Читать книгу Chasing Midnight - Susan Krinard - Страница 6

New York City, 1924

SHE WOKE TO THE SOUNDS of the street: the honking of horns as taxicabs, sedans and roadsters jockeyed for position; the rattle and rumble of trucks bearing cargo both legitimate and illicit; the shouts of the newsboy on the corner, trumpeting the scandalous details of the latest police raid on Joe Bocelli’s Club Desirée.

She lay quietly for a moment, eyes closed, trying to decide what was different. It wasn’t only that the sounds were so distinct, falling on her ears like drumbeats, or that she could feel the shift of every current of air as it brushed against her skin. It wasn’t only that, for the first time in so many years, her body didn’t hurt.

With a groan of pleasure she extended her arms over her head, feeling muscles stretch and bones pop. Her toes tingled. She wiggled them, delighting in the touch of the satin sheets against her skin.

And then she froze as the realization struck her so hard and fast that it stole her breath.

She had moved. Not with stiff, painful jerks, her limbs refusing to obey her simplest commands. Not with withered muscles wasting away, prisoners in a cage of flesh. She had moved easily, smoothly, strength flowing through her like cascades of fresh cool water.

Slowly she opened her eyes. The room should have been dark; no lamps were on, and the shades and curtains were drawn over the windows. But she saw everything with crystal clarity, as if the entireworld were bathed in light. Every detail of the Persian carpet stood out in elegant relief. The pattern of the wallpaper seemed to dance a geometric ballet. And the man in the chair…

Alice sat up, her heart bounding beneath her ribs. The man in the chair gazed at her with a faint smile, his pale eyes reflecting a dim red glow.

“Alice,” he said, “do you remember?”

She rubbed her eyes, caught by a wave of dizziness that made the bed roll and heave beneath her. An hour, a week, a year ago, she had been lying in this same bed, her limbs like dead weights among the sheets, her mouth filled with words she could barely speak. He had been there, looking down at her with an expression both kindly and grim, and she had been afraid.

“There is always a risk,” he’d said back then. “Especially to one in your condition. But the rewards…” He’d gestured at her twisted body. “The rewards are beyond calculation.You will walk again, Alice.You will be free.”

And alive. If she should awaken from the long sleep he had told her about, she would no longer be facing imminent death at the age of twenty-four. Shewouldn’t spend another year in bed, her legs no longer able to support her body, her hands too weak to hold a book, listening to the sounds of life passing by her window. There would be a new existence awaiting her, one she could scarcely imagine. She would be better than before, even better than if she’d grown up without the disease that had stolen her friends, her family, her hope.

“You will have a new family,” he’d told her. “The old loyalties will fall away, the old rules by which you lived. You will never be able to go back.”

She’d shivered. “I have…nothing to lose,” she’d said, pushing the sounds past the thickness in her throat.

He’d nodded, as if he had expected no less from her. “Make no mistake,” he’d said, “you will die.You will no longer breathe. Your heart will cease to beat. If a doctor were to enter this room, he would pronounce you deceased.”

Tears had leaked from the corners of Alice’s eyes. “I understand.”

“I doubt that you do,” he’d said sadly, “but there is no other way for your body to undergo the change. Either you will wake in this bed, or…”

Or she would not wake at all. But she would have died knowing that she had taken the ultimate gamble and spat in the eyes of all the pitying, privileged “friends” who had deserted her to the slowdescent into hell.

Mother won’t even know I’m gone, she’d thought. And if she ever comes looking for me…

Alice had smiled, her mouth too stiff for laughter. “I’m ready.”

He’d taken the chair beside the bed and looked into her eyes. “There will be no pain. You will become very sleepy. Don’t fight it, my dear. Let it take you.” He’d bent close, his not-unpleasant breath drifting over her cheek. “Close your eyes and dream of paradise…”

Alice snapped back to the present, her hands shaking on the bedsheets. She clenched her fists and listened to the steady, strong beat of her heart…her heart, still doing what hearts were supposed to do. Her lungs still took in air. Except for the easy movements of her limbs and throat and face, she seemed to be the same as before.

“To most humans you will seem normal,” Cato said. “Despite certain fairy tales to the contrary, you are not ‘undead.’” He rose from the chair, came to her bedside and took her hand in his, checking her pulse like a kindly physician. “You may eat and drink in moderation, so long as you do not neglect your most essential needs. You may walk in daylight so long as you wear tinted glasses and cover your skin. Even brief exposure will result in serious burns. That is why most of us prefer to conduct our public business after sunset.”

Alice stared at the window. Only the tiniest sliver of light entered past the heavy curtains. “How—” she cleared her throat, startled by the smooth, musical sound of her own voice “—how long was I…”

“Dead?” He patted her hand. “Two weeks. I was not entirely certain that you would wake. But now…” He stood back. “Rise and walk, AliceCharles.”

Her mouth as dry as cotton, Alice began to move. She slid her legs along the mattress and cautiously let them drop over the side of the bed. The ground seemed very far away. She flexed her feet on the carpet.

