by David Castlewitz
“Tales of the Morobeast” first appeared in Tales of the Talisman Summer 2010
“Do you hunt?”
Andress sat up in bed and glanced at the clock on the overturned cardboard box he’d repurposed as a table. Not yet 10AM. Four hours before he had to be at Jimbobs, the gaming café where 12 hours of mindless labor would absorb him for the night.
“Where do you hunt?”
Andress walked through the streak of morning light seeping in from the window, stepped into the narrow bathroom and looked down into the toilet bowl, at its brown ring of filth. This world’s so dirty, he thought. But safe.
“I asked, do you hunt?”
He turned back and crept to the red flower decorated metal table and there he saw her, astride a brown furred tannerwort.
“Mistress Ena,” he said.
“Did you think I’d never find you?” She slid from the back of the tannerwort’s neck, one gloved hand using the beast’s short, curved tusk for support. Her boots thumped the tabletop. She snapped her whip and threw back her head, her long black hair lashing the air behind her, her red leather jacket and black skirt sparkling in the artificial light.
“How did you?” Andress asked, but the tannerwort was answer in itself. Trainers used such beasts as both fast mounts and expert trackers.
“Do you hunt in this dimension?” Mistress Ena asked, and Andress nodded in reply. He’d been out soaring over the city just last night and had found a homeless man, whose few remaining hopes and dreams Andress absorbed, feasting on the man’s spirit just as he once feasted on the flesh of small animals in Lavelzein, the world he’d escaped many years ago.
Mistress Ena’s yellow eyes widened as she stomped to the edge of the table. She looked down at the grimy floor. “Why am I so small and you so big?” she asked.
He guessed she’d come through an artificial crack in the veil between the worlds. That’s why she was a miniature version of the mistress he’d feared in the life he left behind. He had used a portal, which maintained his normal size.
#
Andress pushed the cushioned swivel chairs into place, picked up napkins and paper plates and other debris from the rug, and wiped down the tabletops, rearranged computer mice, untangling their cords and placing them squarely on their pads. The front of the arcade was filling up with high school kids tossing their book bags into a corner, sloshing their drinks and making a mess of the area he’d already policed. In another hour, when the younger kids got out of school, Jimbobs would be packed.
A few girls mingled with the boys. A heavyset girl with short red hair held her own in one of the popular “shoot’em-ups” they played. Another girl sat alone with her eyes transfixed on the computer screen, lost in an animated world of pretend that, Andress suspected, was so much better than her real world of high school failure and parental dismissal.
Maybe, he told himself. Maybe she was a happy kid with a healthy appetite and friends galore. Maybe she enjoyed school. Maybe her parents were her best friends. But he doubted such maybes. She was as unhappy as he’d been when he lived in Mistress Ena’s cage, knowing that he was destined for a life of fear and deprivation once she sold him to Lord Starks, who was building an army in his bid to conquer Lavelzein.
Another girl who caught Andress’ attention was the tall one mingling with an older crowd of players. She stayed at the back of the group, peering over the heads of those in front, a lock of her thin black hair twisted around one finger, her mouth sucking on a knuckle.
She always spoke to Andress, her dark eyes darting quickly from his body to his face and then to some point in the low ceiling with its fluorescent panels. She spoke with a hoarse voice. She smiled, too. Her thin lips curled, her large front teeth protruding, the tip of her tongue darting out like a fire lizard’s when attacking a stream of insects.
Andress had overheard her name mentioned several times, but he never spoke it, not even when he lay alone at night and thought of her hovering with the boys, laughing with them, pushing back when they pushed her, joining them in their cars when they drove away, being the one to run out for pizza or other treats since the café sold only drinks and chips and cookies.
#
“Do you want to move off the table?” Andress asked. Mistress Ena had arranged a paper napkin and a saltshaker with a crusty rim into a semblance of shelter.
“I expect you to supply me with food and water,” she said.
Andress tried to act brave. “I expect you to go back to Lavelzein.”
She lashed the tabletop with her whip. “Insolent brat!” The tannerwort brayed. Andress’ knees shook. Remembered hurt tracked across his shoulder blades.
“Who helped you reach this world?” Mistress Ena demanded. “I want to know the name of the witch, Icarii Moro.”
Andress hadn’t heard that name in a long time. As a fledgling he had thought it was his distinct identity. As he grew and his training included coordinated flight with other morobeasts, he learned that Mistress Ena called every one of her charges by the same name.
