The Monster [H.S.]

Chapter 38

(A/N: sorry for the late and short update! I've been struggling to find a way to get into the main story but hopefully I can now! Thanks for reading!)

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"What did he tell you?" Harry asks.

I stammer to find the words to say but decide to say none at all.

"Listen to me." He whispers, looking behind him and back to me. He stays quiet for a couple of seconds before he's sure no one is around. He takes in a deep breath and keeps his eyes focused on mine, his eyebrows furrowed. "Paul is going to ask you three questions. You need to say no to them all. Do you understand?" Harry hushes, his voice so quiet I can hardly hear him. My mind is screaming 'no', but instead my mouth forms a 'yes.'

"Promise me, no matter what the question you'll say no." He whispers, tucking a loose hair behind my ear before retracting his hand and clenching his jaw.

"I don't make promises." I whisper back.

"Make one for me." He says as Paul Higgins bursts through the door followed by doctors and nurses, but when I look back to Harry he's gone and is in the corner at the other side of the room and I fight back a smile.

"Take her to the infirmary." Paul orders them.

They crowd around me and attempt to carry me but I push them away and stand myself. Paul Higgins looks on in bewilderment, his eyebrows cast together.

"You look untouched to me." He looks me up and down once more before sometimes clicks inside him and his eyes widen.
"Harry, did you-"

"Yes, now just get on with it." Harry snaps and this time I'm confused.

Paul looks at me pensively as I leave the room, his arms crossed over his chest and the doctors follow behind me, one of them touching the back of my arm and I shrug them off.

What is Paul going to ask me that I need to answer 'no' to? Why is Harry so adamant that's to be my answer?

As I'm halfway down the stairs my vision suddenly blurs and my ears ring. I swallow the bile rising in my throat and take one last deep breath.

My eyes fly open and doctors are all around me, their faces inches from mine. I try to focus but I can't, even though I feel perfectly fine. I become aware I'm lying down and look to my right to see the straircase I had just been walking down.

I look to my hand as a doctors jags a needle into it and arms run under my back and scoop my body from the floor. I try to protest, feeling as though I could walk perfectly fine but my body denies my requests and I cant seem to find the strength to move.

"Is your blood hot, Annabelle?" A voice asks.

Was that Paul? Did Paul ask that?

"No." I reply, the layer of sweat coating my body says otherwise, but still I shake my head.

"Do your eyes burn?" He asks.

"No." I reply as instructed as tears brims my eyes.

"Is your heart still beating?" Paul asks, and my eyebrows furrow together.

I'm placed on a bed, doctors drastically moving and prodding me, but I continue to stare at Paul. Is my heart still beating? What kind of question is that?

"Promise me, no matter what the question you'll say no."

"No." I say quietly and Paul looks to the ground.

"Okay." He says and leaves the room.

My heart is literally thudding against my chest and I'm surprised he couldn't see it. Why would Harry make me say that? What would have happened if I said yes? Fuck, I'm so sick of secrets.

They continue to touch me and stick wires in me and wrap various bandages over different parts of my body before they eventually all leave the room, binning their sterile gloves on the way out.

I get up from the bed and as I do so pain courses through my ribs and I grind my teeth. God, that was sore. I push myself up with more care and walk out the room, looking left and right but seeing no one in sight. I don't know what their need for me is, but if there was someone I hunted down for 16 years called "the prophecy" I would guard them will all that I had.

As I'm walking down the hall I hear voices coming from around the corner and I press my back to the wall behind me. As they talk more their voices get more and more familiar to the point where I can no longer stand here and not know who they are. I emerge from the wall and my eyes almost fall from my sockets when I see who stands in front of me.

"It's you." I whisper, taking a step forward but they take one back. "Where did you go?" I ask the familiar little boy.

Jake.

His eyebrows lift upward and he falls to his knees in front of me, crying hysterically and I take a step back from the little boy, startled by his unexpected breakdown. I was beginning to think the wounded boy I shot and carried through the training field in the pouring rain had been a hallucination of some sort.

My eyes stay fixed on the little boy and I stand speechless until two hands wrap under his arms and pick him back up. I look to the face that accompanies the hand and my breath hitches in my throat.

"Danny." I whisper. Memories of my fifteen year old self sneaking out late at night and snorting lines with him flash through my mind and my mouth falls agape. "What the fuck are you doing here?" I growl, taking a step forward, rage replacing the fear and coursing through me like fire.

"You weren't meant-"

"Answer the question I asked you!" My voice booms through the halls and I feel my insides explode, my eyes feeling like they are growing a million times the size and my legs feeling like they are ten feet taller, my body a thousand times stronger.
"My eyes," I whisper, looking at every detail in the room I previously hadn't seen, "what colour are they?"

"Blue. They're blue." Danny's says slowly, his face stunned with awe.

I take a deep breath and feel every emotion strengthen. I close my eyes and see myself back there, and the fear, isolation and sadness I felt hits me like a tonne of bricks and I fall to the floor as I'm overwhelmed with emotion. It's stronger and cuts deeper than before and I cry out from the degree of depression I feel. I bite down on my quivering lip to resist the tears but my heart feels like it's been ripped in two, blood pouring from the cracks.

Harry. His fingers touch my chin and pull my eyes so they're level with his. This time the evergreens don't help me, they only weaken me. The yearning I felt for him smacks against my chest and I fall into his arms, muffles screams sounding against his shoulder and I feel his arms wrap tightly around my body, gently but firmly. The feeling of him against me slowly burns away the terror.

It was in that moment I knew. I can't fight it any longer. None of it. I have to rip my walls down in order for him to build his own around me. I have to have him.

He's a monster, but I have to have him.

With a piercing in my chest and courage stemmed from two blue eyes, I take his face in my hands and pull him closer so my lips brush his ear.

"My heart is beating, Harry. For you." I whisper, and vanish from his arms as I run, fast and far before he can say anything in reply.