The monster let out a huff of surprise when Eva collided with its back. Instinctively, it reached to block her from entering the shed. Under Lenny’s glare, the monster’s shock turned quickly to venom.
“What…?” Eva started.
“Stay back.”Even to the monster’s ears, the harsh words sounded foreign. Arthur never let himself surrender to his fury like this, and it felt wrong to dredge up the darker, angrier parts of him, but the monster wanted to feel its rage.
What had the spirit of the wood called it? Acreature of want?
She’d been right. It wanted so much. To kill. To consume.
Lenny stood slowly, a predator’s rise that also revealed some stiffness in his muscles. The shadows of the little shed cut a harsh line across his face, obscuring his eyes and the intent within. The hard-set line of his mouth pulled back into a sneer.
“Outside,” he commanded, the words full of quiet malice.
Eva tensed at the monster’s back. It nudged her to go. When her warmth disappeared, the monster took a careful step back, thenanother, its gaze fixed on Lenny’s gun as he followed them out into the light.
The sight of him in broad daylight sent a ripple of shock through the monster. Lenny’s arm hung limp and heavy from a shoulder clearly dislocated out of its socket. His sleeve had been ripped wide-open, exposing a deep gash down his arm, the wound weeping dark vermilion blood. The cuts weren’t clean and precise, like those made by a knife. Instead, the flesh looked as though it had been twisted into and ripped free.
The monster wrinkled its nose at the rank iron scent.
“One of you is going to tell me what the fuck is going on.” Lenny’s other hand shook as he swung the gun from Arthur’s chest to Eva’s. “Or I shoot.”
Arthur’s heartbeat sped to a gallop inside their shared body, his panic cracking through.
The monster lifted its hands, palms out. Despite the instinct to reach for the bastard’s throat, the monster knew that if provoked, Lenny might very well make good on his promise to pull that trigger.
The monster had to wait for the right moment.
“How did you find us?” Eva asked, her voice thin.
Lenny sneered. “You leave an easy trail.”
The wildflowers. Of course. The monster cursed inwardly.
“I have to admit, I never thought I’d see you again, Connoway,” Lenny said, waving the gun in a loose figure eight as his head tilted to the side. “And then you just… reappeared.”
Without taking its eyes off the man, the monster steadied its feet in the soil beneath it. If Lenny provided an opening, it had to be ready to strike.
“You always do that, you know. You show up where you aren’t wanted,” Lenny spat. “It doesn’t matter what damage you do, does it? People keep giving you chances to fix it.”
“What are you talking about?”
Lenny harshed out a laugh. “What, you gonna pretend you don’t love that? Starting over, only to screw with the people around you again? I know who you are, Connoway. I know what you can do.” Lenny spat in the dirt. “And I know you tried to kill me.”
A delicious sensation stole across the monster’s tongue as the memory unspooled in its mind. That night may have haunted Arthur, but the monster savored how closely it had dragged Lenny Walker to the edge of death.
“You don’t get to start over. You don’t get to pretend that never happened!” In his agitation, Lenny’s aim swung from Arthur to Eva. The monster stiffened, and its voice dropped low in warning.
“Put the gun down.”
But a craze seemed to have taken Lenny over. “Do you have any idea how you fucked with my life that night?” he said to Eva, staring at her now with eyes starting to shine. “I saw everything, you know, but no one believes me. Your family made sure they wouldn’t. They said I was drunk—”
“Youweredrunk,”the monster shot back, losing an inch of control.
Lenny flinched but didn’t tear his gaze off Eva. “Funny that your daddy’s tea is the only thing that eases my brother’s chest pains.”
Eva blinked. “What?”
“Oh, you didn’t know that?” Lenny taunted. “They like keeping their secrets from you, don’t they? Poor Eva, fragile as a bomb. Of course they didn’t want to risk you blowing up again.”