“I’ve nothing to tell you,” he said.
She raised her chin and glowered up at Andress. The chafe marks from the spiked leather collar she wore looked painful and when her lower lip trembled and her yellow eyes moistened, Andress pitied his one-time mistress. She served Lord Starks as surely as anyone in Lavelzein. Most likely, it was Starks who demanded she come to this world and force Andress’ return.
He filled a jar lid with water and put it on the table. Later that evening, rummaging through the trash in the alley, he found an empty tissue box which he put on the table as a more secure shelter from the insects and mice that scurried at night. For the tannerwort, he provided a cracked porcelain bowl where the beast could wallow in mud made from soil collected outside. As for food, he gave them the remnants of someone else’ salad tossed into a waste bin on the street corner.
“Can you keep the light on?” Ena asked when he had turned it off.
“I can’t sleep with that,” he told her.
“Can I make a fire? What do you have – “
“No fire,” he said. “Stay in your house.”
“They can get in,” she complained.
“Put the tissue up against the opening.” Andress pictured insects nosing around the box, encountering the tissue obstacle and moving on. The mice might sniff and check the box for crumbs, but they wouldn’t go inside so long as Mistress Ena was in there. “Let me know if you see any rats.”
“What’re they?”
“Big. Like jackfleeters. Gigantic. Bigger than you.” He smiled. That would frighten her. Just as she had often frightened him with her demands to fly higher and faster, to rip at the dolls that served as enemy soldiers, to swoop straight down from the greatest of heights, at the fastest of speeds, with the most daring of daring. In training, he’d been afraid all the time.
#
“Rinnie,” the dark haired girl said. Andress knew that, but he had asked her name anyway.
“Andress,” he told her. “Cary Andress.” It was the name he’d made up after coming through the portal with the witch’s help.
They walked together to the front of Jimbobs, into the glow of an arched lamp post. Her gaunt features startled him. She looked as drained as any of the victims whose energy he absorbed for sustenance. The look reminded him that he hungered and would need to hunt soon.
Loitering by the window, they watched a car speed past the strip mall. A truck groaned to a stop at the traffic light.
Andress said, “Rinnie’s a strange name.”
“My name’s really Renee.”
“But I asked you your name and you said – “
“The boys call me Rinnie. It’s a dog’s name, if you must know. As in Rin-Tin-Tin? The movie, the old TV show?” Her thin voice rose on the last two words. “Well? You wanted to think it over. Have you? Come on.” She glanced at the clock inside Jimbobs. “It’s going on four in the morning. I’m exhausted.”
“I’ve got a roommate,” Andress said, thinking of Mistress Ena. “She’ll get pissed.”
“I’ll sleep on the floor. Or in the bathtub.”
“I don’t have a bathtub.”
“Tell your roommate I ain’t a threat. I’m not there to steal you. I just need a place to sleep.”
Andress sighed. “Tell me again what happened?”
Rinnie twirled a few strands of hair around one finger and pressed her knuckle against her front teeth. “Either you say I can or you say I can’t. I ain’t repeating myself.”
“I have to finish up inside.” Andress turned back to the door and pulled it open. Mrs. Oh sat at the cash register behind the raised counter. She peered down at him through her narrow framed glasses and then nodded towards the back, which meant he should vacuum the rug. On the other side of the huge front window, Rinnie pressed her stubby nose into the glass and stared wide-eyed like a child.
Later, walking home with Rinnie, Andress rehearsed how he’d explain his tabletop visitor. The tannerwort might be passed off as some sort of mutant pet, a Guinea pig with tusks, perhaps. He laughed at that. But Mistress Ena?
“You have to wait here,” he said to Rinnie, refusing to let her into the apartment. “In the hall. Just wait.”
She sighed, arms folded across her chest. “I’m exhausted. Do you walk this far every day? Don’t you ever take a bus?”
Andress didn’t reply. He’d never thought of using any other transport other than his feet.
Dashing up to the table in the dark apartment, he bent to the tissue box on the table and whispered, “Mistress? Are you awake?”
“I’ve been fighting off those jackfleeters all night. Can’t you do something?”
“I have a – a friend coming in. Don’t let her see you.”
“What kind of friend?”
“She needs a place to stay. For tonight.” As he spoke, he looked out the window and saw daybreak coming. He had only a few hours before he had to return to the arcade. These late nights – each Friday and Saturday – were tests of endurance. How did Mrs. Oh do it seven days a week?
