My fangs dropped, changing the game.
“Annalise, you have to explain to him what’s happening, or he won’t be prepared,” Bestia said in my head.
Like I was in a trance, I said to Lanier, “Your blood.”
He paused, going still with shock.
“Wha—” he began just before his eyes clouded over, the seafoam green now completely replaced with silver circles. His breath came out choppy as he glared in my direction. “What are you doing to me?”
His voice was suddenly deeper and multilayered. Like he was more than one person. I watched, fascinated, as his skin tone jumped a few shades and lost its brightness, matching mine in a light gray.
I smiled, genuinely enjoying the fact that he was somehow in this mess with me. He seemed surprised by the change in skin tone, so I assumed this was new for him too.
A random gust of wind blew in our direction, bringing with it a new scent. I stopped, turned, and sniffed the air.
No.
No way.
“Did you cut yourself?” I turned back and asked Lanier, my own voice sounding strange. Seductive and husky. Sexy.
“When you threw me, I landed on my hands,” he replied with narrowed eyes. He held up a large hand for me to see, and when I noticed the small scrapes lining his palm, I almost blacked out.
“I…” I started but couldn’t find the words. “Lanier…”
He didn’t reply but instead tilted his head to look at me as I had done to him a minute ago. His nostrils flared as an idea formed in his head.
“Sorry about this, Vix,” he said slowly before he lifted one of his scraped hands and wrapped it around my throat.
I barely had time to take a breath before I was flying through the air and then landing hard in the same spot I threw him just a few minutes ago.
I tucked as best I could when I landed, but my shoulder still smashed into the grass covered ground. The morning dew spread across Quint’s hoodie, leaving me damp and annoyed as hell.
“What the fuck?” I screamed, getting back to my feet.
Anger pulsed through me, while this new power felt totally foreign and completely unwelcome since I had no idea what to do with it or what it meant. I hadn’t even gotten to the wings part yet.
I had a feeling this wasn’t normal.
The power within me was dark and sinister, and it spiked, getting louder, meaner, as I scented blood, the tangy sweetness like a drug to my heightened senses. I licked my lip in anticipation and realized that I was bleeding. My fangs had bit through my bottom lip when Lanier threw me across the open field.
“You fucking asshole!” I yelled, ready for round two.
His eyes blazed as he watched me from across the distance.
I ran, and it wasn’t a normal sprint but rather like a burst of winter wind. I flew forward and landed solidly against his chest, nearly knocking me on my ass again. He shoved me off but held onto my shoulders.
“What the fuck? Did I—” I couldn’t finish that sentence.
I just…flew to him?
“You used your new strength. You’re faster than a Human now,” he said absently. His eyes zeroed in on my bleeding lip, hunger flaring in his hot gaze.
Wait, was he feeling the same thing I was?
“This power…Lanier—” I was scared out of my mind. Half of me wanted to sink my fangs into the throbbing vein in his neck, and the other half wanted to run like hell away from it all.
“This,” he began, pulling me toward him. We were now chest to chest, and it was a struggle to stay focused. The need to get closer was strong, like he was pulling me to him with an invisible thread. “This feeling is new.”
I looked up at him, seeing him not really there. He was somewhere else, someone else. He spoke in a distracted, haunted kind of voice. “Something is happening to me, Annalise, and I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t feel safe.”
Safe. Safe for who?
“What do I do?” I whispered, starting to panic again.
His eyes closed before he let out a deep groan of agony, his features tightening in pain. He let me go, and his hands flew up to hold his jaw.
I watched in horror as his mouth opened on a silent scream, and fangs began to poke through his gums, covering the Human teeth that were once there.
I knew the pain he was in all too well, but I still felt it echo in my own jaw. I bit down on a scream as I pulled the pain within me and used it as motivation. Just like I did with my foster father.
There was a difference between now and then. I had no control back then, but I was in control now, and I hated that Lanier was in pain. Something in me—Bestia maybe—wanted to help him, to save him from it, to take his agony and make it my own.
I closed my eyes and tried to find her. She had to know something. I was battling the sinister darkness that lingered in the back of my mind. It wanted blood—Lanier’s blood. I could still smell it flowing from his hand, running down his arm. Wine.
It smelled like red wine.
I wanted to…lick it?
What the fuck?
“You’re not of this world, my Queen.” Bestia’s musical cadence hit my mental senses, shattering my bloodlust.
Did she just call me Queen?
“Bestia, what do you mean?” I asked her, uncertainty lacing my tone.
“All in good time, Majesty,” she purred. “I need to be let out, I need to get reacquainted with my animated spirit. Let me loose and do not be afraid.”
“Let out? What do you mean, let out?” I was creeping closer to losing all my fucking cool, walking on eggshells in my own mind.
“When Lanier has finished his Transformation, he will be unhinged. He does not have the control that you do, he will smell the blood on you, and he will bite you. You need to shift; you need to let me out so that you can defend yourself against him if he gets out of control.”
“Bite me?” I yelled.
I got no response, as if she pulled away to await my decision.
Lanier was now hunched over with his hands on his knees, and I could feel his pain decreasing. I had mere seconds before he felt no more pain, and then he’d be on me.
Why was this happening?
I didn’t know what to do.
“Annalise,” I heard my name spoken from deep within Lanier’s chest.
He looked up.
I stepped back.
His eyes were pure silver and dripping in hunger. He went from being a little intimidating to totally fucking savage.
His fangs dripped a black liquid onto his bottom lip before it trailed like a river down his chin and fell to the ground beneath us where it sizzled and burned a blade of grass.
Oh no.
Was that venom?
Suddenly, I understood what Bestia meant.
Lanier was gone, replaced by a monster that held nothing but hunger deep within his eyes. And I was his feast.
I stepped back another step and took a deep breath.
I had to do this quick, though I had no idea how to do it at all.
I focused, remembering the pain from last night. Remembering how it felt to have the wings push through the skin on my back.
Blind. Fucking. Agony.
A scream was torn from my throat. I wanted to thrash and roll and do anything to stop the change from happening, but it was too late.
I had accepted Bestia, and she took it from there. She pushed her way through my soul and began the shift. The razor-sharp wing tips sliced my skin, opening up enough space to fit my new appendages through.