Page 16 of These Eternal Bones

“ Molly.” He growls, his voice taking on an eerie, airy quality, one that dances through my blood.

I press my hand to my chest, willing my heart to calm.

A yelp leaves me as the door gives way from behind me, the heavy steel latch popping as if it was a twig.

Elric’s chest is heaving, those darkened veins overtaking the beautiful planes of his face.

His bloody hand snaps out, making me flinch before I realize he simply caught the latch before it hit me.

He’s upside down from my position. My head leaned back, watching him from where I caught myself.

His tendrils snap and writhe before one bands around my throat, another snaking around my torso, then up both my legs, underneath the skirt of my dress.

Fear brackets me, a sob building in my throat when another voice cuts into his panting.

The small, choked animalistic sounds he seems to be fighting against. Those claws gouge the wood, and I can see it in his blackened eyes, the battle he’s fighting.

“Sir, perhaps come away from the girl. You are not feeling like yourself.”

My eyes dart behind him to the odd mismatch of… creature , his head like a lizard as he stands. The selkie grips onto his coat, her eyes wide with not fear but… excitement .

Another choked cry leaves me as Elric jerks, blocking out my view of them with another eerie growl that tunnels through the cottage, electrifying the air.

“Lord Onogahara, this is not the best way…yes? She is safe. Her selkie can stay with her until you are feeling yourself again.” The cr eature says, the words calm and soothing, like one would address a rabid beast.

Elric’s eyes never leave mine, wild with something that makes my heart pound, but my body is humming with more than my terror.

The moments pass like hours before an inch of the veins seems to lighten, before something… human bleeds back into his eyes. “There is more than me to fear in this forest. Not everyone who helps is a friend. It would serve you well to bear that in mind. You are here for me .”

I nod, my breath jolting in and out of my lungs.

“I will collect you tomorrow to begin work at the manor.” He grits out, his bloodied hands fisted and shaking as he extracts his claws from the wood.

His tendrils drag me slightly out of the doorway after him as he dematerializes them in another puff of shining black mist. As if in their last second, they were desperate to pull me along.

True to the mismatched creature's words, the Selkie, my Selkie, apparently, stayed behind. She’s quiet, sensing that I need it at the moment as she gathers me from the ground, helping me into a proper dress for the day.

My eyes are blank and unseeing as she strips me.

Where I had expected the same gut churning anxiety I felt with my mothers and sisters, there is very little except what comes from my memories.

She’s gentle and calming with her touches as she guides me to my bed, insistent on brushing my hair.

A simple meal that was first prepared on the wood-burning stove in who knows how long mostly sits uneaten as something new buds deep in my chest.

Worry…for Elric.

It’s then I realize that I…care for him. That I truly care whether or not he is well.

“Selkie…” I breathe out after hours of silence.

Her head pops up from where she was scrubbing a stain left behind by the now patched roof of the cottage. “Please, mistress, you may call me by my name. I only request that it be in private. Such things have great meaning to beings like me.”

Names have meaning. Perhaps that is why the fox wanted mine. The thought of him makes my chest pang.

I nod.

She smiles wildly, all but bounding across the small space to kneel in front of me. Some of her excitement manages to rub off on me as she leans in close to my ear, her wide, round eyes shining. The moment the name leaves her mouth, a charge fills the air, making goosebumps rise on my skin.

Péal.

I nod. “Péal, is Elric alright?”

The laugh she lets out is musical. “Oh yes, of course, he is simply hungry.”

“Hungry?”

“It’s been a good while since he fed. He was holding out for you, I would imagine.” She winks and laughs again, as if she’s told me something very naughty.

It takes me a second, a flush spreading so quickly over my face that my head feels light. My blood. “He was hoping to feed from me?!” It leaves my lips in a squeak, a pitch or two too high to be comfortable.

“Yes, who else, mistress? The master has waited a great many years to feed again without pain.” I open my mouth, but she quickly cuts me off her cute features now turned in a frown.

“I have waited too, you know? The manor is awful and boring without you there. The seconds pass like decades for us all. Especially the master, of course.” Just as quickly as the frown appeared it’s gone as she rambles from one subject to another.

“Shall we take a walk this afternoon?” I open my mouth again when her hands snap together, creating an odd pulse of energy that fills the cottage with the smell of saltwater and sand.

“We took one to the ocean nearly every evening last time so that I could swim. You quite loved the way my skin felt when I came up from the water.”

“The last time…”

It’s that which seems to sober the excited woman. Her eyes dimming as her smile saddens. “Right, perhaps another time, mistress.”

“Please, call me Molly.”

Suddenly, she’s beaming again, and I manage to smile back although my head is reeling.

I can’t help a pang of hurt for the adorable being, her mind evading her so much that she mistakes me with someone she so clearly loved.

The night is quiet after that, my thoughts straying often to the fox and Elric, although I ask about neither.

For the first time since that night in the woods, a tendril of fear worms its way in for the Vampire of Port Clyde.