Part 23 (1/2)

Sam shook his head. ”Oh, he's not dead. There's still time. As long as he has your blood before the sun goes down, the destiny can be fulfilled. All it takes to continue his legacy”-Sam advanced on me-”is for the chosen one to take his place before sundown. Go ahead, Cooper. As you can see, he's been waiting a long, long time for you.” Sam pointed over my shoulder with the blade. And smiled the kind of reverent smile you gave the pope.

I turned. The monster hung over the edge of the well, his thin frame barely clinging to the stones. His skin draped off his body like loose wallpaper and his mouth hung open, slack like a thirsty dog's. A thick red gash ran down his chest, exposing the wide, yawning pus-filled hole opened by my knife the previous night. Vines cradled him in place, ma.s.sive webbing keeping him upright.

He hadn't died.

He was still here.

Waiting.

For me.

I tried to step back, but branches poked into my back, shoving me forward, closer. The ground beneath my feet undulated, an ocean of dirt forcing my feet to stumble another step closer. Another.

The creature smiled, but it was a weak grin. One that said he wasn't doing so well. Those same eyes as before looked back at me, but the spark inside them had dimmed a little. In the light of day, the creature seemed ten times worse paler, deader. Or maybe that was only because I had wounded him so badly the night before. I hoped, at least, that was why.

Whipple circled the well, barking and yelping. My mother still lay off to the side, but I could see her stir.

”Cooper, meet your father, Auguste.” Sam crossed to the creature, getting almost close enough to touch him. But not quite. Was Sam scared of the monster, too?

Wait. Father? Had he said father? What the h.e.l.l?

”This thing here, this creature,” Sam went on, ”has lived in this cesspool all these years so that we could live like kings. I know he's a hideous, pitiful thing to look at, but he has power. Power you can only imagine.”

I shook my head, tried again to back away from this horror. From the truth I still didn't want to face. ”I'm not related to him.”

”Oh but you are,” Sam said, beaming with pride, and my stomach turned over. ”It's a great honor, Cooper. A great, great honor.”

Maybe in Sam's sick mind. ”But a why me?” I started to realize that this time, there was no way out.

I was going down there. To stay.

”Because you were made for this,” Sam said, as if he were explaining to a toddler that babies came from the stork. ”I had to have a blood descendant, one of Auguste's, because that's what the land demands. An heir to the creature in the well every two hundred years. It's the price we pay, and the land gives back.” He looked over his shoulder at the well almost reverently.

”You go down there, then,” I said. ”You're a Jumel. You're so set on this.” I looked behind me, but the ground and trees kept up their wall.

”You couldn't pay me enough to do that.” Sam chuckled. ”Besides, the power is strongest from Auguste's own progeny. I, unfortunately, am descended from Gerard. But you, my dear Cooper, come straight from Auguste.”

If this wasn't so horrifying, I would have laughed. But I didn't. What the monster had said to me in the well-”child of my loins”-had been true. Auguste raised his head and smiled. ”Cooper,” he whispered, his voice cracking into almost nothing. Breath wheezed in and out of the pus-filled cavity in his chest. ”Dear Cooper.”

”I had to find a carrier for his seed,” Sam went on, ignoring the labored breathing of the creature. ”I tried so many women, and they all failed me. Lost the babies, those idiots. Then your mother came in one day. A little wine to help her relax-a bonus of coming to my practice, I told her-and presto, she's asleep. That was my chance to impregnate her with Auguste's children.”

I needed you, Cooper. Needed you to set me free. And now when you take my place, I live again as a man. My seed a for the return of my life.

The creature had gone back to talking in my head. I knew it was because he was weaker, having been wounded by me. But that didn't stop the horror of his words. ”I don't understand. How is that thing still alive? After two hundred years?”

Sam grinned. ”You are what you eat, Cooper.” And then he laughed, a laugh that almost made me puke. ”Or maybe it's 'you eat what you are.”'

Repugnance shot through me as I realized what the creature had been eating for centuries. I thought of Sam's specialty when it came to delivering babies. Twins.

