Voracious - Alice Henderson [107]
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.