Monster

by Yolanda Olson

“You know, I don’t ask for much. At least I don’t think I do. All I wanted was for you to have at least two people with you at one time. Granted that the gypsy king there is big enough to be two people, that’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  I groaned loudly. Apparently, Cody hadn’t fallen for my ruse. Looking up I saw his legs dangling from one of the thick tree branches. Then he leaned over slightly and looked down at me with a less than amused look on his face.

  “How’d you know?” I asked standing up.

  “Simple. I heard you all whispering in the kitchen. Then I saw ‘you’ run out the front of the house screaming, with nothing behind you. When we got here and saw ‘Ava’, but not you, we figured you’d put the shape shifter up to helping you. And to tell you the truth, dolly that’s not such a great idea. Kaeden almost killed her in his fury. I guess he didn’t know about her secret. Then again, I did kind of force her into sharing it with him,” he said with a smirk.

  “How?” I asked pulling myself up the tree. When I reached his branch, I shimmed over to him and put my head on his shoulder.

  “I tried to kiss her,” he said laughing. “That confirmed it for Kaeden. He knew something was up and went all psycho vamp. Grabbed her by the neck, threw her against a tree. Man he was ready to kill her, until I said, ‘Charlie the jig is up.’ The look of shock on his face; I’ve never seen anything like it. He almost looked betrayed in a way you know?”

  I pulled back and looked at him suspiciously. Cody wasn’t one for being a saint and I couldn’t help but wonder if he did that purposely to cause a rift between the two friends.

  “No I didn’t do it on purpose,” he said noticing the look on my face. “I did it really to save her. I honestly thought he was going to tear her into shreds.” I stared at him with a doubtful look on my face. “Dolly, I swear!”

  “So where is he then?” I asked glancing down at Ryker, who was standing now looking up at us.

  “No idea. He got really, really mad. I mean he was shouting and everything. I did something I didn’t think I’d ever do. I actually helped Charlie,” he said rolling his eyes.

  “How?”

  “I guess Dracula really hates being lied to or having secrets kept from him. When she stood up after changing back to herself, he was so angry that he actually went after her. I mean I couldn’t just stand there and watch one of your friends kill another one of your friends, you know? I didn’t want to be the one that told you that either or both of them died; I’m sure it wouldn’t have gotten a great reception. Anyway so right when he was about to get to her, and I mean by like an inch, I shot over and grabbed his arms and restrained him. I told Charlie to scoot and held on to Kaeden until she did. For a second there I thought he was going to try to fight me for letting her go. But instead he just shook his head and gave me a small smile. Then he ran after her. I don’t know if he caught her though.”

  “Looks like we’re busted,” I called down to Ryker.

  Crossing his arms, he shook his head. “Well I’m almost home, so I’ll keep going. You know where to find it if you can ever get away.”

  I nodded and waved at him as he disappeared into the trees. I knew that Cody was going to ask me what the deal was. I knew that I was going to get a lecture for what I tried to do. I knew that he was probably going to chain me in a dark cellar with only water for running off like I did.

  He hopped off the tree branch and landed cleanly on the ground. I looked down at him. Smiling he held his hands up to me so that I could jump down into them. I stared at him for a moment. What were the chances he’d drop me to teach me a lesson?

  “Come on, dolly. Don’t you trust me anymore?” He shook his head slightly to the right to get his bangs out of his eyes. “Jump kid,” he said laughing.

  Taking a deep breath, I hopped down and he caught me cleanly. He gave me a quick kiss on the tip of my nose, and then set me down on the ground.

  “Now I know what you’re probably thinking. ‘Oh he’s never going to let me out of his sight again,’’ he said with a smile. “Well you’re right. I’m not letting you out of my sight. But I’ll be lenient about it or at least I’ll try to be.”

  “Cody I did it because I was desperate. Kae was obviously drawn to the fairgrounds for a reason and I knew that Ryker would let me go there if we could just get enough of the human scent on me. I didn’t think you guys would be all hardcore about keeping me surrounded at all times.”

