The creature obliged, coming toward her with murder in its eyes. Snarling, she ran at it, ducking beneath its outstretched arms with a grace that felt entirely unfamiliar. She spotted a knife strapped to its calf and nimbly plucked it from its sheath. With deadly precision, she sank it into its back, punching through the skin and then sinking into the muscle. She twisted right where its heart should be and was rewarded with its howl. The creature clawed at its back, attempting to reach the knife, but within seconds its strength had leached away and it tumbled to the floor. It shuddered, then lay still.
With the threat gone, the fog of rage that had overtaken Diana’s mind evaporated. She stumbled away from the woman—the creature—the thing—sprawled on her kitchen floor. Tripping over her own feet, she collapsed in the corner, a sob rising in her throat. The floor was hard beneath her as she started to rock back and forth, weak with exhaustion and fear.
What did I just do?
She hadn’t recognized herself, not even a little bit. Where had those instincts come from? She was losing her mind. She was losing herself. The self that she didn’t even know.
Panicked, remembering the body in her house, she looked up. It was still lying there, with the knife protruding grotesquely from its back. Diana tried to take deep, calming breaths, but the air had gone thick and worthless, heavy with the coppery and sinister scent of blood.
The back of her wrist began to burn again, as if fire ants were crawling over her skin in a pattern. She rubbed it and looked down, temporarily distracted from the corpse in her kitchen.
Her mouth fell open when her wrist began to turn red in a thinly lined pattern. Fine black lines replaced the red, as if she were being tattooed from the inside.
This could not be happening.
She squinted at it, scrubbing panicked tears from her face as she tried to make out the design. It looked like...a mountain range? No, not a mountain range, but close. Scrawled across her wrist where it met the back of her hand was a beautifully embellished depiction of a craggy hill.
She rubbed it more fiercely, desperate to make the image disappear. To make all of this just go away. All she wanted was to go back to her normal life and continue on her nice, safe, sane path.
A sizzling sound distracted her from her assault on her wrist and she looked up at the creature lying on her floor, its black blood creeping across her lovely limestone tiles. Strike that—it had been lying on her floor.
Its skin had begun to steam with heat and its extremities were disappearing. She shook her head. No way. There was no way that creature was sublimating in the middle of her kitchen.
But before she could blink the rest of the tears out of her eyes, the last of the arms and legs vanished. The torso began to steam and shimmer out of existence as well. Within moments, the creature’s knife clattered to the floor when the torso it had been buried in disappeared. A black substance—it must have been blood, though it looked more like tar—coated the wickedly serrated blade.
She scrambled to her feet, shock and terror thick in her throat. This couldn’t be happening. Now she couldn’t even tell herself that the awful beast had been some kind of criminal with weird red tattoos. And how could she explain her own tattoo? She’d think she was going crazy if she didn’t have proof on her wrist. Scratch that. Just because she had proof that something really weird and really wrong was happening didn’t mean that she wasn’t also going crazy. Diana laughed, sounding insane even to herself. She had to get this thing off her.
She leapt to her feet and ran to the foyer to wedge a chair beneath the handle of the front door to make up for the broken lock. Within moments she was scrubbing her hands beneath scalding water in the downstairs bathroom, but the heat didn’t stop the pervasive cold streaking through her veins. She frantically rubbed the lavender soap against the back of her wrist, feeling the thin raised lines underneath the black ink. She had to get it off.
Look at it, a dark part of her whispered.
No. She wouldn’t look at it until she couldn’t feel the raised lines anymore. She scrubbed harder.
Look at it.
Willpower, Diana. But her gaze was drawn down to the tattoo. Still there. Terrifying and beautiful.
Wait a second—she had seen that before. Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh? The famous landmass, an extinct volcano jutting from the center of the Scottish capital, had a well-known profile. One that she was familiar with from the treatise that FedEx had delivered earlier. She’d looked at the first couple of pages before running out to the grocery store. There had been a frontispiece. She’d been drawn to the small illustration, captivated by the delicate curves and jagged lines that told the story of the mountain’s past.
Get it together, Diana. There was no way the tattoo was going to wash off. And she’d actually just killed a monster with some new strength and bravery she couldn’t define. Bravery that was long gone now and she was all alone. Though she normally didn’t mind being alone, her small townhouse now seemed cavernous and dark outside of the bathroom.
She had to get out of here. Diana turned off the water with a trembling hand and grabbed a towel. After scrubbing her hands dry, she ran to the library to grab the book and went out the back door. It took her a few minutes of yanking on the stuck door, but she managed to get it open. It was worth the effort. Anyone could see her if she went out the front. But the back led to a miniscule fenced-in plot protected from prying eyes.
Rain pounded her as she ran across the tiny yard to the little gate she’d added at the side. It swung open easily into an identical tiny and private yard and she ran across and up the back steps of the neighboring townhouse. She cradled the book to her chest, protecting it from the rain, and pounded on Vivienne’s door until it swung open.
“Di, what’s wrong?” Vivienne beckoned her inside.
Diana bolted out of the rain. A small rush of warmth flooded her when she entered her friend’s cheery kitchen, but not enough to banish the cold that had gripped her heart with icicle claws.
Vivienne was the only person she knew who wouldn’t immediately call for a straitjacket, and she was so damned grateful they were neighbors.
Vivienne rubbed Diana’s shaking arms and said, “Come on, let’s go to the living room. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Vi dragged her into the brightly colored room. Such a
contrast to her own, and so welcoming that Diana almost wept. They sat on the couch.
“Tell me what’s up.” Her friend’s face was creased with worry.