Page 82 of Her Psycho Beasts

But that demon also follows me out, crawling after me with strange, ugly movements. I feel his gaze on me. I feel his hunger for darkness. For chaos.

Later that night, in the bathroom of the ramshackle motel I purchased for the night with my saved money, Savage and I stare at the new celestial marks on our necks. A skull and five beams of light that glow with the ancient power of stars lightyears away.

“Don’t mark his perfect skin,”my father used to say.“No bruises. No fingernails.”

This…mating mark, is the first thing that has been allowed to mar my skin. It was granted to me by the Wild Goddess and is a message from her.

I could claim myself. I have that power now.

“Tomorrow, we buy a tattoo gun,” I tell my brother. “And you’ll learn how to use it.”

His face lights up. “I can do that! But…” His adorable face turns sheepish. “Do we have the money?”

I gaze into the distance as the phone numbers of all my father’s contacts run in a list in my head. Both the ones marked for death, and the ones marked for life. “Yes. And we’ll never run out again. I have big plans, Sav, and he never realised it, but Dad showed me exactly what to do.”

“And when we find our regina, she’ll help us too!” Savage rubs his hands eagerly before leaping out of the bathroom with a dramatic pirouette. I’d read about the seven stages of grief and this seems on track.

But I’m not worried about Savage grieving his mother. Once he knew the horrible truth, he’d marked her as an enemy for life. Iamworried about the mark on my neck and the other things it means. My father had been rex to a marine beast, and they had been doomed from the very beginning.

If what I know is correct, it’s going to be a slow, torturous ride to the end for me. That is unavoidable, and I accept that. But there is a lot I’m going to do before I meet my end, and I’m going to take as many people as possible with me to hell.

Chapter 40

Scythe

Aurelia, in her wedge-tailed eagle form, sleeps in my arms while she heals. Every time Lyle or Savage try to take her, she makes mournful noises.

I just know she needs me. And they begrudgingly know it too.

They are worried that she has regressed into her rabid form as she’d done earlier in the year, but her pain is worse this time, and she doesn’t crave isolation or her animas.

She craves me.

I took her to the pack-bed, lying down with her on my chest, careful not to jostle her raw skin. She nuzzled into my neck, shoving her beak into my hair just below my ear, her little bird chest rising and falling with breath. Xander healed her skin, but her feathers had not grown back as I’d hoped. Instead, she remained bald like a newborn hatchling.

I would not have been able to let her go even if I’d tried.

Her tiny heart pounding against my own is so strong and yet it carries such grief within it. I can guess why she’d chosen me as her sole comfort. I’d watched my own father attempt to breed my lifeless mother as a boy, and even if I had not understood what his actions meant, something in my body knew it was deeply evil.

Eventually, evening comes, and after they speak with the animas, Savage and Lyle lie down on either side of me, cooing softly to Aurelia. I catch Savage wiping a tear or two away, and I know he’s sad for his regina. He feels her pain deeply, and it’s no doubt brought up old thoughts about our own parents. Lyle doesn’t express his emotions in the same way, but his aura is dull and slow moving, like a sail empty of wind. Out of all of us, our lion was the one with the kindest parents, for all the good it had done them. Their fate had been the cruellest of them all. And Xander, for his part, took Eugene outside to smoke his feelings away. He’d been the one to bring Aurelia down when Lyle’s telekinesis didn’t restrain her. Our powerful regina. I bet that had been a surprise for Lyle.

To my own surprise, somewhere in the night, perhaps from the cold, Aurelia shifts into a lioness, her weight heavy and warm on me, although her pelt is patchy and thread-bare. At some stage, she becomes a wolf, making tiny whining noises. Savage shifts then too, returning the whine and laying his head on my other shoulder. Her mental voice mumbles sleepily in our heads although the only discernible thing I recognise is a faint,“We do not react, we respond.”Which makes me want to clutch her tighter.

But somewhere in the darkest part of the night, my animus perks up in utter delight, bringing me out of my light doze.

Aurelia still lies on me, but not in any form I’ve seen her in before.

Her skin is smooth and grey. Huge, triangular teeth lie dangerously close to my carotid. Five gill slits search for a current and, finding none, dilate uselessly. A fin swishes somewhere beyond the end of the bed.

My heart skips a beat and I almost leap out of bed, stopping myself just in time. In this form, she does not need hair or fur or feathers. It’s perfect.

Without any water, her anima shifts back into her eagle form and she takes a deep lungful of air.

“What’s happening?”Her voice is a tired whisper in my head.

“Do you want to come to the water with me?”

“Yes?”she says hopefully.

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