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His eyes darken. “A man looking for salvation. A man who might deserve it.”

I snort. “If you think you’re going to find salvation, you best look harder. I may not know a lot about your religion, but I’m sure this isn’t how you find it.”

“I’m not torturing you,” he says again. “I’m not trying to cause you pain. I am doing this because I need you to survive. You have no idea what it’s like to be a creature like me.”

“I think I might.”

He shakes his head. “No. You are from a world where your monstrous side can freely exist. I live in a world where it cannot. This world doesn’t know what I truly am, doesn’t know my kind even exists. Not yet, anyway. And if they ever do, we’ll be the ones put in a cage in an exhibition to suffer for all eternity.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel sorry for you?”

“No,” he says quietly, his gaze flitting over my features. “I don’t want your pity. None of us do. It is the way God made us. Well, the way he made everyone else.” He pauses. “God didn’t make me.”

“Who made you, then? Why are you so special?”

He doesn’t say anything to that. “I suppose I better go get another bucket of water before the day gets away from me.”

“If you gave me legs, you wouldn’t have to worry about that,” I quickly tell him.

He gives me a bitter smile. “No. My worries would only grow.”

And then, he’s gone.

Chapter Seven

PRIEST

Dearest Abe,

It’s nearly been a month since you’ve gone. Knowing you, you’re probably thinking of me at this moment, keeping track of how much time I have until I run out of supplies. You’re probably worrying about me, about my psyche, how I will deal with being alone, how I will deal with having to kill again.

If only you’d known what was about to be thrown my way.

Would you have still left me to my own devices?

Would you still have picked those poor souls over my own?

It is hard to say.

And by the time you read this letter, I’m not sure if you’ll be regretting your choice or not.

A few days ago, local fishermen were attacked by a Syren. I heard their cries and swam out across the strait to help. I saw the remains of two, or at least what was left of them—it was gruesome, no doubt ripped apart by this creature. The fact that we now had a dangerous Syren swimming in our waters, no longer out by the icebergs, was a problem for this village, but it also provided a solution for me.

The next evening, I went into the waters and captured the Syren.

Now, she is in the back of the church, tied to the cross. I crucified her in the hopes that it will remind me of what I have fought for, what you have helped me become. I know you don’t believe in God, Doctor. I know you use God to inspire discipline and constraint and devotion in your monsters. You took God and used him to make us human, and it worked.

Right now, I need that discipline more than ever.

The things I want to do to this creature are unspeakable.

I thought the lust inside me had been buried for centuries. In the monastery, it didn’t even exist. Here, at the bottom of the world, I didn’t dare let it out to play. Not with you, not with anyone. And yet, now that this creature is in my presence, I fear it. I fear it as much as I fear the desire to devour her whole, drink all her blood until she’s a shriveled corpse.

I sound like a heathen, a madman. I fear I am turning into both those things, and I am powerless to stop the transformation. The longer this Syren is in my hands, the more I think she won’t survive.

That I might not survive.

I know what you would say—that it’s best to kill her and be done with it. Don’t prolong her torture any longer, that such sins are beneath me. You would say I shouldn’t prolong the risk of me snapping and becoming that dreadful thing you once discovered chained to a tree in the motherland. Do whatever you can to not regress.