Inhuman (28 page)

Sweat filmed over me like grease as I plucked up the knife and fumbled to open the blade with hobbled hands. A sob escaped me. The knife was tiny — only a few inches long. Unless I stabbed it directly into Chorda’s jugular, the little blade wouldn’t even slow him down. At least I could cut through the duct tape on my wrists. Then I’d be free to find another weapon. I shot a look around the room but felt swallowed up by the rotting furniture and swirling wallpaper.

Just then, Chorda stalked back into the room, hunched, feline, predatory. “Your friends are searching for you.”

Stay calm. I drew up my knees so that my hands were out of view and sawed at the tape.

Slowly he closed in on me, claws tensed, tasting the kill — closer and closer he crept.

The knife sawing through the tape was too loud. I needed to cover the sounds. “Why will my heart break the curse?”

He sank until he was poised on all fours, his eyes burning me. “You are the most human of humans…. There is no trace of beast in you.”

The knife cut through the tape, but it was too late. Chorda was going to pounce; I could feel his intention coming off him in hot waves. As desperately as I wanted to seem brave, tears spilled from my eyes. I didn’t want to die like this or be left to rot in this killing house. I twisted away, trying to get a grip on my terror so that I could figure out how to escape. My wrists were free, but I wasn’t.

“Look at me, Lane,” he commanded, sounding more like the man that I’d first met.

Yet I stayed turned away, eyes clenched tight, not wanting the last thing I saw to be his gaping maw or his bloody claws. I fingered the knife in my hand.

“I think it would be quite something to know you when I’m human again,” he said. “It’s too bad I won’t have that chance….”

My breath caught at the finality in his voice, so close behind me. This was the last second of my life and I would not meet it with my eyes closed. I pried open my lids and saw, right beside me, what I hadn’t before: a fireplace with iron tools propped beside it.

My hand gripped the rusty iron poker and I sprang up, turning and swinging high. Before Chorda could rise, I brought the heavy poker crashing down on his head. The vibration from the impact flew up my arm as the crouched tiger-man fell to his knees.

I watched him grab his head, his fingers splayed as if to keep his brains from spilling out. He didn’t make a sound. Then my vision sharpened.
Run!
With the poker in hand, I took off, not even stumbling when his claws raked my calf.

I sprinted into the foyer, gasping as pain radiated up my leg. I reached the door, hand out, ready to yank on the handle — only it was wrapped in chains. But I still had the poker. I swung it into the diamond-paned window, but the glass didn’t shatter as one and the poker caught. Even if I could wrench the tip free, it would take too long to smash away all of the panels.

I shot a glance back into the parlor where Chorda was still down on all fours, his face lowered and body swaying from side to side. Hurt? No — gathering his strength! I left the poker and ran through the house, dodging around corners, leaping over half-eaten animal carcasses, until I stumbled into the kitchen. But here too the door had been sealed. Not with chains but with boards hammered into place. I yanked open several drawers but they were all empty. No scissors, no knives.

The next room was long and narrow — a butler’s pantry — with two doors at the far end. Somewhere in the front of the house, a piece of heavy furniture toppled. My legs melted into jelly, verging on collapse. I dashed forward and pried open one of the doors to find stairs leading up. I hated, hated this choice — trapped above ground level — but with no other option, I sprinted up the narrow staircase.

I paused on the second floor landing to listen for the tiger-man, but the house had fallen silent. The smell of death coated the air like oil. A smear of blood stained the wallpaper. I hurried down the dark corridor past closed doors, too terrified to open any of them, afraid of what I’d find, until a blood-curdling roar shook the house.

I yanked open the closest door — an empty closet. I tried the door across the hall and blinked against the sudden flood of sunlight. A smell slammed into me, so foul that I had to clamp my hand over my nose and mouth. On the opposite wall, tree branches invaded the room through the broken windows. Like sturdy arms they reached out to me, promising to bear my weight. I stepped through the doorway, my eyes adjusting to the light, and caught sight of someone crumpled on the floor. My muscles went rigid.

No, not someone. A corpse. The room was filled with them. Dried out corpses with taut grins and shrunken eyes, they’d been flung into corners and on couches. All with their chests mutilated. All in various stages of decay. I felt something inside of me tearing and then breaking.

I backed out of the room so fast I bumped into the wall of the corridor. Something brushed my face and sent me spinning aside. A thin rope hung down from a hatch in the ceiling. I gave the rope a tug, pulling the hatch open just a few inches when I heard a strange rustling, like the sweep of dry leaves on concrete.

I knew that sound!

My fingers flew open and the hatch banged shut. I’d nearly pulled an attic full of weevlings down on myself. Creatures that were attracted to the glistening stuff dripping down the back of my calf where Chorda had clawed me. Chorda, who had to have heard the hatch bang shut.

Suddenly a plan formed in my mind. Insane. Dangerous. But I had no other ideas and someone was now pounding up the stairs.

I caught hold of the hatch rope again and backed into the narrow hall closet. With the door cracked and hatch rope in hand, I watched Chorda stagger onto the landing. Lowering his head, with his broad, striped back to me, he sniffed the first doorknob. Then, inhumanly fast, he swung around to stare at the cracked closet door, his pupils enormous in the dim light. As his muscles shifted, coiling for the pounce, I burst from the closet and yanked the rope as hard as I could.

The ceiling hatch dropped open and a skeleton tumbled out. I tugged harder and brought down the whole collapsible staircase. The dry rustle of featherless wings filled the air, followed by the deafening clicks of hundreds of weevlings. They poured from the hatch like black, billowing smoke. With the attic stairs now between us, I couldn’t see Chorda, but I heard his scream — shockingly human — as I tore into the room with the corpses and hefted myself onto the largest tree branch poking through the broken window.

