The Monster Within (2 page)

I was suffocating. Life was draining out of me. I collapsed to my knees, skinning them against the pavement. Wheezing, I crawled forward, trying to reach the convenience store door. Trying to reach Ethan. I needed help. I didn’t know what was happening to me, but it felt like I was dying…again.

The gas station was almost empty at this hour. No one was pumping gas. No one was around to help me. I lifted my head, searching the windows of the store once more. The man with the cowboy hat was at the register. That meant he’d be leaving soon, and he’d have to walk past me. I pushed myself forward more, but my arms buckled under my weight, and I fell.

“Ethan,” I choked out. This couldn’t happen again. I’d just gotten my life back. How could I die again so soon?

I pushed my foot against the pavement in an effort to creep toward the door, but my black high-heeled shoe fell off, leaving me slumped on the ground with one bare foot. I inhaled, willing my lungs to fill with air, but I only coughed in response. At least the first time I’d died, I’d known it was coming. But now…this was a shock. I didn’t know how to fight it, or if I even could.

The bell above the convenience store door jingled, and I raised my head slightly to see the man in the cowboy hat walking out. He was putting his change into his wallet and didn’t even notice me in the dark parking lot.

“Please.” My voice was barely audible.

He kept walking, removing his car keys from his pocket.

“Help,” I tried again, but he unlocked his car with a high-pitched
beep
of the alarm disarming.

His foot was inches from me, yet he had no idea I was there. I reached my hand toward his leg and managed to grab hold of it. The second I made contact with him, I felt his blood coursing through the veins in his leg. It tingled beneath my fingers with a warmth that felt incredible on my freezing cold hand.

He jumped and looked down at me. “You scared the hell out of me! What are you doing down there?”

“Please.” This time my voice was a little stronger. “I need help. I can’t breathe.” I released his leg, and my coughing started all over again.

“Whoa, easy there.” He bent down and studied me for a moment before reaching for my shoulders and sitting me up. “Try to calm down. Are you here alone?” He fumbled for my missing shoe and put it back on my foot.

I tried to shake my head, but I wasn’t sure if it moved at all. I felt like I was drowning. The life was draining out of me again.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s get you to the hospital. I’m going to bring you to my car.”

Before I could protest or try to mention Ethan, the man scooped me into his arms and carried me to his car. I was too weak to fight him, and he was trying to help me, so I wrapped my arms around his neck as best I could. My fingertips grazed his neck, feeling the blood coursing through his veins once again. Instinctively, my other hand reached for his neck, but this time, I traced the line of his carotid artery, letting my fingers follow it down to his chest, where I felt his heart pumping beneath his clothes. Warmth washed over me.

“Don’t panic. I’m going to get you help.” He must have been confused by what I was doing. Hell,
I
was confused by what I was doing, but somehow, I knew it was helping me. My breathing wasn’t as labored. The dizziness was subsiding.

He opened the rear door and started to lower me onto the back seat, head first. I slipped my fingers through the opening in his button-down flannel shirt and felt the heat of his skin.

“It’s okay,” he reassured me.

My hand was above his heart now, and I flattened my palm against his chest. My right hand remained on his neck, resting on his carotid artery. Suddenly, an intense surge of energy flowed from the man to me. His blood was pumping life into me. My lungs filled, and my chest heaved. I felt more alive than I had when Ethan brought me back. My eyes closed in response to the relief I felt. I wasn’t going to die. Whatever it was that had threatened my life was gone. I was alive again.

A wheezing sound forced my eyes open. But this time,
I
wasn’t the one wheezing. I stared at the man leaning into the car, hovering above me. He was no longer holding me. My back was resting on the seat. His hands gripped the seats. His face was red, and he gasped for air. He looked down at my hands, and my eyes followed his.

I could see the color returning to my limbs, but at the same time, the color was leaving the man’s face. He turned from red to purple to white. Ghostly white. Deadly white.
Corpse
white.

The cowboy hat fell from his head, revealing gray hair. I was sure he’d had dark hair. Why was it completely gray now? His skin felt softer under my fingers. His neck was wrinkled and aged. I was about to pull away and ask him if he was okay, when, with one final gasp, he slumped forward onto me. I let go of him and stifled a scream. What had just happened?

