The Devil's Mistress by David Barclay (reading well .txt) 📕

“You murderer!” Marianne shrieked.

Then the same force which had dropped the two men flung her into the wall. She tried to get back up and fell again, her eyes rolling dazedly in her head.

“Isabella, stop,” Jacob yelled.

His beloved stood before the balcony doors, a vision haunting in its beauty. Terrible in its power.

Jacob advanced to the center of the room. “We were going away together. We were to have a farm and a stable. Remember?”

The figure paused. “A stable?”

“Just a simple life, away from this place. We were going to be happy.”

And then he spoke the words he could not find in Moberrey’s cottage, the truth which had been burning a hole in him since the day of her capture. “I was a fool, Isabella. I was a fool for not seeing what was right in front of me. Everything I wanted—the house, the farm, the horses—they would have meant nothing without you. You are all I ever wanted.”

Her features contorted, and for a moment, there were two sets of eyes staring at him through her face. It was as if she were two women fighting for the same, tortured soul.

“No,” she said. “You weren’t there.”

Jacob extended his hand. “Come back to me. Whoever this person is, it is not you. You don’t belong here, Elly. You don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“You left me,” she insisted, but she looked scared now. The color was returning to her cheeks. The amber eyes were fading to gray.

He took another step toward her. “Take my hand.”

Just as his fingers closed through hers, she recoiled in sudden, red fury. Her skin became as ice. Her eyes became as cinders.

“WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME?”

A hand was suddenly at his throat, squeezing the life from him. Her flesh had become as stiff as tree bark, her fingers wrapping round his neck like ancient roots. Most terrible of all, she was grinning, her lips stretched back to reveal a monster’s mouth of wolf-like teeth. The tongue behind them was a severed, black stump.

“No,” he choked.

Then Hunter was there, leaping across the room and plunging his knife into the round of her shoulder. She howled with two voices, her body twisting in pain and fury. The Indian jerked her hand away from Jacob’s throat, and there was a sound like snapping wood.

As Jacob collapsed, she turned her rage upon her attacker, flinging herself into his chest. She was half Hunter’s size, and yet the force carried both of them across the room, raking more books from the shelves and sending the couch onto the floor. Thomas’s body toppled into a puddle of its own fluids.

Hunter pushed with the force of a giant, but the girl held him easily. The hand which had strangled Jacob hovered over his stomach, and suddenly, the fingers began to change. Stake-like appendages grew from their tips, sinking through the Indian’s ragged shirt and into his gut. He grunted as they pierced his flesh.

Another shape darted through the room, blinding Jacob in a flurry of cloth. Then he gained his bearings and snatched his flintlock from the floor. It was already primed and loaded. “Elly, stop!”

Her fingers grew longer, snaking and twisting through Hunter’s abdomen. The Indian reached for his second knife, then dropped it, his strength finally giving way to agony.

“Isabella,” Jacob yelled.

She turned to him with a hideous smile. Her fingers dripped blood. Her face sparkled madness.

Jacob closed his eyes and fired. The ball struck her in the side, flinging her over the furniture and into the far wall. This time, the cry that escaped her lips was not just of two women, but many, as if a gathering of dark voices were shrieking in mortal terror.

“Elly!”

Jacob opened his eyes and crawled to reach her, but when he looked beyond the overturned couch, her body was gone. There was a puddle where she had been, a trail of blood stretching from the floor to the balcony and out into the night. Several large insects flitted round its outline, then buzzed off into the dark.

On the floor, Hunter was breathing heavily, one hand over his belly in a futile attempt to staunch the bleeding. He looked at Jacob. “You are terrible at saving people.”

Jacob found the second knife on the floor and began cutting strips of his own shirt. There was no water to be had, but he dabbed the man’s wounds anyhow. They were very deep.

He managed to hold it together until he ran out of shirt. Then Jacob stopped, sitting back upon his knees and clutching his mouth as if he might hold the sorrow in.

Hunter took a deep breath. “When I was a boy, my father would leave the village to hunt. Sometimes he would stalk a deer for days, chasing it through the woods until the animal could run no more. One winter day while he was gone, a shadow came to our village. It stole a boy child and took him into the forest.” He paused, sucking in a great lungful of air. “The next year it came back and took another. Then the next year, and the next. Always while the men were gone, and always the youngest of our tribe. When I came of age, I vowed it would never happen again. For as long as I have been able to wield a bow, I have stalked these creatures. I have tracked them to their homes and killed them in their caves. I have seen their kettles, their…” He paused, searching for the word. “Potions. They are not man, Jacob. Whatever your mate was, she is no longer.”

“You have a strong name,” Jacob said.

“I am of the Shawnee. I am true to my name and true to my vows.” He smiled when he saw the growing dread in Jacob’s eyes. “Fear not for me, Jacob of Blackfriar. I am still of this world. With your physician, I may even see another day.”

Jacob took one of his hands and