Chapter Thirty-One

Panther Hollow Bridge

VINCENT RAISED HIS hands in the air and tried to breathe through the terror that was shredding his insides to pieces. Any sudden movement could make the monster snap Dr. Cowart’s neck or shoot Sam in the head. “Please. Let them go.”

“He was trying to kill me,” it said plainly, inspecting the professor’s ever-reddening face like it was a fascinating display in an art museum.

Vincent needed a plan. Something to stop this creature. But it was choking the only person who knew how to defeat it. He needed to think of something. Now. Or Dr. Cowart would die. He couldn’t move without risking their lives, so his only option was to somehow convince it to stop. “He didn’t have anything to do with it. I went to him for help. It was me. Leave them alone. It’s me you want. I wanted to kill you.”

The creature stared at him with a blank expression on its face like Vincent had spoken to it in a foreign language. It shook its head as if it was trying to knock the thought loose from its mind. “No. You need me. It was him, and we don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

“It was just me!”

“Shut up!” The creature tightened its grip on Dr. Cowart’s throat, stepping back toward the floor-to-ceiling windows on the other side of the room and raising the professor in the air above him.

“James, stop!” He hated even calling it that name, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. “Please!”

It ignored him.

Dr. Cowart clawed at its hand and kicked the monster—his struggles reflected in the window—but it didn’t even flinch.

Vincent realized what the creature intended to do only moments before it drew the professor back and tossed him at the wall of glass panels.

“No!” Vincent started to run forward in the hope of grabbing one of Dr. Cowart’s outstretched hands, but he forced himself to stop. Its gun was still aimed at Sam, and it wouldn’t hesitate to kill her.

The glass shattered. A hoarse scream erupted from Dr. Cowart as he disappeared into the night. Then, the deafening collision of flesh and bone against cement filled the air before the glass rained down on the sidewalk three stories below.

The creature turned its back to Vincent and leaned out of the window to see what had become of Dr. Cowart. In its momentary captivation, Sam ducked out of the aim of its gun and dove at the monster.

But it was faster. In one swift motion, it turned toward her and smashed the butt of its gun against the side of her skull. She stumbled backward, smacking her head on the wall and collapsing facedown on the ground. The wall clock fell on top of her, but she didn’t react to it. That didn’t satisfy the monster though. It crossed the room, the gun aimed at the back of her head.

Vincent wouldn’t let it kill her. He jumped between them, raising his arms out to block the creature from her. It didn’t lower its gun, but he didn’t move. He stared into its blank eyes, daring it. It’d have to shoot through him if it wanted to get to Sam. “Enough!”

“Step aside.”

A low, breathless groan came from behind him, and he’d never been happier to hear someone in pain because it meant Sam was still alive. “No.”

“I said step aside!” The anger in the monster’s eyes returned, burning bright and hot at his defiance.

Vincent wanted to cower away at his rage because he knew he could very well become its next victim, but he wouldn’t let it hurt Sam. “Why can’t you just stop? No one is after us. You’ve killed everyone. Just stop!”

“Not everyone.” The way it spoke made it seem like he wasn’t talking about Sam.

Before a question could even form in Vincent’s mind, a distant scream came from somewhere below. Another cry followed it, asking for someone to call the police. They’d found Dr. Cowart. The creature no longer had the luxury of time. Any minute now, the sirens would start, and they’d be trapped here.

“It’s over.”

The creature lowered its gun.

The action was automatic. Had he somehow found a way to make the creature follow his orders? Before relief could even enter his system, he got his answer. It wrapped its free hand around his bruised wrist and pulled him toward the door.

Vincent grabbed the edge of the doorframe in the hope of delaying it long enough for the police to arrive—they’d be here any minute—but it yanked him forward, and a terrible wet popping sound filled his ears. He fell to the ground; then the pain erupted in his wrist. It was so sharp that the world disappeared around him. He forgot about Sam and the monster and everything except the pain that had to be the worst sensation a human could physically experience before their nerves just shut down and they accepted death.

