I was shredded, beaten, and bloodied. My body was a map of agony and desperation. Every step sent knives of pain stabbing through me, my back burning from the fresh strips Alex's claws had torn away. Hunger gnawed at me, a feral, insatiable need clawing at my insides like a second predator. I wasn’t just broken… I was being unraveled, and every nerve screamed at me to stop… to feed and reverse what had been done to me. I needed to heal… but I couldn’t.
Alex had pushed me past the point of endurance, and when she finally stepped back to let me collapse, the hunger roared forward, overwhelming everything. It boiled up inside me, a molten force that seared through my mind like a brand. My senses shifted, sharpening, scattering outwards. I could feel life pulsing in the woods around us; small, scuttling things. A fox in the underbrush. Birds hidden in the high branches. Insects humming in the dirt.
I didn’t think; I acted. My mind reached out, lashing wildly, a barbed net of white-hot desperation aimed at anything alive. The strange mental force I could weaponize as a medium for feeding was complicated… an effort of feeling it out. It was more instinctual, but I was panicking and wildly trying to force something that just wasn’t. The effort backfired… my grip slipped, and the threads unraveled. My failure cost me dearly.
Alex's claws raked across my right side slicing around to the middle of my back, carving deeper this time, and I screamed, the sound shrill and raw. My throat burned just from the force of my wail. Blood poured down my sides, hot and sticky against the cold air.
I bolted. My legs moved before my brain could catch up, terror and instinct overriding pain. I didn’t look back. If I could reach the city, maybe… just maybe… she’d stop. Maybe I could lose her in the crowds, force her to retreat.
Every breath was raspy in my throat. My ribs felt like they were about to snap, and my legs like they’d collapse beneath me. I wasn’t running to survive; I was running on borrowed time, fueled by scraps of hope and adrenaline. If things continued the way they had… I would not survive.
And then I saw it… a stray cat darting through the trees, startled by the chaos of my approach. Its sleek body leaped between the shadows, but my gaze locked on it, unrelenting… starving.
I veered toward it, my desperation narrowing into a sharp, singular focus. The hunger surged, the energy behind it coiling like a spring, and then it snapped free. A jagged spear of intent shot from my mind, instantly impaling the cat.
Its body froze mid-step, a pulse of inner light exploding from within as its fur and flesh dissolved into vapor, disintegrating layer by layer. Fur to skin, skin to muscle, muscle to blood. Each part melted away, the red mist swirling toward me in a rush. Bones hit the ground in a hollow signal of final rest as I tore past, sucking down the mist with greedy, heaving breaths.
It wasn’t enough. Not even close. The mist patched the edges of my wounds but left the core damage untouched. Alex had torn too much, taken too much.
But I kept running. Pain screamed through my nerves with every step, my lungs burning as I pushed harder, faster. I didn’t care how futile it felt, didn’t care that my legs wobbled with weakness. The city was my only chance. If I knew just one thing about Alex, it was that she was discreet. She would not do things like this around human beings. That was her only weakness I could exploit.
Behind me, I could feel her presence like a relentless shadow I could never escape. She wasn’t chasing to kill… no, she wanted to see what I’d do, she was aiming for something else.
I didn’t want to play anymore. But I didn’t have a choice. This sick game between creator and created was just getting started… and I was scared. I felt alone. I wanted my family… my friends… I wanted Sam. I didn’t want to be alone out here with her… with this thing inside of me.
I burst through the tree line, my feet skidding to a halt at the edge of the road. Two cars zipped by in quick succession, their engines buzzing rapidly. My eyes caught the faint silhouettes of people inside… two drivers, unaware, their hearts pulsing steady rhythms of mundane life. An older woman was in the first car, her face lined with makeup that I could almost smell from where I stood. Then, a younger man drove the second car, listening to some heavy metal and bobbing his head.
A frantic need tore through my fleeing mind. It was primal and had a frenzied life of its own. I couldn’t stop the thought from forming, couldn’t stop the hunger from twisting my mind. Their blood… their bodies… I needed them. The white-hot energy in my mind began to bubble and rise, a sharp, eager needle ready to strike. I could reach them. Even through the barriers of glass and metal, I knew I could. Not at the same time… but one after the other.
The second car first, so I wouldn’t alert the other… one sharp jab. Then the leading car with the old woman… another mental assault to vaporize and inhale their lives. I could catch them before they even knew what was happening. Their life would pour into me, patching the holes in my battered body, erasing the damage Alex had inflicted. They could be MINE! My feet shifted, the thought already sparking into intention.