“You want me to stay hidden?”
“Please?”
“Will you consider returning to Lavelzein?”
“Of course, Mistress. Of course I’ll consider it.”
“Then I’m going back to sleep.”
Andress turned on the light and opened the door. “Come in.”
“Did you explain me to her?” Rinnie chirped. She glanced at the stained ceiling and then all around the small room with its narrow bed and metal table. She pointed at the sleeping tannerwort.
“My pet Guinea pig,” he quickly explained.
“Where’s your roommate?”
“Must be out.”
Rinnie peeked into the bathroom, touched the plastic shower curtain and then wiped her hand on the towel. “Small,” she mumbled. She looked down at the toilet and Andress saw her slightly recoil. Good, he thought. She’ll change her mind and flee in panic.
But then he wanted her to stay. He pulled a chair out from the table. “I can make us some tea. Are you hungry?”
“Do you have sugar?”
Andress looked at the jar where he tossed sugar packets he took from the arcade.
Rinnie said, “I have to take a shower. I’m – dirty.” She shrugged. “So you have to sit looking at the wall. Do you have another towel?”
“No. Just the one.”
“Okay,” she said, and pulled out the other chair by the table and turned it so Andress, when he sat, faced the wall.
“I have to make the tea,” he said. “And I really need to get to sleep. I go back to Jimbobs in a few hours.”
“Don’t you ever stay up all night? Or all morning?”
He shook his head. He heard clothes rustling behind him. Feet padded across the linoleum floor and then he heard the muted scratching of plastic rings on the shower curtain rod. When the bathroom door clicked shut, he looked back over his shoulder and listened to water striking Rinnie’s body.
“You’ve already guzzled her, haven’t you?” Mistress Ena said.
“No.”
“She’s so drained. She looks like one of your victims.”
“She’s just a friend.”
“Why’s she here?”
“I told you,” Andress whispered. “She needs a place for the night.”
“And you don’t want to – “ Mistress Ena slanted her head sideways and dangled her whip over her forearm. “ – devour her?”
Andress shook his head. Rinnie didn’t have the energy he needed to sustain him. He sensed she was as emotionally sparse as her body was physically spare.
The water stopped.
“I’m coming out now. Don’t look.”
“I’m not looking,” Andress sang, and turned to face the wall. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mistress Ena scurry into her tissue box shelter.
“Okay,” Rinnie said. Andress stood and repositioned the chair. “Thanks for being so polite,” she said, water droplets trickling from her still-soapy hair. “The hot water ran out.”
“It does that,” Andress said.
“Is the tea ready?” Sitting, she lifted one bare foot onto her thigh and rubbed her toes, scratching at a patch of dirt clinging to her big toe.
“Where do you usually stay?” Andress asked as he filled a saucepan with water.
“Wherever.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
Rinnie grinned, a pointed tooth pressing into her lower lip. Her skin looked tingly and fresh. A soap bubble burst close to her scalp and water fell down one bony cheek where wisps of hair clutched her face. “Applying for the job?”
Andress shook his head. “I wouldn’t know how to act,” he told her. “Being a boyfriend. I wouldn’t know how to behave.”
“What?”
He thought of Mistress Ena’s male friends who sometimes visited the morobeast lair in the caves behind her estate. Some helped train her charges for combat, pitting their captives against the giant birds of prey.
“I could be your lover,” he told Rinnie. “But I wouldn’t know what to do if I were your boyfriend.”
She laughed. Her mouth wide open and her red tongue wagging behind her large front teeth. Laughter bellowed up out of her, the sound of her mirth hurting his ears. Mistress Ena peeked out from her refuge, shook her head with disdain, and retreated from sight. The tannerwort stirred in its sleep, slopping mud out of its bowl and onto the tabletop.
“That thing really makes a mess,” Rinnie said, pointing at the clumps of mud. “Does a Guinea pig have tusks?”
“It’s a special breed. Like a wild hog. A boar.”
“In miniature,” Rinnie offered.
#
Though she’d promised to take the floor, Rinnie fell asleep in his bed and Andress dozed in a chair for a couple of hours until it was time to go to work. When he was ready to leave, he tried to wake Rinnie, but she moaned and slapped his hands. When he rocked her by the shoulders, the cloth blanket fell from her torso, revealing a flimsy, yellowed bra covering small breasts. Andress nudged the cover down to the elastic band of her panties. He shuddered, feeling that he’d violated her. Violated her trust, at least.
