She relaxed her spine against the wall as her heart sank. “Henry,” she began.
Scrunching his eyes tighter, he stepped away, his chest heaving. And the absence of his body made her own ache in all the parts she wanted him. He walked away and, when he reached the corner of the stone barricade, he finally had the courage to meet her eyes. His brows pulled together. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t…” She almost followed him, but he held out a hand, stopping her. He appeared to be in a great deal of pain.
“This was a mistake, Ms. Ashton,” he said, his tone formal again.
Then he was gone.
She watched the empty corner, the empty forest—not sure how even the cold, unfeeling Mr. Clayton he pretended to be could walk away from such a moment, with a bond so cosmic and a chemistry so pure, it fulfilled her mentally and spiritually, not just physically. With her chest heavy, she buried her face in her hands, willing that ache to leave her. Begging it to.
***
Henry pushed open his glass doors and moved to the back steps, bringing a bottle of bourbon whiskey to his mouth. He took a long pull, not bothering to wipe his lips when he lowered it. It was almost gone, this bottle lasting only days rather than the usual weeks. The setting sun hid somewhere in the trees, but the clouds in the dusk sky showed their usual pinkness. It had stopped raining only an hour before, and already the gray had dispersed.
Thoughts of Elizabeth haunted him: the way she tasted, the way her body had pressed against him, how exhilarating it had been to touch her. The way the sight of her in the afternoon rainstorm had filled him with a want he could hardly tame. Briefly, he fantasized about what would have happened had he accepted her invitation. He bought the bottle again to his mouth.
The whiskey did its job well, his body tingling and his head in a buzz: the conditions that made his transformation that much easier. Just when he expected them, throbbing tremors began to tear through his heart, changing it. It took his breath and his pulse heightened as he reminded himself, as he did every night, that he deserved this.
He placed the bottle on the top step, his hand trembling. At the same time he descended them, he removed his pants, letting them fall to the weeds. His brokenness had long ago turned to numbness, but tonight was unlike any other. Walking forward, he welcomed the cool evening air against his naked skin…welcomed the pain.
And at the sensation of being ripped apart from the inside out—rolling until every extremity had a taste—heat radiated from his skin. With a grunt, he leapt over the stone wall, where the paws of the monster hit the forest floor.
Chapter 20
Elizabeth rested her elbows on the railing, staring into midnight shadows. She knew he wouldn’t come. Part of her didn’t want him to. The part that felt angrier than she’d ever been. The other part, however—the part that would always ache for him—prayed that this time he would realize he didn’t have to be scared, not of her and not of him.
She sighed, wrapping her jacket more snugly around herself. The storm had stopped before sunset, but the air still felt like rain: crisp, moist, and cool. It even smelled like rain. She turned, making her way to the back door, when a wretched scream echoed from within the forest, shooting a shiver up her spine.
Her stomach dropped when his roar followed, more fierce and deafening than that of a lion’s. She could only watch the trees, as though they would tell her what lay within. The scream pierced the air again, high-pitched and drawn-out. But it wasn’t the scream of a person, since no human could leave such a chilling note in the air. The sound, ghostlike and unnatural, seemed to belong to a creature born of nightmares.
It came over her then: the sensation that left her arms goose-fleshed and her chest tight. The evil loomed out there, and so did Henry.
She jumped from the porch without taking the steps and ran the trail as fast as she could. She could see nothing and lifted her arms for protection against twigs and branches, praying her feet’s memorization wouldn’t fail her. As she ran, wishing for another sound to lead her, she recalled section eight of her father’s book, the section she had just read a couple of days before. The demon, Diableron, and its relation to Aglaé.
The scream sounded again, a blood-curdling eeeeee hanging in the air, and before it could ebb away, a growl overpowered it, making Elizabeth run harder and faster. Though she was close, a strange stillness suddenly settled over the forest, hitting her and the trees as though a physical drape. She stopped short, and with a heaving chest and sweating neck, she looked through the blackness all around her. She wanted to call for him but couldn’t catch her breath.
Before she could take one more step, she was thrown into the air, her back breaking twigs as it slammed into the trunk of a cedar. It knocked the wind from her, and with her back against the trunk—the tree seeming to hold her itself—she winced, looking for the source.
“Brave Elizabeth,” she heard at her ear, startling her. It was a whisper and a voice at the same time, as though the words were spoken on the tongue of a snake; but she saw nothing. She struggled against invisible shackles, unable to move. “Fearlesss,” it hissed again, and this time it came from her other side. Still, nothing there.
Her pulse heightened, her face perspired. “Show yourself,” she managed through tight ribs.
It appeared before her then, right at her eye level, and Elizabeth flinched. This Diableron, unfortunately, appeared less cartoonish than the one in her book. Much more frightening. Her face of flesh, bone, and black nothingness melted, and as Elizabeth tried to steady her breaths, wondering where to look since the creature seemed to have no eyes, it smiled, revealing the black void inside its mouth. Elizabeth swallowed deeply, recoiling.
“Not so fearlessss anymore, are you, Elizabeth Ashton?” Elizabeth waited for a slithering, long tongue to appear.
“Where is he?”
The Diableron’s face pressed against Elizabeth’s, her cold and damp being akin to the dense air from an underground cave. “He’sss worth dying over, mortal?”
Before Elizabeth could answer, a dim light glowed from within the demon, from the place a heart would reside, and then it wasn’t the demon at all. Elizabeth squinted as the light faded, and in the Diableron’s place was an image she couldn’t accept. She blinked to make sure she saw it correctly.
“Beth,” a shaky voice said. His blue eyes were bloodshot and sunk-in, his head shaved, his tall body scrawny, and his face glistening with sweat. Desperation fueled him as he grasped the collar of her jacket. “Help me, please. They’re gonna kill me, Beth.”
Elizabeth’s jaw fell slack as she recoiled, and tears welled in her eyes. “Willem,” she said in a painful breath.
“How could you let me die?” He shook her, the sensation jarring, and blood began to pour from a hole in his chest, then from his mouth—so much blood it looked like too much to fit in a human body. He brought his hands to his chest and gagged, then coughed blood all over her in the way he’d done the last time she saw him. She hyperventilated, his face swirling in her vision. She’d been brave at his death once before. She had no bravery left.
“No, Willem…I tried,” she sobbed.
“You killed me.” With blood still pouring from his mouth, he grasped her jacket again, and her chest shuddered. Through the blood, he shouted, “You killed me!”
She shook her head, beyond words.
Then his face transformed, grew younger. Even his hair grew, and every stage of his life passed in reverse on his face, until it was the face of a seven-year-old boy—the same as the one she remembered most, the one in her locket. “Bethy?” he said in the boyish voice she had almost forgotten, the one that knocked the air from her lungs yet again. He looked around in confusion. He brought a hand to his face then pulled it away, viewing the blood on his small, childish fingers. With eyes enlarging, he screamed, the prepubescent sound catching in his throat. “Bethy!” They seemed to hyperventilate at the same time. “Bethy, what’s wrong with me?”