Alice Henderson - Voracious

She looked at him questioningly.

Sensing her unasked question, he said, “I can give you the eternity of youth. The ability to heal. The freedom to change forms in a single moment.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I’d never want to be like you.”

The corner of his mouth turned up in a smile. “And you never will be like me. We’re far too different. And you’re too determined to do the ‘right’ thing. But I can live with that.”

For a moment she let him take her down this proposed road that lay in a shadowed future not too far from here. Not only would she be a freak for her visions, but she’d be infinitely more so for her ability to sprout fangs and claws. Sounded like a real promising future. And she’d even have a newfound friend complete with cannibalistic tendencies. Cannibalistic if he was ever even human, that is, she thought grimly.

But the ability to change? To be a chameleon? She wondered how powerful the ability was. Would she be able to turn into mist? To fly? Before she’d only thought of the creature’s terrifying capability once her gift was his own. Now she pictured herself with those skills. A shape-shifter, a psychic-there would be no end to what she could do. Her life wouldn’t be filled with the horrors of crimes or hours spent with the police poring over cold cases, hoping for a lead. And it wouldn’t be filled, because it never could be filled. The richness of that life hit her powerfully. She could travel the world over as anyone she wanted to be. She didn’t have to be the “Weird Girl.” Anonymity, true and abiding, could finally be hers.

“You’re intrigued,” he said, sounding encouraged, watching her mind churn over the possibilities.

“Offer someone the fountain of youth, and they’re bound to be intrigued.”

“True, but that’s not the part that fascinates you, is it?”

She met his gaze, trying not to let herself fall back into that dizzying place of potent desire. Her lips burned to kiss him, hands ached to roam over his body. But it was just chemicals. She had to resist. She bit the corner of her lip, and he smiled.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, stepping closer, tongue lashing out to lick the corner of her mouth.

She was about to say “Don’t,” about to place a hand on his chest to keep him at bay. But instead her tongue met his, and she kissed him, his irresistible taste flooding into her.

No. She stopped, lowering her head, letting the luxuriant cloud dissipate around her. Pheromones. Nothing more. It wasn’t magic. Wasn’t love. It wasn’t anything more than chemistry, issuing from a killer, no less. A beast with a thousand forms, none of which she could trust. All of which could tear her apart and eat the soft insides.

He took her hands in his and looked at her with desire, his eyes flashing. “I hunger for you,” he said. “But not in the way you think. Not like I did up on the mountain, before I… experienced you.”

Madeline’s mind crashed back to that terrifying day, running down the mountain, frozen and soaked with river water, teeth chattering. She thought of the night she spent crammed into the rock crevice. Could this really be the same creature who hunted her that night? That black creature made entirely of shadows, with red saucer eyes that gleamed in the dark? He’d seemed so alien that night, so outside of anything she’d experienced. Yet now she’d felt inside him. She thought of her race to the ranger’s station, and of what she found there in the bathroom, slung over the rafters: the creature up there with the corpse, cracking bones between its teeth. What had it gained from eating that person? Intimate knowledge of the backcountry. Especially of that particular area. An efficient predator indeed.

“You’re a killer,” she repeated.

“Yes.”

She thought again of Noah, of how long he had tracked the creature. Of his despair and hopelessness when he’d lost the weapon he’d carried for so many years.

“And your greatest hunter now has no way to kill you.”

“I was growing tired of being hunted.”

She remembered him saying the same thing the night in the cabin when he’d pretended to be Noah. She’d forgotten that till now, assuming at the time that he’d been her rescuer from the mountain.

“It’s hard to sleep,” he said, “knowing someone’s out there with the ability to kill you, and they’re drawing ever nearer, tracking your every move.”

She almost laughed at the hypocrisy. “Don’t you understand, then, how your victims must feel?”

“Yes, I do. And I think it makes me all that more of an efficient hunter. It lets me know how people are likely to react, lets me remember fear.” His hand came up under her chin, lifting her gaze to his own. “But all that commiseration is over now. Noah no longer has the weapon.”

“And that means you’re unstoppable?” she asked, scrutinizing him.

He didn’t answer, just continued to look at her.

“Are you?” she asked again, fear tugging at her. She glanced up and down the path, wondering how she was going to get out of this. No one had come by in awhile.

“Would you take up his sword?” he asked her.

“Will you continue to kill?”

His unspoken answer filled his eyes, red flashes of hunger, the gleam of victims yet to be explored and devoured.

And in her heart burned her own answer: Yes. A great floodwater broke within her. Years of reluctance to use her gift washed away before a newfound determination.

He sensed it, and she knew he did. He’d offered her something amazing and terrible, and she stood before him, not only refusing, but fighting him.

He pulled away, dark hair fluttering in the breeze. “You would destroy me when I offer you so much?”

“Would you destroy me if I turned you down?”

He crossed his arms, a puzzled expression on his face. After a long, strained moment of silence, he said, “Well, I can’t have you trying to stop me.”

Her mouth went dry, feet sinking into the ground, suddenly heavy as boulders. She was stupid. Stupid. Should have played along. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe if she said the right thing, she could think of an advantage.

“I wouldn’t go following you, Stefan. I just want to go home, regain some semblance of the normal life I had before all this.”

“And your talent?”

She raised an eyebrow. “What of it?”

“Are you going to waste it?”

She didn’t answer, though she knew now she’d use it.

“Because I certainly wouldn’t.” He uncrossed his arms, slouched forward slightly. “Waste it, that is.”

So there it was. If she didn’t use her gift, then he’d kill her for it. But she couldn’t very well tell him she’d use it for good… could she? “I won’t waste it. I’ve seen what I can do with it, what I want to do with it.”

He laughed, taking her off guard. It was no laugh of malice, but of genuine amusement. “We could be a pair! Can you imagine? Me taking lives, you saving them. Century after century. The wonders I’ve seen just since I’ve known your friend Noah. The waltzes of Strauss. Swing music. Two world wars. Photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope. Think of what lies ahead.”

She did think of it. But the road was darker than the one he painted, filled with the wraiths of his future victims. Perhaps he could overlook her saving lives as a whimsical facet of her personality, but she could never overlook his murdering innocent people. And what of guilty people? she suddenly thought. Do they not count? You’re not very broken up about the guys who tried to attack you. But murder in the defense of someone else in no way made up for all, or even a majority, of the creature’s kills. She knew that.