Gloam (Monstrous, #4)

by Lily Mayne

If he let go of the cage face, would it rip off his lower jaw? The horror of it made me let out a weak sob, and I finally lifted my streaming eyes to his when he made another low sound. Wide, rectangular pupils gazed back at me mournfully, dark and fringed in thick lashes. The pain in them made me sob again, but it also filled me with the burning need to help him. To take away that pain. I was sitting here blubbering while Gloam was still fucking maimed.

There was so much dried blood under there—years’ worth. Years of those rusted rings tearing up his skin and the sensitive, vulnerable flesh inside his mouth. Years of them holding his jaw locked open wide, unable to make anything more than guttural sounds and clicks.

The vibration of the angle grinder had opened the wounds, causing fresh, rich brown blood to drip from Gloam’s chin to his lap. My breaths were loud through my nose as I pursed my lips together tight, but I managed to hold back more tears. Tears wouldn’t help him.

Blood gushed from the big holes in Gloam’s lower jaw. He was shaking, but when I looked into his eyes, they were bright with relief. He blinked, and a single tear dripped onto his cheek.

“Adam,” he croaked, his deep voice thick and pained. I burst into tears. I didn’t dare throw my arms around him, terrified of hurting him. I clung onto his blood-soaked hand, but it wasn’t enough. Still kneeling beside the bed, I scrambled between his thighs and wrapped my arms around his middle, tipping my head into his hard stomach. Gloam’s blood was everywhere.

His trembling hands came up to cup the back of my head as I wept into his skin like a baby. I knew I was being selfish—this wasn’t about me. I wasn’t the one who had been horrifically maimed. But the horror of what he’d been put through, combined with the relief at finally getting that cage off, made me weak.

“Ad—” He tried to whisper my name again, but his voice cut off with a wet gurgle. Fresh terror streaking through me, I jerked back to stare up at him. I could see dark brown blood coating the inside of his lips. My mouth trembled. “Just spit it out.” I clambered up on shaking legs and knelt beside him on the bed, placing one palm flat on his blood-streaked chest.

Two tiny, nubby horns jutted out from above his temples. They were a deep black colour, covered in velvet, but the fronts of them looked lighter and shiny—like they’d been worn away after years of rubbing constantly against the inside of the cage. I kissed one, unable to help myself. Gloam shuddered, his fingers tightening on my hand.

The room looked like a crime scene when I stepped back inside. The old white sheets were soaked in blood, and when Gloam stood up unsteadily from the bed upon my arrival, the pool that had formed in the crotch of his leather pants dripped onto the wooden floor in a pattering shower. The two pieces from the metal rings thudded onto the floorboards.

Tangling my fingers with Gloam’s, I urged him to kneel on the bathroom floor with me. I could see how unsteady he was. “Let me clean you up.” I started with his hands, gently stroking the soaked towel down each of his long fingers and between them, before turning them over and carefully wiping his palms. Once his hands were clean, I lifted them to my mouth and kissed each of his knuckles.

“There you are,” I said, reaching up to cup the side of his face, tracing the tip of my finger around the base of his horn. “I knew you weren’t ugly. I told you.” It was the least important thing in the world in that moment, but I had to say it. I had to tell him how I felt—what it meant to finally see him.

He lifted the jug and tipped it to his mouth. Only thin trickles streaked with brown escaped the holes under his chin. They were healing fast. Relief coursed through me, until Gloam lowered the jug and I heard the gentle clink of metal coming from him.

“W-we still have to get the rings out of your back.” I’d have to put him through more pain. And fuck, this would be more dangerous. Far more dangerous. What if I accidentally severed his spine? I froze up, hands shaking wildly as I stared at Gloam through panicked, unseeing eyes. What if I killed him? What if I paralysed him? I couldn’t—I didn’t—

We can’t remove the rings yet. “Wh-why not?” I whispered. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle knowing that task was still looming. That I’d have to put Gloam through pain again. Mary cannot know. I stared at his words. “Wh-what? Why can’t we just leave right now?” I gestured at the window. “She’s distracted. We’ll easily be able to get away.”

“A spell?” I blurted. “You… you have to say words to break it? Can’t you just say them now?” He didn’t move, body vibrating with tension—with the desperate desire to answer me when he couldn’t. “You have to say them to her?” I guessed. “Because she’s the one who has control over you?”

“What if I said those words? On—on the paper? So I had control?” I cringed even voicing the idea. I didn’t want to control him. “Then you just say the words to me and we can go. We don’t have to go and see Mary at all.”

