Chapter 16: Fight Hunger with Hunger

[https://i.postimg.cc/DZF43w8j/46-469809-drawing-shark-jaws-great-white-shark-jaw-drawing.png]

I feel numb.

It’s the stress, of course. I’ve moved beyond overtaxed, beyond exhausted. I’ve entered a sort of null state where nothing impacts me anymore. It’s the blissful thing that happens right before going into shock. The brain shutting down, deciding it’s had too much, thank-you-very-much. It would like to go home now.

Honestly I don’t think I can even cry at this point.

I’m watching William walk into the night. He locks the door behind him - I hear the quiet beep of it, and I almost laugh. A lock isn’t going to keep that thing out. It’s going to smash through the windows. It’s going to smash through the metal. It’s going to eat me, then play jump rope with my intestines.

I know I’m trying to scare myself with this imagery. I’m trying to snap myself out of the numb. Somewhere in there, I want to help. I don’t want to be useless. I don’t want to sit here, frozen, waiting for this creature to rip through William and flamethrower-woman and tear into me. There’s a whiny voice in my head, sniveling about how unfair it all is. About how I didn’t ask for any of this. That none of it is my fault, despite what G.I. Jane said.

And what good is that doing you? I think. Is whining going to save your life? Is it going to save theirs?

I take in a breath. Twitch my fingers. I’m still watching William. I can see his back as he moves towards the creature. He’s watching it attentively, rigidly, planning his attack. I don’t know where the woman went - the instant she stepped out of the car, she got down on the ground. Vanished into the grass somewhere, out of sight.

Through it all, even with William heading straight for it at an even gait, the creature never looks away from the car. From me.

“Do you not understand what I am?” it asks. It has William’s voice again, and that gives the incubus pause. He doesn’t look back to me, though. After a brief hesitation, he simply resumes moving forward, closer. The thing’s voice gets louder, but the words - the words stay exactly the same. “Do you not understand what I am?”

It lumbers low to the ground, large dark eye flashing, teeth gleaming. I can see the strength in its emaciated limbs, in the rippling of tendons and muscles. It looks like there’s something moving beneath its skin, something writhing and wormlike. When it launches itself into the air, it leaps in an effortless arc past William, angled like a missile directly towards the back window. It’s fast - so fast it’s a blur, a pale smear against the night.

Time slows. I watch it coming, my lips parted, my mind blank. Closer. Closer. Closer.

Another blur streaks out of the dark. William isn’t as fast, but he’s faster than my eye can track properly. Just as the abomination is about to make contact with the Royce, he slams into it from the side, sending it rolling into the dirt. They flash out of sight for a moment. I hear high-pitched, animalistic shrieks. Sounds of violence - gnashing teeth and a shout of pain. Then William is flying back through the air again, bleeding, one of his arms twisted the wrong way, a look of agony on his face.

A hand smashes through the window to my right. Long, gnarled fingers extend through the opening. I scream, scrambling backwards, clutching the book to my chest. Fast as lightning, the creature reaches into the car and tries to grab at me, snagging claws on my leg. I scream again, feeling the pain of sliced skin, feeling an overwhelming coldness that worms its way down to my very essence. It takes up residence in my chest and makes itself at home. For a moment I stare into that large, dark eye, and I feel a piece of myself shrivel away.

Then William is there again, zipping into sight. He’s upon the creature, snarling, grabbing desperately at it and wrapping his arms around its throat. It lurches backwards, its own legs seeming to break as it slams the incubus into the ground. Again. Again. Again. I hear bone snap, but still William holds on, trying to keep it still. I hear him let out a long, low, awful groan.

It’s going to kill him, I think. It’s going to kill the body and send him back to the Aether.

More than that, though, is the knowledge that it’s hurting him. It’s fucking beating him to a pulp out there and I’m just sitting here, useless, doing nothing. Watching it all happen. I can smell the sulfur wafting off of the demon, that same scent I’d caught wind of when he defied my order in the apartment. He’s hurting so badly that it’s leaking through the shattered glass and rolling over me.

That’s what snaps me out of it. Being useless. Sitting here and watching him suffer.

I’m getting really goddamn sick of it.

I grab the book and yank it out of the bag. Whoever wrote the entry about the incubus, they said that it was malleable. That means the spirit can be altered, right? Adjusted. Maybe I can do that. I have the book, don’t I? If Lucas Hallowsworth, with his fucking prop dagger and LED lights, can summon a demon, surely I can…I don’t know. Power one up?

