“R-Rich?” Poppy stammered when she recognised Nate’s best friend.
He looked horrified by the sight of her. Without another word he grabbed a wad of kitchen roll and knelt beside her, gently wiping at her face as he chewed his lip in concern.
“What’s wrong, Poppy?” he asked. “Is it Casey?”
Poppy could only sob harder in response.
Rich seemed at a loss for what to do. “Poppy, can I…how can I help you?”
“Nobody can help me,” she wailed miserably. “This is all my own fault.”
“Everyone knows it isn’t,” he said, trying his best at a reassuring smile. “We know how flighty Casey is. I’d have spoken to you sooner, only…”
“I kn-know. Nate. Nothing changes the fact that I have been messing him around.”
Rich grimaced. “It’s not that – not really. It’s more like he’s heartbroken, and he doesn’t know how to handle it.”
That only made Poppy feel worse. A fresh wave of tears hit her and Rich, realising what he’d done, flailed about as if unsure of whether he could hug her or not.
“Poppy, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have said that! I’m so sorry –”
“It’s okay. I deserve it.”
“You don’t. Nobody deserves to be this upset and have someone stupidly make them feel worse.”
Poppy let out a garbled laugh. “What’s one more blow, right? May as well get it in whilst I already feel wretched, right?”
Neither of them said anything for a while, though eventually Poppy’s sobs quietened until she was almost back to normal. She looked at Rich.
“Thanks for checking up on me. Why are you in here so late, anyway?”
He glanced at the fridge Poppy was leaning against. “Had a hankering for orange juice. Stupid, I know. It’s almost four in the morning.”
She giggled despite her awful mood, then with effort pushed up off the floor and moved away from the fridge. She gestured towards it. “Be my guest.”
When Rich took the entire carton out, clearly with the intention of leaving for his room with it, he regarded Poppy seriously.
“Go back to bed, Poppy. Being up in the middle of the night won’t make you feel better, but sleep probably will.”
She gave him a small smile. “In a bit. I’m just going to…I don’t know. Clean up. Then I’ll go to bed, I swear.”
Rich didn’t look convinced; however, he dutifully left when he realised there was nothing more he could do.
Poppy shoved her face under the freezing water still pouring from the faucet before turning the tap off. She rubbed at her eyes and took several deep breaths, willing herself to calm down. Rich was right; she needed to get some sleep.
When Poppy heard the door creak behind her she assumed he was having second thoughts about leaving her alone.
“Rich, I swear I’m going to – oh.”
It wasn’t Rich; it was Fred.
She narrowed her eyes, annoyed when she had to sniff away tears before demanding, “The hell do you want, Sampson?”
Fred said nothing, though he closed the door behind him. Poppy could see the dark corridor through the glass panel in the door, in stark contrast to the ugly lighting of the kitchen.
When Fred stalked towards her Poppy instinctively moved away from him until her back hit the sink.
“This isn’t funny, Fred,” she said. “If you were trying to scare me or catch me crying: congrats. You managed both. Hooray. Now if you’ll excuse me –”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
He held out an arm to prevent Poppy from rushing past.
“Fred, seriously –”
“I have some questions for you, and you’re going to answer them. No snide comments or bullshit answers or evading what I’m asking.”
Poppy crossed her arms in an attempt to seem merely annoyed with Fred rather than worried or intimidated. “And why should I answer anything you ask of me?”
“Show me your arm.”
“What?”
Beneath the compression sleeve Poppy’s skin itched wildly in response to Fred’s demand. It was all Fred needed to say to confirm to Poppy that he’d worked out something he shouldn’t have.
“You heard me,” he said. “Show me your arm.”
“That’s not even a question.”
Fred took a step towards her. “I don’t care. Show me.”
“No.”
“And why not?”
“Because you’re telling me to.”
Poppy thought Fred would lose his temper with her speaking back to him the way she was, but his face remained eerily calm and expressionless.
