Page 57 of Something Worth Keeping
Predator. Vermin. Threat.
The guard’s spine snapped with a wet crack. Cillian flung the corpse aside and expanded further, his form now spanning the warehouse’s entire width. Eyes opened across his mass -dozens, then hundreds, each one fixed on different threats, different targets, different routes to Julian.
The second guard fired. Blessed silver rounds tore through shadow and found nothing solid to damage. Cillian was beyond physical now, beyond anything those insects could comprehend. He engulfed the guard completely, wrapping him in absolute darkness.
The man’s screams echoed inside Cillian’s form as shadows invaded every orifice, filling lungs, throat, and stomach with void. Cillian could taste the terror, could feel the frantic beating of the guard’s heart as it struggled to pump blood that was rapidly cooling. The corruption here was different - greed, mostly, and cowardice. This one had held the apparatus while someone bled out above them.
Accomplice. Guilty. Remove.
Cillian peeled the skin from the guard’s body in strips, methodical and thorough. The screaming stopped when he crushed his larynx. The guard’s eyes bulged as Cillian’s shadows forced their way behind them, rupturing the sockets from within. When Cillian finally released what remained, it was barely recognizable as human.
Thorn and Silas were free now, too, their own forms expanding as they recovered from the drain. But Cillian couldn’t focus on them. Couldn’t focus on anything except the spreading pool of blood beneath Julian’s body and the man responsible.
Marcus Vane ran.
Pathetic.
Cillian surged across the warehouse floor, no longer bound by linear movement. He existed in the spaces between - the shadows cast byindustrial shelving, the darkness pooling in corners, the void beneath Vane’s own frantic footsteps. He manifested directly in Vane’s path, a wall of writhing darkness that stretched from floor to ceiling.
Vane skidded to a stop, his expensive shoes squeaking on concrete. Up close, Cillian could see every detail. There was sweat beading on Vane’s forehead, a rapid pulse in his throat, and his hands trembled despite his attempts at composure.
“Wait,” Vane gasped. His voice was steady enough, but Cillian could smell the fear underneath. “We can negotiate. I have resources. Information. I can…”
A tendril wrapped around Vane’s throat, lifting him off his feet. Cillian wanted him to understand exactly what he’d done. He was determined that Vane would comprehend themagnitude of his error before he died screaming.
Cillian forced a portion of himself back toward human speech, though his voice came from everywhere and nowhere, echoing through the warehouse with harmonic frequencies that shattered the remaining light fixtures.
“YOU. SHOT. MY. MATE.”
Each word detonated like a physical blow. The windows exploded outward in a shower of glass. Support beams groaned and twisted. Somewhere in the distance, Thorn was shouting something, but Cillian couldn’t hear him over the roaring in what passed for his consciousness.
Vane tried to speak. Cillian tightened his grip on the man’s throat, feeling the cartilage beginning to collapse. Not yet. He didn’t deserve a quick death.
More tendrils emerged from Cillian’s mass, wrapping around Vane’s limbs. Cillian pulled in four different directions simultaneously. Vane’s shoulders dislocated with wet pops. His scream was strangled by the tendril around his throat, coming out as a choked wheeze.
Slower. Make it last. Make him understand.
Cillian could see into Vane now - could see the corruption that permeated every cell of his body. Decades of cruelty. People sold like merchandise. Children disappeared into shipping containers. Women’s screams silenced with money and threats. A city’s worth of suffering, all traced back to a single point of human evil.
And he’d dared to threaten Julian.
Cillian’s form expanded further, pressing against the warehouse walls. Cracks spiderwebbed throughthe concrete. The apparatus groaned and buckled, its metal framework twisting under the pressure of Cillian’s rage. He was losing cohesion, his edges bleeding into pure chaos.
He pulled Vane closer, until the man’s face was inches from a cluster of eyes that had manifested specifically to witness his final moments. Cillian wanted to see the exact instant when hope died.
“I researched your kind,” Vane managed, his voice a ragged whisper. Blood trickled from his nose, from his ears. “You’re supposed to be...emotionless. Above human attachment. I didn’t think…”
“YOU. WERE. WRONG.”
Cillian drove a tendril through Vane’s abdomen, punching through flesh and muscle and emerging from his back in a spray of blood. Not a killing blow. Not yet. The tendril moved inside Vane, wrapping aroundorgans, squeezing. Vane vomited blood.
Another tendril pierced Vane’s thigh, shattering the femur, and another through his shoulder, tearing through the rotator cuff. Cillian was pinning him in place, transforming him into a grotesque puppet suspended by shadow.
The warehouse groaned. A section of the roof collapsed, raining debris and twisted metal. Cillian didn’t notice. His entire existence had narrowed to a single purpose. He wanted to make Vane suffer the way Julian had suffered, magnified by infinity.
“Please,” Vane whispered, his voice barely audible given the damage he’d suffered. One of his eyes had burst from internal pressure. The other fixed on Cillian with desperate, animal terror, as his mouth kept working.I didn’t know!
Cillian peeled away Vane’s lips, exposing teeth and gums. The man’s gargles intensified, but Cillian wasn’t finished. He manifested smaller tendrils, threading them beneath Vane’s skin, separating dermis from muscle tissue layer by excruciating layer.
