Chapter Nineteen
CHAPTER
Nineteen
When she didn’t immediately spot the beast, searching desperately for the glow of its eyes or the flash of its fangs, Jane opened her mouth and screamed into the darkness. She bared her teeth and howled again, calling for the beast so that it could come to her.
“I’m here, you mongrel! Come at me! Eat me!”
Mud slurped around her boots and parasol, but she persevered as she marched deeper and deeper into the yard; through the rain and thunder, she thought she heard a sound that could’ve been Mrs. Foster calling for her from the house, but she ignored it.
Especially once she heard the grunting of something rushing through the reeds, coming right toward her. The beast’s hulking shadow seemed to swallow the night around it, making it an all-consuming void with its eyes—and teeth—trained on her.
It knew. She had undone its maker, and now she was to undo it, too.
Jane raised the rifle, butt pressing into her still-aching shoulder.
She tried to stay her hand, to train her mark on the beast, but the rain, adrenaline shaking through her, and bleariness that’d otherwise be cured by her spectacles made it near impossible.
At last, she fired. The shot either grazed the beast or startled it because it swerved with a fierce wine, striking her with its passing body.
She fell back with a yelp, having tripped over one of the cemetery’s headstones. The gun was flung skywards until it was caught in one of the angels’ outstretched arms and the remaining ammunition was scattered in the mud.
She hardly had any time to regain her bearings, a grip now secure on the knife in her pocket, before she heard the skidding of paws through mud as the beast turned to rush her like a bull with its eyes set on murder.
The cemetery’s angels watched over them, anticipation creaking through their rain-slick wings.
In one hand she grasped the knife and in the other, she clutched the parasol.
Come at me! Come, boy, come on! Finish what you started!
As the beast charged her once again, she staggered back to her feet and raised both weapons with a yell.
She thrust the parasol forward, and her screams stuttered when it was met with a force and a horrible, wet squelching as the parasol lodged itself securely in the back of the beast’s throat.
The beast choked on the blood that began to bubble at the corners of its maw. Blood showered as it yanked away from Jane and viciously shook its head in an attempt to dislodge the parasol. Its retching became growls of frustration as it continued to choke, and she took the opportunity to attack.
She screamed and charged at it. She tackled it into the mud and plunged the knife into its neck. It brayed a horrible scream when flesh sizzled and a fountain of blood steamed beneath her palm.
The beast arched its neck in an attempt to bite her, seemingly forgetting that it still had an object jammed in its mouth that’d hinder such an action. It tried shaking her off when biting proved to be useless.
Jane retaliated by stabbing again—and then again, and again, deeper and deeper each time she brought the knife down until she was more soaked in steaming blood than rain. Wafting off the both of them was the smoke of hellfire from which its forefather spawned.
The beast swayed on its feet, but that didn’t stop Jane from stabbing its torso, dragging away strips of loosened flesh that bubbled and seeped into the dirt once they hit the ground.
Heaving, the beast collapsed, perhaps from its loss of blood, asphyxiation, Jane’s assault, or some culmination of the three. Jane thought—feared—it died for a moment until she saw its sides shudder beneath a fading breath.
Now to see if he can be freed…
After hesitating for half a moment, she plunged her knife into the center of the beast’s chest and sawed through the skin as though dressing a deer.
It was an action she had witnessed her father do several times, and the muscles in her hands did all they could to muster those memories whenever they weren’t acutely aware of the foreign meat caking every inch of them.
She pushed until she felt the knife scratch against the bone of the beast’s sternum (Please, don’t let it be Terence’s, she begged, soaked in gore). She dragged the knife all the way down to the pubis, where she started to peel back skin.
Like removing a coat, using the knife to tear away connective sinews, Jane hurried to slough off layers of skin, throwing each piece behind her with a savage grunt, and not even bothering to look as they bubbled and disintegrated.
It was different from dressing a deer, but Jane needed to remind herself that this was not a deer.
It wasn’t even a thing of this realm. There wasn’t even a muscle layer to peel away from, no orange jelly of subcutaneous fatty tissues, no tendons to snap.
