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Chapter 37: Monsters

"Angry child." The voices of the many - old and young, crones and maidens, babes and widows - whispered. Cold, spindly fingers brushed up my spine, pressing through my soiled shirt and bumping along the dehydrated lines of my ribs. My eyes flicked around the darkness - the long limbs of the tree swaying like the thickest curtains all around me as my bare feet crunched into the soil and brittle leaves just beneath the canopy of the great tree. "Lost child. Where is your mother? Where are your siblings?"

I flinched at the questions, the words jabbing through me like the sharpest blade. My parents… I was an angry kid. I liked to call it growing up - the thorns that came with an unhappy household - but sometimes I could feel that little girl walking around just beneath my skin, could feel her nails digging into my ribcage. Every child - no matter how much love they get from the people around them - just wants their parents. When school lets out, they walk to the bus and watch the kids getting picked up by their mom and dad and think: what makes us different? Why do they get that while I get nothing?

Sometimes it makes them think that they're just rotten from birth. Sometimes it makes them into better, wiser adults. I still wasn't entirely sure where I lay… but I was inclined to lean toward the first.

Shadows wavered in my peripheral, the sense that a dozen women were crowding around me, making my throat close. I could feel them, but whenever my eyes would dart to the left or right, they would slip away, shadows in the darkness, fragments of light in the sunset. The roar of the mares beyond the depths of the tree was a distant whisper as if I had stepped outside of a house and onto the street. I couldn't even see the clearing any longer - just the expanse of trees and wicked roots clawing through soft dirt.

"Hungry child," a voice like butter being smoothed across toasted bread sliced through the murmur of the rest. "Tell us your name, motherless child?"

I flinched, spine straightening at the lash of the name. My toes curled into the dirt beneath. "I… Runa - Runa Stackhouse?"

"Liar," a voice whispered, shocked. A dozen more followed. "Liar. Liar, liar. Liarliarliarliar-"

"Knott-Knottelska!" I corrected, stumbling as the wind pushed me back a step. My heart beat wildly. I couldn't go back to the other mares. If I went back, they would burn me - they would surely kill me. "I - I'm sorry."

There was a moment of thick, pungent silence. It weighed down on me until I could barely draw in a solid breath without feeling the putrid taste of it on my tongue.

"Have you always denied who you are so fervently, little nightmare?" That sea of voices gentled, deceptively soft as they circled me. I could see the blur of bodies, tall and thin, curvy and short, muscular - all with different shapes and sizes.

What else was there to say? I had loved my powers, reveled in the little bit of power they had given me in a world hell-bent on taking from me instead. But I never wanted to give those abilities a name. Even when I had found the mares, found the place that was supposed to be home, it had all felt so fucking hollow. My own kind despised me and there had been no solace in knowing that my mother would never be someone that ran to me, weeping over my sudden appearance. I didn't know if I would rather she be one of those mares, rotted away already or a nameless face who couldn't even tell that I was her child.

"I know what my responsibilities are." My spine straightened a bit more. Sookie. Jason. Even Eric, although he was more of a pleasure than a duty. But what were the pieces of who you are but the responsibilities that you took on? The children that needed to be fed? The business that you had planted and tended to?

The cackles - like tree branches being snapped and leaves being crunched beneath hungry boots. It howled through the dark space like opening, gnawing mouths, whipping the wind around me until it stung my nose and eyes.

"You're a sad excuse for a mare, Runa Knottelska," a cruel voice howled, bubbling over with mirth. I gasped as my legs gave out beneath me, the barest touch of phantom hands curling around my knees and tugging. My hands hit the dirt with a hard crack, the roots and rock there opening up my palms and shins as I tried to catch myself. The bruises that felt as if they encompassed my whole body throbbed. "Babes know the skills that you've acquired in your 26 years of life-"

"Gro~" a melodious voice broke in, sounding vaguely chastising. "You know that our kind has lost power in the last centuries."

"Actually quite powerful," another voice chirped.

"Must be all the worship that that Viking boy's been giving her-"

"From his knees!"

The air crackled, ripping my hair away from my face as wind tore through the alcove, the sound of their laughter so loud that I gasped out a breath, huddling down into myself as it rang through my ears. They were the very air itself - the roots and rock and dirt that this old tree held within its bony structure.

