Page 29 of The Bane Witch
29
Hostage
Our plan is good, sound, better than I would have come up with on my own. It fills me with a quiet confidence as I drive back to the motel. The sun will rise soon, and I have only a couple of hours to prepare, to dress and feed. I intend to hike to the bunker and ransack Myrtle’s stores since I’m short on time. I can repay her later by doing some foraging.
The handcuffs are heavy in my coat pocket. A precaution only, like the pepper spray—he insisted. I didn’t have the heart to tell Regis there likely wouldn’t be time for either, that if I am face-to-face with the Strangler, there will only be time for death. His or mine. But he knows how this works. I made no promises about a tidy ending. Only to try.
The sky is still dark around the edges when I return to find Myrtle sitting on the porch steps, her long hair coursing down her back, the flannel of her gown peeking beneath the down fill of her parka. Out in the brush, Bart is snuffling at the ground. He takes off after something, the sound of him crashing through the leaves echoing back to us.
“You should be inside,” I tell her as I approach. “It’s not safe.”
She purses her lips. “I’m old. And the benefit of getting old is that people stop telling you what to do.” She shoots me a pointed look, the warning implied. “Where were you?”
“Nowhere,” I tell her, trying to pass to the door.
She follows me in. “Does nowhere wear a gun and a badge on duty?”
I roll my eyes at her. “I know you mean well, but I’m a grown woman, Myrtle. I come and go as I please.”
She folds her arms and watches me as I get a glass to fill with water. “You are grown, that’s true. But you do not belong to just yourself anymore. You are part of a whole. And there are no—”
“Secrets in the venery,” I recite. “Yeah, I got that.”
She sighs. “I only want to keep you safe.”
“Then talk to them, not me,” I shoot back. It’s unfair and I know it. She’s been nothing but kind to me. But I feel childish and sulky, my heart stampeded by the look in Regis’s eyes, the impossible truth of who I am, the reality that this simple existence—a life in a fairy-tale cottage in the mountains with a big-hearted man—can never be mine.
Her eyes narrow dangerously. “You aren’t yourself,” she observes. “What have you done?”
I glance at her and turn away. “Nothing.”
“I have defended and protected you, but there are things I cannot save you from, including yourself. Do not make your mother’s mistakes, Piers. And do not underestimate me or the venery. I love you—I do. But my allegiances are with my clan first, with the whole.”
I turn to face her, a boldness I don’t recognize coursing through me, wrapping my spine in steel, my heart in quills. “What are you trying to say? Do you want me to leave?”
“I want you to be smart,” she hisses. “I want you to think of yourself and your kind. I want you to be better than your mother ever was. I want you to win, dammit.”
“I will,” I spit out, “if everyone will just keep off my back.”
“Everyone?” She nears me, eyes thin as cracked windows.
“Look, I don’t know why you’re upset. It was your idea after all, that I use my allure, that I convince him of my innocence, paint him a picture. And that’s exactly what I did.”
She startles, wheels turning. “You were supposed to wait until he came to you. How can you be innocent if you go to him, throw yourself at his mercy? What have you told him, Piers? What does he know?”
“Nothing,” I lie, voice laden with irritation. “He knows nothing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to,” I tell her. “He won’t do anything.”
She falls into the nearest chair, her head dropping into her hand. “Oh, Piers, what have you done?”
I lean against the corner of the counter. “I haven’t done anything.”
She looks up at me and her eyes are spidery with veins. “He’s a good man. You know that? You’ve doomed a good man.”
“I haven’t doomed him,” I argue. “He’s not going to tell anyone. He’s not going to do anything about it.” I haven’t even had a chance to tell her about our plan to catch the Saranac Strangler together, but considering her reaction, it might be wise to keep that bit to myself.
She chuckles dryly. “You think you know him? You think it matters? He’s a risk we can’t afford to take. Don’t you understand? Every day he breathes he is a threat to us. To me, to Tina, to Ivy and Verna. To Azalea and little Scarlet.” She rises from her chair. “They will not forgive this. Not this.”
