The Darkly Stewart Mysteries: The Woman Who Tasted Death Read online

  “Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s probably a moose. They’ve been known to try to mate with cars.”

  Jack was grasping.

  “We’re a really big car, Jack.”

  Catharine could find time for sarcasm in any situation.

  Darkly had an idea. “If it’s a bear, maybe it can smell the food.”

  She began shoving the grilled cheese crusts into her mouth as quickly as she could.

  “Darkly, stop! You’ll choke yourself.”

  Catharine sat down next to Darkly and held her close, while, once again, the whole RV shook with an impact. This time, it was on the side by the door.

  “Shit. That’s a dent.”

  Jack shot over to the side window and looked out again.

  “It’s pushed us up against the railing. I’m gonna start up the engine. That’ll scare it off.”

  “Jack, just drive away.”

  “How am I supposed to do that with the canopy rolled out, Cat?”

  “Don’t get mad at me.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  Jack pulled the keys from his pocket and fumbled nervously with the ignition key, eventually fitting it into the steering column. He turned the engine over, and the RV came to life. Then Jack turned on the headlights.

  “Holy shit!”

  Darkly saw all the color drain from her father’s face. She saw the green and red lights of the dashboard reflected in the glass above the steering wheel. Jack saw something very different. He looked back at Catharine.

  “Hold on. I’m going to get us out of here.”

  “But you said the canopy -”

  “Just hold on!”

  Jack put the RV into second gear and pressed his foot hard down on the accelerator. The wheels spun, but there was no movement forward. The wheel block at the front of the RV was still in place.

  Then they all heard the piercing howl. It sounded almost human, but deeper, with a menacing, underlying growl.

  Jack dropped the gear shift into reverse, and the RV immediately shifted backwards, slamming into a curved section of the guard rail.

  “We’re free,” her father said hopefully.

  Darkly could hear the canopy ripping and the struts snapping, as her father brought the RV into drive and gunned the engine. The vehicle jerked forward. They were moving.

  Jack swung the large steering wheel wildly around to the left and began making his way down the hill.

  “Out of the way!” Jack yelled at the thing outside the RV.

  A big thud echoed through the cabin, as Jack hit whatever was blocking their escape. Darkly felt the bumps, as first the front, then the back tires ran over something. Then the RV swerved sharply to the right. They were going too fast; Jack was losing control.

  Jack pumped the brakes, but the RV was now skidding off the dirt road. Nothing was going to stop it but the trees they were careening into.

  The RV rammed a cluster of birch trees. To the sound of branches scraping the windows and sides of the RV, Darkly was thrown under the table. The RV rolled forward in jolts until the trees finally forced it to stop.

  Darkly felt the engine sputter out under the floor where she lay, not wanting to open her eyes. She felt her mother pull her close and envelope her body. Then, she heard her father moan and call out, “Everyone okay?”

  “I think so,” Catharine replied.

  Jack tried to turn over the engine several times. Nothing. He turned off the headlights and didn’t say a word for several moments.

  Darkly knew what was going on. They were waiting. Waiting for whatever was going to happen next. She could feel the cool weight of her necklace on her skin. Darkly picked up the silver moon pendant and stroked it, as she always did in times of stress. The pock marks on the moon were set with shiny black rock. Where the pendant rested on her upper chest, a faint bluish rash covered the skin and spread out in faint rays like spider veins. The same spindly stain marked her thumb and forefinger.

  The pendant was not entirely benign. It was painful to wear, bringing what could only be described as a constant, yet minimal, electric shock to the skin, as though the silver content and her body were repelling one another.

  Darkly found the pain bearable now, even reassuring in its constancy. But with her arms strapped to her sides as a toddler, the pendant was excruciating. She would scream herself into exhaustion and eventual sleep, while her mother stroked her hair, crying softly and telling her daughter it would save her from a life of misery in the years to come.

