And Fred had tried to kill her. Even though he hadn’t intended to. Even though he’d never been a violent person before. He’d tried to murder someone.
Something told him he wasn’t going to go unpunished.
INTERLUDE VI
Grace hadn’t been touched – yet. By the looks of the rest of the club members in the room that was strange. Even Ciaran, who had only been brought in two days ago, had lost his tongue. But that strangeness was replaced by dread when she finally asked a question about her best friend.
“Where’s Angelica?”
Nobody answered. They didn’t have to.
MAX MARSHALL
Poppy
Four days had passed since Andrew and Dorian saved Poppy’s life. She’d spent most of that time recovering in Dorian’s bed; it hadn’t taken much to convince the rest of the club that she had fallen ill. Her health had been all over the place for weeks, after all, and she’d taken the argument with Casey badly. When Poppy finally left Dorian’s bedroom she could tell by the looks on everyone’s faces that they felt horribly guilty about ignoring her.
Now they were overcompensating, and Poppy found it suffocating.
“Poppy, you really do seem to be working hard to try and kill yourself these days!”
“Remember it’s okay to take a break now and then. Don’t overwork yourself.”
“Hey, I’m sure if you went to Casey and apologised she’d –”
“Thank you, everyone,” Poppy cut in, trying her hardest to keep her irritation and – though she’d never had to deal with it before this summer – anxiety from her face. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Nate, who smiled at her nervously as if he was unsure about whether it was okay for him to approach Poppy after days of not speaking to her.
Poppy closed the gap between them in answer to his expression. “Hey,” she said, “are we okay, Nate? Or are things still weird?”
He laughed in relief, running a hand through his faded silver hair – it was in need of a re-dye. “Of course, Morph. I’m sorry I’ve been a dick.”
“You’d have to talk to me to be a dick, you dick.”
“Point taken. But even so…Poppy, are you okay?” Nate’s question was asked very quietly, for Poppy’s ears only. From the frown of concern on his face she understood very clearly that the question was about more than merely their relationship.
She sighed. “Rich told you, didn’t he? About finding me in the kitchen.” Poppy barely suppressed a shudder at the memory of what had directly followed Nate’s best friend leaving the kitchen, but to her relief Nate didn’t notice.
“He may have…mentioned it, yeah,” he replied, eyes on the floor as if he was ashamed of himself. “And I didn’t – I really didn’t mean to make you feel so bad. And I know Casey didn’t, either. Or anyone else in the club for that matter. But –”
“Nate, it’s okay,” Poppy cut in, feeling wildly uncomfortable by his apology. “None of you did anything wrong. Not even Casey. I mean, she was right. She –”
“Poppy, let me finish.”
She was taken aback by the seriousness in Nate’s voice. He looked her square in the eyes, the deep brown of his irises clouded over by something Poppy couldn’t quite understand. But she nodded silently, allowing Nate to finish what he was trying to say unimpeded.
“You don’t…you really don’t confide in anyone about anything serious, Morph. Not even Rachelle, and she’s your best friend. There’s been something wrong with you all summer – something really wrong – and it seems like you can’t trust any of your friends to help you through it. Except maybe Andrew, but something tells me you aren’t being completely honest with him either.”
Poppy winced, because until three days ago everything Nate had just said was scarily accurate. But now Andrew did know everything. About the monsters, and the human trafficking, and the state of everyone who had gone missing over summer so far. Poppy had laid it all on Andrew’s shoulders so quickly that she was unsure he had really taken it all in.
But he had to. Poppy did need help, and she wasn’t afraid to admit it now.
It just…couldn’t be Nate that helped her. Or even Rachelle. Poppy couldn’t find it in her to drag them into her nightmare. But Andrew had worked things out – Andrew, who was simultaneously the most observant and densest person Poppy had ever met. Andrew, who had saved her life. Come hell or high water he was in this with her.
“Morph…?”
