"Your food is growing cold," the man told me in a bored tone, pointing his blood stained fingers at the rare, already cold, meat in front of me.
I swallowed down bile and turned my head away. I could feel his eyes on the side of my face but he didn't say anything else. He just went back to eating his kill of the night. I guess I should feel lucky that it wasn't me.
I couldn't forget the look of hurt in his eyes at the fact that I purely drugged him and almost escaped the clutches of such a mad man. In fact, it was hard to picture him as a man after what I have seen him do in the past twenty-four hours. Or was it longer? Shorter? I didn't know how much time has passed since I came into these woods.
Were my Gran and Mother worried? Had they called the police? Surely someone was out looking for me.
"I need to know," I finally said after an hour of silence. I was still sitting at the table while the beast had grown tired of me ignoring him, and moved to sharpen another one of his knives. It didn't matter how many times he took the jagged rock to the blade, it was never going to be sharper than his teeth in his wolf form.
"Need to know what?" He answered, again sounding bored.
If he didn't want me around he should let me go.
"How you know me." The question seemed obvious but apparently there was an inside joke that I was missing. I gritted my teeth as he chuckled. "I don't find this very amusing."
"I do. Because it amuses me greatly how a hauntingly curious little cat like yourself can go through life and never question the missing links."
"I don't have any missing links," I told him. I wrapped the red blanket he had given me tighter around my shoulders. "But you surely appear to." I muttered the last part under my breath but by the puff of air that seemed to blow out like smoke out of his nostrils, I assumed he heard me.
Which would explain a lot. Like how he must have heard me pick those berries while he faced away from me as well as squirt them into his tea. Blame it on the howler's ears.
"I am growing sick and tired of you dodging my questions. What do you plan on doing with me? Baiting me? Killing me? Being your next meal? Just tell me so I can prepare myself for what is to come." I forced the tears to stay at bay. Now wasn't the time to show weakness. I was not a prey.
"You've always had such a temper on you, little flower. Used to scare me a little back in the day but now," he turned and he braced his elbows on the tops of his thighs, narrowing those eyes of his on me, "now I enjoy the redness that dots the top of your chest and how your eyes alight like a forest fire." He bit his bottom lip into his mouth as his eyes roamed towards my chest and I pulled the blanket as well as the green button-down he gave me closer to my body. "It's very amusing indeed."
I grew quiet again because I didn't know what to say after that. Half of me was scared out of my mind and the other half... That half was being it's normal unhelpful self. Call it stockholm syndrome if you must. I tried to ignore the hotness that my body engulfed itself with but it was proving to be harder said than done with him still watching me.
"Did you kill Dalton Andrews?" I found myself asking, the warmth then replaced with the icy reality of what is in front of me. A monster.
The Beast straightened up and turned his eyes towards the knife in his hand. "I'd rather answer your first question."
A sob lodged in my throat because I already knew the answer. Gran had been right. The Beast had attacked my childhood friend. Not a bear.
I sniffled and looked away. How could something so hauntingly beautiful be so evil? It only showed that the most alluring images can be the scariest.
"Why did you do it?"
"What would you do if someone had a gun to your head?"
"Probably the same thing as if something with sharp teeth and the size of a bloody bus attacked me."
"Attacked?" He smirked and leaned back against the wall.
If looks could kill, the man would be cold on the floor. "I highly doubt anyone would have the slightest chance against a six foot tall wolf with razor sharp teeth and the speed of a moving train."
"You pay attention to me quite a lot, Red." His smile grew more and the wider his smile got, the sharper his teeth became. But I think my mind was playing tricks on me. "But that's okay, because I pay close attention to you, as well."
"My friend is dead because of you!" I threw back at him, my eyes hard and glaring. "How can you joke about something as heartbreaking and serious as death? As murder?"
He was on his feet in a flash. Before I could singly blink, my vision was of his face and his face only. As striking as his features were, the wrestling animal behind the tanned skin reared his head at me and it about knocked me down a peg. The warmth of his now frantic breath beat like a hummingbird's wing on the tops of my cheeks.
"Is your heart broken? Does it feel like it's been shattered in your chest and you can't seem to catch your breath at the thought that you can never have him, a pathetic human?" His eyes shone bright in the dim room. A hint of red sparkled at the iris. "Well, does it?"
The answer is no, I was not heartbroken. I was sad. Deeply sad. Someone I knew is dead. We weren't the best of friends but Dalton was more of a summer time acquaintance that made the time past quicker than without him. Though it's been some years since I have seen him due to his own schooling and busy schedule, it now made my chest hurt that we will never be able to catch up. More thought and commitment should have been made when he was alive.
I was more heartbroken that I hadn't told my mother that I love her. That she was the most dominate person in my life because she was all that I had. Though we don't get along most of the time, I still wanted her to know that.
I also wanted my Grandmother to know that I appreciate all that she had done for my mother and me. Just like my own relationship with my mother, her and Gran didn't see eye to eye either. Why couldn't we all just get along?
It's funny how these sort of things come into perspective when there's a chance you can't make the wrongs into rights.
Tears choked me as my eyes flickered between the depths of the Beast's in front of me. I was a pathetic human too. Did I deserve to die the way Dalton did? No. Did this thing in front of me deserve to be punished for what he has done? Most certainly, yes.
"The only one whom is pathetic is you."
A growl rumbled deep in his chest. I swear it shook the rock above us. "That's where you are wrong." He snatched the red blanket from around my cold body and tossed it on the bed behind him. Fear that a mere shield of a blanket was my only protection struck out a breath. "Let's go."
"Go where?" How I was still speaking shocked me. I was very, very, scared.
Oh no, this was it. I've really pushed him this time. He was finally going to take care of me once and for all. Many scenarios of how I was going to die stabbed at my skin. I began to shake.
"You think your heart hurts, Little Red?" He leaned down and grabbed my wrist. No matter how much I tried to shake him off and throw myself in the other direction, he lifted me up and forward as if I weighed nothing and this was all a game to him. "Maybe you should remember."
"Remember what?" My voice screeched and caught in my throat as I wretched myself away from his awfully warm body.
"Maybe then you won't look at me that way," he said more to himself.
"I want to go home!" I screamed, becoming frantic. My voice echoed off the caved walls but its sheer volume of it didn't faze him.
"You are home," was his last words before he blindfolded me and the cool air hit my bare legs.
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Sorry for the long wait of an update. Been cranking out some plots and storyline! Thanks for sticking around. I promise that updates will become more frequent soon xoxo
Ps. HAPPY HALLOWEEN