It wasn’t a living being. At least, I didn’t think it was. The body was impaled on a large spike, guts exposed and swaying in the wind. His spine pierced his mouth. No, it wasn’t a beast at all. It was a corpse.
“What the fuck!” Zane yelled.
He had fallen into the grass below, and a bit of black and oozing blood landed in his freshly groomed hair. I wanted to laugh. I also wanted to cry. Never in my life had such a mix of emotions hit me at once. The beasts did this to that person. I knew they were dangerous, but that is what drew me to them in the first place.
As I faced the horrifying act of violence, I felt that savage longing again. I was wet again. Odd. But the desire burned, turning into an immediate necessity. This was the path to take. I needed him. Cadmar. The others I had yet to meet. Something inside me wanted to be freed, and that part of me wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
Reluctantly, I offered Zane my hand. “Get up.”
I was closer to the body and took in its horrified expression. I recognized him almost instantly. “Dr. Wilson Jacobi.”
Zane was shaken up, but he was in one piece. The beasts were close. I could feel them beckoning. Their hunger was intense, and I could feel my scar start to burn. I was connected to them now.
Did that mean Zane was, too?
“You know this guy?” he cried out in horror.
A little gore every now and then no longer fazed me. My work put me in worse danger on a daily basis. People were terrified of other people or predatory animals, but I worked with poisonous plants, death-defining microbial bacteria, and I had nearly lost my life in my journeys through the Amazon rainforest because of my
research. This sight was nothing but a warning.
“Knew of him, yep,” I muttered while pulling out a pair of field gloves. I held my breath and turned my head as I reached into the center of his stomach. “He was one of the first men who came here. Disappeared without a trace.”
Zane retched and turned to face the other direction. “C’mon, Addie. This is disgusting.”
“Don’t like it? You can go home. I came here for a reason,” I said.
He spat once more onto the dirt below. The forest was unbearably dark and wild, but it also gave off the impression it was once a place of refuge. I wasn’t sure how time worked in this place, but he looked remarkably unchanged by the climate for however long he had been here. “He was one of the first people to take a team here,” I said. “He disappeared in March of 1991. He was never seen again.”
“That’s...”
“Impossible? Maybe.” I dug deeper and deeper until my arm was covered by his preserved insides. I arched my hand and felt the cold lining of his heart. Slowly, I clasped my hand around it. It was still beating.
Run, Adeline. Run for your fucking life.
But I didn’t run. I simply took a step back and tried to remain calm. I couldn’t let Zane see me falter. It would mean he won.
“His heart is still functioning,” I said. “My God...”
“Fuck this,” he said, darting toward a tree. “I’m walking. You can either follow me or get lost.”
Quickly, I took a sample and placed it in a small petri dish. If I ever made it out alive, I was going to want to test it.
With the sample in my possession, I caught up to Zane. I was still covered in the doctor’s body sludge, and I was sure Zane would quit talking about the past now that I had shown him my undesirable side.
In the past, he’d loved how “different” I was, how nerdy and sexual. His favorite type, he told me. It was the first time any man had complimented me outright, and it made me feel so desired.
As time went on, he started to move as far away from me as he did from that corpse. Sure, he still yearned for me. He promised he thought about eating me from behind, about making me shiver and come purely from the massage of his tongue. But he started to stay out later and later.
“Work stuff,” he assured me. “You’ll thank me when you see the ring you’re getting,” he’d joke.
Those assurances weren’t jokes to me. I dreamt about our wedding nearly every night. In due course, he was too tired to fuck. He grew distant. “Work problems.”
The same excuses kept piling up. The assurances went away. At our five-year mark, he was sleeping in his office regularly. That’s when I knew something was going on.
Madison. My best fucking friend.
I was a renowned scientist, dammit. I was smart, adventurous, and I had the good looks to back it up. I was a total catch, but he made me feel like a piece of furniture. His actions let me know I wasn’t as special as someone new. I was just another dumb girl to him.