Chapter 20 — Nightmares and Monsters

The men all yanked off their shirts, and I watched in confusion. My heart had shot into my throat, and everything in my head screamed that I had done something wrong. Your fault, your fault. They’re going to get hurt because of you. Those men have guns, and if someone dies, it’ll be because of you. Your fault, your fault, your fault.

I had to suck in a hard breath just to keep oxygen going to my brain.

Meanwhile, in the back of my head, behind all the gibbering paranoia, thoughts about seeing the Nightmares’ abilities pinged around. I could remember Kier telling me some of what happened, while also giving absolutely nothing away. Maybe I should have been more curious, but this didn’t sound appealing. I didn’t want to see their abilities when the chances of someone getting hurt seemed so great.

Kier turned toward me. His eyes had gone flat and hostile, reminding me of when we first met. It seemed like so much longer than a week ago. A thousand years had passed since then, and all of them had worn us down.

My hands balled and loosened down by my sides. I felt like I had to keep my calm, keep cool, so as not to wreck this moment.

“It’s going to be fine,” Kier told me. “Listen to me. It’ll be fine.”

My mouth felt dry, but I nodded my head. “Fine.”

He stepped away from me, and my eyes went to the window. Brook had paused by the front of the station. She had her hands on her hips and her head cocked, watching the cops approach. She looked about as concerned by them as a cat did with a mouse. Right down to the dark amusement I caught in her profile.

Verdi pulled me to the side, where I could see out the window without getting in the way. “If they get into the building, we’re going to run,” she told me. “You don’t have to worry about anything, because I’m built to protect. Nothing will touch you as long as I’m here. Okay?”

Strangely enough, that didn’t calm me down. Instead, my eyes drifted over to Kier, and I tried to keep the longing out of them. I didn’t want him to know how nervous I felt, or how convinced I was that this would all end horribly. My mind kept flashing between one terrible thing that could happen to another. My heart thundered in my chest, and my breath came in hard, and…

I hated myself. There I stood, getting protected by everyone around me, and I couldn’t even muster up confidence in their abilities? It felt like my insides had been scooped out and replaced with jelly. I just hated myself.

The men started to make noise, pulling me out of my tailspin. I looked over at them, and then couldn’t seem to peel my eyes away from Kier.

A sheen of sweat had appeared on his skin, making it shine in the harsh fluorescent lights. At first, I thought that he flexed for some reason, but then I realized the unnatural bulge under his skin came from something else. This electrical pulse started to beat through the air, drumming against my arms, making all the hair stand up.

The muscles in Kier’s back all popped as one. Horrible visions of his flesh tearing started to run through my brain, and a scream of horror built in my throat. I shoved it down, because I didn’t want him to think that this scared me. I just didn’t want Kier to be in pain. Ever.

Hollow pops rang through the air, and I watched Kier’s arms and legs seemed to lengthen and thicken at the same time. Muscles bulged, ripping at the seams of Kier’s pants. His legs seemed to bend out of shape, becoming longer and more bent at the same time. The muscles along his back and arms bulged some more, becoming grotesquely large.

His face changed, too. It lengthened. I thought the change odd at first, but then fangs started to spring out of his mouth, turning sharper and deadlier at the same time. His jaw couldn’t quite close the way that it had before, because those fangs had become too large for his mouth.

All the hair on his head fell away, leaving a perfectly bald scalp behind. It shined in the overhead lights and showed how pale Kier was. No sunlight did that to a person, but it didn’t usually register to me. Not like it did right then, at any rate.

I stared up at him, unable to kick my brain into gear.

Kier looked like a monster now. His arms and legs had doubled in length, every muscle on his body had become twice the size that they used to. Even his fingers had lengthened, the tips looking deadly sharp. He could’ve cut through absolutely anything with those fingers, and the damage would’ve been intense. Yet, even with all the changes, the bulging power and the sheer size of him, I just saw Kier. His eyes shined silver now, but they had a familiar look in them.

Fury. He wanted nothing more than to rip things apart, and I worried for the humans outside. Forrest said that they wouldn’t kill anyone, but that became hard to believe when I saw Kier standing there, large and deadly and… And he just looked like Kier to me. But I knew the humans would see a monster.

I managed to pull my gaze away from him, to look at the other men. They had all shifted as well, though none of them looked quite as large as Kier did. They had the same kind of changes to their bodies, except their sizes varied. In their person forms, Forrest stood the tallest. In this form, Kier did. He had outgrown every single person in that room.

