She smells good. She’d taste so much better.
My lips curl back into a snarl. Veer twitches and tries to get her legs underneath her but can’t quite get her balance. Power coils in my hips.
“Ellis?” she rasps, and I remember the way she laughed as we flew through the desert, the way she brandished that tire iron like an apocalypse, and the way she’s already started to keep my secrets. I could tear her throat out and bury the only person who could betray me. And where would that leave me? Alone. Is that what I want?
I don’t want to be like the flayed man, skinless and desert born and scheming. I don’t want to be like my mom, grasping for love and ending up only pitied or owed. I want to sweep Veer into my arms, to fall to my knees, to explain everything. I want to try.
I can have that, still. I can fold myself back into human form before the sun is bright enough to burn me. I can fix this.
“Don’t be scared,” I try to say, but it comes out a clatter of jaws and saliva.
I try to step back. Nausea hits me like the aftermath of bones breaking. The animal rushes in, forcing my feet back to the ground, and suddenly we’re in a tug-of-war in the muscles of my legs and I’m dizzy and it’s so strong, stronger than it’s ever been and it’ll do anything to stay free from its cage.
I try again. Step back. My curse rears, defiant, and my vision blurs and I careen forward. Veer flinches back into the wrecked car’s embrace, mouth half-open, breathing fast.
“Okay,” she repeats, more to herself than me. “Okay, okay, okay…”
She smells like polyester and panic and the raw scrape of a split lip. One more leap, and I won’t be hungry anymore.
Desperation pushes and I pull, and we reel drunkenly onto all fours and there’s a slam and a scramble and Veer’s inside the car now. Relief. Rage. My animal turns dinner-plate eyes on me, as if I’ve betrayed it.
She’s going to drive away. That’s what she was supposed to do in the beginning.
The passenger door flies open. She comes back. My hunger-addled limbs are too surprised to lunge. I am too, until I see the camping knife in her hand. Green handle, silver blade. Veer’s face is blank now, the grim mask of detachment she wears at work.
So that’s what it’s come to.
My mind smears with something likeThis is what it always comes toand I’m not going to die, I’m not, my mouth is full of blades and I’ll do whatever it takes, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling like someone’s plunged their claws into the weeping wound of my chest and separated the pieces of my heart.
Veer blows out a sharp breath and cradles the knife in the crook of her elbow.
“Hey,” she mumbles. “This’ll help, right?”
I don’t understand, until she breathes out sharp and fast and her arm bends, and I smell blood like distrust and devotion. Still, I half expect her to attack me. She offers me her arm, and I smell her fierce, well-guarded tenderness, and still I half expect.
Go slow, I beg, but I’m pistoned forward and my snout is on her skin and Veer yelps a little as her blood wells into my mouth. I close my eyes and taste bruised fruit and the golden of sunset, and the creature in my bones recedes until it’s just me and the faint whispering clank of metal and my furious certainty that both of us have to survive this, because what else has it all been for? I reach back inside myself, and my palms brush twisted iron. There’s no cage left anymore. No chain.
What if I was everything my curse made me? What if I could be hungry, dangerous, a portent of evil, and all the other things my family made me, what if I could be all that and still, too, be myself?
I squeeze her arm gently between my teeth, wanting more. The desert is broad and harsh and filled with wonders, and so is the world. And so am I.
A soft growl. I reach for it, find fur and longing. Touch the places where its claws left long hungry grooves in my rib cage. The growl trails into a whine, long and thin and plaintive, and I realize that it’s tired too. A lifetime of denial and iron, of a chain fused to its spine and the promise of agony at the end of freedom, made it something that leapt and fought and dragged its tired, shivering body back to the loneliness of captivity.
Maybe now we can try something different.
Pain grabs hold of my larynx. My marrow goes wobbly, my joints grind back into position, my knees unbreak and my fangs recede and my ribs creep back into the crimson hollow of my chest. I’m still bent over Veer’s arm, kissing the fragrant pink-red line she’s made for me. She shifts and I try to follow but I’m gelatinous inside, pain splintering up my shins and vibrating through my spine, and suddenly I’m doubled over and vomiting a mix of acidic foam and decomposing worms into the dirt.
My hands are too small. I touch my face with my fingers. Nose cheeks lips chin. Blood everywhere, sticking my shirt to my neck, soaking my hair dark and stringy.
Don’t look at Veer. She’s seen too much, she’ll never stop seeing it. Of course I look at her. She’s a wreck and she’s radiant and she’s the only real thing in the world. I want to wrap my arms around her and bury my face in the soft skin behind her ears. I want to tell her I’ll never hurt her, unless she wants me to, unless she’ll hurt me back. I want, I want, I want.
Her eyes flutter. She coughs, dry and embarrassed, and snaps the knife shut, and I remember that I’m lying in a pool of my own vomit.
“Well, shit,” she says. “You scared me for a second.”
I hack up a laugh. It feels good. She helps me to my feet and her fingers linger, just for a moment, to trace the wreckage of my chest. The wound’s still weeping through my shirt. It’ll close soon. My bones are already fusing back to rightness.
We limp back to her car, her hand stroking my blood-soaked hair, my fingers counting her ribs through her shirt, and every part of the world turns to dust except where her skin meets mine.
