(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 55; chrysalis

"It's going tobe a while," Quentin said. "It could take all night. You're nervous, I can feel it." His eyes finally found Tisper, too dark to see their intent. "Would wine help?"

Tisper nodded.

Quentin disappeared up the stairs the same way they'd come, and Tisper couldn't help but think it wasn't the wine at all that motivated him to go. Maybe it was the fact that he couldn't stand to be here and see this anymore than she could. Maybe a drink would help them both.

But an hour later, neither of them had finished a glass. Tisper felt too sick to keep it down, and Quentin hadn't taken his eyes off of the body beyond those bars—the shuddering, groaning, blackening body.

They sat on the cold cement of the basement floor, only a metal cage keeping them from Jaylin.

"You don't know when he'll turn, do you?" she asked when the silence felt almost too thick to crack.

"Could happen at any time," Quentin said. "Could take days for all we know."

Tisper shot a look at her cell phone screen. "It's only seven-thirty. So why are we keeping away already?"

"Like I said. Any time."

"Will he really be that dangerous?"

"Anna tried to kill her brother."

Shock hit Tisper when he said it. Hit her like a hard punch. She found his face in the dark and for the first time in a long time, Quentin drank from his glass of wine.

"Alex?" Tisper whispered. She didn't know why but she felt like such a thing could only be spoken about in whisper. "What happened?"

"I don't know. It was like a car crash—you don't know what's happening until after it's happened. After the adrenaline runs out. We didn't think she would turn as quickly as she did, we had her shackled, ankles and wrists. That was what she wanted, but the binds broke when she turned. We were inside with her at the time and Alex was the first one she went for."

"But, Jaylin...he'd never—"

"Do you think Anna wanted to hurt us?" Quentin's brows dipped and his heavy gaze finally fell under the weight of it all, his thumb tracing the stem of his wine glass. "She loved Alex. She was so protective of him—even towards me. Anna never would have hurt a soul, but that wasn't Anna. And Jaylin...In a few hours, that won't be Jaylin"

Tisper folded her legs up to her chest and watched the shape of him, moving slightly in the shadows. It seemed like for every moment he spoke, Jaylin was stirring more, twisting onto his back and grunting out in a kind of slow-creeping agony. It hurt to watch him hurt. It hurt to do nothing for him—to sit back and just let it happen.

And over the next hour, the agony only grew. Every few seconds, as the devil's root wore off, the sound of his pain swelled loud and labored. And the more Jaylin woke, the more he twisted and wormed, and shouted out when the torment was too much.

And when suddenly the shouts turned to screams, Quentin rose to his feet and Tisper launched up beside him.

They watched him beneath that single swinging bulb—the sound of thunder groaning an ample distance away. And Jaylin had turned over on his knees and reached over his shoulder with a long, frightening hand—the sharp curled talons that belonged only to the beast inside of him. They clutched the gown at his shoulder blades and ripped it from his body.

His hematite skin was moving in the darkness—rising and falling like knots of tangled snakes squirmed beneath. His spine had grown, sharp ridges beneath thin, stretched skin. And with another tremoring twinge of muscle, Jaylin turned onto his back again, pushed his heels to the ground with a hurt cry—one that begged of mercy. And when Tisper finally pulled herself from his shallow ribs and the sound of snapping bone, she found his eyes—open now and filled with so much pain, so many tears. And he was shaking so hard, his jaw set so tight, she could tell that he was trying his best to keep himself together. And she couldn't understand how, because she was falling apart just watching him.