There is more to do. That told me nothing, and I could feel my face going red with hopeless frustration. First I must heal. So I can speak. Okay. Okay, that made sense. I took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to calm down. “Okay.” Then the rest.

But did the compulsion extend even further than I’d thought? Was Gloam trapped in an endless loop where every single action, even the one that could free him, went against his order to protect her?

My chin trembled as fresh tears spilled over. “I just want you to be free,” I told him, voice wavering. “I just want us to get away, Gloam. Together. I w-want you to stay with me.” He cupped my cheek in a gentle hand, those long, rectangular pupils flickering as he watched me. His expression was soft. Calm. Like he wasn’t worried about whatever else he had to do to be free from Mary’s control.

You have to put the cage back on, Adam.

I let out a pathetic sob. “Please don’t make me.” You must. “B-but how?” I gestured through the open bathroom door at the blood-soaked bedroom, the split cage discarded on the stained sheets. “It’s in two halves. If I weld it back together…” What if I couldn’t get it off again? It needs to be done so I can easily remove it again when the time comes, but without Mary realising.

“I’ll—Let me go back to the garage and see what I can find.” Gloam made a soft sound in his throat and lowered his head to write more words. As I peered down at them, his big hand smoothed over my hair. You are very brave, Adam. I choked on a weak, humourless laugh. “No, I’m not. I’m shitting myself.” Go and see what you can find, my love. I will be here.

did love him. I loved him so much it hurt. He was so gentle and kind and smart. Strong—not just physically, but mentally, even after all he’d been put through. He had protected me so much. Looked after me. And I realised… I realised that I looked after him too. That I wasn’t too stupid or useless to be of value to him in return. It wasn’t a one-sided thing, where he gave and I just took. I had given him companionship out here. And affection. And hope. I remembered what we had said to each other, after the first time we’d come together and touched intimately, furtively in the dark out in the Wastes beside Mary’s RV. He was important to me, but I was important to him too. We fit.

Something to hide the fact that the cage has been broken, but is easy enough for him to break free from when the time comes. In the end, I found a small tube of industrial-strength superglue,

If he struggled to break apart the cage, Mary would have enough time to bark another order at him to stop him. She could order him to kill himself if she realised he was close to getting free. She could order him to slit his own throat or rip out his tongue so it wouldn’t even matter about the cage.

“See if you can get them apart.” He took the makeshift oval from me and effortlessly pulled the two halves apart. I spluttered out a watery laugh, feeling stupid for worrying that my big, strong beastie wouldn’t be able to tear apart glue.

But first, I picked up the angle grinder and sliced away the rest of the rings that had been impaled through Gloam’s jaw. Then I filed down the remaining sharp edges with the metal file I’d found, so that they wouldn’t catch on his skin when the cage was back on.

While we waited, I got to my knees between his legs. He was so big that I still had to tilt my head up to look at him, my arms rising to carefully frame his beautiful face in my hands. I took in every detail that I could before it was hidden again.

I didn’t want to kiss him on the lips, too worried it would hurt him, so instead I stretched my body up and pressed my mouth gently to the wide, flat bridge of his nose, then his cheek.

“I love you,” I told him, before I carefully enclosed his head back in the cage.

His fingers sifted through my hair, and at some point I fell asleep when the day caught up with me. I was wrung out and exhausted. When I woke up, Gloam had tucked me under the covers and was no longer on the bed with me. My eyes still felt tight from crying, but I could tell that I’d slept right through the night.

O Hein nor Faie wi no Aedonimus ag ni Boetna. I stared at the words. I could tell Gloam had written it, but his handwriting was shaky and more jagged than usual. Like it had taken him effort, and time, to get the words down. Which surely meant they were to do with getting him free.

exhaled a weary breath and reached up to scrub at my face. Then I lifted the scrap of paper. “Is this… Do I need to learn this?” Gloam was very still for a long moment, before he dipped his chin once. “Okay.” Determination strengthened my resolve as I looked back down at the paper, even though the weight of this responsibility made my shoulders hunch. “I won’t let you down. I promise, Gloam.”

He stepped away from the window, meeting me halfway and wrapping his arms around me when I buried my face against his chest. I breathed in his scent, the faint tinge of metal still there—I wondered if it always would be—and his warmth soaking into my bare chest, even though the chain around his arm was cold against my back. I’d taken off my blood-soaked shirt and scrubbed it in the bathroom when we moved to the new room. My eyes squeezed shut when I heard him whisper within his cage, “Nearly healed.”

