The next day, Val felt him awaken.
She sat in the corner of the red room with her knees drawn to her chest, her stomach tight and empty, her eyes swollen and red. His hunger came on suddenly, as if her veins formed the curve of a fragile egg, and suddenly the shell was splintering. Two minutes later, the door to the red room opened, revealing her mother—hair curled, high-necked blouse shielding her burned décolletage.
Val’s gaze fell at once to the spot where her scorching hand had fallen.
Her own chest tightened, remembering.
Was it a thing to fear, that power?
Or a thing to find again?
And, churned her tired thoughts, is it a power I share with others?
With Zoey?
With Marion?
“Clean yourself up,” Val’s mother instructed, watching Val stagger to her feet. “Don’t keep him waiting.”
Silently Val obeyed, her eyes lowered to the ground but her heart wide-awake and pounding. Her mother flinched away from Val when she passed.
Val said nothing, but as she climbed the stairs to the library, she touched the finger-shaped bruises on her throat. She recovered the memory of her mother’s fists and allowed them to strike her again, and again, and again. She walked up the stairs to her bedroom: One step, punch. Two step, punch.
With each remembered strike, Val’s tired head cleared.
With each phantom burst of pain, the dying fire in Val’s heart grew and sparked.
In her room, Val took the time to shower.
If she showed up in the stones smelling of vomit, he’d make her pay before she could even begin to try anything. She examined her reflection in the mirror as she combed the knots from her wet hair, and then, as she bent over with the hair dryer blasting, hoping the noise would confuse his senses, she dared to think, Are you there?
She didn’t know what she expected to answer her.
But something had happened in the library, and if she could make it happen again, maybe soon her mother wouldn’t be the only creature to bear Val’s bloody brand.
Keep a morsel for yourself, her grandmother had instructed.
Don’t lose yourself to him.
Not all of you.
Val stood in silence, her hair falling frizzy and golden down her back. She glared at her reflection and tried to remember: What had she been feeling, in the library, right before she had hurt her mother?
She closed her eyes, fists clenched, and after a moment of reconstructing the scene in her mind, the feeling returned to her:
Pity, for her own tired self.
Anger, at the life she had been forced to live.
And a desperation to change it, even if the thought terrified her.
Heat gathered beneath Val’s feet, then traveled up her shins, her quads, her abdomen, her sternum.
Something stung her palms, and when she dared to look down, uncurling her fingers, she saw, in the center of her hands, two white knots of light, crackling like tiny twin galaxies.
They blinked once, twice, and disappeared—but their heat lingered, warming her.
Trailing her fingers along one of the black Mortimer pasture fences and humming Sylvia Mortimer’s lullaby, she found Quinn Tillinghouse walking home from John Lin’s house.
Who is the fellow with the bright clean grin?
Do you want, fairy girl, to weave a spell for him?
Val felt him behind her in the woods, following her. She kept her fists closed, tried to measure her breathing so he wouldn’t see anything was amiss.
Could he sense it, though?
Could he read the map of her blood and sniff out the scent of her treachery?
Quinn had her phone out, and her keys. She held the long ignition key between two fingers, notches out, like a knife—just in case a child snatcher happened by, Val supposed.
Tears sprang to her eyes, despite how hard she was working to stay calm. Quinn was an unbelievable moron. Sneaking out to grab a quick shag with John while everything on the island was in such a state?
Val wanted to scream at her: Ever heard of masturbating, Quinn?
Even more than that, she wanted to scream: Run! Now!
She hurried over, looped her arm through Quinn’s before she could even try to run. And why would she? They were friends, had been for years.
“Quinn!” Val smiled brightly. “Hey, girl.”
“Oh!” Quinn jumped, laughed a little. “Val, Jesus. You scared the crap out of me.”
“You really shouldn’t be out by yourself, you know.”
Quinn rolled her eyes. “John said he was too tired to drive me home.”
“Ugh, he’s such an ass.” Val leaned playfully close but kept her voice low. She glanced down at her own hands—nothing. She swallowed against a swell of panic. “Quinn, listen to me. No matter what I say, you need to not react and stay calm, all right?”
“What?” Quinn’s arm tensed around Val’s. “What do you mean?”
“When I tell you to run, I need you to run home, straight down this road, as fast as you can.”
“What are you talking about?” Quinn’s voice turned shrill. She looked back over her shoulder, eyes wide. “Is someone—”
“God, Quinn, you’re so paranoid!” Val said loudly, cringing at the manufactured quality of her voice. Then, quieter: “If you don’t want to die tonight, then run when I tell you to. Stay out of the woods, stick to the road.”
From behind them sounded the snap of a twig, the thud of something falling to the ground. Val nearly recoiled. The sound of him existing in the world was so solid now. Once, he had been a shadow only she could see.
Quinn whirled, squirming in Val’s grip. “Who’s there?” she cried. “Stay away from us! Oh, God.” Quinn fumbled for her phone, let out a frantic sob. She started to run while dialing, tripped over a crack in the ground, stumbled.
Val knocked the phone out of Quinn’s hands, shoved her down the dark road toward town. “Go! Now!”
Quinn ran, screaming for help.
Val turned to search the darkness. She tried to remember the library and recover that hot, invincible feeling, but Quinn was screaming, and Val’s palms remained dark and useless, and then it was too late.
A hand smacked into Val’s belly. It gripped her dress and threw her to the ground. Her jaw knocked the hard earth. She bit her tongue and tasted blood.
