Chapter 15
Though several things are demanding my immediate attention, the first and most overwhelming is the noise. As the man’s jaw moves, the quilt grinds wetly between his teeth. I was correct. The stain on the blanket is saliva. Not drool, but a gradual soaking spread from the corner while he chews.
I blink, trying to get my brain into some order.
Two things are obvious: the first, that this is Kurt Schauerhammer, the dead husband. Who is not dead.
And the second, that I’m simultaneously wrong and not wrong about that observation, because he’s definitely a corpse.
Joren’s voice comes to me, pointing out the details.
The corpse’s corneas are clouded over, changing the eyes from a piercing dark brown to a cloudy gray.
Also observable is the eyeballs’ sunken nature, with much of the liquid disappearing within hours of death.
The lips are peeled back from his teeth, expression slack and lacking any muscle tone or tension, other than the relentlessly moving jaw.
Joren has no explanation for that, so he moves quickly on.
The fingers, visible on either side of the blanket holding it up, are black with rot, as is the tip of the nose.
I have no explanation for the glow, and neither does my imaginary Joren. It radiates from the corpse like a vapor, casting the entire room in an eerie white-blue shade.
I put a hand out to guide Berend so that he backs up. The corpse hasn’t reacted to our presence, and I don’t want it to. We need to leave. My palm finds Berend’s stomach. He shrieks, startled at the sudden touch.
The thing turns its head with a low creaking noise, like bone on bone. It doesn’t blink. It continues to chew. I step backward. We can still get out. We can still—
In the space between one breath and the next, the thing leaps out of the bed.
Berend pushes me without hesitation. I stumble to the side.
The thing lands on Berend, instead. I whirl, pistol raised, but it’s clinging like a tick, arms and legs encircling Berend, mouth fastened to the side of Berend’s neck.
My gun is out, but there’s no safe target. Berend’s already going pale. He stumbles wildly about the room, flailing as he tries to dislodge the attack.
I pull the knife from my boot and throw myself at them, stabbing the thing over and over again in the back. Berend hits the side of the bed and falls to the floor. The creature doesn’t even notice, chewing Berend’s neck with the same relentless rhythm it used on the quilt.
I scream in horror and frustration, but still the creature pays me no mind.
I slide my knife into the creature’s cheek and yank backward.
It breaks the seal between its mouth and Berend’s neck.
This, at last, gets its attention. It throws an arm into me.
I fly across the room and slam against the wall.
My vision dims. Spots flicker. Is the light getting brighter, or is it only in my head?
I try to stand. Berend needs me. Berend—
Berend stares at me from the floor, eyes wide and blank and unseeing. The thing detaches from his neck with a sound like a wet, lingering kiss. There’s nothing left to drink. Berend is dead.
I want to stand. I want to run. I want to scream. But it’s like trying to climb the wall of a canal. My mind is slippery. My body responds weakly and at a delay to every thought. There’s something warm and wet running down the back of my neck.
I push myself up. The world spins on its axis, tilting. The lights explode in my eyes and I slump back down, dizzy and disoriented. I lift the knife to defend myself, but end up staring dully at the blade, instead. I stabbed him a dozen times. I cut open his cheek. But there’s no blood.
The thing—the monster, before his death and even more after—turns toward me.
It clacks its teeth, clack-clack-clacks them.
Berend is gone, and I will be soon, and I never did anything I said I would.
I didn’t avenge my father. I didn’t take care of my mother.
And I didn’t keep my promise to my friends that we would catch Diavola together.
I didn’t kill her. I failed.
For all my bravura in the aftermath of so many deaths, I’d rather not see mine as it happens. I close my eyes. Diavola, not content to let me die alone despite her insistence that we’re all alone at the end, whispers in my thoughts. What are you doing here?
“I don’t know,” I murmur, my voice slurring.
But…Diavola’s never said that to me in my dreams, or in her letters. Which means either I’m having a new dream, or…
I turn my head, the room swimming. Next to me is a pristine white skirt and bare feet. Hanging at her side is a lantern, the gold flickering a wholesome challenge to the sickly glow of the monster.
It lunges at her. In a movement as graceful as if she’s dancing, Diavola shatters the lantern against him. The flame spreads instantly, devouring him as steadily as he devoured Berend.
There’s a shrieking noise, like a kettle letting off steam. The creature stumbles back to the bed. As the quilt lights on fire, he shoves it automatically in his mouth, jaw still moving even as he combusts like dried kindling.
Diavola picks me up. I do my best to drape an arm around her shoulders—I’m helping her?
She’s helping me?—as she carries me out of the burning room.
