Granted by the Beast

by Hamilton, Rebecca; Kressley, Conner;

  All the nonsense that had been and still was swirling around me lost its potency. Abram was here. He was mine. There was some evil force trying its best to bleed me dry and discard me like last year’s spring line, and it didn’t matter. Abram would keep me safe. I trusted him. I really, honest-to-God, without a shadow of a doubt, trusted him. And that made the world a brighter place.

  Of course, it didn’t change the fact that, googly eyes aside, there was still work that needed to be done.

  As we walked through the forest, still hand in hand, my body trembled slightly as everything I had learned came rushing in at me. Suddenly, it wasn’t a wild story. It wasn’t crazy talk. This was my new reality, and as much as I was ready to accept that, it wasn’t any easier to come to terms with.

  Abram gave my hand a gentle squeeze. “Are you all right, Charisse?”

  I chewed my lip. “To tell you the truth, it’s still a lot to take in.”

  “Of course it is,” he said, his voice just as steady as his resolve. “You’ve had days to take in what I’ve had decades to learn and accept.”

  As if I needed the reminder. The path where our feet fell was well worn, and I imagined Abram walking it ten, fifty, one hundred years ago. The idea that it was possible, that he had been this breathtaking man even then, was still enough to spin my head around.

  It made me uneasy. He had lived so long. He had seen so much. And maybe, my grand gesture notwithstanding, I was no different than the rest of them. How could I compete with a hundred and fifty years of life experience?

  No, that wasn’t true. Those were Satina’s words, her insecurities, and I wasn’t about to let them become mine. Besides, I was Charisse Bellamy. I had been on the cover of Seventeen, Cosmo, and Maxim magazine. I was third runner up to the 2007 Miss Plus Size Manhattan. A hundred and fifty years of life experience couldn’t compete with me. And that was just the way I liked it.

  “I’m just not sure how I can help when I still don’t have the first clue what any of it means.”

  “Don’t worry about what it means right now,” he said. “The only thing you need to know is that I’ll protect you. On my life, I’ll keep you safe. The rest will fall into place with time.”

  I sighed and pulled my hand away from his as we continued down the path. We were almost back at the house now, and he fresh air had done little to calm my nerves.

  Abram stopped in his tracks, and the wind picked up, sending strands of dark hair blowing across his night-black eyes. Some people might have seen those eyes as menacing, as capable of horrible things. And honestly, I might have been one of those people if things had turned out differently. But that couldn’t have been further from the truth now. To me, those eyes were kind and beautiful.

  He had tried so hard to explain away the mistakes of his youth. Though he always took responsibility for what he had done, he must have thought me knowing about those things would make me think less of him.

  He couldn’t have been more wrong.

  To me, that only made him stronger. My own mistakes in life might not have been as grand, but I’d lived enough to know everyone was guilty of something. Knowing that he had been that boy and then came out the other side of the man he was now…I was in awe.

  When I didn’t say anything, Abram’s eyebrows arched. “Did I misspeak?”

  “No,” I answered, running my hands through my hair. “Yes. I don’t know.” I shook my head. “Look, I get that you want to take care of all of this. And that’s sweet. It really is. Lord knows there are probably a billion girls out there who want nothing more than some gorgeous man to swoop in and save them from their problems, no questions asked. But I’m not one of those girls. I ask questions, Abram.” I pointed to myself. “This is my problem, my fight. You said it yourself—those girls are dying because of me.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for that,” he snapped, and despite the anger in his voice, his body language told of a man who wanted to comfort me.

  I raised a hand to stop him. “I don’t blame myself. I blame the son of a bitch who’s killing people. But that doesn’t absolve me of my responsibility here. This monster might have been the one to kill these girls, but that doesn’t change that they died because I moved back to New Haven.”

  It had been weighing on my mind, and it had to be said.

  As the sun behind Abram’s head began its descent westward, we finished our stroll and stepped into the living room. We had little time left before his change, but somehow I sensed that wasn’t going to stop him from arguing with me.

  “It started before you came back,” he said, locking the door behind us and waving arm toward to the couch for me to sit.

  I flopped down on a soft but dusty cushion and clutched my purse in my lap. “I visited Lulu weeks before I moved back. I couldn’t ask her a favor as big as moving in over the phone, so I’d come by. I’d been here, Abram. Probably around the same time that first girl went missing. If I hadn’t come then—if I hadn’t moved here—those girls might still be alive.”

  Abram, seating himself beside me, pressed his lips together into a defeated frown. “You couldn’t have known coming back would start this.”

  “That’s just it, Abram. I don’t know anything.” I turned my body toward him, grasping my purse even tighter, as though if I held on tight enough I wouldn’t been thrown from this world that was spinning too fast for me to keep my balance. “Maybe if I knew who this person was, or even if I knew what they wanted, then maybe I could make sense of all this. At least then I’d be able to put reasoning behind why all of this is happening. At least then I might feel like all these people didn’t die for no—”

  “I know,” he said firmly.

  “You know what?” I scoffed, ready for him to tell me that he knew exactly how I felt so that I could tear into him and assure him that he didn’t.

