Chapter Twelve Monika
Chapter Twelve
Monika
Thirty minutes earlier
I grimaced through my photo shoot. Never comfortable to begin with on this side of the camera, the photo shoot seems to last an eternity, even if it’s only actually a few minutes.
On top of that, it was hard not to take Taranis’s dismissal personally.
I mean, he can’t know about my long and annoying history with Cynthia.
We went to middle and high school together in Berlin, and because we were the only two Korean girls in our year, and given our mothers’ close ties, we ended up in a sort of forced friendship.
Needless to say, she’s not the girl I would have chosen for my BFF, nor would she have chosen me for hers.
To start, we didn’t have the same interests or the same values.
To end with, I slept with her boyfriend our sophomore year.
To this day, she hasn’t gotten over it.
I’d like to say she’s being petty, but stealing my date at her mom’s party might just be equal payback. Fucking clever bitch. And I just . . . walked away. I should have stayed. I should have fought her for him. But I couldn’t avoid this photo shoot, and I couldn’t stand up to Taranis’s dismissal.
I couldn’t fully understand the look on his face.
It was . . . creepy. And the fact that I am almost certain he’d been about to kiss me doesn’t help.
I was so flustered that I just left. But that’s not who I am.
I should have stayed and dealt with Cynthia’s rude comments on the spot.
I should have told her to back the fuck up, and if she didn’t, I should have clawed her eyes out. He’s mine.
At least, he’s mine for the night.
The second the photo shoot is over, I book it back to the Tunnel of Lights, worried I’ve been away too long—what if she’s doing her thing and successfully swooping in?
What if he’s buying it? I mean, she is the hottest woman I’ve ever seen in real life.
It’d be tough for a guy not to waver, and Taranis doesn’t have any morals.
He’s a narcissist at best, and at worst, a narcissistic villain and murderer.
I stand at the front entrance to the tunnel as a beautifully dressed couple heads inside in front of me. I compliment their hanboks in Korean and watch the surprise light in their eyes. Without a hard stare at my face, it’s rare that folks suspect I speak Korean with a near-native accent.
I’m about to head in after them when it occurs to me that if I want to spy on Taranis and Cynthia, I should actually head around to the back entrance by the bathrooms since they’re standing closer to that end. Yeah. I want to spy on them. To torture myself? Maybe. I guess.
I hesitate, debating a thousand times, and I’m still debating if this is the right move as I pass the Korean couple again on the way to the bathrooms. They both seem confused and surprised to see me again so soon as I slink past them like a creepo weirdo to the mouth of the tunnel.
I turn into the entrance, the red light of the lanterns washing over me as I stand there, ready for my gotcha moment. Though who am I kidding? If I caught them making out like teenagers in love, the only person getting got would be me.
Compromising with myself, I peek around the corner instead of jumping out like a burglar, and what I see fills me with confusion.
Cynthia’s clutching her face and weeping as Taranis lords over her, words I can’t quite hear ripping out of his throat.
I’d expected to see them wrapped up in each other, but it looks like .
. . he’s torturing her. Is Taranis the narcissist doing that because she’s annoying him? Or . . . is he doing that for me?
I know the answer and my stomach smashes all together and then expands like a balloon on my next jerky breath.
Butterflies. Not a little flutter, but a tornado of butterflies paints my insides with warm syrup with every flap of their wings.
I press my hands to my belly lest they escape as I watch Taranis release Cynthia against the lanterns behind her, lingering electrical shocks still skittering over her perfect bone structure in purple and blue shades.
Ssi-bal! What if he kills her?
I stagger out of hiding and take out my phone to record in case it comes down to a case of he said / she said, but the moment I open my mouth to call Taranis off, he takes an abrupt step away from her as if pushed by an invisible hand.
His body lurches, and he grabs his head at the same time horns sprout out of it.
I gasp, staggering back myself while Cynthia screams bloody fucking murder, and we both watch, mouths hanging open wide, as Taranis becomes something else entirely.
“Your head!” Cynthia screams, pointing a shaking arm at Taranis as horns as white and glittery as freshly fallen snow sprout from the subtle peaks of his hairline.
His brown skin takes on a bluish hue, the color rolling down his body like a flush, and he wavers where he is, like he’s trying to fight against this transformation . . . and he’s losing.