I blink, and we’re out in the warm evening air.
I blink again, and I can’t see flames or smell smoke.
Maybe I’m not blinking, I think as my head jerks up from where it was lolling against her neck and collarbone.
I’m on a park bench. The world is sideways. Diavola is crouched in front of me, considering me with those abyssal dark eyes.
“Your friend is dead,” she says.
I can’t cry. She’ll disappear if I take my eyes off her for even a second.
“Why did you come here? This isn’t one of yours.” She tilts her head in that birdlike way. I want to lunge forward and wrap my hands around her slender neck. I know if I try to move, I’ll pass out again. She knows it, too, which is doubtless why she’s still here. Mocking me.
“They needed help,” I say.
“It was a family squabble.” Her eyelids draw low, as if she’s trying to hide whatever’s happening inside her mind behind a curtain. “None of your concern.”
“He was dead. That man back there. He was already dead.”
“Death doesn’t matter. You should know that.”
“Death is the only thing that matters,” I whisper, and at last the tears form.
“Oh, Little Fox. I thought you’d read your father’s journals. I thought you understood what you were chasing.”
She leans close, the icy scent of her filling all my senses so the night disappears around us.
It’s sweeter than what lingers at her crime scenes, invigorating instead of painful.
There’s only the sight and smell of her.
Nothing else. My head is pounding to my pulse, the waves of pain getting faster and faster.
“You aren’t ready for this yet,” Diavola says, and she sounds sad, not triumphant or mocking. “Go home. Do the research you’ve neglected. I need you to be smarter than this. If you can’t even kill a simple vrykolakas, how can you ever expect to kill me once we’ve finished our work?”
She reaches out a hand and stops just shy of my cheek. I have the strangest impulse to shift so my skin rests against her palm. So she’s cradling me once more.
I need to kill her, though. It’s squeezing my lungs, making it hard to breathe. She stood over my father and made him kill himself. And now she’s standing over me and looking at me with…pity? Tenderness?
I want to scream, to claw, but it makes no difference. I don’t have my knife or my pistol anymore. My trap was never going to work. She’s right. How can I ever expect to kill her when I know so little about anything?
“What do you want from me?” At last the tears fall, tracing warmth down my cheeks to match the warm blood trickling from the base of my skull, soaking my collar.
She opens her mouth but pauses, like she’s changed her mind about what she’s going to say. “The same thing you want for yourself. To pay your father’s debts.”
She stands, and then hesitates nervously. It’s the first familiar movement I’ve seen her make. Everything else about her has an air of inhumanity to it, like she’s less a person than an idea, a dream, a nightmare. But she lingers, looking down at me.
“Be more careful, please,” she says, and then she leans down and brushes a kiss across my cheek, wetting her lips with my tears.
I close my eyes. After a few seconds or a few hours—time is as slippery as the blood I’m leaking—I can move without feeling like my skull is cracking in half, spilling everything I am out into the night. But it’s too late. Diavola is gone.
Berend. I stumble out of the park. I need to see to the bleeding, but I can’t yet.
Not until I get back to where I left that sweet, innocent man dead on the floor.
I follow the beacon of smoke rising into the dark sky.
When I arrive at the house, it’s fully engulfed in flames. There will be no retrieving Berend.
I stand, swaying, and watch it burn. The tears on my cheeks dry immediately from the heat of flames radiating outward. Even the fire knows I don’t deserve to mourn.
“Anneke!” a voice says.
I turn slowly, to see Detective Goldstein. He’s been saying my name for some time, I think.
“What happened here?” He has one hand on my shoulder, like he’s holding me up. Maybe he is holding me up. Everything feels like the sparks flying into the air, swirling and winking out. He swears. “You’re bleeding. We need to get you to a doctor.”
“It was the husband,” I say. “His grave is empty.”
“What? Where is he now?”
I point to the house. “Berend’s in there, too.”
Goldstein swears again. There are other men shouting all around us, throwing water on the surrounding houses to keep the fire from spreading.
This house can’t be saved. It shouldn’t be saved. Berend is dead. Monsters are real. Diavola’s gone. I’ve failed at everything.
“Not right now,” Goldstein says to an older man holding a paper in my direction.
I reach out and take it. My eyes struggle to focus, but there’s just enough light provided by the burning legacy of a man so evil not even death could stop him from hurting others.
It’s a telegram. For me. From Inge. About Dávid.
Your friend is dead, Diavola said. I assumed the wrong friend.
A keening wail splits the night air. It’s only when Goldstein bodily picks me up and carries me away that I realize it’s coming from me.