He still held the knife and drew back that hand, but it was the back of his fist, not the blade, that I felt against my face, snapping my head sideways.
For some reason that was the last straw. The final indignity. “You killed my mother, and I’m going to slaughter you,” I snarled, trying to rise to my feet. But when I placed weight on my shattered wrist, I nearly buckled, and he easily kicked me back to my knees.
“You’ll want the formula again,” he said, starting to smile: a warped, triumphant grin. “You’re a Hyde, and you will long for that side of you.”
“No. Never.”
“You will, Tristen,” he promised, crooked smile disappearing. “If only I could have fooled you a little longer. If only I could have lured you along until you felt the thrill of a trusting, innocent thing perishing in your arms. You were so close to killing her, Tristen. Killing that girl you love, just as I did kill your mother.”
Although I already knew that, I nearly puked to hear him finally confess—and with such satisfaction in his voice. I actually felt the vomit rise into my throat. I really had been living with my mother’s killer. “No . . .”
“Oh yes, Tristen,” he confirmed. “And had you experienced that just once, enjoyed the incomparable sensation of taking your lover’s very life, you would have joined me, willingly.” He scowled at me, dragging the sleeve of his robe across his mouth, wiping away some spittle that flecked his lips and beard. “You will join me . . . son.”
No. I wasn’t like that. I’d proven it with Jill. I’d stopped the beast and myself.
“Never,” I insisted again as the kitchen started to grow dim. I could feel the blood coursing down my face, and the bones grinding in my wrist as I struggled again to stand, determined to fight. “I won’t . . .”
“I’ll give you time to come to your senses, Tristen, because I have long held high hopes for you,” he said. “You are the best of our lineage, and I am as yet unwilling to give you up for lost. As yet.”
“Never!” I vowed one last time, even as the room grew black around me. “I’ll die before I drink it again!”
“You will drink again,” he said, actually starting to laugh. “And of your own desire and your own free will.”
I felt myself swaying on my knees, losing my bearings. “And if I don’t?”
I heard him stop laughing, and although his reply seemed to come from far away, I didn’t miss the warning, just before I blacked out.
“I will finish what I started here. ”
Chapter 50
Jill
“JILL, I JUST ASKED YOU what I’m supposed to do with this stuff,” Becca nudged me, holding up a beaker. “You’re, like, in a fog today.”
With effort I dragged my gaze away from Tristen’s empty lab station and tried to remember what Becca and I were doing. “Just pour that into the other flask,” I said, too distracted to care about being precise.
I couldn’t help looking at Tristen’s table again. Where was he? Obviously something had gone wrong . . .
“Jill, will you turn around and help me?” Becca asked, sounding irritated. “Tristen’s not here, okay? Just let it go. I’m doing everything, and it’s not fair!”
“Sorry,” I said, but absently and without moving to help her. I kept staring at the empty spot where Tristen should have been standing, imagining all sorts of awful possibilities. Like Tristen waking up from a nightmare to realize that the beast hadn’t really been defeated and stumbling to his bathroom, getting a razor, and holding it to his wrist . . . Oh, the blood-soaked scenes that I couldn’t stop imagining . . .
Yet I was still unprepared when the whole class gasped, and Becca blurted out, loudly, “Oh, my god! What in the world happened to him?”
Chapter 51
Jill
TRISTEN STRODE THROUGH the classroom in the heart of a silence that rang louder than applause. It was an ovation of shock as he walked toward his lab station with complete self-possession, like he was oblivious to the stares.
I stared, too, in horror at the wide gash across his cheek and at his arm, which was wrapped in what looked like a torn T-shirt. Although his wrist was bound tightly, his hand hung crooked, like a mad doctor had sliced it off and botched its reattachment.
“It’s about time somebody finally beat the hell out of him,” Flick muttered under his breath, breaking the silence. “I wish it ended his damn season.”
“Shut up,” I snapped, wheeling on Todd.
Flick reared back, seeming more surprised maybe by my outburst than Tristen’s injuries. I saw him start to reply, and I kept glaring at him, not caring for once that he was the most popular guy in school. Eventually, Todd shut his mouth, and it crossed my mind that I’d wasted so much time taking crap from him when all along I could have silenced him just with a look. I thought I was smart, but even after months of watching Darcy Gray control Todd like the pretty, plastic Ken doll that he was, I hadn’t learned until that moment that I had the same power.
Unfortunately, though, Darcy had to have her say, too. “I told you he was violent,” she said to me, sounding like she didn’t care about Tristen at all. He might as well have been a broken burner at a lab station. “I warned you, Jill.”
I glared at Darcy, too, thinking that she had no idea what had happened to Tristen. He could have been in a car accident for all she knew. But Darcy Gray was so sure that she knew everything that she took her assumptions as truth. I hated that, hated that she was right and hated myself because, even though I’d just snapped at Todd, I still couldn’t bring myself to contradict Darcy.
I turned around to watch Tristen as he took his seat, wincing when he rested his wrist on the table.
His dad had hurt him; I
