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“I'll protect you. I promise. That won't be our last kiss.”
Reese was running. Trees and cold autumn air rushed past him as he scrambled through the woods, dry leaf litter crunching beneath his feet. Clawed fingers clutched at his bloodied, shattered jaw, fire shooting along the bone. Heavy, throbbing pressure overwhelmed the side of his face as tendrils of muscle squirmed, trying to reconnect around burrowing buckshot.
It had been a dizzying rush, how his hands wrenched off Tabitha’s trailer door, his body surging into the cramped space, arms outstretched as he lunged at her. Then the shredding sensation of bullets. His breath ripped from his aching lungs and heart hammering against shaking ribs. How his ears rang at the blast, yet the stone still screamed at him, loud and unrelenting from the other side of town.
He staggered outside and there was Nell, standing just a few yards away, pleading with him to stop as he slumped against the trailer’s porch.
"N-no... I can finish this. I won't let her... lock you away!"
And then the shotgun boomed. He scurried away, his head half blown off, sparing her one last, longing look.
He left her behind. Left her with Tabitha.
She was going to be locked away.
Adrenaline flowed like shocking waves through his trembling limbs. He kept running, trying to push the thought from his head. But it kept rushing back, the clinic’s cell flashing in his mind. Metal plumbing bolted down to choking cement, as if all he could do was destroy. How the doctor’s blood splashed against it, dripping down cold metal. Nell, carefully stepping over all the violence, as she wrapped him in her arms.
She understood him, accepted what he was. Something the woman who was meant to be his mother could never do.
Nell saved him from that cell, and he left her.
His inhuman eyes darted, catching his smears slithering after him through treetops. Blobs of white, strange and doughy, watched him from the underbrush. Whispers slid down their stinging tongues, mingling with the cries of the stone. But the forest itself was quiet. As if it were holding its breath, waiting for something.
The fear of last night was still fresh, renewed by his injuries, like a raw, reopened wound. It gnawed away at his insides, digging deeper, as trembling nerves tied tight around his lungs.
He’d been trapped for so long. Stuck in some terrible lie. Everything had slipped away from him, slow and systemic at first, the doctor’s handiwork, and he just let it happen. Now the doc was dead, and everything was ripped away. He had nothing but his life. No house, no family (not that he needed one), he wasn’t even human—
It was overwhelming. Even his own body was new and strange, the world perceived with sudden clarity now that his head was no longer swimming through a tired haze. Lean muscles and keen edges replaced the nauseating, slack-limbed sickness he had grown so used to. His jaw audibly popped and cracked, rippling beneath his skin, as his body tried to reconstruct itself.
A small droplet of rain splashed on the top of his head. Then another, and another, a gentle drizzle falling from dark grey clouds looming overhead. He… he needed to find shelter, didn’t he?
There wasn’t much out in the middle of the woods, lost on some overgrown and rocky hillside. Reese slowed before finally settling under a dense cedar tree, pressing his back against mossy bark. Energy thrummed in the air as he caught his breath, an oncoming storm, the smell of rain mingling with the coppery taste of blood on his tongue.
The silence invited anxiety to creep back in, and all he could do was sit with it.
If Tabitha did something—
He’d what? Get shot again?
Frustration rattled in his ribcage at the thought, a seething growl rumbling in his chest as blood burbled in his mouth. Clawed fingertips tightened on his jaw defensively, sending a shockwave of pain through his skull. Fuck. His hand flew away from his jaw, a strangled whine escaping his throat.
There had to be something he could do. He wasn’t weak anymore, far from it. He could be useful. More useful than he had been in years, when the doctor kept him small and scared, stuck in the basement, festering in the feeling that he was a burden. He wouldn’t sit around and do nothing. He was sick of that. Sick of things just… happening to him.
Rain dropped through the canopy of leaves above him, drizzling sheets transforming into a foggy downpour around him, cold droplets clinging to his dark hair and trailing down his pale skin. A chill settled over him, but he did not shiver.
If only they could have just left town together. But they couldn’t. Well, he couldn’t. Not without his heart threatening to pop. There was something wrong with this place. He could feel it. Like a spider’s web, but alive. Emotional. Wanting.
He just needed Tabitha out of the way. Then maybe him and Nell could fix all of this, and they could leave.
Once it was done, Nell would understand why Tabitha had to go. With the way things went down at the mines, maybe she already did, now more than ever. It was her freedom or Tabitha’s life.
Reese knew which outcome he could live with.
Thunder rumbled through the hills, drowning out the stone’s wailing. In the distance, Reese could see purple arcs of lightning shooting through the sky. His free hand cautiously reached the wound between his shoulder and chest as he looked out at the storm, warm blood sticking to his fingers. But the smoldering holes were smooth now, nearly healed. The only remainder of his injury was the dull, throbbing ache beneath his skin.
At least it was getting better. Poison was one thing, but surviving a shotgun at point-blank range… that was new.
If only he had a mirror, or anything with a reflection, really. He didn’t like looking at himself, especially in whatever horrible state he was certainly in now, but maybe he could see the damage—
His hearing snapped and shifted suddenly. For a split second, it felt as if his head was falling away from his body, his inner ear ringing loudly and then tuning to a new wavelength. The stone’s yelling had stopped, leaving behind a heavy silence, as its constant cry calmed.
Nell.
Now another stone rang out to him, chiming deep and dark like a bell. Reverberating within the soul, unsettling in its vibrations. Vague impressions flashed in his mind as he focused, the clinic’s stone sharing with him visions of strange boundaries, intersecting like crossroads, weaving in and out of existence. A guiding hand leading from one point to another. It was close but trying to push him away.
If she had found one of those things out at the farms, then maybe she’d find this one too.
Resolve settled over him. Reese sucked in a sharp, steadying breath and slowly rose to his feet, damp earth still clinging to his tattered jeans.
He would have to be careful this time, the muscles in his face still stitching themselves together. But maybe he could watch from someplace safe, and if Tabitha was there with her…
Then he’d make good on his promise.