"'Don't go in'," Tisper mocked in a less-than-Quentin kind of voice. Her heart hurt watching Jaylin, watching him grimace, watching him bite his tongue to swallow the sound of pain. "How can he think I would just sit here?"
She stepped forward to the door of the cell and felt the rusted metal under her fingers. Jaylin wasn't dangerous. Jaylin could never be dangerous. Maybe it was stupid of her—no, definitely it was stupid of her, but the only person who'd ever truly accepted her for who she was laid inside that cage now, curled up in agony. She couldn't let him do this alone. She twisted the key through the lock and gave the door a pull, ensuring it stayed open on it's own.
By the time she reached Jaylin, she could hear his strenuous breath—each a sharper wheeze than the next, each exhale endlessly deep, not like any sound she'd ever heard from him before. There was a voice in his breath—a feral rumbling, like the abysmal sigh of a wounded lion.
She knelt, slid an arm beneath his neck and one around his ribs and pulled the weight of his head onto her lap and Jaylin laid there, staring up beyond tears and the strange reflective cataracts of his right eye.
"I'm scared," he confessed, but his words were only shambles between tears.
It broke her heart to see him cry. It always had, it always would.
Tisper ran her fingers through his hair and tried to smile, though she felt like crying too. "You've been through worse." She swept away the cool tears on his cheek. "Remember ninth grade? The Freshman hunt? I thought those things only happened in movies, but the seniors chased us down with paintball guns—had us cornered back behind the old bowling alley and you refused to hide like the rest of us so they shot you at point-blank range?"
Jaylin laughed and another tear fell. "I cried as soon as they left."
"You wailed like a baby," Tisper smirked. "But only after you'd proven your point. And if you hadn't done it, we would have all been pelted. And what about Greg Mastenson? Remember how he knocked you out cold in the Starbucks parking lot because you made out with his girlfriend that summer? I had no idea a boy who whipped frappuccinos for a living could hit that hard. You kind of deserved it for what you said to him."
Jaylin laughed again—but sucked his breath in from the pain of it. "You're just pointing out all of the times I've gotten my ass kicked."
"But that's just it, Jaylin." She wiped back the sweat on his forehead and tried not to think twice about the skin underneath. How it didn't feel like skin at all, but gritty like wet stone. "You're a fighter. You always have been. Nothing's changed, Jay. The only difference is that you're facing a bigger bully now than you've ever faced before."
"What if I hurt someone, Tisper?"
"You could never hurt anyone, Jaylin. The thing in you—it might want to hurt people. But it's not you. It's a bully. It's just another bully, okay?"
Just then, Jaylin's eyes went still—frighteningly still. Blood upsurged from his mouth and he choked, let it spill down his chin, pool in his ears. Tisper felt it hot on her lap and fear struck her like it never had before. It hit her like a hammer to glass. One strike and everything shattered. Every security, every pep-talk she'd given herself about this night. It was like the ground fell out from under her.
"Jaylin!" she panicked, holding his face in her hands. "Jaylin!"
"Get out," he growled in that voice again, wet and gargled with blood.
"What? No—"
"Get out!"
And then he started to shake—shivers at first, and then the blood came again, welled in his mouth. And the shivers turned to shakes, and then trembles.
"Jaylin, no. No, not yet," she pleaded. "Not yet, you can't do this yet. It's too early."
She laid his head on the pillows, hoping they were softer than her own lap. Hoping they'd keep him from hurting himself. And as Jaylin shook, she saw the black consume the last of him, she heard that gruesome sound again—the sound of snapping bone.
And Jaylin arched his back from the ground and screamed out until his voice tore—and Tisper saw then the teeth that broke through his gums. The long, wickedly sharp fangs, layering over pre-existing teeth like the grin of a shark.
"Quentin!" she cried out, but no one came. He'd left already, and she was alone watching Jaylin—watching him change, watching his body alter itself in ways that defied logic. It started with his hands; they grew in size, clawed into the pillows above his head, ripped until the feathers spilled out. And then his back broadened, his spine rising rigid and sharp, bones moving and growing and grinding as they migrated to places they weren't meant to be. And his screams had become so deaf to her ears, Tisper couldn't hear them anymore.
She could only watch as he tossed and turned and his bones grew so large they broke through flesh and that same flesh resealed itself around them. And from every wound they'd made, blood poured, spilled from his lips. Jaylin began gripping at his head and she knew what was to come next.
"Get out!" he screamed, and she shoved herself up, stumbling backward, blindly for the door. She stepped out and slammed it shut, locking it again with a useless, trembling hand. She dropped to her knees and held her face in her hands, helpless to the sounds of his suffering. To the sound of ripping flesh and the beastly noises he made—noises she mistook for thunder itself, the way they shook into her bones. The way they lingered in the air, dark and impending.