Whilda? his voice whispered in my head.

My eyes widened, and I stared up at him. I knew that he could do some things like that. When he knocked me out that one time, he did so by digging into my head and turning all the switches off. Yet, somehow, it felt different when he spoke to me while in that form.

I swallowed. “Yeah?”

Are you okay?

Even with just his voice in my head, I could hear the note of worry that came from him. I stepped forward, careful not to get too far from Verdi. “I’m fine,” I said, and it was true for the most part. I still felt like crap for bringing all this down on them, but I also didn’t have the spare headspace to freak out anymore.

The Kier creature relaxed, and that did absolutely nothing to make him look less intimidating. He stood at over eight feet tall now, and I felt so small. In the back of my head, I could hear him telling me their creation story. About how their Huntress had taken the mold of man and created something out of their nightmares.

Everything started to make a lot more sense.

And then I heard Kier telling me that women got something different. Men could do this, become this creature that looked like death on two legs, like some amalgamation of animal and person. If they could do that, then what could women do?

My eyes drifted out the window, and I wove through the bodies around me, getting to it. Brook had started walking toward the cops in suits while I’d been paying attention to the men. I felt them all hovering around me, even as Verdi stopped right behind me. “We should back away from the door. Give them some room to work.”

“If they wanted to, I think they could break the wall without slowing down,” I said, not moving from my spot.

I caught the barest hint of Brook’s voice as she called out to the cops. “Hey boys!” she said, twiddling her fingers.

One of the cops raised his gun and pointed it at her. Adrenaline pumped through my veins, and I wanted to rush outside. I didn’t even know what I’d do. Maybe I’d just break down into tears, but I wanted to keep them from hurting Brook. She had been nothing but a bitch to me, but that didn’t mean she deserved to die. Not for the sin of wanting to keep her family safe.

I could hear the cop’s voice, but not what he said. Though, it didn’t take a genius to guess. Probably some variation of put your hands on the ground, over your head. Stop, or get shot. That kind of thing.

Brook didn’t look worried in the least, and that electric pulse that had started when the men shifted became more intense. I felt it in my chest, this beat that thumped right behind my heart. My hands tightened at my sides, and my eyes couldn’t turn away from the scene in front of me.

“You really think you’ve got the upper hand, don’t you?” Brook asked. “Fancy little guns. Such a man thing, to think that you have the ability to control the world if you just find a weapon big enough.” She used a taunting voice, and I could practically see the smug look she’d put on her face.

I shifted my feet as the cops lifted more muzzles and aimed them at Brook. In my mind, a thousand different movies played. All of them ending with people getting shot, blood spraying in the air—though I felt certain that it looked different in real life. Sometimes death just lacked drama.

The cop’s voices floated through the air, loud enough to hear now. “Hands in the air, right this second!”

I looked over as one of the officers opened the station door. A scream built in my throat, getting ready to shout at him to close the door. Brook could die if they saw one of the Nightmares in this form. Strangely enough, I didn’t for a second consider that Kier might die. I found it hard to imagine a creature as fearsome as one of these falling to something so simple as a bullet.

As the door opened, though, I could hear more clearly. One of the officers shouted, “Where’s the girl? Give her over!”

Brook cocked her head. She turned around, and I caught her profile. Her eyes had started to glow such a bright, iridescent blue that my heart stopped. They glowed with power and an odd mischievousness that I’d never seen in her face before. I knew that whatever happened next, I would know how women had differed from men.

She sighed. I couldn’t hear that, but I saw her chest rise and fall.

“Put your goddamned hands up, or we will start shooting!” the man shouted, waving his gun around like he had never been taught about finnicky mechanisms.

“If you insist,” Brook said.

That electrical pulse beat against me as Brook started to raise her hands. They got about to her waist, and then she yanked them up with enough force that it looked like she lifted something.

The entire ground shook, making my knees knock together. I gasped as cracks formed all through the parking lot. Deep cracks, that people could fall into if they didn’t walk carefully. A blue glow that matched Brook’s eyes started to shine, lighting up the entire parking lot until even the sun couldn’t match.

I could hear the cops all shouting different things, and someone fired their gun. My heart leapt, and I pressed my face against the window, not caring about how my eyes stung with the light.

The sound of cracking filled the air, and the light began to dull. Brook stood in the middle of the parking lot, unharmed, and smiling wide. “You have about ten seconds to change your mind about this endeavor, before I remind you of why your kind leaves mine alone.”

