Page 95 of Kill the Beast
She was close enough for the bullet to make impact. It didn’t do anything more than piss the monster off, of course, but that was all Lyssa needed—to distract it from the potential prey in Bleakhaven. To force it to focus on her, instead.
She pressed her fingers to the wound in her shoulder with a grimace and waggled them. “Smell that? Fresh meat. Why go shopping in town when we can have a picnic right here?”
The Beast bared its teeth and charged.
Lyssa turned and fled, luring the monster deeper into thewoods, away from Bleakhaven. The Beast howled as it chased after her, its paws thudding on the forest floor, its huffing breaths punctuated by the snap of branches and crunch of leaves. The heady aroma of the woods enveloped them both, the scent of rot and decay lurking beneath the fresh green burst of life. Lyssa didn’t dare turn around to see how close the creature was to catching her. Instead, she focused on zigzagging through the murder-trees without getting disemboweled by them, cursing every time her clothes got caught on the thorns jutting out from the trunks.
The Beast howled again, and she could feel its hot breath behind her—too close. It was right on her heels. She pushed her body harder, surging ahead with a burst of speed she knew would cost her later. She was getting tired already, her head swimming with adrenaline and fear, blood loss and heartbreak.
A stream bisected her path, and Lyssa plunged into the frigid water, boots slipping on the mossy rocks lining the bottom. Her feet went out from under her and she fell hard, cutting her knee on a sharp stone. She was up again a moment later, ignoring the pain and the slide of blood down her skin as she scrabbled up the mud-slick bank on the other side.
The Beast splashed into the water only a few heartbeats after she had climbed out of it.
Lyssa spat obscenities as she forced herself to run faster, and though it didn’t do her labored breathing any favors, it kept a fire burning within her—a fire that might keep her alive a few moments longer.
If only she knew this forest better, knew somewhere she could trap the Beast. If it got stuck somewhere, even for a few minutes, she could catch her damned breath andthink.Anything but this mindless, panicked flight, the monster a few seconds behind her.
Her shirtsleeve got caught on another murder-tree and she swore, yanking herself free.
An idea flashed within her, as sudden as an electric bulb flaring to life, and she looked around frantically. Spotted something that might work for what she had in mind.
Lyssa sprinted forward and then veered sharply right, toward a thicket of the thorned trees, spaced far enough apart that she could squeeze her way through, but not so close that the Beast could do the same. She hacked a narrow path between them, biting back a cry of pain as the stray thorns she had missed sliced open her skin. The creature yowled behind her, and she knew that it had gotten a taste of the murder-trees as well.
When she got to the heart of the thicket, she whirled around. It was like there was a spiked wall between her and the Beast, with more fortifications at her back and sides. The monster paced at the edge of the thicket, clearly agitated, its face already latticed with cuts. She let out a ragged sigh, satisfied to have bought herself a little time to catch her breath and think.
At least until the monster lost interest in prey it couldn’t catch and ran off to find something easier to kill.
But then she shifted her weight, the leaves beneath her boots rustling, and the Beast stopped pacing, its eyes locking onto her general location. Lyssa shuddered.
It hadn’t been agitated because it couldn’t get to her without hurting itself—it just thought she had gotten away.
And now it knew that she was still in the thicket, still within its reach.
The Beast charged at the murder-trees, impaling itself on the thorns in a wild attempt to get at her. The thicket shook as the trees cracked and splintered from its frenzied onslaught, and its bloodied maw strained for her as it snapped its slobbering teeth.
“Fuck!” she spat, staggering back and almost stabbing herself on the thorns circling the trees behind her. She hacked her way through the rest of the thicket as fast as she could, the thorns slicing into her arms as she waded between the murder-trees, the Beast making its own path right behind her in a shower of splintered wood and flying thorns. She cursed herself the entire time, her anger more powerful than her fear.
Stupid. She was stupid to think that would work. The fuckingthing was nothing but a mindless creature of death and rage that would stop at nothing to get at her now that it had scented her blood. Of course it wouldn’t care about a couple of thorns in its face. Superficial pain like that wouldn’t have stoppedher,so why had she assumed—
Understanding slammed into her, cracking something open inside of her. As she emerged from the thicket and turned to watch the monster from her nightmares force itself through the thorns after her, it was like seeing herself clearly for the first time.
This was what Alderic had witnessed at the lake. A brute in thrall to her bloodlust, willing to ruin herself if it meant killing the thing she wanted to kill.
He had seen the part of himself that he was desperate to destroy, reflected in her.
Alderic had spent centuries trying to control that side of him, while Lyssa wore her monstrosity like a crown. And yet he had still managed to see the good in her, regardless of the horrific choices she made again and again. Because he, of all people, knew what it was like to have something vicious at your core—and that it was possible to wrestle it into submission.
To become something better than what your circumstances had made you.
Lyssa had been so quick to accept that there was nothing of Alderic in the Beast, after the creature had driven its tusk into her shoulder, because the Aldericsheknew would never hurt her. But what if that feeling she had gotten in Liedensham—that the man she knew was only one facet of him—was truer than she’d realized? She had been scrambling to figure out a way to kill the Beast without killing Alderic, but…
There wasn’t one.
Because monster and man were not separate entities—they were pieces of a whole. The Beast was as much a part of Alderic as Lyssa’s rage was a part of her. It was his worst self made manifest, amplified a thousandfold, and no matter how hard he had workedover the centuries, that part would always lurk inside. Lyssa knew better than anyone that steel always retained some of what it had once been, even when it was hammered into a new shape.
That didn’t negate the transformation—Alderic was not a monster, despite having something monstrous within him. But if Lyssa couldn’t kill the Beast without killing him, too, then she was going to have to choose: between the oath she had sworn, and the friend she would lose if she fulfilled it.
The Beast was almost to the edge of the thicket now, its muzzle a shredded mess, its fangs slick with bloody saliva that spattered the trees around it as it snapped and snarled.
