My pants split, my shirt stretches, buttons pop. My blood burns hot as my face stretches, my teeth sharpen and lengthen, my nose forms a snout, and my hands turn to claws.
Zach’s in trouble. His blade isn’t silver. Even if he stabs me in the heart, I’ll still rip his head off.
Gilroy and Nevin have run off screaming for help, but there’s no need. Surely everyone can hear me howl.
From just a few feet away I leap at Zach. At the last moment he pulls the knife away from Meredith and slashes at me, but I smash into him with all my weight. He goes down, his head smacking into the floor with a dull thud. For a moment I just lie on top of him. He offers no struggle, no resistance. Can it really be this easy?
Karen crouches behind me. I can feel her cold breath. I want to talk to her but the beast can’t speak with words. Just with actions. With violence. My jaws are at his throat. I can feel the pulse within. Hear his shallow breathing. He lives. But not for long. His carotid artery pulses with hot blood. Just one quick snap and I can set it all free, yet I hesitate.
“Kill him, Stanley,” Karen whispers in my ear. “Think of what he was doing to Meredith.”
Just one quick snap. Nothing more. The beast is willing, but my humanity resists.
Is Zach right? Is that what I am, a murderer? Are we going to sacrifice Zach instead?
No.
My resistance grows, painfully, as my face retracts, my arms and legs twist and transform, everything retracting, shrinking, reforming. Before I can take a breath to scream, I’m just a freshman boy again, crouched half-naked in front of Zach.
“Move out of the way, then,” she hisses. “Let me do it.”
I let her push me out of the way. God, she’s strong. She reaches down. I’m not sure what she’s planning. To choke him? Twist his neck?
It’s amazing he’s still alive. That fall to the ground would have killed almost anyone. Almost anyone human, that is. Oh crap. He’s not human. What did Rewsin say about faeries?
As Karen reaches down, his eyes open.
“Bitch,” he whispers. “I can’t believe I ever went out with you.”
But his actions speak louder than his words. His hand flashes out, my athame, black and defiled, slicing into her arm, spraying blood onto the floor. He jumps to his feet. She’s out of reach before he can strike again, but the damage is done.
“You coward,” I growl. “You don’t fight fair.”
“Fair?” Zach chuckles. “She’s the one who ruined everything in the forest. And now here, again. Fair? That’s a good one, Stanley.”
He’s got a blade in his hands. My bloodied blade.
That’s when I lock eyes with him, and him with me. And I fall into madness. How can so much hate and ill will fit into a human being? Start with being pulled away from your demon mother when you were nothing more than a baby. Because he’s not human. He’s not even pure faerie. He’s a halfling, and a changeling to boot. If only it ended there, but I get to see how he acted out, how his natural aversion to eating flesh grew into a hatred for all meat eaters, for the impurity all around him. How all the iron around him stinks and burns. How he yearned to escape, not knowing to what, until his father contacted him at last in his dreams. And showed him what he must do. Finally he could leave his impure foster family and come home. But not before gathering some human children together and a cat for one final experiment, one ceremony...
I break eye contact, and I’m on him again, half-naked, half-wolf and half-human, but one hundred percent biting and screaming rage.
There’s a disconnect here. A cut in my consciousness. One moment I’m jumping on him, and the next thing I know, Karen is pulling me off. Her hands are cold and strong and pull me back in a wave of cold, prickly pain, an inundation of my senses.
Everything is roses. Blood red petals fill my mouth, clog my nose with their sweet scent. Prickly thorns pierce my welcoming skin. I sigh softly.
She lets me go. My senses clear. Unfortunately. Because now a nasty, coppery taste fills my mouth. Like when I bit my lip.
Blood.
But this time it’s not my lip that’s bleeding.
I spit and bring my hand up to wipe my face, but my hands are covered in it. And none of it is mine. Zach lies on the floor underneath me. It’s impossible to focus. How did this happen? There are things wrong with him that disturb me.
But most disturbing of all? My hunger: it’s gone.
And I’m afraid to look at what’s left of my feeding.
Above me Karen stares down, her face twisted. Is she afraid of me? Of Zach? Or is it the blood?