In this place.
Trapped. On my back. Can’t move. Try to raise my head. Can’t.
Suddenly, a scream. And then, nothing.
I’m scared. So scared.
Footsteps… It’s him again. What does he want? He kneels beside me. He has a syringe in his
hands…big one…he injects it… into my head. My head hurts, terribly. Spinning. Dizzy.
Dying.
The ache of my head is unbearable. I feel my bones crack. I howl out in pain. He comes
closer… and puts his lips on my neck. I growl. He bites hard on my neck...sucks...draws blood. And
when he finally raises his head, I see him grinning, blood smeared around his mouth.
He lowers himself, his luminous eyes staring directly at me. His breath is inches away.
“Ah…” Eurynomos sighs in satisfaction. “The taste of human blood.”
“No…” I’m petrified.
Yet I can speak. Like a human.
“Remember, Nick, the snow leopard?” the hooded man grinned.
He walks away...to a table beside me. I twist my head. A snow leopard is beside me. What’s
going on? I see him repeating the same thing he did to me. I cannot watch it. It is howling. I turn
to look.
A girl appears. It has turned into a human being, just like me.
The memories were physical as well as mental agony. Nick had refused to face them for
eleven years.
He was one of them. An animal, a snow leopard, transformed into a human.
“I can still see the panic look in her eyes. Still feel her fragile body going limp in my arms.
Her warm, sweet blood trickling down my throat-”
“SHUT UP!” shrieked Nick.
Nick tightened the grip of his hand, making his hostage yell in pain.
“I’ll kill him. I’m serious,” Nick replied, pushing the end of his gun under the man’s chin.
“Do as you please, Nick. But it won’t get you out of here.”
He remembered her dead, hollow eyes staring straight at him. His heart was torn into tiny
shreds. Luck had left his side, taking Brooklyn with it.
“You loved her, didn’t you?” Taunted the hooded man.
Nick didn’t reply.
In that instant, Nick pushed his hostage to the floor and aimed the gun at the hooded man.
Nick watched as the bullet pierced through his skull, tearing the hood off. For a few seconds
light passed through the wound, but gradually the smoking hole closed in on itself. Nick felt the
revolver slipping from his fingers.
Eurynomos.
“Bad shot,” he commented. “You still don’t understand, do you? Nothing you do can get you
out of here. Tell me, do you want me to kill you the old-fashioned way?”
Nick shook his head. A lump had filled his throat.
“Why are you doing this?”
The devourer went silent for a moment. “Because I love you. And you know the saying: We
always kill what we love most. ”
He pulled his fist back and punched Nick in the stomach with incredible speed and strength.
