Ms. Wickman gave Giselle a straight razor.
Giselle used it on her brother.
Over a long period of time.
Then finished him.
“Oh my God,” Eddie breathed as he read this. “Oh, sweet jumpin’ Jesus…”
I MURDERED MY BROTHER, the tale’s concluding paragraph began. THE MASTER ALTERED ELEMENTS OF MY BODY CHEMISTRY AND ARRESTED THE AGING PROCESS, ALLOWING ME TO SERVE HIM HERE AS HIS APPRENTICE INDEFINITELY I HAVE SERVED HIM WELL. WELL ENOUGH TO FOOL HIM. I HAVE WAITED THREE DECADES TO ATONE FOR MY SINS, AND THE TIME FOR ATONEMENT IS NEARLY AT HAND.
Eddie stared at the disturbing words a moment later, horrified by the cruelty they described, then he wrenched his gaze away. He didn’t want to look at Giselle, didn’t want to have to look into those dark eyes. He could feel them on him, studying him, taking the measure of him. He cast his gaze about the room, looking for something, anything, to divert his attention-and he realized the cat was missing.
He still wasn’t looking at her when he said, “What happened to furball?”
Giselle turned the pad to a fresh page and wrote, GONE.
Eddie frowned. “Gone?”
She elaborated: THE CAT IS A SHAPESHIFTER, ALBEIT A MORE HIGHLY EVOLVED EXAMPLE OF THAT SPECIES. IT FUNCTIONS AS MY PERSONAL MESSENGER AND SPY
A shapeshifter.
Well, sure.
Eddie had only seen the Lon Chaney wannabes Below, but he remembered his struggle with the creature in the closet and knew she was telling the truth.
Eddie was finally able to meet her gaze again. “What happened … have you always been mute?”
She scrawled a single angry word in big block letters: NO.
Eddie winced. “The Master? He …”
She wrote, I WAS A SHRILL TEENAGER. HE TOOK MY VOICE, A REMINDER THAT MY STATUS AS APPRENTICE DIDN’T MEAN HE WOULDN’T PUNISH ME HE REVELS IN SUCH PETTY CRUELTIES.
Eddie shook his head, “That’s fucked up, Giselle.”
IT WAS A VALUABLE LESSON, she wrote. I LEARNED PATIENCE. I LEARNED TO THINK. I TURNED INWARD AND GREW STRONG IN MY MIND. I HAVE MANY THINGS TO TELL YOU, BUT FIRST YOU MUST LEARN A LESSON OF YOUR OWN.
Eddie tensed. “Whoa, wait-“
She was still writing: YOU MUST KNOW YOUR PLACE. I ALLOWED YOU THE ADVANTAGE LAST TIME, BUT YOU CANNOT OVERPOWER ME.
Eddie started to push the chair away from her.
“Giselle-“
She seized him about the wrist, gripping him hard with one slender hand. Eddie attempted to yank free, but she held him fast-and with little apparent effort. She steadily increased the pressure until he could feel bones grinding. Tears welled in the corners of his eyes. Maintaining her grip on him, she stood up and pulled him away from the table. He stumbled along beside her as she led him to the bed. She spun him about at the foot of the bed, spread both her palms open over his chest, and pushed with all her considerable strength.
Eddie flew backward, then momentarily experienced a kind of drowning sensation as he sank into the plush comforter. The girl climbed onto the bed and stood over him. She prodded him with the tip of a high-heeled shoe, urging him toward the headboard. Eddie scooted backward, too intimidated now to do anything but her bidding. The display of strength had frightened him, all that power in that small body.
His gaze was riveted to her face-her beautiful, cruel face.
Then he felt the folds of her long dress brushing his bare torso as she planted a foot on either side of him. She neared the headboard and velvet darkness engulfed him.
A moment later he couldn’t breathe.