  “I might not know who the person is,” he said, “but I’m fairly certain I know what he wants.”

  I blinked hard. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I didn’t want to tell you anything.” Abram huffed. “If I had my way, you would be mixing drinks for your over-privileged friends or helping Lulu with the baby. The fact that this has touched you even this much is a testament to how much I’ve failed you already.”

  Lulu. God, I hadn’t even thought about her. Some friend I was. I would have to call her later and check up on things. Of course, if she was still in labor (very possible given the seventy-two hours it took for her to squeeze out the first one), that would mean I would have to call Dalton…which was a completely different can of worms I didn’t have time to open right now.

  “Your father wanted you to have a normal life, Charisse,” Abram finished.

  “Well, that ship has sailed, don’t you think?” I arched my perfectly plucked eyebrows at him. “I get that you’re old world, and that you think a man is supposed to take care of everything, and a woman is just supposed to be barefoot and in the kitchen. But I’m not Donna Reed, Abram.”

  “My sentimentalities are actually much older than that, I assure you.”

  “Whatever. The point is, this is the twenty-first century, and even if it wasn’t, I’m not the type of girl who’d just let you make everything better. This is my life—not my father’s, not yours, and certainly not whatever outdated gender roles you subscribe to. I want to know everything you know. I deserve to know everything you know.”

  For a long moment, he stared at me. I couldn’t be sure, but he seemed impressed.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “I brought Satina back.”

  “What?” I narrowed my eyes. “Why would you do that? She’s horrible. And that poor girl…”

  “The girl was dead. But I knew something was coming, and Satina was right. All the monster, none of the magic. I was out gunned. I needed a Conduit to help me through this.”

  “So you brought back the worst woman you’ve ever known? How did you even do that without magic?”

  “A mystic owed me
a favor. He brought her back. But I couldn’t trust him for what was coming. You’re a very potent Supplicant, Charisse. I had to be careful who I exposed you to.”

  “Something tells me you made a bad call.” I chewed the inside of my lip, shaking my head. “She tried to kill me.”

  “She was trying to get you to turn on me, and that’s the least of what would happen if a full blown Conduit ever got their hands on you. Satina’s powers are diminished while she’s trapped in that body. It’s why even the simplest of memory projections required your blood. I can control her this way, Charisse. And she has no choice but to give me the guidance I need.”

  “What guidance?” I gave Abram a proper glare. “You still haven’t told me anything.”

  The sun dipped well below Abram’s head now. We only had so much time, and I needed to make sure we put it to good use.

  “Satina thinks she knows what the other beast is after.” Abram folded his arms over his chest, making him look twice as hulking. “He’s not an actual Conduit, not a born one anyway. They give off certain energies, and Satina was able to pull a sort of psionic fingerprint off of the body she’s inhabiting. The only thing we don’t know is why its energy changed the night it followed you into my home—that night it was certainly more of a Conduit and less of…whatever it was when it killed Satina’s host.”

  I shook my head slowly. Back in New York, I wouldn’t have been caught dead marching around the woods in sneakers. And I never imagined I would be in a position where I would have to listen to a sentence with the words ‘psionic fingerprint’ in them. But here I was.

  Guess you can’t fight fate.

  “You said I was born a Sassafrass,” I muttered.

  “Supplicant,” he corrected. “And you were.”

  “And Conduits are born, too?”

  “Traditionally,” he answered. “But there is another way—a much more gruesome way entirely. “

  “You have to kill one, don’t you? That’s the other way?”

  Abram nodded.

  “Unbelievable!” I threw my hands in the air. “Everything is about killing with you people. Why does life always have to be about death?”

  He moved toward me. This time I didn’t stop him. “I wish I had the answer to that question, Charisse. But they’re not my people. I’m a bastardized monster—a product of a curse, not a beast by birth or by murder.”

  “Are you sure they killed a Conduit, though? Maybe they were cursed like you were.”

  Abram shook his head. “They wouldn’t be after you if that was the case. Your blood would be no good to them then. A Conduit without the magic is a beast and nothing more. And you must understand—these are your people. This is your world. It’s because of that that this monster can use you.”

  “To what end?” I asked as he neared me.

  “This other beast—he has some of the powers of a Conduit, but not all of them. That is why his visions of you are unclear. Any other Conduit hunting you would have found you by now—would not have killed the wrong people in error. But what Satina believes he is after is something much more potent, something only your blood could give him, due to your bloodline being one of the strongest Supplicant bloodlines in history.”

  “And what is that? What is it that my extra special blood has to offer that is worth this blind killing spree?”

  Abram looked down at me guiltily, as though he was somehow to blame for this. “Eternal life.”

  “What?” I gasped. “I can’t do that! I don’t have the power to make someone live forever.”

  Abram just stared at me.

  “Do I?”

  He continued to stare.

  “But I thought you beasts already had that?”

  “I do, but only because it’s part of my curse. Someone who has stolen the life of a Conduit, however, would have to keep replenishing their state of being with fresh Supplicant blood…unless they could find a permanent solution. You could be that solution.”

  “Oh my god,” I said, and I started pacing. “Oh my God.”

