After escaping from the werewolves that wanted her dead, Marcy Davins is living the life as an art curator in a south american museum. She's got a new name, a new job, a new boyfriend, even an adopted daughter... All in a world recently introduced t...
For Halloween I pulled a song from Zakar. For Thanksgiving, here's one for Marcy as she grows from the start of Dark Side and beyond. I like to picture the instrumentals here as a good background pace for this particular scene!
The first breath of air pulled the stiffness from my joints in a fiery gasp. But neither a breath of fire down the back of my throat nor the threat of something warm and fluid against my skin couldn't tear the chill from my veins. The cold only retreated deeper into my bones. I shivered. The earth around me rippled in brilliant streaks of sunshine. Water, came the dim thought, mirrored by the element's gentle caress against my swollen lips. I was laying in lukewarm water, pushed against the shore, with my lower back and legs fully blanketed by the tepid liquid. The relief from the cold proved only a mild benefit, as the numbness receded and stinging pain gripped my ribs.
Clutching my side, I pushed myself onto my knees, dragged my legs out of the water to sit wheezing among sun-warmed pebbles and waterlogged strips of red fabric. Water dripped off my legs and sides, cherry-tinted pearls that rolled into my shadow.
My face was felt like I'd been punched in the jaw by a charging rhino. Blood thickened the curve of my nails. Without picking it out, I reached with water-puckered fingertips to feel my chin, wincing at the lightest touch. Leaning over, I used the surface like a gently swaying mirror, touching the parts of my face that were bloody and bruised. Diluted in my slumber, the blood was a pale, distorted color concentrated along my throat and the delicate space around my ears that hadn't soaked like the rest of me.
Any deep breath or quick movement drew a sharp flinch from my core. Beneath my left breast my tender skin showed symptoms of heavy bruising. Wheezing in another breath, hand braced against my ribs, I looked across the crystalline water.
Spread across the surface shallows, like a tiny sea of sunken ships, were the tattered remains of my dress. Further on, the deep water hole held a purple tint in the light of dawn.
"Luc?" I coughed, tasting a split lip. I pushed damp hair from my face. "Luc?"
Leaves quivered along the forest floor just to my right. Within seconds a dark snout thrust through the emerald foliage. Zakar. Held in his teeth was Luciano's straw hat. The feline wore quite the catty grin as he padded down beside the boulder and pawed the Encantado's abandoned clothes. My, my, he said, long tail flicking at each syllable. He dropped the hat onto the man's balled shirt. Can you be a black widow if you were never married?
"Luc?" I called again, more urgent. A sharp spasm rocked through my core when I tried to stand. At a minimum, my ribs were bruised. "Fuck!" I gasped, wobbling towards the irreverent spirit.
Oh, you naughty little bird. You'll really have to wash that tongue out now. The dark cat stretched himself out along the boulder and turned his whiskers toward soft sunbeams. You know I can't bring this one back. I mean, I could have, if you'd left me enough.
Instinct and a deepening worry stopped me from calling out again. My toes turned against the smooth pebbles. I looked out past the tattered strips of crimson, out toward the deep water. Something pale bobbed against the distant shore. I scrambled towards it, hoping, unsure, and understanding all at once. Zakar stretched his spine and jumped down to follow me.
I got halfway around when I realized what the distorted blob was—or rather, had been. Brushed against the shore was part of a pink tail fin, gnawed to the bone as if a hyena had ravaged the carcass.
No, not a carcass. There wasn't enough left to call it that.
This wouldn't have happened if you had just listened to me. Zakar's voice was as innocuous as powdered arsenic. His tail rolled against my calves.
My shaking hands swallowed up my voice. I didn't look down at the feline, didn't kick him away. I couldn't stop looking at the fin. The closer I got, the more pieces of flesh and bone I found. That wasn't Luc. It couldn't be. I didn't. I couldn't. It was like a rabid animal had....
I warned you. I told you not to enter the water with him.
"Shut up!" I screamed, whirling on the cat. Pain kicked me in the lungs and I slipped headlong into the mess.
Zakar sprang an arm's length out of my reach. The tip of his tail lashed from side to side in short bursts. His ears had gone flat. What? he hissed, leering at me from the chewed tail. I'm just the messenger. You plan on eating me, too?
He acknowledged for the first time the dread I had felt for months. Brought to truth to my fears of waking up with blood in my teeth. Those long nights that stayed fuzzy and distant in my memory: he'd claimed I'd been eating monkeys and small game. It was easier to believe him than to think that I could've possibly...
The cat sunk his claws into the rendered fin for grip, then used his teeth to rip and devour slivers meat. The back of my throat convulsed. My stomach gave way to a puddle of bloody lumps.
My pulse raced. Dizzy aches radiated down my spine, strangling my stomach until there was nothing left to vomit. I couldn't breathe. The world turned, my vision faded.
But somehow I pulled myself onto my feet, pressed by the urgent, desperate instinct to leave. I had to get out of here. But above all else, I had to get Luc off of me.
I washed my face and body in the water, scrubbed hard enough my arms became streaked with my own blood. The sun shone above me as I rubbed congealed blood off my throat and from back behind my ears. The sun, that high and at this hour, would also be shining on dozens of people out enjoying the day's merits. I couldn't return to the hotel naked. With my ribs biting into my posture the whole way,I moved over to boulder with our dead flashlights, threw up again, just a pale foam, and then slipped on the dead man's clothes. After a moment's hesitation, I put on his hat to mask my bruised face.
In the back of my mind resonated a deep, throaty purr: Run along, Mirelle. We've got bigger fish to fry.
And I ran, despite the pain, despite the fear in my mind about what I was turning into. I ran through the wild wood knowing I could never run fast enough, never run far enough, to escape what had happened there.
So on that note, Happy Thanksgiving!
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