8
You could just leave,” Celeste says casually, legs crossed and feet bloody—a shard of the broken beer bottle still lodged in her bare arch—as she sits in front of me.
Her skin flashes creamy white in the darkness, her hair an electric, startling blue against the sterile black of the room.
“Go back home to your dad. Help Mom with my funeral. Pretend none of this ever happened and run.”
I hug my knees to my chest and rest my chin on my forearms, not bothering to glance at the door, the barred window. “There’s no way out, remember? I can’t leave.”
“Come on. We both know they haven’t locked you in here to die. Eventually, that door is going to open.” She nudges me with her bloody foot, though the scarlet doesn’t transfer to my own skin.
She’s not real. She’s not real.
She’s dead.
“Eventually,” Celeste drawls, far too happily, “you can flee.”
My chest cracks open, and a sob escapes. I clamp down my teeth around it. My emotions have moved from a torrential downpour to a gentle sprinkling. Sadness, hopelessness, and grief grow roots in my heart, plunging branches through my veins, but I force them to remain there. Inside me.
What am I going to do?
Celeste has asked me that question for the last four hours.
I don’t know the answer. Usually, I have those—answers.
I’m confident, assured. I might not be able to dance gracefully at a party full of semistrangers, but I always know what comes next.
Aside from Celeste, schedules and routines have been my dearest friends over the years.
But now… I raise a hand to the moonlight.
My veins swell, blacker and blacker still, pulsating to the despair coiled tight in my chest.
What am I going to do?
Without Celeste, without my father, without volleyball and school and the teddy bear I’ve cuddled every night for almost seventeen years… I don’t know.
I don’t fucking know .
I can’t be a monster and live like everything is normal.
Can’t smack the leather of a ball with the knife-sharp tips of my claws.
Can’t wander school hallways with this… this storm building inside.
It feels like drowning. Like sinking to the bottom of riotous waves as the sea smothers my voice. And the pain —
“I thought you were stronger than this,” Celeste says, standing and drifting onto the mattress. She drops down like a feather. The bed does not react to her weight. I swallow hard, unable to meet her eyes.
“All those games,” she continues. “I’ve seen you.
I sat in the front row at every single one.
You don’t back down from a challenge. You’re stubborn, and you’re talented, and you…
you don’t lose. You hate to lose. In fact, I think if Max freaking Cayden stood in front of the net, you’d serve a ball right into his face if it would score you a point.
You should have no problem hiding somewhere, waiting for them to open the door, and sprinting out of this hellhole. ”
I laugh softly, but it feels more like a cry for help.
That’s just it. I’ve already lost. I can’t go back, can’t change the rules of the game… I hadn’t even realized I’d been playing one.
“You, after what happened to you…,” I whisper, but I can’t finish the words and condemn us to the truth. “And Dad abandoned me. He left me here, Celeste. I’m becoming a monster. I’m becoming…” The thing that ate you , I want to say. A tear tracks down my cheek instead.
“Pathetic,” Celeste says. My gaze snaps to hers as her tone descends into unabashed cruelty. “If anyone should be throwing the pity party, it’s me.”
“I know—”
“You don’t.” Celeste rises onto her knees.
Her hair falls over her eyes as blood trickles from her scalp.
I blink hard. It doesn’t erase the gore.
Doesn’t end the hallucination. “One of us lost everything. One of us has nothing. It’s not you, Vanessa.
It’s me . You felt my blood on your fingertips.
You still feel it now. But you sit here, weeping like a baby, when you’re alive. You’re alive .”
“That’s not enough,” I hiss. “I’m imprisoned . I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who’s keeping me here. I don’t have any of the facts.”
“You have enough.” Her gaze flashes with an indignation that matches my own. “This is why I died. You know that, don’t you? It’s what you’re the most afraid of. You hesitated. You could have stabbed that werewolf before it ate me. You could have saved me. But you let me die.”
You let me die.
The accusation echoes around us, as shrill and piercing as a scream, and drills holes in my composure until those sad trees inside me catch fire and I burn . The floor scorches as I stand, and my footprints smoke against the stone. “I did not.”
“You hesitated,” she repeats. “I saw you.”
But that’s impossible. She couldn’t have seen it—it’d been a split second. Of weakness. Of fear. “No,” I argue. “I couldn’t have done anything—”
“Liar.” Celeste makes finger puppets in the shadows along the wall, but they transform from fingers into nightmares within a breath.
Two wolves. Two girls.
The larger wolf attacks the tiny girl. Devours her. While the other girl stands there. Too slow. Too useless. I clench my teeth so hard, they threaten to fracture.
“You let me die,” Celeste hisses again.
I reach for her, but she’s not real. I feel the wisps of her hair, but I can’t hold on to them. I can’t hold on to her. Instead, I stumble and knock into one of the bed’s black posts. “No.”
Her image flickers out then. Sudden. Final. “You abandoned me.”
“I stayed .” A growl rips from my throat, and even the post begins to smoke beneath my grasp.
The room smells of charred rage and sea-salt sadness, and I can’t control it.
I can’t do anything but succumb to it. My emotions erupt like a volcano.
Without thinking—simply reacting—I snap off the metal post in my hand and hurl it through the air.
Somehow, it impales Celeste in her phantom chest, nailing her beside the door where she’s reappeared. Blood pools around the sharpened post.
She stares at it. Glances at me. “How could you?” she whispers softly. “You promised to love me forever. You promised to stay.”
I can’t breathe. Can’t suck in air or even expel it. My lungs are exploding. My skin sizzles. All of me—every part of me— hurts . And it’s a pain I can’t run from. A pain that nestles into my soul. There’s no fixing this. Any of this. “I couldn’t fight off a wolf, Celeste. I’m no one. I’m nothing.”
“You are not nothing. Not anymore.” She fades into the door, vanishing with a sad smile, and though I wait for her to reappear, she never does.
It no longer matters. The damage is done. My composure snaps, and my vision blurs. I no longer care. About the pulse thudding and separating into dual beats in my chest. About the claws growing from my fingers. About anything except escaping.
I rip the post from the wall with alarming strength— unnatural strength—and use it to beat against the steel door again and again and again as something big and bold and ugly rears its head inside of me. What am I going to do? Nothing. Everything.
Why?
Why did the wolves kill Celeste? Because she attacked one of their friends on the beach? It doesn’t make sense. And I hate it. I hate the confusion. I hate the pain. I hate myself.
I hate those monsters.
Lashing out with my claws, I break chunks of stone loose from the wall.
You are not nothing. Not anymore.
I scratch and kick and pound, becoming pain. Becoming rage . None of this is my fault. I was just a human. I was just a girl going to a party with her best friend. I wasn’t equipped to take on one werewolf, let alone two. No. This shouldn’t have happened. It’s their fault.
It’s their fault, and… and they need to pay.
My spine breaks. This time I don’t scream; I let it happen. The bone splits down the center, like lightning striking a tree, dividing my body into two. Vanessa Before and Vanessa After.
Woman. And wolf.
My skin ripples. Flays. The black blood running through my veins drenches me, banishing the hurt until I feel only hatred. Only anger. I emerge from the transformation, a butterfly fleeing its inky chrysalis, and finally become the monster they’ve made me.
Claws and teeth and fur—so much fur—I leap at the door.
The steel buckles. Shudders to the ground under the heavy weight of my new body.
What am I going to do?
The only thing I can do; the only thing I have left. Find who ruined my life and make them rue the moment they decided to kill my best friend.