Secret Worlds (26 page)

I jumped to my feet and bolted. I needed to get out of here, get away before the beast returned.

I rounded the corner, desperate to get back to the woods which had ironically become my safe haven. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who had that idea.

I ran smack dab into someone. Panicking, I starting clawing at the body instantly.

“Hey,” a familiar voice said. “Stop. It’s me! Char, it’s me.”

Looking up, I saw Dalton standing in front of me. His hair was disheveled, and his face was pale.

“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I thought you were—”

And then it hit me. Everyone else was still unconscious. Even now the streets were littered with sleeping citizens. The fact that Dalton was awake right now, that he was standing in front of me—

I shook my head and swallowed hard, cautiously stepping back. “No, Dalton. Please, no. Not you.”

“Oh, Char,” he said, and he grabbed my arm, his expression darkening. His hands turned to claws, digging into me, breaking the skin. His eyes flickered red as my blood touched him.

It was him. Dalton was the other beast.

“I should have known. I was so frantic, hoping that my sister wasn’t the Supplicant. I looked right past the most obvious candidate.” He grinned wide and manically. “It was you. It was always you.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “No, it can’t be. You knew I was in the woods that night. You would have known it was me.”

“Oh, Char. How limited your scope of this earth really is. Of course I wasn’t the one who attacked you in the woods that night. I had been … preoccupied.”

My mind flashed to the woman who had been found dead that same night—the one who had been walking her dog. I shook my head, the horror piercing every inch of my skin like a thousand needles. But how—

“I admit, I should have figured it out when your blood lured me to Abram’s home,” Dalton continued. “But then Ellie Farmer was there. I thought I’d left her for dead, but there she was, taunting me, and I thought for sure she was the Supplicant, that somehow I’d missed it the first time. But then she skipped off again, right out of protective custody, and who should I find when I go to look for her? You. You walking around when the rest of the town is trapped in some frozen spell.”

As terrified as I was, my mind just wouldn’t let go of one thought: Dalton was the beast who had killed those women. Dalton was the beast we were looking for. But Dalton was
not
the beast who attacked me in Abram’s home. Which meant … 

I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to admit that there could be more … that there could a third beast in New Haven. With everything I knew, it made sense, but admitting it made this situation feel even more hopeless.

Finally, I whispered what I already knew to be true. “It’s not just you, is it, Dalton? There are others. Aren’t there?”

“It’s a good thing you’re pretty, isn’t it, Char? You wouldn’t have gotten far in life if you had to rely on your mind.” He titled his head, a smirk playing at the corners of his lips. “Of course there are others. You escaped, after all. And my victims never escape.”

It was true. Ellie Farmer had died eventually, even if Abram had reanimated her with Satina’s spirit. But where did that leave me now? I finally had all the answers I wanted, but I wouldn’t live to tell about it.

With a low and deep growl, Dalton pulled me closer with one arm and punched me hard in the face with the other. I whipped back, but he wouldn’t let me go.

“Sorry, Char, but I’m going to have to make you bleed.”

Blood poured from my nose, and Dalton looked at it hungrily. This didn’t make any sense. This man, the one standing before me now, wasn’t anything like the person I had come to know since returning to New Haven, much less the boy I grew up with.

Dalton’s mouth twisted into a determined, but sullen, smirk. Still, he held my arm tightly.

“This isn’t how I wanted it to end. You should know that.” His voice was light and apologetic. “Even if it wouldn’t have been you, even if it had been one of those random girls who looked like you, I still didn’t want it to come to this.”

“It doesn’t have to,” I said, trying to tug free of him. But he was supernaturally strong; I would’ve had a better chance of pulling off white after Labor Day than breaking free of his grip. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I do.” He ground his teeth together. “I don’t have a choice.” His bright eyes filled with tears. “Do you think I wanted to be this? Do you think this is what I envisioned for my life?” He stomped hard against the ground, causing a crack in the pavement.

Damn, he
was
strong.

“I had a good life, Char. I had ambitions. I had dreams. I had a fiancé. And do you know what she did when she found out?” Tears tripped down his cheeks now. “She just left. Said she couldn’t handle it, that she didn’t think she had the constitution to care for a sick person.”

