Page 228 of Evil Hearts

Chapter Seven

“ P lease Nora,” he said. “Please don’t leave me. Did we not join? Were you not happy?” She could not deny him the truth. They had joined; not just physically, but emotionally too. In those long cavern nights, their conversations and gone into dreams and deities, family and futures, real and imagined. She knew that in a different place in a different time, Madoc might be a man she could live her forever with. But in this time, in a cavern under the Great Smoky Mountains, she could not stay.

Without looking back, she said, “I can’t live in your darkness, even if the love you showed me burned as bright as the sun. I can’t stay. But you could come with me.”

“You do not know what I am. And when you do, I fear that you will run in terror and loathing.”

“Show me, and we’ll see,” Nora replied. “I can only promise that I will try, Madoc.”

Her heart swelling, she slowly began to turn, her eyes closed. Easing herself down, she sat, and slowly opened her eyes.

Before her stood a man, but not a man. He was covered in soft gray fur, and by covered, she meant covered . Everything from the top of his head to the tops of his feet was covered in a fine dusting of silvery gray fur. Madoc’s ears were long, and flopped over at the tops, kind of like a rabbit. He looked her straight in the eye and slightly opened his mouth to show her the tiny fangs that peeked out from below his full upper lip. Other than those three things, Madoc looked like a man on the cover of a sexy firefighter magazine. Shirtless, the skin beneath his fur was golden brown, and Madoc’s beard, mustache, and hair were a shaggy russet brown. He was beautiful.

But it was the shy nervous look on his face that nearly did her in. “Madoc, you’re…”

“...a bat,” he said. And suddenly, Madoc was gone and in his place now fluttered a small gray bat. It fluttered and hovered for a bit, then slowly made its way to Nora, who stood with her mouth hanging open.

In a blink, Madoc–the man version–was before her, reaching out, needing reassurance. Nora scrambled backwards, her back against the cave wall. The logic in her brain could not reconcile the fact that Mattock had turned into a bat and suddenly reappeared in front of her. It made no sense, and it made perfect sense. He was a bat. Of course he was.

“Do it again,” she demanded. So he did. Several times, over and over as Nora watched deep in awe and fascination.

Finally, he paused and stood before her.

“That is the coolest fucking thing I have ever seen.” A grin slowly spread across her face.

“Does that mean you’ll stay?”

Her grin disappeared. “Madoc, I can’t. I have to go home. I want to stay with you, but I can’t.”

She put her hand on his face and cupped his cheek gently. Madoc wrapped his arms around her and hugged her as closely as he could. “Will you do one last thing for me?” she whispered.

“Anything,” he whispered back.

“Change for me again. I want to see it one last time before I leave.” She pulled away from him just enough that they could stare into each other’s eyes. “It’s magical. You’re magic.”

He stepped back from her, his eyes never leaving hers. And just as quickly as he changed, Nora grabbed him, wrapped him snugly in the hammock, and secured the wriggling bat tightly against her.

“It’s only fair,” she reasoned with herself as she crawled out of the cave into the burning light, with Madoc, her very own bat man, tied against her for safe traveling.