Lips Touch: Three Times(27)
Author: Laini Taylor

Mab had just been stirring her soup in circles. Now she lifted her spoon and took a tiny sip from it. "There," she said. And slowly, in silence, they ate their soup without tasting a thing.

"Mama," said Esme after the handsome waiter had cleared away their bowls. "Don’t you think the wolves can follow us through the train tunnel?"

"We should have some time," answered Mab. "They only hunt at night. They draw power from the moon and they’re strongest when it’s nearest."

"But it’s not near now," said Esme. "It’s almost in apogee." She’d been charting the monthly moons with her mother her whole life, and she finally knew why.

"That’s good for us," said Mab. "They won’t be at full strength."

Esme knew somehow that it wouldn’t matter, that they would be strong enough. She could almost see them lunging out of the darkness, slaver clinging to their yellow fangs. She also knew, somehow, that they wouldn’t stop until they found her, and she wondered why she wasn’t more afraid. "What do they want?" she asked in a hushed voice.

Mab only smiled at her and reached for her hand. If she knew what they wanted — and by the fear in her eyes Esme could tell that she did — she wasn’t going to tell.

The train sped on, out of its undersea tunnel and onto the plains of France. By and by they arrived in Paris and transferred to a train bound for Marseilles, where Mab planned to get them on a ship for Africa or the Canary Islands, or perhaps a boat that would never again come to a shore but just sail and sail where the wolves would never find them. But when they reached the port in Marseilles, they learned the next passenger ship wouldn’t depart until morning. It was bound for Tunis and would leave at dawn.

Night was falling.

Mab knew that back in London the hunters would be waking up in whatever dark place they had used for a lair. They had probably slept in their human cithrim as they usually had back in Tajbel. Erezav and Isvant would be among them, the Queen’s favorites who looked like beasts no matter what cithra they kept, wolf or man or even crow. They made vicious crows, and picked out humans’ eyes just for looking at them. And the Queen herself, she would be there too, not as a wolf but as a woman. She might be riding one of her wolves, her long fingers clutching the fur of its nape. Mab shuddered at the vision of the Queen astride one of her massive black beasts. She knew the hunters couldn’t reach Marseilles for hours, but the sight of the rising moon still sent a thrill of panic through her. "Come on," she said, grabbing Esme by the hand.

They found a hotel and took a room high in the attic. It had a round window that looked out over the harbor, and it had one big bed. Mab and Esme huddled in it. They burned the pages of a romance novel someone had left behind and spread the ashes around the bed, keeping some in their fists and the laps of their nightgowns, ready to throw. "Ashes burn them," Mab told Esme.

"Why?" asked Esme, looking at her dirty fingers. She found the sensation of the ashes unpleasant.

"I don’t know. They abhor fire. I never knew of fire until I left them."

They fell silent for a long time, listening.

Esme slept and she dreamed of a moon framed by a rough rock window, and of a bed of furs, and of silver eyelids winking open on hinges to disclose real eyes, bloodshot and sticky. She dreamed of the pressure of warm lips against hers and she tasted river water on them and saw snowflakes caught in long, dark hair. She woke and listened in the dark for the howl of wolves but she heard only city sounds.

Mab had stayed awake all night and her eyes were glassy with exhaustion. "It’s time to go," she said.

It was dawn. The tattered lace of darkness still hung over the city, as if night were a grim bride trudging to the horizon, trailing her shadowy train. They hurried the short blocks to the waterfront and merged there into a sleepy knot of passengers waiting to board a ship. The minutes dragged past and with each the glow of morning crept a little farther up the sky, until Mab and Esme began to believe they would escape.

The first howl, when it came, was very far away, an eerie wisp of sound that might have been something else: a siren, or a grief-stricken woman. But Mab and Esme both knew it wasn’t something else. They felt it in their spines and in their souls. They spun, listening, staring, searching. The next howl was closer, and the next closer still. "Mama, they’re coming!" Esme cried, and Mab heard excitement in her voice and saw that her face was vivid with it.

"Esme!" she said sharply, and grabbed her hand. The passengers were lumbering across a narrow gangway onto the ship, and she shoved past them, dragging Esme behind her. Lazy curses followed them as Mab thrust their tickets into the porter’s hand and hurried aboard and down the wide aisle of the deck. She made for the portal that led inside but Esme broke away and darted to the railing. She clung to it and stared out over the dawn-washed waterfront.

For a moment Mab stared at her daughter, so slight and slim, head back, hair chopped, long white neck so newly exposed. The fixed fascination on her face made her almost seem to glow. She reached up and slid her eye patch back. Her blue eye glittered like glass. She gasped and pointed. "Mama! There!"

Frantically Mab followed her pointing finger, and at the same instant that she heard the first bewildered screams coming from the docks, she saw them. Black, rushing, huge. With a cry, she clawed Esme’s hands off the rail and dragged her through the doorway. She drew her step by struggling step down the corridor. Esme lagged and looked back over her shoulder, transfixed.

They went down steps, down corridors. The ship was a labyrinth. The howls that had gone mute when they first plunged inside now filled the passages with unearthly echoes. The wolves were inside. Wild, Mab found a small empty room, pulled Esme into it, and pushed the heavy door closed.

It didn’t latch. It had no lock. Desperate, Mab drew a ragged breath and threw her back against it, just as a great weight hammered it from the outside, slamming it into the back of her head. It lurched open a crack. A black snout appeared and wolf breath steamed into the small room. With a scream Mab threw herself back against the door, fighting it, her feet scrabbling and sliding as the wolves snarled and lunged at it.

Esme stood before her in a kind of trance.

And behind her, in the tiny dim chamber that had, an instant earlier, been empty, there appeared a figure. A voice, soft and accusing, asked, "Where did you think you were going, Mab?"

Mab gasped, "You!" as the figure stepped from the shadows.

He was beautiful and bestial, tall, with dark hair gleaming in riverine channels over his thick shoulders, and he gazed at Mab through the pale, terrible eyes of a Druj. He looked exactly the same as he had fourteen years ago. The same as he would look forever. He reached for Esme and gently cupped the nape of her bare neck.