Outside, I perched in the tree and quickly scanned the area. Chorda’s house was bound by an overgrown, tangled hedge with meadow beyond it. I saw no sign of the broken highway or the lake.

I climbed down a few branches, dropped out of the tree, and ran through the garden gone wild, wishing I had my father’s machete. I had no idea if I was headed in the right direction to find Rafe and Everson, but no direction could be wrong so long as it led away from the death house. My ears pounded with the sound of my own feet hitting the ground. The cuts on my calf throbbed, and my lungs burned, but I didn’t slow down, and I didn’t look back.

As I barreled through the hedge, the branches caught my hair and scratched my face and arms. The evergreen scent was a welcome relief. On the other side, I tripped over something in the dirt and landed on my stomach. Inches from my nose, a human rib cage jutted out of the muddy ground. Too breathless to scream, I heaved myself up and raced through the meadow — a killing field — leaping over bones and tearing through the scrub until I reached a broken road. Was it the same one that we’d taken the day before?

I glanced back and saw the tiger-man lurching across the field, bloody and enraged. A cry burst from my throat.

How had he gotten away?

Something growled to my left. I spun to see the jeep skidding for me. It didn’t even make a full stop, just swerved alongside me long enough for Rafe to lean out, grab my arm, and haul me into the backseat with him.

Chorda veered onto the road to cut us off. Everson laid on the speed, heading right at the tiger-man. Blood streamed from the gashes that crosshatched his face and body. With foamy lips and glistening fangs, he locked eyes with me. Everson hunched over the wheel while Rafe braced us for impact. The jeep bore down on Chorda until — at the very last second — he vaulted aside and we flew past. I twisted around to see him throw back his head and bellow out his rage.

Rafe pulled me close and I pressed my forehead into his chest, trying to block out Chorda’s roars. My muscles began to jerk and tremble. I dug my nails into my palms to give myself something to concentrate on, but it didn’t work. Fabiola’s vacant eyes kept floating into my mind, followed by the corpses. My stomach twisted, and with a groan, I pulled away from Rafe to lean out of the speeding jeep and vomit up the pineapple I’d eaten for breakfast. There wasn’t much, but my body kept going until my throat burned raw. Rafe gripped my arm to keep me from falling out, and then he swore under his breath. “You could have mentioned you were bleeding to death.” He guided me back onto the seat.

“He bit her?” Everson slowed the jeep and twisted to look at me.

“No,” I croaked. “It’s from his claws.”

Rafe placed my leg across his lap and pushed up my torn pants leg. Blood coated my skin from the knee down. He grimaced, but a split second later, when he lifted his eyes to mine, he’d wiped the worry from his face. “Man, these will be some fierce scars,” he said, as if that was something I would look forward to.

The jeep slammed to a stop and Everson leaned over the front seat. I knew the cuts were bad when he too steeled his expression. “That needs to be disinfected. Stitched.”

“No kidding.” Rafe pulled his T-shirt over his head. “Go! You don’t want to know how fast a raging feral can run.” As the jeep bucked and tore out, he wrapped the shirt around my lacerated calf. I closed my eyes and ground my teeth against the searing pain.

“Tell me when it’s safe to stop,” Everson said over the engine’s roar. “I’ve got what I need in the med kit.”

“You know how to stitch a wound?” Rafe asked skeptically.

“Yeah, and I won’t leave her with a fierce scar.”

I opened my eyes to see a fuzzy little gray face, peering at me over the front passenger seat. I sat up, legs still across Rafe’s lap, and tried to smile. “Hi.” Cosmo blinked back the tears that were rapidly filling his beautiful blue eyes. “I’m okay,” I told him in a scratchy voice. “A-okay.”

With a wet sniff, he popped up in his seat and thrust his ratty dish towel into my hands. I held it close to my heart and mouthed, “Thank you,” knowing my voice would break if I said it aloud.

“You know, you scared the crap outta Cosmo,” Rafe said and then cast me a sidelong look. Any other time I would have smiled at his reluctance to admit that I’d scared the crap out of
him
, but not now. Not when I was struggling to hold in a sob.

Everson glanced over his shoulder again, checking the T-shirt on my calf — now blood-soaked. “Wrap it tighter and apply pressure.”

“I knew that,” Rafe muttered. I gasped as he rearranged the makeshift bandage and cried when he clasped a hand to my calf. Pain blazed along each cut as if Chorda’s claws were still embedded in my skin. I tried to wriggle free, but Rafe held on, and slowly, after several panting breaths, I realized that the firm pressure of his hand had taken the pain down by a degree.

I swiped the tears from my cheeks. “How did you find me?”

“I followed the tiger’s trail, but lost you at the stream.” He sounded apologetic.

“You got us close enough,” Everson pointed out. “We found her.”

“Yeah, we did.” Rafe’s voice sounded strained. Probably leftover worry. “There’s a place about twenty miles from here. We can fix up your leg there.”

My thoughts weren’t on what lay ahead, but on the nightmare behind me. “You were right,” I whispered. “He killed all those people.”

Rafe stared at me, brow puckered. “Tiger-guy told you that?”

“I saw them.” I could barely get the words out. “He eats their hearts. He thinks it’ll turn him human again. If he eats the right one.”

“Lemme guess, you have the right heart.”

I nodded. “Because I stopped you from killing him.”

“See what being nice gets you?”

“She doesn’t need to hear that,” Everson snapped.

But Rafe had been right and I’d nearly had my heart ripped out because I hadn’t listened to him. “I’m so stupid….” The memory of the tiger’s claws threatened to pull me under. I focused on taking in air. Chorda was out there loose, because of me. If he killed someone else … it would be all my fault.