Page 48 of A Serpent in the Garden

I hesitated. It read my thoughts like words on a page.

This isn’t murder, this is a preventative measure, It said exasperatedly. It will prevent a child, not kill one. Eating a fucking flower won’t damn your soul. It’s your choice, but you need to make it quickly before you’re spotted. He dashed my eyes around the area as if taking stock of potential threats.

I knelt, plucking one flower from its stem. The petals were soft as kitten’s fur, supple as flesh. I popped it in my mouth. And for a reason I couldn’t quite understand, I had never felt so humiliated and vulnerable as I did right then, the juices of the moonflower spilling from between my back teeth. It tasted like shame and disgrace, floral notes of failure blooming on my tongue. I swayed slightly, like a bird blown off course, pressing my eyes shut against the unexpected sting.

It’s nothing to be ashamed of, It said brusquely. It happens. No harm done. Your blood will probably come sooner than you’re expecting it.

Ashen rays of light were beginning to flood the wood’s floor, pooling against tree trunks, dripping through skeletal branches. I swallowed the ragged bits of flower, heading back toward the grotto, and It said nothing more on the subject.

That It couldn’t sense what would happen next should have scared the life out of me. I was too shocked to think of that. I was alone and then I wasn’t; they arrived so quickly they seemed conjured from thin air or created by the fogs. Grouped around me in an urgent clamor, they were as soundless as the rest of the wood. I felt It give a massive jerk from behind his window but his reaction came from far away, as if it were a storm raging over Monde’s End a hundred miles off. They swamped me like an avalanche, bodies multiplying like locusts, faces pressing close. And every single one of them looked like mine.

The copies of myself were grotesque, twisted. One of my faces peered down at me, its head bobbing on a long and spindly neck, a sheet of unnaturally straight dark hair plunging to its waist. Another had overlarge eyes that might have looked comical if it weren’t so alarming, the pupils vast and black and empty. Outsized heads swayed over bodies much taller and leaner than I could ever be. Freakishly long lashes; eyes an eerie, supernatural blue; hands so large they looked like they belonged to a grown man.

A primeval fear had woken in me as the nearest reached out and ran a long white finger down the column of my neck, its sharp nail grazing my skin. The copy tilted its head so its hair, much glossier than mine, dipped nearly down to the earth. Even as I stared in horror, its disturbingly slender neck thickened, shortened, so it suddenly looked a great deal less frightening.

Holy shit, It said with a shaky laugh. They’re just shifters. I’ve never seen one. Well maybe I have, but I wouldn’t know. They’re shy.

Shy?! Another grabbed my wrist, held it up to its chillingly large eyes for a closer inspection.

They’re probably just curious. I doubt they’ve seen humans before. Look how bad a job they’ve done mimicking you. I’m sure it’s been a while since they’ve had any new forms to assume. They don’t have physical bodies themselves. At the pounding of my heart as the closest shifter lifted aside my cloak to scrutinize my collarbone, It said, Just let them look at you. There’s too many to make an enemy of them and I couldn’t hurt them anyway. They’re solid now, when they’re imitating you, but their natural state is shadow.

The nearest were perfecting their reproductions. Hair too long withdrew into scalps, eyes shrinking, jawlines softening, heads sinking down to a level with mine. Their faces were oddly, disconcertingly still. They didn’t seem to have any need to blink, so they stared at me, perennially wide-eyed.

Don’t they ever see demons? I asked It nervously as one found a tendril of my hair and held it out for examination. Your mother looked human enough, what little of her you showed me.

The demons of Hell don’t often walk these woods. The succubi and incubi of the plains don’t usually roam this way, when the humans they want are in Monde’s End. And my mother could never be mistaken for a human.

Well I can’t stand here all morning. A shifter lifted my hand and pressed its palm flat against mine, the nails softening from daggerlike points to ovals, the fingers retracting to perfectly align with my own. It looked up at me, its lurid blue irises tempering to a shade more like mine, and in my head an image bloomed, a ghostly white hand with long, wicked nails tapping at a blockade of boulders piled at the mouth of a hollow tree.

They wanted to see you. I guess that’s what all the howling was about. They can’t speak in their shadow form. It probably had no idea how hideous it sounded. Maybe it heard you talking and tried doing the same.

They would have had to be following me to hear me speak. How could you not have noticed?

And how do you suggest I sense a being made of shadow? If it isn’t corporeal, there’s fuck-all I can do about it.

The crowd showed no signs of boredom. The longer I stood there like a dressmaker’s dummy, the more inquisitive they seemed to grow. One read my lips with its fingers like a blind person; another traced the curvature of my jawline.

I need to get back to Serich. What should I do, barrel through them?

I felt him shrug. That’s what I’d do. They’ll get bored of you eventually. Shadows prefer the dark. That’s not to say they can’t move in daylight but night will always be their first choice. They should drift off when the light gets brighter.

And so I let them touch me with their icy fingers. Let them peer into my eyes and lift aside my hair to better see my ears, let them stare and stare with unnerving vacancy.

“Well, what’s this, now?” a sudden voice said, purring through the press of bodies, and I looked up to find a man had drifted into our midst. Fogs shrouded his face like the moon in a cloud.

The temperature in the clearing seemed to plummet.

That’s not a fucking man, Des. Its voice left me cold with fear. That’s an incubus.

He was long and lean, ropes of blue veins running through milky skin. Sleepy eyelids sank to half-mast over scarlet eyes. Dark hair was feathered with dead leaves, like he’d been running hard. A firm bare chest tapering into a narrow waist, an expression alight with interest as he surveyed the scene.

I was septic with terror; I felt it flooding every part of me.

“When have you seen a human?” Slowly, he threaded through the thicket of my replicas. One disappeared into a mist of shadow at his touch. He paid it no mind. He walked casually, more of a wander, innocent as a fever, tilting his head this way and that to look into their faces, an elegant flop of dark hair shading red eyes.

Run. Get out now.

I couldn’t. I couldn’t move; then he’d see me and he’d know. I felt the fogs curl about my ankles, like they were consoling me. I was rooted where I stood, as immovable as the trees.