“I can protect you, Juliet,” he said. “We’re similar, you and I. Both children of the same monster. Both capable of his same atrocities.”
I pressed the pad of my thumb into the pick’s sharp end. “That’s not true. I haven’t killed,” I said.
“Not yet. But you would. To defend Montgomery. To defend yourself.” He lunged at me. I gasped and struggled, but he only wrestled the pick from my hand.
He studied the sharp end, as if to prove his point. “There’s a darkness inside you. Don’t deny it—you know it’s true. You feel it. It’s the animal in you, stirring, hungry for unnatural things. Just like me.”
He turned and hurled the pick against the back wall, where it dented the wood with a thud. I threw my hands over my ears, pressing my eyes shut. But I felt his presence in front of me, coldness and scars. His hands covered mine, drifting into my hair, his fingers running along my scalp. “I loved you the first moment I saw you. Helplessly. Passionately. I love you more than he does.” His breath was just inches from my own.
“Stop. Please.” I squeezed my eyes harder. I should have twisted away, but my body didn’t obey. “You know it’s impossible. You’re a murderer.…”
His hands tightened in my hair. “And what do you think Montgomery’s doing out there? Don’t you hear the gunshots? We’re all animals! We all fight to survive.”
His skin was on fire. His lips grazed my neck, and my larynx tensed, ready to scream. My eyelids shot open, my vision glassy and unfocused.
“We belong together. Not to serve your father’s mad experiment. But because we’re the same.” His open palm covered my heart, just grazing the exposed skin above my neckline. I gasped at his touch. Fear and thrill were divided by such a fine line that I couldn’t tell which plucked at the tight strings in my chest. And was he really so wrong? I did know about the darkness he spoke of. As much as I loved Montgomery, he couldn’t understand it like Edward.
Something thudded at the door, and the wooden latch splintered. The door burst open. Edward spun around, nearly knocking over the lantern. Montgomery stood three paces away, a gash running down his face, with the rifle aimed at Edward.
“Get away from her,” Montgomery said. Mud streaked his clothes. “I’ll blast a hole in your goddamned chest.”
“Montgomery, don’t!” I yelled. I shouldn’t have cared about Edward’s safety. He was a monster and a murderer and the last person I should defend. But it was too late.
Montgomery paused just long enough for Edward to attack. A low growl rumbled in Edward’s chest before he leapt across the room, knocking Montgomery’s gun to the floor.
I screamed—it was as if Edward was suddenly a different creature, wild and violent. Gone were the gold-flecked eyes, now black as night except for an electric ring of yellow iris around slitted pupils. His clothes strained over muscles that seemed to grow larger by the second. The way he moved was calculated, threatening, like he was stalking prey.
He knocked Montgomery down with the force of three men.
I wanted to scream for him to stop, but my voice was gone. Edward was changing. Its bones alongside my bones, he had said. Its blood in my veins. The animal part of him—the jackal, the fox, along with whatever other bits and pieces of various species Father had added—really did live inside him, lurking, waiting for its chance to transform Edward into the monster Father had made him.
His knuckles were red and knobby, so swollen I thought they might split and seep blood. As I watched, his fingers seemed to grow. Tendons snapped. The metacarpal bones grated against each other. The hair on his arms darkened, until he looked nearly as beastly as the wild dogs that haunted the outskirts of farms.
I dug the heels of my palms into my eye sockets, convinced his transformation must be a trick of my eyes. But when I looked again, it was the same. The palmar ligaments in his hand twisted and popped, bending the fingers. He grabbed the door to slam it shut. The way his gnarled fingers knotted, the sweaty handprint on the door looked as though he had only three fingers. Just like the three-toed prints on the cabin porch. But what animal could he have been made from that had only three toes?
A heron. One of the animals Edward had listed. The realization nearly knocked me flat.