Panic begins to claw at me from the inside. “You don’t have to tell them,” I insist. “It can just be between us.”
She looks defeated. “I thought you understood. I thought you were learning. Maybe they were right. Maybe the seed of your line is too toxic to overcome.”
“What are you saying?” My heart races inside me, barreling toward an end I can’t see. “Are you threatening me?”
She reaches over and takes my chin in her fingers. “Precious girl, I don’t have to. They’ll overrun me. All I can do now is damage control.”
“Damage control?”
She looks full of immeasurable grief. “If I act fast, if I’m lucky, then perhaps they won’t take it out on me as well.”
“ You? ” The truth begins to dawn in sickening shades of red. “You mean, they’ll want to kill you? Because I told Regis?”
She studies me. “See there? You are learning. Just not fast enough.”
“But you didn’t do anything!”
“I sheltered you. You are my responsibility. There will be a heavy price to pay for this violation. We will all have to pony up—him, you, me.” She picks up her boots and begins to drag them onto her feet, grabbing the keys from the table where I dropped them.
“What are you doing?” I ask her.
“Trying to fix it.” She glares at me. A sickener mushroom lies on the table between us, something she must have gathered on a recent walk. Before I can move, she scoops it up and shoves it whole into her mouth. When it slides down her throat, she says, “He will suffer. This is your fault.”
“No,” I insist. “Myrtle don’t. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“Our rules exist for a reason. They are all that has stood between us and the anger of men for hundreds of years. They’re not arbitrary. All you had to do was follow them.”
“I will,” I assure her. “I won’t make another mistake. He won’t tell a soul. No one has to know, I swear it!”
She looks at me and sighs. “Sweet girl, you have already made one mistake too many. Now, I must clean up your mess. If we are very lucky, very clever, it will be enough. I can concoct a story that they’ll buy, and he’ll pay the price for us both. But I must act fast.”
I hurl myself between her and the door. “No! I won’t let you. Don’t do this, Myrtle, please. It’s my fault. I can’t take another person dying because of me. Tell them it was me. Let them deliver the last kiss. Just spare him, please.”
She grips my shoulders with talon-like strength. “Stand aside, Piers. Sacrificing yourself won’t change anything, so I don’t recommend it. As long as he knows, we are not safe. Be glad I am not making you do it. It’s more than your mother got.”
She shoves me aside with a bullish strength I didn’t know she possessed, and starts out the door, but I throw myself at her, catching her by an ankle as she descends the stairs, causing us both to fall to the ground in a heap of limbs. I recover first and pull myself up her body, reaching for the keys, clawing them from her fingers.
She pushes me aside and leaps up, starting forward at a determined speed. After a moment I realize that she intends to walk. It would take her hours to reach him on foot, but still, I can’t allow that. I cast about looking for a way to stop her when I remember the oars crossed over the doorway inside the kitchen. I run in and wrench one free, darting back out. Myrtle is booking it toward the café, but I scramble behind her, swinging the oar and clipping her across the shoulders. She goes down hard, the wind knocked out of her, and I leap on top before she can get up.
Prying her arms back, I slip Regis’s handcuffs from my pocket and lock in one wrist, then the other, before dragging her back to the cabin and depositing her onto the sofa. She glares at me as if she can kill me with looks alone.
“These weren’t supposed to be for you,” I spit at her. “We had a plan! Now, if you’ll sit tight and let me handle it, everything will work out like it’s supposed to. You’ll see.”
I rip the shoelaces from her boots near the door and tie the cuffs to the sofa’s heavy frame beneath the cushions. Then I dig through her pockets and take her phone and spare key.
“Who’s we ? You and Sheriff Brooks?” She eyes me venomously.
I stand back, crossing my arms with a huff. “Yes. Regis and me. We’re working together. It was your idea, after all.”
“Not like this,” she hisses.
