7. Chapter 7- Lenora #2
“I thought they were you.”
“I know.”
“I swear to God, Lenora...”
“Sarah.”
He stops.
The name seems to physically hurt him.
I hate that too.
“Sarah.”
My whole body trembles.
He tries again. “Sarah.”
And I start crying. Because hearing him say it feels like being buried. Not because the name is wrong. Because it’s right. Because for the first time since this began, someone has said my real name.
My original name.
Mine.
“I thought you were coming back,” August whispers. “Every time. I thought your soul...”
“There is no soul coming back.”
“I know.”
“You were falling in love with pieces of her.”
“Maybe.”
“With women who weren’t her.”
His eyes meet mine. “No.”
Anger flashes. “Don’t.”
“No.”
He moves closer but doesn’t touch me.
“Don’t take this away from yourself too.”
“What?”
“I didn’t fall in love with a ghost.”
“August...”
“I loved Eleanor.”
My breath catches.
“I loved Anna. June. Every version.”
“Because you thought they were Lenora.”
“At first.”
I stare.
He continues. “They were different.” His voice breaks. “God, they were so fucking different.” Tears spill down his face. “Eleanor hated coffee. Anna smoked. June couldn’t stand when I touched her feet. One of you snored so loudly I slept in another room for three years.”
A broken laugh escapes me.
He laughs too. Crying through it.
“I loved them.” His chest rises shakily. “I loved every woman that thing destroyed.”
The anger drains out of me.
Replaced by something worse.
Grief.
Not one dead woman.
A graveyard.
And August remembers loving every grave.
“What about me?” I barely get the words out.
He looks at me. “Sarah?”
“Yes.”
My chest hurts. “If I’m not her...”
His face folds. “I know.”
“If everything inside me telling me I love you is something implanted...”
“It’s not.”
“You can’t know that.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “But neither can you.”
I look away. “Maybe I only want you because it’s making me.”
“Maybe.”
That hurts.
He doesn’t lie.
“Maybe I only recognized you because it made me.”
Another wound.
“Possibly.” He crawls closer.
Still doesn’t touch me.
“But you hate mushrooms.”
I blink. “What?”
“You hate mushrooms.”
I stare at him.
“You sleep with one foot outside the blanket.”
My throat tightens.
“You order iced coffee when it’s forty degrees outside.”
“August...”
“You laugh when you’re scared.”
Tears blur him.
“You swear at inanimate objects when they inconvenience you.”
I cover my mouth.
“You bought peaches three weeks ago and let every one of them rot.”
A sob turns into a laugh.
He smiles through tears. “That’s you.” His voice breaks. “Not Lenora from 1897.” He presses his fist to his chest. “Sarah. You.”
I can’t speak.
“And I’m in love with you.”
“Don’t.”
“I know what it does.”
“Then don’t say it.”
“But you deserve to know.”
My second heartbeat pounds. His eye in my skull sees him too sharply.
Every detail. Every tear. Every piece of him I’m stealing.
“I’m in love with you,” he says again.
Pain tears through his body and he collapses.
“NO!” I crawl to him.
His back arches. Something beneath his shirt twists. A sickening crack. Then another. His ribs.
“Oh my God.” I grab him before I remember touching makes everything worse.
I don’t care.
“August!”
His scream turns strangled. One side of his chest caves inward. Not broken.
Emptying.
Bones disappearing one after another beneath skin.
At the same time, pressure tears through my torso.
I scream with him. Something hard grows beneath my ribs. Too many bones.
His.
Fitting themselves around my organs.
My body stretches from inside. I feel every curve. Every new attachment. Every piece settling into wet tissue where it does not belong.
I vomit onto the floor.
August curls beside me. “Don’t touch me.”
“Fuck you.”
“Sarah...”
“Don’t you fucking dare die.”
I grab his face.
He laughs weakly.
“Very romantic.”
“Shut up.”
“Bossy in every lifetime.”
“I’m not her.”
His smile disappears. “No.” He touches my cheek.
Four fingers. “You’re not.”
Something warm splits along my spine. I scream as skin opens down my back.
August catches me as I pitch forward. “What?”
“Something’s happening.”
“Don’t peel.”
“I’m not!”
The skin separates by itself. I feel it sliding. A whole layer. Shoulders. Back. Waist. The old skin sloughs down my body in one wet sheet.
