CHAPTER FIFTEEN
For the second night in a row, Richard woke warm and content. He had made up his mind as dawn broke, as Jane snored softly in his ear. Today they would go out. Today they could go wherever she wished. He hoped she wouldn't run away from him (again), and it was long past time he let her out of his bedroom.
Or you could come to your senses, beg her forgiveness, and let her go.
He frowned, then stretched. He didn't really need to—he always woke energized and hungry and anxious to get moving—but enjoyed the sensation. Yes, they would go wherever she wished and it would be delightful. Then back to his place for a liquid lunch and some energetic lovemaking, and possibly a nap, or more of Salem's Lot. Yes, it was all—
Where was Jane?
He'd been groping absently for her while he'd been thinking, but she wasn't in his bed, and the bathroom light was off. He could hear her on the floor, gasping in—pain? How had he not noticed any of this?
Because you’ve been thinking with your cock?
Was that...pain? In the second before he looked, it seemed like every malady mortals were prone to raced through his brain. She had appendicitis. He'd impregnated her (it was supposed to be impossible, but who really knew?) and she was suffering a miscarriage. She was having a seizure. A heart attack. A brain embolism. A kidney shutdown. God help him, he was as afraid to look as he was afraid not to.
He looked. Jane was on her knees beside the bed, panting harshly, and her back—it almost looked like the knobs of her spine were moving. Her hair was hanging in her face in sweaty tangles, and her nails were sunk into the carpet. His feet hit the floor with a double thud and he reached for her. "Jane, I'm getting a doctor. I'll—"
A low, ripping growl froze him in mid-reach. And then—so fast, so quick, he blinked and it was done—she sprouted fur and her nose turned into a long snout and her teethed doubled in size and her eyes went wild and she shifted from biped to quadruped and she was leaping for the door.
She bounced off it, but he was alarmed to see it actually shudder in its frame. She coiled and leapt again. And again. He remained on the bed—he was afraid if he stood he would fall—and stared at her. Jane was a dun-colored wolf with silver streaks running down her back. Her eyes were the same deep cognac color as when she was a biped, but now they were glittery and homicidal. (More so than usual.) He remembered how she paced when he read, how she couldn't seem to sit still for long, and realized that in this form she was claustrophobic.
Splinters of door were leaping off the frame and falling to the carpet each time her body hit the door, but at this rate it would take at least five minutes and she was likely to damage herself. But she wouldn’t quit, not even if she broke her own shoulders.
He got up and walked to the door on legs stiff with shock, fumbled with the lock, dropped his key twice (all the while dodging her small wolf body—she never stopped, she completely ignored him, he doubted he was even a cipher to her now), and finally swung the door open. In less than half a second, Jane arrowed past him and disappeared down the hall.
He ran after her to do it again, and again. Then she spotted the bank of windows facing west and lunged toward them. He dived, and managed to catch her back left leg just as she was coiling for a leap that would take her through the window. She spun and he had a dizzying glimpse of what looked like a thousand sharp teeth as she growled at him, the sound like tearing cloth. Tearing cloth that could kill him, or at least ruin his evening.
"We're three stories up," he panted, clutching her while at the same time trying not to break her leg or get bitten in the face. "You'll never survive the fall. Well, you might but—don’t go."
She snapped at his fingers, he could feel the wind of the bite on his knuckles. Wrathful growls bubbled up out of her without pause, or breath.
He hung on, dogged fool that he was. "Please don't leave. I was wrong and you were right—I was a blind fool not to see it. I’ll—I’m so sorry. Please don't run away."
She snapped again, her jaws closing about a centimeter from his flesh. A warning. Probably her last warning.
"I can't bear it without you, I can’t go back to any of it. I thought I was content but it was a lie, everything was a lie, even why I was keeping you was a lie..." His grip was slipping. He talked faster. "...but you were right, and you never lied, not once, not even to get away, and Jane, I will spend the rest of your life making it up to you...however long or short that is. Stay. Stay and kill me, I’ve more than earned it, just let me have more time with you, please.”
She was almost free, and he was afraid if he let go to get a better grip, he wouldn't be fast enough. And he was afraid that she would break her own leg to get away from him, which he couldn’t bear for all sorts of reasons.
“...but please...don’t...go...”
She went.
He lay on the floor for a long time. It seemed too much work to rise, find the broom and start sweeping up the broken glass. He owned the building anyway, so who cared? Who cared about anything?
He couldn’t believe she was gone. He couldn’t believe he—who prided himself on possessing at least a modicum of intelligence—had let this happen. Not just her abrupt and well-earned departure. Any of it. All of it. He’d been a blind and willful fool all the way down the line. He was lucky she hadn’t torn out his throat. She should have torn out his throat.
My name is Jane Lupo.
That he had done such things! And to such a woman, one he cared deeply for.
I'm not afraid of any man, and I don't lie.
What had he been thinking?
My name is Jane Lupo.
How could he have been so stupid and arrogant?
The full moon is eight days away. And when it comes, you're going to get a big fucking surprise.
Oh, if there was a higher power this was a fine joke indeed. He had finally found a woman he could spend eternity with...
Your little oak doors won't hold me then.
...and he had kidnapped her and kept her and forced her and ignored her when she spoke the truth.
You'll realize you fucked up, bad.
He'd demanded she admit to being afraid of him, and when she wouldn't, he assumed it was a lie.
You'll know I was telling the truth the whole time, but you couldn't see past your stupid injured male pride.
His stupid injured male pride. Yes. That was exactly right.
I'll be gone forever, and you'll have the next hundred years to realize what an asshole you were.
He would have cried, but as with finding a broom, there seemed to be no point.
To any of it.