With a growl of frustration, the monster shoved Lenny away, flinging his gun into the grass. Denial was an agony, and the monster’s chest crowded with a sudden mix of love and resentment.
There was one thing it wanted more than vengeance.
Damn you, little death-touch.A stinging sensation heated the bridge of Arthur’s nose, a sure sign of swallowed emotion. But this was not the boy. No. This was something else. Something raw and unfamiliar.
“Go back to your brother,”the monster snapped.
It could spare one life, not for Lenny’s sake but for the boy the monster loved so much.
Lenny seethed up at both of them, his bad arm twisted wrong in the grass. For a moment the monster saw itself as though through Lenny’s eyes, a wicked slash of lips curving Arthur’s mouth into a grin. What had the spirit of the wood called the monster?
Something worse than a man.
Maybe she was right.
When Lenny stood, the grass beneath him lengthened, stretching up past his knees, where it swirled, ropelike, around his legs. Alarmed, Lenny kicked the grass off with a shout.
“Leave,” Eva echoed, her voice small but steady.
The monster watched, moved by her grit.
“I don’t care where you go,” Eva said, “but I don’t want to see you ever again. ”
How remarkable she was. Full of admiration, the monster shot her a brief look of approval.
A mistake.
In that split second of distraction, Lenny flung his body to one side. The monster’s attention snapped back to him just in time to catch a flying stone to the side of the face. Pain erupted in the monster’s skull. The stitches split open, the already tender, swollen skin stinging as it wept hot, new blood. The monster’s ears rang with tinnitus, and its knees hit the dirt.
Lenny rolled to his feet again, breathless. The gun was back in his good hand, and he pointed it at Arthur’s face.
“No!” Eva lunged toward the monster just as Lenny fired.
Chapter 37
The Monster
The gunshot split the air like glass, the force of the bullet throwing Eva’s body into the monster, where she crumpled like a rag doll, heavy and warm. The whine in the monster’s ears stole every sound but the pounding of its own heartbeat.
Birds exploded from the canopy overhead.
So many feathers.
So much life.
For several seconds, the shock of it stole the monster’s breath, and it lay there, stunned. When it set its hands on Eva’s waist, something warm and wet slicked between its fingers. The tang of iron filled its nose.
“Eva?”it whispered as it blinked very slowly, finding it hard to arrange its thoughts.
Then everything rushed in all at once. With a gasp, the monster gripping the fabric of Eva’s shirt and rolled her over, confusion melting into fear as it realized what she’d done by jumping between Arthur and the bullet.
“I-I didn’t mean…”
The monster’s gaze snapped to where Lenny stood frozen, staring at them. He stammered, his voice breaking.
The sound that came from the monster wasn’t human at all but the furious cry of an animal.“Go,”it seethed.
Lenny stepped back, startled. He looked suddenly younger. “I didn’t mean to hurt her.”
