Chapter Thirty-Four

Diana paced in front of their living room drapes in a slow, languid daze. Deep scratches tattooed her arms and hands in red stripes and dotted them with tiny red quarter-moons. “Flight of the Valkyries” pounded from her sound system, and she licked a slash in her wrist that faded with every pass of her tongue. She wore an ankle-length white caftan of Egyptian cotton that Daniel gave her for their birthday in San Francisco. Her attention was on a toy, a glass bird with overlong wings balanced atop a glass post on their coffee table. The bird turned and dipped in response to the wind currents Diana stirred up as she moved. Their mother got it from a carnival glass-blower passing through New Mexico in a swap for one of her psychic readings. The graceful, hypnotic bird was one of only two relics from their mother that Diana hadn’t burned or broken. The other was her mother’s ivory-handled penknife for milking her cattle.

Daniel followed her movements while he answered the phone, then he stiffened and slammed the device onto the counter. His hand trembled. He brushed back his hair in anger and frustration.

When the phone hit the table, Diana stopped pacing, blinked twice and cooed, “Something wrong, dear brother? I smell something wrong.”

Daniel hurried into the living room and planted himself in front of her nose-to-nose.

“The woman at the hair salon. Jean’s friend. Asking if their friend Alice is here working on your project.”

Diana met his gaze and held it. “And?”

“And I want to know what happened out there last night. Obviously, you’ve fed yourself. Will the law come knocking again? Who was it?”

She engaged her cooing voice again. “Maybe it was just a deer. Bambi.”

“Don’t play with me, Diana!” A fleck of spit hit her cheek. “You hate animals!”

Diana snapped out of her lethargy, wiped her cheek with her sleeve and bumped her forehead into his without breaking her wide-eyed gaze.

“And you hate us!” she growled. “You hate what our parents made us. You love your pitiful humans. You eat like them, think like them, mingle with them. Get it through your head, Brother. Your studies, your experiments will never make you human! You can get away with fucking them, but you can never live with them because they can’t know!”

She emphasized with three jabs to his chest with a finger, then backed away. She closed her eyes, draped her arms over his shoulders and leaned her cheek against his chest. He stood still and said nothing.

“Our mother was human at one time,” she said. “But you and I were born this way. How can you miss something you never had?”

Daniel sighed and put an arm around her shoulder. “Their lives are so much simpler.”

She snorted a laugh. “Simple, yes. They work work work until they die die die. Fascinating. Boring. Forget them! Forget this sailboat woman. You and I—”

Daniel pushed her to arm’s length and held her shoulders. “I like Jean,” he said. “Have you ever liked anyone? Even once?”

She smiled. “I like you.”

“I don’t think so,” he said, and shook his head. “You need me for planning, proxies, IDs and cleanup.”

“But I don’t need that,” she said. “I’m happy to live wild. You think you have to protect me, and that’s touching, but it’s your need, not mine.”

“If you’re going to kill Jean’s friends, then we have serious trouble between us. What happened to the landscape woman?”

Diana pulled away, looking tired, her scratches just pink smears on her white skin. Her composure went cold and her expression, hard.

Trouble between us?” She hissed the “us.” “Will a stake come between us in my sleep someday?”

Daniel didn’t falter. “I can smell her on your breath. Is she going to be trouble?”

She turned in a huff. “There was a time you would have licked her off my teeth.” She walked to the stairs and waved a hand in the direction of the clearing.

“She’s in the clearing. See for yourself, I’ve cleaned up after myself. Isn’t that what you wanted?” She stopped partway up the stairs and, without turning around, said, “Okay. There’s a bicycle and a backpack. Your business. I have painting to do.” She cranked her Wagner full volume.

Daniel hurried to his workshop locker and pulled on his bulky sweatshirt and jacket, his long rubber gloves, white ski mask and scarf. At the door he snapped on his hat with the ear flaps and his sunglasses. He rushed into glare too quickly for his eyes to adjust, even with the glasses. Momentarily disoriented, he nearly panicked before he could make out the gravel path between the tall cedars. His breathing became desperate as he beat through thick salal to the clearing.

He stood, stunned, catching his breath, and sized up signs of the considerable struggle. He found the gore-covered loops of white rope tied to trees across the way. He tracked a trail of clotted blood and tissue, and as he neared a clump of bushes, he heard high-pitched, fast, tortured wheezing. He shoved the brush aside and found a cowering, badly burned lump of animal.

“Alice?” It came out in a dry croak.

The lump that was Alice made one last effort to burrow under the brush, then stiffened and stopped breathing. He knelt and saw that she’d melted more than burned. The overcast and the brush slowed everything down, and it still had a way to go. He felt a wash of sadness and despair that he hadn’t felt since their mother died, in agony and alone on the side of that New Mexico roadway.

With a great effort of will, Daniel dragged what was left of Alice back into a safe spot in the clearing. More sun today, he thought. She’ll go fast. He gathered the loops of rope, scattered clothing and a backpack. After a long last look at the blackened, bubbling remains, he shuddered and turned away. Hives had started on his face and arms, so he had to hurry. He shook his head and whispered, “You didn’t have to do that. You didn’t have to do that!”

Daniel gathered the evidence in his arms and rushed down the path, searching for Alice’s bicycle.