“Sick?” I muttered, my face tensing as my eyebrows drew together.

“Cancer.” The word left him like a breath.

Images of my mother flooded my mind the way they always did when that horrible word was uttered. I always figured time would change that. But I was wrong. Even now—in the most dangerous situation of my life—her face was the first thing I saw.

“Stage four,” he continued. “There was nothing the doctors could
do. There was nothing anyone could do. They just expect me to rot away, to lie around and wait to die.” He shook his head. “And do you know the worst part? By the time it’s finished, what they bury won’t even look like me.” He stared past me for a moment, then shifted his gaze to the ground, but his hand never left my arm. “And I’ve tried, Char. I found as much blood as I could after that old man came to me. But it wasn’t enough. The magic always wore off, just like he said it would.”

“What old man?” I asked, wincing as his hand tightened around my arm, his nails digging into my skin.

“That doesn’t matter!” He yanked me closer. “None of it matters, because it wasn’t enough.” He blinked hard. “But he showed me what I needed to do. I had to kill that stupid Conduit and change myself.” He shook his head, slowly lifting his gaze back to me as he gentled his tone. “Have you ever killed someone, Char?”

“You don’t have to do this, Dalton,” I said emphatically. “It doesn’t have to be this way. Maybe we can help you … somehow …”

“It changes you,” he said. “It digs deep down into you and steals away things.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Things you didn’t even know could be stolen.”

“Dalton—”

“I had to,” he said, as if begging me to understand.

And the scary part was, some small part of me could. Some small part of me wondered how far I would have gone to save my mom from the same fate Dalton had faced. But I wouldn’t have gone this far.

“I couldn’t die like that,” he continued. “I had come too far. I had done too much to let it all end like some chump, connected to machines and living off applesauce and medication.”

His eyes filled with some dreadful emotion I could not pinpoint. Desperation? Determination? Or was it agony and regret?

“And that’s still true,” he said. “I hate to do this, but I can’t just give up on life. I’m sorry, Char. I can’t. Why should it be me who dies? Why does fate get to decide?”

I shook my head. I didn’t know what to say. That’s just the way it was. He couldn’t play God. It wasn’t right. “So—so what are you going to do?”

He let out a slow sigh. “I need more Supplicant blood. All of a Supplicant’s blood. The
right
Supplicant’s blood,” he added. “That’s the only hope it might be enough.” His cracked his knuckles in front of him, then slanted his gaze toward me. “I really wish it wasn’t you. Please don’t make this harder for me.”

“Harder for
you
?” A new wave of anger came rushing through me. “What are you expecting, Dalton? That I’m going to willingly sacrifice myself for you? Clearly you would not do the same for me.”

He bit down on his lip and shook his head. “Sorry it has to be this way.”

Then he swung at me again, striking me hard against my right cheek with a sickening crack. I slumped in his grasp. Now that I was limp and defenseless, he finally let go of my arm, and I crumpled to the ground.

“I wondered if you could use it, the magic in your blood.” He kicked me hard in the gut, knocking the wind out of me. I lurched to my side, holding my stomach. “Guess not.”

My eyes scanned the ground. Of course I would leave the stupid gun over there. Of course I would.

“D-Dalton …” I said, my voice nothing more than a thin rasp. “P-Please …”

“I wish I could stop, Char.” He advanced, his fists morphing into sharpened claws. “I’ll make it quick.”

This was it. He was going for the finishing blow.

“You
can
stop,” I murmured. “You can.”

He raised his right hand over his head, readying to bring it down on me. “Pleading won’t save you. Nothing can save you now.”

A blur whizzed across my line of sight. In a blink, Dalton was on the ground, gasping for air with scratches across his face.

Looking up, I saw Abram standing there in his human form, bare-chested and glistening in the moonlight. “I think I’d like to test that theory.”

My heart leapt. The rest of me would have followed, but I was as bruised and battered as the honorees of Mr. Blackwell’s ‘What Not to Wear’ list, and my heart was the only part of me capable of doing any leaping.