  He smiled but didn’t say anything. I knew that I had dug my grave in a way without really meaning too. I spaced out as I felt him slide his arm around my waist but was quickly brought back by the persistent itching that came back with a vengeance.

  Sighing impatiently, I pushed him away gently and started to scratch my arm again. This time I scratched harder and faster. Cody stood there and watched me curiously as I dug further into my skin scratching as hard as I could.

  “Finn, stop,” he said suddenly pulling my hand away from my arm.

  Angrily I tore my hand away from him and started to scratch again. He reached for me again and I took a couple of steps back.

  “Stop Cody! I’m trying to get the itching to go away!”

  “By scratching yourself down to the bone? Look at yourself Finn!”

  I looked down at my arm and saw that I had indeed bore a hole into my skin. I looked up at him with frantic eyes and watched as his face changed from anger to fascination.

  “Whoa,” he whispered.

  “What?” I asked looking back down.

  My arm. It started to close the hole like it was never there. That’s when I noticed something odd. I felt myself starting to go in slow motion. I turned my face back to Cody but it felt like it was taking forever just to do the one simple motion.

  When I finally was able to look at him directly I saw a look of cold fury all over his face.

  “I get what's happening to you now, dolly.”

  It looked like he suddenly figured out the cause of my new problems. I opened my mouth to ask him but the only sound that came out of my mouth was a low, dry moan. I started to roll my eyes at the irony of how I was acting now, but that act almost took a full minute to do which left me blind and vulnerable until I was done.

  He looked at me again. His eyes turning into snake slits, the fury making his entire body shake. Then he said one word that shook me to my core.

  “Drake.”

  17. Final Transformation

  (Day 21)

  I laid in the dry leaves where Cody had left me. I didn't know exactly where he had gone, but I assumed it was to get help. Even in his enraged demonic state, he hadn't been able to lift me off the ground. My body dropped like an anchor and much like an anchor, had refused to budge.

  Cody paced back and forth like a vicious animal. He was so angry that he couldn't lift me off the ground and even angrier when he knew that he would have to leave me there to get help. He had leaned over me and told me to answer him with blinks. I was to blink once for no and twice for yes. He probably asked me are you going to be okay by yourself? at least ten times. I think we wanted me to blink once but I refused to let whatever it was that took over me, keep me down. I think part of the reason he left so angrily was because I told him I'd be okay.

  In his pacing fury he had spent a good deal mumbling about Drake. It seemed like he was putting pieces of a puzzle together. Now that I had some time to lay here by myself in the silence I started to go over the “evidence” in my head.

  Drake had been left alone with me when I had been put to sleep that one time for a matter of thirty minutes. No one saw him really leave to get his tattoo equipment; apparently he had some “special ink” as he told them there. He claimed he had gotten his gun on the way back, which was plausible because he could’ve sent a clone to do it.

  Unlike Ken’s work, Drake’s started to itch incessantly a few days after he had done it. The purpose of getting the work done by them, besides the obvious fact that they kept their shop open at night, was the fa
st healing process. Something definitely was sending off red flags on that account.

  Another thing that Cody reasoned to himself was that if Drake wanted to suddenly get back at Kaeden, attacking me somehow would be the perfect way to do it. It made sense to Cody; it made zero sense to me. I mean if Drake wanted to after Kaeden, a direct hit would’ve been more effective.

  The last thing that Cody rationed was that Drake disappeared shortly thereafter. He wasn’t sure where he had gone only that he had suddenly left. Of course that would make him look guilty, but I just couldn’t or maybe wouldn’t believe that Drake would do something like that.

  Not to me.

  We were friends.

  Weren’t we?

  I took a deep breath, which seemed to be about the only thing that I could still do that didn’t require an obscene amount of time to accomplish. In this state of whatever I was in, I felt as if even time was moving slower than usual. The clouds seemed to be inching along and the fresh snowflakes that were starting to fall through the night sky were moving so slowly that it seemed to take at least three minutes for one to land on the ground.

