Chapter 4
Silver-white moonlight flooded the bed as Will jerked awake. He could no longer remember the dream, yet his heart was still hammering in his chest. His face was slick with sweat, and his pale hair fell in long strands across his bare chest.
Only a few seconds later did he remember where he was. The carved figures on the bedposts looked down at him, waiting, strangely alive in the echo of the dream. A swallow of water would wash the nightmare away.
Will reached for the pitcher beside the bed as pain suddenly tore through him.
It struck like lightning and lingered, coursing through his torso and lower body.
Groaning, he put a hand to his stomach and froze.
His belly arched like a dome of taut, pale skin, large, round, and hard.
A stifled cry escaped him as he pressed against this impossible wrongness.
It had to be a dream—a madness only a city like this could conjure in him.
And yet it felt so real. Panicking, he scrambled upright and kicked the sheets from his naked body, only to reveal even more of the far-advanced swell of his belly.
This time, the cry was half a curse. He pushed his hand against it, trying to shove this foreign thing out of himself, yet pressure built against his bones and the muscles stretching around it.
“That’s impossible!”
Something moved beneath the skin of his belly. Will screamed as pain ripped through him, his body already strained to its limits. But he saw it clearly in the moonlight; saw something shifting there. He felt it glide beneath the skin like a lindworm moving under the surface of a lake.
“Isn’t it wonderful, my dearest?” a voice whispered from the darkness. It sounded like the roaring sea in a storm.
“What the hell! Who’s there?” Will stared into the shadows, and indeed—there, in the far corner of the room, something shifted. It seemed as though the entire wall around the fireplace was coming to life.
“You carry my heart, most beautiful one. Guard us until we meet again.”
The worm pressed against his belly from within, pushing deeper, and Will cried out. His fingers dug into the blankets and his head fell back while his mind could scarcely keep pace with any of it.
The creature wanted out, and he wanted it gone.
“Not yet. The time has not yet come. My beautiful one, adieu,” the voice whispered, suddenly close beside him, and then it was gone. As though it had taken the storm with it, the shadows stilled and made room for the peace of night. The room lay vast and empty in the moonlight.
Will dared to exhale, but his breath caught.
Something still pressed upward against his lungs, his diaphragm, his belly.
With a twitch, the worm stirred again, growing larger, making his stomach swell further until his skin was stretched to the point of tearing.
At the same time, the pain grew, rearing up until it threatened to tear Will apart.
And with a wild, desperate scream, he lost his mind.