THE FINAL
“Well done, boy, really. I didn’t think you would come through. My experience with your kind is that you rarely do.”
“Spare me the condescension, old man,” Roman bristled, his fists clenched tightly and his whole body tight with tension. “I did as you asked, right? Why don’t we just leave it at that.”
“You did, didn’t you? I guess all it takes is getting some money involved and you mutts become useful little tools, don’t you?”
“I’ll not say it again. I don’t want your insults. I’ve no need for them. You got your daughter back didn’t you? Now if you don’t mind, I’ll be taking my reward and I’ll be on my way.”
Eloise watched this back and forth exchange between Roman and her father with no feeling at all. She should have had feelings about it, lots of them, but it was as though all of her feelings had been used up. If she had a well inside of her from which they sprung, that well was dry. Now, she could only watch in silent, morbid fascination as Archer’s best friend and her own father discussed the specifics of the deal that would transfer her from one man to another.
Never in her life had she felt like a possession before, but boy, did she ever now. The idea that her father had put out a reward for her collection, that he had put one out and that Roman had chosen to collect on it, only served to drive that point further home.
In one way, it made her feel better, to know that Roman’s getting rid of her was only for a prize, but in another it made her feel infinitely worse. That was all the ruination of her life had come down to; reward money. Not only that, but both of these men had the gall to discuss the sum in front of her, like she didn’t have enough sense in her head to understand what they were saying.
It was enough to drive a person mad with anger, only Eloise couldn’t make herself feel it. She felt like she wasn’t even real anymore, like she was watching a movie and waiting to see whether the ending would be happy or sad. When she looked at her father, at the expression on his face, she was pretty sure she knew the answer to that and it didn’t bode well for her at all.
“You’ll get your money, boy, as soon as I’ve finished my business. I want you to watch it. I want you to go back and tell all of your mongrel friends that my kind are not to be trifled with.”
“What business?” Roman asked with what sounded to Eloise like genuine surprise. “You’ve already gotten what you wanted. Your precious little princess back safe and sound. Now you can carry her on back home, lock her up in her room if you want to. Whatever men like you do with wayward daughters.”
“Whatever men like me do? Well, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you exactly what men like me do with a bad apple. We get rid of it.”
“Come again?”
Roman’s face had fallen as Eloise’s father spoke and by the time he understood what was being got at, he looked pale, waxen. Her father, on the other hand, looked full of life and color. He looked like a maniac, but one with a sinister kind of control over himself. As he spoke, he moved slowly towards the chair that Roman had bound her to with a length of rough rope, his eyes gleaming in a way that told Eloise he was very, very dangerous now.
She knew that look. She’d hoped never to have to see it again, but she knew it. No wonder he had arranged for Roman to meet him in one of his warehouses. What he was going to do to her, he wouldn’t want anyone to hear.
“Do you honestly think I would want her back now? Do you think I would take her back under any circumstances?”
“But you said. You said you wanted her back, that’s why I brought her. You said you were offering a reward for her return.”
“I did, and I am. So she can be dealt with, that’s why. I don’t want her back. I want to strike her down the way she deserves. And I want you to take the story back to your friends so they know never to come near my kind again. I thought I had made that clear when I took care of those morons who came to try and settle things between our two families but their son proved me wrong. Like father, like son, I suppose.”
Roman and Eloise both understood his meaning at the exact same time and when Roman looked at her, his face was stricken. He moved towards her, his mouth open in an apology he couldn’t find the words to make. Eloise’s eyes brimmed with tears as she nodded at him. She forgave him. Even if he couldn’t say the words, she forgave him. He hadn’t understood, nor had she, how depraved her father really was.
“That’s not what I signed up for,” Roman stammered, moving closer to Eloise, standing in between her and her father. “I didn’t bring you here so you could kill her and I won’t let you do it.”
“Won’t let me? How do you suppose you’ll stop me?”
“Easy. I’m taking her back with me. Screw your money. I’ll get some another way. This ain’t worth it, no matter what you’re offering. I may be a piece of shit, but I’m not as bad as all of this.”
Roman turned towards Eloise quickly, kneeling and fumbling with the knots he himself had tied. Normally he would have been able to get them open easily but now his hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold the rope. If he had been able to move more quickly, he might have stood a chance. Maybe.
As it was, he never saw Eloise’s father coming and by the time she was able to get a scream of warning out of her tight, dry throat, it was already too late. Her father let out an infuriated roar and charged at Roman, whose back was to the older man as he tried to undo the damage he had allowed to happen. Eloise’s eyes went wide with horror as she watched her father leap, shifting into the great, terrifying lion that he was in mid-air.
When he landed, it was squarely upon Roman’s back, knocking him to the ground with an unrelenting ferocity. Roman let out a scream of fury and pain and twisted, desperately trying to get himself off his stomach so that he could fight back. No matter what he tried, it was no use. Eloise’s father was a massive beast made up of sinewy muscle and a complete lack of caring when it came to who he killed.