“Sir?” My voice was strong again but filled with fear. “Sir?”

I tried to move him, but his face was buried in the fabric of my black dress. I pushed myself up onto my elbows, and the man shifted slightly to my right, falling into the small space between the front and back seats.

His eyes stared up at me, completely devoid of life.

He was dead.

I had killed him.

CHAPTER TWO

I
STARED
at his wrinkled form for a moment, unable to believe what had happened. My hands shook. I turned them over, examining both sides, horrified that I had somehow ended this man’s life with my bare hands. I wasn’t sure how it had happened, what I’d done. All I knew was I was to blame. I was a killer. The sound of the bell above the convenience store door brought reality slamming back to me. I raised myself up in the back seat to look out the window. Ethan was walking back to the car with a bag in one hand and a tray with two cups of coffee in the other.

I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t let Ethan know what I’d done. I scrambled across the seat and out of the car, keeping low so Ethan wouldn’t see me. As he fumbled with his keys, I ran around to the side of the store. I took a deep breath and patted the front of my dress, trying to regain my composure. Stepping out from the shadows, I called Ethan’s name. He looked up at me in surprise.

“Where were you?”

“I had to use the bathroom.” My voice shook as I motioned over my shoulder, hoping he hadn’t noticed the bathrooms were inside the store, not around the side of it.

He narrowed his eyes at me. “You left your door open.”

“Yeah, sorry. It was an emergency.” I got back in the car and helped him with the bag and coffees, trying to push the image of the dead man out of my mind. “I guess my body is functioning properly.” I forced a little laugh, but inside, I was crying, crying for the man I’d killed.

Ethan smiled and leaned over to kiss me softly on the lips. “I told you. You’re just fine. Completely you again. Everything is functioning exactly as it should be.”

Then why had my body given out on me? Why had I felt like the life was draining out of me until… I wondered how long it would take someone to find the man slumped in the back seat of his car. If I was normal again, alive, then how had I killed him? Drained the life out of him?

Ethan tapped my forehead. “Where did you go?”

I shook my head. “Sorry. Being back takes a little getting used to, I guess.”

A woman screamed, and Ethan and I turned to see what was going on. The woman was standing by her car. The same car I’d gotten out of only moments ago. The car where the man was dead in the back seat. I looked around the parking lot, noticing there were no other cars. Of course the woman and the little boy were with the man who’d tried to help me. My heart tore to pieces as I watched the woman try to shield the little boy’s eyes from the sight of his dead father.

“Stay here,” Ethan said. “I’m going to see what’s wrong.”

I grabbed his arm, squeezing his wrist as if my life depended on keeping him in this car. Maybe it did. “Don’t. We can’t draw attention to ourselves. We don’t even have our fake IDs yet. Please, Ethan.”

He looked at me with such love in his eyes. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Too late. Something already had. Something I didn’t understand.

Ethan started the car and pulled out of the parking lot without another thought about the woman or why she was screaming. I felt awful. I’d played the helpless damsel in distress card. That wasn’t me at all. I was a killer, a monster. And I hated that Ethan was willing to forget about the poor woman and little boy just because I’d asked him to.

“Hey, what happened to your knees?” Ethan reached over and pushed up the hem of my dress, exposing my skinned knees.

“Oh, it’s nothing.” I gently pushed his hands away. “I fell when I got out of the car. It’s these high heels. I’m not sure why Mom had me buried in them. I’ve never worn high heels a day in my life.” I was babbling to cover up how much I was freaking out on the inside.

Ethan rubbed my cheek with his thumb. “Aw, sweetie, why didn’t you rinse the cuts in the bathroom? They could get infected.”

Damn it. I didn’t even think about my little lie leading to more questions. I wasn’t used to lying, not to Ethan.

“I guess I wasn’t thinking clearly. I wanted to get back to the car as quickly as possible. I don’t like being away from you.” I hoped that sounded believable and not too needy. Ethan and I had always been together, but we weren’t exactly codependent. We were fine on our own, too. Only that wasn’t true for me anymore. The first time Ethan left me alone, I’d done something horrible, unforgiveable.

