The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

in the air above him. And then slowly, his eyes still fixed upon them, he rose — like a man entranced, not moving by his own volition.

He turned back — back the way we had come.

I showed myself then. I sprang up and called to him — loudly, desperately, in anguish.

“Ronnie! Ronnie!”

He hesitated. He turned again, and looked at me, and in his eyes there was a strange struggle — bewilderment and friendliness and recognition, all fighting with a strange charm that moved him as if he had been an automaton, no longer in control of his own limbs.

I called him again: “Ronnie — Ronnie!”

He took an uncertain step toward me; then another and another. He said, “Johnny — old John!”

And then the birds swooped. With a terrible, shrill cry of rage one of them leapt at me, her long bright beak aiming at my eyes. I saw hers as she came, and knew them, for all their red fierceness — the eyes of Aretoula!

Then my hands were over my face, and I could feel her sav age beak tearing them, biting through muscle and flesh and bone. Could feel her claws slashing at my chest like knives, while her great wings beat my shoulders and head.

I heard Ronnie give a cry of horror — and then another cry, a long-drawn, horrible cry of pain. And knew that the other bird’s swoop had taken him.

I forgot my own danger. I lowered one hand and looked.

She had him by the chest and throat. Her long claws held him by his shirt-front, and by the flesh beneath it, and her beak was in his throat. He was reeling, staggering, trying to fight her off, but that beak was sawing ever deeper.

And then I heard another shriek, the most terrible of all. The fiercest sound of rage and hate, surely, that ever came out of any throat, human or beast’s or demon’s.

The bird that had been attacking me had left me. Had launched herself through the air, a black, whirling missile, straight for the other’s throat!

Her beak closed just beneath that other beak, which was set in Ronnie’s throat; sank deep into the black feathers just below that savage, red-eyed little head. And the bird let go of Ronnie. He staggered back, blood streaming from his throat and chest, and fell.

I ran to him. I worked to staunch his wounds while the battle raged above us.

And not only above us. Over the ledge and over the heights above it they fought, sometimes breaking apart and staring at each other, red-eyed, and then springing back upon each other, with mad, savage cries. Sometimes they fought almost over our heads, so that bloody feathers fell on us and I covered Ronnie’s face and my own eyes; and sometimes they flew so far away, a whirling, battling black ball of awful, self-destroying oneness, that we lost sight of them, and hoped that they were gone.

But always they came back. Always we heard those shrill, deadly cries again, saw the beating of those black, threshing wings.

They whirled in battle above the depths below the ledge, shrieking and biting, clawing and tearing, pounding each other with their wings.

And there one of them fell. Sank down slowly, softly, like a dropped ball of down, into the depths below.

The other staggered in the air, then turned and flew back toward us, its wide wings black against the shining heavens.

I crouched over Ronnie, shielding his head with my body, peeping through the fingers that I held before my own face.

Which had won — which?

The bird reached the ledge. Swung in the air six feet above us. I could see its head quite clearly against the darkness of the great, outspread wings. And the reddish-black little eyes were glazed and queerly glassy; no longer menacing. Its beak was red — red as the wounds that covered its body.

It looked down once, as if seeking something it could not find — Ronnie’s face, that my body hid. And then its eyes closed and it fell.

But as it struck the earth it trembled and spread out as water spreads. It quivered and changed and grew in a strange, transforming convulsion. And then, where the dying sun had glistened in a bird’s black feathers, it glistened on a woman’s black hair. Aretoula lay there, pale and torn and bloody, her mouth redder than the wounds that disfigured her lovely face.

With a great cry Ronnie tore himself away from me. He ran to her. And as he came she lifted slim, dripping fingers and tried to wipe the blood away from her mouth. She seemed ashamed.

When he dropped to his knees beside her she smiled at him, and once again her mouth was lovely and tender, a woman’s mouth.

“I — loved you, Ronnie. I could not let her kill you — when the moment came. I was — more woman than striga.”

He could only gasp, “Aretoula — Aretoula!” and hold her close. He could not understand.

I came to them, and she looked up at me. “Is — my mouth all right now, Johnny? Not — ugly? I would like him to remember me as — beautiful. As beautiful as — any of your English girls.”

I knelt and wiped the last of her grandmother’s blood from her mouth. Ronnie kissed her, sobbing. His grief- stricken eyes were dazed.

She said gently, explaining, “My grandmother would have killed you, Ronnie. She did kill Bert. And now I have killed her — for you. And I — am dying. But there is a village — yonder — beyond that peak — to the west.” She tried to raise her hand, but could not. I had to raise it; with a great effort she pointed the shaking fingers.

“They will — hide you there. From the Germans. They are — clean. No strigas — there. And no — woman who will love you as much as — I—” And then the words stopped, and the breath rattled in her throat. She never spoke again.

She has been dead since moonrise. Ronnie and I have dug her grave. We will not go down into the abyss and try to find the other; the birds of prey, her kin, may clean her bones. We will rest here tonight, and in the morning we will go on. To the village. To another day.

THANA NIVEAU White Roses, Bloody Silk

THANA NIVEAU LIVES IN the Victorian seaside town of Clevedon, where she shares her life with fellow writer John Llewellyn Probert in a Gothic library filled with arcane books and curiosities.

This is her second appearance in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Other stories have appeared in Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane, Terror Tales of the Cotswolds, The Seventh Black Book of Horror, The Eighth Black Book of Horror, The Ninth Black Book of Horror, Death Rattles, Delicate Toxins and the charity anthology Never Again, in addition to the final issue of Necrotic Tissue.

She is currently working on a short story collection to be titled From Hell to Eternity.

“‘White Roses, Bloody Silk’ was written for the Hanns Heinz Ewers tribute anthology Delicate Toxins,” explains the author. “A controversial figure, Ewers was fascinated by themes of obsession, transformation, decadence and blood.

“I enjoyed his weird fiction and really wanted to write something Gothic and decadent myself. I’m also a huge fan of the Italian giallo films of the 1970s and there’s nothing more Gothic or decadent than those Grand Guignol sex-and-murder extravaganzas with their strange, evocative titles.

“A single image came to me — that of a girl clutching a bunch of roses in her bleeding hands. I didn’t know how or why she had come to be in that situation, but I knew that it wasn’t entirely unpleasant for her.