Then disgust slammed into me like ice water. No! What was I thinking? I staggered back, my breath catching in a sharp gasp. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. They were innocent… just people driving home, heading to loved ones, maybe… just living their lives. I couldn’t be the thing that stole that from them; that stole them from those waiting to see these people again.
The needle in my mind recoiled as I clenched my fists and forced myself to move, turning my back on the road. My legs carried me forward, pushing past the clawing hunger, the aching need.
I ran. Away from the road, away from Alex, away from the monstrous instinct clawing at my core. Whatever this thing inside me was, I wasn’t going to let it win. Not like that.
As I ran, each strained breath clawed harder at my throat, and the ache in my legs threatened to buckle me, but I couldn’t stop. I had to think… had to focus. My body was screaming for rest, for repair, but the truth hung heavy in my chest: I couldn’t heal on my own. I needed life… blood, flesh; something to fill the corrosive emptiness gnawing at my insides like acid, eating me from within.
But as the needle strained in my skull, trying to get me to turn and go back to the potential victims, I felt the woman’s heartbeat again… someone’s mother. The younger man’s… a son. A brother, maybe. Like Allen.
The urge shattered, and revulsion surged through me. No!
But it could be so easy… so quick. I needed them.
“No! I won't!” I screamed out loud.
My thoughts spiraled, panic flooding my veins. One second, I was me, trying to save the lives of these innocent passing civilians, the next I was a monster. Hell-bent on their ultimate destruction. I wanted their lives… their existence to fade into mine and fuel me. What was I thinking? What was I becoming?
Images from that night in the alley slammed into my mind like a fist. The violence. The snarls that tore from my throat, guttural and feral, as I ripped into two strangers. My stomach twisted at the memory. The blood. Their screams. My claws. But there was something else, buried under the haze… something I couldn’t quite grasp. I remembered following them, watching them, stalking them with purpose. Why?
A sound yanked me from my spiraling thoughts… rushing footsteps behind me. Alex. She was closing in.
My senses flared wildly, reaching out in all directions, mapping every movement in the surrounding area. I didn’t have time to think. I bolted across the road, my body protesting with every step, and plunged into the new tree line. The woods swallowed me, their shadows wrapping around me like a shroud.
I heard her voice before I saw her.
“That was actual control,” Alex said, her tone unnervingly calm like she was assessing me… watching me through my temptations. There was something else in her voice, something I couldn’t pin down… relief? Hope?
“What is this? Why are you doing this to me?” My voice came out weak, a desperate demand for answers, a plea for mercy.
“I need to be sure,” she replied simply, her words like a door slammed shut in my face. The words meant nothing to me in my terrified state.
Then her body began to twist and rupture, the change announcing itself with a sickening crack. Her skin split into jagged lines, glowing reddish-orange from within as though molten fire coursed beneath her flesh. The hue spread rapidly, the cracks widening to reveal a grotesque, chitinous armor emerging from beneath like some primal beast shedding a human disguise.
Her hands contorted violently, bones snapping and reshaping as her fingers stretched into jagged daggers of bone, each tip gleaming like a blade freshly quenched in blood. Blood-red spikes tore through her knuckles, sharp and dripping with a viscous fluid that hissed as it hit the ground, eating into the earth like acid… consuming the ground in wisps of smoke.
Her arms bulged unnaturally, and with a wet, tearing sound, lengthy bone spines erupted from her elbows, their edges rippling like jagged saws. The armor crawled higher, engulfing her torso and limbs in thick, grotesque layers of shell-like plating, the texture both smooth and pitted, resembling rusted iron painted in blood.
Her size surged upward, doubling as her body expanded in grotesque fits and starts, each motion accompanied by the squelch of stretching muscle and the snapping of bones reforged. Her body held the same proportions, just bent and twisted in strange inhuman angles. Her face dissolved into the monstrous, her features subsumed by weird bonelike scales that grew within her head and face. Her face was marked with organic grooves and ridges, that resembled her human face only more grotesque, and pulsed faintly like breathing skin.
But her hair, her blood-red hair remained, though it had transformed into something as monstrous as the rest of her. No longer smooth and lustrous, it hung jagged and coarse, twisted into wild strands that jutted out at odd angles, some clumped together and others flaring outward like grasping tendrils. It spilled down her back in uneven, sharp-edged streams, nearly brushing the ground and bristling like the quills of a deadly beast.
