Page 22 of These Eternal Bones
No…it couldn’t be.
But everything else was…why not?
“Fox?” I whisper, barely audible, but his smile widens, eyes zeroing in on me. Excitement bursts in my chest for a moment, making my pulse quicken. Everything in Elric tightens, his miasma-like presence hitting me the way it did that night in the woods. Malevolence, a warning. My fight-or-flight bolsters me as I take a step back, sucking in a ragged breath as Elric’s tendrils snag me again, tugging back to him.
“Tell me, pretty one, what is your name this time?”
“Leave.” Elric growls. “Now. Or shall I put you back in the dirt?”
My name this time?
“You are the fox, right?” I ask.
“I’m far more than just a fox.” He quips.
Like a band snapping into place, I’m released from Elric’s tendrils. My heart lurches when both of them blur out of focus. An odd, choked sound catches in my throat as they clash in the middle of the clearing, moving far too quickly for me to track. My boot catches against the ground, making me stumble as I backtrack, only for the fox to appear in front of me with a smirk on his face. He smells of rich, deep earth, radiating heat that makes my ever-chilled fingers flinch with the desire totouch. “I am a forest deity, and I recall asking for yourna–”
I scream as Elric appears behind him, that black ink bleeding from his eyes as the Fox's words are cut off with a grunt, his body pinching forward. Gone is the soft man from moments before, the one who weaved grass into a crown to put on my head. When I look at him now…all I see israge. Such cold and refined hatred, violence that robs the air from my lungs. Madness in its purest form.
The fox coughs, blood spraying from his mouth before he too melts into something terrifying, hardened.Evil.“Release my heart, cold one.”
Hisheart.
Bile churns in my gut when I step further away, to the side, so the full picture comes into view. My eyes widen at the horrifying scene in front of me, of Elric’s…fist embedded in his back.
Elric’s voice is a growl, “Better cold and eternal than held to the whims of gods that no longer answer you.”
“You’ll kill him.” I gasp. “He-he saved me!”
The fox’s mouth gapes in pain before he wipes it away. Schooling his features. His very being vibrating where he stands. The air in the clearing suddenly so thin.
“Get in the cottage.” Elric orders.
“N-no! Elric, stop this!”
The fox laughs, the sound pained and breathless. “Even now she fights for me, oh how that must wound your pride.”
“Hundreds of years and you have not yet learned not to antagonize me where she is involved, stupid, stupid creature. Perhaps I will not kill you this time, perhaps I will lock you away again, so far from the touch of your gods, far from my forest you’ve come to love.”
The look of panic in the fox’s eyes has me rushing forward, my hands gripping his face. To do what I do not know. My hands slip to fox’s warm chest, and I canfeelthe vampire’s fist as it moves insidehim. Sweat slicks my hairline as sick surges up my throat. “Elric, let him go! He’s done nothing wrong!”
The sound that comes from Elric is savage as he moves, twisting inside the fox. The answering sound of agony makes my heart pinch for the creature that saved my life barely over a month ago. “Get. Your. Hands. Off. Him.”
God, I do. I feel the loss of warmth immediately.
Still, the fox smirks. That feels so very much like him. “Do as you please, cold one. I have done what I set out to do.” With that, the fox focuses his attention on me. I scream as he lurches forward, coming within inches of me again, his insides making a sick, wet ripping sound. “Your name?”
Elric’s voice is a growl when he speaks. “And what was it you set out to do? Die? Because that is the only thing you’ve achieved here. Poking my ire when already I was so very much teetering on the edge?”
The fox laughs, but the sound is wrong, pained and gasping.
“Get inside. Now.” Elric’s words are a warning.
My stomach drops from underneath me as I wobble on my feet, pivoting and bolting back to the cottage, but not before the fox answers. “I have shown heryou, the real you. The version that damned us all.”
My heart is slamming against my ribs with such force that I barely feel the way the cottage trembles as I slam the door, pressing my back to it the moment a sharp yelp fills the drafty walls, followed by a heavy thud. Panic squeezes in on me, the open room too small when everything goes quiet, only my pulse whooshing in my ears. The seconds turn to minutes, and during it all, I don’t dare move from my spot long after everything falls so deceptively silent. Not a chirp or caw of a bird, nor the trickle of the creek, breeches the silence until a voice shakes me to my core.
“Open the door, syringa.”