Leaving Rinnie in his bed, he lumbered out into the hallway, down the creaking stairs and out into the city and on to work. When he returned several hours later, in the early morning of the next day, she was still asleep. But she must’ve gotten up. Dirty dishes and cups littered his sink. He checked the diminutive refrigerator on which the hotplate rested. Rinnie had devoured his vegetables, had taken two soup cans, and had eaten most of what was left of a loaf of bread he’d been rationing for the past week.
“You’re back?” she said. She sat up, clutching the thin blanket to her neck, her skinny bare legs parting, the cover falling discretely down the middle of her body.
“You ate all my food.”
“I’ll go out and buy you something.”
“It’s five in the morning. Nothing’s open.”
“I bet there’s a fast food hamburger place open. Want a burger and fries?”
He shook his head. “I’m a vegetarian,” he said, lying to a small degree. In Lavelzein he hunted small animals in the forest. Only in this world did he refrain from such sustenance, having discovered early on that he couldn’t digest meat properly.
“I had a really odd dream,” Rinnie said. “An angel was on my shoulder, talking to me while I slept.”
He looked at the tissue box on his table. “What did she say to you?”
“How do you know it was a ‘she’?”
“You said it was an angel,” he replied. “Aren’t they female?”
Rinnie laughed. “No.”
“What did she say, exactly?”
“I don’t remember. It was all just a – a rush of air.” She pointed at the window, where early morning light bathed the dirty pane of glass. “I’ll get dressed and run out to buy some food.”
“I don’t have any money,” he said. “Not until I get paid. Which won’t be until – “
“I’ll get money.”
“How?”
Rinnie grinned. “Nothing illegal. Just panhandling. I’ll panhandle a couple of bucks and buy us some burgers.”
“I don’t eat – “
“For me. Burgers for me. I’ll get you a bunch of carrots, you odd looking rabbit, you.” She bent forward and kissed him, her sour breath washing across his pock-marked cheeks, wafting into his pointed nose. Fingers ran through his coarse red hair and nails scratched his scalp. That hurt. But he withstood the pain and enjoyed this odd caress.
“You’re going to devour that one,” Mistress Ena said, popping out of her shelter after Rinnie left.
“What did you say to her?” Andress demanded.
“I tried to warn her off. Get her out of here before you do something.”
“I won’t do anything to her.”
“You’ve got to hunt. Or you die. Isn’t that true?” Mistress Ena placed her fists on her hips.
Andress grunted. “She’s too drained to make a meal.” He glowered at his one-time mistress, the woman who had raised him to obey every command, follow each rule, live within the laws of Lavelzein. If he hadn’t escaped, he’d possibly already be one more casualty in Lord Starks’ war of conquest.
“You must come home, Icari Moro. How long can you live here before they destroy you?”
The pleading in her voice startled him. He rejected what he heard. “I’ll be caged and killed the moment I return.”
“Caged? Yes,” she admitted. “Killed? No. You’ll fight. Which is your destiny. You can’t ignore your destiny. No more than I can ignore mine.”
“Yours?” he scoffed. “To maim my kind? To train us? To cage and then sell us to Starks? Is that the destiny you can’t avoid?”
“I love all of my charges, Icari Moro.” She sniffed and raised a leather-gloved hand to her face, flicked away something near her dark eyes. With her other hand, she pulled a cowl down over the top of her head, as though to obscure her narrow face.
“Don’t talk to Rinnie,” Andress implored her. “Stay in your shelter when she’s here. Keep your tannerwort under control.”
“Who are you to give me instructions?”
He slapped the table. Mistress Ena lost her footing and fell onto her back. “Someone who lives in this world! Unlike you, I am not just a visitor. Look at me. Full sized, fully capable, able to live and thrive in a world that – that protects me.”
“Until they discover the truth,” Mistress Ena whispered, and stumbled into her tissue box shelter.
#
Standing at the window, Andress watched the night descend. He savored the prospect of a midnight hunt, even if the hunt itself – so necessary and so vital – was an act he had come to despise.
Rinnie slept soundly on the narrow bed, her chest rising and falling under the thin cover, one naked leg protruding from the edge of the blanket, her toes like mangled roots of a young tree, the nails yellow and cracked and curled.
