AVERY
He’s not human.
The words kept on repeating in my head until it was the only thing that I could think of.
Cyrus wasn’t human.
I walked on autopilot out of his house, stepping carefully over the broken blocks and debris that littered the ground from the explosion.
It was late, so it would be hard to find a taxi right now. And, I thought, at a neighborhood like this, taxis wouldn’t just come in. They probably had to be requested. So I quickly pulled up the uber app on my phone, requested for a ride, and wrapped my arms around my middle to fight back the chilly night air.
Why hasn’t I brought a jacket?
Well, it wasn’t like I had known that the night was going to go like this. What on earth was I saying? No one would have expected a night to go like this.
I was taking the whole thing quite remarkably, I thought, but then again, maybe I was still in shock. Maybe it still hadn’t clicked in my head that the man I met at the bar a few weeks ago, the man I had feelings for, the man I had made out with in his car, the man I just went out on a date with was not human.
My knees threatened to buckle and give out under the weight of everything I had learned this night but I couldn’t let it. I had to remain strong. At least until I got back to my room.
A lykae.
He called himself a lykae.
Clear, like the image was right in front of me, I saw his lips drawn back to expose his fangs, the wolf-like hair on his face, the long black claws on his hands and then that beastly voice.
He hadn’t sounded like Cyrus. Hadn’t looked like him either. Well, he did, but also didn’t. It was like Cyrus had been in there, then a really good make up artist had given him exaggerated features that made him look like a wolf. Like a Halloween costume. That was exactly what it had looked like.
At first, when I came downstairs and saw him, I thought it was a prank. That the attackers had put those things on him so that I wouldn’t recognise him, but when I saw that they were too busy raining blows on him, I knew that doing his make up was not on their priority list.
The blows. The beating.
My heart gave a hollow pang. He had to be in a lot of pain. And I had left him in there all by himself.
It was selfish, I knew that, but I also had to think about myself. I had to protect myself.
I saw two headlights coming down the road and I hoped that it was my ride. I had to leave here before I did something stupid like go back inside and beg him to convince me that the last hour had been a prank. That it hadn’t actually happened.
But his ruined front door was a glaringly obvious reminder that the past hour had, in fact, happened and that we had actually been attacked by four men. Who were all dead on the floor of his living room this moment.
The car pulled to a stop in front of me and the driver rolled his window down and poked his head out. “Are you Avery, miss?”
I nodded and stepped towards the car, anxious to get in. When I sat at the back the car, buckled up and laid my head back on the headrest, I heard the driver talking to me.
“You know cars aren’t allowed in here, right?” He was looking at me through the rearview mirror and he had a concerned expression on his face, “I had to pay my way in.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” God, tonight was such a shit show. Glumly, I said, “I’ll pay you for it.”
“Don’t worry. It’s on me.”
My eyes snapped to his in shock and appreciation. When I couldn’t find anything to say, I said, “Thank you. So much.”
He nodded and drove on in comfortable silence.
Cyrus wasn’t human.
I was trying to not think about this night for just a few seconds and I was failing miserably. I just simply couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that he wasn’t a human being. I mean, he was, but every definition of the word, he wasn’t.
He had a beast inside him! I didn’t understand fully what that meant, but from what I had seen and what he had told me, the beast could be summoned when they were under attack. The fight, the people attacking him, was what had prompted the beast to come out.
I didn’t want to call it a beast because he was still human. He still walked on two legs and spoke-although his voice had been so deep and rough that it had been hard to hear what he was saying-and most importantly, he still looked like the man I knew. Just with… beastly features.
There. I used the word. Granted, I didn’t want to, but there was no other way to describe it.
And God, the way he had killed those men in what seemed to me like a blink of an eye. One moment, I had a knife to my throat and for the third time, I was looking at death right in the eyes, and then the next, I was free and staggering back.
Just like that night in the woods.
It was then that I realized that the four slashes on Alvin’s neck, were the same slashes that Cyrus had inflicted on some of the men.
I didn’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t know what it meant. Maybe I was starting to drive myself crazy from all the thinking I was doing, but I knew that the marks were identical. Just that the marks on Alvin’s neck had been smaller. The ones Cyrus inflicted, were wider and deeper.
I shivered.
I had been on his lap, kissing and making out with him. I had been with him several times, but none of those times had I ever suspected that the man I was with might be something other than human.
We were starting to get closer to the university. Closer to my dorms.
What was Mariah going to say when she saw me? She would probably be surprised that I came back, wondering why I had and what was I going to tell her?
There was no way I could tell her what had happened. I didn’t even know if it was the truth-yes, I still doubted it even though I saw it with my own eyes.
There was no world where humans were known to turn into creatures when they were threatened. If there was one, then people should have known about it by now, shouldn’t they?
And it wasn’t even scientifically possible. This wasn’t the Avengers. People didn’t just up and turn into anything when war arrived
How. On. Earth. Was. That. Possible?!
I was overthinking myself into a headache, but I couldn’t stop.
The first night I had been attacked, I thought long and hard on what could have caused it. On what I could have done that might have made me a target to someone and I came up blank. When I hadn’t been able to come up with anything, I chalked it up to the guy targeting the wrong person.
I mean, it happened. I read somewhere that everyone on earth had a doppelganger. Someone that looked exactly like them somewhere else in the world. So I figured maybe I looked exactly like someone that had been made a target.
The second time, I knew that it definitely wasn’t a coincidence. If started to occur to me that I might actually be the one that the people were after, but I just didn’t know it yet.
I couldn’t tell my mom because I knew that she would be worried and ask me to come home and I couldn’t go home. Not now when I had my finals in a few months.
Now, however, finally realising that the only reason I had been targeted was because I was linked to Cyrus, everything clicked.
I knew what I had to do.
I had to stay away from Cyrus even if it killed me.
There were so many reasons why I should. First and foremost, he wasn’t human. I still didn’t know what to make of that. And second of all, people were after him and any ties I had to him, would automatically make me a target.
He could hold his own. I couldn’t.
I didn’t want to die.
It occured to me that I should have probably asked him why people were after me, but I had been so filled with shock and betrayal and the only thing I had been able to think of at the time, was to leave.
The car stopped moving and when I looked out the window, I saw that we were finally at the university. I paid the driver, thanked him again, and got out.
How was I going to get in now?
Getting into the university wasn’t the issue. Entering the dorms, however, would prove almost impossible.
The dorms were already closed by now and I knew that even if I walked up there, I wouldn’t easily be let in.
Then again, I guess a little bit of begging and fake tears never hurt anyone.