I sigh and drop to a crouch before her. “I love you, Myrtle. But you’re wrong about him. You told me that our roles are changing as society changes, that we had to evolve. What if that’s what this is? What if there are men we can trust with our secret? Men who can help.”
She scoffs. “Please. You sound pathetic.”
“Fine,” I say, rising. “Have it your way. But I’m going to go out there and get my mark, with Regis’s help.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she says sourly.
“Good. Because you will see it. And once we’re done, we’re gonna come back here and talk—calmly and rationally—about how we can make this work. Maybe it was stupid for me to take the risk, but I’m willing to give him a chance. You said yourself he is a good man. An honest man. He’ll keep his end of the bargain. And once you see that, you’ll believe me, and we can keep it between the three of us. No one else has to die.”
My heart is hammering with fear even as I speak, terrified that I’ve crossed a line I can’t come back from. Not with the venery. I’ve attacked one of my own to protect a man I have no business loving. In their eyes, I have become my mother, plain and simple. Worse, because in the end even she had the decency to do what was required of her. But if I can just get Myrtle to see the truth, then maybe we can fix this without them ever knowing.
She stares up at me, petulant as a child.
“I’m not your enemy, Myrtle.”
“You’ve handcuffed me in my own house,” she points out.
“Only for a little while,” I explain. “So you can see we mean it. Please, give me a chance here.”
I want to believe the twitch at the corner of her mouth is a sign her resolve is softening, that the deep breath she takes means I am getting through to her.
“What choice do I have?” she finally replies.
I exhale and head for the door. “I’ll be back,” I tell her. “Just sit tight.”
“Piers,” she calls.
I glance back.
“Hunt well.”
The last thing I see before locking the door behind me is the wry smile crowning her face, savage and proud.
T HE C ROW L AKE trail was Regis’s idea. It isn’t a big tourist draw, thanks to it being a flat hike less than four miles long and bordering one of the smaller lakes. Anyone visiting the mountains will head for the myriad Instagrammable options that pepper this region like buckshot. They’ll probably never even notice Crow Lake on their map. But that’s why it’s perfect for him. It’s the kind of quiet, easy, out-of-the-way spot he loves. That, and it’s close to me. Taking Kathy Miller in the back parking lot of a local bar was unadvisedly risky, out of character, but that’s my fault. He’s stalking me like a heat-seeking missile. Regis thinks, given the chance, he’d gladly keep to the recesses, the cover of wilderness. He just needs the two to come together. Me and this morning, this trail, are precisely that moment.
Of course, he doesn’t know I’m the one he wants, the one with the power to silence Aunt Esther’s laughter in his mind— he thinks. In a way, he’s right. I have every intention of shutting Aunt Esther up for him, just not in the way he’s expecting. But I can’t do that if I can’t figure out who he is. Hunting a ghost is proving impossible, and the last thing I need is another man like Henry getting the jump on me. I’m petrified to face him, after everything Henry put me through. Looking a darker, more mature version of my husband in the eye is not my idea of a pleasant afternoon. But I’m tired of waiting for him to show up for coffee and a waffle while other women, better women, die.
I make my way down the silent slip of trail between the trees, sniffling, wiping my nose hastily with the back of my hand. “Regis?” I whisper, but there’s no response. I’m early, I realize. I shouldn’t be here for another thirty minutes. The fight with Myrtle sent me springing this way too soon, before I’d checked the time, before I’d even fed. In response, my stomach gurgles, a searing hunger awakening in me. I swallow it down.
He feels close, so close, closer than he’s ever been. He’s coming for me. I can feel his pulse quickening at the notion, at his nearness. A flash of leaves and limbs crosses behind my eyes. He’s out here somewhere, stalking. My allure must be working on overdrive thanks to Regis’s good luck charm. I reach into my pocket and feel for it, pull it out to make sure it’s there, silky inside my fist—the green-winged teal feather. The only thing we have that the Strangler has touched. It ties me to him like electric wire. I feel his presence in it, humming, and my body—no, my magic —responds with a crackle inside me. As if the man himself is touching me.
