Dripping tears mix with black splotches of blood as I sob quietly on the floor, one lower arm clutching the stub of my other in a half-hearted attempt to prevent myself from bleeding out. My fight with Vita left me broken, and I know her biomancer ally will heal off all the damage I managed to do to her. This isn't even accounting for the rest of her team, any of which could easily slay me now. Even if they didn't see where I went, which I doubt, I left a trail of my blood here. Lightheaded and woozy, I can barely even think straight. I wonder what it will be like to experience unconsciousness like humans do. This isn’t my nest. I don’t have a stored meal to retreat to. I haven’t had a meal at all in… in… ugh, I could count the days, but I just want to do nothing at all.
It’s safe here, he told me. Well I’m here, but I doubt it will be safe. I’m not sure I want it to be. I am so, so tired. So… done. I hear the door to the cabin open. I wonder which hunter is here to slay the monster first?
"Lark?" August asks. "Are you in here?"
My breath catches. No, no no no. Not him. Not now. He can't see me like this. Yet I hear him move further inside, closing the outer door behind him.
"Is everything alright?"
Of course nothing is alright! I want him, need him to leave! I'm dying, August. Just let me. I try to be as quiet as I can, hoping he'll leave me alone, but a sob shakes out of me. My body, ever the betrayer to my mind.
"Lark?" August calls again. "Lark, is that you? Are you hurt?"
Am I hurt? Just a few bites on any of the hundreds of people I passed on the way here, and I would be fighting fit! Yet I didn't. I can't. I can't ever go back, and the thought of even opening my jaws at them crushes my heart.
He knocks on the door to the bathroom.
"Lark? Let me know you're here or I'm coming in."
"Go away!" I snap at him.
Before August, I'd never even thought about things this way. I had a plan. But I abandoned it. Why?
"Lark, what's this on the floor?" August asks seriously, once again listening but refusing to obey. He’s always been like this!
I abandoned the plan because I was happy. He taught me what happiness is. Why couldn't he have stopped there? Why wasn't that enough? I hear him kneel down, investigating the splotches of blood I trailed on his floor. There's a lot more of it now, here in the bathroom. I'm sitting in quite the puddle. It is so, so hard to think.
"Lark? Lark! Is this blood? Lark!"
"Go away!" I demand again. "Leave!"
There's a pause, the only sound in the house my ragged, slowing breaths.
"Tell me you're okay," August says, fear in his voice. "Or I'm coming in there."
I'm not going to lie to August. I can't. But I can tell him something I know is true.
"You promised you wouldn't come in," I remind him. "Not unless I said you could."
"I also promised this place would be safe for you," he counters. "So tell me you're okay, and I will leave you alone."
How can I get him to hate me, to leave me to die?
"The black stuff is my blood," I admit. "I'm not human. I never was."
Moments later, there's a crash as August slams his body into the bathroom door, breaking the lock. He spots me then, a look of horror on his face. He sees what I am. The last thing I wanted was to know the look on his face when he sees what I am.
But he does not flee. He tears his shirt off his body, the slightest splash ringing in the small room as he quickly kneels beside me, staining his pants with my blood. Grabbing my stump of an arm, he starts tying cloth around it, stemming the flow. Why?
He smells so good.
"Stop it," I snarl at him, baring my teeth. Teeth still stained red with a hunter's blood. Why doesn’t he run?
"Don't try to talk," August huffs back, false calm obvious in his voice.
Does he think I won't notice? His terror? What is he trying to prove? I try to push him away, but my arms are so heavy.
"I killed Sharif's family," I choke out, and for an instant he pauses.
Good. Leave! Let me die! But just a moment later, he continues his work.
"Did you now," is all he says, tightening and securing the bandages over my arm before moving the rest of my body.
"I did," I confirm. "I watched the father scream while I ate his wife."
My imagination runs wild with similar things I could do to August. I'm so hungry. So cold. He's just an old man, and it would be so easy.
"That's an awfully cruel and evil thing to do," August opines, and though I already knew it to be true hearing it feels like an arrow carved open my heart.
But he doesn't stop binding my wounds.
"Then let me die," I beg him. "Run away! I can tell you’re afraid!"
"I am," he retorts. "I’m afraid of leaving you here alone. I’m afraid you’ll die before I do."
"I'm a monster!" I shout at him, as best I'm able. "You don't know what I've done!"
"No, but I know you,” he says firmly. “I suspected for a long time you probably weren’t human. And it sounds like you have much to be held to account for, if you killed Sharif's family."
With one hand, he pushes my chin very lightly up, to help me look him in the eyes.
