Page 41 of Grotesque

T he mirror rippled, distorting my reflection into an elongated face atop a long, coiled neck and scaled body.

Quiet thrumming rattled the frame. There was a sudden burst of darkness across the glass, like frost climbing over steel, that revealed a pathway blanketed in snow and shadowed by twisted white trees.

“Underland,” I breathed.

I reached a shaking hand toward the moonlight, my body bracing for the violent pain that had attacked me all the times before. My fingers passed through. Cold. Frigid cold met my fingertips. I pushed my hand farther.

My vision blurred as I twisted my hand one way and then the other. I knew it had worked – well, had hoped it had worked – but here was the proof. After so many years, so many lives, I was finally and truly free.

I pressed my chilled hand to my chest, letting the cold seep into my fast-beating heart.

After all this time, the mirror that had gotten me into this mess was finally letting me go.

I stepped forward, letting the cold seep into more of my body as old magik sank into my bones.

It gripped my hand, pulling me forward like a lost love.

Something snapped me out of my daze. I don’t know if it was a sound or a scent, but I was aware something had shifted. I turned my head, my fingers curling, still holding onto the other side. I opened my eyes slowly, not realizing that I had closed them.

A loud crash echoed from somewhere in the manor.

I looked down the white-lit path once more before taking a step back into the mortal world. My scaled reflection rippled in the mirror. “Don’t go,” it seemed to say. “Come back. Come home.”

It was a scent, I realized. The house reeked of sweat, rage, and fear. Fear that did not belong to my Sorcha.

There was a loud crack from downstairs, but another, much closer crash came from Sorcha’s bedroom. I stepped into the shadows, materializing beside a man. Oddly, he was hammering a small table into the mirror that hung across the room from her bed.

It was one of the five boys that had come to Glamis all those years ago.

He was older now, as Quint was, as they all were.

They thought I hadn’t seen them hiding in the bushes, the scraggly things.

One would expect that aging would have made them wiser.

Would have kept them away from the horned monster and its lair.

Apparently not.

“What are you doing in my home?” A hiss trickled down my long throat as I shifted, letting my gnarled, taloned forelegs drop to the ground.

The man whirled, his eyes going wide. They flicked from my snarling face to the wings curving over my back. Shadows spilled beneath all four of my clawed feet. They wrapped around his legs, holding him in place as the color seeped from his thin face.

“You’re real,” he gasped.

“As real as the day you first saw me. Scarier now, aren’t I?” I grinned, letting him see the sharp teeth behind my scaled maw.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were real.”

Sorcha’s pained cry echoed up from somewhere below.

I had not felt such fury since the day the mortal man tricked me into stone – when he had bound me to this godsforsaken manor – but in this moment, when a pained sound not of my own making came from the woman I loved, I grew white hot with rage.

The man tried to move. His body lurched, but my shadows held him firm. He wailed. There is something particularly delicious about the moment when a man loses all his inhibitions and really screams .

He tried to shield himself with the table, but I cracked my horns through it like it was an eggshell.

Somewhere behind me was the sound of someone running.

They weren’t going to be fast enough. Nothing was faster than my strike.

I opened my fanged jaws and snapped the man’s head from his neck, ripping it free and swallowing it down as I turned to face whoever was stupid enough to come to his rescue.

The second man was already retreating by the time I turned around. I shot after him.

Magik coursed through my blood, my veins.

It sang through every part of me that had been denied its beauty for so long.

I let it devour all mortal flesh and let my true form expand.

My claws crushed the floorboards as I shifted and slipped into the walls of the house, while he ran further into its depths, trying to escape me. No matter, I relished a panicked chase.

I flowed through the bones of the manor in pursuit, not giving much thought to who he was or why he was there. He was in the way of me getting to Sorcha. He had something to do with her getting hurt, and someone who hurt Sorcha would not be allowed to live.

I sent a ripple of my power forward, and the door of the bedroom he had been running for slammed in his face. He darted to the right, but I slammed that door shut too.

“Run, run as fast as you can,” I cajoled.

