaned in closer for a look and was suddenly seized by curiosity to go through the creature’s belongings. I unbuttoned its waistcoat and searched the pockets of its breeches. I came away with several letters and a small pocket-sized journal much like this one.