"But as far as I'm concerned, you are my family."
My eyes go wide. No. No, anything but that.
"Why," I breathe, fearing I know the answer.
"Because from the moment I met you I knew you needed one," August answers. "How could I not give it to you? You knew so little of the world. You are a child, Lark. And all children need parents, because a child can’t be expected to know anything if they are not taught and shown. To love, you must be loved. To grow wise, you must see wisdom. To respect others, you must be given respect. A parent leads by example. If I could not teach you in time to prevent you from making a mistake, then it is I—"
No.
"—who—"
No!
"—erred."
"Shut up!" I screech, jumping my feet and stepping away only to stumble and collapse again a second later.
August catches me, and I nearly bite his throat out. He can't do this. He can't do this again.
"Don't make me regret this, too," I beg him.
He just looks at me with sad eyes, and no weapon in the world could hurt more.
"You learn too fast for your own good," he says quietly. "You were not this mature just a tenday ago. Time normally helps us process and forget."
"I don't forget anything," I tell him. "I can't. I can't handle anything more. Please. Just leave."
Woozy and hysterical, I barely understand myself anymore. Everything is just hunger and sadness and bubbling rage. I hate all this. I hate ever learning any of it.
"I just want it all to end," I whisper. "Let me die."
He looks at me again, eyes far too piercing.
"If you truly wanted to die," he asks softly, "why would you have come all this way to a safe place?"
Because while I hate life, I fear death, and no matter how I try to pretend I'm just as much of a slave to instinct as I was when I was born. None of these words can leave me, though, because as if to prove the point my body erupts again into uncontrollable sobs. Two old arms wrap around me, pulling me into a hug.
"You have your whole life ahead of you, Lark," August says, and it sounds like a curse. "There is yet more good you can do for this world than the good you have taken from it. You must always believe this. You can always grow to be better. And I know you have the potential to be great at anything you choose to be."
But why should I have to, a dark thought asks inside me. I did not care before this. I was happy here, with him, but I was happy before, too! I was happy with my flowers and my Claretta and my home long before anyone came by to destroy my things and chase me away. Why should I have to hate myself now for things I loved before? Why does that matter? How is that fair? My wounds drip blacker as my heart starts to beat faster in my chest. It's not fair. It's not right.
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And it’s because of August, the hunger in me sneers.
It’s his fault, isn’t it? All because he had to take me in and be kind to me and make me care until he could show me every way I deserve the torture promised to the worst souls in the world. What sort of kindness is that, what sort of family?
Something screams inside me to stop, but as my wounds throb harder and my head feels lighter those thoughts become less and less distinct, flittering and fraying as fight or flight replaces them with anger. He broke his promise because he came into this room. And he broke his promise because he hurt me. He's hurt me more than everyone else in my life combined, and now he wants me to hurt more. How have I not seen this!? He wants me to spend an entire lifetime, incomprehensible years of existence, in an unending, unceasing torture! He wants me to regret this forever, to hate myself forever, to fight against a memory that I can never unsee! How dare he? How dare he!?
My teeth clamp down, the oh-so-familiar taste of blood flowing into my mouth. August's body stiffens in shock, but he doesn't release the embrace. My teeth finish cutting through his shoulder, and I swallow. It hurts so much. How dare he. He doesn't have the right.
A familiar scent wafts into my nose. The hunter. The monster that kills monsters. She's here. I bite down again, rage to the point of insanity filling my body. She found me. This isn't even a safe place. Liar. Liar! I swallow again, August's left arm going limp, now only able to hug me with half his body. I want to scream.
I bite again. There's a slam as something hits the front door and fails to break it. I bite again as the door shatters, a shouting voice entering our once-home. I bite again and my missing arm starts to regrow fast enough to tear the makeshift bandages he used to save my life. I bite again, and feel his one remaining arm softly stroke the back of my head.
I bite again, and the flesh tastes like ash.
Sobbing into the bloody shoulder of a dead man, it takes me a moment to register that the Hunter is in the room. Vita stares at nothing, wearing the slightest expression of confusion and bewilderment. Her spear is in hand, but not pointing at me. No attack comes.
I leap past her, claws scraping into the wood floor as I turn to bolt out of the building. Glancing behind me, an odd pain hits when I see that she does not chase me. Instead, she kneels down, staring at the corpse I left behind with interest.