The men started to lift their guns.

The ground began to move. Not shake, but actually move.

Brook lifted her hands again, and another resounding crack filled the air. Pieces of asphalt peeled off the ground, dozens of them floating in the air. They all rose up as one, and…

They looked like birds. I couldn’t peel my eyes away, because the asphalt looked and moved like large birds. They flapped wings that had cracks running through them, and they cawed like crows. Boney feet stretched from their bodies, with talons that looked as sharp as Kier’s claws did.

The birds started to swirl around Brook, creating a barrier between her and the guns. The cops began to fire wildly, and I watched sparks rising off the birds’ wings. The bullets didn’t seem to bother them in the least.

Brook turned around and started heading back toward the building. She called out, her voice rising above the sound of gunfire and screaming birds. “They aren’t up to negotiating. It’s time that we make a point.”

If Forrest responded to her, he didn’t include me. The big creature rushed through the door, and the other officers followed him. Kier paused by the door, and his thoughts appeared in my head. Stay safe in here. We’ll be fine. I promise.

I wanted to believe him and took the words to heart. More importantly, I needed him to not worry about me. “All right,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

He ducked his head once, and then rushed out of the door, having to bend and twist his body to fit through the thing. My mind threw the image of him as a fourteen-year-old, morphing into that, and fighting his father. Retroactive fear did nothing for anyone, but I felt it. Down to my stomach, I felt it.

Verdi touched my shoulder. “Let Brook and the boys handle this. We need to duck down and stay low.”

I nodded and looked around. The only spot that would show me what happened outside was by the window. I refused to entertain any other spot, so I knelt down right there, and peeked over the windowsill.

Verdi knelt next to me, her hand refusing to leave my shoulder. “I’ll make sure that nothing touches you.”

Outside, the birds that Brook created started to sweep down on the officers. They grabbed guns and helmets and dragged them up into the air.

My eyes went to Kier immediately. He crouched low and then sprang up, leaping about thirty feet across the parking lot. He landed on the ground, sending a plume of dust up from the dirt that had been underneath the asphalt. The officer that had been making a break for the station stumbled to a stop and began to back away. His eyes widened as Kier let out a roar that put paid to all the growling he normally did.

The cop fell backward, hitting the ground on his ass. He stared up at Kier with such open fear that I almost felt bad for him. His superior officer had ordered him to do this, and the man probably would’ve left me alone otherwise. But I’d tried my world. I’d tried to keep myself from getting beaten or dying, and none of them wanted to help me. I had been too complicated for them.

I didn’t have enough emotion left after my shock to spare any sympathy.

Kier grabbed the man by his arm and yanked up. I didn’t need to hear anything to know that Kier broke that arm. It twisted so out of shape that my heart stuttered. “Oh, wow,” I whispered.

“He won’t kill the men,” Verdi said. “On occasion, we have to remind humans why this uneasy truce exists. We never kill them when those reminders come to pass. They just need to be shown how easily we could kill them.”

I glanced at the woman with reddish brown hair and dark eyes. She stared out the window with something close to longing on her face. She wanted to be out there, teaching the lesson. I would’ve rather had Kier in there with me. He didn’t take joy in the violence. I knew, because he had taken the second to see if I felt okay with his new appearance. The one so clearly designed for killing.

Kier shoved the officer down. He screamed on the ground, curled around the broken arm. Asphalt birds swooped low, shoving him around as a reminder of why he needed to keep to his own kind. Everything out there looked like chaos. With the birds screaming and swooping, the officers firing off enough bullets that they had to be running low, and the Nightmares attacking… I couldn’t even understand half of what I saw. I just sat there, watching it all with wide eyes, surprised by everything in front of me.

My heart tripped.

We had been living in these separate worlds for so long, I started to wonder what caused the break. I pictured a battlefield like this, hundreds of humans and dozens of Nightmares, all of them attacking each other. I couldn’t believe that we had even survived as a species.

It would be over soon, I figured. The police would fall and Kier would come back in. He’d shift to his normal self, and I’d huddle up to his chest without the fear of him accidentally clawing me. Everything would be fine. If I kept saying that to myself, then maybe I would start to believe it.

“What happens after this?” I asked. “If they try to get me again?”

Verdi snorted. “I’d be surprised if that happened. Normally, the humans learn their lesson really quickly. I’m sure you’ll be fine to live with Kier as soon as this is over.”

