For Tina, Brian, and Donna — With Love

DARK SIBLING

The Dark Man reached beneath his cloak, and when his hand was once more revealed to the watching children, it held an ornately carved instrument, its handle worked from ivory, from which protruded a glistening needle.

The Dark Man held the device high, poised over the infant’s breast, then began to bring it downward.

The child uttered a scream as the point passed through its skin, then pierced its sternum to sink deep within its chest. Though its body remained unharmed, the baby’s spirit began to die, impaled on the tip of the Dark Man’s weapon.

As the child’s sigh died away, the Dark Man unscrewed the ivory handle, leaving the needle in place.

When he was finished, he held the baby high. “Behold your brother,” he said to the gathered children. “Care for him, as I have cared for you.” The ceremony was over.

Darkness wrapped around Amelie Coulton like a funeral shroud, and only the sound of her own heartbeat told her that she was still alive.

She shouldn’t have come here — she knew that now, knew it with a certainty that filled her soul with dread. She should have stayed at home, stayed alone in the tiny shack that crouched only a few feet above the dark waters of the swamp. There, at least, she would have been safe.

She would have been safe, and so would the baby that now stirred restlessly within her body, his feet kicking her so hard she winced with pain.

But Amelie hadn’t stayed at home. Now, huddled silently in the darkness, she could feel danger all around her, danger she knew her baby could feel, too.

Eyes were watching her, but not the eyes she was used to, the eyes of the animals that roamed the swamp at night, searching for food among the reeds and mangroves, creeping through the darkness, ever vigilant for other creatures even hungrier than themselves.