"Speaking of which-"

A dim light burst before my eyes, making the small clearing where I was crouched come into blinding focus. For a moment, the gnarled branches and roots that dug into the soil blurred together, my eyes struggling to bring everything into clarity. I blinked once and then again, a sob working its way up my throat as I took in the hulking form crouched in the dirt before me.

"Eric," I whimpered, my voice breaking as I struggled a step forward.

He was all hard lines - exactly as I remembered him from the last time I had seen him. The green light of his eyes seemed dim in the glow; his blonde hair pushed back from the brooding tilt of his brow. The white shirt that he wore strained against the familiar muscular slope of his shoulders and chest. My mind spun, catching on little details that panged through me like cords missed on a piano. His lips weren't pulling into that smug little grin that he gave whenever he saw me, the line flat and bland as if he were barely even thinking about laughing. He always found things amusing - always. He would have thought that the primitive setting that the mares had dragged me to was infinitely hilarious. And his eyes - ah, those eyes that I had drowned in on so many days. Even through the gloom, I could see the dim cast, the way that his brow didn't dip too severely, his eyes barely ringed with barely concealed disdain.

My hand drew back, falling lamely to my side. "It's not him."

He vanished in an instant, the light snuffed out with him, leaving nothing but roots and dirt. I tried to force down the wail of loneliness that started to creep up inside of me. It felt like something had been torn away with him - even that ghost of an image that was my Eric. I drew in a ragged breath.

"Now that, little nightmare child," a million voices whispered. "Didn't seem like the reaction of someone who wants to die."

Bitterness burned at the back of my throat, turning my stomach acidicaly. "I shouldn't have expected mercy from monsters."

The wind whipped around me once more as they howled with laughter, all sound dying abruptly as I felt them crowd closer. "This is a mercy, child. The best mercy that you will receive from this life and the next. The mercy to give you a final choice." Hot, moist breath bathed my ear, phantom hands curling around my shoulders and digging in. "You want to die - go back to your sisters. They will kill you gladly. That can be your punishment for whatever piss-poor excuse you've given yourself to continue this whipping."

More hands pressed up my arms, clashing with the ones at my shoulders. "The sad truth of the matter is that you were bested." I flinched, clenching down on the instinctive urge to tell them that this didn't feel like being bested. Bested people didn't kill innocents. "Bested by a mare who filled your pretty little head with the comfort of being useful and needed. The sad truth is that you let her keep you there for too long. She wormed her way into your head and grew a garden from all of your insecurities that made you go around and around. She fed off of your base urges."

"Because you're right, Runa Knottelska," a third voice whispered, and my head bowed as a third set of hands combed through the tangled, disgusting matted mess of my hair. "We are monsters."

"We enjoy the suffering of good, honest people," the first voice sang, her voice going high and warbling as she said the last three words.

"We enjoy the terror that comes from the deepest parts of humanity."

"We enjoy the killing-"

"And the maiming-"

"And the sweet, bloody final screams," the last one finished, and I shivered as I felt the way her tongue came out to lap at the final syllables of those words as they escaped into my ear.

"And you do too," the second voice whispered, her hands going to circle my throat. "Even if you want to hide it. Even if you want to stay in the shadow of that ditzy little fairy of a sister you have."

The final whisper came in a long, low hiss, jumbled together in a million different voices. "You. Are. A Monster."

Rotten from birth.

I gulped down my own self-loathing, drawing in a long breath as those hands released me, their presence drawing away until I could feel the biting coldness of the wind. I still hated the things that I had done - hated the person that that mare had made me become. But somewhere between the isolation and the beating, I had made my decision. If I were going to be punished, it wouldn't be from the vile heaps of flesh and garbage that were here. There would be no redemption from mares that had more than likely killed their fair share of humans without a second thought.

I took another breath, the air slipping down my throat like cool water. "What now?"

Silence lasted for a beat, the crunch of leaves the only thing that reached my ears as I felt smug satisfaction crackle through the air. Slowly, one of them stepped forward, their fingers coming to rest lightly at the crown of my head.

"You look like you need a pick me up, little nightmare." I felt a jolt of pure adrenaline pump through me, lighting my insides into a cluster of vibrating organs, burning up.

