Page 29 of Tenebrous

Mud and dried crimson cover every inch, turning the injuries into something grotesque. A cold numbness spreads throughout my chest, leeching into my arms and neck. The severity of my injuries finally registers, and a violent shudder brings vomit up my throat until I turn and spill my guts onto the stone floor. Burning agony unlike anything I've ever felt renders me completely useless.

Above, eerily still, the monster's gaze remains fixed on my lower half. Almost hungrily. Its golden eyes trace the length of my body before returning to my face, and I suddenly understand how a wounded deer must feel when it finds itself in the hunter's trap.

Unable to run. Unable to fight.

“What are you gonna do with me?” I spit, still coughing on my own puke.

It just stares for half a second before reaching for my left leg.

"No!" The word tears from my throat instantly, but its hand keeps coming. "No. No, don't fucking touch me."

Every survival instinct I possess screams at me to get away, to do something, but I'm completely immobilized. I can't even fucking crawl fast enough. Instead, I remain exactly where I am, trapped inside a body that doesn’t seem to work.

The creature's enormous hand settles around my hip, seeming to squeeze the pain right through me. I try to shout, but all that comes out is air. When its grip tightens, I realize for one horrible moment exactly what it's planning to do.

"No. Please, don’t.”

It plants its other hand against my thigh, holding me down, and the panic is instant. I start to thrash wildly, even if I know logically I have no chance at stopping this from happening.

The monster growls low in its chest, then pushes violently, popping my hip back into place. A shriek tears itself from my lungs so forcefully that it hurts. The cavern vanishes, taking everything with it, as white-hot pain consumes me.

I don't know if it lasts seconds or minutes, but when awareness finally returns, my throat is raw and tears stream down the sides of my face. Unintelligible words bubble out of me as the thing releases my hip, shifting its attention to my other leg.

"Stop it. Please.”

Its human-like fingers wrap around the limb, brows furrowing into something like annoyance. Then it presses its thumb into my gunshot wound, and the world explodes a second time. Intense agony floods my system, every nerve igniting as if fire burns beneath my flesh.

A deep, vibrating growl rolls from the creature's chest, and that's the last thing I hear before everything simply ceases to exist.

Chapter

Twelve

The Monster

Humans are fragile creatures. I learned that decades ago.

They are soft and pliable, easy to break. Killing them usually takes little to no effort. By all accounts, the one lying beneath my hands should already be dead. His wounds reek of iron and smoke.

Human weapons are strange things, capable of causing terrible damage from a great distance. I have seen what they do to flesh before. Usually, there is nothing left to salvage. Somehow, my human still breathes.

His chest rises and falls unevenly beneath my palm. Every few moments, a tremor passes through his body, and a soft whine escapes him. I know that sound. Most creatures make it before they die, but I do not want this one to die.

That thought settles heavily inside me, and my hands go still over the cloth absorbing his blood.

For a long moment, I simply stare at him, at his damp curls matted with dirt. Bruises mottle his skin, and a strange expression remains even in sleep, as though he is fighting something I cannot see.

Humans have entered my territory before. Hundreds. I've avoided them, killed them, fed upon them, and protected this mountain from them. Never once have I cared whether they lived or died as long as they kept away.

At least, until now. This one is different, and I do not understand why.

The feeling has followed me ever since his scent first reached me through the trees. It remains even now, with him broken and bleeding on the stone floor of my den. This mountain feels different with his presence. Whatever restless feeling that has plagued me for days has finally eased now that he's in my grasp.

It should be comforting, this sensation. Instead, it upsets me.

Nothing has changed. The forest and tunnels are still mine, and yet when I look down at my human, I know that something is different. I just simply do not know what.

He stirs beneath me, an agonized groan escaping his lips, and I lower my head without thinking to listen for his heartbeat. It is faint, but still there. Still alive.