I take a few steps forward, my hands raised, including the one holding my phone.
“Taranis?” I try, worried. Shit fucking scared.
Is he . . . in pain? He looks like he’s in agony.
“Let me call—” Who the fuck do I call? Panicked, I start to put my recording down in favor of calling the lead COE doctor, Emily.
“Don’t fucking . . .” he snaps at me, his voice loud and warped. It’s so deep and dark that it scares the piss out of me, and I jump. Then I slap my free hand over my mouth as Taranis crumples in on himself.
He lands hard on the ground and I rush over to him, only to be thrown back onto my ass when a burst of energy is flung from his body.
I’m thrown back toward the bathrooms. I can hear the doors slam against each other.
I grab my phone; my clutch is around my wrist. I shelter my head in case another blast comes out of him, but when I look up, I’m fairly certain the damage is complete.
I scrabble over the ground toward the . .
. toward Taranis. He’s three times the size he was when I last blinked.
His body has exploded out of his tuxedo, and did I say I thought his skin was blue before?
Because now I’m sure of it. The hands he was using to hold his head have become massive and taloned—clawed.
I don’t know the difference. They’re white like his horns, dusted in glitter, serrated on the sides, and look deadly sharp.
I’m freaking the fuck out, begging him to be all right. “Taranis, please . . . Please . . .” I keep begging him while Cynthia sits nearby shouting uselessly.
“Oh my God, it happened! Oh my God, did it . . . Was it because of me?”
That warm fluttering in my gut turns to a cold knife as, for just a second, I believe the conviction I hear in her laughter.
I rebel against it, trying to focus, trying to stay calm.
Did he revert because of her? Is this what happened with the Wyvern and Vanessa? Are Cynthia and Taranis in love now?
But before I can dig too deep down that rabbit hole, the smart part of my brain catches up to the knee-jerk thoughts. No. Fuck no, he didn’t fall in love with her. Neither Taranis nor Cynthia are capable of loving anyone.
“Taranis! Taranis?” I’m scared to touch him. Scared of his claws. He releases this deep rumbling sound and, all at once, starts to unfurl. “Cynthia, help me!”
His engorged, muscle-bound arms are busting out of his tuxedo, leaving strips of it hanging off his frame in tatters.
Those bulky arms lash out for stability, one hand grabbing on to Cynthia’s arm—which I’m pretty sure she’d lifted only to defend herself—while the other reaches out toward me and grabs my shoulder. I’m still recording.
Taranis starts to angle himself toward me and give me more of his weight. “Easy,” I grunt, struggling to accept it.
“Monika?” Finally, fucking finally, he’s trying to open his eyes.
I gasp as soon as he does. His eyes . . . they’re fucking radiant. The purest pale blue, a shade I’m entirely positive isn’t found in nature. “Y-y-yes?”
Cynthia says more stupid things while Taranis releases her entirely.
I try to encourage him once again to let me take him to Emily, but he refuses.
I don’t think he realizes what’s happened to him, so with significant effort, I manage to get him to the bathroom.
He needs to see this with his own beautiful blue eyes.
“There’s something on my ass,” he tells me as his head swivels on his neck. He’s regaining mobility, slowly but surely, but he doesn’t seem to be fully with me yet.
I’m worried about an injury I can’t see, so I don’t hesitate to end my recording, stash my phone back in my clutch, and reach for his belt.
Under other circumstances, this might have made my heart pitter-patter.
As it stands now, my heart does pitter-patter, but not because I pull a beautiful, glorious dick out of his pants . . .
Because I pull out a tail.
I curse in every language I know and fall back against the closed bathroom-stall door.
I manage to get a few words out before the bathroom door opens up behind me.
I almost crash into the ajumeoni emerging from the stall behind me.
She shrieks, and I’ve got half a mind to join her as Taranis’s tail starts to move autonomously.
Why it wouldn’t, I don’t fucking know, but it reminds me of a giant boa constrictor, and I’m absolutely terrified when it wraps itself around my waist.
We stumble out of the bathroom. I’m freaking the fuck out. I want to get him to someone who might be able to be calm about all this, but Taranis is insistent that we get back to his car. Which means we have to fight our way through the press.
How fucking ironic.