Page 40 of Autopsy of a Fairytale

“Go,” Eamon ordered. “Get out of here.” He didn’t wait to see if she obeyed as he dove for Alcina, who was still wrestling the enraged pitbull. He dragged the seventy-pound animal off the woman as if he weighed no more than a pillow and launched him at his mother. Cerberus landed hard beside Bel, and Eamon gripped Alcina by the throat, slamming her back against the tree. “Go, dog! Get her out of here.”

As if he understood, Cerberus lunged for Bel, shoving his snout under her arm. She wrapped an elbow around his neck, and together they began to crawl for her cabin, leaving a stream of blood behind them on the underbrush.

“Kill her!” Alcina screamed as Eamon smashed her skull into the tree again.

“No,” he growled, and that solitary word was the single most terrifying sound Bel had ever heard. It was unrestrained anger and hatred. Despair and regret, but it was the underlying care braided with his rage that struck her through the heart like an arrow on the battlefield. The two unnatural beings raged in and out of her peripheral vision, and out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the witch lift her hand to throw magic.

“Eamon!” Bel’s warning was weak, but he heard, and he caught the witch’s wrist. He slammed it against a tree so hard, Bel flinched as the bones audibly snapped in half.

“You are supposed to kill her!” Alcina screeched.

The further Bel crawled, the darker the world became. Sounds muted. Her skin had stopped hurting. She barely felt Cerberus pushing her along.

“I will never.” Eamon threw the blonde to the dirt, but Alcina launched a punch of magic at his face, and he flew across the clearing to slam into a tree.

“You shouldn’t be able to resist her blood!” Alcina stood, cradling her broken wrist, but Eamon was faster, his fist around her neck as he lifted her off the ground. “You shouldn’t be able to defy me.”

“I told you I would find a way,” he said, and then as Bel’s vision blurred to blindness, he fought with a speed not even a witch could survive. Cerberus nudged Bel, trying to get her to move, but she couldn’t. She had lost too much blood. This was it. This was her end. At least her dog was by her side. At least Eamon had found some redemption in resisting this monster, and the last thing she saw before losing consciousness was Eamon Stone fighting a brutal assault of magic that ripped into his body to give her the chance to escape.

Bel knew three things.She was not dead, Cerberus’ heavy head was lying on her stomach, and a solid wall of muscles supported her back. She blinked slowly in the darkness, registering that the excruciating pain in her chest had faded significantly, and her eyes trailed down to her heart. Her bloody shirt had been ripped open to reveal what should have been deep puncture wounds and a ruthless bite, but the teeth marks had vanished and her torn flesh looked less like claws had dug into her and more like aggressive scrapes surrounded by sickly purple bruises.

Bel lifted a tentative finger to her skin, the excessive blood coating almost every inch of her body not matching the barely-there wounds, and the movement jostled Cerberus’ head. He jerked to attention and pushed his beefy snout against her cheeks, gifting her with slobbery kisses. Bel smiled as she pulled him closer, burying her face in his neck, and that was when she noticed the powerful hand resting on the dog’s black coat. She stiffened, suddenly aware of who sat at her back. She was still mostly laying on the forest floor, but someone had settled behind her, cradling her shoulders and head on their chest as one muscled arm held her possessively while the other pet her pitbull.

“Any witch worth her salt keeps healing potions on hand.” Eamon’s voice rumbled through his ribcage, vibrating her back with its roughness.

“He’s letting you pet him.” Bel ignored Eamon’s statement, transfixed by the closeness of her dog and her attacker. The pitbull was clearly a better judge of character than she, and he lay beside this dangerous man as if he was a long-lost friend.

“He’s a good dog,” Eamon said into her hair.

“He hated Vera… Alcina,” she corrected, studying Cerberus’ face for signs of discomfort, but the animal seemed to enjoy the man’s attention. “He knew something was wrong.”

“Like I said. He is a good dog.”

“And he likes you.” Bel tried to twist in Eamon’s arms, but the pain in her chest froze her in place with a gasp. “Wait? Healing potion?”

“I found some in her cabin. I put it on your wounds to save you. You wouldn’t have survived the trip to a hospital.”

Bel looked down again at her bare chest, fingering the flesh where his teeth had ripped her open. The skin was whole and smooth, if not a little greasy. “Is there any more?”

“Yes.”

“Could we use it?” She gently traced the purple bruise spreading viciously over her ribs.

“No.” His tone was final, not allowing for arguments, and Bel twisted, trying to see his face. “We’ll need to prove this was self-defense. I healed you as much as I could without erasing all the evidence.”

“Self-defense?” Bel recalled where they were and scanned the forest floor, spotting a feminine hand poking out from behind a bush. “Is she…?”

“Yes.” He didn’t need to answer her, though. Alcina's hand was lifeless.

“I can’t believe she was right under my nose, and I didn’t see it.” Bel scratched Cerberus’ ears. “He did. He saw, and I should have listened to him. She killed all those people, and then I sat in her kitchen telling her about Garrett as if she was my friend.” Emotions boiled over in her chest, and Bel swiped the tears that escaped with a bloody finger. Eamon’s grip tightened possessively around her, and the fact that the thundering heart and warm embrace that kept her from spiraling into hysterics belonged to the man who had tried to carve her to pieces on two occasions baffled her. Yet here she lay, his possessive strength inexplicably comforting.

“No one suspected her,” Eamon rumbled against her ear, and she was glad it was too dark to see him clearly. She could tell by the way his skin stuck to hers that he was still coated in her blood. “I didn’t even know Vera and Alcina were the same person until just now.”

“Is Vera…” Bel trailed off.

“Yes. In order to take her shape, Vera would have had to die. Your neighbor was most likely Alcina’s first victim, since no one would suspect an old woman.”

“I didn’t.” Bel’s mind drifted back to the last time Emily Kaffe was seen alive in her security footage. Vera had been with her. Vera had been with all the victims, hunting them, stalking them… hunting Bel, and no one so much as blinked.

---