Page 14 of Speak No Evil
Mrrrow?
“I don’t know, good boy. But we’re about to find out, aren’t we?”
Brrrpt.
We burst into the kitchen, or what’s left of it, to find Thorne bodily blocking Vrahs’s giant, naked, and red true form from leaving the basilica through the window he’d smashed.
“What the fuck happened? And please tell me you did not fuck him like that.”
Thorne snarls at me. “Fucking help me keep him here, asshole.”
“Pain. She’s hurting. She needs me!” Vrahs is still speaking in mostly full sentences, so he’s not too far gone. That’s a good thing.
I dash over to him and grab his enormous arms, wrenching them behind his back.
I’m met with an ear-splitting demonic roar that would make a lion cower in the corner.
“Release me! I must help her. Must find our witch!” Vrahs rips his arms from my grasp and heads toward Thorne.
“I will go through you, brother. Come with me or not, I do not care, but you will not keep me from saving her.”
“What the hell is happening?” I yell behind them, earning both their gazes.
“I-I felt her through our link. I brushed it off as a fluke because I’d only ever felt Jade’s mind when I aimed to, while her active mind was suppressed.”
“Sleeping or unconscious, yes, I know how it works,” I say and motion for him to continue. I don’t want him taking so long that his lesser brain takes over.
“I didn’t know it was her at first. But when I felt her distress, her unabashed terror, I knew it wasn’t merely a figment of my imagination. Jade is in trouble, and I have to get to her.”
Thorne and I cast a glance at each other.
“Alright, brother. Where is she?” Thorne asks.
His enlarged features twist into a mask of frustration. “I don’t know! But I know I can find her if you just let me out of this damn kitchen!”
Another glance between Thorne and myself.
“And stop looking at each other like I’m crazy. I’m in full control of my faculties.”
“For now,” Thorne says.
Eyeing Vrahs, his carmine flesh pulsing with veins, rippling with adrenaline-fed muscles, I utter my next words carefully. “I don’t think this”—I gesture to Vrahs’s true form—“is the same as before, Thorne.”
“It’s not!” Vrahs agrees too vehemently. “Jade didn’t summon my true form this time. I did. I’m in control of myself, and you need to get out of my way so we can find her.”
His skin still bulges with veins and twitching muscles.
“I understand your position, Vrahs. But you can’t expect us to let you trounce through Blackwood in your current state.”
“Yeah,” Thorne agrees. “What will the neighbors think?” He gestures to Vrahs’s equally large, pierced cock.
“We can’t portal. We can’t blur like vamps. Someone’s bound to see you like this and—”
Vrahs cuts me off with another brutal roar.
Both Thorne and I cover our ears until it’s over.
“Jade needs me. Needs us. What is there to argue about?”