And it felt like an eternity before the sounds finally stopped and she heard only breath—namely, her own, but also his. Deep, ragged, wounded breaths.
And from the moment Tisper lowered her hands from her eyes, she regretted it. She wished to cover them again, but fear had taken her hostage. The beast before her was nothing like she imagined.
Dark. It was so dark, like ash. So dark she could hardly see him in the shadows. Just the round arch of his back—the long, wicked claw that hung from the ends of his splayed fingers. The size of him was what struck her the most. He was large—behemoth. It was impossible, physically impossible for something the size of Jaylin to become this. But there was no questioning this world anymore. The things in it had no reason.
Men who turned to wolves. Girls who could speak through candlelight. A moon that could pull evil from the kindest person she knew. Magic had no mechanics. And that was all this was—magic. The awful kind.
The creature was crouched on the bedding, blood dripping from the hirsute fur of its arms. He grunted once, his entire back depressing as the air left his chest. And then he turned to Tisper and she saw the wicked horns on its head—three, perfectly placed cones, curling back along the shape of his elongated skull.
He moved towards her, only an outline in the darkness. A large black mass with eyes of milky moonlight. Tisper stiffened and shoved herself away from the bars, the beast pressing his gnarled muzzle against the metal. He was looking for a way out—trying to squeeze himself between the gaps in the bars. And when that didn't work, the monster stalked along the his ensnarement until he found the seam of the door.
He stood on his back legs and shoved against the metal, and Tisper's heart seized at the sound of something steely, snapping apart. Metal whining. She staggered back, knocking over her wine glass as the door came loose from its hinges, clattering open with a thunderous sound.
She wanted to run, but her legs trembled and her knees went weak. The beast slid out through the bent, half-attached door and Tisper coiled into herself. She dropped to the ground and covered her head with her arms as she felt the beast close in, his breath gales of deep, hot gusts that whisked her hair back. His footsteps heavy against cement, he labored closer, until she could feel the wild heat of breath on her face, smell the blood on the fur of his pelt.
And then when he was close—so close, she could feel the heat of him—Tisper opened her eyes.
And the beast opened its jaws.
It bared a mouth full of long, frightening fangs and growled a duet with the rolling thunder. A snarl so menacingly loud, it arrested her bones and froze her body. And she could only cringe away as she felt the swelter of it hit her face, the flecks of saliva on her cheek from the strings that webbed along the monster's crooked canines.
The sound of its roar shook her down to the very core, and there Tisper stood, staring into the face of the lichund. Into the pale yellow eyes that belonged not to Jaylin, but to the moon. To the darkness. To the curse.
She froze. Helplessly, she froze.
All her life, Tisper had been a fighter. Well—not all her life, just since she'd met Jaylin. Since her life became her life. And for as long as she could remember, when fear hit her somewhere deep, she hit back.
Eleventh grade, Fright Fest. She'd finally talked Jaylin into the bowels of a haunted house, swearing to him all the way through the doors that it wouldn't be that scary. That the creatures inside were kids younger than themselves. Fifteen—sixteen years old, just trying to make an easy buck. She hadn't anticipated how good they were at their jobs.
She hadn't anticipated the clown.
She'd popped out of the wall with her creepy smile and her plastic ax, and Tisper's first instinct—her only instinct was to punch. And she did. She punched a fourteen-year-old girl so hard her clown nose popped off. Jaylin refused to take her to another haunted house after that, but it was a natural reaction.
She'd fought Phillip when his bitter personality and his obstinate ignorance reared its horrid head. She'd fought off the assholes who thought it appropriate to dip a hand up her skirt without her admission, and the ones who condemned her for wearing skirts at all. Ever since Jaylin had taught her what fighting was, she'd fought, fist and tooth and nail. He'd taught her that it wasn't the win at all that mattered, it was the fight. And once you let go of the fear of losing, you could throw a pretty good punch.
But as she felt this beast's louring rumble shiver deep into her bones, Tisper couldn't fight. She couldn't move. Not a finger, not a toe. It was that kind of fear that had found her. The kind that held her down. Now she was just waiting to feel its dagger teeth.
But instead of teeth or even claws, she felt something cold and wet against the back of her hand. A nudge.
She opened her eyes, slowly, and blinked until the darkness settled. He was crouched on all fours, this creature, standing on the knuckles of his fists and the pads of his feet—shredded fabric from his shorts still hanging from his fur—sopping wet and stained dark.