I turn, fleeing into the forest, and immediately an arrow nearly tears me in two, knocking me to the ground by the sheer force of it passing. What was that!? I leap away and instant later a gout of fire devours the spot I just stood, but as I dodge a sword catches the motion and cleaves through my rib. But still, alas, not enough to kill. Twisting, I grab the arm holding the blade and let the momentum of the strike drag me away from another arrow as I bite down. The flesh is strange and stale and bloodless, attached to a man with no head. But it still tastes wonderful. No time to question it, I take another bite to fill the hole punched through my lung and rush out of the forest, dodging two more arrows that crack the ground less than an inch from my body.
Forest apparently hostile to me, I'm nearly blinded by tears as I find myself forced back towards the city. Countless arrows rain from the guard towers as I return, but they lack both the force and the accuracy of what I can only suspect was Netta. So, was the swordsman Alan? How is he alive with no blood and no head? I’ve no time or real desire to consider it. I avoid or simply claw the barrage of arrows out of the sky and breach the city. Swarms of humans both furious and frightened span this place, kicked into a frenzy by my presence. But they are slow and I am clever. Many of the buildings, both large and small, have no people inside for much if not all of each day.
And I must find a safe place to hide, because when I let myself think what I am about to think I will be crippled forever. Inside a two-room shed full of tools, I lock myself in, web the entrance, and curl up in a ball to die.
The unforgivable, unassailable weight of what I have done is too much. How could I… no. What a stupid question. Of course this is how it turned out. I am a monster. This was going to happen from the start, and it didn't become any less inevitable just because I loved him.
The reality is, I did know. I'm not stupid. From the moment Claretta taught me to speak I understood that other creatures feel things. That they have emotions, that if I were in their situation I would suffer. The thought was just so abstract it was no more noteworthy than the acknowledgment that the sky is yellow. It was a fact I was aware of, not one I gave any significant care or thought. But I knew. I knew when Fulvia screamed, I understood when Claretta wished me death, and I recognized the pain when I made a man watch me eat his wife. I knew. The only thing I truly didn’t understand was why any of my atrocities started to hurt. But they do now and they will. Not. Stop!
I should not be alive. I should not exist. August was wrong about me. I can't change, I can't improve, and I would not deserve any sort of peace I could acquire from those actions. But I just can't seem to let myself die. Perhaps I'm being kept alive in order to ensure that I suffer more. I suppose I deserve it.
It just wasn't enough to eat my first friend's father. I had to go and eat my own, too.
The door behind me is suddenly forced open. I relax. The hunter is here, I smell her. Yet I am not running or fighting. Finally, finally, it can end. I wait in silence as she hacks away at my webs, slicing them apart with a blade and raw strength. She walks slowly into the room, closing the door behind herself. And then I find myself cursed once more, as she sits down next to me instead of ending my life.
Silence stretches between us, my back to her as I remain curled up on the floor. What is she doing here? Why am I alive? I feel watched, judged, but I can't bring myself to ask. Why do I have to be curious? Really, that failing is what ruined me, not the only man to ever treat me with respect.
Eventually, Vita reaches over and grabs one of my ears. She yanks it painfully, eliciting a snarl from me but nothing else. I'm not going to move. I’m not going to do anything. I'm done. Even when she takes her knife and saws the ear completely off, I barely let even a pained hiss escape my lips.
"Hmm..." Vita hums to herself, pocketing the chunk of my body. "All right, then."
Yanking on my hair, she pulls me out of my curled-up position on the floor, making me look at her face. Then, she grabs my jaw in one hand and forces it open. With the butt of her knife, she slams down on my teeth. Pain shoots through my skull, but still I refuse to move. After a few hard strikes, she sets the knife down, sticks her hand inside my mouth, grabs the loosened tooth, and starts to pull. Slowly, it tears out from my gums until it is finally free, blood gushing into my mouth as she pockets the tooth as well. I could so easily bite off her hand, but I don't. Not even when she batterers and grabs the next tooth, or the next, or the next.
Half my skull's worth of teeth later, the monster grins, her eyes as unfocused as ever.
"There," she says with a hint of self-satisfaction, "that should be enough to fake your death."
It takes me a moment to register the words, before the horror of them finally dawns on me.
"No," I whisper, bloody mouth gurgling slightly. "You're supposed to kill me."
The hunter shrugs.
"I have been convinced not to," she says.
"I'm a monster!" I snap. "I'm not going to do anything but hurt people! Kill me!"
Vita responds by grabbing my hair again, and shoving her other arm down my throat. The movement is instant, expressionless, and devoid of fear. Food, I think to myself! So close, so easy!
"Bite my arm off," she dares me, "and I will happily slay you here and now."