There was hardly even any bone to cut around, just flimsy infrastructure built with a firm gel-like cartilage that gave away beneath her clawing fingers.
It was layers upon layers of slop, like a rotted onion.
She sawed away until she found the paleness of human flesh, warm to the touch, spasming beneath her fingertips.
Terence.
It inspired fervor that jerked through her limbs as they continued the labor of shucking away more layers of beast to uncover the man beneath.
Too slowly, the beast’s choking roars dulled into pathetic whimpers, and then utter silence when Jane took hold of its mane in both her hands, and yanked it away.
It detached with little resistance, as though peeling away an old strip of adhesive, but with the mane came the beast’s head, whole and still choking on the parasol.
Staggering beneath its weight, she heaved it aside with a grunt.
Its tongue lolled out of an agape maw, and its eyes, lifeless and unfocused, still, somehow, managed to peer up at her.
Or perhaps it was Claunek itself watching her.
Scorning her victory and quirking the dead beast’s lips in the faintest of smiles, wishing her a begrudging congratulations she earned with blood, before the thing began to melt.
The pelt oozed and steamed, deflating into putty. Pieces soaked into the mud, drawn back to Hell where they never should have left in the first place.
And Jane roared at the puddle. She bared her teeth and screamed until the eyes were completely gone, bursting into yellow gunk with a pop and puff of steam. The earthy taste of blood soaked her tongue and the back of her throat.
Once the breath had gone from her lungs, unable to scream anymore even if she wanted to, she turned to look at the naked man still curled in the dirt. Rain was washing the gore from his body.
Jane rushed over to him and slapped away whatever remained of the beast’s entrails. Tiny cuts from where the knife nicked him bled gently, the blood red and not smoldering. Not the blood of the beast or Claunek.
His.
She hauled him into her lap and patted his cheeks, calling his name. His face was slack but his brow was drawn tightly together, as though he were trapped in the throes of a bad dream. She wanted to wake him up if it meant scaring that nightmare away.
She begun to fear that her parasol had skewered too deep and penetrated him, too, but as she started to feel around his body for any other wounds, fingers ghosting over the chaffed scars of his throat and wrists, he gasped violently, eyes snapping open as his lungs swallowed a desperate breath of air.
It startled Jane at first, but then she captured his face in her hands, pleading for his eyes to meet hers. Her thumbs rubbed over his lips, peeling them back just enough to show that his teeth were, blessedly, blunt and human.
But he didn’t look at her. He instead gawked at the sky above. He didn’t even blink as the rain splattered across his face.
“W-We… We are outside?” he rasped, throat bobbing in harsh a swallow.
For some reason she couldn’t quite place, Jane chuffed out an exasperated laugh. “Yes, quite an astute observation—”
“And it… it is dark. Is it nighttime?” His eyes widened as panic seemingly took hold of him. A hand reached up to take hers that had now rested on his shoulder. His grip turned his knuckles white.
“Well, I was hoping it may be nearly dawn by now—”
“Outside… at night… Jane—”
She pressed a palm to his mouth, silencing him.
“Yes, yes, Terence,” she breathed. Her eyes blinked rapidly, against the heat of tears and the chill of rain. “We are outside.”
He continued to urgently search the sky, perhaps for an answer, or something to calm himself, but after a long time, as the rain began to quiet, his eyes finally flittered to look up at Jane.
A hand, still slick with the beast’s meaty bits, reached up to skim across her cheek.
It left a streak of brown gore in its wake.
Jane already felt it seeping deep into her skin, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.
His brows furrowed as he brushed her face again, perhaps convinced that what he was living now wasn’t reality at all, but instead a nightmare.
Jane huffed out another small laugh, tears now in her eyes as she leaned into his touch, using her hand to keep it there, and she briefly kissed his knuckles. He was alive—that much she could celebrate, at least, even if there was the chance that it may have been minute and pointless.
“Jane…” Terence started, but Jane silenced him with another kiss, gentle, chaste, cherishing. She didn’t care that he tasted of mud, blood, and brimstone, for he also tasted of freedom.