She frowned. “Look, I’m just going to go –”
Fred lunged for Poppy’s arm and, in the process, grabbed one of the kitchen knives drying on the dish rack behind her. When he pointed the tip of the blade up against Poppy’s jugular she had no choice but to stay where she was.
“Fred,” she said, trying her best to stay level-headed even though she was anything but, “what do you think you’re playing at? This isn’t funny.”
His eyes flashed. “It isn’t meant to be.”
Without moving the knife Fred grabbed at the compression sleeve, meaning to rip it away. But Poppy reached for the blade of the knife, wrapping her hand around it before elbowing Fred in the face. He yelled in surprise, and Poppy used his momentary distraction to shoulder him out of the way.
She barely made it two feet before Fred yanked her painfully back by her hair. When her eyes found Fred’s she saw his nose was bleeding.
“Who the hell grabs a knife by the blade, King?” Fred muttered, almost to himself. He seemed torn between taking off Poppy’s compression sleeve and forcing open the hand that held the knife. She had no choice but to loosen her grip to prevent the blade biting into her flesh, though it hadn’t yet managed to cut her.
That was the opportunity Fred needed. Pulling on Poppy’s hair even harder he grabbed her wrist and crushed it with his hand until Poppy was gasping in pain and dropped the knife entirely.
“Fred, let me go!” Poppy yelped, though his grip only grew tighter in response to her protest.
And then Fred saw it – Poppy’s hand was fine. There was barely a mark that ever indicated she’d grabbed the wrong end of a knife. There was nothing there at all.
Fred’s eyes went wide with disbelief, though he must have had an inkling of what would happen given that he’d wanted to see Poppy’s arm in the first place. He tossed her to the side and retrieved the fallen knife, grinning maliciously as he took a step towards her.
Poppy tried once more to escape for the door, eyes darting round wildly to try and find something she could use against Fred. But the cutlery drawer and knife block were both behind Fred; Poppy had nothing but her fists, and she was weak from malnutrition and exhaustion.
“Show me your arm, Poppy,” Fred repeated. Poppy could only numbly shake her head as she took a step away from him.
When Fred grabbed her again she was starkly reminded of when he’d pulled on her arm and demanded she follow him to help Andrew on the hike, back when Nick and Tom had tortured the mountain goat. Poppy had become uncomfortably aware that Fred was stronger than her. And Poppy didn’t know how to fight – not properly. If Fred really wanted to he could easily overpower her.
The knowledge crept up Poppy’s spine like an ice-cold spider.
I’m in trouble, she thought, just as he finally ripped away the compression sleeve on her arm.
Fred’s voice was eerily quiet as he asked, “…how?” He stared at the smooth, unmarred skin of Poppy’s forearm, which was trembling beneath his fingers. “How come you don’t have a scar? How come you’re completely fine?”
“Fred, leave me alone –”
“How do you heal so quickly?!”
“I don’t know!”
“I don’t believe you!”
“Why would I lie about this?!”
Poppy frantically tried to pull away from Fred;
he responded by viciously pushing her against the fridge and pinning her in place with a hand on her throat.
“Because you lie about everything,” he hissed, taking an unreasonable amount of pleasure from seeing Poppy’s nails desperately scrabbling at his hand in an attempt to free herself. He only squeezed her neck tighter. “You and Kapros are up to something,” he continued, “and I want to know what it is. I want to know why I can do this and you heal right back up.”
Fred slashed Poppy’s arm open with startling power and speed; she cried out, coughing and spluttering when Fred finally released her neck. She stared at him, wide-eyed, clutching her arm to her chest and smearing blood over her t-shirt. But the cut had already healed, and Fred had witnessed it happen.
He shook his head in disbelief. “What are you, King?”
“Stop this, Fred!” Poppy made another attempt to push past him, making it within five feet of the door when she felt the cold bite of steel slice into her thigh. She collapsed to her knees, then down to the floor when Fred removed the knife and plunged it into her back, straight through one of her kidneys.
Poppy screamed. She couldn’t stop. She had thought it was painful falling from the climbing wall; she’d thought it was bad when Dorian first mutilated her arm and drank from her.