  Soon after weaning, Darkly’s mother and father would leave her one weekend a month in the care of a family friend, so that they could follow their joint lifelong obsession: geology. From the Mojave Desert to the Badlands and the Great Plains, Catharine and Jack MacIntyre hunted one rock only. Meteorite. And in particular, meteorites with concentrations of an element born in supernovas.

  With silver recovered from the heavens, Catharine crafted her necklaces. Darkly spent many hours watching her mother bend heated metal into celestial shapes, manipulating the precious metal through thick gloves and pliers. But never did she see her parents sell a single item or wear one themselves.

  Before setting out on this family vacation, Darkly watched her mother put down the soldering iron for the last time. She packed several hundred necklaces into a wooden chest and placed it securely in the RV cupboard next to the propane stove-top fuel and the powdered milk.

  It could have been three minutes, or an hour, but the next thing did happen. Another piercing, primal howl was followed by more dead silence.

  Jack got out of the driver’s seat and rubbed his ribs. He crouched down next to Catharine and Darkly.

  “What is it, Daddy?”

  “Shhhh.” Jack put his hand on Darkly’s head. “Just be quiet.”

  He looked deeply into Catharine’s eyes. She knew, without him saying so, that he was going to confront what was outside.

  “It’s why we came here,” he said with wavering confidence.

  Jack got up and walked slowly to the door. He unlocked it and looked back at his wife and daughter.

  “It’s okay. I’ll be right back. Lock the door behind me.”

  He stepped out into the darkness.

  Catharine left Darkly’s side, walked slowly to the door and held her hand over the lock. She hesitated for a second, and then turned it.

  Outside, something was coming closer to Jack. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck. The forest was silent, as though the wind itself stopped blowing in anticipation. The earth held its breath.

  Inside, Darkly heard her father call out, “We’ve come back. We don’t want any trouble. I’m sorry we ran. You startled us, you see.”

  Darkly met her mother’s eyes, and Catharine pulled her close once again. Darkly heard her mother’s heart race and imagined it slowing until it stopped. Like everyone else, young and old, Darkly lived by hope. Hope that her inability to imagine an end to her own life would somehow inoculate those she cared about against the final outcome.

  Yet, in this instance, Darkly had a sixth sense that she would feel alone for the rest of her life. She clung to a woman who was already a million miles away from her.

  Jack saw the light in their eyes first. His voice shook as he said, “We’ve come to make our peace. We found a treatment. For your children. For the babies. They don’t have to live like this.”

  Jack’s body and senses tingled to the point of vibration. He felt the slightest temperature change on his skin, and a hundred different smells invaded his nostrils, filling his insides. They were everywhere. He looked back at the RV door, where one of them had slipped in behind him unnoticed. Jack’s bladder gave out, and he collapsed to the ground, feeling the cool dirt on his palms. Then, they attacked.

  Darkly had never witnessed her father cry out in agony, in helplessness, in
despair, but she knew it was him when she heard it. Darkly also knew it was his body breaking when he was thrown against the outside of the RV.

  Catharine wiped a tear off Darkly’s cheek as she got her up and removed the seat of the couch to reveal an empty storage space below. She lifted Darkly into the space, as the pounding on the door began.

  “Whatever you hear, you aren’t to come out of here until I come get you. Cover your ears and don’t say a single word. Do you understand, sweetheart? Cover your ears.”

  Darkly nodded.

  Catharine acted swiftly, but without panic, and even offered a gentle smile, as she kissed her daughter for what Darkly sensed would be the last time.

  Darkly inhaled to sob.

  “No crying. What did I say? You can’t make a sound.”

  Catharine stroked Darkly’s hair and helped her curl up into the bottom of the storage space. Catharine then ran her fingertips over Darkly’s moon pendant. Darkly observed those same fingers recoil, and her mother pull her hand back, tucking it under her arm, nursing an unseen pain.

