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“He won’t hurt you. You won’t hurt me.” The last sentence was a whisper.
“Who is doing this?” My hand trailed down her shoulders, catching on her elbows.
“What would you do if you knew?” she asked.
“Turn them in.”
She laughed then, small and hollow. She pulled away, then pushed the covers off of her legs, reaching for her nightgown on the edge of the bed before slipping it over her shoulders.
I stood, stepping closer to her, and when she turned to me, she wrapped her arms around me, and the tenderness was so unlike her, like the ways I never wanted to be touched. But with her, with Sorina, I welcomed it. I wrapped my arms around her petite frame, and she tucked her head under my chin, only reachable because I was leaning down, forever toward her like she was the sun.
“I want you to have a normal life. Go to the winter formal. Fall in love. Get married. Have kids. Live in the charade created for you for as long as you can.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked, pulling away.
Sorina was crying, and her tears were red. She shook her head, running her hand up my chest. “You’re getting bigger,” she remarked.
“I guess,” I said. But it was true. Ever since we’d settled in Hart Hollow, I felt my skin stretched thin. When I slept, though rare, I ached in the mornings. Growth spurts.
“You won’t be able to help yourself, not if he lets you out.”
I let go then, dropping Sorina’s hand. “You’re going to stop that right now, and you’re going to tell me something, fuckinganythingreal. Or I’m going to tell someone what I saw. That I saw you covered in blood last night.”
Sorina’s jaw tensed. “I didn’t kill her, Nicholas. You know that. You know I tried to save her.”
I groaned, and it sounded like a growl. “I don’t know shit. All I know is this shit is pissing me off. Tell me something now, or I’m gone.”
“What if I want you gone?”
“Do you?”
Sorina didn’t speak; she didn’t tell me the truth. Instead, she walked to me, and I stood still. She placed her hands on my chest and moved them up to my neck. Her skin glowed in the darkness of her room, and her pale face beckoned me. I wanted to kiss her, strangle her, tie her up again. But, when I looked into her eyes, they were black. And she opened her mouth, exposing the teeth. The incisors that had always seemed a little longer were longer now than the rest of her teeth.
One hand traveled higher, gripping my throat. I reached for her hand. Trying to pull it away, and it wouldn’t budge.
“What are you doing?” I gasped.
“Giving you what you want,” she replied as she backed me out of the room to the staircase, and I struggled in earnest, grabbing her arm, yanking at it; it was useless, I couldn’t get her off of me, and she was backing me to the steps. I panicked. “Sorina,” I begged—her voice a prayer and a plea, the only pleasure I’d ever known.
She smiled, incisors gleaming white. Then, when my feet hit the top of the staircase, I thrashed. She pushed me one last step, and I didn’t fall; I didn’t tumble down. Because she still had my throat in her hands, and I was in the air, dangling from her small, outstretched arm.
It was impossible. No girl that small should have been able to hold someone like that. I was not yet my full height or strength, but it shouldn’t have been possible.
I struggled, gasping for air, and she stepped back, letting my feet hit the hardwood, releasing my neck.
I grabbed my neck, dropping to my knees, gasping. “What the fuck?”
“Am I? I think you know,” she said, backing away.
I straightened to my knees, one hand on my neck, one hand gripping the banister. “No,” I said, the reality washing over me, overtaking me. I’d left that life behind. It was fairytales and made-up stories to manipulate. It wasn’t real.
“Markus worshipped the son of a demon. And that son is here, Nicholas. The Devil has a need, has a hunger.”
“No.”
“I do too. And think you should leave,” she said, walking back into her bedroom, shrouded in darkness.
I wanted to follow her, to get more answers, but the flash of her teeth haunted me, aroused me, and made me sick.
