53

I wasn’t going to admit that she had done a good job.

I could barely admit she— it wasn’t a monster. But there it was.

“Take this.” I checked the knife blade and waited for it to return to the sitting room. It had pinned its skirt around one of its full legs, making its movements smoother but exposing the supple skin of her— its thigh. I swallowed tightly as it approached.

It looked down at the serrated blade with a curious look.

“It tears,” I explained, running my finger over the steel teeth with the pad of my finger. “It’ll inflict more damage than your kitchen knife; trade me.”

It considered the blade. I could feel the apprehension as it rolled from its tight shoulders. I knew it had the capabilities, the bloodthirsty drive. It had taken the kitchen knife to protect itself in the first place. The instinct was present; she— it just needed to find the courage to use it.

“The ghoul won’t hesitate,” I warned it. “If it gets the chance to kill you. It will take it without mercy.”

“He can’t kill me…what if I just…” It stepped back but I surged forward and grabbed its wrist, holding it tightly so it would look at me.

“This isn’t about you,” I said. “This is about all the children it and its ghoul friends have killed, and will go on to kill. This is about stopping it from hurting anyone else.”

Her sad, green eyes flickered to my hand and I released her without question.

My head was swimming, light and dizzy from being upright for so long. I was confused, maybe even slightly disoriented.

“He was one of the ghouls?” She questioned. I shook my head and cleared my scrambled thoughts.

It, Wes… It’s a monster.

“Yes, and it’s probably stalking the Manor right now looking for a way in because it’s pissed off, hungry, and you’re a…” I swallowed down the urge to call it a woman. “You’re alone. At least it thinks you are.”

“You can’t help me in this condition. You should hide,” she said with a sniffle as she switched knives with me. Her– Its hands shook so violently for a split second that I thought it might drop it, but it pulled itself together like before.

Its expression darkened and it shook out any fear that may have gripped it moments before.

“No.” I shook my head.

“You’re bleeding, won’t he smell that?” It pointed to the torn stitches on my thigh. It stared at it for a moment longer before taking the blade to its forearm.

“Hey.” I reached out to stop her, but it was too late.

The blade ripped through her flesh and left a red, bleeding line across her skin. Before I could do anything about the wound, she was dropping to her knees. She used the knife and tore a long strip from the bottom of her skirt clumsily. She used the torn fabric to soak up the blood pouring from her arm, the strip turning dark red before she wrapped it tightly around my thigh and knotted it.

I bit down on my tongue at the sight of her on her knees, helping me the best she could, even battling her own fear. God damnit .

“Now he’ll only smell me,” she explained and stood back up. I grabbed her arm but the wound was healing by the time she finished her little unexpected plan.

“Don’t do that again,” I warned her, hiding the concern in my voice.

“Go find somewhere to hide. You can’t fight like this,” she ordered.

Unfortunately it wasn’t the time or place to flex her newfound confidence.

“I’m not hiding,” I scoffed at her. “I just need the upper hand.”

“An unfair fight.” She nodded, finally understanding.

“The ghoul will be strong,” I explained to her. “Stronger than you, but if you can keep it distracted, I can take it by surprise and it should be enough to take it down.”

We both heard the sharp click of a door opening from our left, the sound echoing down the hall toward us.

“Are you ready?” I asked her.

She shook her head no.

“Too bad. Go to the kitchen, pretend you’re unaware.” I nodded toward the arch and saw her off before wandering around toward the sound of the intruder's footsteps.

The ghoul wasn’t quiet about its presence in the Manor, giving away its location as it wandered down the hallway toward the sitting room. For the first time in over a month I was glad the guys had begun nesting immediately. All our belongings had been moved from the parlor to our rooms upstairs and there was no trace of us on the main floor.

The ghoul turned the corner and I pressed tightly against the bookshelf out of sight. Its beady eyes dragged over the room, carefully taking in its surroundings. I was sure the ghoul had seen me as its gaze trailed the wall I was tucked around, its nose turned up and its face scrunched in disgust before stepping out. My thigh throbbed from all of the movement. A tight, stinging pain radiated through the muscle up into my hip and back, making it hard to stay still.

I moved the moment the ghoul slipped from view, wanting to track its movement so it wouldn’t catch Florence off guard. It was seconds limping across the foyer before I realized my mistake, too focused on protecting that God-forsaken monster to notice that I was being stalked. I turned too slow and it was on top of me, its hands moving faster than mine as it slammed a fist into the side of my face.

The pain from the punch vibrated through me. I dropped to the ground, hard and, without the ability to soften my blow, I was slow to defend myself. The ghoul took another cut before I had a chance to shove it back and it landed squarely with force into my collarbone. I grunted as it hovered, grabbing the neckline of my shirt and pulling me toward it off of the floor.

“You stink,” the ghoul sneered. Its disguises dropped, revealing the gruesome characteristics that gave away its inhumanity.

“Speak for yourself.” I ground my teeth together and lifted my leg in a failed attempt to push it off me, but it was too strong.

“You killed my kin.” Its tongue flicked out over its bottom lip, changing and growing into a less human and more monstrous gray fleshy muscle as spit dangled from its maw in a gooey stream that hit my cheek in a wet, warm splash.

“Your kin were assholes.” I slammed my head upward, catching the ghoul in the mouth with my forehead. A violent storm of stars danced through my head but the action had given me an opening to shove my knife between its ribs, plunging it deep, turning it over, and ripping it out just as quickly.

