4. “Ryan, what are you doing?”

Someone mumbles around me.

Another slash sends me to my knees, hissing.

What are they doing to me? What is this?

Blood trickles down both my arms. The rusty smell hits my nostrils, and I feel woozy.

"Let's see if it's true," Ryan says as another guy steps forward, and the mumbling intensifies. I don't know what they're saying. I can't understand a fucking word, but it sounds… It sounds a lot like a chant. Like an incantation.

Heat blasts through my body and my eyes roll back as a hollow darkness stretches its limbs inside me.

Hello, Master.

The voice in my head is more like images my brain translates into words, but they send an energy through me. An energy that is welcome and comforting and so, so tasty.

I open and close my fists. They have no idea what they've started. No idea what I can do to them with all this power surging through me.

A pressure pushes through my shoulder blades and tailbone. The pain flattens me on the floor, and I scream as it explodes.

Wings, dark and slithery, expand behind me. A tail worms its way out, tucking under my crotch and between my legs.

"Oh shit! It's true!" someone says.

Ryan's lackeys get closer, tightening the circle around me, and their chanting gets louder and even creepier.

I sit up and show them my teeth, but they don't seem phased by it or my eery appearance.

A pain pierces through my chest, and I collapse back down, screaming.

What is going on? What are they doing to me? What are they saying?

I look up, search their faces, try to read their lips, their expressions, but all I see, all I find, is darkness.

"Stop. What are?—"

Heat sears through me and all my extremities—both human and eldritch—tense. My hands start shaking. My entire body starts shaking. There's so much pain. It hurts. It hurts so much. I can't help but flail like a tortured animal.

What's happening, Master? What's happening to us?

Has the music cut out? Is everyone watching me? Why is no one helping me? Why is everyone just standing there?

Ryan steps into the man-made circle, holding a big, old leather-bound book with a smile on his face.

It sounds like Latin.

I don't need to speak it to know he has no good intentions whatsoever.

Have I walked into a trap? Is this what they meant when they said they were going to invoke an eldritch monster? Were they always planning to use me?

"Ryan, what are you doing?"

He doesn't stop. He doesn't even look at me. He keeps going as if he doesn't even know I'm there, at his feet, in pain.

The creature inside me swells, writhes, splits apart. I clutch my heart, whatever good that will do, but it's no use. When I look beside me, the creature with its large slithery wings and tail is there, dripping with dark, disgusting slime. Its scream pierces through the room like a guillotine and cuts my insides into pieces.

What the fuck?

How did they do that?

"Mason was right. You are a weakling. Even with all the power coursing through your veins, you are pathetic."

Mason?

What does he have to do with anything?

The monster lets out another screech beside me. Its wings flap, but it won't fly. Despite it being separated from me, I still feel its pain as if it were my own.

This was a trap, after all. A trap I was too foolish to see. Ryan is right. I am pathetic.

I thought that because I hadn't seen Ryan since that day, he had no affiliation with Mason or the Taylors. But for all I know, they were best friends. Maybe they never came home because Kevin forbade it or because he liked walking around naked with blood dripping down his body and didn't want to have an audience when he used me as he pleased.

But if Ryan knows what I am, Mason must have told him my mother was an eldritch witch and what that means. As soon as Ryan saw me walk through the doors of Lockwood, he either assumed or knew I had inherited my mother's powers.

That's the only explanation for what's happening right now. The only one I can think of. I don't know what they're trying to accomplish, but I've walked right into their trap.

Ryan raises his hand, opens his palm, and slices it with a knife. The blood drips in front of his feet, and as it does, he repeats the same phrase over and over again.

"Servis mihi. Servis mihi. Servis mihi."

He points a finger at the creature, and it stands, arms pulled above its head, feet spread apart. Threads, red and ethereal, form around its wrists and ankles and connect to Ryan.

I feel the shadow of them around my own limbs, but it doesn't last long.

In fact, the more I watch what's happening, the less of the creature I feel inside me until…until I don't feel it at all.

"What are you doing?" I shout.

Not that it matters to Ryan and his lackeys. Their entire focus is on the creature and the creature alone.

Ryan moves his left arm as if for the first time. The creature moves its left arm too. He takes a step forward, and the creature takes a step forward too.

He…he's subjugated it. I don't know how, but he's separated the eldritch creature from me—which shouldn't even be possible—and enslaved it.

"Aren't you going to do anything? Isn't anyone going to do anything? Doesn't anyone think there's something wrong with all t?—"

I look around the room as everything fades. The music, the lights, the drinks, the people.

The only one left is Ryan.

What.

The.

Actual.

Fuck?

"This…is…brilliant!" Ryan flexes his muscles, and the creature copies each of his moves.

"What the hell are you gonna do to it? Are you gonna walk around the rest of your life with it beside you, copying your every move?"

Ryan smirks and finally looks at me.

The eldritch creature looks at me too, though it doesn't share Ryan's amusement.

"Who cares? I'm going to be so powerful with this thing attached to me that no one can stop me."

If he thinks I'm just going to sit back and watch him enslave a creature, he's got another think coming.

I glance around and spot a bloodied knife on the floor. I bend my knees and jump toward it, rolling on the floor as I land and wrap my hands around the sharp object.

I push back up and rest the tip of the blade against my palm, and look at Ryan.

"If you don't stop this madness I'll stop it myself," I warn him.

He laughs.

"Please do. Summon another. The more I add to my collection, the more powerful I'll become. So please, do go on. Give me the best gift of my life." Ryan circles me, the eldritch creature towering behind him doing the same.

How did he do this? What kind of illusion magic does he have to be able to shroud this entire gym with fake people, fake…everything?

How can I stop him even if I summon another creature?

And what if I do and he just enslaves yet another one?

I'm stuck. I'm stuck, and there's nothing I can do to help me or save the creature he's already enslaved.

"Go on," Ryan says.

I breathe in and out, but I don't give him the pleasure of a reply. I know I don't have any options. No options whatsoever. If I don't cut myself, they'll do it for me and repeat whatever incantation they've found. I'm stuck. I've once again found myself without any agency or freedom.

Am I doomed to always be a victim? What is wrong with me?

There's a noise behind me. Glass breaking. I don't need to look behind me to know what's happening. Just a glance at Ryan's and the other lackeys' faces, and I know my savior is here.

Lucian.

"What the hell is going on here?" his voice booms.