Vomit shot from his mouth, flooding the carpet with yellow bile flecked with bits of mushy food. The monster let his arm drop to the ground, and he vomited once more before a spell of dry heaving.

“Look what you’ve done now.” Its large hands encircled his waist. He was hauled into the air and thrown over its shoulder in a fireman’s lift. He needed to kick and punch and get this thing to put him down, but he could barely breathe. The pain wasn’t dying away. It remained just as intense as when it happened.

The monster started through the doorway, and Vincent hit against its back. The room came in and out of focus. He squinted his eyes and managed to see Sam, lying on her side and clutching her head, before it carried him into the hall. She was in pain, but she was alive, and the police would be there before long to help her.

The creature hurried down the hall, and every time Vincent collided with its back, the pain was so intense he thought he’d pass out at any minute. But unconsciousness refused to take him out of his misery. When the creature stopped for a minute, he looked up to find the office door of a professor whose name he didn’t recognize.

Why’d it stop here?

Then, a ding rang out, and he realized it’d just been waiting for the elevator. Once the doors closed them in, he saw his pale face in the metal.

A pitiful sight to behold.

“You have to walk out of here,” it said. Not a question. An order.

The monster set him down. His legs shook. He clung to the railing along the back of the wall with his good hand and leaned against the wall for support. He was determined to keep himself upright because the alternative was going back into that monster’s hands. The hands that had caused purple and black patches to appear up his arm and who knew how much damage below the surface. It must have dislocated his arm or torn a tendon. And it didn’t seem to care about whether he was okay as long as he was at its side.

The elevator doors opened.

It grabbed his uninjured forearm and led him into the empty lobby. “I’m parked just up the road.”

It could crush this arm, too, and there was nothing he could do about it. And he was following along with it. Following it with no idea of what it intended to do to him. It’d told him it hadn’t killed everyone yet. Was it saving the finale for him? Kill him and end this once and for all?

No, it wouldn’t kill me.

But it was furious, and it did all sorts of things when it went into a fit of rage.

There had to be some way to stop it. This creature couldn’t just take him without anyone interfering. He felt like he was back on the trail in Panther Hollow, praying for some heroic figure to save him yet knowing no one would. He was the only one left who could stop this monster, and beyond taking out his pocketknife and sawing off his good arm, he found no way to free himself before they got to the exit.

Shards of glass littered the ground just outside the building. They crunched under their shoes as the creature pulled him forward into the chaos that had erupted in the wake of Dr. Cowart’s fall.

Somehow, Dr. Cowart had survived the three-story drop. From an initial pool of dark liquid, smears and handprints of blood led out toward the sidewalk where nearly a dozen people had crowded around his body with their phone flashlights on to get a good look at him in the dark.

A woman shouted to give him space. Others warned not to touch him until an ambulance got there. A man who’d stopped on the sidewalk asked about what’d happened, and another woman was on the phone with 9-1-1, shushing people to hear what the operator said. Through their legs, Vincent caught glimpses of red blood and white bone.

They were all so consumed with the man dying on the ground that no one gave Vincent or the monster more than a passing glance. They probably couldn’t even see the blood staining its face in the darkness outside their circle of light.

Vincent could call out to them for help. Create a scene until the police got there. But even the brief glimpses of Dr. Cowart’s body kept him quiet. There was no doubt in his mind that the monster would tear every single one of these poor bastards apart if they got in its way, so he went with it back to his car. He must have passed right by it on his way inside. He’d been so afraid the detectives had set a trap he’d completely missed it.

The creature opened the passenger’s side door and pushed him into the seat. His bruised arm hung useless outside the door. He didn’t dare try to use the muscles in his arm to lift it for fear it might put too much strain on whatever was broken or torn. He instead pulled it into the car with his good arm, and he screamed involuntarily as the pain flared.

