Chapter Thirty-Four #2
He seizes so beautifully beneath me, like a rabbit caught between the teeth of a wolf. Blood gurgles in his throat, and I pull my hand away to watch it bubble around the symbol of his faith, watch it spill over his holy lips and mingle with the tears anointing his cheeks.
"Where was he?" I ask, my voice cracking even as the Hunger pulls the knife out and plunges it into his chest instead. Over and over and over and over and over. "Where was he when I needed him? When I begged and pleaded and prayed? Why wasn't he there? Why didn't he answer?"
My hands are my Hunger's, stabbing until the knife breaks off in the father's chest, then clawing and tearing, digging through the skin and muscle in desperation.
But my voice is my own. The sobs bursting out belong only to me. The words spilling from my lips, decades of pain and torment and betrayal bubbling over like the blood-soaked beads he chokes on—those are mine.
"Why wasn't I good enough? Why wasn't I worthy?" My nails scrape and chip against bone. His ribs break beneath the weight of my grief. "I did everything I was supposed to! I did everything you asked, everything you demanded! I tried so hard, and still he was never there. Why?"
Father Thompson doesn't answer. His eyes are empty pools staring up at the heavens that have abandoned him. His heart has stopped beating as my Hunger wraps its claws around it and pulls.
He is dead, and with him, so is the child that once hoped for redemption. Salvation. A chance.
All that is left now is the monster he left behind. The monster that digs its teeth into his heart and devours.
I gorge myself on him, swallowing bite after bite until the heart is gone and the blood licked clean from my hands. Yet still I am not satisfied. Still the Hunger aches in my stomach and demands more, more, more.
And for once, I give in without remorse.
I tear and pull, chew and swallow. I eat and I eat until my stomach grows taut and my throat seizes with a plea to stop. A threat to vomit it all back up if I dare take another bite.
I take another. And another. And another.
It's not until a cool hand wraps around my wrist and I look up to meet red eyes, freckled with greens and blues and golden browns, that I finally stop.
“You must breathe, Theodore,” Azizi orders, kneeling beside me despite the blood seeping into the hem of her dress. She takes an exaggerated breath, and I struggle to follow it, the air wet and sticky in my throat.
“K-Kolfina—”
Terror shoots through my veins when I cannot find her, the memory of her clawing at her own throat, of her flickering and fading from view with every word falling from Father Thompson’s mouth, floods my mind.
“Kolfina is fine,” Azizi assures me. “Look at me, Theodore. Look. She is here.”
It takes me another moment to realize what she is saying, to calm down enough to see what she is trying to show me.
“Is she—are you—” My hands are shaking when I frame her face with my fingers, searching for Kolfina in the curve of Azizi’s cheekbones and the small wrinkle in her nose, despite us previously thinking it impossible. “Kolfina?”
It is Azizi’s firm grip on my chin and Kolfina’s gentle smile on her lips that finally pulls me from the vicious spiral of grief-coloured rage.
It is the soft kiss they both press to my lips that grounds me back into my quaking limbs and my aching chest. I take another deep breath, and for the first time in my life, I cannot feel the burns scarred into my back weighing me down.
I cannot feel the water that has filled my lungs for so long. For the first time, I feel… unchained.
“She is here, we both are,” Azizi promises, her eyes tracking the line of my jaw as she smudges the blood there with her thumb. “I do not know how, but she is here, within me. Weak, and in need of rest, but she is here, nonetheless. She will be okay, we all will.”
"I don't—I didn't—" God, what have I done? Killing Fitzwilliam had been an accident. The people I'd been feeding from since moving here were Azizi's leftovers. But this... this isn't just a random village boy who disappeared. This isn't a stranger Azizi brought home from the city.
This is Father Thompson. This is a priest. People will notice he is gone. People will ask questions.
The others are easier for me to distance myself from, but this... this is me. This kill is mine. Fully and completely, and I cannot even bring myself to regret it. I am sickened by it, yes. Hating myself for it, yes. But regret? No… I do not think so. Not if it means protecting the ones I love.
Still, his death is dangerous. It will draw attention to us in a way I know Azizi does not want. Attention to her family, to the others like us.
"I'm sorry," I gasp out, grasping at Azizi's wrists, because without her, I would surely fall apart. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—"
It is Kolfina's gentle kiss to my bloody lips that silences me, and Azizi's voice that calms my heart when she says, "Hush, my love. He is of no consequence."
"But he—"
"Can be explained easily by a wild animal," Azizi interrupts with a smile. "We have done so already with the boy, we can do so again.”
“People will grow suspicious—”
Azizi hushes me again, pressing a bloodied finger to my lips. “The woods are a dangerous place, as you should know, beastie. We have done this before. Some well-placed wolves seen and heard here and there, a body eaten beyond recognition, and none will suspect you. I swear it."
I want to argue with her. The village knows I am a monster.
They have always known. They may not speak of it where I can hear, but it is no secret that I am something to be feared.
Just as it is no secret that the father and I are not on friendly terms. It would be no big stretch to think me responsible for what has been done.
Then again, Azizi does have a point.
When I glance back at the still body beneath me, the carnage is vicious. Brutal. Father Thompson's chest is torn open and his ribs broken. His robes are ripped to shreds. If not for the beads resting upon his tongue, there is nothing to suggest that it was anything other than a wild animal.
"Theodore, my sweet," Azizi says as she turns my gaze back to hers and Kolfina’s, "do not worry. You have protected us, now let us protect you."
I close my eyes when they kiss me again, and I let the reassurances wash over me.
I trust Azizi, and I trust Kolfina—more than I have trusted anyone before.
I would give my life for them if they asked.
Would let Azizi drink me dry if she were so inclined.
Would let Kolfina slip inside me and consume my soul if she wished it.
My Hunger yearns to eat and eat and eat, and yet for them, it wants nothing more than to give.
I wish to tell them so, to spill every feeling and emotion that swirls inside of me into their laps so they might understand how desperately and inconceivably I treasure and adore them. Poetry is etched into my very bones, and yet I cannot think of words worthy enough to gift to them.
Is anything worthy enough to give to someone who is worth the whole world?
I am saved the trouble of finding an answer by a low rumble in my head—no, not in my head.
In my ears. Azizi has heard it too, because when I glance up at her, she is already looking down the winding path that leads back to the village, her brows pinched and head tipped slightly to the side as she listens.
“Someone is coming.”
My Hunger—which had puttered back to its bed, satisfied and warm after its meal—reels back up on its legs and snaps its teeth in warning.
To my surprise, it does not frighten me like it once did.
Now, the carriage appearing from the shadow of the forest does not worry me, despite the still warm body that lay dead beneath me.
Because now I know. Now I understand.
If I am the Devil’s Mouth, then I was not created to simply devour for the sake of devouring.
I am his sentry, born to protect and avenge those abandoned by God.
My teeth are weapons to wield against the angel’s blades.
My Hunger is an oath to do what needs to be done.
Let danger come for us. I will devour the world if only to keep my hearts safe.
For them, I will be the Beast and the Hunger.