Chapter 38 On The Edge
On The Edge
My apartment is actually cold. Between walking out of that jail and the difference in temperature, it feels like I’m walking into a stranger’s place. Or maybe that’s because time yawns out in front of me without a job to keep me occupied.
Evie, the quiet house cleaner, no longer exists. I left her behind in that jail cell.
But I can’t sit on my hands. If I want to keep a roof over my head, if I want to eat this week, I’m going to have to get a job and keep moving forward.
If there’s anything I know, it’s starting over.
Finding a new job turns out to be even harder than I thought it would be. I spend my days trudging back and forth from the library's aged computers to cafes, to check out bulletin board listings. My phone, a basic model incapable of anything beyond calls and texts, is of little help.
Cleaning houses was my go-to, but even those opportunities have dried up. I scour online listings, send emails, make calls, but every lead is a dead end. Days blur into one another, each as unproductive as the last until I become restless.
My finances are a dwindling clock, each tick a reminder of the approaching empty. Food becomes a luxury. Even my cat friend stares up at me with hungry eyes that I can't satisfy.
The pressure builds—a relentless vise squeezing tighter each day. The gnawing in my stomach becomes a constant ache, a reminder of my failure to find even the simplest of jobs.
It’s almost as if the world knows I’m not safe anymore and refuses to allow me back into the workforce with normal people. I’m too dangerous to be let into the stream.
On day nine, the desperation feels like it's about to swallow me whole.
I can’t sleep, I can’t sit and read. I pace the creaking boards of my apartment, waiting for something to change. Waiting for some idea to come. Or maybe I’m just waiting for my monster.
"Come to me, come to me, come back to me," I chant as I squeeze my fists shut and release them repeatedly. I circle the bed with my steps and vaguely wonder if someone would think me a witch trying to cast a summoning spell.
But I don’t care if I look like a crazy person. I’m tired of waiting. I can’t stand the isolation for one more second, and I’ve resorted to willing Shadow back to me.
My attempt to summon him didn’t work for four years, so I’m still taken aback when there's a shift under my bed. The disturbance sets my heart racing.
Shadow emerges from the darkness. His horns have elongated into twisted spires that nearly scrape the ceiling. His eyes, obsidian pools devoid of humanity, burn with feral intensity.
He moves toward me, each step deliberate and predatory. His form is larger, more menacing, the very air around him charged with a dangerous energy.
Forced to back up, my breath catches in my throat as he advances. Arms on either side of me, he cages me against the wall. Heat emanates from him as he nuzzles my neck. The scratch of his fangs along my collarbone makes me gasp. I'm torn between fear and a traitorous desire that pools in my belly.
"Evie," he growls. "You smell so delicious." His words are laced with hunger, a primal desire that goes beyond mere appetite.
His hot breath is a stark contrast to the chill of fear that runs up my spine. The air is thick with tension—a palpable force that wraps around us, suffocating and intimate.
I'm frozen, caught in the paradox of fear and desire. He's more monstrous than ever, yet under the threat of death there's a seduction, a pull that's impossible to resist.
I'm acutely aware of the fine line between life and death, love and predation. I'm inexorably drawn to him, even as I fear what he's become.
"You’ve been eating monster hearts again." I state the obvious.
He pushes off from the wall with almost furious force. He stalks away before returning as if I’m a powerful magnet drawing him back.
Black marble eyes bore into mine. "I must survive. I must be more powerful. I must evade the Guard." His voice is gravel and has lost some of its eloquence. "You called. I came. But I can’t control this." He gestures to himself.
Calling him here was a bad idea for both of us.
"You won’t hurt me," I insist.
My eyes clamp shut as he unleashes a deafening roar in my face, pressing me harder against the wall.
I know he won’t kill me, but my body pumps blood like a freight train urging me to move, to run as far away as possible. I force my feet to stay glued where they are.
Even if I did make a break for it, my fleeing would only provoke the chase. Shadow is on the edge, teetering between his nature and the monster he's fought so hard to control. And I'm standing right in the crosshairs.
"I'm... losing... control... I’m losing… myself." His words end in a ragged, tortured whisper.
The threat of death is a palpable, dark promise hanging in the air between us.
My heart pounds a frantic drumbeat against my ribcage. "Shadow, listen to me." My voice is a mixture of fear and determination. "You need to fight this. You can't let it consume you."
"Evie... I can't... " He trails off, his body tense, every muscle coiled like a spring ready to snap.
In a flash of movement too quick for me to react, he slams me to the ground. My back hits the floor with a jarring impact, the air knocked from my lungs. His form looms over me, a predator ready to engulf its prey.
His hand is poised over my chest, his claws scratching at the skin over my breast, my heart. "Need... human hearts... " His words are a low, tortured sound, barely coherent but laden with despair. His eyes, black as the void, flicker with barely a trace of the creature I know.
"You need to resist," I choke out. "Please, Shadow, don't do this. Don't give in."
For a tense, eternal moment, he hovers above me. Then with a guttural snarl of frustration, he pulls back, the shadows swallowing him as he retreats, but he doesn’t leave.
I'm left on the floor, shaking.
"You've saved me, time and again," I say, my voice steadier now. "Now it's my turn to save you." My mind races, piecing together a desperate plan. "You need a human heart? I’ll help you get one."