I emerged from the shadows behind him and dropped my head down, letting my wings spread wide so that they blocked his exit.

Foolish as he was, he tried to dart past me.

I twisted my head around slowly to follow him, letting him think he could wriggle away.

The moment he cleared the underside of my wing I lunged, sinking my teeth into his shoulder.

He let out a broken curse that was cut off entirely when I shook him violently, spraying blood across the walls.

“Who are you to come into my home?” I asked, dropping him. Gorgeous, pink fleshy tissue bloomed from the tear in his shoulder. I snaked forward and bit down again, snapping the tendon and earning myself a shuddering scream. “To make my woman bleed?”

“I didn’t. I didn’t touch her. Holy fuck, don’t kill me. He talked us into coming.” A dark stain spread across the front of his pants.

I curled my lips. “I can smell her on you,” I seethed.

“Please don’t.” His breath was coming in ragged pants.

For as much blood as he was losing, he was surprisingly coherent.

He rolled onto his belly, and using his good arm as leverage, tried to crawl away.

I followed him, clacking my claws together intentionally to enjoy the way he flinched at the sound.

“It has been months since I tasted flesh.” I stepped on his back, forcing him to the ground with a sharp talon that I slowly embedded in his spinal cord. The man’s scream sent shivers down to the tip of my tail. “So allow me to thank you for sating my hunger.”

The crunch of his skull beneath my teeth was delicious. I licked his flesh from my lips, wishing there was more time to savor him, before tossing the body to the side. Blood spattered over the hallway in a gory arch, painting the walls crimson.

I twisted my way down the stairs and through the foyer, slithering across the short hallway that opened into the living room.

Oil-slick trails of magik seeped in my wake.

It thrummed within my blood. I flicked my tongue, tasting the air.

The overpowering, metallic tang of blood was a living thing.

Not hers, and yet it sharpened my fangs into vicious points.

A third man was striding out of the kitchen, a bat in one hand and a cloth in the other, which was pressed to his forehead.

He stopped dead at the sight of me. Unlike the other two, he didn’t try to run.

The spike in his scent revealed how desperately he wanted to, but he remained still, his grip on the bat tightening.

I pulled back the scales, forcing them beneath my skin. My wings twisted backwards and down, finding their way beneath flesh too, where they wrapped lovingly around my bones. I allowed the horns and hellfire in my eyes to remain.

“We should have killed you,” the man said. “We should have come back and killed you.”

I flicked a piece of debris from my shoulder as I stalked toward him. “You could have tried.”

The man threw the towel at me and with speed faster than I anticipated, gripped the bat with both hands and swung it toward my face.

I had just enough time to dodge it. The wood collided with one of my horns instead of what would have been my jaw.

I grabbed the bat and pulled him toward me with a vicious yank.

“I do love it when they fight,” I taunted.

It drove the man into a frenzy. When he couldn’t jerk the bat free from my grip he threw a punch into my throat. The sound of his knuckles fracturing was a sweet symphony.

I grabbed the collar of his shirt as a wave of pain blossomed over his face.

“W-what the f-fuck are you?” he sputtered.

I hunched forward, lowering my face to his so that our lips nearly brushed. “I am the foundation of this house. I am the stone heart that beats within these walls. I am the grotesque that steals your loved ones. I—” I ran my forked tongue over his face, “—am the monster of Glamis Manor.”

My shadows, which had been waiting patiently, struck. They pulled the man’s arms and legs apart, suspending him in midair. I slid my hand down his chest, letting my claws rest over the galloping heart beneath.

“And you, my sorry friend,” I said, looking up at him as I lifted him higher into the air. The red light of my eyes cast his face in an eerie glow. “Are a dead man.”

I thrust my hand into his chest, through the breastbone until my fingers wrapped around the pumping muscle. He was still screaming when I pulled his heart from his chest.

The defiant light dimmed from his eyes with the final exhale from his lungs. I released him and watched with satisfaction as he crumpled to the floor. I took in the blood drenched organ in my hand. “Pathetic,” I muttered, crushing it with a flex of my claws before I dropped that too.