The creature didn’t seem to care. They’d gotten far enough away from the crowd that being noticed no longer seemed like a major concern. At least not with the revolver in its pocket. It snapped off the plastic car door handle and shut his door. As if he could make a run for it in his current condition. But he’d be lying if he didn’t think about revisiting his plan of opening the door once they got going and letting the pavement put him out of his misery before the monster had the chance.

It got in the car and slammed the door shut behind it.

Vincent jumped at the sound. Pain shot through his arm. Cradling it, he pressed himself against the door to put as much space as he could between himself and that thing. The illusion of safety did little to comfort him. He was trapped in here with it.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said, trying to hide the fear that drenched every single one of his words.

It didn’t answer. It turned the key in the ignition and pulled onto the street. The silence sat heavy in the car like fog on a summer morning. Vincent tried to wade through the pain and fear for something to fill it with, but he came up empty.

The sirens were what filled the silence. First, an ambulance that came up behind them and pulled to a halt in front of Posvar Hall. Then, two cop cars that came barreling down the road toward them, lights flashing. They passed by without even looking their way. Too focused on the scene ahead to acknowledge a random passing car.

The monster continued down the street. The sirens had barely faded away when muffled screams and pounding sounds filled the car. Vincent looked behind him, but the back seat was empty. The trunk. It had someone in the trunk. “What the fuck is going on?”

“I got him for you.”

Vincent almost asked who, immediately fearing it had gotten to Henry, but the pieces fell together when, through the trunk and whatever it had gagged him with, he recognized the gravelly voice. The monster had been spotted leaving the scene of a shooting with another man. It hadn’t killed the tall man. It’d captured him. Of all the people who’d been senselessly murdered at the hands of this monster, the one it decided to spare was the man who had caused all this pain and death in the first place.

“Why?”

“Because you will end this where it all started, and we can be happy again,” it said simply, as if the plan was so obvious that any further explanation would be an insult to his intelligence.

“You…” He tried to process the monster’s words. It wanted him to kill this man where it had all started. Panther Hollow. It wanted him to kill the tall man at Panther Hollow to end everything so that they could be happy? “You aren’t making any sense.”

“You let him get away at his apartment. You distracted me. He’s yours to kill.”

The monster didn’t want to make Vincent its next victim; it wanted to make him a predator.

“I can’t kill him. I just can’t,” he said.

“You will. What if someone like that professor of yours tries to hurt me again? You have to be able to protect yourself.”

“He wasn’t trying to kill you, I—”

“Enough!” It hit the dashboard with its first so hard Vincent expected the airbag to deploy. Veins were bulging in its forehead, but it had no veins. No blood beyond what had mixed with the dirt. An imitation of a human. Of James. A wolf wrapped in the skin of his lover.

They were close to Panther Hollow, and it was going to make him kill the tall man. He needed to think. The next few minutes could decide the trajectory of the rest of his life or, indeed, whether he had a life when this was all said and done. He used his good arm to run his fingers over the jagged edge of the door handle, but there wasn’t enough of it left for him to get the door open.

He had to do something, but no ideas came to mind. Dr. Cowart was his only hope of stopping this creature, and he was as good as dead if he hadn’t already died. Vincent thought back to his words on the phone. The police hadn’t been feeding the professor lines or monitoring what he’d said. The monster had been doing it, and Vincent couldn’t think of any other reason why Dr. Cowart would emphasize the “circular narratives” of these tales except to provide his student with a clue about how to defeat this monster.

They’d discussed the story structures of myths, legends, and folktales at the beginning of the semester. Like most of Dr. Cowart’s classes, Vincent hadn’t been paying much attention. Dr. Cowart didn’t permit any of his students to take notes using their laptops because of how easily they could become distracted, so Vincent had spent the class doodling in his notebook. He remembered drawing a caricature of Dr. Cowart that day because of how much it had made his classmate, Jen, laugh.