”Twins.” I would have ralphed, but the trees had crowded in even farther, pressing me within touching distance of the creature.

”They aren't so easy to get, you know,” Sam said, still keeping his distance from the creature. He gave it a wary glance every now and then. ”But when you work my job, sometimes a accidents happen.”

The bundle. The b.l.o.o.d.y blanket. ”B-b-babies? More than just the one last night?”

Sam shrugged. ”Not too many, Cooper. Just enough to keep Auguste alive until you turned fifteen. It's a magical age, don't you think?”

He was raving. A lunatic. I didn't think he expected an answer.

”Of course, your twin was vital to his existence. Your twin gave him the strength to survive the past fifteen years, gave him the knowledge and proof that his sentence was almost finished. It was perhaps his most important feeding. And now here we are; you're finally fifteen. In other cultures, fifteen is the age for change. For girls in Spain, it's their quinceanera. In the Baha'i faith, it's the year a boy becomes a man. In j.a.pan, they have a genpuku ceremony for teenage boys.” He tipped the knife under my chin. ”But here, dear Cooper, we have a ceremony of a differa ent sort.

”You're insane. I'm not going down there.”

You will, the creature whispered. It is your destiny.

Sam chuckled. ”It's October tenth. Two hundred years since Auguste was sent into this h.e.l.l on the special and sacred ground that has fed his existence. Poor you will have to wait two hundred years for your turn to live again.”

The creature reared up on the edge of the well, throwing forward what seemed like a last-ditch effort of energy, his eyes glittering. ”Stop talking a and a do it now! Give him to me!”

Sam spun toward the monster. ”Shut up, old man. I'll do what I want.”

”You a work a for a me,” the creature rasped. ”I a am a your”

”You're my meal ticket, and that means you don't need to talk,” Sam said. ”So shut your mouth, you stupid beast.”

”Watch a how a you a talk to me.”

Sam leaned toward Auguste. ”I can talk any way I want to you. I don't even need you anymore, you hideous troll.” He reached out and grabbed me by the s.h.i.+rt. ”Cooper is the future of this vineyard, not you. As long as he's in that well, Jumel lives on. And you can just die.”

In the creature's eyes, I saw hatred. Not for me. But for Sam.

Sam ignored it all and instead closed the gap between me and him. ”You will be sacrificed today, Cooper. There's no escape. Consider yourself a a business expense. Just like Paolo and those babies.” He laughed, then thrust me against the well. I tried to twist away, but Auguste grabbed my arms from behind. The vines twined around him and me, knitting his grip tighter. He pulled me back, exposing my neck to Sam's blade.

”Give up the fight, Cooper. Accept your destiny,” the creature whispered, well water dripping from his mouth and puddling on my neck, the stench emanating off him in waves. His claws dug into my shoulders again, opening old wounds. Blood burst from my cuts like grapes being popped open.

I struggled but got nowhere. My dog bit Sam's ankles, but Sam kicked him in the head. The dog cried out. Fury blinded me. ”Leave him alone!”

Sam swung the knife across. I jerked to the left, but it wasn't enough and the knife nicked my throat. Pain raced through my body and I screamed.

Auguste's web closed around my throat, cut off my breath. The world began to go black. ”Stay still,” the creature whispered, ”and the change will be almost painless.”

He lowered his head to my neck, and the vines danced up my skin, slithering along my arm, my throat, my cheek- Just then, a burst of orange erupted around us. Flames? I couldn't tell. I heard the trees crunch and stomp, moving away. Whipple started barking. The screaming doubled. Was that me? The creature? Whipple?

”Don't stop!” Sam ordered the creature. He raised his arms back, palms out, ready to shove me down there. I tried to turn to the right to get away, but the creature's grip tightened even more and he let out a gasp, as if he was pouring every last ounce of strength into the effort to hold on to me and drag me down with him. No escape, no way out.

I saw Sam's hands coming toward me and braced myself. I closed my eyes and thought of Megan.

Ponytail.

Pink dress.