Chapter Eight
Sera, drained from the healing circle with the guardians, slogged back to her hotel, showered, and slipped into bed. Sleep took her quickly--dark, blank, and mercifully deep. After an hour, whispers began to fray the edges of her consciousness. Soft, sibilant voices coaxed her to open her eyes, to rise out of the nothingness of sleep. She rolled onto her side, searching for comfort, and forced herself still. The voices returned. Whispering. Calling her name. She opened her eyes and sat up slowly. Blue moonlight washed the room. No one stood near her. The faint must of old, locked-away books hung in the air, but beneath it came something else: that sound. The whispers. Sera tilted her head, fully awake now, listening hard. At first, they seemed to come from beyond the door, somewhere down the stairs. Then the sound shifted closer, as if it had begun at the door itself. She shivered.
She eased out of bed, her bare feet landing softly on the carpet, and crept toward the door.
A cold tingle climbed the back of her spine. She stopped with one hand near the latch and turned. Behind her, where the moonlight failed to reach the corner, Caliban crept out of the darkness. Up close, he was too tall for anything human, his body stretched as if some giant hand had pulled him out of shape. His face nearly resembled a man’s, but not quite. The nose was too thick and long, more snout than nose. His ears curved over the top of his head and were patched with coarse fur. The skin was missing from his left cheek, as though someone had carved it away. Beneath it, muscle and veins glistened, leaking dark fluid down his chin. His teeth were canine. His eyes, yellow in the moonlight, held a wounded, doglike longing. He snarled and growled at her, but curiosity flickered behind the sound.
Sera held his gaze. Fear tightened her throat, but something else rose beneath it: pity, sharp and unwelcome. Caliban spoke in a low, guttural voice. “He’s coming for you, Sera.” He inched forward.
“What does he want?” Sera asked. Her healer’s instinct warred with the warning in her bones. The creature looked both ferocious and lonely, like a feral dog that had learned to expect the belt before the hand.
“Jack wants what he always wants.” The beast drew his lips over his teeth, the snarl tightening into something almost human. “A new sensation. A new body. A new way to feel alive.” His eyes shone. “Will you give that to him, Sera?”
“Did he send you here to find me, or to frighten me?”
The beast lowered his head. When he spoke again, the words dragged out slowly, as if each one had been taught through pain. “Yesss. I find what Jack wants. I do what Jack needs.”
She lifted her hand toward the ruined side of his face. Caliban recoiled. “What happened here?” she asked.
Caliban’s growl thickened. “His punishments are terrible when I disobey. He knows where pain hides. He knows how to make it last.” His eyes flashed briefly, then dimmed. “But sometimes he rewards me. Sometimes he gives me a feast of my own.” A long red tongue slid over his lips, slick with saliva, and for one breath his hunger eclipsed his fear.
Against every instinct that told her to run, Sera reached for him again. This time, she did not touch the wound. She hovered her hand beside it and let the light gather in her palm. Pure energy flowed from her into him, warm and steady. Caliban froze. The torn cheek stopped oozing. New skin drew itself upward from the ragged edge, fresh and pink, sealing over muscle and vein until his face was whole.
Caliban lashed out, his claws raking the air so close to her face that she felt the wind of them. “What have you done?” He pressed both hands to his restored cheek. Terror, not gratitude, widened his eyes. “Jack will be angrier.” Then he lifted into the night and vanished, thinning like mist swallowed by fog.
When he was gone, Sera stood trembling in the moon-washed room, exhausted and too restless to return to bed. She needed to cleanse the fear from her skin. In the shower, she scrubbed herself with homemade soap laced with honey until the scent clung to her like a charm. Then she boiled water in the hotel’s in-room coffee pot and pulled herbs from her bag: fresh lemongrass to purify, ginger to wake her tired body, dill to sharpen her conscious mind, and bay leaf to open the sight she wished she could close. She poured the tea and sank into a chair, breathing in the steam as it curled around her face. For twenty minutes, she sat cross-legged and stared at the blank wall, letting each thought drift in, loosen, and pass gently out again. She knew what she had to do.
TO BE CONTINUED