  “It’s all right,” Abram said, wrapping his arms around me and stopping me. “It’s a lot of power, but it doesn’t change who you are. You’re still you. You’re still—”

  I shook my head against his chest. Listening to the steady beat of his heart, I continued. “If we can’t stop him—if he does get to me—then he’ll never die. Think of all the people he could hurt, all the people he could kill. Forever.”

  Tears burned behind my eyes.

  “I won’t—We won’t let that happen,” Abram answered. “I promise.”

  “How do we stop it then?”

  Abram rubbed his hand up and down my back and let out a long, soft breath. “For now, just try not to hurt yourself. No falling down steps or running through the woods with cut up feet. The blood will only draw him to you.”

  I shuddered, pulling away. “So my blood acts like a beacon for demon monsters? Geeze, better hope I don’t knick myself shaving.”

  Abram leveled his gaze at me. “This is no laughing matter, Ms. Bellamy. I’ve already chased it off several times thanks to your…injuries.”

  “Then let’s do something about it,” I said. “I’m not going to wait for some accident to send this thing hurtling at me while I’m unprepared. I rather see it coming.”

  “No, Charisse,” Abram said firmly. “This man killed a Conduit—something most would consider a suicide mission. That he actually accomplished that only speaks to how dangerous he is.”

  “Which is all the more reason for us to stop him,” I said, “and it sounds like there’s only one way to call out something so single-minded.”

  “Please, don’t.” Abram placed his hands on either of my shoulders. “I shudder to think of whatever it is you are considering.”

  “There’s nothing to think about, Abram. I’m going to give him what he wants.” I slid his hands from my shoulders and scooted back. “I’m going to give him me.”

  Chapter 21

  The look on Abram’s face told me that I may as well have shot him as suggested what I had.

  “Are you out of your mind?” He huffed, staring at me with bewildered eyes. “I’ve spent all of this time trying to keep you safe, keep you hidden, and now you just want to dangle yourself out there like a worm on a line?”

  “A worm, Abram? I think as far as prey are concerned, I could at least pass for a rabbit in a fox’s den, or something less…slimy.”

  “I’m being serious,” he responded without even a shadow of a smile. “This is deadly business.”

  “I know that.” I spread my hands. “And I’m not the only one. I bet all those girls that bastard massacred knew it, too. I bet that was the last thought that went through any of their minds.” I looked down at my feet, suddenly ashamed that I’d ever thought the sort of shoe adorning them was in any way important. “I won’t let their deaths be for nothing, Abram.”

  “God, you’re amazing,” he mumbled under his breath, and I couldn’t tell whether he was exasperated or impressed. “Don’t you see, Charisse? If you die, then all of it really would have been for nothing. He’ll get what he wants, and those girls will never be avenged.”

  I shook my head. “That won’t happen.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because you’re here,” I said. I stuck my finger into his hard chest and let it sit there. At first, I’d only intended the gesture to hammer home my point, but soon, I found myself taking comfort in this small connection. Touching him, even like this, seemed to quiet my mind and steady my stance. “You’d never let anything happen to me.”

  “Not in a hundred lifetimes.” His voice had dropped to nearly a whisper.

  His hand traveled upward and encompassed mine. Sparks shot through me and, for an instant, I forgot about everything else. I wasn’t a Supplicant. He wasn’t some Conduit’s pet science project. He was just a man, and I was a woman. There was no danger, no pile of lookalike corpses for me to hang my guilt on.
There was only this tenderness between us. Tenderness and heat.

  He cleared his throat, and I realized he was feeling it, too.

  “That doesn’t mean I want you to go spearheading into danger, though,” he said. “We need to go about this in an intelligent manner.”

  “Does intelligent mean slow, Abram? Because I don’t think the next poor sap who looks like me has that kind of time to waste.” My hand was still his to hold. My heart was still his to break. But I couldn’t fold on this.

  “I know you want to save them, and that’s admirable. But you have no idea what we’re up against. I was dealing with Conduits while your grandfather was still in diapers. They’re dangerous creatures, and I doubt you have the foresight to fully understand that.”

  My eyes narrowed accusingly. “So I don’t understand anything?” I wrestled my hand from his. “I’m just some child then?”

  He sighed, his expression forlorn. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “That’s exactly what you meant,” I answered, grinding my teeth together. “You think that because you’re older than sand, you have some kind of immaculate perspective on this.”

  “I think my situation affords me a unique advantage, and if you weren’t so close to the situation, I’m sure you would agree.”

  “You’re sure?” I asked indignantly. “And I suppose you’re sure because I’m so infantile and predictable.”

  His eyebrows shot up quizzically, which was just what I was going for, and he blew out a thin stream of breath. “Why are you acting like this?”

  “Acting like what? Childish? Well, I suppose I’m acting this way because that’s how you see me. Like a child!”

  I wasn’t, of course. I knew better than that and, even if I didn’t, I wasn’t the type to go off on some poor guy just because he said the wrong thing. That was way too ‘How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days’ for my taste.

  I had slipped into mega-bitch mode only to create a distraction. And I was trying to create a distraction because I didn’t want Abram, with his heightened beast senses, to realize that I was—at this very moment—fumbling for the nail file in my purse.