Hemlock Veils (34 page)

Thoughts of Elizabeth haunted him: the way she tasted, the way her body had pressed against him, how exhilarating it had been to touch her. The way the sight of her in the afternoon rainstorm had filled him with a want he could hardly tame. Briefly, he fantasized about what would have happened had he accepted her invitation. He bought the bottle again to his mouth.

The whiskey did its job well, his body tingling and his head in a buzz: the conditions that made his transformation that much easier. Just when he expected them, throbbing tremors began to tear through his heart, changing it. It took his breath and his pulse heightened as he reminded himself, as he did every night, that he deserved this.

He placed the bottle on the top step, his hand trembling. At the same time he descended them, he removed his pants, letting them fall to the weeds. His brokenness had long ago turned to numbness, but tonight was unlike any other. Walking forward, he welcomed the cool evening air against his naked skin…welcomed the pain.

And at the sensation of being ripped apart from the inside out—rolling until every extremity had a taste—heat radiated from his skin. With a grunt, he leapt over the stone wall, where the paws of the monster hit the forest floor.

Chapter 20

Elizabeth rested her elbows on the railing, staring into midnight shadows. She knew he wouldn’t come. Part of her didn’t want him to. The part that felt angrier than she’d ever been. The other part, however—the part that would always ache for him—prayed that this time he would realize he didn’t have to be scared, not of her and not of him.

She sighed, wrapping her jacket more snugly around herself. The storm had stopped before sunset, but the air still felt like rain: crisp, moist, and cool. It even smelled like rain. She turned, making her way to the back door, when a wretched scream echoed from within the forest, shooting a shiver up her spine.

Her stomach dropped when his roar followed, more fierce and deafening than that of a lion’s. She could only watch the trees, as though they would tell her what lay within. The scream pierced the air again, high-pitched and drawn-out. But it wasn’t the scream of a person, since no human could leave such a chilling note in the air. The sound, ghostlike and unnatural, seemed to belong to a creature born of nightmares.

It came over her then: the sensation that left her arms goose-fleshed and her chest tight. The evil loomed out there, and so did Henry.

She jumped from the porch without taking the steps and ran the trail as fast as she could. She could see nothing and lifted her arms for protection against twigs and branches, praying her feet’s memorization wouldn’t fail her. As she ran, wishing for another sound to lead her, she recalled section eight of her father’s book, the section she had just read a couple of days before. The demon,
Diableron
, and its relation to
Aglaé
.

The scream sounded again, a blood-curdling
eeeeee
hanging in the air, and before it could ebb away, a growl overpowered it, making Elizabeth run harder and faster. Though she was close, a strange stillness suddenly settled over the forest, hitting her and the trees as though a physical drape. She stopped short, and with a heaving chest and sweating neck, she looked through the blackness all around her. She wanted to call for him but couldn’t catch her breath.

Before she could take one more step, she was thrown into the air, her back breaking twigs as it slammed into the trunk of a cedar. It knocked the wind from her, and with her back against the trunk—the tree seeming to hold her itself—she winced, looking for the source.

“Brave Elizabeth,” she heard at her ear, startling her. It was a whisper and a voice at the same time, as though the words were spoken on the tongue of a snake; but she saw nothing. She struggled against invisible shackles, unable to move. “
Fearlesss
,” it hissed again, and this time it came from her other side. Still, nothing there.

Her pulse heightened, her face perspired. “Show yourself,” she managed through tight ribs.

It appeared before her then, right at her eye level, and Elizabeth flinched. This
Diableron
, unfortunately, appeared less cartoonish than the one in her book. Much more frightening. Her face of flesh, bone, and black nothingness melted, and as Elizabeth tried to steady her breaths, wondering where to look since the creature seemed to have no eyes, it smiled, revealing the black void inside its mouth. Elizabeth swallowed deeply, recoiling.

“Not so
fearlessss
anymore, are you, Elizabeth Ashton?” Elizabeth waited for a slithering, long tongue to appear.

“Where is he?”