"We'll allow you a little help to give you a fighting chance but-" the second voice wore a smile that curled the words up gleefully.

"The battle is with you. This is your punishment. Find the way out or die trying," the last voice finished with a shrug. "We grow tired of weakness in our brood."

My heart quickened, whatever they had given me, spiking through me with the iciness of an ice bath. I swallowed around the almost frenzied racing of my own body, my muscles twitching uncontrollably as I fought to keep myself still.

Why was I doing that, though?

I needed to run.

I needed to get out of here.

I sprang to my feet, crashing through the underbrush at a reckless speed, the cackle of a million voices following me. "Run, little nightmare. RUN!"

I heard the screaming and shouting as I crashed out into the clearing, the figures of mares lounging in huddled clusters all around. They hadn't expected my exit to be quite so noisy. Or quite so abrupt.

My magic crackled around my knuckles, light my skin to a purple haze as I swept a quick glance around. My tongue tingled in my mouth, the breath sawing from me seeming too loud in my own ears. It was as if I was stuck in a glass case, everything inside becoming more amplified as the things outside faded.

Run, my brain beat and I dove to the right, crashing through the forest at a reckless pace. I barely noticed when a rock slit open my foot. I barely noticed when a root caught me, sending me rolling into a ravine that I hadn't even realized was upon me. I kept moving, the sound of my sisters crashing through the underbrush behind me so distant that I knew it was a trap. There was no way that they were losing me. No way that I had outpaced them in their own woods.

What would I do when I got away? I sprinted past a cluster of withered seedlings, crashing into a trunk that sent me rebounding in the opposite direction. I had no plan. No way of knowing where I was going. What would I do? It seemed like an unimportant question right now. Right now, it was all about the escape. All about the beating, blinding adrenaline that was making my heart skitter inside of me like a spooked rabbit. Run, run, run, run, run, it beat inside me.

I kept going. I crashed through underbrush and clusters of trees too close to be normal. I felt something in my left leg twinge and then snap, like a rubber band being pulled too tight and breaking. My body didn't so much as pause, the breath in my chest sawing in and out of my lunges faster and faster. Run, run, run-

I went crashing to the ground, my whole side lighting up in agony that seemed more like a flicker of lights then a feeling. As if my body was a series of traffic lights instead of living, beating organs that could feel pain.

"Got you, you fucking-" A fist connected with my jaw so quickly that I rebounded off of the dirt, my face bouncing like a tennis ball. I gulped down a breath, blinking away the flash of red that went off in my vision.

Onyx. Her name was Onyx and I remembered her from the night I had left Eric. I grabbed her arm, batting away the next hit and rolling so that I was finally over her. I caught the slight widening of her dark eyes, the shock that burst through her face before I slammed an elbow into her throat, the drive losing some of it's momentum as she shoved against me.

"You know how to get home," I realized, trying to keep her on her back as she tried her best to buck me off. Her hands made feeble attempts to catch my ribs, something like fear light her eyes. "Tell me," I pressed, my heart breaking open as I thought of Bon Temp. Home. Home. Home. I needed to get home. "Tell me how to get-"

"Fucking psycho bitch-" Her fist caught my jaw again, knocking the breath from me and sending my head whipping to the side. I pressed more of my weight down on her.

She wasn't going to help me then.

My hands lit, sparkling with fizzling ripples of pure magic. I wanted her powers. Her eyes widened as I pressed my hand into her throat, not caring as it allowed her enough room to get a few clean hits to my ribs. I grunted, boring down.

Get me home. I thought of the little house Sookie and I had made our own after Gran's death. Home.

The forest around us lit to a startling purple. In Onyx's eyes, I saw the first flare of terror, her lips parting as she doubled her efforts to get me off of her.

I would rip her open to get back to where I belonged. I would tear her powers from the very depths of her being if that's what it took.

Around my throat, I felt the familiar burning of the collar. Maybe Empress was close by. Or maybe I was doing something that I wasn't supposed to. My insides burned, everything but that purple haze fading around us. Fangtasia, I thought. Eric. My heart felt like it was about to burst, the organ throbbing in my chest at a painful rate.

