Chapter 18 #2
“You dare defy me?” His father’s thick fingers tightened on the gun. “Do you want to die with her, then? Because if you lie with the deer this time, boy, so help me, you’ll be treated like one.”
“Even deer have antlers,” Cal quoted softly.
His father’s eyes narrowed with reptilian fury. He leveled the barrel of his rifle at Cal’s chest. “I strongly suggest,” he began, rage pouring from every word, “that you rethink that stance.”
Cal looked at the gun. “You’ll have to remove the safety if you want to scare me.”
A knock sounded at the door before he could do just that. His father jumped, squeezing the trigger instinctively. There was a loud click that made both of them visibly tense.
His father recovered first. Giving Cal a dark look, he arranged his face into the most basic semblance of humanity before twisting around to open the heavy front door.
A woman stood on the porch, hand still raised.
She was wearing a turquoise suit that was already starting to wrinkle, her face heavily made up.
“Mr. Cullraven,” she said brightly. “Shelly Mable, Cable 16, local news. We were hoping to get a quick tour of your mansion for tonight’s segment.
Helena Peters sent us your way, said you were open to the public.
” Her eyes skipped over him, going to Cal.
Her expression faltered. “Unless it’s a bad time? ”
His father’s jaw tightened, giving his smile a ghoulish quality.
“Regrettably, I’m afraid Ms. Peters misled you.
This is a private residence and tours are available by appointment only.
My daughter’s website . . . confuses people,” he said tightly, “but let me see if my wife is around to show you the place. After all—” he gave a false laugh “—it’s festival day. ”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Shelly, after an awkward pause.
His father inclined his head, as if to agree that he was constantly extending his largesse to the undeserved.
Cal and the reporter watched him saunter upstairs, his grip on his weapon relaxed and familiar.
He could see her clocking the wallpaper, the portraiture, the expensive antique furniture, as the cameraman fumbled to clean the misty vapor from his lens.
Then their eyes met and she gave him a blue-white smile that was considerably more enthusiastic than the one she’d given his father. “Shelly Mable,” she said. “And you are?”
“Caledon Cullraven,” he said. “The second.”
Her smile grew wider. “Just like the statue in the square! We were just admiring it.”
Cal smiled tightly, feeling as if wires were pulling at his flesh. Undaunted, she continued.
“My goodness, it’s an impressive sight—and the inscription at the base . . . so cryptic and mysterious!—but I can see why your parents gave you that name. You’re quite an impressive sight, too. Why, you could be the spitting image of your—”
“Great-grandfather,” he said, in an exasperated tone. He glanced at the stairs, wondering what his sparrow was doing. It was nearly time for lunch but he hoped she hadn’t eaten yet. She’d told him her illnesses didn’t last that long . . .
“You sure you don’t have a painting rotting in your attic?
” the reporter teased, drawing his eyes back to her.
“Wouldn’t that make for an amusing ghost story?
The founder of the town rising from the dead and going walking once a year—every festival night, perhaps.
It just gives me the shivers to think about. ”
“Yes,” Cal said, not finding it very amusing at all. “Excuse me.” Knowing his father waited upstairs, he squeezed past Shelly and her cameraman to go back outside, despite both their protests.
“Wait! I was hoping to ask you a few questions about the festival!”
“Ask my father,” Cal responded, without turning back around.
The town center was a bustle of activity.
Several large cattle trucks were parked near the western entrance to the woods.
He could hear the deer bleating inside them.
Their ears had been clipped with orange tags to designate them as the festival deer.
Tomorrow, the local restaurants would serve hyper-seasonal dishes made from the meat of tonight’s catches, some of which his family would prepare personally.
Today, they were still alive, hearts beating, blissfully unaware of the fate that awaited them.
Their heads appeared over the steel edge of the gated back when they jumped, before landing against the metal flooring with a loud, banging thud, followed by the clatter of their hooves on the grating.
The gate was too high to give them proper clearance, but was just low enough to give them a cruel glimpse of freedom.
For the first time he could remember, Cal found himself with the rather perverse urge to undo the latch, and loose them early.
“Cal!” His sister’s voice drilled into his ear as her hand gripped his bicep hard enough to startle. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“The woods,” he said impulsively.