When she finally stood before me, she was no longer human. She was a hulking, but somehow lithe, armored nightmare. Her form stiffened with lethal edges and raw, violent intent to consume. Every inch of her screamed danger, her transformation a brutal display of dominance and destruction, a monster born from something far beyond this world… or even the supernatural world my family had known. She was something else… something darker than we’d ever faced. The sight of her turned my blood to ice.
Alex stood there, no longer the strikingly beautiful woman she had been, but something monstrous. A predator. Her presence was suffocating, her towering form casting a long shadow that seemed to envelop me. She was a living weapon of otherworldly power. My legs trembled, both from the damage she’d already inflicted and the sheer, overwhelming fear that gripped me. I wanted to run. Every instinct screamed at me to flee, but my body betrayed me. My feet felt anchored, locked in place as if the forest itself had decided I wouldn’t escape this time.
I couldn’t help but think of Sam. His transformations had been terrifying in his own right, his aura overpowering and impossible to ignore. But Alex… she was something different. Not as commanding and strong, but ferocious and bloody, her change so visceral it carved itself into my mind.
I thought of Phineas, of the chimera’s twisted form of amalgamation, and how it had haunted my memory. Now Alex joined that list. This was a sight I would never forget… one I couldn’t forget, no matter how much I might want to.
Alex's voice tore through the air like a jagged, metallic scream, a symphony of chaos grinding against itself. “Let’s see what happens if we go even further.”
Her face twisted into something almost human but undeniably monstrous, a perverse snarl stretched into the mockery of a grin. It was the kind of grin that promised ruin, not mercy.
She moved. Not walked… moved. With one earth-shaking stride, her towering form closed the distance with unnatural ease, each step leaving deep gouges in the dirt beneath her feet. Her motion wasn’t just fast; it was devastating, her very presence warping the space around her like a predator ruling its domain. A single stride for her covered what would’ve been four for me.
Something primitive clawed its way to the surface within me again, an instinct that wasn’t mine but felt carved into my bones. My wounds burned, muscles twitching as they pulled together against logic and reason, and I was moving before I knew it, driven by a raw, animal terror. My legs launched me into a desperate sprint, a blur of limbs and blood as I tore through the forest, trees whipping past me in streaks.
She wouldn’t kill me… she couldn’t. Could she? No. She had just saved me. Days ago, she had been my savior, my anchor against Peter’s curse. But now? Now she was death incarnate, a relentless force that had turned its focus on me. My thoughts fractured in discord of confusion, doubt, and the singular command that screamed above all else: KEEP RUNNING!
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My body betrayed my desperation. My hands swung wildly for balance as blood trailed from open gashes on my arms and legs, leaving splatters in my wake. And still, I felt her… an impossible weight, a predator's gaze boring into my back. It didn’t matter how far I got… she was inescapable.
Then, the world snapped.
Agony erupted in my spine, white-hot and unrelenting, the force enough to stagger me mid-stride. My body locked, my mouth frozen in a silent scream as my vision blurred from the pain. I stumbled, and my eyes drifted downward. A jagged, wooden branch jutted through my abdomen, splitting me like an overripe fruit. It wasn’t just pain; it was destruction, the kind that hollowed you out and left you with nothing but the knowledge that you were already dead. The last few seconds of acknowledgment that life was ending.
Her hand came into view… a monstrosity of armored scale, black-red claws dripping with some unholy sheen. With a casual brutality that spoke volumes of her power, Alex ripped another branch from a nearby tree as if snapping a toothpick. She didn’t hesitate. In one smooth motion, she drove it through me, the force lifting me clean off the ground. My feet dangled uselessly, twitching in empty protest. Two wooden spikes were firmly planted in my core.
She held me there, suspended like a trophy. Her eyes… oh, God, her eyes… were solid pools of crimson set behind the thick chitinous scales. They were glowing with a hunger so ancient, so absolute, it left no room for anything else. I felt my own hunger cower before it. Her stare burned into mine, her expression devoid of mercy or hesitation. It was pure craving, an unspoken truth that she wasn’t just stronger… she was inevitable.
I thought I had power. Thought I could fight, survive, escape. But her presence alone crushed those notions like ocean waves obliterating sandcastles. She was a tidal wave, a storm of ruin bearing down on me. And I was nothing. Nothing but her next victim.
