Fox Trott (First Book of the Shadow Series)

Chapter 38: Curse of Eternity

Bexous walked out of the cell with Mystic in his arms. Although she was rigidly still, she was not fully unconscious. Somehow, she didn't fully black out when The Witch had pinned her down and began tearing into her skin and ripping into it like wrapping paper hiding a special present inside. Mystic knew what it had been aiming for. It was aiming for the heart. She could feel the blood leaking into her clothes and staining the shirt she wore a dark but permanent red. Yet before The Witch could reach its prize, Bexous had come storming inside of the glass cell. The rest was a blur of darkness: screeches colliding with the sound of a deep canid growl. The shadows hid the true goriness of the fight, but Mystic felt every blow in her chest as if she were the one fighting. For some reason, she could only hope that Bexous was fine through it all. Perhaps it was because he was the one who came to her rescue, or maybe because she was scared of The Witch winning the battle. As a tense quiet enveloped the room one more, long, cold arms scooped her up and held her close to a strangely still chest. The silence of it was discomforting. Did he not have a heart...? He felt has hollow as he acted when they spoke. She was carried away from the glass cell, every step echoing inside of his ribs as if it were fully vacant without the pounding of a heart. Her mind drifted to the soft, doglike rhythm of the steps. He was off balance, as if he didn't walk in this form often enough to understand his own body. After all, it took no effort to figure out that this was not Gynesis's body she was being held by.

            Instead of waking up to show him she was okay, she feigned her comatose. She stayed limp as her arm dangled to her side and her head stayed turned toward his chest. He seemed so different like this. She knew it was him by the way he growled deeply in his throat and because no one else would have been down there, but this wasn't Bexous inside of Gynesis's body. This was Bexous, exposed and real without Gynesis's stolen human form covering it.

            Mystic silently debated in her head. If she looked, Bexous could catch her and possibly punish her for pretending she was asleep. If she didn't, she might never get the chance to see Bexous's true form ever again. All she had seen before now was a faint silhouette passing by her cell, but even that gave her no relief. She decided that the risk of being caught was worth satisfying her curiosity. She opened her left eye and stared up at the monster that held her. From her view, she could only see one of the red eyes she had come to recognize as his trademark, marking the door out of the cells. She knew she had seen the symbol in other places, but she simply couldn't remember where. A simple almond shaped eye with a red or black pupil shaped much like a cat's. A long, thin, almost greyhound like muzzle protruded from a head that resembled a hairless dog, almost like a large chupacabra with bloodshot eyes and deadly long fangs. Speaking of, they stuck out slightly from his bottom lip, sharp and off-white. He wore a loose black shirt, but Mystic could feel the bones of a very human ribcage against her side. He looked like a pale younger brother to the god Anubis: very real and plenty petrifying. He had fresh cuts across his face, but they did not bleed, they simply existed, as if he didn't have any blood to be spilled. Just as Mystic realized she had been staring for too long, Bexous looked down at her.

            She was back to her sleeping game, eyes closed and breathing shallow. Bexous sighed quietly, turning his attention back to the trail that lead him past the monsters he had created. Despite the fear she should have felt upon seeing a creature that even the monsters he had made himself did not compare to, she did not feel afraid. In fact, she felt intrigued by him. No accidental science could have conjured up such a being, nor could Bexous had done this to himself even with all of his experiments. He seemed to be a creature that was never meant to exist, one doomed to a life inside of a body that was not human or animal, but simply was. He was like the monsters... he was like her. But why? Why was he doing this? What had made him decide that he wanted to spend years turning animals and unsuspecting men into monsters? Mystic knew that right now she couldn't understand, but she would understand all too well one day.

            Bexous carried her up the small flight of stairs that lead to the door, sighing as he realized he couldn't open it while carrying Mystic. It was almost amusing watching his long ears twitch in agitation. He carefully lifted her higher so he could reach the nob and turn it without having to let go of her. As he moved, Mystic caught the strange smell that surrounded his entire being. It reminded her of burnt hickory and nail polish remover. It took him a surprising amount of time to get the nob to turn so he could walk into the hall. After two more doorknobs and many more minutes of struggling and quiet-but-not-so-silent curses, Bexous was finally able to set Mystic on the bed that stood near the middle of her room. She sunk into the mattress as Bexous sighed once more, pulling the blanket from the foot of the bed over her. She stayed still, not willing to move until she knew he was fully gone. The flick of a light switch brought darkness to the room instantly. As her eyes opened, the door shut.

            She heard faint footsteps receding quietly down the long hallway as she sat up in the bed. Although her body was torn by the monster she had just met, she felt completely numb to the injuries. Her mind was locked on a single thought and not even the pain of the deep, stinging wounds would tear her away from it. She sat up on the bed and turned on the lamp that stood next to it, resting on top of the bookshelf. She searched through the books she had finished reading or was in the process of reading, looking for the one book without any words. Mystic pulled it out, the blue leathery cover easy to distinguish among the others, and grabbed one of the pencils littering the area around the lamp's base. She sat on the bed for nearly an hour, sketching and erasing the creature she had seen. He was more detailed than she could have predicted. Though his face was mostly a blur of lightly wrinkled skin, his single red eye took almost the entire hour to perfect. By the time she had finished, her hand was sore and her eyes were heavy with the exhaustion the day had injected her with. She made sure to close the sketch book and hide it behind the bookshelf before she fell backwards onto the bed. It took only a moment for her to fall asleep, despite the deep wounds that littered her skin and the blood that stained the sheets.

            As she fell into a full sleep this time, a pair of glowing red eyes watched her. Bexous stood away from the light of the lamp, moving from the corner of the room towards the bed. A soft smile surfaced on his muzzle as he quietly looked down at Mystic. He sighed quietly and grabbed something from behind the bookshelf before he left the room so silently, he could have not been there at all.