Chapter Twenty-Six
Theodore
There is a beast inside my skin and it bares its teeth in hunger
My throat burns with ravenous craving
My stomach aches with gnawing emptiness
I wish to sink my claws into your skin
And devour
When I was seven, I got lost in the woods between Sainte-Falaise and Echo's Peak.
I don't remember much of that night, only that I woke surrounded by trees and moss, my feet bare and scratched from the detritus, my body shaking from the cold.
There was a dead fox on the ground in front of me, mostly eaten and picked away at by the carrion birds and forest animals, patches of skin and fur barely clinging to the bone. I remember the mushrooms growing from the ground around it—the fleshy, sponge-like fungus filling every gap and space.
I don't know how long I stared at it before my father found me. How long I wondered if the mushrooms knew what they were doing, building a new home within the carcass of a decaying old one.
"Why are the mushrooms growing on it?" I remember asking my father.
"They're eating it," he told me as he hoisted me on his back.
"Mushrooms eat bones?"
"Sometimes they do."
"But why? Aren't bones gross? That's why mama takes ‘em out before we eat?"
My father thought about that question for a while before he shrugged. "Well, I'm not quite sure what bones taste like, but maybe they just like them. I like peas and you don't. All things decay, my boy, and all things devour. It's not up to us to decide what they choose to do it to."
I remember looking back over my shoulder at the dead fox and wondering if the mushrooms knew what they were consuming. Wondering if they liked the taste of it. If they hungered for it like I hungered.
My parents never knew how I got so far into the woods at night, nor how I did it while asleep—somnambulism, the doctor called it; the Devil's Puppet, Father Thompson corrected—but they took to locking my doors at night after that.
Even now, though I am old enough not to need it anymore, I have gotten in the habit of locking the bedroom door.
Maybe that's why I am so surprised to find myself standing on Azizi's doorstep in the middle of the night, shaking from the cold and panting from exertion.
I do not remember falling asleep. I do not remember unlocking the door or walking here. There is blood on my bare feet when I look down at them in confusion.
"Theodore? Goodness, what's happened to you?" Azizi asks as soon as the door opens, her voice loud enough in the quiet night to make me jump.
She is lovely, in her red nightgown and crème robe, surrounded by the gentle light coming from inside the manor. Kolfina appears at her shoulder a moment later, just as soft and beautiful as always. I want nothing more than to fall into them and lose myself in the distraction they pose.
"Theodore?" Azizi speaks again, her hands taking mine gently. "Can you hear me, darling?"
It's only then, when I see her paint-splattered hands cradling mine, that I realize just how much of me is covered in blood. It is soaked into my trousers, soaked into the collar and sleeves of my shirt. I lick my lips, and I can taste it dripping from my chin.
"I-I—"
I don't know, I want to say. I don't know what happened.
Azizi hushes me, cupping my chin in her hand to meet my gaze. "Darling, can you tell me where you are right now?"
Home.
"E-Echo's Peak," I stutter, my voice raw and wet. "I don't—I don't remember coming here. I don't remember waking up—"
"That's alright," she assures me, glancing at something over my shoulder. "Am I right to assume this isn't your blood?"
"I don't know."
Her face softens, and I can see an exhaustion poking at the edges of her eyes. Didn't Kolfina say she was struggling too? Has she been sleeping since I've been away? Eating? Has she been holed up in her studio doing nothing but spiraling in her canvas hells until I showed up at her door?
Her lip twitches into a smile, and I realize I've said that all aloud.
"You worry too much, just like Kolfina. I am fine.
" I'm not so sure, but her thumb brushing my bottom lip draws my attention back to the still-warm blood that coats my skin.
I can feel it beneath my fingernails, under my tongue, sticking my shirt to my stomach and my unbound breasts.
"You dear, are an entirely different story, however. "
I swallow the mix of bile and blood pooling in my mouth.