Quietly, Andress pushed up the window, allowing the cool night air to invade. He undressed slowly, careful not to drop his shoes or let his belt buckle bang the sink. Naked, he stretched his hands up over his head, his fingertips wiggling close to the low ceiling. He pictured his leathery wings taking form, their boney struts creaking when he flexed his shoulder blades. When his feet began to disappear and he shrank in size, he held his wings close to his sides while his chin and nose merged to form a pointed beak. And then he rose into the air and drifted out the window.
He dashed for the clouds, streaking across this world’s dark ceiling, just as he once raced in pursuit in Lavelzein. But no armor-clad enemies shuddered at the sight of his ascent. He wasn’t one of scores of cohorts, the mighty arm of the mightiest army of the all-mighty Lord Starks. No cavalry would be crushed. No soldiers would flee into the swamps and rivers.
Andress floated downwards and entered a tunnel, looking to anyone who noticed like nothing other than a small creature flying in the night. Anxious to feast and return home, he searched for a victim and found a frail woman sleeping in an alcove in the underground complex of tunnels once used to haul coal to the surface buildings.
He invaded her effortlessly, sought her ambitions – which were few, but worthy – and her desires – which were strong and persistent. She yearned to find a home, see her children again, and relive a love of her past. She ached to rid herself of drugs, to work as she had once worked, and perhaps care for a husband who offered protection and tender regard.
Carefully, he cut these emotions from her as a butcher removes excess fat from a lamb’s carcass. He basked in her strength, robbing her because of his need to consume what little she offered. When he finished, she slept as soundly as when he’d found her, but without her dreams, her sleep profoundly dark and, Andress knew, with a dismal new day dawning soon to greet her.
At home, nourished, he resumed human form and dressed before Rinnie awoke. When she did, she said, “You can come into bed if you want.” She lifted the blanket, revealing her narrow hips and thin thighs. When she raised the cover higher he saw that she’d removed her underwear. He got into bed beside her.
“Aren’t you going to take off your clothes?” she asked, giggling. He put a hand over her mouth and shook his head.
#
“How long can you persist in this charade?” Mistress Ena demanded, pacing back and forth in front of the tannerwort. The beast pawed the tabletop, purring when she turned to it and stroked the back of its pointed ears
“The rest of my life,” Andress replied. He looked at the apartment door, expecting Rinnie to come bouncing in with their daily supply of food.
“You’re a warrior. Trained to fight. Here you’re just a – “
“I’m happy.”
“Devouring the already senseless? That’s not a substitute for the nourishment you need.”
He shook his head, refusing to believe or to give in. He’d escaped Lavelzein. He thrived in this world.
“How long before you take that woman-child?” Mistress Ena asked in a hoarse whisper. “Haven’t you already devoured past friends? Men and women who trusted you?”
“Never.”
“You’ll betray her, Icari Moro, as surely as you’ve betrayed me.”
The door opened and Rinnie, her face bright and her smile adding sparkle to her eyes, strolled into the one-room apartment. Mistress Ena scrambled back into her shelter, disappearing behind a tissue.
Rinnie put the paper bag of groceries on the table. “I’ll make dinner.”
“I have the eight ‘til four shift today,” Andress said, and checked his alarm clock.
“We’ve got hours and hours before you leave for work.” Rinnie leaned close and pecked him on the cheek, her breath — unusually sweet — wafting into his flared nostrils. “Let’s enjoy ourselves.”
#
“There!” Rinnie wagged her finger at a corner of the room. “Don’t you see it?”
Andress fumbled for his voice. “Is it a mouse?”
“I don’t know.”
Andress dropped to his knees. Mistress Ena crouched behind the table leg, her whip raised, and her eyes wide with fright.
“She must’ve gotten out of her box,” he murmurred.
“You didn’t say you had a pet mouse,” Rinnie said.
“I told you about the – “ He looked at the tannerwort wallowing in its bowl of mud. “- Guinea pig.”
“But not about the mouse.”
“Sorry if it scared you.” He put Mistress Ena in her tissue box shelter.
“Does it have a name?” Rinni asked.
“Ena.”
“Can I see?”
“She’s scared,” Andress said. “You scared her. It’s okay. I understand. Most people are squeamish when it comes to pet mice.”
“Especially if they get loose,” Rinnie said, laughing. She bounded into the bathroom, shutting the door tightly. When it clicked closed, Andress tapped the tissue box and Mistress Ena emerged.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Of course. I would’ve gotten back myself. I didn’t need – “
“What were you doing out?”