I sob against his chest.
He holds me while I come apart.
When it finally drops to the floor, we both stare.
There are markings across the inside.
Not one name.
Dozens.
SARAH.
JUNE.
ANNA.
ELEANOR.
LENORA.
Names layered over one another.
Some crossed out. Some barely visible. Some I’ve never heard before. And beneath them, written into the tissue itself VESSEL 09
I stop breathing.
August reads it and his face empties. “No.”
I look at him. “Specimen eight.”
He understands.
The jar wasn’t labeling Lenora.
It was counting hosts.
The word on my skin wasn’t NINE because this was our ninth life. It was nine because I am the ninth vessel.
My stomach turns.
August whispers. “Jesus Christ.”
“No.” I stare at the skin that used to cover my body. At the names of dead women woven through it. “This isn’t a love story.”
His eyes meet mine. “No.”
“It’s a breeding process.”
The realization makes me sick. Something has been using August as permanent source material.
Using women as temporary bodies. Using love as the trigger that begins the transfer.
His biology replaces ours. Lenora’s memories overwrite ours.
Then August regenerates after the cycle completes, ready for the next host.
Not immortality. Harvest.
I look at him. “You don’t come back because you’re immortal.”
His face goes pale.
“You come back because it needs you.”
His mouth opens.
I understand before he does. “You’re not the survivor.” Tears fill my eyes. “You’re the seed.”
August looks like I’ve stabbed him.
And I wish I could take it back. But the truth has already entered the room. He isn’t being punished for loving Lenora. He is being kept alive because his body is necessary to recreate her.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Love doesn’t trigger a curse. Love activates a biological machine. And every woman caught between them becomes raw material.
My body gives another violent shudder.
August catches me.
I feel something moving beneath my face.
My jaw. Changing.
“August.”
He looks at me. Horror floods his expression. “What?” His hand rises and stops before touching me. “Your face.”
I turn to the mirror.
My stomach drops.
My jaw is his. One eye is his. The bridge of my nose is changing.
But beneath that...someone else is appearing. A woman I have never seen. Dark hair. Brown eyes. A chipped canine.
1897. The original Lenora.
“No.”
Her face flickers through mine.
Sarah.
August.
Lenora.
Three people fighting for the same body.
I press both hands against the mirror. “Which one am I?”
August appears behind me. His reflection is fading while mine is becoming crowded.
“Sarah.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re the one asking.”
That destroys me.
I turn.
He looks smaller. Fragile. Human. For the first time, August looks his age. Not physically. In his eyes. One hundred and seventy-four years of losing women he thought were the same woman. And only now realizing they were never the same.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“For what?”
“Finding you.”
My heart breaks. “No.”
“If I’d walked away in that lobby...”
“No.”
“You’d still be Sarah.”
“August.”
“You’d have your green eye.”
“Stop.”
“Five fingers.”
“Stop.”
“Your scar.”
“STOP.”
He closes his mouth.
I grab him and pull him against me.
He resists for half a second.
Then breaks sobbing into my shoulder.
Not quiet tears. Not graceful grief. He fucking breaks. His whole body shakes. “I’m sorry.”
I hold him tighter.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“I’m so fucking sorry.”
“I know.”
“I killed all of you.”
“No.”
“I found you every time.”
“You didn’t know.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.” He pulls back. “Sarah.”
I touch his face. “Listen to me.”
His one good eye finds mine.
“You don’t get to turn this into another cycle where you decide the best way to save me is destroying yourself.”
His lips tremble.
“No more martyr bullshit, remember?”
A broken laugh. “Right.”
“We know what it is now.”
“Part of it.”
“Enough.”
“For what?”
I look at the layer of skin on the floor.
VESSEL 09. At the black writing on the wall. At August disappearing in front of me.
Then at my reflection.
Three people. One body. A machine in the middle of completing its work.
“For me to make a choice.”
His face changes. “What choice?”
I look at him.
The final truth settles quietly.
If the transfer finishes, Sarah disappears. Lenora returns. August is consumed. And whatever created this gets exactly what August asked for in 1897.
She always comes back. No matter how many people it takes to build her.
I wipe August’s tears with a hand containing one of his fingers. “This time...” My voice shakes. “...we don’t let her come back.”