  “And remember what I’ve always told you. Wear your own personal moon at all times. Never take it off.”

  And, then, all was darkness.

  The inside of the couch had a strong, cedar smell. Darkly couldn’t see her hand before her face. She was shaking so hard, she had to hold herself tightly, so as not to make any noise. She took small, silent breaths and listened as the pounding on the RV door became more violent and frantic.

  Then the door was ripped open, and the RV tipped, as something or some things climbed inside.

  The pent-up emotion in Catharine’s voice released itself. “You know who I am. I’m descended from the first of our kind. You will listen to me. Your children don’t have to suffer.”

  Darkly heard her mother’s footsteps run to the front of the RV and all matter of hell break loose. What sounded like wild animals tearing each other to pieces ended with something large crashing down on the couch above her. The impact forced the base of the seat to break and cave in over Darkly’s head, stopping just an inch above her face.

  Darkly knew she was supposed to cup her ears with her hands, but she was paralyzed. The cracked balsa wood now allowed a shard of light into her hiding place and also gave her a slivered glimpse at what was happening to her mother.

  Catharine’s face was pressed against the floor by some force Darkly couldn’t make out. Her skin was splattered with blood. Catharine’s eyes widened as she met her daughter’s horrified gaze. Darkly watched clouds of yellow swim into the whites of her mother’s eyes, and saw her lips contract to hug teeth now clenched in a snarl.

  It was then that fear overcame Darkly’s conscious mind. Darkness seeped into her brain like a grown-up’s drug. The last thing she heard was Catharine whimper like a child, and call for her own mother, as she was dragged out of the RV and into the night.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Darkly Stewart caught the scent of the man standing next to her under the streetcar shelter. Well, scent was the wrong word. It was like nosing whisky with your mouth open, letting the vapors run across the taste buds. She was standing next to someone who had recently killed another human being. She could taste it. The metallic make-up of his blood mingled with a forbidden sweetness. It was a sweetness that worked its way into the pores of the cheeks and stung the mouth. Strange, he didn’t look the type. He had kind eyes. Maybe a soldier on leave? The cropped hair fit the bill.

  Darkly had come a long way from the days of an American orphan found walking along the Trans-Canada highway, dehydrated and incoherent, remembering only three things from the first seven years of her life: her name was Darkly Stewart, she was from Portland, Oregon, and she must never remove the silver moon pendant hanging around her neck.

  The middle-aged couple from Toronto who rescued Darkly had tried to have children for many years and interpreted their chance encounter as divine intervention. Who’s to say they weren’t right? It’s true they didn’t contact the police. But, in his defense, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable, William Schilling, did search for Darkly’s past in Portland. He prayed he would not, but entirely expected to find a relation, school record, or the smallest clue to his new ward’s existence. To the relief of his wife, Elizabeth, he did not. So, Darkly Stewart was raised Darkly Stewart Schilling.

  Yes, her parents had pinned upon her a registry of brighter names. Darkly rejected these, clinging tightly to one of the few connections to a forgotten little girl, and the Schillings stopped pinning.

  A family friend referred the Schillings to a discreet and costly psychiatrist who advised against prying at all into Darkly’s past. Darkly had forgotten for a reason, and it was best to consign such trauma to another life. “Let sleeping dogs lie,” opined the psychiatrist. The Schillings happily complied.

  As for the moon necklace, Darkly never mentioned the physical pain it inflicted for fear that it would be forcibly removed. The family doctor could find no direct correlation between the necklace and Darkly’s blue spider veins, so a previous physical trauma to the chest was deemed the likely culprit. Use of a fake tanning lotion or make-up was suggested to bring the color of the skin back to a healthier complexion. Through her teenage years, Darkly took to wearing turtlenecks to avoid questions altogether.

  Constable William Schilling gave no thought to Darkly’s future career, and certainly did not expect her to follow in his footsteps, until one family weekend in the Algonquin wilderness revealed Darkly’s gift.