There’s a SLAM that rocks the entire car, tipping it to the side so precariously that for a moment I think it’ll roll. I smack into the opposite window, cursing, struggling to keep my grip on the book in my hands. From this angle I can see the stars flashing in a clear night sky. I can also see the eldritch creature grasp William by the throat, tighten its fingers, and begin to pry his head upwards, the angle wrong and sickening.

It’s going to snap his neck.

My hand is planted on the open book now. I feel all of my rage and fury rising, choking me and flooding me. I feel worthless, impotent. But more than that, I feel desperate. I don’t have time to sit here and read. I don’t have time to translate Latin while he’s sitting out there, dying out there, sacrificing himself for me.

I can’t say how it happens. I don’t know how I do it - not anymore than I understand how I cut Mr. Darcy in half. One moment I’m reaching my hand out towards William, watching the tendons in his neck strain to their limit, fighting against a sob. Help him, I’m thinking. Help him, for God’s sake, do something!

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

My vision erupts in light.

The air around William is suddenly alive with color. Beautiful strands of it spiral and twist, framing him like some sort of otherworldly aura. He’s close enough that I can touch those strands, their ends seeming to move towards me of their own accord. Seeking out the brush of my fingertips. There are flashes of blue, glimmers of violet, and shimmering reds. I see something else there - something gilded. Something golden, but it’s woven so intricately that I can’t seem to get a grip on it. I can’t pry it away from the rest. I also see something black and slithering, sinuous like a snake - but it seems to exist only in the blank spaces, blending in, intentionally hiding from sight.

So I clutch at one of the red strands. I feel a sensation of hunger, something old and primal. And I think to myself, well. Why not fight fire with fire?

It coils around my wrist, pressing into my skin. I gasp at the sensation. It isn’t painful, not quite, but a hum reverberates through my body. I see William’s eyes go wider, his hands clawing at the creature’s grip. He looks towards me with an expression of raw panic on his face, and in that moment, I realize that he’s more afraid of me than of it.

‘It’s okay,’ I tell him. ‘It’s okay. Let me help you.’

And I begin to pour myself into the scarlet thread.

It feels so natural to me. So normal. Even as I feel it starting to sap the energy out of me, I don’t fight it. It’s not like anything I’ve experienced before. Not like when I was staring into the creature’s large black eye. I’m giving this up freely. I can sense the cracks in William’s essence, in the parts of him that hurt and bleed, and I try to weave the thread through those places. As if knitting stitches through a wound.

I hear an ear-shattering crunch, then look up, the lights fading away.

The eldritch creature has broken William’s neck. I can see the way the bone presses wrongly against his skin. Pivoting, it flings his limp form into the grass. Then it comes to bear on me again, grinning a bloody grin, slipping its body deeper into the car so its face hovers inches from mine. In William’s voice, it murmurs:

“You should run.”

But I don’t run. I just stare at it. I don’t have any more tears left, not even with the incubus dead. I tried, and I failed, and maybe I should just let go. I should just…

A fist slams through the meat of the creature’s chest. Blood and gore explode out of the opening, covering me. It shrieks in pain and fury, but it doesn’t get a chance to retaliate. In the next instant, William’s face is looming over its shoulder. He looks at me, his eyes gleaming, the red behind the blackness brighter than I’ve ever seen it before.

Then he opens his mouth impossibly wide, showing rows and rows of razor teeth, before biting down into the thing’s throat.

Its eyes go wide as saucers. William wrenches it away from the car, using the power of his arms, of his jaw. Where before the creature clearly outmatched him in strength, William flings it around like a goddamn marionette on strings. The demon kicks out, and I hear the telling crack of limbs snapping. Not his limbs this time - he’s hamstringing the creature by breaking its legs at the knee joints, limiting its mobility. His movements are so fast I can barely see them, and not once does he pull his mouth away from the abomination’s neck. I can see his throat moving, as though he’s…drinking.

Warning bells signal dimly in the back of my head. What the fuck did I do to him?

When he finally pulls his teeth free, he rips away half of the creature’s jugular, bits of the skin on its face dangling from his mouth. His gleaming eyes fix on something that I can’t see, and then he withdraws his hand from its chest, exposing a grotesque still-beating heart, and grabs the back of its head.

