Chapter Eight
“No.”
The single word was useless. Didn’t stop me from saying it, though.
Remy’s gaze never wavered. “You were right, you weren’t bitten. You didn’t even need to be near the Beast to be infected. You were the last person to draw its blood, so it would have found you no matter how far away you were.”
“Why? Is it some sort of demon?”
“No,” Remy said, surprising me. “It’s more like an animal.”
“Animals don’t possess people,” I countered.
Remy stared at me with those jewellike eyes.
“Before there was anything else, there was darkness, but not all of the darkness was empty. Primal magic existed within it. Ancient warriors accessed some of that magic with forbidden rituals in order to take on characteristics of fierce animals during battle. Some of those warriors became addicted to the power, and appealed to the darkness to make it permanent. Most of the time their appeals went unanswered, but every so often, the darkness said yes.”
Ice raced up my spine. That’s what was inside me? Something made from darkness that predated time itself?
“The creatures formed from that magic were so powerful, they continued on in new hosts even after their original hosts died,” Remy confirmed, and stopped fast-forwarding.
On screen, the Beast was now forcing Remy toward the elevator. Remy’s head was down, but I thought I saw his lips moving. The symbols glowed to life only to fizzle out like dying flares.
The Beast let out a victory roar. Remy stumbled, his arms dropping slightly.
The Beast tore into Remy’s back until my fist covered my mouth in horror. Remy dropped to his knees, freeing the Beast’s head. I stifled my scream as its huge mouth opened—and bit down on only dirt. Somehow, Remy had managed to scramble away. The Beast was almost on him, though—
Remy muttered something I didn’t hear.
The Beast stood completely still.
“What did you do?” I asked breathlessly. “Hit it with another spell?”
“Of sorts.” The timbre of Remy’s voice made me look at him even though I’d been riveted by the screen. “I said your name.”
I had to try twice before I could speak. “What?”
“Your name,” Remy repeated, a hard little smile playing on his lips.
“I didn’t believe Brendan when he said the thing inside you was …
the word he used. I can’t say it because Beasts are summoned when a Warden calls them by their true name.
What’s inside you is very rare, Raine, and nearly unstoppable.
All my spells had failed, as had my strength, so calling to you was my last resort. ”
“But I don’t control the Beast,” I sputtered out.
Remy’s stare stuck to me like dry ice on skin. “Watch.”
I looked back at the screen. Sound broke the sudden silence as Remy turned the volume up.
“Raine,” Screen Remy said through ragged breaths. “Raine…”
Gooseflesh rippled over me and I suddenly needed to be next to Remy. It was all I could do to keep myself on this side of the couch.
“Turn it down,” I gritted out. The power in his voice was affecting me even through the video.
He did, but that didn’t stop the gut punch I felt when, on screen, my face briefly replaced the Beast’s hideous visage. Then the Beast’s liquid-like fur swallowed it back up.
The Beast charged Remy. This time, Remy didn’t outrun it. The Beast’s claws stabbed deep into Remy’s shoulders. Remy’s whole body shuddered.
“Raine,” I barely heard Remy say. “Raine. Come back to me!”
The Beast deflated with the suddenness of a popped balloon. Suddenly, I was there, covered only in the blood that had covered the Beast. I spat out the dirt the Beast had gotten a mouthful of when it had tried to eat Remy—
—and I was now watching this in Remy’s arms, feeling his heat roll over me like a welcome burn while his hard body cradled mine and his thigh pressed against my—
I yanked away with enough force to make me fall off the couch. On screen, a bloody Remy dropped to one knee with a relieved sigh.
“Raine, you’re back.”
“Turn it off,” I ordered.
“Apologies,” Remy said, although something glinted in his eyes that said he wasn’t entirely sincere.
I got back on my side of the couch. I didn’t want to be that close so soon after leaping on him, but sitting farther away would look childish. Besides, I hadn’t jumped on him of my own free will. I’d been under the influence, so to speak.
“Yeah, well … same.”
Mandal was either oblivious to the new awkwardness, or he didn’t care. He kept looking between the paused TV and me.
“Remy’s power couldn’t contain the beithíoch, but you did.”
I shrugged. I still didn’t know how. Maybe the magic in Remy’s voice had managed to pull me back. Maybe I was getting better at stopping the Beast myself. Either way …
“I can’t kill the Beast, and I can’t always stop it from getting out, so all I can do is stuff it back into its cage.”
“You are the cage,” Mandal whispered, staring at me as if he’d never seen me before.
A weird way to put it, but whatever. “I try.”
