Page 45 of The Bleeding Woods

. . . it begins.

Quakes rack the ground, creating fissures like newborn mountains on the earth.

They pierce through the infrastructure of the EHKI’s headquarters, destabilizing every proud, man-made level.

The power of the bedrock, supported by the might of an entire planet, easily prevails over Gwendolyn’s steel and glass.

The holding cell shatters, sending fireworks of shard confetti in every direction.

Air.

It hits my lungs like the gaseous equivalent of cold water on a hot day.

All of a sudden, I’m high on everything, soul soaring above the clouds for one final joyride.

Then it nose-dives back to the surface, plunging into my physical form to reestablish the integrity of our tether.

I’m alive, and considering my IV drip has been lost in the fray, I’m also free.

The subterranean structure is pulled into a great crevice by the most tremendous roots I’ve ever seen.

The glow of the magma beneath shines up to meet us, screaming out scorching, third-degree promises.

A few of Gwendolyn’s people tumble down through the kinetic wreckage.

Their shrieks are bloodcurdling battle cries, but even the bravest go quiet when their bodies hit the heat.

The liquid sun living at the core of our world consumes them, but not hungrily.

It is an impartial beast, a reaper with no bias.

While I could let the shaking ground send me to the same fiery fate, I did not make it this far just to die. It’s beginning to look like a portal to hell down here, and as they say, when you’re going through hell, the last thing to do is stop.

Red light runs through my veins, igniting them like a web of highways in electric fast-forward. I summon Jasper’s power; I summon my power. My birthright. My ancient, forbidden, wicked genes. My chaotic, corrupt, demonic blood.

I may have been born of someone else’s hubris, but I am not a child of it.

I may have been awakened by Jasper’s dark desire, but I am not a slave to it.

I am no one’s experiment, and I am no one’s prize.

I will stop impersonating a diamond for a world that values only what shimmers and shines.

I will stop playing characters to put on the most amicable show.

I am in this realm, but I am not of it, and I refuse to keep up the act for another second longer.

I—Clara Lovecroft—am a monster, but at last, a monster of my own design. I—Clara Lovecroft—am a human, but at last, because I choose it. I am not caught between the greater of two evils. I am two evils, and so much more.

As the serendipitous earthquake continues to shatter the EHKI’s infrastructure, I elongate my limbs and begin climbing the floors.

They come undone like a crumbling puzzle, the pieces mixing, mashing, and crashing into one another.

The elevator that unites them explodes, showering all those still alive in sharp snowfall.

My muscles writhe, wrapping around my spiny exoskeleton like ribbons.

My fingers stretch into knives, perfectly serrated and fit for a trek toward the surface.

A few stray scientists cry out, but not for help.

They squeal in fear, more apt to cannonball into the earth’s asthenosphere than to trust me.

The most malicious part of my heart yearns to see Gwendolyn, if only to wave goodbye to her as she boils with the rest of her organization.

Alas, we do not meet again. Alas, revenge is not as important as survival.

I press forward, scaling the shivering bedrock, avoiding each boulder and lightning strike–shaped rift.

On the surface, I do not find the forest as I’d last seen it.

It has become two mighty slopes, hinging inward at a great split that was once a road.

Treetops that never should have touched slam into one another.

The mummified corpses that turned to blood roses and bark plummet toward the steaming pool of orange and yellow beyond the tremors.

The barbed-wire buildings have been uprooted.

They spill hundreds of skeletons, blackened by the burns from Jasper’s escape, and metamorphosed into ivy and wood.

All at once, what he built, what had been built before him, and all that came after is . . . erased.

I latch on to everything steady. I grapple up the tree trunks, thrusting myself toward the indigo sky.

In the dome overhead, the constellations call to me, all of them cheering my name.

They could also be wailing in horror, because no matter how persistently this disaster tries, I refuse to die.

Joey cared about me. Somewhere in her heart, so did Jade.

Grayson tried to save me. And my parents, those beautiful liars, thought I was worth preserving.

They thought I, of all things, was worthy of a life beyond their laboratory.

For the first time in my uncanny existence, I agree with them.

For them, I refuse to die.

For me, I refuse to die.

The aftershocks pull the forest into nonexistence, but today is not my doomsday.

I haul myself up to the severed edge of the asphalt strip.

Finally, the quake ends, leaving a gash on the landscape that bleeds and bleeds and bleeds.

Rays of inner earthlight reach toward the stars, all of them silent once more.

The forest is gone. Both facilities are gone.

All that stands is the rickety gas station and its group of rusty pumps.

It was me.

Realization thrums through my mind. It clicks in one colossal light bulb flicker.

The roots that caused the tremors were not coincidental, nor were they the work of some strange, benign deity with unknown motives for prolonging my life.

Just as Jasper had been able to manipulate the natural forces in his midst, I had been able to create a surefire means of escape from the EHKI.

It was all me, and that means I am not only as powerful as Jasper had been, but more powerful than he’d ever become.

Inside the gas station’s mini-mart, not an aisle is out of place.

With a monstrous hand, I pluck a chocolate bar from the counter’s edge.

I return to the topographical wound, lying on my back as I peel away the tinfoil wrapping.

Four squares. One for Joey, one for Jade, one for Grayson, and one for me.

We feast together, warmed by night’s tenebrous blanket. They are specters, and I . . .

I am a murderer. A stain on the surface of a world that pretends to keep its hands clean. I could drive a hand through my own chest and try to rip out my monstrous heart. I could try to become human, only human, but I don’t want to be human, only human.

I want to be all of me.

An experiment. An anomaly. Ancient and forbidden. Beautiful and damned. Cruel and chthonic. Awake, alive, rapturous, and reborn. Maiden, monster, and mayhem, mayhem, mayhem.

AV-7D.

Clara Lovecroft.

Me.