Dream went to Karen’s side, knelt beside her, and draped an arm over her heaving shoulders. Karen turned into her friend’s embrace, clutched at the thin fabric of her top, and began to sob even harder. Dream cradled Karen’s head against her chest, felt the wetness of tears against her breasts, and felt moisture appear in her own eyes. She stroked Karen’s hair and made painfully useless cooing noises.
Alicia’s face was a mask of intent concentration as she held Shane’s limp right wrist. She dropped the wrist and leaned over Shane’s face. Dream wasn’t sure what Alicia was looking for, but something in her friend’s expression told her she wasn’t finding it. Alicia pressed two fingers against the man’s throat, waited a few moments, frowned, and sighed. She made eye contact with Dream, who asked the pertinent question with a lifted eyebrow.
Is he…
Alicia answered with a tired nod.
Yes.
And now a tear did slide down Dream’s face.
All my fault, she thought.
She’d taken the stupid detour because she was a fucking flake. Memories of the escalating tensions in the car in the moments preceding the detour were temporarily banished from her conscious mind. All she knew was that a human being was dead due to her foolishness. She was such a worthless shit. If only… if only …
If only I’d gotten it right that time, came the inevitable conclusion.
The thought made the scarred area around her left wrist tingle. She experienced again the sense-memory of the blade penetrating her flesh. There had been pain, yes, intense pain, but there had also been relief. Tremendous relief. There’d been a sense of falling, of plummeting from a great height, and then the sweet release of unconsciousness.
If only …
Dream’s tears flowed unimpeded now.
She made a shushing noise, slipped an arm around Karen’s neck, and again eased her into a sitting position. She cupped a hand under Karen’s chin, held her head steady, and said, “Honey, I’m gonna need you to get up now, okay?”
Karen’s shoulders sagged. “Shane …”
“I know, sweetie, I know…” She glanced at the man’s ravaged body, winced at the tickle of nausea at the back of her throat, and brought her gaze back to Karen. “He’s just resting.”
“That’s right,” Alicia said, taking the verbal baton from Dream. “He’s resting. We’ll get him some help real soon, but first we have to get you out of here.” A forced smile turned up the corners of her mouth. “Okay, sweetie?”
Karen swallowed a lump in her throat, sighed, and looked at each of them in turn. Dream and Alicia each felt a flash of shame at the look of desperate pleading in her eyes. “Don’t coddle me.” She sniffled. “I know he’s dead.”
She tried to get to her feet. “Whoa …”
Dream and Alicia caught her as she wobbled, held her until she was steady, and began to walk her back to the car. As they stepped through the line of trees, Dream heard something behind her. Something stealthy. She risked a backward glance, saw a flicker of shadow at the periphery of her vision, gasped, and stumbled over a rock. The other women gave out a shout as she pitched forward and tumbled down the incline.
Her uncontrolled descent came to a painful and abrupt stop in the ditch. Her body was gouged and scratched, and she ached all over. She tried to move, but a line of pain arced through her like a jolt of lightning. She cried out again and looked up to see a panicked Alicia kneeling over her.
“Goddamn, Dream, try to give me a heart attack, why don’t you?”
Dream winced as she turned her head toward the dark line of trees. “I saw something back there, Alicia. I looked back and … saw something.”
She shuddered at the memory.
Alicia frowned. “What?” She glanced in the direction of the woods, then looked again at Dream. “What did you see?”
“She saw what I saw.”
They both looked at Karen, who was sitting up on the guardrail now, staring at the line of trees, that green wall that now seemed like the demarcation between the sane, natural world and a land of nightmares.
Her voice had a faraway, dreamily detached quality to it. “The thing that got Shane. A real, honest-to-gosh monster.”
Alicia sighed. “Jesus…”
Dream seized Alicia’s wrist. “She might be right.” The other woman’s skepticism was immediate and obvious, but Dream plunged on. “Or maybe not. But there’s something out there. Something that didn’t leave when it was done with Shane.”