Pain erupted in my core, radiating outward like molten iron coursing through my veins. It wasn’t the sharp, jagged texture of the branch lodged in my flesh, that pain was almost easy to identify, a serrated reality I could grit my teeth against. This was something deeper, something alive. I felt it churning inside me, a violent pulse that resonated through my tissues, vibrating me from the inside out. It wasn’t my power… it was Alex.
I gasped as my vision wavered, my veins glowing like molten filaments beneath my skin, a lattice of burning red light threading through my body. The heat intensified, tightening my skin until it felt brittle and dry as if my very essence was being scorched from the inside. My blood vessels throbbed with pressure, each pulse a war drum against the fragile walls of my body.
And then, my blood found its way out. Thin rivulets seeped from my eyes, my nose, my ears, my mouth… dripping like the slow bleed of a dam about to burst. My life force was being wrung out, every drop siphoned through my trembling frame as though I were nothing more than a wet rag clamped in a merciless fist.
My life… it wasn’t mine anymore. It was hers. Her power, stronger, hungrier, infinite in scope yet precise in its devastation, carved through me. My flesh screamed in silence as it refused to give way, but my blood obeyed her command. My body was her battlefield, my veins the pathways of her conquest.
Then it shifted. A surge… no, an eruption exploded within my mind. The animal buried deep inside me clawed its way to the surface, desperate and defiant. This wasn’t survival in its purest form; this was rebellion. A single, blinding lance of white-hot energy erupted from my mind, instinct sharpened into a weapon. It wasn’t a choice; it was a reflex, pure and untouched by active thought, a force unleashed the moment my body took over.
My invisible attack struck her. For the first time, in this one-sided nightmare where she toyed with me like prey, I saw an attack truly land.
Her reaction was almost imperceptible… a flicker of light, dim but undeniable, igniting deep within her. My eyes bulged, strained to bursting as I bore witness to this moment of resistance. My chest heaved, and I drank deeply, hungering for what had been stolen… and then MORE!
I could feel the exchange now, like an infernal circuit linking us; she was consuming me… while I was consuming her. Her intent to take, my defiance to take back… our energies locked in a vicious, looping flow. Her power was vast, a tower of strength that dwarfed my own, but my attack had slipped through the cracks of her focus. She was too consumed by her own purpose, too singular in her intent to toy with me and not just end me outright. Not until it was too late.
It wasn’t even a drop in the bucket… but it was enough to help give me some more breathing room.
Her eyes narrowed, a flicker of realization sparking in those crimson voids. Her lips curled, not in anger but in something dangerously close to amusement. With a feral strength, she swung the tree branches still skewering me, and I was flung off like a discarded toy. My body hit the ground with a bone-rattling thud, the jagged wood tearing free in a spray of crimson that painted the area. The psionic exchange of lifeforce, blood, and tissues was cut off from both sides.
“You just keep surprising me,” Alex said, her voice layered and warped, but it contained genuine intrigue. She lumbered over towards me. Her towering form loomed above me like a storm cloud poised to strike.
I didn’t feel impressive. I felt like a torn scrap of something barely clinging to the edges of survival. Every breath rattled in my chest, every step wavered on legs that screamed for rest. Whatever she was doing, whatever she wanted, it didn’t matter anymore.
When she flung me away, I hit the ground hard, skidding like a thrown doll until my back collided with a tree. My skull smacked against the rough trunk with a crack that wasn’t just sound… it was a feeling, a sickening jolt that reverberated through my entire being. Pain bloomed like fire at the base of my head, spreading in waves until it settled into something worse: a dull, insistent throb that smothered my thoughts in a fog. Something had broken in my head. Not just the surface… but deeper. My skull. Maybe worse. Everything narrowed to instinct, that primal thing in me screaming above the haze, demanding again only one thing… run.
I stumbled to my feet, legs trembling, blood trickling from a dozen wounds and streaking down my face like warpaint. She stood there motionless, watching me. A monster, her massive frame encased in that grotesque, rust-colored exoskeleton, a patchwork of scaly plates and raw sinew in the form of something that resembled a twisted female. The wounds I’d managed to inflict on her, the places where I’d ripped her apart with desperate hunger, were already mending. Blood and something thicker, viscous, and alien, oozed into the gaps, solidifying into fresh armor. It was like she’d never been touched, never been hurt.
I turned and ran again, lurching forward with everything I had left. Ran was a generous term… because I limped away slowly, just moving away in the opposite direction. Any movement to put distance between us. My mind was so foggy, so broken. But… it was the only move I had against her. Fighting her wasn't an option… she was too strong. My lungs burned, each breath a wheeze as my body screamed in pain, but I didn’t dare slow down. I didn’t dare look back. Hunger gnawed at me, a feral emptiness in my gut that felt like it was eating me alive. I needed something… anything. Someone, something, whatever it took to quench the growing void inside me.