“Give yourself time. You’ll see there’s nothing to be afraid of. Everything is like it was before, only without the—”

“Cancer,” I finished for him. No, I didn’t have cancer anymore, but I did have some sort of disease. One that kept me on the verge of death. One that made me feed off another human being’s life. I was like some zombie-vampire hybrid. This was so much worse than having cancer.

Ethan kept stealing sideways glances while he drove. Finally he said, “New rule. No one uses the C-word anymore. It doesn’t exist. It’s all in the past.”

I nodded. There wasn’t really a word to accurately describe what I’d become now.

We drove the rest of the way in silence. Ethan seemed to know I needed time to process things. He was always good at reading me. Only this time, I hoped he couldn’t read too much. What would it do to him to know he’d brought back a monster? I had to protect him from that. He was all I had.

I nodded off again, most likely because my brain couldn’t handle what I’d become, and when I woke up we were parked in a gravel driveway. A rundown old shack stood in front of us. The roof looked like it was about to cave in, and the front door was hanging crookedly. I could tell the cottage—at least that’s what Ethan had called it—had once been white, but the paint was almost completely peeled off. The only way to describe the color now was rotten wood tone.

Ethan shut the car off and turned toward me. “Well, this is it. I know it isn’t much, but I can fix it up a little. My dad always made me help him when he did stuff around the house. I’m sure there are some tools in the shed around back, and we have a little money if we need to buy paint or wood.”

“We have money?” Where did he get money from?

“I emptied my bank account before—” Before he’d brought me back from the dead. “It’s enough to get us going. I’ll find a job once we get settled. Something to pay the electric and water bills.”

“I can get a job, too.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but I shot him a look. I was not going to sit holed up in this cottage while he worked. I’d never been that kind of girl, and I wasn’t about to start now. Besides, sitting would give me too much time to think about that poor man and what I’d done to him.

“Maybe we can find something at the same place. We only have one car, so it would be easier if we could drive to and from work together.”

That seemed like a lot to ask—a place looking for two new employees to work the exact same shift. But I didn’t want to be negative, so I just nodded.

“Well, should we go inside?”

I swallowed hard, wondering how much worse the inside could be. I forced a smile and opened my car door. Ethan met me at the hood of the car and took my hand. I didn’t say anything, but I had a feeling he was afraid one or both of us would end up going through the front steps. They definitely needed to be replaced. I walked up the edge by the railing, hoping it would have the most support.

Keys weren’t going to be an issue. The door was open. Who would lock a place as decrepit as this? Ethan held the door for me as I slipped inside. I stepped just far enough for him to reach behind me and fumble for a light switch. A single bulb went on in the center of the living room. The fixture had four bulbs, but only one was working. And for that, I was thankful. Seeing this place in better lighting would’ve been even more depressing.

The living room consisted of a worn-out couch and a wooden table with a broken leg. To the left of the living room was a tiny kitchen with a sink, stove, refrigerator, and table for two. Beyond that was a bathroom too dark to see into, but I could imagine the horrors waiting for us in there. Beyond the living room was a door, which I could only assume led to a bedroom.

That sent shivers down my spine. Ethan and I had the best relationship I could imagine. We couldn’t have been closer. But…we hadn’t exactly slept together. We almost did once. When I stopped my treatments, and we knew the end was near. It was one of the things I wanted to do before I died, but I was too weak. Now Ethan and I would be living in this tiny cottage with one bedroom. One bed. I loved him. I didn’t doubt that. But I was scared. I didn’t know what was going on with me. What was wrong with me? I’d already lied to Ethan. I couldn’t be that intimate with him when I couldn’t even tell him the truth about what happened at the gas station. Tears welled up in my eyes. I couldn’t stop picturing that man’s wrinkled face.

“Hey.” Ethan rubbed my arm. “I know it’s pretty bad, but I promise I’ll fix it up. The sun is already coming up, so I’ll check the shed and see what I can get started on right away.”