The
Diableron’s
face pressed against Elizabeth’s, her cold and damp being akin to the dense air from an underground cave. “
He’sss
worth dying over, mortal?”

Before Elizabeth could answer, a dim light glowed from within the demon, from the place a heart would reside, and then it wasn’t the demon at all. Elizabeth squinted as the light faded, and in the
Diableron’s
place was an image she couldn’t accept. She blinked to make sure she saw it correctly.

“Beth,” a shaky voice said. His blue eyes were bloodshot and sunk-in, his head shaved, his tall body scrawny, and his face glistening with sweat. Desperation fueled him as he grasped the collar of her jacket. “Help me, please. They’re gonna kill me, Beth.”

Elizabeth’s jaw fell slack as she recoiled, and tears welled in her eyes. “Willem,” she said in a painful breath.

“How could you let me die?” He shook her, the sensation jarring, and blood began to pour from a hole in his chest, then from his mouth—so much blood it looked like too much to fit in a human body. He brought his hands to his chest and gagged, then coughed blood all over her in the way he’d done the last time she saw him. She hyperventilated, his face swirling in her vision. She’d been brave at his death once before. She had no bravery left.

“No, Willem…I tried,” she sobbed.

“You killed me.” With blood still pouring from his mouth, he grasped her jacket again, and her chest shuddered. Through the blood, he shouted, “You killed me!”

She shook her head, beyond words.

Then his face transformed, grew younger. Even his hair grew, and every stage of his life passed in reverse on his face, until it was the face of a seven-year-old boy—the same as the one she remembered most, the one in her locket. “Bethy?” he said in the boyish voice she had almost forgotten, the one that knocked the air from her lungs yet again. He looked around in confusion. He brought a hand to his face then pulled it away, viewing the blood on his small, childish fingers. With eyes enlarging, he screamed, the prepubescent sound catching in his throat. “Bethy!” They seemed to hyperventilate at the same time. “Bethy, what’s wrong with me?”

“Will, it’s all right,” she managed.

He sobbed in confusion, as though the demon had plucked him from the past and placed him before her. Even the cowlick that used to spring up at the crown of his head danced with his movement. “Did
you
hurt me?” he asked with betrayal in his eyes, and she shook her head. “Why would you hurt me?”

“No, Will, I would never hurt you!” She tried reaching for him, tried not to let him see her sob. But he’d never been covered in so much blood. “You’re going to be all right,” she assured, but through her weeping it sounded less than convincing.

He grasped her jacket, pleading as blood began to escape his nose in addition to his chest and mouth. All she wanted to do was save her young, helpless brother, and she couldn’t escape this damn tree. “You can’t let me die, Bethy! Don’t let me!” As his face grew more ashen, his voice weakened, and so did her limbs. His blue Dr. Seuss shirt—his favorite—was covered in so much blood that Thing One and Thing Two were unrecognizable, and she hoped she could get the blood out, that she could get it clean for him again.

Her stomach rose, her head spun, and she closed her eyes, trying to breathe, trying to replace his bloodied image with a different one—one that didn’t pull her under. “It’s all right, Willem,” she barely managed in a breath. She thought of him in the park with her and their father. Laughing. It was the best image.

An image: that’s all this was. It wasn’t real,
he
wasn’t real. The
Diableron
.

“You’re not real,” she said, eyes still closed.

“Beth,” Willem said, his voice now the adult version of him, the same choking one from the night of his death.

“No.” Her voice found strength. She lifted her chin. Staring into eyes that weren’t really her brother’s, she said, “You aren’t Willem.”

With the disappearance of her brother, darkness and the demon appeared before her, and as it had the first time, the horrifying sight startled her. Behind the angry, melting face—the face that would have given her nightmares as a child and the face she was sure could transform into a most beautiful
Aglaé
—the black, spear-like tail raised. It came to her neck, rubbing its cool wetness over Elizabeth’s skin, and just when it retracted, about to strike, the creature was thrown from her. Elizabeth fell to the ground, trying to adjust her eyes to the swift movement of shapes in the darkness. Snorts and grunts gave the beast away, ones that could belong only to him.

