Not an animal one, a human one, rage and vengeance. She comes out of nowhere, something thick and silver in one hand, and without a hitch in her step she swings it over her head. The tire iron misses the flayed man’s skull but cracks onto his shoulder, and he goes down with a screech and a spray of blood.
“Eat that, motherfucker!” Veer shouts. Her eyes are huge, her voice is too loud. Terror, shock, probably both. She tries to offer me a hand. God, I want to take it. But what happens when the flayed man’s paralysis lifts? Where does that leave me and the hunger ready to crawl out of my skin?
“Get out of here.” I hate the way my voice sounds, raspy and muddled. “I can’t—”
The flayed man rises from where she crumpled him. Veer’s scream smears red across my vision.
I was angry before. Now, I’m not anything. I’m just an animal.
26
MY CHEST EXPLODES IN WET AGONY, AND THEN I’Mdifferent, pelvis twisting, knees cracking backward, fangs shearing through the soft flesh of my lower lip as I fight to not bite off my own tongue. Instinct blurs my thoughts to pinpricks of sensation.
I cling to my sanity and point my fury toward the flayed man.
I hit him like a car accident. My claws snap through his rotting tendons like guitar strings as I tear him off Veer. She lands limp on her back.
The flayed man laughs hoarse and harsh, like the whir of a garbage disposal. His blood-soaked arms snake out, and I hit the ground with enough whiplash to blur my vision. His hoof-foot digs into the cavernous remains of my torso, and reality goes blurry at the edges.
“This isn’t going to change anything,” he snarls. “Stop trying.”
I spit blood and saliva and wrath up at him. It froths over my lips but goes no farther. He shifts his weight, and my head spins with the sound of a thousand bowls shattering as the edges of my ruined rib cage slice black ribbons across the skinned soles of his feet. Thick, heavy drops weep into the void of my chest, and I feel a twisting in my lungs, like his worms have slithered their way inside.
He steps back and I roll myself over, try to get back on all fours. My claws slip on the hard-packed ground. The flayed man laughs again.
“Have you ever eaten a heart?” he asks. Something’s broken in my pelvis. No, everything’s broken. My lips won’t close over my teeth. Instinct pilots my legs under me, and I try to hold on to a sliver of myself by reciting the names of bones. Ilium. Sacrum. Coccyx.
“Of course not.” He’s on all fours too now, thrusting his snout in close. Frontal bone. Nasal bone. Maxilla. Mandible. “You wouldn’t dare. But I’ve lived a thousand years and I’ve dared a thousand times, and for you I’ll make it a thousand and one.”
He leans over me, and worms emerge from his flesh like white threads. They land on me like raindrops, wriggling where they touch exposed skin. On my arm, one lifts a delicate head to expose a faceless abyss of teeth.
Scapula. Humerus. Radius. Ulna.
Those tiny teeth kiss me, and with the latch of its mouth my senses light up with countless other tiny pressure points, other worms. The flayed man crouches low, one taloned foot tracing the rupture in the center of my chest. I imagine my heart there on display, no longer protected by ribs or flesh or iron.
Cervical. Thoracic. Lumbar.
The worms carve cavities into my musculature. The flayed man’s touch shaves away the iron woven through my skeleton. I’m losing control and I can’t get away and I’m buckling, weakening.
Femur. Tibia. Fibula. Patella.
The flayed man’s hand catches behind the barbed wire of my broken ribs and I forget every name of every bone I ever learned in nursing school.
I’m going to die, and it’s my fault.
No. Not like this. I won’t be a sacrifice to something who only sees me as the next in a line of a thousand faceless sacrifices. I’m a monster and a ruin and a daughter without a mother and I’m going to kill him right fucking back.
I let go of the final shreds of control and my curse rears up with a scream so loud it burns my tongue. His fingers scrape my lungs and then my claws are tearing through him, snapping bone as the worms infecting me squirm impotently. Claws aren’t enough. I dive my snout into the ruin of his chest cavity and my dagger fangs close around the pulsing sac of blood and flesh and power inside. I rip free, and the animal I am howls something ancient and unholy through my mouth as I bite down. My mouth floods with a taste like stale breath and ancient magic.
Eventually, he stops fighting.
I blink, and all that’s left of him is a wet stain brushstroked across the dirt. I watch it seep into the indifferent throat of the desert. My stomach clenches, and I retch up a mouthful of white worms. All dead. I dip my snout and wrench the rest of them out of me by their tails. They burst under my claws, and the desert rushes to absorb their innards.
Brightness is starting to crest the mountains, but the sun isn’t up yet. My curse is me and I am my curse, and I haven’t lost control. I’m alive, I’m pure animal, I’m realer than I’ve ever been. The air is iridescent with scent. Scarred metal and day-baked dirt, sick blood like iron filings and choked-up organs, and healthy blood like panic and pain. And fear. Fear that clogs my nose and seeps into my brain, fogging my thoughts.
It’s coming from behind me.
Hunger scrapes my shins. I turn and there’s Veer, huddled against her busted-up car. The one surviving headlight illuminates her from below like a ghoul. Rusty spatters paint her shirt, a red welt works its way across her neck. Her eyes are dark as the mountains at night, and huge with terror.
