Chapter XIX #2
Vic stared at Aren’s face as apprehension crept into her mind.
He couldn’t be that bad, could he? Not this smiling man sitting beside her mother, looking at his two friends like they meant the world to him.
If he was as the Order described him—cruel, calculating, power-hungry, intent on eradicating an entire population of witches—how was it that he looked so normal?
And if Aren was what they told Vic he was, and Meredith was friends with the monster, what did that make her? Where had Meredith landed in the fight between Aren and Max?
Her pulse sped as the past reasserted itself. There were secrets in this apartment. Vic could feel them like a physical presence.
She’d come here for closure. She’d wanted to understand the world her mother lived in, find out how she died. She had never considered that she might not want to know.
With trembling hands Vic pulled the photo from its frame. She folded the picture in half and slid it into her pocket, but she dropped the frame, and it fell to the floor and shattered.
“Shit.”
Vic looked around like someone would see her, like Meredith would materialize to scold Vic for breaking her things. But the apartment was dead silent and empty.
She backed out of her mother’s bedroom and approached the closed door across the hall.
The first thing Vic saw when she pushed it open was more books. Loose papers rustled in the breeze of an open window. The air was frigid.
Thick stacks of papers cluttered an antique desk, but when Vic stepped into the room, she froze.
There was someone sitting behind the desk.
For a brief moment—an instant, a heartbeat, the time it took a single synapse to fire—Vic thought it was her mother sitting across from her.
But it couldn’t be. And it wasn’t.
The moonlight from the window filtered in behind the woman and cast her in shadow. But the stranger had dark hair. It fell down her back in a solid sheet of black and turned pewter where the light glanced off it.
The woman sat stock-still with her back to Vic. The desk, piled high with papers and books, obscured most of her figure.
Vic’s first instinct, still rooted in the realities of the world outside the castle, was to apologize for intruding.
“I’m sorry, I—”
But her voice died in her throat when the woman turned. Her head and shoulders shifted slowly, and Vic had the distinct awareness, deep in her gut, that she was not surprised to see Vic.
The woman had high cheekbones, and a broad jaw hung low on her face. Her skin, paler than pale, the skin of a corpse, glowed in the moonlight, and shadows hid her features. Her eyes, Vic saw, were dark and piercing.
Vic noticed with a jolt that the stranger was naked. Her collarbones stuck out from her chest, skin taut and translucent, and Vic saw the contours of her exposed breasts as the woman turned. Vic should look away, she should leave, she should never have come.
The woman’s mouth opened, and her jaw—so much wider than it ought to be—fell almost to her sternum. She breathed hard through her gaping mouth, pulling drafts like she meant to taste the air. It whistled through her throat with a low rattle.
Vic backed toward the door, her body preparing to escape while her mind was too stunned to leave the strange woman behind.
Vic heard her own voice in her head like a hit drum.
Get out.
Get out.
Something moved in the corner of her vision, and Vic flinched as she searched for the source.
A dark shape crawled across the floor and up, near the side wall.
The moonlight hit it just right, and Vic saw.
It was a wing—a dark, leathery wing—and Vic’s mouth fell ajar as she followed its bony advance across the room, where she saw that it sprouted from the woman’s shoulder blade.
The thing’s mouth fell open wider, and Vic understood why it couldn’t close all the way.
Long canines like a wildcat’s sat on either side of its mandible, too large—much too large—for a human.
Vic couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe.
The wing made a wet sound as it scraped across the floor.
Papers fell from the desk with a muffled thump.
Get out.
The thing in front of her began to rise. Two wings narrowly avoided the walls on either side of the room as it drew itself into the air. At first Vic thought it was standing up. Until its torso cleared the desk and Vic saw what lay beneath it.
The creature’s body ended at the rib cage, and it ended messy.
The skin at the base of its ribs was torn, gaping, dark and rotted on the edges.
Organs hung loose below the creature’s half body as it rose, and Vic finally took the gasping breath she needed.
Intestines swung under the shredded rib cage like wet ropes, trailing across the desk as the creature moved toward Vic.
GET OUT.
In a flash, it lunged at her.