But those incidents were nothing compared to the excruciating pain of Fred removing his knife and stabbing Poppy through her liver, then slashing her hamstrings, before jamming the blade into the meat of her shoulder.
“Fred!” Poppy begged, coughing up blood onto the floor as Fred paused long enough for her to drag herself away a few precious inches. She knew the wounds were healing. She knew he was watching.
She knew if she didn’t get away that she would die, and Poppy realised, with aching clarity, that she wasn’t ready for death after all. She wanted to live. There were still people in the club to save. People she wanted to say goodbye to. People she loved.
Poppy had thought her life ended the moment she’d handed it over to Dorian. She’d been wrong.
Behind her, Fred laughed cruelly as Poppy’s body continued healing itself. The floor was slippery with blood. Her blood. It covered Poppy’s – no, Dorian’s – t-shirt and soaked into her skin. When she risked a glance at Fred she saw he’d been splattered with it.
Along with his gleaming eyes, the twisted set of his mouth and the garbled laugh that followed, Poppy concluded that Frederick Sampson had gone completely insane.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he called out when Poppy tried to haul herself towards the door. He flipped her onto her back; she mouthed a wordless scream as the action sent jarring waves of pain through her currently-healing organs.
When Fred plunged the knife into Poppy’s stomach all she could do was sob. She’d lost so much blood, and she had been too weak to begin with. And Fred continued laughing as her flesh tried to heal itself around the knife.
“You’re a monster, King,” he murmured. He pulled out the blade and slashed through Poppy’s t-shirt, over and over again until she was covered in bleeding, biting wounds. “Completely inhuman.”
“You’re…the monster,” Poppy barely got out. She was losing consciousness; this was simply too much pain for her to bear. As a cut healed Fred merely replaced it with a new one, until there was barely an inch of Poppy’s skin left untouched by blood. Even her hair was drenched in it.
Fred barked in laughter at her comment. “Does it even count when you heal this quickly? In five minutes nobody would know I hurt you at all!”
“You’re killing me!”
“No I’m not!” he screamed, slamming the knife back into Poppy’s stomach with both of his hands as she cried. “You can’t die! You can’t die, otherwise when you fell from the climbing wall you would have! I’m not doing anything to you!”
In desperation she arched her neck back to look at the door, wondering how she could possibly reach it. It was all Poppy could do to withhold a gasp of shock when she realised someone was watching through the glass panel.
Andrew.
A horrified, stricken, shaking Andrew, who clearly had no idea what to do.
Poppy did.
Dorian, she mouthed. Get Dorian. Get Dorian. Get Dorian.
When Andrew disappeared Poppy turned her attention back to Fred, who was too engrossed in his violent, psychotic breakdown to have noticed what had just transpired.
“Tell me what’s going on, King!” he demanded, though Poppy was growing limp beneath him. “Tell me why you’re like this!”
“Don’t…know…” Poppy’s eyelids fluttered. She’d lost too much blood. She was going to die. She was going to die and, even then, she was still refusing to tell Fred about Dorian’s plan.
Stubborn and stupid to the end, she thought hazily. To think Frederick Sampson would be the death of me.
When the door slammed open and Fred was wrenched away from her Poppy did not have to see to know who was responsible.
“Dorian,” she cried weakly.
But then she closed her eyes and slipped into nothing.
CIARAN RADIN-KIRKWOOD
Dorian
Dorian didn’t even revert to his true form when he threw open the kitchen door and flung Fred off Poppy as if he were weightless. He didn’t have to.
With what Andrew had told him Dorian could easily rip a man in half using human hands alone.
When Dorian had awoken to the sound of frantic, heavy banging on his door he’d known something was wrong. He hadn’t expected, however, to open his door to a hyperventilating Andrew Forbes. But all it took was for Andrew to mouth the word Poppy and Dorian was racing out of his room, immediately awake and urging Andrew forward to take him to her.
The sight before him was sickening, in a way that watching members of his kind consume humans never had been. It was a bloodbath. Poppy’s bloodbath. Dorian could just barely make out her pale, unfocused eyes through the crimson of her skin.
