Savage Wings: Book Three of The Whitechapel Chronicles

Chapter 26

"But you loved her. You loved her."

I took a step back as Philippe began to rub maddeningly at the graze on his forehead. A thin trickle of blood ran down into his brow, like a dark smudge bruising his eye.

"Apparently it wasn't enough. It's never enough," he sobbed, his face a molten mask of pain.

"You don't mean that. I know you don't."

His eyes flashed with rage. "You don't know anything about me!" he shouted, spittle flying from his mouth. "You don't know what it's like to have him up here." He jabbed a finger at his temple, twisting it as if he could bore into his own skull. "To always have him here, inside. Even now I can feel him, in my head, under my skin. Vánagandr calls to us, he calls to us all and we have to do his bidding, we have to obey."

"No, no, you don't Philippe! Please listen to me, I can help you. I will help you."

"Can you stop her from screaming, Megan? Can you?" His voice echoed around the small clearing, like thunder rolling down the hillside. The lightning was coming again. I could feel it in the air, that crackle of electricity, that static that was making every hair stand on end. "Maybe you can," he said, his acidic gaze locking with mine and sending fear spiking into my heart. "Maybe you'll make it stop."

He staggered towards me and I grabbed frantically for the gun, freeing it from the holster and pointing it at him, at the man that was once my friend. It felt heavy in my grasp, perhaps the heaviest weight I'd ever had to carry, heavy with fear and guilt and hatred – for Brandon, for myself, for this whole fucked up situation.

Philippe's eyes widened and he stopped abruptly just a couple of metres away.

"Why?" I whispered. "Why did he make you do it? I can believe many things about him. I have seen him do terrible, awful things. But this? What did he possibly have to gain? Or is that it? He wasn't looking to gain anything but proof that you were his."

Philippe swayed slightly as if I had cracked him across the jaw, his brow puckering with confusion. "You think Brandon made me do it?"

"But you said.....Philippe, he had to have done, otherwise why? You wouldn't have hurt Elizabeth, not willingly."

"Oh Megan, you really don't understand, do you?" He sounded almost sorry for me. Him. Sorry for me.

"Then explain it to me. Because right now, none of this is making any sense whatsoever. You're telling me you have to obey him and yet you're saying that he had nothing to do with this?"

Philippe's face crumpled, the tears rolling again as his body shook with sobs. I wished I could have comforted him. I wished I could have done something because watching him fall was tearing my heart into pieces. But then I remembered Elizabeth and wondered how loud and how long she had screamed out here in the woods where no one but the wolves could hear her.

"Brandon told me not to tell her. He warned me and I didn't listen. I didn't listen to him and he was right, Megan, oh god, he was right." He sucked in a breath that seemed to get caught in his throat, sounding raw and ragged as he coughed and spluttered. "He said she wouldn't understand. He said that she would hate me, despise me, but I'd lied to her for so long and it was killing me. It was killing us. I had to do something, I had to tell her the truth."

"You told her?" I said, incredulous. "You actually told her? But why here, Philippe? Why bring her out here where it's so easy for you to lose control?" My arm was aching, muscles shrieking at me as I tried to hold the gun steady.

"Don't you see, I had to!" he snapped, clenching his fists. "It had to be here. I needed to prove to myself that I could control it. It's been so hard lately, so bloody difficult to keep it at bay especially with Vánagandr calling out to us, but I was winning, each day I could feel myself growing stronger."