Chapter 52: Ethan?

Chapter 52: Ethan?
The creature moved too fast for the headlights to catch. One second the road was empty, the next it was there—thin, dark, and bent wrong, like it had crawled out of a place where bones didn’t form the way ours did.

Marcus swore under his breath and jerked the wheel. The tires skidded over gravel, throwing the SUV sideways for half a heartbeat before traction caught again. My shoulder slammed into Damien’s chest, and his arm tightened around me before I even processed the jolt.

“Eyes forward!” he snapped at Marcus.

“I am!” Marcus shot back, but his voice was tight.

The creature clung to the hood now, long fingers curled over the metal like hooks. It leaned its head toward us, and for the first time I saw its eyes—pale, washed out, almost silver. Empty the way an abandoned house is empty.

My stomach dropped.

“That’s not human,” I whispered.

“No,” Damien said quietly. “It’s not.”

The creature dragged its hand across the windshield. Thin scratches bloomed in the glass, like frost spreading too fast. It wasn’t clawing to break through—it was marking us. Testing the barrier. Testing me.

Damien reached for the radio panel built into the dash, pressing his thumb to a hidden switch. A faint hum filled the car.

“Stay still,” he murmured.

I didn’t ask why. I didn’t move.

The hum grew sharper, higher, until the creature stiffened. Its shoulders jerked once, twice, like it was being pulled backward by invisible strings. The hum wasn’t a sound—it was a frequency. Something the wolves used. Something old.

And for a second, just a second, I thought it was enough.

Then the creature screamed.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t even human. It was a vibration in my bones, a sickening reverberation that made the windows buzz.

“Damien—”

“Close your eyes,” he told me.

I didn’t.

The creature lunged—not at the windshield this time, but straight into the hood, slamming its weight down. The SUV tilted forward from the impact, the nose almost dipping into the asphalt.

Marcus swore again. “I can’t shake it!”

“Then stop trying.” Damien leaned forward. “Brake when I say.”

I stared at him. “You can’t be serious.”

His hand brushed my knee—quick, steady. “Trust me.”

I did. Even when it scared me.

The creature climbed higher, its face pressing to the glass. Its mouth opened, revealing no teeth—just a dark, shifting space, like the inside of a cave.

My breath hitched.

“Now,” Damien said.

Marcus slammed the brakes.

The world snapped forward. The creature flew over the hood, hit the road, and rolled in a blur of shadow and limbs. The SUV spun slightly before Marcus corrected it. My seatbelt locked, biting into my ribs.

Damien had braced a hand across me, keeping me steady.

“Ariel,” he said softly. “Breathe.”

I didn’t realize I hadn’t been.

The SUV crawled to a stop.

Marcus whispered, “Tell me that killed it.”

But even before he finished, the air shifted again—colder this time.

I turned toward the left window. The grass in the ditch bent inward as something crawled back into form. A shape pulled itself together out of smoke, slow and deliberate.

Damien muttered a curse I’d only heard him use once.

“What?” I asked.

He didn’t take his eyes off it.
“That shouldn’t be possible.”

The creature raised its head. No eyes now—just hollow sockets. Emptier than before.

Its mouth opened again.

But this time… a voice came out.

Soft.

Unfamiliar.

Yet horribly familiar at the same time.

“Ariel.”

My fingertips went numb.

Marcus whispered, “Shit… that’s a human voice.”

No.

Not a human’s.

A voice I knew.

Ethan’s.

My chest tightened. “No… no, that’s not possible. That can’t be him—”

Damien’s hand closed around mine immediately. “It’s not him. It’s a mimic. A trick.”

But the sound came again—low, frayed.

“Ariel… help me.”

My throat closed.

The creature dragged itself forward a few centimeters, each movement crackling like broken branches.

“Please…”
The voice wavered.
“Why did you leave me?”

Something in me curled in on itself.

Ethan had asked me that once. With the same break in his voice.

I shook my head. “Damien… make it stop.”

“I will.”

He opened the door.

“Wait—what are you doing?” I grabbed his sleeve, panic tightening my grip.

He didn’t look back. “Ending this.”

“Damien—”

He stepped out.

The night swallowed him.

Marcus’s hand hovered over the lock switch. “Do I follow?”

“No,” I whispered. “He wants it to come to him, not us.”

Outside, Damien walked slowly, shoulders squared, his steps steady.

The creature rose onto shaking limbs, the stolen voice spilling out again—this time a choked, broken whisper:

“Ariel… don’t go with him… please…”

My breath caught. For a moment I forgot how to exist.

And then Damien spoke, his voice cold and unshakable:

“Use her voice again, and I’ll tear you apart from the inside.”

The creature tilted its head, the sockets widening.

“Ari—”

Damien moved.

Not shifted—
But faster than any human.

The creature hit the ground before it finished the syllable.

I pressed my palm to the window, my breath fogging the glass.

He was protecting me. But the voice…

That wasn’t random.

That wasn’t an accident.

Something in me knew—deep, instinctive—that the creature hadn’t chosen Ethan’s voice just to hurt me.

It had chosen it because something in my magic recognized him.

Damien pinned the creature, claws sinking into its shadow-like form. The thing writhed, shrieking without a sound.

“Don’t look,” Marcus told me quietly.

But I did.

And for the briefest moment—just a flicker—I saw something beneath the creature’s smoke-like skin.

A human shape.

A face blurred by darkness.

And I heard the voice once more—weak, distant, fading:

“Ariel… I’m sorry…”

My pulse stopped.

That wasn’t mimicked.

That wasn’t stolen.

That was Ethan.

Or what was left of him.

The creature dissolved into ash, scattering across the road like burnt paper.

Damien stood there, chest rising and falling steadily, watching the ashes disappear into the wind.

He didn’t come back to the car right away.

He knew what I had heard.

He knew what it meant.

And so did I.

Ethan wasn’t just somewhere in the world.

He wasn’t missing.

He wasn’t alive.

He was changing into something else.

Something calling for me.

Something I wasn’t supposed to feel connected to.

Something tied to my bloo
dline.

Damien finally walked back, his expression unreadable.

He opened the door slowly. “Ariel… don’t panic.”