And here I was, trapped and helpless to stop it.
The beast growled at me, teeth bared and eyes glaring hungrily. Its jaw snapped at me before it licked its snout.
“Get away from me!” I said, pushing wildly against the old man’s body. Of course, he didn’t move.
The monster knelt toward me, and the scent of burning flesh wafted through the air.
“Get away!” I repeated. But what could I do? I was meat, literal meat, waiting to be consumed and drained of everything that made me, me.
I pushed against the man again, but this time I felt a stiff mass pressed against the waistband of his pants.
Well, this is awkward.
No. It wasn’t that, I realized. This wasn’t New York, and that hard mass wasn’t an old man’s excitement. It was a gun!
God bless this town.
I whipped the pistol out of his pants and aimed it toward the monster. Without flinching, I pulled the trigger. The barrel pushed back, knocking me in the chest. But the blast did its job. Opening my eyes, I saw that the monster was gone.
Adrenaline pulsed through me, sweet and freeing. After placing the gun beside me, I pushed hard. I pushed like I should have the first time—like my life depended it—and finally he budged enough from gravity to help tip him off of me.
I jumped to my feet and bolted. I needed to get out of here, get away before the beast returned.
I rounded the corner, desperate to get back to the woods which had ironically become my safe haven. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who had that idea.
I ran smack dab into someone. Panicking, I starting clawing at the body instantly.
“Hey,” a familiar voice said. “Stop. It’s me! Char, it’s me.”
Looking up, I saw Dalton standing in front of me. His hair was disheveled, and his face was pale.
“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I thought you were—”
And then it hit me. Everyone else was still unconscious. Even now the streets were littered with sleeping citizens. The fact that Dalton was awake right now, that he was standing in front of me—
I shook my head and swallowed hard, cautiously stepping back. “No, Dalton. Please, no. Not you.”
“Oh, Char,” he said, and he grabbed my arm, his expression darkening. His hands turned to claws, digging into me, breaking the skin. His eyes flickered red as my blood touched him.
It was him. Dalton was the other beast.
“I should have known. I was so frantic, hoping that my sister wasn’t the Supplicant. I looked right past the most obvious candidate.” He grinned wide and manically. “It was you. It was always you.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “No, it can’t be. You knew I was in the woods that night. You would have known it was me.”
“Oh, Char. How limited your scope of this earth really is. Of course I wasn’t the one who attacked you in the woods that night. I had been … preoccupied.”
My mind flashed to the woman who had been found dead that same night—the one who had been walking her dog. I shook my head, the horror piercing every inch of my skin like a thousand needles. But how—
“I admit, I should have figured it out when your blood lured me to Abram’s home,” Dalton continued. “But then Ellie Farmer was there. I thought I’d left her for dead, but there she was, taunting me, and I thought for sure she was the Supplicant, that somehow I’d missed it the first time. But then she skipped off again, right out of protective custody, and who should I find when I go to look for her? You. You walking around when the rest of the town is trapped in some frozen spell.”
As terrified as I was, my mind just wouldn’t let go of one thought: Dalton was the beast who had killed those women. Dalton was the beast we were looking for. But Dalton was not the beast who attacked me in Abram’s home. Which meant …
I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to admit that there could be more … that there could a third beast in New Haven. With everything I knew, it made sense, but admitting it made this situation feel even more hopeless.
Finally, I whispered what I already knew to be true. “It’s not just you, is it, Dalton? There are others. Aren’t there?”
“It’s a good thing you’re pretty, isn’t it, Char? You wouldn’t have gotten far in life if you had to rely on your mind.” He titled his head, a smirk playing at the corners of his lips. “Of course there are others. You escaped, after all. And my victims never escape.”
It was true. Ellie Farmer had died eventually, even if Abram had reanimated her with Satina’s spirit. But where did that leave me now? I finally had all the answers I wanted, but I wouldn’t live to tell about it.
With a low and deep growl, Dalton pulled me closer with one arm and punched me hard in the face with the other. I whipped back, but he wouldn’t let me go.
“Sorry, Char, but I’m going to have to make you bleed.”
Chapter 27