The clip-clop continues on the stairs and I find myself leaning that way, trying to see what’s coming, even though every bone in my body is screaming at me to run.
This makes no sense. But that gray fog outside didn’t make any sense either, and nothing about this place seems to be logical.
The clip-clops become louder. Almost thumping. No, thundering with each footfall, because now I understand what it is I am hearing.
They are footsteps.
But not feet. Not of a human. Human feet don’t clip-clop. Horses clip-clop. Goats. Bulls. Cows. Deer, maybe, but not humans.
So it should come as no surprise to me that the creature—no, the monster—that appears at the top of the stairs isn’t human. And I am so focused on the footsteps, that’s where I’m looking when the feet finally come into view.
But of course, they are not feet. They are hooves.
A horn, a hoof, an eye, a bone…
My gaze wanders up the monster’s legs, covered in thick, light brown fur that matches the wheat-colored rings in Tomas’s eyes. He still has his hand over my mouth.
They are not human legs. They are the legs of a goat, or a deer, or a bull.
I look up and find a bare chest. The chest of a man. The neck of a man. The arms and hands of a man, except for the claws. And when my eyes track to the beast’s face, and meet his gaze, I hope for the eyes of a man too, but that’s not what I find staring back at me.
“What the fuck is that thing!” Even though Tomas’s hand is still clasped tightly over my mouth, I scream these words out. And then I bite him, forcing him to let me go. I run to the door, ready to pull it open and take my chances in the gray nothingness, but the thundering, thumping sound of hooves follows me, and I am abruptly pulled back—flying through the air and looking up at a magnificent painted ceiling—before I fall.
And then three things happen all at once:
Pia flies up out of my hand and turns into a moth.
Tomas yells, “No! He’s gone, Pell! He’s gone! We need her!”
And I hit the ground and everything goes black.
CHAPTER THREE - PELL
When you are cursed, you know it.
No one has to tell you. No one has to explain it to you. It’s just… there. Like your hand always was.
And when a curse breaks, that realization rushes in.
This is how I wake up this evening. With the abrupt realization that Grant is gone.
Not gone, like he went to the store without me. Not gone, like he took the car in for an oil change. But capital-letter-G gone, as in his curse has been lifted.
And there’s a moment—there’s always that fucking moment—when I think, Hell yeah. We’re done. We’re finally free.
But then… Reality check, Pell.
He’s gone.
I’m still here.
I just had that moment and now I am standing in the middle of the cemetery, surrounded on all sides by lifeless, lost souls, watching the form of an unfamiliar shadow as it runs into the cathedral.
I turn that direction, then sniff the air and turn back towards the unused slave cottage.
Because someone has been here.
Someone who is not Tomas, who is not Grant, who is not me. And there is no one else. Hasn’t been anyone else in more than half a century.
Except now there is.
I look back at the cathedral, wondering about my shadow intruder. But I am drawn back to the scent coming from the opposite direction.
It’s conflicting. It’s a mixture. I can discern it now. Grant and someone else. But Grant’s scent is different somehow. Nothing I can immediately understand, I just know that something has gone wrong here tonight.
So instead of following the shadow, I follow Grant. Slowly at first, my joints aching from the day’s inactivity. But then I am running down the hill and it’s so much stronger down here, the scent of wrong, that I slide to a stop in the wet grass and sniff again, trying to separate out the scents.
Grant.
Not Grant, but close.
And the third scent is definitely not Grant at all.
This is when the situation really sinks in.
Grant has left the sanctuary.
This is not completely unusual because he leaves all the time. The grocery store, the oil change place, what have you. But he never leaves without the ring on his finger and that ring is still here. I can feel it.
I turn and look back at the cathedral. The shadow took the ring and Grant is gone. He left behind his magical scent and slipped into a brand-new one.
No.
Not a new one, an old one.
The one he came here with fifty years ago.
A rage builds inside me. It starts in my chest and radiates out, pulsing and undulating through my muscles. A hatred. A malice with a nice dose of malevolence mixed in with bitterness and spite.