  I hope he comes back before I get buried under a snow mound, I thought to myself. Then again, I didn’t think it was supposed to snow tonight. The weather had been extremely weird lately. Snow, rain, clear, snow, rain, clear; I felt like I was stuck in an endless loop of only three phases of weather when I knew that it was capable of so much more.

  In my mind, I started to hum a meaningless tune to myself. I knew that if I tried to do it audibly, I’d probably take half an hour to hum one note. I decided to close my eyes. If something decided to come at me in this state, I’d rather not see it coming since I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it anyway.

  I lost track of time. I didn’t know how long it had taken Cody to leave and come back but I was actually surprised to see him come back with Remy. He knelt down next to me, and yanked her to her knees on the other side of me.

  “Fix it,” he said angrily.

  “I don’t even know what ‘it’ is, yet,” Remy retorted.

  They locked eyes angrily and I let out a long-suffering moan. It was meant to be a sigh. I was starting to get used to that clichéd noise that was starting to come deep from within me, but it wasn’t any less embarrassing.

  “It’s okay dolly,” Cody whispered to me as he ran his hands over my hair.

  “She’s gonna make it better.”

  I started to smile at him but he quickly put his fingers to my lips to stop me. In a weird way I was happy he did. I’d probably look like a psychotic circus freak by the time the smile was done spreading, unfreezing, and then finally dying.

  “Finnegan, I’m going to have to cut your skin off where he put the poison in. I can see still see it fresh, the arm is an angry scarlet, and I need to drain it. It will hurt but thankfully since you are almost paralyzed, you shouldn’t feel it.”

  I’m going to look like needlepoint by the time this is over.

  Whatever. As long as this was all over soon then I’d be fine with it. It’s not like they’d get to see me when I finally buried anyway. The smile started to spread across my face as I thought about finally being laid to rest for the duration of time. I couldn’t wait to finally experience death and not have to worry about anything anymore.

  “What’s with the smile, Finn,” Cody asked curiously.

  Since I couldn’t answer, I just blinked once for no and went back to mentally humming my new song.

  I felt a sting in my triceps. I felt the blade that she had suddenly dug in deeply and coarsely cut a wound into my arm. Then I felt the familiar tug of my skin being peeled off, only this time I heard the chunk hit the ground as she dropped it. Charlie was so much better at this, but since she wasn’t here, I’d take what I could get.

  I heard some rustling and Cody asking Remy what it was that she was holding. Not answering him, she lifted my arm with great effort and held it over something.

  Cody reached over and helped her keep a grip on my arm when she started grunting with effort.

  Since I had no idea what was going on, I decided to concentrate on something else. It was kind of hard to do what with Cody leaned half way over me and Remy giving my arm a shake and a squeeze every now and again.

  I closed my eyes. The first image that formed in front of me was Kendall. It was that same hike through the Marble Quarry that I relived so many times before. That was my favorite memory with her, even when we both almost slid off the cliff. I remembered the walk and the jokes we told. I remembered the way we shoved at each other when one of us got the other one good. I remembered the warmth of the sun on our faces even though it was a bitterly cold day. I remembered how young Kendall was and how she always told her friends that her big sister was her hero just as she did to anyone that would listen that day in the Quarry.

  Slowly I opened my eyes. I felt the tears slide down as I did. It took twenty-one days but I had made my decision. I knew what I was going to do and I had to be strong to be able to do it.

  “Alright Finnegan, we’re done,” Remy said finally setting my arm down on the waist scarf she had laid out on the ground. As Cody watched, she wrapped it around my arm a couple of times and then tied knots on both ends to keep it securely in place.

  “Can we get her up?” Cody asked her.

  “No, we’re going to have to let her get up on her own. Besides, I can barely lift her arm, let alone her entire person right now,” she said dryly.

  “Yeah, huh?”