"I'm not hurt." At least, I don't think I am. My feet ache from walking through the woods without shoes, and my body still aches from Fitzwilliam’s beating. I still feel weak from the lack of food and a week’s long stint in bed.
But I do not hurt. "I just… I don't know—I don't remember. .."
"Would you like me to go look?” Azizi asks, nodding to the path behind me. “You've left a trail easy enough for us to follow.”
It is in fact rather obvious where I've come from, the ground scuffed from my dragging feet, the branches of the trees broken where I walked straight through them. It is too dark for me to see the rest, but I've no doubt Azizi can see the drops of blood following in my wake.
"You do not have to come with," she tries to assure me, but I am already walking toward the forest line as if in a trance.
Terror surges through my veins, causing my stomach to pitch and squirm, but Azizi places a hand on my lower back, and I can feel the gentle coolness of Kolfina's fingers on my neck as we walk.
And walk.
And walk.
I’m not sure what I expect to find, but when Azizi finally stops us, it is too late to deny the truth.
I can see the body splayed out on the ground in a puddle of moonlight, bloodshot eyes staring up at the stars, chest clawed open and throat torn out.
It's dark, but I recognize the face all the same. Handsome, but cruel.
I can almost feel his skin between my teeth still, can almost remember the tear of flesh as I dug my nails into it and pulled.
"I-I—"
Azizi abandons me at the edge of the small clearing, stepping closer to the man to observe him. Kolfina stays at my side, her presence too cold for the chill of the night, and yet too comforting for me to move away.
It is only then, when Azizi hovers over the body and it twitches violently, that I realize he is still alive.
I couldn’t tell with the sound of my own blood pounding in my ears, but now that I know, his wet gurgling is impossible to ignore.
It echoes around the clearing, every gasp and cough like another stone in my gut.
Every twitch of his hand or spasm of his chest like another knife in my throat.
"His name—his name is Fitzwilliam." The words crack in the back of my mouth; my hands shake at my sides. "He—I didn't want—I shouldn't have—"
"Is he the one who beat you?" Azizi's voice is hard and unwavering as she pokes the man with her foot, only sparing me a glance when I do not answer.
But I don't need to. She can see it on my face, in my eyes and the bruises still lingering around them.
She nods once and then turns to look at him again, as if to make sure he is paying attention.
"Good, then he deserves whatever fate has given to him. "
He doesn't. He doesn't, I want to say. Instead, I watch as Azizi crouches down and reaches for something I cannot see. Whatever it is cracks and squelches beneath her grip. Fitzwilliam coughs so hard the blood in his mouth splatters across Azizi’s face.
He scrambles to claw at her, to push her away, but his body is too weak, his soul too close to death.
With a final, pitiful whine, his arms fall limp at his sides, a dull, resounding thud echoing around the small clearing. He does not move again.
When Azizi stands and turns back to us, there is something wet and dripping in her hands, and I try not to look at it.
Hunger and bile wage war in my stomach as I take a hesitant step back, but Kolfina is there instead, watching with that morbid curiosity of hers, a paradox of worry and encouragement that I cannot understand.
"Azizi—"
"Tell me, Theodore," she says as she draws nearer, gliding across the forest floor without making a sound.
I do not dare to move, for Azizi is a hunter on the prowl, a wild cat that slinks through the shadows and tracks its prey.
She brings one hand to her mouth, sucking at her bloody fingers, and a smirk twitches at the corners of her lips when she catches me staring.
"Tell me what you feel. Tell me what you want. "
Disgust. Revulsion. Terror.
A drop of blood falls from her plump lips, the scent sharp and metallic where it fills the air.
I watch it cut a river down her chin, watch it gather there until it grows too heavy and plunges down, down, down.
It lands on the dark expanse of her breast, following the curve until it disappears beneath her nightgown.
I ache to follow it. To drag my tongue across her cool skin and sink between her breasts until every last inch glistens with my thirst.
