Page 9 of Horns & Heart
This fifth monster was just as horned as the others, but his skin was darker, almost midnight blue.His horns were the same color, dark as the midnight sky, and he wore a black hoodie with his black hair much shorter than the others’, just a casually messy length.
He was calm in the way coiled snakes at the zoo are calm, and I could tell that this one was a killer.Even more so than Inkiri was.This one was good at it.He had that vibe.I’d seen it before over the last two years, even if I wished I hadn’t.His steel-gray eyes were piercing, looking right into my soul.
“I find it’s rather easy to tell when humans are lying.You’re lying.Why are you trying to run?”He said that so lightly, but nothing about this situation was light.My heart was racing in my chest, and his glare was getting more withering by the second.
“Vergis, what is this?”Inkiri said from behind monster number five, a.k.a.the scary one, a.k.a.Vergis, apparently.
“The one who’s been calling to you was trying to leave.”Vergis took a step away from me.“You might want to keep an eye on him.”He turned and walked away toward the metal staircase.When he rounded the corner, not only did he vanish into the shadows under it, he also went completely silent; no echo of footsteps, nothing.
Inkiri did the head tilt, left, right.“That’s true what he said, isn’t it.You want to leave?”
Whether it was something in Inkiri’s soft, almost breakable tone of voice or whether it was meeting the super scary Vergis, I…started sobbing.And crying.I could feel myself dissolving in a way I had almost never allowed myself to after everything, after watching Cat and Jacob turn to ash and knowing all lovers had left the world in ash and nothingness, and that I was to blame.
“Please, I…I’ll just go, okay?I’m not with any other humans, so I won’t tell anyone where you are, and you can do whatever you want, but…I just don’t want to get eaten.Or become your…your…slave.Please.Let me go, okay?”
Slowly, ever so slowly, Inkiri stepped closer, reached out, and wiped a tear from my left cheek.“No one will eat you.No one will enslave you.Rory, I would not hurt you, not when I am hoping that you will allow me to prove myself.I’m hoping you will take me as your mate.”
That drop bombed, and so did my jaw.Goshdarnit, what my only occasionally sober aunt had said was right after all: the only thing men wanted was sex, and that didn’t change when they had horns.Or blue skin.She hadn’t said the bit about the horns or blue skin, but I inferred.
Inkiri leaned in.“I hope, with time, you will see past my lack of boobs.”His voice had dropped to a low, pleasant rumble, making it that much more awkward for the both of us.
Oh, how truly, truly sorry I was for making the apocalypse happen with a single, stupid wish.This was clearly the universe getting back at me for that.