“Shoot it.”

The sound of the bullet pierces the air the before he even finishes speaking. It hits the eldritch creature right through that large, terrible eye, pulverizing the gray matter in a puff of smoke and flame. The fire engulfs it entirely then, burning through its muscles, burning through its viscera. There’s a terrible moment where I can see its innards glowing from the heat, watch as it’s incinerated from the inside out. Then it’s nothing but ash, nothing but charred flesh and a terrible, rotten smell that lingers like a disrespectful dirge.

William drops the corpse unceremoniously to the ground. He turns his gaze towards me then, still gleaming, and the look he gives me is utterly ravenous.

“Don’t eat me,” I say. “I’ve already had the worst night of my life.”

A smile splits his face, and I can still see the lingering hint of those razor fangs. “I think a bit of eating might make you feel better,” he replies. “I’m told I’m very good at it.”

I can’t help it. I laugh. I can tell that it’s him, feel him, even if I know that there’s a new need in him now. Blood. He wants blood. But he’s got a handle on it—the bond between us has blown wide, gaping like a goddamn high-speed rail tunnel, and I’m getting everything from him. Hunger and pain and joy and power and…

Oh. Oh. He doesn’t just want blood.

Never breaking eye contact, gore still smeared on his face, William opens the car door. He places a hand on the seat, and I can see black talons on the ends of his fingers. I’ve turned the incubus into a goddamn vampire. I should have listened to the gun-wielding woman. Did I think this was a game? It’s not a game! He’s going to kill me just as surely as that thing would have!

“I’m not going to kill you, Lydia,” William says. His voice is low and rumbling, his tongue swiping along his lips. “I’m just going to…”

“Right.” The voice interrupts him with cold authority. I peer over his shoulder, my mouth dry, and see that the woman with the flamethrower is aiming her gun at William’s back. There’s a cold look in her eye, and I have no doubt whatsoever that she will fire that weapon at the slightest provocation. “You’re going to get off of her. Now. Because if you can’t handle this, if you can’t get yourself under control, I assure you I will put the second bullet in your head.”

The demon freezes. He turns his head slowly, and some level of realization comes into his eyes. He raises his hands over his head, then begins to back away from me, sliding out of the seat. But not before shooting a wink at me and murmuring: “Maybe later, then.”

She’s still pointing the gun at him even as he fully exits the car. William is smart enough to keep both of his hands up high in the air. Stooping, the woman peers in at me, checking on me. There’s a frown on her face that I take for concern, and in spite of her biting words from before, I get the feeling she’s worried about me.

“How are you feeling?”

How am I feeling? Not well. I can’t seem to get my thoughts together. It occurs to me that I can barely move my limbs, come to think of it. It reminds me of when I have sleep paralysis. I’m aware of the room around me, but I can’t do more than twitch. Maybe the book did it. Whatever I did to help William. Maybe it took something out of me.

I feel cold. I feel so incredibly cold, but I notice my breath isn’t fogging the air. So it can’t be that bad out here, can it?

Pursing her lips, the woman shifts her eyes towards William again. “You got a handle on yourself, or am I doing this alone?”

He blinks at her. “Doing what?”

Her expression is grim. “That thing got its hooks in your girl. We need to act fast, or she’s not going to make it.”

William stiffens, and I feel a glimmer of panic from him. “What do you need me to do?”

“Make sure the car’s still drivable. I’ll give you directions from there.” She turns back to look at me again, studying my face. “Hang in there, kid. We’re not out of the woods yet.”

I find I can barely keep my eyes open. My thoughts knit and fray, then knit and fray again. But I manage to speak even though my tongue feels like lead.

“What’s,” I say, squeezing out the words. “What’s your name?”

Her face softens. She adjusts the grip on her gun, pointing it downwards. “Samantha,” she says gently. “Friends call me Sam.”

I smile at her. Or I try to smile at her. I probably look like I just got dosed up on morphine. Half of my face is so stiff I’m pretty sure I’m about to start drooling.

“Sam,” I say. “S’nice to meet you.” My head lolls to the side, my eyes fluttering shut. The car is moving - I know that much - but I’m sinking deeper into the cold now. So deep it’s starting to feel warm. There’s a hand on my forehead - a hand that feels so blisteringly hot I reflexively pull away. When Sam speaks again, her voice is grave.

“Drive faster. She doesn’t have much time.”