Poppy shook her head sadly. “You’re right, Nate. Of course you are. But I’m just…very confused right now. About my life. About where it’s going when summer ends. It’s not really something you or anyone else can help with.”
“That’s bullshit!”
“No, it’s the truth,” she fired back, hackles raised on instinct by the tone of Nate’s voice. But the look of hurt he gave her caused Poppy to calm down immediately. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, turning away for her bedroom before she could say anything else to further damage her already doomed relationship with Nate.
Poppy wished the summer could be over already. That everything that was going to happen had happened and she could move on with whatever life she had left once the dust finally settled. But she couldn’t do that. She had too much to do.
When she caught Casey watching her with a torn expression on her face Poppy forced herself to ignore her. She didn’t have time to deal with petty apologies over rivalries that didn’t matter, even though that very rivalry had been what drove Casey into Patrick’s arms in the first place.
No, Poppy told herself. Casey would have slept with him anyway. And Dorian was never going to deny Patrick’s request to have her, either. Casey was a lost case from the start.
But that didn’t make her friend’s fate any easier to bear, nor did it make Poppy’s own conflicting feelings for Dorian any easier to ignore. She hated herself for the way she felt about him.
And yet it was Dorian who had saved her from a man, not the other way around. Fred was as much a monster as Dorian was, and he didn’t have the excuse that he needed to eat humans to survive. Poppy retched simply thinking about Fred; when she reached the corridor containing the board members’ bedrooms her heart raced wildly upon spying his door. When it opened she almost screamed.
“King, please –”
“Get the hell away from me,” she mouthed, words silent on her terrified tongue as she wrenched open her own door and slammed it in Fred’s pale, wretched face.
“Poppy, open the door! Let me explain! Poppy –”
“Leave her the fuck alone, Fred.”
Poppy’s eyes darted to her door. The voice was Andrew’s, though she’d never heard it sound so harsh – he never, ever swore.
“Andrew,” Poppy heard Fred protest, his voice almost as manic as it had been when he’d attacked her, “you don’t understand. I have to –”
“I understand more than you think. Don’t go near her again.”
A stretch of awkward, agonised silence fell and then, after another few moments, Poppy heard the angry closing of a door.
“I won’t let him near you,” Andrew mumbled just loud enough for Poppy to hear, all the sharp edges lost from his voice immediately. “I won’t, I swear, Poppy, so just rest, okay?”
A surge of affection hit Poppy like a train. This was the same Andrew who always came running to her whenever he was feeling anxious or confused or bothered by something – who would knock on her door at two in the morning to ask Poppy some ridiculous question that was, of course, not ridiculous to Andrew at all.
And now he was protecting her despite everything she’d told him about her deal with Dorian Kapros.
Poppy stifled a sob.
Resting was the last thing she had time to do.
DONALD BROWN
Dorian
“Poppy King, get over here.”
Dorian watched as Poppy seemed to hesitate before answering Nick’s call, who was standing at the base of the cliffs behind the facility, hand shielding h
is eyes from the sun as he looked up at them.
Everyone was outside in the meadow enjoying the pleasant weather before the ominous clouds creeping up on the horizon ruined it. Nate and Rich had strung up a net to play volleyball after requesting Patrick buy one for them. Aisling was watching them play from her sprawled position on a blanket, whilst Steven was playing cards with some of the male club members Dorian hadn’t much bothered to get to know.
For the first time that summer, he felt deeply uncomfortable knowing that they were interacting with people they fully expected to die. But it was Nick calling Poppy over that concerned Dorian for now; the glint of interest in the man’s eye was not something he especially relished.
Dorian knew Nick was interested in buying Poppy. More than interested, going by his comments over the past couple of weeks. Dorian had hoped that Poppy’s propensity to pass out and become bedridden for several days at a time would have deterred Nick, but no. Nothing seemed to have worked.