She could see his horns clearly now, see the way intricate ridges twisted around them like an endlessly corrugated staircase, winding up and up into nothing. He was digging at her hand with his snout—long and narrow like a wolf or a bear, but strangely bare of whiskers. The tip of his nose felt cold against her skin and she turned her trembling hand around to offer her palm. The beast buried against it and took in her scent, blowing it back out in a deep gust.
"Jaylin?" She trembled, flinching as the beast hung back to look at her. Those strange yellow eyes looked into her so easily.
The beast lowered his head and folded his sharp ears back, and he sat before her like that, waiting and watching—all of him darkness but the amber alabaster of his eyes.
She reached for his face, at first leaving only a chary touch on his snout. When he stilled to it, she laid her fingers down again and let them roam, feeling the coarse fur of his muzzle and the blood-wet plumage of his cheeks.
She watched him shut his eyes then and exhale, a long deep breath. There was no questioning it anymore—the way his head rested so heavy in her hands told her all she needed to know. He wasn't dangerous, he wasn't. And then her legs gave in and Tisper dropped to the basement floor wiping her shaky palms up her face. "You... scared me," she clutched her chest and breathed for what felt like the first time in forever. "You scared the shit out of me, Jaylin."
The beast made a sound—something between a whine and a groan and lowered further to look her in the eye. It was strange, how he was built, looking more like a bear than a wolf. Except for his hands—his long, freakish digits. They were more alien than anything, five crooked fingers splayed out against the ground, bursting with fat claws nearly longer than themselves.
His back and chest—they were broad like the minotaurs she'd learned about in Greek mythology. Strong and large and swathed in a sheening black coat. His legs took the shape of a wolf, bones bending anthropomorphically at the knee, and then backward to a sharp, lifted heel. His feet though—those had no human shape. They were wolf's feet, entirely.
His face was the hardest characteristic to decipher because there was nothing quite like it. Animal, with a broad nose like a lion, but nestled at the top of a sharp wolf-like snout. His face was framed in a scarf of thick fur—a glorious mane that thickened his chest in wild tufts nearly all the way down. And those horns—they curled wicked and wild around a set of sharp canine ears, pointed nearly to the heavens. Twitching delicately for every sound in the distance.
Then they quirked, one folding back, the other twisting in the same direction. And Jaylin snapped his head around to whatever sound he'd heard, that low, frightening rumble begging to roll from his chest again.
He was looking to the staircase, the fur on his back bristling. The sound of his growling growing louder as the storm outside warbled and groaned. She couldn't understand what it was he was seeing—there was only the staircase in that corner. Empty and drowning in the orange light from the upstairs hallway.
"Jaylin, there's nothing there."
He glanced back at her, the beast. Only enough to flash his yellow eyes over his shoulder. Then his ears snapped to another sound, and he was staring steadfast in that direction again.
She understood now. He wasn't seeing anything; he was hearing it. Something beyond the storm. Something she couldn't hear.
Something that made the fur on his back stand on end.
He stood on his hands and feet and stalked toward the stairs.
"Jaylin, wait!" She shoved herself up from the ground and stumbled after him, but Jaylin kept going; footsteps thudding loud and heavy as he climbed to the top, nearly too large to fit through the basement door.
"No, no, no!" She caught up to him, tugging at the fur of his broad back, but Jaylin kept on, trudging through the hallway, knocking canvases from the wall and picture frames to the ground.
He wandered through the kitchen, the den and out the front door, and Tisper caught him on the cabin porch. She threw her arms around his thick neck and pulled and finally Jaylin stopped and sat on his haunches.
"You can't leave, Jaylin. You have to stay here."
Jaylin turned from her and looked to the moon, glowing red in the bleary haze of the storm. He whined, stomped a hand down into the mud of the earth. Then he tilted his head to the sky and sounded out a kind of caterwaul. Not quite a howl, but something close. Like he was trying—trying with all his might to yowl into the night like the others do. Like the wolves do.
Tisper slapped her palms to her ears, the noise too loud—so loud, like standing beside blaring sirens. Still, Jaylin was yearning to leave the steps, pining for the forest lining. The wood of the porch cried beneath his upset footsteps.
"Okay," Tisper said in an inhale. "Okay, Jaylin. But let me come with you. I just have to get some things."
His pacing stopped then. He sat still on the porch, nose pointed to the cherry moon. To the stars and the clouds that loomed beside it, like bloody spatters in the sky.
She wondered what it was that made him this way. He understood her words. He listened.
He was deadly, sure. But harmless all the same. That wasn't the way Quentin had described them—that's not what history had written in his books and his journals. Something was different.
He wasn't a monster. He was...Jaylin.
Just bigger.