  Darkly loved family camping trips, slipping out into the woods alone while her parents slept. For her, it was an experience that bordered on the religious. Every leaf caught in the wind and each drop of rain that hit bark connected to Darkly in a way to which others were oblivious.

  The Schilling family sought seclusion on their holidays, much as they did during their day-to-day existence, perhaps reluctant to push their luck that someone would recognize Darkly and take her away.

  On this particular trip, though, Darkly and her parents shared a campfire with the young couple from the adjacent site. Her father asked her not to stare at the young man, and his girlfriend playfully told the teen to keep her hands off her property. But Darkly could taste the murders within him, which made looking away all the more conspicuous. An instinct welled up within her to hold her ground and stare the dangerous intruder down.

  That taste. There were moments in her life when her mouth acted like a canary in a coal mine. Darkly felt as though she was a bullet shooting through the stranger’s veins, and she could taste his lust in her mouth. The metallic shades of iron gave way to a potent spice that lit her tongue on fire.

  As she curled up in her sleeping bag in the three-man tent later that night, fiercely gripping her moon pendant, she whispered to her father her fears for the life of the young woman.

  The next morning, William discovered a body torn to pieces, and the man was never found. To this day, William chooses to believe it was a bear attack. The marks on the girl’s body were not made by a human. Of that, he was certain.

  So it was, on that morning in the woods, William learned of his daughter’s disturbing ability to tell when another had fresh blood on their hands. Thus, he gently guided her to where she found herself today.

  With her parents retired to the small cottage community of Parry Sound, Darkly found herself renting a studio apartment in the Queen West neighborhood of Parkdale. The neighborhood was inhabited by two distinct groups of people. Out-of-work, organic-shake-consuming, wannabe-filmmakers dominated the main thoroughfares, wearing army fatigues and riding vintage bicycles built for an age of hoop skirts.

  The narrow neighborhood streets, on the other hand, belonged to the diminutive, blue-rinse, Portuguese ladies in sensible shoes, who didn’t speak a lick of English and never would. It was a true collision of old and new worlds.

  Darkly could have claimed it as p
art of her cover, but she also genuinely felt at home in places she appeared out-of-place. Her first rule as an undercover Mountie was to always leave herself open to attention. That way, no one would accuse her of hiding anything.

  Darkly was attached to missing persons. At twenty-five, she looked nineteen, which her government-issued fake ID attested to. Darkly could be considered perfect in just about every way. There were also some distinct imperfections she kept concealed. Nevertheless, she had a body and a face to which a plastic surgeon would do time for touching.

  There was also that jet black hair. It was dramatic when draped across her pale skin, though not off-putting, and, surprisingly, only a couple of young men had been given the opportunity to run their fingers through it. Relationships were very much discouraged during an undercover assignment that could stretch on into years.

  She underplayed her looks on her own time: little make-up, her hair tucked under baggy clothing. But, for this assignment, Darkly was instructed to play it up for all she was worth. She boarded the streetcar in tight black leggings and a lace top that stuck to her perspiring skin in the humidity, barely concealing her undergarments.

  Disembarking at Queen’s Quay, Darkly made her way along the lakeshore to the warehouse complex known as The Senate, an event and clubbing space she would never have been caught dead in as a patron. As the RCMP Constable, her cover was that of a bartender.

  At the start of her shift, Darkly cleaned her bar surface, counted-in the till, cut her garnishes, and restocked the beer. Not that she would serve much beer. The Senate, the downtown club destination for anyone under thirty, was not known for its alcohol consumption.

  Darkly entered the club down a long red carpet past the bouncers stationed between fake Roman columns. The main foyer had a tacky, naked goddess pouring water from a jug into a pool of water below, known as the bottomless wishing well. Legend had it that the more change a guy threw into the well, the better his chances of getting lucky that night. The club’s owner, Dmitri, fostered this legend for obvious reasons.