Page 9

Blinding agony.

There was hardly an atom of Everett’s body still in his control.

One arm useless, both of them tied, and his legs too weak to stand on.

Belly starving for awful things and an infected brain spinning his thoughts in feverish circles, fixating on everything he shouldn’t want.

The only thing he could do was scream.

Under his shirt, around his spine, the wicked hungry thing that had got its teeth in him to devour him from the inside out cracked apart the two flanks of his back ribs to arch out from its cage of flesh and bone, a gristly, blood-matted thing.

Throat shredded, vocal cords torn, Everett’s screams turned wet and hoarse.

Through the throbbing red of his vision, he saw Marshall, crouching frozen by the headboard, his expression a mask of perfect horror that made Everett’s stomach flip in one last push of panic.

The devil in him clawed its way out, pulling free its ugly, toothy snout, then its legs, two at a time.

Its breath was damp and rancid against the back of his neck as it hunched over him like a shell.

It was bigger than he was, a heavy weight pressing him down.

He stared up at Marshall from between its forelegs as it shook its head, its ruff falling into place as the fur settled.

Blood sprayed the floor and flecked the bedcovers.

He knelt as the beast surrounded him like a pelt, its ribs enclosing him in a dread embrace, drawing him up into its belly, towards its spine.

His shirt hung in tatters off his shoulders, his good arm free, the harness pulled apart.

He reached desperately for Marshall, like the man could take his hand and pull him out of the creature that had claimed him.

“Help me,”

he croaked, straining forward.

With the beast torn out of him, it was like it had taken with it every awful thought and violent urge.

He felt empty, like a sawdust doll: no blood, no bones, no hope, just thin skin in the rough shape of a person.

He couldn’t blame Marshall for not taking his hand.

Everything Everett had said and done, everything he hadn’t said and failed to do, every avoided word and glance and touch; in Marshall’s place, he might not have wanted to save himself, either.

He wasn’t even sure there was enough of him left to be worth saving.

But the animal instinct for life, that bone-deep terror of dying, and dying messy at the teeth of a predator, kept driving him forward.

It wouldn’t let him give up.

Even though the easiest thing for him and Marshall both would be for him to go quiet and limp and let the beast finish him off without any more fight.

But he clawed against the floor, digging broken fingernails into the seams between the boards, trying to keep himself from being consumed completely.

Marshall grasped his hand and the touch shocked a current through Everett. His palm was slick with sweat, Everett’s sticky with blood, but his grip was like a vice.

It wasn’t enough to drag him out. The beast’s grip on Everett was stronger. Through the beast’s filthy fur, Marshall’s gaze met Everett’s, terrified but determined. They both understood that Everett wasn’t going anywhere.

“Finish it,”

Everett begged.

The beast’s ribs encircled him, holding him tight as the thing’s meat and muscle knit itself around him like he was an exposed bone that needed to be brought back inside.

Marshall’s revolver was in the hand that wasn’t holding onto Everett.

The gun was raised, safety cocked, but Marshall didn’t pull the trigger.

His hand shook, the revolver’s nose wavering between the beast’s snarling head and Everett’s face.

He couldn’t do it, Everett realized, any more than Everett could have shot him in the same position.

Everett let go of his hand to fumble blindly for the gun. “Give it to me. You don’t have to do it, I won’t make you, it’s okay, I’ll do it myself—”

“Shut up,”

Marshall retorted.

Everett fell back, hurt and confused.

“Shut up, I’ve got you. I owe you. Listen,”

Marshall said frantically, dashing aside his tears. “Trust me. Close your eyes. Okay? Shut them. I got you.”

The beast on top of him snarled and gnashed its teeth, gusting hot, rotten breath in Marshall’s face.

For a split second, Everett could see out of the beast’s eyes instead of his own.

The room was red, hazy at the edges like it was full of smoke, and Marshall was a pulsing shape made of tender meat and bones to gnaw.

Everett flinched.

The beast’s body closed around him, smothering him in matted, manky fur, choking him against the slide of wet muscle.

Tendons wrapped him into the beast’s flesh like a spider wrapping its victim-fly in silk.

They tied him to the beast’s bones where nerve paths zipped over him, overwriting his own body’s.

His hand was the last to go, fingers stretching towards his friend, towards the gun, before they too were swallowed in a tangle of dense fur.

“Close your eyes,”

he heard again, and he scrunched them shut tight, refusing to look out with the beast’s hungry red vision to see his friend as something to be mauled and devoured.

The revolver cracked.

Then there was nothing.