If I didn’t, I was dead. And even then, I wasn’t sure I’d make it far enough to find what I needed before she decided to move.
----------------------------------------
It had been maybe two hours since I’d broken away; if you could call it breaking free. Maybe she’d let me go. Maybe she was watching, waiting for something, but I couldn’t bring myself to dwell on it. She wasn’t here, and for now, that was all that mattered.
I slipped through the shadows of a parking garage, my steps silent against the concrete floor. I stayed low, moving between the thick cement pillars and parked vehicles. The air smelled faintly of oil and exhaust, the faint hum of distant city life filtering in through the structure’s edges. I didn’t know where I was, but I could sense them. People.
Adults, men, women… and children. Their presence brushed against my awareness like whispers, faint yet vibrant. The rapid fluttering of small heartbeats struck a chord that made my insides churn. Each one felt alive, vital, and unbearably loud. This was a hospital…
The hunger surged, a dark, twisting thing coiled deep inside me, urging me forward. It whispered that I could take what I needed, just a little. Just enough to fill the aching emptiness that gnawed at my every nerve. These people could heal me after what Alex had done. My hands twitched involuntarily, the clawed tips barely visible against the dim lighting.
But then… like a gasp of air through choking smoke… my own mind reasserted itself. The real me. Autumn. I recoiled from the thoughts like they burned my soul, clutching onto my rationality like a lifeline.
Not them. Someone else. Not them.
The mantra echoed in my mind with each step. I wandered through the garage, circling the boundaries of where they moved, sensing their paths but never crossing them. Never getting close enough to let the hunger gain ground. It slammed against the walls I built around it, desperate and howling, but I held it back. The black hole inside me was relentless, and consuming, but it was also a liar.
It wasn’t real… not in the way it wanted me to believe. It would never destroy me, not entirely. It just wanted control… it wanted to eat. I forced it into a mental box, a cage forged of my own will. It raged and clawed, pressing against the edges, but it stayed locked away. Still, it whispered.
And then I felt them. The children… a small group of them passed through a walking bridge that connected the parking garage to the hospital. They walked in a large cluster, their hearts beating in a way that tempted me to lurch forward into the enclosed bridge and steal everything they had left. They were escorted by two nurses but I could have them too… fast enough that no one would see before I fled into the shadows… fully healed.
NO!
They were so small, so frail, and yet their presence struck me like a physical blow. I didn’t need to see the bald heads or thin arms to know they were sick. I could feel it… a wild, chaotic energy in their blood that marked bodies like a signature. Cancer.
They were patients, being led on a short stroll to stretch their legs, to taste something beyond sterile walls and hospital beds. Seven of them, all tired eyes and muted words, unaware that something monstrous was watching from the shadows.
Me.
I didn’t move. I didn’t let myself. But the disgust churned in my stomach as the thought came, sickening and vile. For a fleeting moment, I looked at them… and saw food.
The realization hit me harder than any blow Alex had ever dealt. My knees almost buckled, and I pressed myself deeper into the shadows, clutching at my head as if I could wrench the thought from my mind.
It didn’t matter that I hadn’t acted on it. Just the fact that the thought existed was enough to make me feel like a monster. My claws dug into my palms, a desperate attempt to remind myself that the hunger wasn’t me. But at that moment, it was hard to tell where it ended… and I began.
I took a shaky breath, trying to steady myself, but it felt useless. I was still a mess… broken, torn apart in ways I didn’t even understand. My body was slowly stitching itself back together with what little power I had left but that was starting to fail. The remnant power that I still had within was beginning to fail. Alex had ripped everything else from me like an angry child, tearing apart a toy they no longer wanted.
I didn’t belong here, not with the innocent, the people clinging to whatever hope they could find amid their suffering. I was a danger to them, a threat they didn’t deserve. I had to get away.
So, I lumbered away in the shadows. Not to escape from Alex, not from the monster who wouldn’t stop chasing me, but from myself… what I was becoming. I could feel the darkness inside me, a gnawing hunger that was waiting for the slightest crack to take over. If I stayed near them, near anyone, I was afraid I’d lose control. And these people… they were already carrying enough pain and loss from disease and tragedy. They didn’t deserve the plague that I was now.