Pop.

Her power coursed through me, my fingers spasming around her throat as we rolled, falling endlessly into the darkness. A moment of rampant terror tore up my throat through the haze of drugs that the elders had pumped into me. Darkness so encompassing that it pressed into my very lunges engulfed us, making out fall seem endless.

Desperately, I grasped onto that small flicker of home. The smell of blood and leather and dim lights mixed with tacky red accents. And in the middle of it all that horrid throne, a spotlight burning down on it as bodies withered in the darkness beyond. Eric - Eric with his strong jaw and barely contained contempt for everything around him. Eric's eyes on me. His breath against my skin. His lips against mine as he whispered about his life and our life and the life he had created in Bon Temp.

I hit the ground hard, Onyx's body landing on me with enough force to take all the breath from my lunges. Whatever power I had fizzled out like a candle suddenly being extinguished. The excruciating trials of the last few days crashed into me with the vengefulness of a lover scorned, bile burning at my throat. My mind spun, the pulsing lights of Fangtasia making my stomach lurch.

Screams accompanied our sudden appearance, the laughter that had been there before teetering off into silence as we rolled together, Onyx's hands grappling with my face and arms - anything that she could dig her claws into. We crashed down from the cold surface of the bar top, sending drinks shattering to the ground as we rolled into each other.

Her fist connected brutally with my jaw, sending my skull bouncing against the cement floor with enough force to make me see stars. I gagged, vomit burning at the back of my throat as I tried to get my bearings. Onyx's body slammed into mine once more, her breath hissing from her teeth as she tried to maneuver me back completely beneath her, stopping my weak attempts to scramble away.

"I'm going to tear your fucking heart out and bring it back to Empress as a fucking necklace," she hissed into my ear.

It wasn't a fair fight. I was weak, barely lucid enough to shove my shoulder up and to the side enough to jar her a bit off of me. Where the fuck was Eric? Pam? Everything was such a blur - even Onyx, her face inches from mine, her body grappling with my own.

Pain lanced through my arm, forcing a scream from me as I felt the distinct prick of sharp, needle-like teeth tear through the side of my throat. I gulped back a guttural sob, twisting away like a fish trying to get off of a hook. My fingers scrambled against the cement, breaking as I leveled myself enough that Onyx's teeth tore away from my flesh, blood, splattering across my face.

A murmur of excited approval slithered through the vampires and humans of Fangtasia, lighting my senses enough to understand that I wouldn't be getting any help from them. Bloodletting was foreplay for vampires. They wouldn't stop it - especially when they wanted some. And god, did they want mine. I could feel their lust - their barely contained urges.

A low growl slithered from Onyx as she forced me back beneath her, her nails digging into my arms as she dragged me back. "I'm going to make you beg for the old gods-"

Whatever she was about to say, left her in a scream, her body weight vanishing from on top of me in an instant. I gulped in a hard breath, instinctive tears searing my eyes as the sound of flesh tearing apart and bones breaking filled the air. Animal noises like wild wolves tearing into a gazelle filled the air, some of the people near me wincing as they backed away. I felt the wet, warm splatter of blood on my legs and knew that whatever was happening to Onyx wasn't pretty. And it wasn't kind.

My head spun, the last of my fight leaving me as the rest of the drugs slipped away, leaving behind nothing but pain. Sweat, cold and clammy dampened my skin, my teeth clattering together as my muscles strained under the beating that my body had taken. I was half-starved, dehydrated to the point of delirium and crashing from the effects of magic, old and carnal.

My gaze wavered as I forced my eyes upwards, finally able to take in the all-encompassing figure on a few paces away, something meaty and wet landing with a wet splatter against the cement a few feet away as he tossed it. His chest heaved, the front of his body and face bathed in vivid red. I gulped down the queasy leap of my own joy, my own relief as he spat out a mouthful of blood and gore, looking disgusted.

Eric was beside me in a second, his eyes taking in the mess of my body with such ice that I wanted to wither away. His massive hand came forward to press against the gaping wound between my shoulder and throat, pressing down with enough force to make me yelp. His eyes were the coldest, darkest pits that I had ever seen; his fangs dyed an ugly crimson as he snarled out a breath. "I'll fucking kill them."


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