“You faithless bitch,” growled a wheezing, alien voice—he must have been too hungry, too exhilarated, to assume a proper human form.
Val tried to push herself up, but her vision spun, and she collapsed. She raised her head in time to see a flickering darkness, bat-shaped and human-size, lunge through the air and tackle Quinn. It latched on to her face, smothering her cry of horror.
Silence. The woods and their creatures had gone still.
Then Val heard the sound of Quinn’s body being dragged nearby. He yanked Val to her feet, pushed her forward into the trees. He moved with ease, like ink sliding through water. His grip on Val’s wrist was sickeningly solid, his footfalls hitting the velvet forest floor like boulders flung from catapults.
“You’re looking well tonight,” she forced herself to say, grasping desperately for a handle on the situation. “I’ve never seen you so strong—”
“Remember that,” he rasped, tongues flicking wetly at her ear, “the next time you consider disobeying me.”
Val shook her head, tears blinding her. “I wasn’t—”
He squeezed her wrist so hard the pain snatched her breath away. His form towered over her; the air, the ground, Val’s entire existence bent toward him, sucked in by the singularity of his anger. “Walk faster.”
Val fought to stay upright as she led the way home. Her use to him as navigator was the only thing keeping her alive—and she knew that this might be the last time he had need of her for such a thing.
She stole one last look at her unlit palms, and hope crumbled like ash under her feet.
There was a nicely shaped gray stone, just inside the perimeter of white ones. It was low and flat, and it was, her mother had once joked, Val’s throne.
“Mine was bigger,” Lucy Mortimer had remarked, upon seeing it for the first time. She’d cupped Val’s cheek, her eyes flat and cold. “But I’m sure that doesn’t mean anything.”
That was where Val sat, as he pinned Quinn to the ground in the center of the stones and got to work. He ripped and he clawed, he carved and disemboweled, he slurped and he drank, he flayed and he peeled. By the end of it the stones were red, the ground was red, and Val was reddest of all.
Splashed from head to toe with it, Val sat with charm-school posture, and thought distantly of Jackson Pollock paintings. (Perhaps she would ask her mother to acquire one for her bedroom.)
She wondered if school would start up again in the fall like normal, considering all the tragedies of the summer. (Maybe they’d shut the hellhole down for good.)
She wondered what she would do until the next and last kill, to pass the time. For of course the last kill would happen, probably in a matter of hours, judging by the look of him—already peeling his glutted self off the ground, already looking human again. A new form, one she’d never seen: Like Dr. Wayland, but more overtly masculine, more muscled, his clothes barely containing his sculpted body, his smile toothy and his posture military and his pale hair cropped close to his head. He was the mirror-universe version of Dr. Wayland, one who could kick the last breaths out of anyone he didn’t like and would laugh while doing it. His bright white gaze flitted about the clearing, and his fingers twitched at his sides, like he was already scouting the woods for the next meal. Soon he would break free of all need for the Mortimers, and run off into the wild to hunt as he so desired, all because Val had failed to stop him and would doubtless fail again if she tried it.
She stared numbly at the carnage before her, tears filling her eyes.
Marion, I’m sorry.
She closed her eyes, desperate for the memory: Marion’s face, smiling up at her, her dark hair tangled and love-mussed.
Marion’s sleepy murmurings, drifting up from where she lay tucked beneath Val’s chin.
Marion, laughing. Marion, gasping. Tasting Marion, holding Marion, making Marion smile and cry out and gasp for breath—
“Who’s Marion?”
Val’s stomach shrank into a cold metal knot and plunged beneath the sea of her flaming blood.
The little boy stood before her. It was a relief to see that familiar form, instead of the monstrous, unstoppable Dr. Wayland. Blood stained the boy’s mouth and hands and angelic curls. His wide blue eyes looked up at her with a carefully fabricated ingenuousness.
“Tell me?” He sidled closer, placed two pudgy red hands on her leg. Even through her jeans, she felt the wet heat of his grip.
Val, fighting for calm and finding none, attempted subterfuge. Usually, his mind was fuzzy after a meal. Maybe, if she spoke carefully enough, she could dislodge his memory of Marion, alter it. “I— No one. I was just daydreaming—”
“You’re lying.” The boy’s voice was cold. His eyes flicked away, then returned. In his gaze turned a calculation. “The other girl. The second sister.” A slow smile spread across his face. “Oh, yes. I remember her now. Marion. Yes. I’ve been her before. I’ve played with her mother. Come. Let’s get cleaned up and go pay them a visit. It’s been too long.”
Val couldn’t move. Her panic was too complete.
Bringing him to Marion would be bad, but perhaps salvageable.
Refusing him would be disastrous.
Val took his hand and unsteadily led him out of the stones. Behind them, the remains of Quinn’s body lay scattered. The air vibrated against Val’s skin—the veil he used to keep the stones hidden from outsiders.
Val opened and closed her fists, thinking quickly.
“Marion’s nothing much, you know.” She kept her voice casual. “Kind of plump. Plain, really.” She dared to fiddle with his hair, rearrange a matted red lock. “She’s not your type, as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now.”
He smacked her hand away and twisted her arm so hard that blades of pain shot up to her shoulder.
“Wait,” she gasped, but it was pointless to plead with him. He didn’t stop until she was silent and on her knees before him.
“Oh, Valerie,” said the boy, tipping up her chin so she had to look at his baby-faced grin. “It’s too late for that. Any girl who could inspire you to betray me is special indeed.”