“She was napping. I wanted to explore. I can’t spend all my time on the tabletop.”
“How did you get down?”
“I can get anywhere I want, anytime I want. I’m not your prisoner, Icari Moro.”
“I didn’t say you were,” he mumbled. At the sound of the toilet flushing, Mistress Ena dashed into her box. Andress sat on the bed. He was surprised to see Rinnie emerge wearing black bikini underwear and high-heeled shoes, her hair brushed and shining, her lips glazed and glossy, her narrowed eyes intriguing, beckoning.
“Glad to be home from work?” she asked. Andress managed a nod. “Let’s make sure,” she continued, and sat beside him on the bed.
#
They walked holding hands and Rinnie’s hair bounced against the back of her neck. She’d visited a beauty school that a friend attended and had had her hair washed, its split ends trimmed, its wasted body fluffed and styled. Waves of soft tresses enhanced her wide eyes and broad features. She was pretty, Andress thought. Even the pin-prick red blemishes on her cheeks and forehead didn’t detract from her attractive face.
Rinnie had recently started working as a bike messenger and she raved about riding in the heavily trafficked streets, dodging cars and buses and arrogant pedestrians. She liked starting off from the apartment at six in the morning, returning at four in the afternoon, exhausted but flushed with a feeling of accomplishment, glad to share her earnings with Andress, to contribute to what he distinctly heard her call, “Our home.”
He enjoyed being with her.
“You’re good to me,” she said while they sat close to one another on a bench in a park tucked into a corner where several streets met in competing intersections. The pungent aroma of flowers and cut grass won over the exhaust fumes spilling across the curb.
Rinnie rested her head on Andress’ shoulder. He put his arm across her back. He watched the passersby. He’d never had moments like this in Lavelzein. Just rusty cage floors, cold iron bars and Mistress Ena’s whip.
He felt a pang of hunger and glanced sideways at Rinnie. He wanted her strength. He wanted to taste the victory over life that she’d so recently acquired. He yearned to savor her dreams and delight in her hopes.
“It’s like I’m in a trance,” Rinnie said. “I’ve dreamt of this. Being happy. That angel I told you about? She told me I could achieve this. Is it trivial?” She kissed his cheek. “It’s not to me.
“Rinnie – “
“Renee,” she corrected. “Rinnie’s an awful nickname. They – my friends? Some friends! They called me that because I was such a dog. Like my nighttime angel says, I am so much more. You’ve made me more.”
“There’re things you don’t know,” he began. “About me.” He stared at a strand of her hair plastered against her pimpled forehead.
#
“Watch,” he said, standing at the open window. They had eaten, made love, showered together in the narrow metal stall, arms around each other, soap in their eyes making them both cry.
Renee stood with her arms crossed over her chest. Her sweat shirt clung to her back where the water from their shower hadn’t yet dried.
Andress cautioned, “Don’t be afraid.” A breeze pushed its way into the room, slithering through the open window. His shoulder blades quivered. His back muscles rippled. He tensed his arms and legs and torso, and then he sprouted wings. Slowly, his body reduced in size and he transformed from a creature that looked human to one that was distinctly avian.
He watched Renee’s stare. This was the truth he needed to convey. He wouldn’t devour her. He wouldn’t consume her as he would the prey he’d now stalk. He’d keep her safe from himself.
But Renee’s stare revealed a innate horror. And her horror quickly became dread, her face bloodless, eyes wide, her chin quivering.
And then she was gone.
Not in a flash, but in a whimper and a cry, gathering up her clothes, quickly putting on shorts and sandals. She stumbled out of the apartment, crying. Andress hovered near the open window. Hunger gnawed at his brain. He had no choice but to fly into the night, high into the sky and far enough, high enough, that the sight of Renee running down the street wouldn’t tempt him.
#
“Did you hunt?”
Andress hovered near the ceiling for a moment. Mistress Ena stood outside her shelter, her hands on her hips, her leather skirt glistening with blood. Something red and unrecognizable lay next to the tannerwort leaning back on its haunches as it cleaned its sharp claws with its tongue.
“Did you?” Andress asked once he had assumed his accustomed form. He looked down at the mess on the table. “Looks like you did.”
“The important question,” Mistress Ena said, stressing each individual word, “is whether or not – “
“I ate! Okay? And not – not the girl.”