The stabbing caught it off guard and it snarled, stumbling backward from me and letting go of my sweater. The ghoul didn't slow down though; it advanced towards me before I was able to get off the ground, but I trained my gun between its eyes as it caught its breath.

“You Hunters all are the same. Sloppy and blood-hungry. I’m going to finish you,” it threatened, “and then I’ll find your brother—” It paused to watch my reaction to its words. “He’s in the system for some pretty bad things, won’t be hard to find once I put an APW out on him. Same with the Dunn kid, both of them will be dead within the week.”

“You attacked the wrong Hunter.” I spit a gob of blood to my right, the copper tang filling my mouth as I spoke. “The other two are dangerous and uninjured.” I laughed, but nothing about the situation was funny. “You must be a coward, picking low-hanging fruit!” I kicked out and my foot connected with its wound, causing it to growl out a string of curse words.

The ghoul was back on me faster than I expected, its long nails digging into my throat and drawing blood. The smell of it made its pupils shake and widen, completely blacking out the rusty brown color of its irises. The ghoul was too strong. Without both arms, I was too weak. I didn’t stand a chance to get it off of me and its grasp on my neck was restricting the oxygen to my brain.

My vision blurred around the edges as the ghoul leaned into me with all its weight behind it.

“When I’m done with you and them I’ll come back here and fuck that pretty little thing until she can’t move.” Its voice was sick and the thought of its twisted violence made my blood boil. There was a small chink in my armour as my subconscious raged at the thought of it defiling her.

“She smelled like candy,” it said. “It’s how I found you, you dumb shite. She’s all over you.”

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t.” Florence’s voice was dark and annoyed, if a little shaky.

The ghoul reared its ugly head back in surprise as slender, soft hands gripped its hair. The blade tore viciously through the tender meat of its throat and blood sprayed from its severed flesh. The ghoul stumbled for a second, its eyes fluttering open and closed as it fought to control the bleeding with hands that were half human, half curved sharp claws that clasped around the gaping wound. But it wasn’t enough. It collapsed on its knees, rocking forward and crashing over me.

The air flooded back into my lungs, my body wrenching from the sensation as it regulated. The creature's body writhed for a moment longer before it went completely still and limp on top of me. The ghoul’s sticky, dark ichor soaked through my shirt and smelled like gasoline. It filled the air as I shoved it off me onto the floor and pushed to my elbows.

“I told you to go to the kitchen,” I coughed.

Her skirt was covered in blood. A thick droplet of crimson streamed down her round, bare thigh where the fabric bunched out of the way. Hands trembled around the soaked blade. Her green eyes drained of any spirit and trained on the knife in her possession.

I pushed off the ground, stifling the pained groan on my lips as I stumbled on my sore leg toward her. I reached out, took the knife from her stained hands, and threw it away toward the wall. She was utterly still and silent, probably shocked by what she had done.

She had saved my life.

She .

“ Florence ,” I said, her name feeling strange on my tongue and her eyes flickered to meet mine. Confusion, a little shock but mostly fear. “Go wash up.”

She lifted her hands a little but shook her head, straightening her back and swallowing thickly before stepping to my side.

“We need to get you back to bed,” Florence said tightly, completely ignoring the baffled look on my face. “I have to restitch your thigh. If you bleed out in the foyer it would be awfully unfortunate, after all that.” Her eyes remained unfocused and far away as she spoke. “May I?” She asked before touching me.

I lifted my arm so she could brace my weight and nearly scoffed at how tiny she looked tucked against my frame. I almost doubled her size, yet she took the weight like it was nothing and guided me back to the stairs.

We took the steps slowly, one at a time, each more painful than the last.

I gripped Florence tighter than I would have liked, hating how human her skin felt to my touch. She hadn’t said another word, even as we crossed the threshold into the room, and she let me limp the rest of the way alone. She had to be a bundle of adrenaline and shock. Her fingers shook violently, barely able to untie the fabric around my thigh but, eventually, she broke the knot and let it fall away.

I snapped my fingers and watched her haunted emerald eyes focus.

Without a word she flexed her hands out in front of her as she shook her head, took the moment to right herself, and went back to work.

The word trousers was mumbled, along with a few tiny curse words that sounded funny from her lips as I shifted my sore hips and pushed my pants down with one hand. The stitches I had popped were hanging haphazardly from my raw and swollen skin, but it wasn’t bleeding as much as I assumed it would.

Stitching up the irritated skin was going to hurt.

“Are you going to be able to sit still while I fix this?” Florence asked me.

Her eyes never left my skin. The only feeling worse than touching her was the look of sympathy in her eyes as she traced over the skin. I bit down on my lip to keep from reassuring her that it would be okay, that she had done an excellent job. That the ghoul deserved to die. But she was still a monster, wasn’t she? A creature lurking beneath the guise of a beautiful woman, just as bad as that ghoul and, at the end of the day, she was still the enemy.

“Just stitch it,” I said through a clenched jaw.

She shook her head, clearly frustrated, but at least she wasn’t lingering any longer. She brushed her bloodied fingers against her shirt and untied the bunched fabric so it finally fell loose, covering her legs. The sharp, stinging pain in my chest was hard to ignore when she was so vulnerable.

A delirious state of weakness.

“Florence.” Her name rolled off my lips for the second time that evening, stopping her in her tracks. “Thank you.”