He was going to do it. He was going to keep me safe by any means necessary, even if that meant facing that mob by himself.
“Abram!” I screamed, beating so hard against the door that I thought I heard something in my hand snap. “Abram! Would you listen to me damn it? For once, just listen to me!”
Tears streamed hot down my cheeks. My heart shattered into so many pieces it might as well have been dust.
“Abram!”
No answer. He was gone. And I knew where he was going.
I rushed toward the window, wiping my eyes and looking past the nearly full red moon that graced it, a perfect match to the one back at The Castle.
The mob had gathered outside. All of them. The entire town littered the ground, armed with pitchforks, rifles, and other weaponry.
Blinking through fresh tears, I saw Abram walk out the door and into the yard, already morphing into the beast.
The crowd reared back, but soon overcame their fears and pushed forward. Shots fired at Abram, and I beat against the window. Maybe I could jump through it, the way Abram had back at the Castle.
But I knew better.
I wasn’t as strong as him, and the truth was, if this room didn’t want me to get out, then I wouldn’t.
All I could do was watch. Watch the man I love fight. Watch the people I grew up with try to kill him.
“Stop!” I screamed. But no one listened. Did they hear me? Could anyone even see me?
I slapped my hand over and over again on the glass pane, but no one so much as looked up at me. The glass rattled and my palm stung, but it was useless.
Bullets collided with Abram, and his body lunged backward.
“No!” I screamed.
Howling loudly, he lunged forward, but he didn’t attack. Didn’t defend himself. Didn’t even try to run. A swing with a baseball bat to his hind leg hit so hard that the crack could be heard over the cries and shouts of the mob. Another person—this time someone I didn’t recognize—swiped at him with a kitchen knife, but the man kept too far a distance to make contact.
But the more people who braved their assault on him, the more people who found the courage to do the same. Soon the town had swallowed him up. My fingernails dug into the old window frame, splintering against the soft wood. Pain cut off the air to my lungs as they kicked him, punched him, stabbed him. Seeing the blood matting his fur did something to me—changed me. This was a nightmare. I couldn’t cope.
I ran back to the door and tried it again, rattling the doorknob and banging on the wood. “Please, please,” I shouted. “Open.”
My voice was strained and cracked, my body weak, my mind a swirl of confusion and anger and hurt. I stumbled back to the window, falling to my knees at the sight of him. They had backed off now to observe their damage. He staggered sideways. Someone threw a stone at him, and he yelped.
No one wanted to go through with it. No one wanted murder on their hands, even with such a beast as they believed him to be. For a moment, hope bubbled up through my heartache. But through the blur of my tears, I saw the one person who could shatter all that hope in an instant.
Ester.
Ester, with a gun in her hand, marching up to Abram with the barrel already pointed down and finger on the trigger. She didn’t even look like herself. My body tensed.
Ester, please. Don’t.
I shook my head as though I could will her to stop. This couldn’t be happening. Why couldn’t she just leave him alone? He was already a heap on the ground, bloody, broken, barely able to move.
But Ester didn’t stop her advance—didn’t even flinch—as she fluidly approached the beast.
With a swift, almost graceful motion, she took aim at his head and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 31
I watched Abram’s body fall lifeless to the ground and, as it did, reality twisted into a dark and unsettling thing.
Things would never be the same.
My body shut down. The pain in my chest was so strong that I couldn’t feel if my heart was still beating, but if it were, each beat would be hopeless anyway. My soul had been shattered, and I felt the pieces of me scattering away from my body, leaving behind only the sinking feeling of dread that weighed my every limb.
My hearing went out. Could a gunshot do that, or was I in shock?
The crowd dispersed—Ester with her horrible gun and the rest of the townspeople behind her, ambling away as though they had awoken from a spell. They had done what Dalton implored them to. They had killed the beast. Their nightmare was over, and mine was just beginning.
I stared in trembling, core-quaking silence as they filtered back into the woods, so much more ceremoniously than they had come. Marching victoriously back to the safety of their beds and leaving Abram to rot in the night air.
Bile rose in my throat. They had won. It was over.
Expect that it wasn’t.