He tossed the
Diableron
into a hemlock, and with a piercing cry she fell to the ground. The beast stood on all fours, snarling at the dark silhouette that rose with difficulty. They circled each other, she hissing and he growling.

He roared, making her retreat, and lunged for her, his fangs tearing into her neck. It wasn’t until he howled that Elizabeth realized
Diableron’s
tail had penetrated his side. While a black, mist-like substance poured from her neck and lifted into the air, she retracted her tail from deep in the beast’s flesh.

“Beast!” Elizabeth called, running to him.

While
Diableron
writhed on the ground, he threw a warning at Elizabeth.
Stay away!

Then, in a less commanding, muddled tone, she heard,
Elizabeth?
and he fell to the ground.

Her knees skidded through the mud and came to a stop before him. She lifted her head at another screech, but
Diableron
fled, slipping between the trees as quickly as the beast moved. Her last screech, which came from much farther away, was unmistakably a cry of pain.

The beast began to stand.

“Stay,” Elizabeth said, trying to push him down. She moved her hands over his fur until she reached the blood on his left side, warm and wet and spilling. She ripped off her jacket, rolled it up, and pressed it hard into the wound. He howled again, writhing, and she tried shushing him. “It’s all right,” she soothed. “You’re going to be all right.” Her face was wet, not from the tears she’d shed for Willem, but from new ones. She wiped them on her upper arm, still putting pressure on his wound.

Elizabeth, leave
, he said, and she shook her head before the words finished in her mind.

“I’m not leaving you.” She looked all around, trying not to panic. He didn’t have long before the poison would overtake him, and if she didn’t do something about his wound soon, she would lose him.

“I need you to walk,” she said after a sniffle, trying to make her voice strong. “Can you do that, Beast?”

Leave me.
His eyes drifted.
Go home.
He said it over and over again.
You’re not
…
safe.

She shook him, and his large, brown-and-gold eyes met hers, though they appeared out of focus. “You listen to me,” she said through her teeth. “She’s gone now, I’m fine. I’m
not
leaving you, and I can’t carry you. So you’ll either walk with me, or I’ll stay right here with you all night. What’s it going to be?”

As though his deep groan commanded it, he slowly rose to all fours. His legs shook and his head swayed. She lifted her long-sleeved thermal shirt over her head and yanked her arms out of the sleeves, leaving her in her white camisole. She pushed her back upward against his side, to both steady him and supply pressure on the wound, and as quickly as she could, she tied her shirt sleeve to her jacket sleeve. Behind her he wavered, and she pushed her back more forcefully into his side, digging her boots into the soil.

At her release of her pressure, blood began to pour from his side again, and as quickly as she could, she threw one end of the makeshift bandage over his back and retrieved it from underneath, pulling it tight around the thinnest part of his waist. She positioned it with the hood of her jacket balled up over the wound then pulled it tighter before tying the opposite sleeves together. It was almost too short and in the long run wouldn’t do much, especially because blood already saturated it.

“Let’s go,” she rushed. She shoved her shoulder into the wound and steadied him with her hands, trying to be the best support she could be. But she was nearly helpless with a creature so large; if he fell on her, she would be crushed. His legs wobbled and his steps seemed difficult, and words floated in and out of her mind: her name amidst random, incoherent thoughts. “I need you to focus,” she said, trying to guide him in the right direction. But he wouldn’t allow her to guide him to her home. Instead they veered toward the mansion.

The stone wall wasn’t far ahead, but his front legs nearly gave out and he stumbled. She steadied him, urgency giving her limbs strength. “Stay with me, we’re almost there.”

After a few more feet he stumbled again, and she moved just in time for him to fall face-first to the ground. “Beast, get up!” she shouted, shaking him.

Leave me
…
Elizabeth.
He laid his head on the ground, his eyes closing and opening with a heavy drowsiness she could almost feel herself.

“No!” She shook him again, even pulled on his ears. “Please.” She tried not to notice his blood, everywhere. “You’ll be all right if you go with me…”