Voracious - Alice Henderson [51]
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