body; he made me want to cringe for some unfathomable reason.
He was dressed in an ill-fitting jet black suit and collarless button-up shirt. The too-large suit served only to accentuate his emaciated, nearly skeletal appearance. His face was sunken, the bones protruding grotesquely beneath pale, waxy skin. His wispy hair, the blue-black of a raven’s wing, floated weightlessly around his narrow head like static electricity pulled at its tips.
“Fahl,” Derek said tightly. His voice held so much venom I had to look and make sure it was him speaking; it barely even sounded like him.
“Finally,” the man, Fahl, said. His voice was a surprise: smooth as glass and just as cold. It also held the lilt of a British accent.
The man looked toward Derek, who made no comment. The thin man smiled, the kind of smile I imagined a cobra might have if it could make such gestures. It chilled me to the bone.
“What are you doing here?” Derek growled.
“I felt it when you brought her into the clearing. I just had to come and see for myself that you found her. She’s, how shall I say?” The man paused, searching for the right words. “Highly anticipated.”
“What do you want?”
“Fortunately, I don’t have to explain myself to you, Derek. In fact, you should be glad that I gave you this assignment rather than keeping you…with me, where you have no choice but to learn all the gory details,” he sneered.
Derek’s chest was heaving and he looked positively livid. The veins in his neck stood out like they were about to burst and every muscle in his body looked taut with fury.
Then I noticed his hands. They were a bright glowing orange, like red-hot pokers, and they shook with his effort to restrain himself.
I stood perfectly still as the man approached me. By the time he was within about three feet of me, I could smell him. He didn’t really stink so much as he just had very distinctive odor, like sickness and death and dark things I didn’t want to know about were oozing from his pores.
“I knew she’d be beautiful, too,” he said, his voice no more than a whisper.
He didn’t stop walking until he stood only inches from me. Eyes the dull, flat black of coal met mine, unblinking, boring a cold path into my skull. He didn’t speak or move, just stood looking down into my face for several intense, breathless seconds.
The corners of his mouth twitched up into that dead smile. “Mmm, you feel just like her,” he said, closing his eyes in pleasure. When he opened them, they held an evil delight, as if he’d somehow sampled my soul and liked the way it tasted. “Only sweeter. Pure,” he declared, licking his lips.
Just as I was about to back away in disgust, he closed his eyes once more and his body began to shimmer. The trees behind him became visible, dancing delicately in the wavy air where his translucent body shook.
Suddenly I was paralyzed. I watched him take another step closer to me. I wanted desperately to back away, but I was unable to move. Wide-eyed and terrified, I held my breath when he took that final step toward me, the one that would bring his transparent body into contact with mine.
The air burned inside my lungs and I closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear to know what was coming.
A low whisper sounded in my ears, the deep ahh of ecstasy. Then a cold tickling sensation erupted on every surface of my body all at once. It was like walking through a huge, icy spider web. Reflexively, I shivered. For a second I could taste the awful smell of him, as if he’d somehow invaded my mouth. And then it was gone.
I waited a few seconds before slowly opening my eyes to look around. The man was gone. And I was shaken, profoundly shaken.
I exhaled. Then, with my very next breath, asked the most obvious question. “Where did he go?”
Hesitantly, I tried my legs. They wobbled, but at least it appeared they were back under my control. I spun in a tight circle, looking for the man at the edge of the forest, in the shadows of the trees, in the open of the clearing, but he was nowhere.
Relief washed over me in an energy-sapping wave. I turned to face Derek. He was looking at me as if I’d grown a second head.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that? Where did he go?”