“Ah, ah, ah, you know the rules.” She steered him back towards the house, away from the trailers, and he wondered absently if she had a better read on him than he’d thought. “No cheating. You were going to pluck a deer for your own, weren’t you?”
“I was going for a little walk to clear my head.”
“Of course you were.” She widened her eyes at him. “Does this have anything to do with Nadine? I noticed she didn’t show up at breakfast this morning. Nor did you.”
“Very little escapes you, as ever.” Cal sighed. It morphed into a growl when he saw Ben striding out of the house, looking far too pleased with himself. “Yes, I spent the morning with my sparrow.”
“But Father said—”
“What did Father say?” Ben stopped in front of them, giving Cal a brief once-over, before looking pointedly at the empty space to his right. “Where’s your so-called sparrow, Baby Cal?”
“Regaining her strength.”
Ben looked momentarily unsettled. Then he laughed nastily. “Well, I suppose she’ll be needing it for tonight.”
He waited for a response. He didn’t get one.
“You’re not going to lie with her,” Ben said, though it sounded more like a childish taunt than the warning he intended. “She’s not your fucking sparrow. Whatever fun you’ve been having, it ends tonight. She’s going in the book.”
“Father already threatened me. If he didn’t frighten me, why do you think you will?”
“Cal, don’t,” Odessa said.
Ben glared at him. “I don’t think you understand what the stakes are.”
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“Either you kill the deer or you die.” Ben poked him in the chest, hard.
“You’re a Cullraven, but not blooded. Not fully.
In fact, right now, I’m not seeing much to put you above the rest of the lowly herd and frankly, neither does Father.
We’ve both decided: it’s time for your initiation. You’re either with us—or against us.”
“Remove your hand from me.”
“I will kill her if you don’t,” his brother whispered, his dark promise further escalating the internecine conflict that had been blazing between them since his marriage to Noelle. “Cullraven blood rots the veins of the wilting, Baby Cal. And if you can’t kill, what good are you?”
“Ben.” Odessa looked up at him worriedly. “What if he really does think she’s his sparrow? I mean, she hasn’t even tried to get away.” Not like Noelle hovered, unspoken.
“Can’t you see he’s been cossetting her like a little pet? There’s no challenge in that.” Ben gave her a blistering look. “He’s as soft as our mother, unfit to bear the family name.”
“Are we ready?” Shelly’s voice echoed through the courtyard as she approached, trailed by his parents, his father walking ahead of his mother, who was wearing a thin linen dress that looked starched and steamed.
“I thought we could take some pictures in front of the house of the proud founding family! What do you think?”
Odessa gave him a look that he would have called concern, had it come from anyone but her.
It vanished instantly as she put on her game face, prancing to arrange herself in front of the camera in a way that had his mother frowning.
“Where do you want me?” she asked teasingly, to the young cameraman, making him blush. “I want you to get my good side.”
Cal posed on the outer edge beside her, one thumb hooked through his belt-loops. The founder of the town, he thought, as the camera flashed. Rising from the dead . . .
That was the precise purpose of this festival, though, was it not? His great-grandfather’s dark and bloody legacy, paraded from the grave to haunt the town that had spurned his violent practices and was now forced to endure this continued spectacle.
“My family has owned these woods for over a hundred years,” his father said, speaking into the camera with the same confidence he used to fool his colleagues and investors.
It dripped like poison honey, each word burnished to a lethal, shining point.
“Once a year, we open them up to share our legacy with the world.” In a death lottery, Cal added silently.
“Hunting,” the reporter prompted, looking up from her notes. “Hunting . . . deer?”
“More than that.” His father wet his lips.
“Oh, it’s more than that. It’s about man versus nature.
Man and his God-given dominion over nature.
Out here in the woods, you might very well see god, or something like it.
My grandfather—he was a visionary. He could see the toll of the industrial world: men were never meant to be buttoned up into finery and shut up within four walls. ”
(That sounds like a cult)
Shelly looked at his father’s expensive hunting clothes and said nothing. Cal noticed and felt himself warm to the reporter unexpectedly.
“What was man created for?” she asked in an even tone.
“Freedom.” It came out as a growl that startled both Shelly and his mother.
Shelly and the cameraman exchanged a glance, apparently deciding that they had done a sufficient amount of questioning with Nathaniel Cullraven.