“Your body has the strength,” Cato said. “Far more strength than you need to walk across this room.” His words took on a strange hum, like some powerful generator crackling with energy. “Prove that you are worthy of this gift. Walk!”

Compelled by a force far stronger than fear, Alice pressed her weight down, felt her muscles tighten and grow firm at her command. She stood, swayed, straightened. She took one step, and then another. Her legs carried her to the opposite wall and back again without a single stumble.

I can walk, Alice sang silently. I can walk, I can walk, I can walk…

“Yes,” Cato said, a distant look in his eyes. “I need no further proof.” He took her shoulders and steered her toward the huge mirror that dominated the wall above the dressing table. “Look,” he urged. “See what you have become.”

She looked, though she had not viewed her own reflection in many years. The face that stared back at her was almost unrecognizable, as if some skilled and prudent sculptor had taken her features and rearranged them into something that was partly AliceCharles and partly something…other. Something beautiful. The lines of her features were clean and regular, her skin smooth, her brow unlined over vivid aqua eyes. Her hair, black and shining, hung downher back like ebony silk. Andher body, clearly outlined by the sheer drape of her night robe, was both strong and intensely—unmistakably—female.

“Lovely,” Cato said, lifting her hair in his hands and letting it sift through his fingers. “So much more than I had hoped.”

He gestured Alice back to the bed and sat down beside her. “There is still a great deal for you to learn, my dear, and I will be your teacher until you have passed beyond your infancy…shall we say.” He lifted her chin with his fingertips. “Do you remember what we discussed?”

Alice nodded. There was more than one price to pay for this miracle, and she had resolved to settle the debt without complaint. She began to remove her nightgown.

Cato laughed. “My dear, you misunderstood. It is quite true that we are now bound by blood…as you will learn should either of us find ourselves long separated or in a life-threatening predicament, unlikely as that may seem. But I am far too old to find the prospect of rolling about between the sheets in the least appealing.”

Alice released her breath. “Then how can I repay you for what you’ve done?”

He held her gaze, and she felt the power of his great age work its way into her mind. “You shall make a new life,” he said. “You will have all the money you could possibly require, all the freedom you have lacked since the coming of your illness. I ask only that you protect your secret, as our kind must, and come to me when I call you.”

Alice angrily scrubbed at her cheeks. “Why? Why have you helped me?”

“Your father and I were friends, brothers in science in spite of our obvious differences. He never learned of my true nature, but he would have appreciated my intervention in more ways than one. And I…I consider your Conversion one of the great achievements of my latter years.” He kissed her forehead and rose. “Rest now. It will be a few days before your instruction can begin. You mayspend the time composing a name for yourself. Until then, everything you need will be supplied by my servants.”

He left, closing the door behind him. Alice lay still, half-afraid that if she moved she might wake to find it had all been a dream. But the moments passed, and nothing changed. After a while she got up again and wandered about the room, stopping before the mirror once more.

Perhaps this was what she might have been like if the disease hadn’t claimed her at so young an age. Perhaps she might have attended parties and outings with other young people on Long Island, gone riding and sailing, even married.

Or perhaps they would have snubbed her anyway, knowing that all she and her mother had left was the decaying mansion and two servants to manage the entire estate. She couldn’t have afforded the expensive frocks or given the right kinds of soirées.

No, she would always have been an outcast among the fashionable set to which her mother had once belonged. Alice smiled at herself, imagining Lucy Shearer and Wilson Hinds, Johnnie Macklin and Oralie Gray, all the neighbors and former friends who had found even pity too taxing an emotion. Outcast they had declared her, and outcast she would remain. To hell with them all. She would learn to live in a way they couldn’t begin to imagine.

Tossing her hair over her shoulders, she turned toward the window. Cato had reminded her of one of the basic rules of her new existence: one must not walk in daylight without layers of protective clothing. A rule that must be obeyed. A law that meant survival.

Just another set of chains to choke and bind.

She walked slowly toward the window, her gaze fixed on the sliver of light at the edges of the shade. She passed her hand through the narrowband of illumination. There was no pain. With a swift jerk she drew back the dark, heavy curtains. The shade was triple thick, utterly safe. Alice raised it with a sharp tug on the cord.

Heat and light flooded into the room, bathing Alice’s face and hands, penetrating her thin gown as if it were tissue. She braced herself for the burning, the punishment she had risked by daring to defy the rules.

Strangely, nothing happened. Her skin remained smooth and unmarred, with no blisters or blackening, no agony as the world of humanity took its toll. Only the soft and gentle caress of warmth stroking her cheek like a long-absent lover.

She pressed her palms to the window and looked down into the street. Fewof those people passing on the sidewalks were aware that they shared their city with beings that looked very like them but were not human. None of them knew what had transpired in this room today. They had never heard the name Alice Emil Charles.

That would change. She would choose a new name, and New York would come to know it, rules or no rules. She would have fun. And she would laugh…laugh so long and loud that even the snooty debs and fancy chaps would hear her in their pricey mansions.

Alice turned her face up to the sun. Let them try and pity her now. Let them keep their rarified world of knowing the right people and wearing the right clothes. She wanted no part of it.

She would never go back again.