Abram glared at Dalton with enough animosity to break glass. His chest huffed up and down like waves crashing against a gorgeous shore. He was obviously pained. Panicking, I scanned his torso, searching for the bullet wound. All I found was dried blood. It seemed the injury had closed itself. I should have known better than to worry. It would take more than a bullet to stop Abram.

Of course, the same could be said for Dalton.

But what did that mean? If Abram wasn’t injured any longer, then why was he in so much obvious pain? The answer came to me almost immediately. It was after midnight. He was trying to maintain his human form, probably so that I would recognize him.

“Are you okay?” he asked, speaking to me but never removing his gaze from Dalton.

“I think he broke something,” I answered, already feeling how much my jaw was swelling up.

Abram growled. “I’m about to break
him
.”

Dalton smiled from the pavement. His wounds were stitching themselves together, too. This wouldn’t be an easily won fight. The only thing clearer than that was the fact that
I
seemed to the only person around who couldn’t heal her own wounds, which put me at a distinct disadvantage.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with you, Abram,” Dalton said, getting to his feet much quicker than he should have been able to. “Run along like a good dog, and you just might survive this.”

Abram leaned toward Dalton, not a wrinkle of fear to be found anywhere on him. “I would say the same about you, but I’m not going to afford you that luxury.”

As they circled each other, Abram’s eyes flashed down to me.

“Run,” he said, his worried voice gravelly with warning.

Then he sprung forward, morphing into full-on beast mode as he came down on Dalton. His elongated jaw went right for Dalton’s throat. He was obviously not wasting any time, freeing up of whatever energy it took him to remain human and going right for the kill shot.

Dalton ducked out of the way, and Abram landed, spinning around on his paws. Deep claw marks gashed into the pavement.

I darted off, heading right for the woods. But Dalton appeared in front of me.

“Stick around,” he said. “I don’t want you to miss this.”

Grabbing my arm, he flung me hard. I stumbled back and crashed against a parked car. The impact dropped me to my knees, and I curled up, spikes of pain shuddering up my back.

Abram’s howl pierced the night air. It was, at once, terrible and wonderful. He looked over at me, his beast form lean and muscular. His eyes traced me, taking ownership of all they saw. He lunged toward Dalton, but this time Dalton wasn’t lucky enough to get out of the way.

Abram collided with him, a mass of fur and teeth. Soon, Abram had eclipsed him, and all I could see from where I slumped against the car was Abram’s massive form huddling over what surely by now was Dalton’s bloodied corpse.

Astonishingly, though, Abram’s form lifted from the ground—Dalton held him over his head. He flung Abram through the air. The beast hit hard against a nearby building and yelped.

I shivered, realizing what Dalton could have done to
me
. But he wanted me alive—at least until he was ready to drain all my blood for himself. If I died before then, I would be no good to him.

Dalton started toward me. “Let’s go, sweet thing. I don’t exactly have an endless amount of time.”

Another howl danced across my eardrums, and Abram raced between us. He was on all fours now, growling with bared fangs and raised fur. The two beasts pounced toward each other, claws connecting with bodies midair, slicing gashes into each other as they tumbled back to the ground. They rolled closer to me. A spray of blood—I hoped not Abram’s—splashed onto my hospital gown.

With so much blood streaking and matting their fur, I could not fathom how either of them continued to brawl. Abram swiped at Dalton’s face, his nails slicing through his snout, and Dalton howled. He whacked Abram hard, sending him flying back, then barreled toward me again. His dirty claws tore right through the hospital gown and into my thigh, and I screeched.

Though my mind went numb with terror, my whole body shook from the pain. Dalton raised his paw again. But Abram towered behind him, pulling Dalton back by his beastly shoulder and sending him hurtling through the air.

Oh, Abram
.
This is a disaster
.

Abram’s eyes, even in beast form, looked so human. So anguished. He made a small mewling sound, tilting his head as he looked over my wound. He ripped off a piece of my hospital gown and tied it around the large gash in my thigh, then started to try to lift me.

Before he could get me off the ground, Dalton pounced on his back, wrapping his beast-arms around Abram’s neck and digging claws into his shoulders to hold tight. Abram’s grip on me slipped, and fell back, my head knocking into the car. There was just … so much blood. My stomach lurched, and I squeezed my eyes shut.