  They sat there in silence. Every now and then one would lean over me to look down and see if I was okay or reacting differently yet. Remy was seated to my right softly singing a song in Romani. Cody was seated to my left with his arms wrapped around his knees. Every now and then, he would rock back and forth.

  I watched as the moon reached its peak. It seemed to be watching us carefully illuminating everything around us so that nothing could sneak up or attack. I smiled again. The moon actually seemed like it cared tonight. With as silly as it sounds, that’s how it felt for some reason.

  The moon suddenly seemed to move a little faster and I felt my body shudder. I watched it still, as it started to move swiftly to the west. I opened and closed my mouth but no sound came out. Cody having noticed my involuntary body movement followed my eyes up and then shrugged.

  How can he not be worried? I wondered frantically to myself.

  My eyes cut to Remy who was lost in her own little world, still singing her song to herself. It dawned on me that neither of them seemed to notice how rapidly the moon was moving. That had to be it. I know that they wouldn’t let me lay out in the sunlight and die of exposure.

  I opened my mouth and closed it again. It didn’t seem to take as long as it did before so I tried it again. Open. Close. This time I thought I’d try to place words into it.

  “M..o..o..n,” I managed to get out.

  Cody jumped. He looked down at me and raised his eyebrow. “You say something dolly?”

  Ugh!

  “M..o..o..n!” I repeated louder.

  I felt myself getting dizzy. That took more effort than it should’ve and I was starting to wonder if maybe me being able to talk was a sudden burst of adrenaline. I decided not to try it again, at least not now.

  “What did she say?” Cody asked Remy.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t hear her clearly,” she replied looking down at me.

  Frustrated, I just shut my eyes. There was no way I was going to try that again so soon. I sighed and looked at Remy. When we locked eyes I decided to try a different approach. I held her gaze for a moment then let my eyes travel up to the moon. She looked confused and finally realized what I was doing.

  “Are you worried about the moon?”

  I blinked twice.

  “Why?” Cody asked finally understanding.

  All I could do was blink twice again. How was it possible that they didn’t understand what was scaring me right now?

  “Be
cause the moon is falling out of the skyyy. And the sun is going to rise soon and burn her to deathhh,” replied an eerie voice in singsong way.

  Immediately I knew who it was. Apparently so did Cody. He sprung to his feet in true demonic rage ready to kill her if she came close. Remy grabbed me up from the floor and dragged me to a tree a little ways back and propped me against it.

  “I’m going to help Cody, you’ll be fine here. This whip reaches far just in case she tries anything,” she said with a reassuring smile.

  I sat there watching. Slowly a pair of legs slid down the tree. Then I watched as the torso of the body slid down. She used her arms to hold her neck and head in the darkness for just a moment. To build suspense I had assumed. Then she let go and landed on one knee and whipped her head up like a vicious animal. Once again I found myself staring into the half burned face of Ava.

  “Ava, I swear if you leave now, I’ll make sure that no one comes after you. You know she can’t do anything against you right now and that’s not who you are. I know you. I’ve watched you for a long time too. You want this to be a fair fight. You want to be able to know that when you beat her it was because you were the better one. Not because she was already vulnerable.”

  What’s he saying? He sounds like he wants to watch us tear each other to shreds. Like he thinks that she can beat me.

  “I know,” she said in her raspy voice. “But I don’t care. Not anymore. And if I have to kill the son of an angel and demon to get to her, then I willll.”

  She’s lost her mind and I can’t get up. If Cody and Remy can’t hold her, she’s going to kill me.

  The familiar snap shook me out of my thoughts. My eyes focused and I saw Remy standing next to Cody ready to attack at a moment’s notice.

  “You can’t beat me, Ava. And you can’t beat Red. And in case you haven’t guessed yet; you aren’t touching Finnegan.”

  His body was so tense that I knew one small move would set him off. Suddenly the tension in his body left. I knew that it meant that he was completely engulfed by the demon inside him.

  I wanted to yell to Remy. I wanted to tell her to get away from him, that he was dangerous in this state, but I didn’t know if I could. You have to try, I told myself.