I shiver. Bite down, I order myself. Let it all end. I killed August! Biting her should be easy! I deserve this! She smells delicious, she tastes delicious. I remember the chunk I swallowed from her, how beautiful and rich and dense with power it was! Just bite! Bite!
"Go on," the hunter presses. "I'm waiting. It's a free meal, monster."
The horrible certainty in her smile brings tears to my eyes again. I won't, I can't, and she knows it. How? Why would anyone trust me? I don't trust me!
She extracts the arm, dropping me back to the ground.
"Well, that settles that," Vita says smugly.
"I've killed people before," I hiss impotently.
"Me too," the hunter dismisses. "So what?"
"I have tortured them," I snarl. "I've eaten them."
"Me too," the monster smiles. "So what?"
I have nothing to say to that, so she reaches into another pocket and pulls out what appears to be a dead field mouse. She looks at it, something invisible around her moves, and suddenly I smell the creature with that sense of mine that knows food from fodder. Yet far unlike what I would expect from a mouse, it smells heavenly.
"Such a big and beautiful soul," my fellow monster comments, stroking the dead rodent lovingly. "A deep and gleaming light, smelling of fresh wood. We can’t let something like that go to the fucking Watcher, can we?"
I don't know what she's talking about, but before I can ask she holds the mouse out to me, dangling it with its tail pinched between two fingers. A true meal, made from a mouse. How? I salivate. It… it's just a rat, right? I could eat it. There can't be anything wrong with that. I don't deserve to eat it, but I could eat it, right?
Before I know it, she's placed it in my hands. It waits, as if expecting and accepting its fate. It smells familiar.
"Eat up,” she says softly. “I have a friend that I think would be very mad at me if I didn't extend to you a bit of solidarity between monsters. She lost her life trying to find a way to get people like you to stop hurting others."
"If you don't want me to hurt others," I whisper, "then you should kill me."
Despite my words, I bring the mouse up to my mouth. Something inside me trembles, fearing it's too good to be true. Yet into my mouth it goes. I am missing many teeth, but my teeth are more for cutting and tearing than chewing anyway. I swallow the creature whole, and though I know that it lived, that it could move, it does not resist in the slightest as it is pushed down my throat into my void of a stomach. The usual tingling of regrowth tickles my ears and gums as a memory screams inside me.
I know this flavor.
"What did you do," I whisper in horror.
"I let him choose," the vacant-eyed monster answers, entirely unsympathetic. "He could be with me, or with you. Considering what I have to do to someone to even ask, he must have loved you quite a lot to make this choice. If he came with me I wasn't even going to eat him."
I'm shaking, my breath too shallow to take in any meaningful amount of air. This is impossible.
"How... What…"
"He had some last words for you," Vita continues, tone as flat as ever. "Two things, really. The first is this: justice is not about punishment, it is about making things right. But we cannot make the past right. All we can affect is the present and the future. An evil person's greatest redemption is not in removing their evil from the world, but in replacing it with good."
My only response is a wordless wail. Again, I don't understand. I don't understand anything.
"The second thing he wanted me to tell you," the monster intones, "is that he forgives you."
She stands up and starts to walk away. No, stop. I don't understand. What did she do to him? What did I just...
"Why?" I sob at her. "Why would..."
"I just told you why,” she answers. “Besides, what was he going to do with half a soul if not complete yours?"
She makes it to the door and I stand up, turning to face her.
"What is wrong with you!?" I shriek at her.
She looks back at me, actually focusing with her eyes before tossing a wooden owl mask at my feet. The same one I discarded in our fight.
"Have fun being human, Lark," she says. "It will be night soon. Make your escape then, and don’t get caught. If you still want to die, there’s always the edge."
She exits, closing and locking the door behind her, leaving me alone but for the screams inside my head. I expect the tears to start again, but, ever unpredictable, I find them dry. Numb. My mind is nothing but torment but my body has given up, wracked with an exhaustion beyond any other I have felt. I wish I could sleep, but I’m simply not capable. Each and every moment of this agony lodges itself in my memory forever, brutally slow hours passing until darkness envelops the town.
Then I get up. I don’t know why. August wanted me to live, but what does that matter? I killed him, and then a monster made me do it again. There is no more August. He shouldn’t matter anymore. So I tell myself as I find my feet padding silently through the darkness, mask on my face as I look for ways to leave the city unseen.
...He shouldn’t matter anymore? No. He does, he will, and that is absolutely how it should be. This pain is what I deserve. No sleep, no forgetting, no death… no escape. Not from what matters. I was a fool to try.
Though I suppose that hunter had a point. There’s always the edge.