Ena laughed. “Why not? Wasn’t she ready? Isn’t that what you’ve been doing all this time, ripening her for yourself?”
“No.”
“Making her strong and happy so you could devour her whole, turn her back into the sniveling wreck she’d been when you brought her here?”
“No!”
“Then what have you been doing all this time, Icari Moro?”
He shut his eyes and saw Renee’s soft face, remembered the wet feel of her tongue lapping the inside of his mouth.
“She can never accept you,” Mistress Ena said. “She proved that.”
He nodded. It had been a mistake to think otherwise. But it would have been a disaster to continue without telling her what he was. He had planned to show her and then tell her of Lord Starks and Mistress Ena and of his life in Lavelzein.
“I could have told you so,” Mistress Ena said. “And don’t think you could have refrained from devouring her one night when the wind howls and ice coats the window. You would have thought, take her now. Yes. Take her and build her up again. Rob her of her spirit now. Give her back that spirit later. Whisper encouragement each night, loving her, holding her, helping her.”
Andress glared at Mistress Ena. “It was you!” He advanced and leaned against the table. Mistress Ena backed away. “You were the angel she told me about. You encouraged her. You whispered to her when she was sleeping. That’s why I found you on the floor that time. It was you!”
“That’s ridiculous. Why would – “
“You brought about the changes, just like you trained me. You trained Renee to be – what? Strong? Beautiful? Desirable? So I’d want to devour her? Prove how right you are? Prove how much I don’t belong here?”
“I never spoke to her.”
“Liar!” Andress slapped the table with his hand, making Mistress Ena fall backwards. The tannerwort bellowed, rising up on two hind legs, salvia dripping from its long incisors, its curved tusks cutting the air.
“You’re wrong,” Ena stammered, and scrambled to her feet and dodged Andress’ fist when he slammed the table once more. She ran to the tannerwort, signaling it with frantic hand gestures. Turning around, she slapped her whip at Andress’ fingers when he tried to grab her.
The tannerwort dropped to its knees and she mounted its bare back, grasping a length of knotted cord wound around its neck. She screamed, her words indistinct, drowned by the bellowing beast.
“It was you! You!” Andress roared, moving around to the other side of the table to cut her off. She expertly guided the tannerwort sideways, dodging Andress’ fists. Pulling back on the cord, she made her mount leap into the air.
A flash of light, the squeal of a door sliding open, the touch of cold air swamping the room, and Mistress Ena and her tannerwort were gone.
Andress studied the bare white wall. Only cracks in the plasterboard, nothing more. There’d be no visible line where the veil had parted. There’d be no sign of how Mistress Ena had escaped. He imagined she returned to the same point in time and space she’d left many weeks ago.
Renee!
Find her, he told himself. Explain it to her. Cajole her. Urge her to come back.
He opened the apartment door, ready to dash down the three flights of stairs, out into the night and the city streets, where he’d seek her in familiar places.
Renee sat in the hallway, her back against the wall. She sat at the end of the hall, next to the stairwell, her clothes in a pile beside her, her arms wrapped around her knees.
“Renee,” Andress called. “You didn’t go far,” he added, stooping. He tentatively touched her arm, pulled at the fabric of her sweatshirt. “I’m sorry I frightened you.”
“What are you?” she asked, turning her red and swollen eyes in his direction. “Are you a monster?”
“Come back inside. I’ll explain everything.”
“I heard you screaming.”
“I’ll tell you all about it.” Standing, he extended his hand and she took it and he pulled her to her feet.
“Can I trust you?” Renne asked.
“Can I trust you?” he asked in reply.
Renee bent down and picked up the clothes she’d hastily bundled when she fled. Holding them tight against her chest, she walked with Andress back into the apartment, where she inspected the empty dish where the tannerwort had rested, the empty box Mistress Ena had used as a shelter.
After he finished telling her of his earlier life, of Lavelzein and Lord Starks, he said, “We should probably find another place to live.”
“Why?” Renee asked.
“Mistress Ena could come back.”
Renee laughed. “We’ll chase her away if she does.” She took hold of Andress hand. “We’ll chase her off, chase her back to – . What was the name of that place?”
“Lavelzein,” Andress told her.
“We’ll chase her back to Lavelzein.” Renee smiled with her eyes as well as her mouth. Engulfed by her glow, Andress pulled her into his arms and kissed her, savoring the taste of her soft lips, the scent of her breath, and the feel of her flesh.
The End
