Demon of Dreams (Vesperwood Academy: Incubus #1)

7. Noah

7

NOAH

T he day after I met with Lew, I had a long set of sparring sessions with some Hunter seniors, most of them weapon-bonded by now. It was exhausting. I was good, and I had practice fighting against a host of paranormal creatures with different weaponry and fighting styles. But I wasn’t as fast as I once was, and each year, I noticed it more.

I’d lost so much, and speed was the least of it, but it rankled.

Still, sparring with the seniors was good for me. It kept me fresh, and kept me useful for the rest of my students. The seniors were, at most, twenty-two. Younger and quicker than I was, but with far less experience. And none of them had ever fought an opponent who truly sought to kill.

I hoped they never did, but I wanted them prepared anyway.

There was a dead sparrow on my doorstep when I got back to my cabin on Vesperwood’s grounds that evening. Another present from Mouse. Most of the time, she brought me voles or moles or, yes, the mice that were her namesake. But not today.

I preferred the rodents to birds, overall. They were smaller, and easier to clean up. Plus, I knew the statistics about outdoor cats and local bird populations. But there was nothing I could do.

Mouse had adopted me two years ago, but she refused to come inside the cabin. She’d evaded every trap I’d put out for her. She seemed to know that if I caught her, she’d be stuck inside a building for the rest of her life. She liked her freedom too much for that.

I tried not to feel bad for the small animals she left me. That was life. You were born, you lived, you died. In the animal kingdom, death by predation was common. It was the human world where that kind of death was rarer.

I was a predator in the human world. Or, at least, I had been. If I didn’t feel bad about the human lives I’d taken, why should I care about voles and sparrows?

I shouldn’t. But I did.

There was a meow in the darkness at the bottom of my steps as I unlocked my cabin door. I flicked on the light inside and looked back over my shoulder. Mouse slunk out from underneath the steps and flowed up to twine around my ankles. Her dark tortoiseshell coat was a mix of charcoal and gold in the light that spilled out of the cabin.

I bent down, just to stroke her fur, but before I could reach her, she jumped down to the ground with a hiss. She sat there, staring at me, her tail flicking in wary expectation.

“I wasn’t trying to pick you up,” I told her. “I’ve had enough scratches and bites from you for one lifetime. Believe me, I’m not making that mistake again.”

She just watched me, then meowed a second time. I could have sworn there was a note of impatience in it.

“Alright, alright. Just give me a minute. I need to open a fresh tin.”

I stepped inside the cabin, leaving the door ajar, in case she wanted to come in and warm up. She wouldn’t, but I did it anyway.

The cabin wasn’t actually that warm. It was one room, heated by a wood-burning fireplace, and I made sure the fire was out when I left each morning. I’d light a new one in a minute.

I rolled my neck and stretched out my shoulders, which made the center of my chest ache. Well, ache more . It had ached for the past seven years, but physical strain never helped.

I filled a chipped coffee mug from the sink and drank deeply. Then I got a fresh tin of cat food out of the cabinet and scooped it into a bowl for Mouse. I put water in a second bowl, even though it was pointless. She never drank from it.

I’d heard that cats preferred running water for drinking, but the creek that snaked through Vesperwood’s grounds was mostly iced over this time of year. I had no idea where she was getting her water from instead. Maybe Superior itself? The image of a tiny cat bending down to lap from that giant lake made me chuckle.

I set both bowls on the top step outside, then stood up and leaned against the doorframe, watching Mouse creep up the steps to eat. The cold air blowing in through the door made the cabin feel warm by comparison. I caught the scent of snow on the wind. If I remembered correctly, we were due for flurries overnight.

Mouse ate daintily, stopping to look up at me every now and then before returning to her food. She didn’t come by every night. In the summer, she’d disappear for a week or more, and even in the winter, I could go days without seeing her.

I had a hunch she didn’t need the food I gave her. That she ate it more out of politeness than anything else. Perhaps, with her gifts of mice and voles, she was worried about me getting enough food.

She did at least sometimes sleep in the shelter I’d made for her. It was just an old fruit crate lined with wool blankets and covered with plywood. It was around the side of the cabin, backed up against the wall so it could catch a little warmth by contact. But it was rare for her to still be there when I stepped outside in the mornings.