However, he also remembered incorporating some of the story structure figures into his drawing. The linear one was just a straight arrow he’d drawn sticking out of Dr. Cowart’s ass. That told a story straight through from beginning to end. He’d made one of Dr. Cowart’s eyes the spiral structure, which was a story that progressed inward to the center. He didn’t remember drawing the circular one though. He wanted to say that, given the name, it was just a big circle, but he couldn’t remember anything about it or what a circle had to do with killing a monster.

Shit.

In any other situation, he’d just take out his phone and google it, but there was no way he was going to be able to maneuver around a half-working screen with the monster beside him. It’d probably think he was trying to call the cops, and there’d surely be consequences for such a betrayal.

He returned to what he’d researched about golems in the car with Sam in the hope of finding a solution. The story that had most closely matched what’d happened with him and James was the one where the creator had brought the golem to life by carving a word into its forehead. The way that golem had been defeated was by removing a letter from the word, which changed the meaning of it. But Vincent hadn’t written any words on James’s forehead. He’d just kissed him. And the monster’s forehead had no blemishes Vincent could alter or remove.

Back to the drawing board.

Vincent knew that pleading with the monster was useless, but with only minutes separating them from the Panther Hollow, he had to do something. “Why don’t we leave him for the police? A lifetime in jail would be a far more deserving punishment than death. Let them handle him, and we can leave. Go wherever you want. Boston even.”

Only after he spoke did he realize he’d never talked to the monster about Boston. James had often talked about moving there after they both graduated. The monster would have no way of knowing that though. Then again, it knew a lot of things it hadn’t just been told.

“We both know he wouldn’t get life in prison for what he did, and he’d come after us. This is the only way.”

He wished he could say that the creature was wrong, but it wasn’t. The tall man probably wouldn’t get more than a slap on the wrist, and with his testimony, Vincent would be wanted for murder. But he couldn’t kill the tall man. He couldn’t cross that line. He was supposed to be the monster’s creator, not the other way around. It should take orders from him. An idea came to him then. He might not know how to defeat this monster, but he should be able to control or at least persuade it.

“I don’t want this,” he said. It started to speak, but he talked over it. “I never did, so if you do this, know that it isn’t for me. It’s for you.”

The creature laughed. James’s laugh. “You can’t lie to me. You asked me to keep you safe, and you knew what that entailed from the beginning. You wanted them dead. You might be able to lie to yourself, but not to me. I know you better than you know yourself. I’m a part of you. You wanted them dead, so I killed them.”

No. He—it was lying. “I just didn’t want those bastards to hurt anyone else. I didn’t want anyone else to end up like us or Damien Wright or…”

His name escaped him.

“Who?”

“Todd Caldwell,” he answered, but the creature had already made its point and delivered it like a punch to the gut. If all of this really was for Damien and Todd, then he’d be able to remember their names.

He hadn’t thought of asking their attackers where they’d dumped Todd’s body at any point when facing them. That had been the last thing on his mind. He was too worried about surviving to care about someone else. He hated their attackers, and he didn’t want to spend his whole life waiting for them to find him, but he didn’t want to kill them. He just wanted them dead. There was a distinction between the two, but he was having trouble finding it.

Vincent felt the tears coming, but he held them back. The creature was just messing with his head. It might have a point, but that didn’t mean it was capturing the whole truth of the matter. It was neglecting all the innocent people who it had senselessly scarred and killed in its pursuit of their attackers. “I never wanted you to kill Tyler. Or Dr. Cowart. You did that.”

“Everything I’ve done is for you. All of it. Blame whoever you need to, but I’ve done this for us. It’s us against the world, babe.” It smiled at him. Not a vicious smile. A softer one. Loving.

James had always called him babe. Hardly a unique term of endearment, but how did this thing know to call him it? It said it was a part of him. Had it somehow tapped into his memories, or did it also contain some of the person from whom it had been modeled?

Maybe he could somehow appeal to the part of it that’d come from James. He took the monster’s hand in his. Forced himself to kiss it. “Let’s just go. Leave all this behind. I know you did this for us. I appreciate it, and we can just go and move past this. No one else needs to die.”

