The storm screamed through the forest like a scorned lover, ripping branches from ancient oaks and flinging them at the moon. Lucas' claws shredded the leather-bound poetry collection, pages scattering into the gale like ash from a funeral pyre. He roared, the sound blending with thunder, as fragmented verses stuck to his bloodied muzzle.
"Stop—!" Ayla's voice fractured against the tempest. She lunged for a spiraling page, its edge slicing her palm. The ink bled crimson where her blood met his childhood scrawl:
If moonlight were a bladeI'd carve my ribs into a cageTo keep your laughter from escaping—
(Three miles west, Lila convulsed in her hospital bed. Her IV bag pulsed scarlet as Lucas' left eye ruptured.)
II. Fractured Sonata
The wolf's claws seized Ayla's shoulder, puncturing fabric and flesh. She didn't flinch. Rain sluiced down his matted fur, revealing the jagged scar where Selena's silver collar once bit into his throat.
"Look at me," she hissed, pressing the sodden page to his bleeding eye. "Not the monster she made. The boy who wrote this."
Memories detonated like landmines:
Age 14. Lucas slumped against the greenhouse glass, hand mangled from Selena's "obedience test." Ayla, 12, binding the wound with rose thorns and piano wire. "Don't tell Father," he'd mumbled. She snapped the wire with her teeth. "Don't tell him I used G-sharp."
Present-day Lucas gagged, regurgitating paper pulp and black bile. The vomit sizzled where it struck wet soil, forming skeletal cherry blossoms.
(Lila's pen stabbed her diary: "Sister's migraine tastes like copper. Her pulse knocks against my ribs. Why does her pain smell like his blood?")
III. Scar Symphony
Ayla's grip tightened on the poem. "You think eating these words will make them stay? They're already rotting in your veins!"
Lightning flash—
—revealing Selena's hunters encircling the clearing, crossbows loaded with Lila's crystallized tears.
"Stand down, mutt," their leader sneered. "Lady Selena wants her favorite pet intact."
Lucas' remaining eye dilated. The poem fused to his cornea, projecting holographic verses onto the rain:
Your smile fractures lightInto prismatic liesI drink anyway—
Ayla tackled him as crossbow bolts whizzed overhead. They crashed into a gully, her forehead pressed to his feverish muzzle. "The cage was never your ribs," she whispered. "It's her voice in your skull."
(Flashback: Selena's lab, age 9. Lucas strapped to a steel table. "You'll thank me," she crooned, drilling vampire fangs into his jaw. "Hybrids need balanced diets.")
IV. Eclipse of Self
The storm stalled. Silence fell like a guillotine.
Lucas' claws retracted with a wet crunch. He stared at the poem grafted to his eye, then at Ayla's ravaged shoulder. A howl tore from his throat—half wolf, half weeping child—as he raked his own face.
Blood petals bloomed in the mud.
Ayla seized his wrist. "Stop. You'll blind yourself."
"Already am," he choked, pointing at the hunters' dissolving bodies. Their screams harmonized with Lila's heart monitor flatlining miles away.
(The hospital: Lila's eyelids fluttered. Her ventilator hissed a phrase in Selena's artificial vampire tongue: "Key... under... tongue.")
V. Resonance of Scars
Dawn bled through bruised clouds. Lucas lay motionless, Ayla's scarf staunching his eye wound. The surviving poem pages swirled overhead, forming a helix of butchered couplets.
"Why keep it?" He gestured to the blood-crusted page in her fist. "That's not me. Not anymore."
She unfolded it slowly. The verse had mutated:
If moonlight were a bladeI'd carve her ribs into a fluteTo play our funeral march—
Somewhere, a cherry tree burst into premature bloom. Somewhere, Lila's fingertips carved the same verse into her padded walls.
Selena's laughter rode the wind: "Sweet, isn't it? How love curdles into weaponry."
-
Rain needled Lucas' exposed fangs as he ravaged the book. Paper cuts blossomed on his tongue, each swallow embedding verses deeper into his marrow. Ayla's scent cut through the petrichor—cherry balm and rust, the same salve she'd used on his wounds since childhood.
"You idiot!" She tackled him as a crossbolt grazed her ribs. "Tearing up proof you had a soul won't kill it faster!"
His claws pinned her to mud. Thunder pulsed in time with Lila's distant seizures.
But then—
—a shred of poem fluttered against his ruined eye. The world kaleidoscoped into memory:
14-year-old Lucas sneaking into Ayla's room, fresh stitches crisscrossing his chest. "For you," he'd mumbled, tossing a crumpled sonnet. "Burn it if it's stupid." She'd smoothed the paper over her knee, lips moving silently. When she looked up, her eyes held the same defiance as now.
Present-day Lucas recoiled. His claws, buried inches from her jugular, twitched toward his own face.
"Still running?" Ayla rasped, pressing the poem to his bleeding socket. "From what? The boy who wrote this? Or the monster scared he ever existed?"
Somewhere, a tree split by lightning began oozing sap the color of Lila's newly opened eyes.