If only she didn’t bloody show off, he thought wretchedly, though he knew that, most of the time, Poppy wasn’t deliberately showing off at all. She merely thrived when she was climbing and swimming and running and diving and just about anything else physical. Dorian never saw her more alive than when she had a particularly difficult goal in mind that she fully intended to smash.
“What’s up, Nick?” Poppy asked carefully when she reached his side. Though Poppy always seemed small next to Dorian, since even in human form he towered over her, next to Nick’s height pared with his broad shoulders and chest she looked absolutely tiny. He didn’t want to think about how easily Nick’s true form could break her in two.
Nick’s eyes gleamed. He nodded up at the cliffs. “How high d’you reckon you could make it free-climbing? Without chickening out, I mean.”
Oh fuck no.
Despite her knowing exactly why Nick was asking, and innately understanding how foolish and downright dangerous it was to react to his question, Dorian could only watch helplessly as Poppy readjusted her ponytail with a fiery expression that yelled challenge accepted.
“Just watch and see,” she said, and before anyone could suggest anything to the contrary she began scaling the side of the cliff.
“For fuck’s sake, Poppy!” Dorian shouted despite himself, garnering far more attention than he wanted as he bolted towards the cliff, where an amused and very impressed Nick stood observing Poppy’s daredevil ascent.
And though everyone had now stopped what they were doing to watch what was going on with various looks of curiosity, joy, concern and outright terror, Dorian knew that nothing anybody said was going to draw Poppy back down to the meadow.
Which meant he had to go up to her.
Shaking his head at how ridiculous the situation had become, Dorian spared half a second to sweep his gaze across Poppy’s rapt audience one final time. He spied Fred sitting at a picnic table, his lunch all but forgotten as he stared up helplessly at the person he’d so viciously attacked who was, for all intents and purposes, completely fine.
Dorian didn’t want to think about Fred, because then he’d murder him in front of everyone for sure, so he located the best place to begin scaling the cliff and promptly started doing so. Poppy was well ahead of him, but it didn’t matter.
He wasn’t a mountain goat for nothing.
“Oh my god – how is Dorian so fast?!” he heard Casey exclaim in wonder, down below, as he rapidly closed the gap between himself and Poppy.
Dorian relished the strain on his muscles as he pushed them to support his reckless climb. The burn of them. The adrenaline urging him higher. It was the closest his body had felt to being his in a long time.
He was satisfied when Poppy paused long enough to turn her head to see what was going on; the grin that spread across her face when she realised Dorian was just five feet below her made him feel giddy.
“I wondered how stupid I’d have to be for you to actually climb, Dorian,” she laughed, clearly full of just as much delirious adrenaline as he was. Her laugh propelled him up the cliff even faster until, in the space of a second, he surpassed her.
“You’re so slow!” he exclaimed, soaking up the clamour of noise from the watching audience like a sponge.
“Poppy, get back down here!” Rachelle shrieked, clearly terrified for her friend. “Don’t you remember what happened last time? You’re going to fall!”
“As if I’d let that happen a second time!” Poppy called back as she worked hard to keep up with Dorian’s breakneck climbing pace.
“If you fall from up there you’ll die.”
Poppy merely laughed like the somewhat mentally unhinged, invincible being that she was. Now that Dorian was up on the cliff with her instead of down below watching with everyone else, he found that he no longer cared that Poppy was showing off and acting dangerously.
She was perfectly matched for him. Dorian had never met anyone so suited to being with him in his entire life. It didn’t matter that Nick would undoubtedly push to buy Poppy even harder after this. He would never have her.
Nobody would, except for Dorian.
*
Poppy
When Poppy finally reached the top of the cliff, lungs burning for air and muscles twitching, she found Dorian sprawled on the grass laughing like a madman.
“Too…slow,” he got out, eyes full of mirth as Poppy collapsed beside him.
“Fucking goat,” she said, words barely audible against her gasps for air. Up at the top the two of them could no longer hear what anyone in the meadow was shouting below them; it was bliss.