I think of Myrtle locked in her cabin, tied to her couch, and grimace. This feather is probably as much to blame as anything else for my reaction to our quarrel. My whole body is on high alert, senses sharpened to a razor edge, radiating with the need for action. It’s unthinkable to have hit her with that oar, to have made her a hostage in her own home. I remind myself that I acted out of desperation, that when I left she was rooting for me, and I can fix everything. With the Strangler dead, the venery will be happy, and Myrtle will be safe. I’ll send Regis away. I’ll talk sense into Myrtle. I’ll make them all see.
But I can’t do what I came here to do if I don’t feed. I need to forage something toxic off this trail before Regis gets here, or worse, the Strangler. I sit on the bench facing the lake and stare out across the surface of the water, smooth and contained like a spill, watching the ducks on the other side. I probably walked half a mile already. I could keep going, but I’m not stupid. Getting too far in, too isolated before Regis is here to back me up, would only put me in peril. I don’t want to give our common foe any ideas, not before I’ve fed.
A smell, musty and sour, finds me like the steam coming off a fresh-baked pie. I practically drool in my lap and twist around trying to locate it. When I can’t see the source, I get up and stumble blindly into the trees, pushing switches out of my way as I scour the earth like a chicken looking for worms. The lake shines through the brush to my right, but its beauty is lost on me. Even my original intention in coming here, the plan I had with Regis, shifts, relegated to a place of lesser importance. We were supposed to meet at the trailhead. But only one thought consumes me now—finding the source of that heavenly smell.
I am close to giving up when I spot the red cap through the moss, winging up like a saucer of blood, stemmed in white. I fall to my knees before it and breathe deep. It takes all my self-control not to bend down and lick the cap like a Popsicle. It’s another sickener mushroom— Russula emetica —known for its nauseating effects on the stomach of anyone foolish enough to eat one. Not typically deadly, but my nose tells me it would be in my system, that my magic would heighten its effects with such acuity my mark would be dead in a matter of hours. I’d prefer something fast acting, but beggars cannot be choosers, and I can’t resist the cravings anymore. I pluck the mushroom from the ground and hold it under my nose, then take my first bite. Everything inside me dilates—my veins, my pupils, my chakras. I feel a charge of energy course through me, hot and cold at once, and I chew greedily, swallowing before I am finished so I can rush into another bite.
This is different from the feedings of my childhood, lazy summer nights under the moon. This is ecstasy, the rush of a divine high. I lose all sense of time and place, the lake fading to nothing, the trees stretching to oblivion. I nearly forget myself, the Piers I am used to less important, less significant than the witch inside me, the drop of faery blood I carry far outmatching the gallon of my own. I merge with the mushroom, with the forest, with the magic. Cells and roots and streams all running into each other like lengths of yarn, knitting into a landscape, unrecognizable but achingly familiar, here and nowhere. There is only this feeling and its source and the hunt it calls me to.
When the last bite is swallowed, I scatter the leaves searching for another. There has to be more. That is what I’m here for. That is what I want. And then something swells in me, like air, a life force, and I am lifted from the ground, buzzing inside with a kind of desire I’ve never known before, as wanton as sex, as vital as thirst. He feels so close now, so near, that he’s practically inside me. I crush the feather in my pocket. Come, my soul sings to him, my destiny, my allure. Come now.
I’m getting to my feet, brushing off my knees, when I hear a crunch. I spin and duck, crouching low as an animal, peering through the brush to see a pair of legs walk briskly by, a long hiker’s pole beside them. My nightmare lances through me, of the hiker who was Henry, and I recall Regis telling me the Strangler uses a stick of some kind to control his victims in their bind, tightening the garrote until they perish. A hiking stick, I realize, would make a sturdy, inconspicuous choice.
