“Then it all comes oozing out. You’re afraid forher.” He tips his head toward me. “Afraid of what she will do… or what she won’t. Afraid she’ll abandon you and leave you all alone, just like everyone else in your life.”
I find myself flinching on Devon’s behalf.
“Glad to have captured your interest,” Devon manages faintly.
Turning his attention back to me, the Fear spawn nods thoughtfully, tapping his chin in faux consideration. “You know maybe I’ve been wrong this whole time about places like this. Maybe after I’m done devouring you, I’ll just set myself up right here. Be king of this little town. Might be nice.” He flashes that gap-toothed grin again, only now it is no longer charming, but threatening beneath its veneer of harmlessness. Like a bunny with rabies or something.
“Everyone will come here to see me, the one who defeated Death’s successor and claimed her territory,” he says in an airy tone, that sounds almost like he’s joking but I don’t think he is. “Fear conquers death, bitch!” He holds his fists up in triumph. “It sounds like something that should be on a plaque somewhere. Maybe that’ll be my first task for my little townspeople.”
It doesn’t take much to imagine Beecher under his influence, not with Danvers right next door. Fear causes humans to retreat, to hide, to protect themselves. But it also turns them against each other. Killing, stealing, hurting one another.
My friends. My makeshift family. Myhome.
I might not have claimed it, but Beecher belongs tome.
Fury ignites in me, a bright spark that burns at the fear binding me.
He throws his head back and laughs. “Don’t you know, anger is fear turned outward?”
What absolute psychobabble bullshit. And I should know. Anger is anger, perhaps generated by fear, but it is its own emotion. One that isnotwithin his control.
I steady that tiny flame, feeding it carefully. I am done with the bullshit. With thisrandoshowing up here and threatening me.
His grip on me breaks, and I don’t hesitate. I snap my hand up, attention focused on the glow of life in him, andpull.
His mouth drops open in a brief moment of surprise, then panic lights his face.
I tighten my mental grasp on the sunny flow of his life, so bright now with his recent feed from us. He gasps as it pours toward me, like warm caramel running off the spoon.
I can make this fast. End it right now by ripping his life away. It’ll look like a heart attack or a stroke, just as my father taught me. It raises fewer questions, especially when you’re feeding on humans who have family that might wonder why someone has aged sixty years in the minute and a half before they died.
But for this spawn, for one ofus, I’ve got a better idea.
He blanches, color draining from his face, first with surprise, and then literally, as his skin turns papery and aged. His short dark hair goes white in patches and then falls out.
His life swirls through me, and it’s a heady sensation. Not just the feeling of being sated, on the way to full, but the satisfaction oftakingwhat I need from him. It feels like I’ve been hobbling around my whole life with a broken leg, managing but with difficulty, but now, now I’m healed and I canrun.
Distant voices in my head whisper, then shout in warning:Jo. Jo! Jocasta, you need to stop! You’re going to kill him!
Reluctantly, I release my grip on the tattered remains of his energy.
The Fear spawn sags toward the ground, his clothes now loose and billowing around his small frame.
“Help, someone. Come help this elderly man,” I call without much enthusiasm. Still, one of the other hospital visitors looksup, bleary-eyed, from his phone and then hurries into the lobby through the revolving door.
I drag the Fear spawn over to the nearest bench by his now fragile-feeling arm. Devon, after a moment, grasps his other arm to help him sit.
When I stand over the spawn’s slumped body, he blinks up at me, eyes gone milky and white with cataracts. That cocky attitude has vanished like his hairline. He raises his hands in surrender, and they shake with both age and terror.
A gritty joy fills me at the sight.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“JT,” he says in a raspy, quavering voice.
“Right, so here’s the thing. I’m not going to kill you, JT. Though, let’s be clear, I absolutely could.” I bare my teeth at him in a grin, mainly because I can’t stop myself. I’m drifting on a ridiculous high. “Because you’re going to go tell everyone else that this is what happens when you come to Beecher and try to go up against me. Do you understand?”
A phalanx of nurses and orderlies bustle outside with a gurney, and I step back to let them through.
