Genevieve

ChapterFifteen: Swans

Evie watched as the man's head fell to the floor. She stared straight into the eyes of the head, the emotions that had now been frozen in time. 

A shiver ran through her body. 

She had once read about them, lycanthropes. She had climbed one of the book shelves in a try to reach the book that intrigued her the most. It had dark blue leathery covers. After many failed tries she had finally reached the book and pulled it away from the shelf. 

The maid who had been watching her had almost fainted when she had seen her hanging from the shelves. 

That night and many nights after that she had looked at the book trying to decide if she should open it or not. At first she forbid herself from opening it. Everything about it screamed of forbidden. 

The harsh leather and the worn out pages it held. 

It was obvious that someone had read the pages multiple times. 

One night she had dared to open the first page and almost screamed when she had seen the illustrations on the page. 

It had been a wolf with the most vicious eyes she had ever seen.

Now as she stared at the man she had once thought as a mystery standing in a pool of blood she wasn't sure of that. 

That night she had seen nightmares about the red eyes that she had seen on the first page. On the next night she had encouraged herself in front of a mirror before opening the book once more and this time she didn't stop until she had devoured every single page. 

It held the tales of the supernatural creatures that once upon a time allegedly roamed the same world as she. Evie remembered watching the descriptions of the beasts and then at the illustrated images of them. 

Back then a part of her heart dreamed of meeting one of them. 

Something in its words had sucked her into the book and she didn't want to let go of that word. She wanted to live among there where her mind could be free without having anyone tell her who she should be.

However, never even in her wildest dreams had Evie dreamed of this exact moment when she had seen Chasen, or whoever he now was, sunk his claws into the pulsing neck of the man who had groped her. 

Something forbidden inside of her body had aroused when she had watched Chasen attack the man, not that she would be confessing this to anyone soon.

Evie's hands shook as her mind tried to comprehend what had just happened. A part of her screamed that everything she had just seen was only a hallucination. That she hadn't actually entered a story book of beasts and wickedness. 

"No," she muttered to herself as she took a step backwards trying to find something she could lean onto. 

She watched as the thing, neither an animal nor a man, was breathing heavily not too far away from her. Its claws were dripping with blood. Evie stumbled backwards as she could no longer hear what was happening around her. 

The world around her turned black and white as she looked into its eyes. Black dots took control of her sight as the thing started to shift towards her. And then the world around her turned black and she fell onto the ground hitting her head on the floor.

***

As a child Evie had loved to read books. Something in them had always intrigued her even when she wasn't able to read. Back then she had asked one of the servants to read books to her even when most of them were far from a fairytale.