And sure enough, as soon as she was done eating, she jumped off the steps and merged with the night without so much as a thank you meow.

“Bye,” I called out to the darkness. “You’re welcome.”

I needed a shower, so as soon as I got the fire going, I covered it with a grate and stepped into the bathroom. It was a small, ‘ modern ’ addition to the cabin, built in the nineteen fifties. It was cramped, and covered in peeling linoleum, but it gave me indoor plumbing with hot water, so I wasn’t going to complain. I needed it on a night like this.

I stripped, leaving my clothes on the floor, and stepped into the scalding water. Steam filled the tiny room quickly, and I closed my eyes, letting the water roll over me. My whole body was sore.

Was I getting too old for this job? I wondered sometimes.

I’d taken the position under duress. I’d never wanted to teach, never wanted to be here. I hadn’t even wanted to live, when Isaac found me. I’d only agreed because Isaac had promised to help me carry out vengeance. He swore we’d be fighting the same enemy, if I joined him.

But it had been the better part of a decade without a sign of Argus. I was sure he wasn’t dead, though I couldn’t explain why. I just knew I would feel it if he were gone.

But seven years later, I was no closer to finding him, to killing him, than I had been on the day I’d lost everything.

Maybe I should leave. Give it all up and go back to hunting Argust full time. I worried that Vesperwood was making me soft. Worried that I’d come to care about things, about people, who ultimately didn’t matter. People who distracted me from my real goal.

The only thing that kept me here was that I had no idea how to find Argus on my own. And I knew I’d die if I left Vesperwood for too long.

I didn’t mind the idea of dying. I relished it, truthfully. Being reunited with Tara and Ben. It was a nice dream. But I didn’t really believe that it would happen.

I was fairly sure death was just death, with nothing after it. But I didn’t mind that idea either. Letting go, laying down my arms, letting my body sink back into the earth. A final, eternal relief from the pain I’d been carrying for so long.

But not while Argus lived.

No, Argus would die before I did. I’d promised myself that. Promised Ben.

I stepped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around my waist, and wiped a hand across the foggy mirror. My face stared back at me, so tired, so much older than it used to be. Sometimes I felt like I’d aged a hundred years, the day Ben died.

Abruptly, the face of the kid at the Balsam Inn popped into my mind. He’d looked so naive. So guileless. Even masturbating in a men’s room, he’d looked innocent.

Was I ever that young? I knew I had been, at one point. But it felt like a lifetime ago, not just a decade and change.

As the steam dissipated, the glass cleared enough to remind me why I hated mirrors. Why I avoided being undressed as much as possible. It wasn’t modesty. It was the unhealing wound on my chest.

The wound was a palm’s-width, jagged circle of angry red scars with streaks of black rot, and tender, still raw tissue in the very center. It oozed a deep red trickle of blood every time it tore open, which happened about once a day.

It wasn’t that I’d never given it a chance to heal. But no matter how much I rested, it never went away. I’d tried all sorts of remedies, talked to various healers. But no one had been able to heal it completely. And on days when I pushed my limits physically, it seemed to me to grow bigger. That was probably just my imagination and dark mood. But still.

Seven years and it had never fully healed. The best I could do was keep it contained, and keep from giving in. I wasn’t going to lie down and let it claim me. My body was mine to command, and I wasn’t done using it yet.

The wound sat above my heart, and it pulsed in sick syncopation with that muscle. Every heartbeat pumped fresh blood through my body, and with each beat, the wound throbbed and shuddered in perverted imitation.

Most days, I could ignore it, if I stayed busy. Most nights, I tried to pretend it didn’t exist. And when I did catch sight of it, of the rot at the center of my body? I told myself that I’d earned it. That it was right for me to have it. Something to remind me not to infect others with my touch. Something to warn others off, should I ever forget.

There was a reason I’d seen Lew without his clothes on, but he couldn’t say the same for me.

I met my own gaze in the mirror and shook my head. I was never as young as that kid at the Balsam Inn, because I’d been poisoned from the beginning. I just hadn’t noticed it at first.

My life had been on a trajectory of pain and loss since the arrow was first released at my birth. I’d accepted that. There was no use wishing things were different, that I could ever have been so pure.

I was shame, and vengeance, and that was enough.

Because that was all there was.