Chapter Fifteen
FIFTEEN
Terror devours him. He is alight with it, suffocated by it, tendrils of fear wrapping like decayed vines around his throat and squeezing. There is an infinitesimal second where he cannot remember how to move because he has become only this: a scream inside hollow places.
Poisoned berry smears across his tongue as those putrid finger bones clink against his teeth, and then adrenaline kicks in like a thunderclap.
Evander throws himself backward with all his might, thrashing against the tangled sheets and clawing over to the other side of his bed.
His heel slams out wildly toward the creature, the thing, the monster, that once was Carrington, and he should’ve landed a brutal blow to the old butler’s stomach. But he has no stomach.
Instead, Evander’s foot crashes right inside Carrington and cracks against vertebrae.
Viscid juices envelop his ankle and he can feel the jagged edges of bone still corded in shriveled sinew.
It’s wrong. It’s impossible. Evander yanks his foot away with a broken cry, bile slicking up his throat.
Everything in his brain is melting like bloody red wax.
wakeupwakeupwakeup
He hurls himself off the bed.
The smack of his spine hitting the floor sends white-hot pain crashing through his body. It hits the back of his teeth and air explodes from his lungs until he is breathless from the sharp shock of it. Can’t breathe. He can’t—He’s gasping, scrabbling at the carpet as he tries to get up.
Carrington drags himself around the bed, his gait uneven. His feet make wet squelches on the carpet and revulsion crawls up Evander’s throat as he sees Carrington’s bare feet are caked in compost, worms threaded through the gnarly, bulbous twist of his toes.
“Don’t be difficult,” Carrington hisses. “It’s time to go outside.”
No. No, no nonono—
Evander scrambles backward on his elbows, but then his eyes lock on the pulsing, inky blackness beneath his bed.
Under there, the night has unfurled with a thick, endless vengeance.
Slow tendrils begin slithering out from beneath the oaken bed frame, unwrapping themselves like tentacles, like tongues … like thick green vines.
The tip of a vine glides out and twists around Evander’s ankle.
He wrenches backward, his legs kicking out in panic, but as soon as that vine snaps, another is threading its way across the carpet twice as fast. Strange flowers unfurl from green nubs, the stigmas way too long and the petals upside down.
A sweet, sickly stench oozes from them, toxic even to inhale.
Then Carrington looms over him, his arms outstretched and hands knotted into claws. Foul silt is still spilling from his mouth in an endless stream as if he’s vomiting up a graveyard.
This is a nightmare.
It’s not real.
It’s notnotrealrealnotrealnotrealnotrealnotrealnot—
Get up.
He scrambles to his feet, unsteady and sick, the world sliding sideways in smears of static. Everything inside him narrows to this: Run.
He explodes toward the door, tripping as another vine snatches at his ankle and cracking his knees when he falls.
Carrington’s claws graze the back of his shirt, but he flings himself out of reach.
Animal instinct has taken over, consumed him.
His heartbeat slides into his mouth, bloodied from his own teeth sinking into his tongue, as he plunges through his door and is enveloped in darkness.
It is like stepping into nothing; it is like falling.
For a stricken second, he is unbalanced, the pitch black of the hallway throwing him off as he stumbles blindly with his arms outstretched.
He slams into the opposite wall and finds a doorknob just as Carrington skitters into the hallway, his legs moving like a roach.
There is something sickeningly disturbing about how fast he is, how his neck cocks at a broken angle, how the cracks between his teeth are packed with soil.
He is less like a man walking and more like a suit of decaying meat.
Evander has no time to think. He can only lunge for the next door, his shoulders crashing into the heavy gilt art frames on the wall.
Every door is locked. He cracks his shins into an antique side table and cries out before clapping hands over his mouth.
Maybe if he goes quiet, Carrington won’t be able to find him in the dark.
But the sound of confident footsteps behind him douses that idea.
A skeletal hand snatches for Evander’s throat, and fingernails rake against his flesh.
He wrenches away and runs, keeping his arms outstretched to soften the blow of whatever he smashes into next. He needs to get out of here before he is dragged outside by a nightmare.
Don’t go into the garden.
But it has come inside to him.
Evander falls over twice, scrabbling up in an uncoordinated flail of limbs before dashing down the narrow back staircase and nearly breaking his neck when he misses the last step.
His heartbeat slams against his ribs. Call for help.
But he doesn’t know what name to pull from the frenetic spiral of his brain. He can’t thinkthinkthinkthink—
run
get away
find a place he can’t get you
it’s not real you know it’s not real you’re being foolish and childish and if you continue on like this you’ll be strapped down since you’re such a danger to yourself stop screaming like that stop it stop it stop it stopstopstoppppp—
A light has been left on in a hallway, dim and flickering, and Evander rushes toward it like a moth. He hears nothing but his own rusted gasps as he hesitates under the tarnished sconce. Where is he? He has to hide. Maybe go left. Or maybe—
Somewhere beyond the flimsy ring of light, he hears the wet breathing of an old man with mulch in his lungs.
It turns into a snarl, a scream that shatters all the silence in the hallway.
Evander doesn’t run. He flies.
The headlong plummet away from the light sends him crashing into more walls as he staggers through parlors full of furniture cloaked in white sheets. Pain means nothing. Pain he can deal with. Especially when he realizes where he is.
He is so so so close—
“Laurie!” It rips from him in a frantic cry, terror shredding the edges of his hoarse voice. “Laurie—Laurie LAURIE—”
He is back in the garden.
The low scraaaaaape of the shovel dragged through soil.
Dirt hits his face.
He is screaming without words because back then he had no name to scream; there had only been a raging, vicious want for a boy he could not reach.
But he reaches him now.
Down the dim hallway, a door wrenches open and Laurie tumbles out in a spill of golden light. Evander springs for him. The collision is inevitable.
The obvious reaction would be to withdraw, to protect himself, but Laurie reaches out and catches Evander as they slam together. Laurie’s shoulder blades hit the wall with a meaty thwack. Evander collapses into the solid warmth of his body and hangs on to him like a thing half-drowned.
Words don’t make sense in the space between them, when Laurie’s heat is a molten promise against Evander’s bones.
They are wrong like this—they should be flint against sharpened teeth if they touch.
But instead, Laurie curves himself like a supplicant who would hollow out his own body if only it could be used to fit a lovely god inside.
He is real.
He is so very real.
“What the actual hell?” But there’s no heat to Laurie’s voice. He wears a thin white T-shirt and boxers, his hair mussed from sleep.
Evander is too dizzy to answer, his lungs clawing for air in heaving gasps. Sweaty hair covers his face and gets in his mouth.
“I’m going to die,” he gasps. “I’m d-d-d-dying. I’m—”
“No, you’re not.” It’s only a murmur, but then Laurie roughly twists Evander around so his back is to Laurie. He slides both arms around Evander’s chest with python swiftness and then he pulls their bodies together, hard.
The embrace is constricting, it’s crushing, it’s too tight—and yet not tight enough. Laurie’s right hand flattens against Evander’s heaving stomach and there is an almost tenderness in the way his fingers press down to slow the sickening lurches.
The sound escaping Evander is too high, too terrible, and he jams the heels of his hands over his eyes as he inwardly hisses at himself to pull it together.
This is beyond ridiculous. Calm down. Explain what you saw.
But berry juice is on his tongue, its wicked sweetness sweeping another wave of terror through his body.
All he can think of is Byron Lennox-Hall’s veins threaded a monstrous inky black as his lungs seized, his throat swollen with a foul, tangled growth.
“I’m p-p-p-poisoned.” Evander’s breathing quickens again, his voice gone hoarse. “I’ve been poisoned.”