“He can’t help you, don’t you see?” Edward grunted. “He made Alice. He’s as bad as the doctor.”
I heard my name called outside—Montgomery was shouting for me. Another gunshot rang out. Something flashed by the door, leaving only dust in its wake.
Edward heard my gasp and turned.
“They’re inside the walls,” I said.
Forty-four
SNARLS TORE THE AIR. A shelf of tiles crashed right outside the barn. Two more gunshots.
Edward dragged me into the tack room and slammed the door, sealing us in. In the second his back was turned, I grabbed the hoof pick and hid it in the folds of my skirt.
“I can protect you, Juliet,” he said. “We’re similar, you and I. Both children of the same monster. Both capable of his same atrocities.”
I pressed the pad of my thumb into the pick’s sharp point. “That’s not true. I haven’t killed,” I said.
“Not yet. But you would. To defend Montgomery. To defend yourself.” He lunged at me. I gasped and struggled, but he only wrestled the pick from my hand.
He studied the sharp point, as if to prove his point. “There’s a darkness inside you. Don’t deny it—you know it’s true. You feel it. It’s the animal in you, stirring, hungry for unnatural things. Just like me.”
He turned and hurled the pick against the back wall, where it dented the wood with a thud. I threw my hands over my ears, pressing my eyes shut. But I felt his presence in front of me, coldness and scars. His hands covered mine, drifting into my hair, his fingers running along my scalp. “I loved you the first moment I saw you. Helplessly. Passionately. I love you more than he does.” His breath was just inches from my own.
“Stop. Please.” I squeezed my eyes harder. I should have twisted away, but my body didn’t obey. “You know it’s impossible. You’re a murderer. . . .”
His hands tightened in my hair. “And what do you think Montgomery’s doing out there? Don’t you hear the gunshots? We’re all animals! We all fight to survive.”
His skin was on fire. His lips grazed my neck, and my larynx tensed, ready to scream. My eyelids shot open, my vision glassy and unfocused.
“We belong together. Not to serve your father’s mad experiment. But because we’re the same.” His open palm covered my heart, just grazing the exposed skin above my collar. I gasped at his touch. Fear and thrill were divided by such a fine line that I couldn’t tell which plucked at the tight strings in my chest. And was he really so wrong? I did know about the darkness he spoke of. As much as I loved Montgomery, he couldn’t understand it like Edward.
Something thudded at the door, and the wooden latch splintered. The door burst open. Edward spun around, nearly knocking over the lantern. Montgomery stood three paces away, a gash running down his face, with the rifle aimed at Edward.
“Get away from her,” Montgomery said. Mud streaked his clothes. “I’ll blast a hole in your goddamned chest.”
“Montgomery, don’t!” I yelled. I shouldn’t have cared about Edward’s safety. He was a monster and a murderer and the last person I should defend. But it was too late.
Montgomery paused just long enough for Edward to attack. A low growl rumbled in Edward’s chest before he leapt across the room, knocking Montgomery’s gun to the floor.
I screamed—it was like Edward was suddenly a different creature, wild and violent. Gone were the gold-flecked eyes, now black as night except for an electric ring of yellow iris around slitted pupils. His clothes strained over muscles that seemed to grow larger by the second. The way he moved was calculated, threatening, like he was stalking prey.
He knocked Montgomery down with the force of three men.
I wanted to scream for him to stop, but my voice was gone. Edward was changing. Its bones along my bones, he had said. Its blood in my veins. The animal part of him—the jackal, the fox, along with whatever other bits and pieces of other species Father had added—really did live inside him, lurking, waiting for its chance to transform Edward into the monster Father had made him.
His knuckles were red and knobby, so swollen I thought they might split and seep blood. As I watched, his fingers seemed to grow. Tendons snapped. The metacarpal bones grated against each other. The hair on his arms darkened, until he looked nearly as beastly as the wild dogs that haunted the outskirts of farms.
I dug the heels of my palms into my eye sockets, convinced his transformation must be a trick of my eyes. But when I looked again, it was the same. The palmar ligaments in his hand twisted and popped, bending the fingers. He grabbed the door to slam it shut. The way his gnarled fingers knotted, the sweaty handprint on the door looked as though he had only three fingers. Just like the three-toed prints on the cabin porch. But what animal could he have been made from that only had three toes?
A heron. One of the animals Edward had listed. The realization nearly knocked me flat.
Montgomery struggled to his feet. Blood dripped from Edward’s knuckles, though he hadn’t cut them. He balled his hands in pain and growled deep in his throat. Three black claws slid out between the knuckles of each hand. They were retractable, so that in his human form there had been no sign of them lingering beneath the surface. One claw was missing on his right hand, I realized—cut off by my own shears.
I stumbled and my hip connected hard with the corner of the saddle stand, but I felt nothing. Shock had rendered me blank inside. I’d wanted not to believe it. The change in Edward was hard to define. He was larger. Darker. And yet as my eyes slid over his face and body, I couldn’t name one clear thing that was different. I’d have said his fingernails were black, and yet when I really looked, they were unchanged. It was like looking at stars—one could only see them clearly from the corner of one’s eye.
But the claws, at least, were no trick of my eye. He raised them like deadly knives in Montgomery’s direction. “Edward, stop!” I screamed. But he didn’t seem to hear me.
Edward slammed Montgomery against the wall of bridles with enough force to crack the boards. The seam of his shirt split around his shoulders. He had gotten larger. I rubbed my eyes, trying to see clearly.
Montgomery managed to twist out of his grasp. Leather straps fell, tangling around them. If I could get closer, I could pull one down and try to get it around Edward’s neck like a noose.
Edward curled his gnarled fist. The black claws dripped with blood. Suddenly they retracted, and he punched Montgomery so hard that the wall cracked under his weight.