“You don’t try.” Remy’s voice was all business now. “You succeed, and so well that I never found you despite hunting down many other deadly creatures for over a century.”
“You’re barely thirty,” I said with a snort. “You haven’t been alive long enough to hunt anything for that long. I looked you up after I met Brendan, remember?”
Remy’s eyes were aquamarine ice. “No record you found would show my true age. I’m two hundred and forty-three.”
I laughed. It died off as Remy kept staring at me.
Mandal wasn’t laughing, either. He just looked at Remy and shrugged as if to say, Looks good for an old guy, doesn’t he?
“Eleven years ago, your mother and grandmother reportedly perished in a wildfire.” Remy’s voice was almost caressing.
“That wildfire is why the Beast, as you call it, escaped my notice. I’d been tracking it, but I was looking for strange disappearances or reported animal attacks to find its new host. Not deaths attributed to one of the many wildfires that year. ”
A harsh laugh escaped me. “I told the police it wasn’t the fire that killed them. They thought I was hysterical.”
He nodded. “Or simply traumatized. That’s why they didn’t put it in their reports, and your family’s bodies were never found so there was no evidence to back up your claims.”
No, there wasn’t. With more than a thousand acres of the Appalachian Trail destroyed from that fire, recovering a couple hikers’ bodies wasn’t high on anyone’s list, especially since I hadn’t remembered exactly where they’d been killed.
“The ‘animal attacks’ I’d been following stopped that year,” Remy went on. “I thought the Beast left the country, so I quit hunting it. But you were here the entire time, miraculously keeping it from further carnage.”
“Hardly.” Guilt cut like a knife. “It ate fourteen people if you count the guys who tried to kill Brendan and me the other night.”
Remy gave me a knowing look. “That’s why you’re broke. You drained the inheritance your mother left you and donated the money to GoFundMe sites benefitting the families of the Beast’s victims.”
Yes and no. My father had gambled away most of my inheritance. I’d only given away the small amount I had left.
“It was the least I could do” was all I said.
Remy rose.
I glanced away. He really needed to put on a pair of pants.
“Some Wardens have the gift of prophecy,” Remy said.
“My grandmother did. With her dying breath, she said, ‘You will keep the cage that traps the Beast.’ Of course, she called it another word, but again, I can’t say that because you’ve seen what happens when a Warden calls the Beast by its true name.
So, I poured the best of my magic into building its cage.
It took decades, and I tested it on many other creatures.
None of them came close to escaping even when trapped in it for years, yet tonight, the Beast demolished it within minutes. ”
I grimaced. “I’d say I was sorry, but we both know I had nothing to do with that.”
A humorless smile twisted Remy’s mouth. “That’s correct, and while my trap failed, you didn’t. I called your name, and you stopped it from killing me. Moreover, you’ve kept it from murdering scores of people, as it normally would have during a decade. You, Raine, are its true cage.”
Mandal had also said I was “the cage,” as if that had significance. Now I realized it did, and shot to my feet.
“Tell me you don’t intend to keep me just because your grandmother mumbled about cages and beasts before she died?”
Remy’s expression confirmed it all.
“People say all sorts of nonsensical things when they’re dying,” I snapped. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It does this time,” Remy said in a flintlike tone.
I huffed. “Believe what you want. I’m not being kept, so I’m leaving, and don’t you dare try to stop me.”
Remy swept out an arm. “I won’t, but before you go, tell me, what are you afraid of?”
I paused. “What?”
“You heard me.” Remy’s words hit me like a slap, and not from his power this time. “You said you were afraid of only one thing, and you’ve proved that it isn’t me. So, what is it?”
Damn the way he stared at me. Like he already knew the answer, and he was just rubbing it in my face.
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” I said with less force than I intended.
His smile made me want to punch a dent into his gorgeous face. Gotcha, it said, and the bastard might be right.
But not tonight. Remy might have guessed my secret fear, but I wasn’t going to admit it. I was going back home and draining every bottle of liquor my apartment had.
I spun on my heel and walked toward the open space in the roof’s walls. I thought I saw the stone gargoyles’ eyes shift toward me, but they didn’t move. With one word from Remy, they could stop me, though, and what could I or the Beast do? Stone couldn’t be drained or killed.
Remy said nothing. I passed between the hulking gargoyles without incident. As soon as I was on the other side of the gateway, dark gloom concealed the entire roof again. I only saw the stone path beneath me, the gargoyles behind me, and the spectacular garden in front of me.
I wasn’t able to see Remy, but I swore I heard his mocking laugh. That’s why I ran all the way back to the other hotel.