“But what if—”

A big, concussive boom rocked through me. Blood and skull fragments sprayed across the window and my ears felt stopped up at the same time. I scrambled away, my thoughts so confused that I kept trying to find Verdi. She would keep me safe. She would make sure that I didn’t get hurt. She promised and Kier needed to know that I made it through this in one piece.

Then my eyes and head finally made sense of what happened. Verdi slumped to the ground, a hole in her forehead the size of a baseball. One of her eyes had gone missing, but the other stared, empty and unseeing, at me. Her blood and chunks of flesh decorated the mirror, smearing down the glass.

And if someone shot her…

My eyes lifted, and I saw the men. Two officers approached me, their guns held out and ready. Neither of them aimed at me, but their muzzles kept swinging around, and for the two seconds that they’d be on me, my heart would leap.

And my father came in behind them. He looked normal as ever and calm as could be. It had only been a week, but I felt like I hadn’t seen him in years. His blond hair looked the same, and his cold blue eyes stared at me as if I had somehow disappointed him.

The men came straight toward me, and I still couldn’t hear really well. His mouth didn’t move, but the cops’ did. I tried to focus on their lips, to see what words they said, but nothing seemed to get through. No matter how hard I focused. One of them pointed their gun at me, and my hands went up automatically, to show that I didn’t have a weapon.

The second officer started to pat me down. Each time his hands touched me, I had to resist the urge to flinch or start crying.

My eyes went to the window again, and I saw the Nightmares out there. One of them lifted a cop up and turned him upside down. The man scrambled, his arms flailing about, his teeth ground together.

The ringing in my ears started to lesson as the man who patted me down grabbed my face and yanked it around. “Are you listening to me, little girl?” he barked, two inches from my face.

I stared at him and realized that I felt Verdi’s blood on my skin. It had started to cool, and I couldn’t forget about it at that point. It had dripped down my cheek, and I felt it over my neck. Some more had soaked into my shirt, and my heart thudded painfully. Even not staring at her, I remembered the exact way that she looked. The way that she laid.

The man shook me.

“No,” I said.

“What?” he demanded.

“I’m not listening to you,” I said.

“Well, you need to start. You’ve made enough of a mess of your life. You can either listen to me, and we’ll get this entire thing sorted out, or you’ll get more people killed. Is that what you want?”

“No,” I said.

My father stepped forward and grabbed my arm. He pulled me through the desks and spoke over his shoulder. “I’ll get her taken care of. Don’t worry, she’ll listen to me. Cover our backs.”

The officers did just that, one taking the lead and the other falling into step behind us. My dad’s hand bit into my arm so hard that I knew it’d bruise. My feet stumbled as he hauled me through the station, and I couldn’t get my brain to work.

“What is wrong with you?” my father demanded, shaking me. “After everything that I’ve given you, this is what you do? Why wouldn’t you just come home, where it was safe? Instead, you had to get snatched by a couple of monsters?” He shouted each word like an accusation, and they stabbed me through the heart.

Monsters? Who’s the monster? The man who shot a woman who did nothing but sit there, or the one trying to keep me safe from a life of pain? Who is the monster in his mind?

“I never thought I’d say this, but I wish your mother was alive, so that she could see what a pathetic waste you are,” Dad said, shaking me some more.

She would be so upset that you turned me into this. Pathetic waste? Who do you think you are to call me that?

He hauled me out the back door, where the men had broken in. The second we got outside, into the sunlight, my father whipped around, and popped me right across my face. I hit the ground with the force of the blow, and then stayed there, on my hands and knees. His voice sounded like a snarl as he started talking to me.

“I’m never letting something like this happen again. If they don’t throw you into prison for all the shit that you’ve caused, then I’m going to make sure that you never destroy my life, like you always do. Every time you woke up in the morning, it was like a fresh curse was laid down on me. You’re going away. I don’t care what I have to do to lock you up, but it’s happening. I’m done with this, Whilda. I’m done with you.”

I tasted blood in my mouth. He had split my lip, and definitely bruised my face. More blood dried on my skin, but this time, it belonged to me.

“You are a disgusting whore, a waste of life, and you will only destroy whatever you touch,” my father snarled.

You know what you have to do, something whispered, as if the wind had carried it right to my ear.

And I did know what I had to do.

“It’s over,” Dad said.

“No,” I whispered.

“Excuse me?”

I lifted my eyes to my father and felt it. Felt that burning rage that scared me so much. It rose up in my chest, filled my lungs, seared my stomach. It burned me from the inside out.

For once in my life, I would refuse to stay down.