Chapter 4: The Binding Tightens
Ella’s apartment was a museum of silence. She’d been sitting on the cold concrete floor, back against her immaculate kitchen island, for over an hour. She’d scrubbed her skin raw in the shower until it stung, but the feeling wouldn’t leave. A phantom sensation of immense power, of muscles that weren’t hers moving with terrifying grace, of a hunger that was both sexual and… carnivorous.
She stared at her hands. Normal hands. Short nails, a faint scar on the left thumb from a kitchen knife last year. They trembled.
Did I hurt you?
The man’s face—Lewis, his name was Lewis—flashed in her mind. The shock. The scratches. The way he looked at her like she was a ghost, or a demon. She remembered the feeling of his ribs under her palms, the dizzying height difference, the taste in her mouth that was like licking a battery. It wasn’t a blackout. It was a takeover.
A soft, choked sob escaped her. This was insanity. She needed a doctor. A psychiatrist. Something.
Then, a knock. Three tentative raps on her door.
Her heart stopped, then hammered against her ribs. She didn’t move. The knocking came again, a little firmer.
“Ella?” His voice was muffled through the frosted glass. “It’s… it’s Lewis. From across the hall.”
Every instinct screamed at her to stay quiet, to pretend she wasn’t home. But a deeper, more terrifying pull drew her to her feet. She had to know. She had to see if the fear in his eyes was still there.
She padded to the door, barefoot, and peered through the peephole. He looked worse than she did. Pale, his hair a mess, shadows under his eyes so dark they looked like bruises. He was holding two mugs of steaming coffee.
She opened the door a crack, the chain still on. “Lewis.”
“Hi.” He shifted his weight. “I, uh… I couldn’t. I just sat over there, thinking. And I figured you probably weren’t sleeping either. So. Coffee.” He lifted the mugs awkwardly. “It’s just instant. Sorry.”
The normalcy of the gesture was so absurd it broke the tension in her chest. She undid the chain and opened the door wider. “Yeah. Okay. Come in.”
The loft felt different with him in it. The spaciousness shrank. He hovered near the doorway, looking around at the sleek furniture, the artful emptiness, as if expecting to see claw marks on the walls.
“Nice place,” he said, his voice too loud.
“Thanks. It’s… sterile. I know.” She took the mug he offered. Their fingers brushed. A tiny, electric jolt passed between them. She flinched. He did too.
They settled on opposite ends of a long, low sofa. Silence stretched, filled only by the hum of the refrigerator and the distant traffic below. She sipped the coffee. It was terrible, too weak.
“I’m really sorry,” she blurted out, unable to bear the quiet. “For whatever… happened. I have episodes. Medical stuff. I should have warned you. I totally understand if you want to report me or… or something.” The lie tasted bitter.
Lewis stared into his mug. “It wasn’t an episode, Ella.”
The words hung in the cool air. She had no response.
“You don’t remember, do you?” he asked, finally looking at her. His tired eyes were searching. “After. You don’t remember what you said.”
“I said I was sorry. That I blacked out.”
“You said,” he began, his voice dropping, “that I called. That you were the answer. That it was a binding.”
A cold wave washed over her. She didn’t remember saying it. But hearing the words felt like a key turning in a lock deep inside her. A sense of rightness, terrifying and absolute. She looked away. “I don’t know what that means.”
The silence returned, heavier this time. The space between them on the sofa felt charged, a minefield. Her own nervousness was morphing, twisting into something else. A heat in her stomach. A prickling awareness of his body, his scent—soap and anxiety. The memory of his skin under her hands, but from the other perspective. The victim’s perspective.
Shame curdled the arousal, but it was there, pulsing dully.
“This is so messed up,” she whispered, more to herself than to him.
“Yeah.” He put his mug down on the concrete floor with a click. “But I’m not afraid of you.”
She laughed, a short, sharp sound. “You should be.”
“Maybe.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “But I’m not. I think… I think I’m afraid of it not happening again.”
Her breath caught. The confession hung between them, dark and inviting. It mirrored the unspoken thing squirming inside her. The want to feel that power again, to stop being the confused victim and become the thing that caused the confusion.
The look in his eyes wasn’t fear now. It was anticipation. A dark mirror of her own hunger.
Without thinking, driven by a need to apologize, to connect, to just do something, she slid off the sofa and onto her knees on the floor in front of him. He froze.
“Ella, you don’t have to—”
“Shhh.” It was an instinct, a gesture of placation and dominance all at once. “Just… let me. An apology. For the scratches.”
Her hands went to his belt. His sharp intake of breath was all the permission she needed. This, at least, was human. This, she understood. A transaction of pleasure, an offsetting of guilt. She focused on the mechanics, the texture of his jeans, the human warmth of him.
But as she did, a familiar scent bloomed in the back of her throat. Ozone. Metallic, like blood on the tongue. The taste from before. The humming in the air of the loft seemed to intensify, vibrating up through the concrete into her knees.
She looked up at him, and his face was a blur of shock and desire.
A green flash, not in the room, but behind her own eyes. A synapse firing in the deepest, oldest part of her brain.
No. Not now.
But it was too late. The heat in her stomach wasn’t arousal anymore; it was a reactor core going critical. It surged up through her chest, down her limbs, a tidal wave of raw, transforming energy.
She jerked back from him with a gasp, falling onto her haunches. Her hands flew to her face.
“Ella?” Lewis’s voice was distant.
“It’s… it’s happening,” she choked out. The bones in her hands began to ache, a deep, grinding pain. She watched, horrified and fascinated, as the skin across her knuckles darkened, tingeing a sickly, vibrant chartreuse. The tendons thickened, rising like cables. Her nails elongated, curving into sharp, opaque points.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
The sounds came from her own body. Her ribs, expanding. Her spine, lengthening with a series of wet cracks. The soft cotton of her t-shirt pulled taut across her suddenly broadened back, the seams screaming. A feral groan ripped from her throat, her voice dropping, distorting, as her jaw loosened.
Lewis scrambled back on the sofa, his coffee mug tipping over, spreading a dark stain across the pale concrete. He didn’t run. He watched, transfixed, as she grew.
Her frame inflated, muscles swelling with grotesque, meticulous speed. The concrete floor felt cold under her now-massive, bare feet. Her socks had vanished, shredded. Her leggings split up the sides with a sound like gunshots, falling away in ragged strips. She rose, and rose, and rose, her head nearly brushing the dangling crystals of the chandelier. The world shrank. Lewis looked so small.
The confusion, the fear, the human guilt—it all melted away, burned off in the green fire. What remained was a pure, roaring certainty. She looked down at her own body, at the powerful green hands that could crush stone, and felt only belonging.
A grin spread across her widened face, revealing a row of sharp, predatory teeth.
Lewis was on his feet now, backed against a pillar of frosted glass.
“You came to me,” she said, her voice a gravelly purr that vibrated the air. It wasn’t Ella’s voice. It was Her voice. “I’ve been waiting. Pacing in the dark behind her eyes.”
She took one step toward him, the floor thumping under her weight. Then another. She caged him against the cool glass with her body, the heat radiating off her like a sun. He was trembling, but his eyes were wide, drinking her in.
She leaned down, her breath stirring his unkempt hair. “Now you know the truth, little man,” she whispered, the words a promise and a threat. “You can’t un-know it. I am the dream you whispered to your empty room.” One massive hand came up, a single claw tracing a line down his cheek, not breaking the skin. “And I am the nightmare that stays after you wake up.”
She pressed her body against his, pinning him fully, letting him feel every terrifying, magnificent inch of her. The binding was complete. There was no more hiding. For either of them.