Enter, Night

of the cave where the creature he’d resurrected was still feeding on the last drops of his life.

After the bar had closed, they had gone to Elliot’s place instead of Donna’s, because Elliot said he had to get up early in the morning. She didn’t find it particularly chivalrous on his part, but Donna wanted his company more than she wanted to be in her own bed, so she’d acquiesced. He’d asked her to stay the night and offered to drive her home afterwards, but she’d brought her own car and didn’t relish the prospect of leaving it in front of Elliot’s house overnight, advertising her whereabouts to the entire town. For the same reason, she didn’t want to leave her car in the O’Toole’s parking lot overnight so they could all wonder where she’d been instead of knowing.

In the past, sex with Elliot had always been a deeply pleasurable experience. He was a devoted, attentive lover who took her satisfaction as a point of personal pride. He’d bend his body to her pleasure while taking his own, always leaving her satiated.

Tonight had been different.

It had all started the way it always did, the way she liked it, with his hands and mouth deftly playing her body, with Elliot offering his own body for her exploration, gratification, and pleasure. But when she’d slipped her hands between his legs to stroke his shaft, she found it soft.

It’s me, Donna thought, abruptly and self-consciously aware of the slackening of her body and the way it must have changed, how different it must feel to him since they had first slept together years before. What she saw in the mirror at home looked just fine to her, but here, with Elliot McKitrick on top of her…

She guided him onto his back and knelt between his legs, using her mouth on his cock, gently squeezing his nipples between her fingers until she felt him harden, then laid back herself and urged him along using the filthy words she knew he liked. She arched her back, offering her mouth and her breasts to his kisses the way she had always done, which he’d always liked before.

“Turn over,” he’d said in a muffled voice she’d never heard before-a compressed, harsh, entirely unfamiliar but oddly thrilling voice. “Roll over on your stomach.”

When she did what she was told, he entered her from behind. At first his movements were languorous and rhythmic and she moaned with familiar pleasure. But as the strokes quickened, he thrust harder and with more force.

Then Elliot pulled out and slipped his cock into her ass.

Donna gasped at the sudden invasion. Wanting to please him, she willed herself to relax and take him in. His fingers dug into her hips as he pushed. When he entwined his fingers in her hair and yanked on it as though it were a bridle, she cried out in shock and pain. She felt his body buckle and he collapsed against her, driving her into the bed with him on top as wave after wave of his climax shuddered through his body.

“We’ve never done it like that before,” she said. When there was no reply, she asked, “Was it OK? I mean, doing it that way?”

“It was great,” he said.

Afterwards, he’d sat naked on the edge of the bed with his face in his hands. She ran her fingers along the scallops of muscle between his shoulder blades. When she’d touched his shoulder, he’d flinched.

She’d asked him if he was crying and he said, “No, of course not, why?” as though it was the stupidest question he’d ever heard, which hurt Donna’s feelings more than anything else. When she asked him what was wrong, he told her he’d had a bad day, then apologized for snapping at her and offered to drive her home.

“I brought my car, Elliot, remember? You have to get up early, you said.”

“Right, sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Donna. Really, I am. I have a lot on my mind. Work, you know. I’ll make it up to you next time.”

Donna said nothing. She kissed him on the cheek, then picked her jeans and pink blouse off the floor where she’d left them.

I’m too young to feel like this, she thought bitterly. Like something secondhand, like something in the fridge that’s turned. Her clothes smelled like beer and cigarette smoke after the fresh-laundry scent of Elliot’s sheets, but she couldn’t dress quickly enough to suit her purposes. The only thing Donna wanted was to be out of Elliot’s house and back in her own bedroom, with her cat and her cold sheets, where at least there was no one to make her feel the way she felt right now.

“Next time,” Elliot promised as she said goodbye. But they both knew there wouldn’t be a next time. And Donna, for one, was fine with that.

In the car, she lit a cigarette, then turned the key in the ignition and pulled out of Elliot’s driveway, heading towards her house on the other side of town, thinking that Elliot McKitrick was a prick of the first order, but that it still hurt like hell.

At 4:30 a.m., Donna had parked her car in her driveway and put the keys in her purse. A light, cold rain had begun to fall and she hurried up the driveway to avoid getting drenched. The perfect ending to a perfectly awful night, she thought.

She was nearly at the front door of her house when she heard something pass through the air above her head. The sound disoriented her. When she was eight, her mother took Donna with her to visit an elderly aunt who’d spent her life in a convent outside of Montreal. The sisters kept a working farm, and while her mother visited with the aunt, one of the younger nuns showed her the dovecote attached to the barn. Donna had lain on her back in hay and watched the doves fluttering above her. She’d closed her eyes, listened, and imagined they were angels.

That’s what this was like-the ripple of wings, but louder and heavier than doves’ wings. Instinctively, she looked up towards the sound, but saw nothing in the night sky except stars and the distant mass of the cliffs.

Then the sound came again, directly over her head this time. The last thing Donna Lemieux ever saw was something huge, something with wings-no, not something, someone, and not wings, outstretched arms-fall from the sky, smashing her into the gravel of her driveway. Her mind had time to register only two things: first, that the body on top of her was male and that it-he-was fiercely strong. And secondly, that she was about to die here on her own driveway in sight of her own front door. She tried to scream, but the impact of the body crashing down on top of her back had driven the air from her lungs and she lay on the driveway gasping for air.

Then her world went white.

All around her was the scent of hay and clover, and the musk of barn animals. She lay back on the straw and watched the doves wheel and flit above her like angels. She listened to the beating of their wings. Wonderfully, even though her eyes were closed, she could still see: the doves were indeed transforming into angels-the most beautiful angels imaginable, angels with strong, gleaming naked men’s bodies and opalescent- feathered wings.

She felt a warm gust of heavenly air as one of the angels separated from the others and swooped down to where she lay prostrate on the hay. She gazed at the angel’s face, awed by the perfection of its body-a face and body she recognized.

“Elliot,” Donna said weakly. “What are you doing-”

The angel opened its jaws and cocked its head to the side, and Donna saw its two rows of sharp white teeth. She realized then that the angel wasn’t Elliot at all-how had she ever confused them? This angel’s hair was white, and he was wearing a long black robe that covered him from neck to ankles. Rain streamed from his hair, running down from his high forehead and into his eyes, which burned like coals. But Donna didn’t care because she knew at that exact moment she was desired-desired and desirable, more desired than she’d even been by Elliot, or indeed any other man. She felt the angel’s cool lips on her throat for a moment and a sharp, momentary pain. Then a spreading coldness that felt like heat, in spite of the cold rain that soaked her clothes and her skin, as she lay there in the driveway.

When the angel-or whatever it was-enfolded her in its black wings, she gave herself up to its hunger, and knew that whatever it cost to be loved like this, she would gladly pay that price a hundredfold or more.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

As usual, Finn woke before dawn.