He lifted his head and roared, a sound that shook the corrugated metal walls that housed the three foes, and dragged one massive paw down Roman’s back, claws fully extended. Roman shrieked again, but this time the sound was one of pure agony.
Eloise watched in grim fascination as the chambray shirt he wore darkened to a sickly purple, instantaneously soaking up the blood spilling from his wounds. Where the shirt tore away, Eloise could see ghastly gouges in his flesh, each at least an inch wide and deep enough that she could see the bone.
“Stop it, Father!” she screamed, fighting desperately against her restraints but to no avail. “Stop it! Leave him be! It was me you wanted, right? Well, now you’ve got me! Kill me and leave him be.”
For a minute, she thought he would do just that. He met her eyes and she saw that he fully intended to kill her, but that it would be slow. She sighed, whether with fear or with relief she didn’t know, and tensed herself in preparation. She only realized a fraction before it happened that her father was going to rip Roman’s throat out and she never had time to try and stop it again.
She watched him dip his head back down, watched his mouth unhinge, then close down on that throat and whip back and forth. The skin of Roman’s neck made a sick ripping sound and his screaming stopped at once. In its place, she heard a low gurgling noise, the sound of his life draining out of him in great hot gushes of blood. All the while, her father shook the poor man, playing with him like a dog with a chew toy. By the time he lifted his face again, his fur was matted and thick with blood. Roman was dead, mercifully for him, and now he had set his eyes on her.
“Daddy,” she whispered, “please.”
Her words were met by silence, followed by the splintering crash of metal and wood and the earth beneath them being ripped up into the air. Eloise should have been frightened, even her father seemed to be and that was entirely unlike him, but something inside of her instead grew very still.
She knew what this was. She knew who this was, without ever seeing his face. It was Archer. He had found her, and come to rescue her. He’d made his grand entrance by driving his motorcycle through the wall of the warehouse and jumping off of it before it hit the ground. Now he strode quickly towards her father, who was still crouched in front of Roman’s lifeless body.
Archer’s eyes fell to that body and Eloise saw them fill with a brief but terrible pain, then move back to her father with the coldest hatred she had ever seen. When she saw that look, she knew that Archer knew everything. He knew that her father was responsible for killing not only his best friend, but his parents as well and that her father was in for a fight unlike anything he had ever seen.
“I’d step away from the lady, if I were you.”
Her father snarled and began to creep forward, his body still low to the ground and ready to pounce. Archer grinned and took his jacket off, tossing it casually to one side. He looked at Eloise, his head cocked to one side as if he were asking for permission. She nodded back. She would never have agreed to the killing of the father she believed in as a child, but that was not this man.
This man was a monster and the only thing to do with a monster was to defeat him. So she gave her nod of consent and then watched as Archer began to change. His head twisted back and forth in a silent shake, then snapped back as his face began to elongate into the muzzle of a wolf. His back arched and then he dropped to the floor, writhing and contorting with the change.
When it was complete, she saw that his eyes were gold and that his teeth were bared. Her father gave pause in his forward progress, then roared again and began to charge. Her heart gave a lurch of fear, suddenly sure that her father would do to Archer what he had done to Roman, but it was a fear she need not have indulged in. Archer was younger, faster, and filled with the kind of rage that was almost impossible to stand up against.
He stood stock still, watching his opponent approach, then at the last minute lunged forward. The lunge was low, his body as close to the ground as it could have been without him just laying down, and it gave him prime access to the older lion’s throat. He snapped, making contact, but not enough to cause a mortal wound. Still, her father wasn’t used to being wounded at all, and the sight of his own blood gave him pause.
That pause was all Archer needed and he struck out again, this time running at her father with his head lowered so that when he struck the lion’s body, he was able to knock him over on one side. Before there was time to do anything to correct the fall, Archer was on top of him. He lunged forward again, snarling and ripping into the lion’s belly. There was a sound of flesh unzipping and then Eloise could see ropes of glistening intestines spilling out of her father and helplessly onto the floor.
He tried to get up again, to fight back even though it was clear that he was bested, but it was no use. Archer was relentless, his head dipping down again and again, puncturing the lion in what looked like a hundred different places. By the time it was done, the saw-dusted floor was covered in thick, black looking blood. Eloise could no longer tell which of it was Roman’s and which of it was her father’s.
The part of her that still loved her father cried out in revulsion, but the part of her that understood that what had just happened was the only thing that could have happened rejoiced in Archer’s safety.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a husky voice the moment he shifted back into his human form. “I’m sorry. There was nothing else. Nothing else I could do. I’m so, so sorry, Eloise.”
He continued to babble his apologies as he untied her ropes, continued even to utter them as she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling his head in towards her so that it rested on her shoulder. It was only when his body began to shake with silent sobs that he stopped telling her how sorry he was, and when it did stop Eloise was glad.
She was sorry too, about all of it, but she was also strangely sure that everything was going to be alright now. She didn’t have Gram’s sight, but she knew that everything was going to be fine.
*