The Angel's Share

A short horror story

Image credit: Ondra Mach via Unsplash

When the wind picks up and the stars blink out, the hunger starts.

It’s always this way. An unchanging cycle.

I step to the window, still light on my feet despite the rust in my knees, and wipe away the frost with the edge of my sleeve.

There, against the matte black of a midnight wood, it stares at me, the bright orange of its eyes casting a faint fiendish glow over stone-colored fur.

The hare.

I breathe, try to push down the need building in my gut. Not tonight, with the hoarfrost making the world hard. Not now, when all I want is to sleep and dream. But it’s there, insistent. A force of nature.

I back away from the glass and slip through the shadows to the hearth. The darkness is welcoming, but it’s the light of the fire I need.

I kneel, close my eyes, let the heat chase away the cold from my skin. And as the warmth moves across me, I am changed. I grow restless, wild.

The orange glow of the flames becomes the orange glow of my lantern stare. I feel the cold ground beneath me, see the trees, taller than tall, scraping the sky above.

My skull articulates, cracking and reforming into joints better made for bounding. My muscles are coils, my sinews snapping bands driving me forward through the dark. The wind rushes past my long ears, and I can hear the whispers of a world hidden from humans. Then my stride lengthens, my heart races, and my haunches quiver until there’s no telling the difference between the hare and me.

And still the hunger burns inside, insatiable, overwhelming.

I drive myself on, my long limbs cutting elegant jags across the needle-strewn floor. My nose, exquisitely sensitive, knows the way. It can smell tender meat across the miles, and I want it so badly my jaw aches.

I’m out of the woods, dashing through fields edged in rime. The starless night is black velvet above me. My empty stomach a black void within. My nose twitches. My eyes burn orange swaths across the darkness.

Then, finally, I see it.

The cabin on the hill.

I approach on silent paws. No light escapes the cracks between the logs of the cabin walls. No whisp of smoke drifts into the charcoal sky. But I know a family slumbers there. I can smell them. This one a mossy leather. That one vetiver and tobacco. A clutch of fresh-cut flowers and herbs. But the one I want is a rich ambergris. A musky, earthy, salty smell that sets fire to my veins, the blood rushing to my gut.

The one that smells of ambergris is afraid. He’s beset by nightmares. I can see them in the sky, prancing and pawing above the roof, delighting in their danse macabre. I give them a moment more and then lift my foot, slamming it against the ground, fast and hard, over and over. A signal in the night.

The dark horses evaporate into mist and blow away on the winter breeze. Their job is done. It’s my turn now.

He appears at the window, the one who smells of ambergris. Young and tender yet, but long-limbed and sturdy from his time out in the world. The salt still clings to his skin; there’s a brininess to his breath.

Come to me. The words follow in the footsteps of the nightmares, dancing out a dream of what could be.

Come to me. My eyes burn, orange and oranger still, a beacon to follow.

He’s across the threshold moments later. I let him approach me, let him get just close enough that he reaches out a shaking finger as though I were a creature of comfort. But I am hard and sharp. Cold and hungry. There is no comfort here.

And so I turn and run and know he will follow because the salt in his blood sings for me.

I bound over the earth, lithe muscles stretching over my bones. He bounds too, just behind. Beads of sweat break out on his skin, and his musky smell intensifies. I need to taste him. But I must wait. The blunt teeth of an herbivore aren’t made for what I will do.

So I run on, focus on the press of the air against my fur, lift my nose to the smell of home, the hearth, and the body—my body—that waits there. Patient. Hungry.

We’re at my door now. It’s open, and I’m across it in one easy leap.

My eyes snap open. I’m back in front of the fire. The logs still crackle and pop in the heat of the flames, but I am changed. The hare is gone, and in its place is a mouth full of teeth made to tear. The hare is gone, but my body remembers its athleticism. I feel vigorous, powerful, feral.

The one that smells of ambergris lingers on the other side of the threshold. His brain denies the danger, but his heart knows. Hearts always know.

I prick my ears to the sound of his rapid pulse, delighting in the prey-panic beat. I dance to it, skipping over the old floorboards worn smooth from a hundred years of hunts just like this.

I interlace my fingers with his. I’m gentle, yielding, the creature of comfort he thought I was, if only for this moment on the verge between life and death.

And then I let myself go, give into the wild thing at my core. Not an angel, nor a demon, but something older, an atavistic energy.

A thing that must be fed.

The one that smells of ambergris does not struggle. He does not make a sound. The brain keeps him quiet. But the heart knows.

His bones snap. His fluids run thick with terror. I chew and chew.

When it is all over, the one that smells of ambergris hovers before me, a shade expelled on his body’s last breath.

He hangs there, inert. But his eyes burn a muted orange. We stare at each other, and I wonder, not for the first time, what it must be like to have this shadow self. The ones that smell of ambergris and vetiver, of spice and moss, and sweat and skin. For them it is always this way, this peculiar double of flesh and phantom.

I have taken my share. Enacted half the age-old symbiosis. And now it is another’s turn.

And so we wait, the shade and I.

They will come soon. Hungry in their own way for what I’ve left behind.

And indeed, it’s scarcely more than a hundred beats of my quicksilver heart, and they are there at the edge of the darkness—the one that smells of aether and ash. When they step through my door, the sky, if anything, grows darker behind them, and it’s hard to pick out their sable wings against that black hole firmament. But once inside, my fire limns their feathers, wringing gold from all that darkness.

They are beautiful. And terrible.

They reach for what remains of the one that smells of ambergris. And I watch as dark absorbs dark until there’s nothing left except the lingering savor of salt.

Phantom. The angel’s share.

And flesh. For the angel’s hare.

---

Thanks to

Nick Winney

for inspiring me to think of the different ways angel’s share could be parsed!

Looking for more tales fresh from the witch’s oven? Check out my other dark fantasy and horror stories here, including the contest winner, The Echo of Gods.

Or maybe you’re in the mood for something a little longer? My serialized novel, Dark as Dawn, Bright as Night, is a literary fantasy with elements of horror, and you can find all the episodes here!

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