Ben reached out for a giant shard of glass lying a few feet away. He ignored the fact that it had sliced into the flesh of his palm. He knew if he looked right into Marshall’s eyes, he would hesitate, so he closed the distance between them without looking at his face. When there were only inches between them, he slashed the jagged pieces of glass at Marshall’s throat. And it was as if it had moved through water.
Because Marshall Ferriot’s skin had become fluid and black. It looked as if he was bending backward at the waist, but his torso was actually lengthening, his legs fattening, and then his mouth opened so wide it appeared to consume his entire face, turning his head into a featureless, gelatinous black mass that looked like crawling lava after it has dived under the surface of the ocean. His neck was lengthening and taking on the patterning of a snake’s smoke-colored scales. His arms had opened as if he were about to take Ben in an embrace, then they sealed themselves to both sides of his narrowing trunk, sprouted into something that looked like a millipede’s legs. Then the matching rows of dripping fangs took shape inside the creature’s giant, crescent-shaped mouth, and it was now ten feet long, level with the floor, its blazing eyes focused on Ben.
Ben wasn’t sure what terrified him more, the thought of staying put or the thought of what the thing’s soul would look like if he tried to drive it a second time. So he turned and ran. And that’s when he felt an incredible gust of air behind him, heard a deafening, pained hiss and looked back in time to see the winged beast Anthem Landry had become seize the giant serpent in its great avian beak and lift it off the ground. Doglike, the winged monster swung its head back and forth, wings pumping madly, and the giant serpent’s entire body jerked and spasmed as it was hefted up into the air. Then they both dropped.
The serpent’s limp body smashed into the emptying remains of one of the open-air tanks. Now that it was pinned to the floor, the winged creature landed talons-first on the serpent’s back, and then tugged lightly on each talon to make sure it had pierced its scales. Then, wings pumping to give it balance, it pulled its talons in opposite directions and tore the son of a bitch in half.
One after the other, it yanked it talons free from the blood, gore and shredded scales. When it turned and looked back at Ben, he collapsed on the walkway, just inside the tunnel that lead to the rest of the aquarium. The creature stood up on its hind legs, its talons tucked against its feathered chest, and despite the inhuman shape of its blood-splattered beak, the eye that it focused on Ben was Anthem’s. And when the creature opened its beak and let out a piercing scream that sounded like a woman’s cry filtered through a torrential thunderstorm, Ben thought it might be parroting the terrified sobs he couldn’t fight any longer.
Having exhausted itself, the creature picked up the serpent’s severed head in its talons, then kicked itself into the air with its powerful legs, the pumping wings giving it flight. It took a few minutes for Ben to gather his courage and walk to the spot where the serpent’s shredded lower half lay strewn across the walkway. Once he was there, he looked up and saw Nikki standing on one of the thatched, elevated walkways that passed just below the tree house overhead. She was staring up through the shattered glass ceiling of the exhibit, probably at the spot where the creature had flown away. By the time he had joined her on the walkway, they could hear the footfalls of approaching police officers, too many at once to drive off, so he took her hand and they sped off down the walkway in the opposite direction.
32
MADISONVILLE
They crossed Lake Pontchartrain in silence, and by the time they reached the old push boat outside Madisonville, they had three hours until dawn. Nikki used her Maglite to guide the way toward the ship’s remains, which now seemed tiny to Ben in comparison to the leviathan that had almost run them down earlier that night. For a while, they stood at the edge of the empty parking lot as Nikki ran her flashlight beam over the push boat’s glassless windows, waiting for the eruption of some unnamable creature cowering inside, Ben scanned the night sky. But the boat was empty and so was the sky. The dock had mostly rotted away, so they were forced to wade through waist-high water to get to its back deck.
They searched the lower deck for any signs of talon marks, any stray obsidian feathers. But there was nothing, just a hollowed-out steel-walled cavern. The situation on the upper deck was the same. That left the wheelhouse. And when the beam of Nikki’s flashlight traveled across the pile of red Mardi Gras beads Anthem had piled there every year after the Krewe of Ares parade, she sank slowly to her knees and ran them through her fingers.
Ben turned his back on her, allowing her this private moment at the graveside of her adolescence, and surveyed the sweeping view of the lake. In the near distance the causeway twinkled, though not with its usual energy given the lateness of the hour. But the world around them was flat, silent and dark, devoid of monsters and seemingly drained of magic. And this sudden peace made him feel dizzy and light-headed. He had the sense that he was about to float away, as if all that truly tied him to the earth’s surface over the years was his belief in the inevitable orderliness and decay of the human body.
He was exhausted, and he smelled awful, so awful he was tempted to douse himself in more lake water. But that would only make it worse. Having taken her moment with Anthem’s makeshift altar, Nikki sank to the floor, knees to her chest.
“The way to keep from losing your mind is to see them as extensions of the person, rather than . . . you know, a separate thing. Something from another dimension. It sounds horrible, but it actually makes it easier. The eyes . . . They’re always there, in the eyes.”
Ben nodded, and for a while, neither of them spoke, just listened to the gentle howl of the wind moving through the ship’s hollow, rusted skeleton.
“I never told him,” Ben finally said.
“Never told him what?”
“That I thought Marshall caused the accident. That I knew you two had gone to Elysium together.”
“What does it matter, Ben?”
“If I’d given him some reason to . . . suspect, I don’t know. Some reason to hate him or fear him, even, maybe he wouldn’t have let him get so close . . .”
“Marshall didn’t need permission to use his power on anyone. That’s not how it works. You know that.”
“I know, but . . . he brought him on the ship.”
“He could have been driving him all night long.”
“Then he would have changed earlier. Look how quickly Marshall changed. No, they were . . . They were together, Nick. For a while before Marshall did anything. And if I had told Anthem what I . . .”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I thought he would kill him. Now that doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.”
“No, of course not. Marshall would be dead and Anthem would be on trial and you would have no real idea of what you’d been spared, just that your best friend was going to go to jail for murder. And all because I was still out there, letting everyone believe I was dead. You’re not going to beat me at the blame game, Benny.”
Another silence fell, and then she whispered, “I never thought he’d wake up. You have to believe me. I never . . .” And then a tremor took control of her voice, and Ben sank down to the floor beside her and laced his arm around her leg and held it there until she seemed to have regained her composure.
“Of course you didn’t,” he whispered.
He gave in to the urge to rest his head against her shoulder, and when she relaxed under the weight, leaning back against the wall and spreading her legs out in front of her for support, he leaned in further and she curved an arm around his back.
“I’ve never turned one back,” she said. “You know that, right? I mean, not into anything that’s . . . livable.”
“But you’ve never loved any of them either.”
“That’s true . . .”
“Do you still love him?”
“What I feel for him, I’ve never felt for any other man.”
“Me too . . .”