My stomach was too knotted up with nerves to eat at all. Gloam was relying on me. I needed to learn this, and I needed to stay sharp so I could pay attention—so I knew when I had to say these words. I wondered what they meant.

I clenched my jaw when I realised what it was. Mary’s bell. She was summoning Gloam. I jumped up to wrap my arms around him and press a kiss to his chest before he left. And then I paced the room, wondering what she was making him do. It felt like he was gone for hours. Eventually I got tired and curled up on the bed. I wanted to keep going over the words, but I didn’t dare turn on a light in case anyone spotted it.

My eyes burned with the need for sleep as I lay there in the dark, staring at the door. When I next blinked, the room was suddenly light from weak morning sun, and I could feel Gloam’s big, warm body curled around my back on the bed. Relief turned my limbs to jelly. “I tried to stay awake,” I whispered, twisting around in the cradle of his arms to face him. “Sorry.”

It is time. When she calls for me, follow out of sight. His hand paused, before he wrote more slowly. Please know that what you see is what needs to be done. Shit, that sounded ominous. Unnerved, I swallowed and looked at his cage as I nodded. “I trust you,” I whispered, curling my fingers around his free hand. “I’m with you, Gloam. Whatever you have to do.”

I slipped out of the room, gripping that scrap of paper in my fist. I was sure I knew the words on it, sure I could get them out when Gloam needed me to, but I was also fully aware that I froze up under pressure. Fear turned me into a useless statue and I knew I would be terrified for him, even though I didn’t know what was coming.

Panic froze me in place. He was relying on me. But how would I know when to say the words? Gloam said I would, but how? I didn’t even know what they fucking meant. I was going to fuck this up. I just knew it. I was going to miss the right time, or say the words wrong, or freeze up and forget them entirely. After all this. After everything.

Channelling my focus helped me to calm down, helped to slow my racing heart and chase away some of the overwhelming panic. I had to do this. Gloam needed me. He needed me to get this right.

His back was tense, and when I silently eased the window open wider, he stiffened completely. He knew I was here. I watched as he resituated his grip on his war hammer and slowly lifted it just an inch off the ground, before silently taking several steps back and to the right. He was covering me, I realised. His big body would block out the sight of me crawling through the window if Mary happened to turn around.

Instead, his fingers twitched on the handle of his war hammer. A tiny movement, but I knew. Somehow, I knew this was my signal. I knew, deep in my gut, that it was time. I was never going to doubt tiny Mexican grandmothers ever again. Not that I was likely to come across many of those out here.

Mary squeaked in a shrill voice just as I said the last words. “Aedonimus ag ni Boetna.” Immediately, Gloam reached up with his free hand and ripped away the front of the cage, the back falling a split second later and both halves hitting the floor with a deafening thud. He started to speak, his voice hoarse and rough from lack of use, but the words that flowed in a constant stream from his tongue were fluid and so alien that my skin broke out in goosebumps. When he started to advance, Mary let out a little scream.

“Stop,” Mary shrieked as he reached her, but she was too late. He’d already stopped. He’d already finished speaking, and now he was looming over her where she lay in a spreading puddle of blood and viscera. He lifted that war hammer high into the air with both hands, and then he brought it down directly on Mary’s head.

“You… you killed her,” I said like an idiot. Gloam didn’t need me to tell him that. Her brain matter and blood were splattered all over his boots and leather-clad legs. I was trying desperately hard to keep my eyes off Mary’s body, but even in my periphery I could see that her head was just… gone.

I raised my trembling fist to my mouth when the shulc chittered with excitement and snuffled around Mary’s gaping neck wound. It hoovered something into its mouth and crunched down. “Oh shit.” My stomach spasmed and lurched, but I managed to get a hold of myself before I threw up. I ripped off my mask and dropped it on the floor, needing to suck in more air.

As the shock receded, I felt pretty embarrassed that I hadn’t realised this was coming. That it hadn’t been painfully obvious Gloam would’ve had to kill her. I assumed it was the final step to break her hold over him, but even if it wasn’t… why wouldn’t he have wanted to kill her? She had tortured him. Maimed him. Held him captive for years.

it was over. Gloam was free.

my trembling lips curving into a tiny smile. Gloam stilled, then slowly smiled back as he exhaled in relief. His fingers sifted through my hair. “There is so much I want to say to you.” My smile turned into a shaky grin as I looked up at him, my fingers still wrapped around the leather straps of his harness. “I’m ready to hear all of it.” He let out a soft rumble of amusement. “My Adam.” He brought his hands around to cup my face, big thumbs smoothing over my cheekbones. “I love you.”