Midnight Shadows

Chapter 0.1

***Chapter 27 of King of Beasts

It was a symphony of snarls, of mad beasts so far outside of their own minds they didn't feel the pain of the runes surrounding Charlotte until they broke their bones trying to breech it. It was a collage of flashing eyes, shining with the glow of something else, something more, something not . . . right. It was an image of a girl hugging her knees to her chest, face buried down, surrounded by dozens of beasts spitting and snarling and pushing against her circle of runes.

It was hell, and Charlotte was sure she had made it.

"I can think." Came a gnarled voice from the darkness, rising among the snarls of his companions. "I can think clearly, for the first time. These symbols on me, on us, it takes our madness and it . . . it sets us free."

As the beasts moved and clawed at the runes, she could feel them within her, the energy the symbols were pulling. She could feel it thinning. She was losing her own mind, losing her will to place power behind her own protection.

"It's been so, so long since I could think." He breathed, his voice carrying like it's own entity, like it could breech through Charlotte's rune boundary and strangle her. "Since I could put a reason to things. All it took was a small symbol, it didn't even hurt--"

"And now you're someone's bitch for the rest of your life." Charlotte mumbled into her knees. She was so exhausted, so tired she couldn't even feel afraid of the monsters pawing at her. She just felt a delirium pushing her towards an imminent edge, made her laugh to herself as she huddled on the dirt. "That's so much better Cepheus. You've finally got that free will you always wanted to be able to never do anything for yourself. Was it my grandma, or my granddad?" she didn't even know who was trying to kill her anymore.

"Barbara." He sniffed. A chill wafted through the darkness, bit into Charlotte's skin. "She's a very kind woman."

"Her only flaw was the murder of her granddaughter. I can see how that's easy to look over." She lifted her head, eyes glinting just as mad as the beasts around her, and instantly caught the eyes of the only man in the clearing. "This isn't freedom, Cepheus. It's changing out the chains of your mind for the chains of the elders."

She couldn't see him, not with the darkness as prominent as it was, but his eyes caught the moonlight and flashed with fury, jolting her deep in her chest. For a quick moment, shorter than the length of a heart beat, Charlotte came back into her own mind and was paralyzed with intense fear at the scene before her. Of the claws and teeth gnashing inches from her, of fur and spittle and the smell of rot and the ache to find Gabe.

Then she was gone just as quick, numb and cold once more.

"When she has you, I have the pack." Cepheus declared. "I want you to know that as you're dying, I'll be killing your beast."

A slow, wretchedly beautiful smile spread across Charlotte's face. It was so serene, so peaceful, that the snarling beasts around her took pause to stare at the fire haired girl before them.

"He's the king of beasts." She noted quietly. "There is no killing him."

And the next hit to her cocoon of safety sent a tremor deep into her chest, knocking the breath from her lungs, as a set of teeth sunk deep, deep into her ankle.

.

.

Blood, the stench, the feel, the knowledge it was Charlotte's.

Hurt, she's hurt. Charlotte is hurt. Bleeding. A lot? Not enough to kill, but enough to hurt. Blood. Charlotte is bleeding.

Moving fast, not fast enough , faster, faster, faster.

Trees and darkness and the breeze running with him, on his side, on his team, pushing him towards Charlotte.

The sound of snarling beasts and the stench of rotting decay and the last threads of humanity in Gabe's mind fled the moment he made it to her.

It was just the beast, just the monster, baring down on a group of mad animals with his mate, his soul, his life, held in their jaws.

There was no stopping him now.

There was never any hope, ever, to stop the king of beasts.

.

.

When the first beast died at the jaws of the king, a massive tremor shot through the boundary line. It was an earthquake only those capable could feel. Rising up from the ground, sending jolts of electricity to their fingertips.

The fault line was breaking. Shattering. Just a breeze now, a sneeze in the wrong direction, would shatter the entire thing. Shatter centuries of growth and strength and life.

And one way or another, it would all end on this night.

It could be from Barbara, hobbling through the woods towards where she knew her beasts were, with an unfamiliar desperation clawing apart her insides.

Or maybe Jerimiah would finish it, although he was far away, an entire state away. He was in a hospital room, standing beside the bed of a girl with hair so black it caught the light and almost seemed purple, a tube down her throat forcing air into lungs that couldn't work anymore on their own, making the body live while the mind had left a long, long time ago. A shell, a perfect, perfect shell, one of which Jerimiah etched a tiny symbol on, right behind the left ear. If you looked fast enough, it almost seemed like a flower, circling and looping and utterly beautiful in its own right.

And maybe it would be Charlotte to finish it off, finish herself off. Maybe her own mind would split in half, and she'd give the elders just what they needed. A kick in the ass to get out of there and find another fault line to live on.

One way or another, it would end soon, end on this very night.

And oh how incrdauble it was going to be.

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