“Dorian,” was all Poppy said before her eyes closed. Dorian was stricken, thinking for one, awful moment that she was dead. But he could see her chest rising and falling; proof that Poppy was still alive.
But not for long, he thought as he bent down and very carefully swept Poppy up. She was slick and slippery with blood. The metallic tang of the stuff filled Dorian’s nostrils, waking in him a desperate longing to drink it despite the terrible situation the woman in his arms was in.
The realisation that followed caused Dorian to freeze. The kitchen was covered in Poppy’s blood. His staff couldn’t go near it. If they did they’d know what it was.
He turned and stared at Andrew, who grew steadily more ashen as he took in Fred’s unconscious body lying in a crumpled heap by the fridge. But then the young man stared at Poppy and burst into tears.
“She’s not dead she’s not dead she’s not –”
“Don’t worry, Andrew, she’ll be okay,” Dorian said, forcing his voice to remain soft and calm.
But Andrew couldn’t comprehend this. He merely shook his head and cried harder. “I saw him – I saw Fred with the knife. Over and over again. How is Poppy not dead?”
With a hand he realised was shaking, Dorian lifted up one of Poppy’s arms. Though it was happening worryingly slowly compared to usual, the multitude of criss-crossed gashes on her skin were healing before Andrew and Dorian’s very eyes.
“You can’t tell anyone about how special Poppy is, Andrew,” Dorian said in response to the look on Andrew’s face. “Nobody can know. Nobody. Do you understand?”
Andrew lifted a hand up, helplessly gesturing towards the state of the kitchen. “People will know when they see this. Or Fred will say –”
“Fred won’t say anything or I’ll slit his throat,” Dorian spat out, meaning every word of it. “Andrew, look at me. Don’t look at Poppy. I need you to clean this mess up. Every last drop of blood. And get Fred back to his room unnoticed. Can you do that?”
“No!” Andrew replied immediately. The look on his face sugges
ted he might be sick. “What about your staff? Can’t they do it?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Why?”
If Dorian’s arms weren’t full carrying Poppy he’d have dragged a hand across his face. But if Poppy could be endlessly patient with Andrew then so could he.
“Andrew, I can’t explain it right now. I need to help Poppy. But if anyone were to come across the kitchen like this then Poppy would be in trouble. More trouble. You don’t want that, do you?”
Andrew slowly shook his head.
“Is anyone else awake? Why were you awake?”
“Nobody else is awake as far as I know. And I – um, I couldn’t sleep, and I knocked on Poppy’s door because I knew she hadn’t been sleeping well lately, either, but she wasn’t there, so…I went looking for her.”
Dorian could have hugged the man for loving Poppy so hopelessly. It had, quite literally, saved her life. He settled for smiling at him instead. “You’re a good person, Andrew, and an even better friend to Poppy. Do her this one, last favour and clean up the mess in here. I swear you’ll get an explanation when I can give you one.”
As soon as Andrew, still full of reluctance, nodded, Dorian whisked Poppy away with him to his bedroom. Grabbing a large blanket he covered his bedsheets, before gently placing Poppy down upon it. Beneath the thick layer of blood he realised Fred had torn through Poppy’s clothes, or what little there had been of them in the first place.
For she’d been wearing Dorian’s t-shirt. It gave him an overwhelming urge to vomit – to look at the tattered, bloody material and to know that, had he indulged his urge to keep bothering Poppy rather than dutifully giving her space, Dorian might have prevented what Fred had done.
He was the one watching us in the meadow two weeks ago, Dorian realised with certainty. He saw me drink from Poppy. He was merely waiting for an opportunity to corner Poppy on her own.
Dorian shouldn’t have allowed her to be alone for a moment, even if Poppy had shouted and screamed at him to go away. Having her hate him was infinitely better than what had just transpired.
And he didn’t even know where to start helping her. Poppy was as crimson as her name; a complete and utter mess.
Invisible Monsters Page 20