“Who are you giving up and saving this week?” Dorian asked, souring the mood immediately.
Poppy scowled. “Why would you…ask such a thing now?”
“Because I don’t want the question to interfere with what happens next.”
“And what would that be?”
When Dorian glanced at the knotted grove of trees some distance in front of them, Poppy’s heart lit up. She’d been wanting to explore up here ever since she’d first spied the forest from Dorian’s bedroom weeks ago.
“How did you know I wanted to check that forest out?”
Dorian smiled softly. “I didn’t. It’s where I was born, though, so I always wanted to show you it.”
Poppy was taken aback. “You were…born in a forest?”
“Let’s get the difficult stuff out of the way first. I’d rather like to enjoy the afternoon before – ah, never mind,” he murmured as a drop of rain fell on his face.
“A bit of rain has never stopped me before,” Poppy said, when the rain began to fall in earnest, “and it certainly won’t now.”
“That was the right answer.” Dorian flipped onto his feet gracefully before holding out a hand to help Poppy back up. She didn’t take it, fighting her exhausted muscles to stand up by herself instead. Dorian merely rolled his eyes. “You’re allowed to accept help sometimes, you know.”
The remark caused Poppy to remember what Nate had said, which Poppy didn’t like thinking about at all. “Max Marshall,” she said, to hide her discomfort, “the one with red hair playing cards with Steven. I’m sacrificing him.”
“Any particular reason why?”
“I’m running out of good reasons,” she admitted. “He doesn’t really have any aspirations for his life. I suppose I didn’t, either, so it’s a shitty reason to sacrifice someone, but I guess it’ll have to do.”
Dorian didn’t comment on this. He wiped rain off his face with a hand before asking, “And who are you saving?”
“Donald. That quiet guy who’s friends with Paul. Nice guy. Training to be a doctor.”
“Definitely a good reason to save someone.”
Poppy grimaced. “Can we stop talking about this stuff now?”
Dorian grinned. “Absolutely. Now…” He walked over to the edge of the cliff, looking down and waving at the people below like an idiot, laughing when a wordless wall of shouting hit him in response. Poppy couldn’t
help but join him for a moment, giving Nate the finger when she spied his tiny figure doing the same to her.
“Would you agree they can’t see past the actual edge of the cliff, Poppy?” Dorian asked as he moved away.
She eyed him curiously. “I’m fairly certain they’d have to be in your bedroom to get any kind of view of the top. Why?”
“Excellent.”
“Dorian, what – why are you dropping your human form?!”
For no sooner had Poppy answered his question than the very edges of Dorian’s body began to ripple and warp right in front of her eyes until, a few seconds later, she was met with all eight feet of his towering, inhuman, true form.
And then he was gone, darting towards the grove of trees before Poppy could shout out in protest. Not knowing what else to do, she ran after him through the steadily increasing downpour, legs protesting against doing something so physical after literally scaling a cliff. When she finally reached the edge of the trees Dorian was nowhere to be seen so, with no other option in front of her, Poppy entered the forest.
She wound through broad-leaved trees with wide trunks and heavy branches, enjoying the sound the rain made as it hit the canopy above her. After a few minutes shadowy-dark conifers began to creep around her, and all sounds seemed to disappear altogether. Beneath Poppy’s feet was a layer of absorbent, spongy moss, making her a silent visitor in a forest that seemed entirely out of a fairy tale.
When she heard the sound of roaring water Poppy followed it. Before long she came upon a clearing, where a waterfall crashed into a pool as dark as the trees it reflected. Dorian was kneeling by it, washing his face and horns.
There was something about seeing Dorian like this outside, rather than in the artificial lighting of the facility, that set Poppy’s heart beating far too quickly. He seemed more realistic in the forest. More substantial, like he wasn’t simply a figment of her fearfully enticing imagination.
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