I fled further… slowly, with the most bone-chilling pain imaginable… but I had to get away from there. The city faded behind me until the quiet of Forest Park surrounded me. The emptiness in me felt almost like a relief, even as it hollowed me out more. In the wide, open expanse of grass near a small pond, I sank onto a large rock, my back to the world. The night had crept in, and I could hear the murmur of distant voices from the city’s nightlife. No one was close enough to see me for what I really was. I wasn’t anyone’s concern. I just sat there, staring at the water, watching the shadows grow longer as they swallowed the world.
And then, the tears came. I couldn’t stop them. I let them fall, wetting my cheeks, but I couldn’t bring myself to wipe them away. There was nothing left to hide. I was beyond that now. The bloody tears just blended in with the rest of the carnage that covered me from head to toe from Alex’s assault. The hunger continued to burn as it had, but now it just felt like the numb pain of something that would never go away. A fire inside that continued to eat… to consume. It begged for food… but I wouldn’t feed it. I couldn’t.
I don’t know how much time passed, or how long I sat there with the weight of my thoughts pressing down on me, but then I felt it again… her presence. Alex. Maybe she’d been watching me again… in my vicinity this whole time, maybe she’d been with me from the hospital. I didn’t have the energy to fight it anymore.
Her human form appeared beside the rock, standing still like she was waiting for something. She was the red-haired beauty again, complete with her usual revealing clothing like she was heading out to a nightclub. The new clothes covered her pale body, not the monstrosity that I had witnessed her transform into. Her gaze was on me, measuring, calculating. I turned slowly, not with any kind of defiance, but just because I had nothing left in me to resist. When I looked up at her, I felt the weight of inevitability in my chest. This was it.
I slid off the rock, my legs too weak to hold me. My body hit the ground in a crumpled heap, like an empty sack, drained of everything. I couldn’t run anymore. I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t even pretend to care. It was over.
The energy I had left was barely enough to keep me alive. There was no fight in me anymore. And for the first time, I truly accepted it.
I wished I had said goodbye. To Mom, to Dad, to anyone who mattered. I wished I hadn’t left without a word, without a chance to tell them. One last face popped up in my head before she came upon me… it was Sam. I missed him. I missed the closeness we shared. I wanted to see him again before all of this was over… it was a dream I guess. I closed my eyes… and waited for her to end it.
Alex’s feet stepped right in front of me, and I could feel her presence, heavy and undeniable, even before I looked up. She was here, and I knew what was coming next.
“What’s wrong? Giving up? Not feeding… not healing?” Her voice was taunting, but there was no will left in me to respond.
She waited, expecting something from me. But I didn’t give her the satisfaction. I couldn’t. The silence was all I had left to offer.
“You came across a lot of people today… but you didn’t touch any of them…” she said, almost as if it puzzled her.
I blinked slowly, the haze of blood loss clouding my thoughts, and the brutal weight of everything pressing down on me. My hunger still gnawed at me, but it was distant now… like the last desperate throes of an animal slowly succumbing to death. I lifted my gaze, barely able to focus on her.
Her voice was barely a whisper. “You’d rather die than become something you’re not… wouldn’t you?” she asked, the seriousness in her tone cutting through the fog.
I nodded, the motion slow, heavy, like it took everything I had to move my head. The weight of my decision pressed down on me, and I barely managed to croak out, “Yeah… so if you’re going to do it… then just do it.”
The words hung between us… a surrender. I couldn’t fight her anymore, couldn’t even pretend to try. I wouldn’t run, not this time. I just closed my eyes, my body too tired to stay upright, my head bowing forward to accept what was inevitable.
And then, unexpectedly, I felt her hand on my shoulder. But it wasn’t what I thought it would be. Instead of her claws' cold, cruel touch, there was a warmth… a gentle, almost comforting embrace. Her fingers didn’t dig in, didn’t rip, but cradled me with a care I didn’t expect.
As she carried me into the night, the darkness swallowing us both, I felt the soft weight of her words, her voice solid and unexpectedly comforting.
“It’s so easy to be a monster… to be what we are made for… it’s in our blood. I had to see… monster… or human…” she said simply. It wasn’t an apology. I felt that she would do it all again to be sure. But she was certain… “You’re still you… Autumn… as much as you can be.”
I wanted to reply, to say something, but the weight of everything… of the battle, the hunger, the exhaustion. It was too much. My body gave way, and my head rolled against her, my eyes fluttering closed as I finally let go of consciousness. And in the darkness of her arms, I fell asleep.