It leaned over and kissed him. He ordered himself to stay where he was. Kiss it back. Pretend he loved it. It was the only idea he had left.

The smell invaded his nostrils. Beneath James’s cologne was a rotting smell. One of blood and dirt and death. It had always been there, beneath the surface. He’d attributed it to something else in the apartment, but it had always been James.

“It’ll all be over soon,” it said, stealing another kiss.

Vincent wiped his mouth with the cuff of his jacket. If a part of James was in there, then it had been overshadowed by the monster long before now. A monster that could do who knew what to his wrist and murder people without giving it a second thought. There was no arguing with it or persuading it. He’d do what it said or face its wrath.

He had nothing left. No new plan or strategy. He’d tried everything he could think of, and yet they’d arrived at Panther Hollow. Not the trail leading down to the park, but the bridge they’d been attacked under almost two months ago. It parked on the side of the road just before the bridge.

The monster got out of the car and walked around to let him out. “Let’s go.”

He got out, cradling his arm, and followed it to the back of the car. It opened the trunk, and the muffled screams grew louder. Inside was the tall man. His mouth was wrapped in duct tape. His arms were taped together at his wrists and his legs at his ankles. His clothes were drenched with blood, and his eyes were wide with fear. The wind carried the sharp smell of piss and blood from the trunk. For a man who he’d feared for so long, Vincent was surprised by how pathetic he looked.

The monster pulled the tall man from the trunk, shut it, and ordered Vincent to walk in front of him as he dragged the tall man, kicking and screaming, down the sidewalk by his wrists. No cars drove down the street, and there were no bystanders in sight. They passed the two panther statues that were eternally frozen in a pouncing stance at either side of the entrance of the bridge. He wished they’d come alive. Leap on the monster and end this, but they merely watched them pass.

Before he’d taken more than a few steps onto the bridge, the monster said, “Stop. Here’s good.”

Over the waist-high stone railing, he could barely make out the trail below in the darkness. They were above the very tunnel where he and James had first come across the tall man and his cronies. They’d come back to return the favor. He was supposed to kill the man here and leave with the creature to go who knew where.

He should be afraid, but he just felt empty. He’d done everything in his power to prevent this, but here he was, standing on Panther Hollow Bridge with the monster and the tall man. He wondered if this had always been planned—like it was some Greek tragedy and his fate had been written in stone. All there was left to do was to play his part. Kill the tall man and accept he’d forever be this monster’s prisoner. That his death would be slow at the heavy hands of this thing. It had already destroyed one of his arms, and it would move to something else. He was sure of it. It would keep breaking him down until he was in too many pieces to survive.

It handed him the revolver. He expected his hand to shake under its weight, but his grip was steady. The metal of the gun reflected the streetlights. So much power in such a small thing. He just needed to pull the trigger, and this would be over. He’d been through so much just to reach this point. To do what this monster wanted.

The creature brought the tall man over toward the ledge and held on to his forearm to keep him in place beside him. “Shoot him.”

Vincent raised the gun.

The tall man’s face was red. His eyes were narrow. He was screaming, but not in fear. He was angry. Muffled curses at Vincent and the monster. The man hated them. He’d hated Vincent and James from the second he detected they were different. As many lies as the monster told him, it was right about one thing. Vincent hated him back. This sorry excuse for a human being had ended James’s life and ruined his beyond repair. And he could end him with one pull of a trigger.

“Do it. Now,” the monster ordered.

He aimed the gun at the tall man.

The gunshot echoed past the perched panther statues and the trees below in Schenley Park.

But Vincent hadn’t fired the gun, and the tall man hadn’t been shot.

A dark circle expanded across the monster’s white shirt from the hole in its stomach.

Sam walked out from around the panther statue on the other side of the road, her gun aimed at the monster. She had a large red welt on the side of her head, but she otherwise looked unharmed. She must have gotten up and followed them here. Her jaw was clenched, and her eyes were glaring at the monster.

“Why won’t you just fucking die?” she said, firing another shot into its chest.