Everyone Saw

Chapter 4

Nobody moved.

I don't know how long it was. Long enough that my legs started shaking. Long enough that I could hear a kid up in the third tier asking his dad a question and getting shushed.

The Beast stayed down. Its head was on the floor between its paws, and its breath came out in slow, heavy huffs that moved the hem of my shirt.

"Get her out of there," somebody said. Not the announcer. Somebody closer, near the railing, a man in the pack's black and gold.

"Nobody move," the announcer said. His voice had gone thin. "Nobody — nobody move."

The Beast lifted its head.

I swear to God the whole hall leaned back. Three tiers, hundreds of people, and they all leaned back at the same time like the seats had tilted.

Its eyes came up to mine. Gold, and close, and it didn't blink.

My knees were doing that thing. That stupid thing they do when I'm scared, where they turn to water and I have to lock them straight or I go down.

Don't run, the woman had said. He only kills the ones that run.

I wasn't going to run. I couldn't, my legs wouldn't do it, but I told myself it was a choice.

"Okay," I said. My voice came out about two sizes too small. "Okay. Hi."

The Beast's ears moved.

Somebody in the crowd made a sound. Not a scream. A gasp. Like they'd never heard a person talk to it before. Like they'd never heard of anybody being stupid enough.

"Vance," I said. My voice was getting stronger. I don't know why. Maybe because nothing was dead yet. "Ella Vance. Silver Creek. I can't shift. I'm not gonna fight you, so if this is the part where you kill me, just—"

I stopped. Because it made a sound.

It was low. Rumbly. It came up out of the floor through my shoes and into my shins.

It was a whine.

The Beast whined. Like a dog at a door. Like something hurt.

"What the hell," somebody whispered, very clearly, in the sudden silence.

Above me the railing rattled. Guards were up there, six or seven of them, all with long silver poles and one of them with a rifle.

"Hold your fire," the announcer said.

"He's down! Look at him, he's down—"

"Hold your fire!" Louder this time. "You put a bullet in him in a hall full of people, that thing comes up and it kills everybody, do you hear me? Everybody."

The rifle barrel went up. Just a little. The man holding it was shaking.

The Beast turned its head toward the noise.

It happened fast. One second it was still and low, and the next it was up on its four legs with its shoulders bunched and its whole body angled at the railing, and its mouth was open and I could see everything — every tooth, every one, wet and white.

"Don't," I said.

I put my hand out.

I didn't think about it. That's the thing. I've had a lot of time to go back over it, and I still don't know what I was thinking, because I don't think I was thinking. I just put my hand out and I said don't, the way you'd say it to a dog in traffic.

The Beast stopped.

Its head swung back around to me. Its eyes were different — I couldn't tell you how, but different. The growl died in its chest.

"Get back," I said. "Get back, you're gonna get shot."

And the thing — the monster, the cursed Alpha King, the thing that had killed eight girls in that pit before I ever walked into it — backed up. Two steps. Three. Away from the railing.

The hall absolutely lost its mind.

Not screaming. That's the part people get wrong when they tell it later. It wasn't screaming. It was a roar, this huge ugly roar of hundreds of people trying to talk at once, and under it a chant started somewhere in the second tier and spread up and it was not a nice chant.

"Witch. Witch. Witch."

"Get her out of the pit," the man in black and gold barked. "Get her out now."

Two guards came down the steps with poles extended. The Beast turned and looked at them and they both just — stopped. Didn't back up, didn't run. Stopped, like somebody had hit pause.

"That's enough."

The voice came from the floor level. Not loud. Just the kind of voice that makes a room shut up.

Everybody looked. I looked.

A man was standing at the edge of the pit in a black coat, holding the rail with one hand. Older. Gray hair, gray beard trimmed close, and the calmest face I've ever seen on a human being.

"Arthur," somebody whispered. And then it went around the hall. Arthur. Arthur.

"Open the gate," Arthur said. "Not the railing. The gate."

"But sir—"

"The gate." He said it like he was asking for a coffee refill. "And somebody get the King's coat. Not the guards' coat. His coat."

The gate at the end of the pit groaned open. Two men came through it with something folded over their arms — dark wool, heavy, with a silver clasp at the collar.

The Beast watched them. It didn't move toward them. It didn't do anything except stand there and breathe, and while I watched, the breathing changed.

I didn't understand what was happening until it was already half done.

The shoulders came down first. Then the spine. Then the fur pulled back into the skin like water draining out of a tub, and the black receded, and what was left was a man.

A man. Tall. Barefoot. Naked and shaking, on his hands and knees in a clean stone pit in front of a thousand people.

Covered in blood.

He was covered in blood and it was not his.

"Nobody moves," Arthur said, calm as anything. "Nobody. Takes. A picture. Nobody says a word about what they saw today. You'll hear from me tomorrow and you'll sign something and you'll mean it."

Two men dropped the coat over the man's shoulders and I saw them be careful not to touch him.

He lifted his head.

And I don't know how to explain this next part. I really don't. Because he looked at me, and his eyes were gray — not gold, gray, plain gray — and they were the emptiest eyes I have ever seen on a living person.

"Who are you," he said. Rough. Like he'd been screaming.

I opened my mouth.

"Get him up," Arthur said, and moved between us. "Get him up and get him out. The car's at the loading door."

Two men pulled the man to his feet. He went. He didn't fight them. He didn't look back at me once.

I stood in the middle of that pit with a dead silence around me and a coat on the ground where a monster used to be, and I thought: he doesn't know what he did.

I thought it in the plainest way. Not like a theory. Like a fact I'd been handed.

I looked up at Arthur. He was watching me with those calm gray eyes.

"Am I going home?" I asked.

He tilted his head. Just slightly.

"Home," he repeated, like it was a word he hadn't heard in years. Then he turned and started walking for the exit. "Bring her."

Chapter 4 Ends