Vic’s back hit the wall with a smack. One of the creature’s pale hands reached for Vic as it dove. Long claws at the end of each bony finger narrowly missed her throat.
The beast hovered in the air in front of her face, and Vic shoved it backward and vaulted toward the hall.
Her foot caught on the lip of the office door, and she fell forward while rounding the corner.
Her hands hit the rug as she stumbled, the raw skin on her palms searing.
She pushed herself up and into the hallway.
The beast’s claws snagged her hip. Vic twisted out of its grasp and tried to run again.
But a spiny hand caught Vic’s arm around the elbow and spun her around. Now facing the monstrosity, she felt her head snap backward as the creature wrenched her toward it.
A horrible smell hit her. Rancid milk and vinegar. Vic gagged and tried to pull herself back, away from the thing, away from that hideous reek.
But its hold on her arm was too strong, claws stabbing her skin through her sweater, pain flaring hot and red. Vic thrashed and pulled away, but its grip only tightened. Vic tried to kick it, but her feet swung loose in the air. There was nothing beneath the beast’s rib cage to kick.
With one arm pinned in place, Vic snaked her other hand behind her back, reaching for the handle of the knife she’d hidden there.
Her heart beat panic in her throat as the backs of her nails scraped her skin from the awkward angle, but Vic finally had it.
She gripped the rubber handle of the dagger she’d stolen and spun it around in her hand.
As fast as she could, Vic slid the blade into the creature’s side, and it screamed with rage, but it did not falter.
Vic reached for the weapon again, thinking she had to hit the creature in a precise spot, the neck or the heart, to kill it.
Vic couldn’t remember what she was supposed to do, if she’d ever known.
She grasped at the blade in the creature’s side, the blood-coated handle slipping in her fingers.
But the thing’s claws lifted and flicked Vic’s hand away.
With a roar it pulled the knife from its side and threw it across the room.
The creature pulled in a slow breath through its mouth again. Lower in the throat and louder. A swirling sound came from inside it, like a snake uncoiling, and Vic watched in horror as a length of spindly dark rope fell from the monster’s open jaws.
When the coil began to move of its own accord, Vic realized what it was.
The thing’s tongue fell heavy in front of her face.
Black in the dim light and about the width of a finger, it was at least a foot long.
At the end, a bulb perched like a putrid flower on a vine.
Vic stared as the bulb opened and closed, its petals gasping for air.
Vic realized what it planned to do an instant before the slimy tongue hit her face with a slap.
She clenched her lips together as hard as she could.
Barbs on the end of the tongue moved, and Vic felt their searching bite on her cheek as it crawled.
She let out a muffled whimper when the thing’s tongue slithered toward her mouth.
It tried to pry open her lips, and Vic writhed away from it.
Vic threw her head from shoulder to shoulder to shake the tongue off, but it stuck, latched on her mouth as it fought to wriggle inside.
Desperate, Vic pushed her body weight backward, straining into the beast’s hold on her arm.
She used the momentum to kick both of her feet out this time, and she aimed her legs as high as she could.
Forcing her weight into the thing’s hand, Vic felt white-hot pain as its claws tore deep into her arm, but her right foot hit its mark.
It connected with one of the wings. A loud crunch, and the creature’s tongue whipped away from Vic’s face as it bellowed in pain.
The tongue swung madly in the air as it opened its mouth wide and snarled.
But it loosened its hold enough that Vic tore herself free and fled down the hallway.
With a damaged wing and without Vic to hold it up, the creature fell to the floor with a smack and a growl.
Throwing a glance over her shoulder, Vic watched the beast pull itself up onto its hands.
It began to pull its body forward, its claws clinging to the hallway carpet for purchase. It wriggled toward her like a viper.
Vic barreled into the door to the outside—to safety—and ripped at the knob. But it was locked, pulled shut by the same magic that had kept her out. Panic roared in Vic’s head as she tried to focus on the ward again, focus on getting out. She needed to think, needed to—
A clawed hand wrapped around Vic’s ankle and yanked.
Vic twisted toward her attacker as she fell. Her shoulder hit the stone floor first; the back of her head a split second later. The blow stunned her. Her head pounded. A fog crept across the sides of her vision. She couldn’t see.