So, instead, we swallow down the warm, wet, and coppery mush in one go.
Now that Andrew’s very thoroughly dead, I expect my creature to let me shift back. But I guess simply ripping outAndrew’s heart, one of the surefire ways to kill a shifter, isn’t enough. She wants to make sure that he’s as dead as can be.
Coiling her barbed, scaly tail around Andrew’s limp neck a few times, she pulls until a sickening crack sounds throughout the strangely silent apartment. Rending sounds echo throughout the small space as she forcefully separates his head from his body.
Tossing his head aside, my creature squeezes Andrew one last time, hard enough to pulverize almost every bone in his body.
Then she reluctantly uncoils herself from around Andrew, letting his body fall carelessly to the ground with a soft thud.
I’m glad she doesn’t make me look at the gruesome scene very long before turning her back to his body. After one last hiss, she gives me back control of myself, allowing me to shift back into my human form.
When I turn into myself again, my legs buckle underneath me. I fall to my knees on the plush ivory rug, stark naked.
I can feel the flecks of Andrew’s blood drying on my face and skin, and there’s even a few places where it’s dripping down me. But I’m too emotionally numb and in too much physical pain to care.
Shifting helped heal the concussion enough that I can form a coherent thought, but my head is still throbbing with pain. My throat feels bruised and scratchy from Andrew choking me. My back hurts from where he body-slammed me into the wall.
And I feel numb from everything I learned about Andrew, Marcus, Wren, and the plans for me. My heart is even more mangled than the one currently sitting in my stomach, but I can’t really feel anything right now. No sadness or heartbreak or anger or anything, really.
The only thing I can feel is a mild horror at the fact that I just killed a man.
A really fucking awful man, but he was still a person. And I just ended his life. Brutally.
I don’t know how to feel about it. Sure, there were many reasons he absolutely deserved to be killed, not the least of which was that he knew what was happening to Wren and didn’t stop it.
But who am I to decide who gets to live or die? Who am I to be judge, jury, and executioner of anyone, even someone as evil as Andrew?
I don’t know, and I don’t think I’m going to find out the answers to those questions right now. Not kneeling on a bloodstained rug with a mangled corpse a few feet from me. Not when I can’t even begin to start processing everything I just learned.
What I do know, though, is if I don’t get away from Andrew and all the blood and gore soon, I’m going to lose it.
I’m barely holding myself together right now, and I need to keep it together until I figure out what to do about the very violent crime I just committed in my home.
Feeling slightly energized by the simple task of getting away from the carnage, I robotically climb to my feet. I walk over the bloodstained sofa in a daze and vaguely notice myself grab the dark green throw draped over the back. After wrapping it around myself, I swipe my phone and stiffly walk around the couch.
Between the sofa and the wall is a foot of space.
It reminds me of the hiding spot I used to run to as a kid when my parents started screaming at each other and anyone unfortunate enough to be around them. I’d crawl into the nook behind one of the couches in the formal sitting room and put my hands over my ears to block out the sounds of their fighting.
I’d stay curled up in a ball like that until Wren found me.
The first time I hid there, it took her hours of frantic searching to find me. After the first couple of times, she couldfind me in minutes. She’d take me up to our shared room and hold me until the screaming and crashing and glass breaking stopped.
I haven’t hid like that from my parents in almost twenty years.
Yet the urge to curl up in the smallest space I can fit in is so strong right now that I can’t fight it.
Getting on my hands and knees, I crawl behind the couch until I reach the opposite wall. Resting my back against it, I bring my knees up to my chest and hug the blanket around me.
All I want is for Wren to come find me and tell me everything’s going to be okay like she used to.
But I’ll never here that from her again.
So, I have to find a way to make it okay myself. I pull out my phone and dial the one person I think might be able to help me fix this mess.
The phone rings for a few beats before he picks up with an enthusiastic greeting.
“Hal?” I rasp into the phone. “I didn’t know who else to call, and I need help,” is all I manage to get out before the phone slips from my numb fingers and falls to the floor with a crash.