My mouth waters. My voice is barely a whisper by the time she is close enough to hear it. "I feel... I feel hungry."
She is a breath away when she finally stops, and I have to crane my head a bit to keep her gaze.
It grows harder and harder to breathe with her so near.
Every breath is a mouthful of that intoxicating scent, and I am barely holding myself back from sinking my teeth into the soft flesh spilling from her gown.
How can I still be so hungry? While I do not remember what led me here tonight, the blood covering my front should be proof enough. Yet still there is a ravenous void inside me that craves more.
Azizi brushes her fingers across my cheek, leaving a wet warmth there that sends shivers down my spine. I close my eyes against it, focus instead on the wild thumpthumpthump of my heart in my chest and Kolfina's chill where she stands at my back.
It works for only a moment before those fingers trace my lips and I am lost to it. Lost to her.
Before I know what's happened, I've parted my lips and let her in, a desperate groan spilling from the depths of my soul as two fingers glide over my tongue, spreading that sweet ambrosia in their wake.
It burns, the taste of blood. It burns like holy water on the Devil's tongue, and I'm desperate to choke on it. To drown in every drop she deigns to offer me.
I grasp her wrist to hold her still, and she lets me, watching with piercing eyes as I lap at her fingers like a desperate pup at its mother's tit.
I drag my tongue along her palm, dip it between the webbing of her thumb and forefinger, trace it down the veins in her wrist until there is nothing left for me to clean.
It is a mirror to the first time we did this, only this time she is not the one with a body beneath her.
"Such a hungry thing," Azizi coos when I look back up at her.
The world is too fuzzy at the edges, the monster in my mouth on its hind legs begging for more.
I have not let go of her wrist, but she does not pull away.
She grasps my chin between her fingers instead, tracing my lips with her thumb to smear the blood staining my skin.
She digs her nail into my bottom lip until I part them just wide enough for her to press something hot and burning against them.
"Open your mouth, my little beast. Open your mouth and eat."
I cannot deny her, even if I wanted to. The Devil grasps at my jaw and pries it open with clawed hands; he pushes me forward and sinks my teeth into the thing Azizi feeds me, laying praises against my lips with every bite.
It gives so easily despite my human teeth, spilling blood across my tongue and down my chin, staining my already tainted skin with rivers of hellfire.
I dare not look at the thing she holds, but I can feel it pulsing in my throat as I swallow. I can hear it thumpthumpthumping behind the cage of my teeth.
The scripture speaks of the fruit of Eden—sweet juices that clung to Adam's hands and the gentle crunch as he sunk his blasphemous teeth into the fruit’s outer skin.
It speaks of a serpent hissing promises in a beautiful woman's ear, tainting her and tempting her until she held that fruit in her hand and fed it to Adam with a smile on her face.
Azizi smiles at me now, and I find myself lost in those gardens of lore as I gorge myself on the fruit she offers.
It fills me in a way I've never known, settles in my stomach like it was always meant to be there.
I imagine this is how it feels for the rich to dine on delicacies from all around the world.
How it feels for a man set to hang being offered his final meal.
How it felt for Adam to finally taste the heart of Eden.
I take another bite. And then another.
I cannot help the crashing moan that breaks over the cliffs of my teeth as I dig them into the bloody muscle. Cannot help lapping at the waves of blood that roll in like the tide on the coast of my tongue.
Before I know it, the whole thing is gone, and I am left licking and sucking at Azizi's hand once more. My legs quake beneath me, my breaths come out ragged and euphoric.
For once in my life, I am full. Sated. There is a contentment settled in my gut that I have never known. A happiness bubbling in my throat that trips over my lips like a giggle.
When finally I look up, my smile crooked and blood-drunk, they are both there watching me with pride in their eyes.
I feel as if I could run for hours, feel as if I could jump off the cliff and fly.
But before I have the chance to even entertain the idea, Azizi cradles my face in bloody hands and kisses me.
"There you are, beastie. Finally."