I tumble forward, trying not to make too much noise, until I am squarely on the trail. But the man is already paces ahead and not slowing down. A burn rips me from lip to loin, and I nearly groan as I stumble forward, increasing my speed until I am matching him step for step. He’s tall, but not large, the right build. His arms are pale and thin, sleeves short even in the brisk cool. They aren’t explicitly hairy, another tip-off, and the hair on his head is short, hidden under a wool beanie. Wool is fibrous, a choice that could shed evidence, but our killer takes his time, cleaning up at the scene. He doesn’t move like an inexperienced hiker, but then again, this trail is easy on a bad day. There is a wedding band on one hand. Does our killer have a wife? Not likely. Though it would make a perfect ruse.
I speed up, not wanting to lose him. But I misjudge my steps and soon I’m practically breathing down his neck. He doesn’t seem to notice. My heat, my steps, magically cloaked even in his proximity. Another flash of forest flickers behind my eyes, the sweet relief he feels at being so close, but it confuses me, like an image laid over this one, not quite syncing up. I take a deep breath, but only smell tobacco and citrus, the notes of a lingering deodorant or body spray instead of the stench of death, the iron tang of blood, the sweet croon of rot. I cool inside, the intensity ebbing, the high of my feed dropping like a fever in an ice bath. For a moment, I can’t understand it. The sensation disorients me, brings me back to where I am, who I am. Regis… I was supposed to meet Regis. But the sickener courses through me, and the man ahead is so close. My dream looms large in the forest beside me, everything such a perfect match, from his shirt to his pace to the tip of his hiking pole. That can’t have been coincidence. I have to know.
I am reaching out when I hear his voice shout, “Acacia! No!”
Regis, I become aware, is behind me. This is all wrong. I was supposed to wait for him. To pick a place inside the trees—a bench—where he could lie low, keep a visual on me, have his gun ready in case. We were supposed to do this together. But I botched it.
Myrtle… Oh, Myrtle. Please forgive me.
I want to turn to him, to apologize, to explain, but the man is right in front of me, and my fingers are inches from contact, and I can feel the Strangler like a second skin intersecting with my own. This must be him.
“Piers!” I hear Regis call as I clamp down on the man’s shoulder. The touch… The touch should tell me everything. But it is empty, like gripping sand. It runs through my fingers, this moment, and vanishes.
This isn’t right.
Henry. His name is like a beat of my heart. Just one, the last, before he gets his happy ending.
He spins around, and my other arm raises instinctively to block the blow from the pole, but it is a blow that does not come. The man’s face is wrong. It is not Henry’s, not long and pale and taut with hate. And even though I’ve never seen the Saranac Strangler, it is not his either—I know this to be true. His five-o’clock shadow and bushy eyebrows don’t add up, the streaks of gray in his mustache, the panicked bulge of his eyes, the flare of his nostrils. He looks stricken, as though I’ve beat him, taken my fist to his face instead of grabbing his shoulder. He is afraid, I register a second later. Of me.
Suddenly Regis is beside me, his gun gripped with two hands, his legs powerfully spread.
The man nearly swoons with fear. “P-p-please, don’t shoot. Don’t hurt me!” He pulls his wallet from a pocket and tosses it at my feet. “Take whatever you want. Take it all! I have a wife, a family.”
As Regis bends down to grab the wallet, the man takes off running. Regis flips it open, quickly shuffling through the contents, then holsters his weapon. “Wait here,” he admonishes, frustration deepening his voice, and takes off after the hiker. “Sir! Sir, your wallet! Please, wait. I’m a cop!”
As he brushes past me, I stagger, dumbfounded, bewildered, a daze of toxins flooding my system. It was him. I knew it was him. The dream. The feeling that he was near, that he heard my call. The flashes of forest like the one I’m standing in now. I shake my head to clear it, turn at the sound of a duck’s call from the water, blink in rapid succession.
Something isn’t right. My instincts keep pumping adrenaline through me, but the wires are all crossed, the signals wrong. I stare off dumbly down the trail where Regis went. And then I turn slowly until I feel a shudder deep inside. I realize I am facing the direction of the motel, of Aunt Myrtle. Dread rises in me like vomit, and I run.