Jane whimpered again, unable to speak proper words.
As Terence carried her, she wanted to wriggle free. She feared that he was bringing her to the cellar to add her to those piles of meat, perhaps as punishment for her disobedience, and was to throw her straight into the beast’s awaiting maw. Or maybe he was bringing her to lay before the idol, a totem of the flayed-faced demon in her nightmare, to butcher her for its amusement. Its gurgling cackle bubbled in her ears, burning hot with petty hate.
Her pulse raced through her as he brought her to thewashroom, as he and the two women stripped her bare and dipped her into the steaming bath, as they mended her leg with thread.
Even as Terence set her in bed, she whimpered, speech slurred as she wailed about the beast, begging for him to let her leave and to keep the beast away.
All she could remember was seeing something vaguely resembling pain pinching his brow as the darkness swallowed her whole once more.
CHAPTER
Thirteen
The pain in Jane’s leg awoke her before she felt the sting of daylight piercing through her eyelids. As she slowly came to, so did the looming shadow of a figure sitting at her bedside. She gasped as she rushed to prop herself up on shaking elbows, everything aching, but a hand came to her chest, gently easing her back down.
“Jane—stay…” Terence’s rumbling whisper embraced her, timidly, as if she were an animal to startle or a doll to break. His face, partially obstructed by hair that had fallen loose, became more clear. He wore a dark robe, open to show the rumpled shirt and trousers underneath, and there was no sleep in his eyes. They had to them a pink dewiness that only came after one had a particularly wretched cry. He was quick to retract his hand, fingersflexing, as he returned to sit in the chair that had been pulled up alongside the bed. “Rest, please.”
Jane continued to frantically blink the bleariness from her vision and the ache from her skull.
“Beast… a beast outside, thecellar—Terence,” she blanched when she recalled those mounds of flesh, the slurping sounds as the beast lapped at puddles of some bodily goop. The stank of congealed blood still clogged her nostrils, the color of her stained dress was a residual crust against her flesh, the taste of blood in her mouth was an echo of last night’s horror. She gagged. “W-We need to leave!”
I need to leave—I cannot stand to be here another minute.
A grim shadow inked across his features as he leaned forward and lightly cupped her chin between his fingertips with the gentlest pressure.
“And go where?” He whispered. “The roads are still flooded, we have no horse, and I reckon that you should keep weight off your leg for the time being.”
Her heart was pounding, sending cold blood through her veins that muddied her mind.
We can go nowhere.
We’re trapped—damned.
Those words felt too damning, as though they were the keys that locked her tightly shut in a cell where the beast would be in the corner, waiting to devour her. The demon would be crouched in an opposite corner while gurgling in amusement.
Panic was wracking its claws through her before settling in her throat to strangle her as she stared out the window, hoping to seek some hope for escape but instead saw the beast’s snarling eyes, its snapping teeth, in the jaundiced aura of the still-clouded skies that wept more rain.
Jane swallowed down thick bile. No one would save them—save her. No one would tell her mother, her sisters, her father, what became of her until it would be too late…
There was the mumbling of someone speaking, but a touch on her cheek alerted her to Terence’s presence still at her bedside.
“Jane,” he murmured, gently. The gauze that wrapped around his hand chafed her chin as he drew away from her. His mouth moved as though he were still talking, but Jane couldn’t hear him. She was too busy studying his wrapped hand as ice-cold nausea surged in her throat. For on the bandage was a mark, faint and pink as some wound beneath it started to bleed through. A wound that bled in the arched shape of teeth in the cradle between his thumb and pointer finger. She licked her lips, the phantom sensation of rotted meat weighing on her tongue.
Jane’s teeth marks.
The taste of the beast’s blood flooded her mouth, sour and like bile.
As she failed to retain a single thought that wasn’t fueled by the pure animalistic fear to flee, she met Terence’s eyes. A dreadedknowingmade them go utterly dark.
With a sound caught between a choke and a hiss, Jane coiled back, clawing distance between herself and Terence, to get as far away from him as she could without falling onto the floor. Aches jolted up her leg with every movement.
Terence visibly withered, drawing into himself, as an expression of hurt flitted across his face. He leaned forward in his chair to stand with his arms extended at his side, palms up in a non-threatening display.
“Jane…” he started slowly, but it was no longer Terence that spoke to her. All she saw was the beast, dog-faced and blood-stained, standing in his place. She felt the scrape of its teethagainst her bone; she saw the demon that wept gold, a monster that hungered forherblood.
Buthow?
How were man and beastone?
