Infatuation Turned into Disease

He didn't know how to make her see what was wrong with him.

He motioned to himself.

"This is a lure," he said. "it's to make you trust me. It's easier to eat people that trust me because they come willingly. But I love you Addy, I do, and I do care about you, but that's why you can't trust me."

It hurt him. It hurt him that he said that he didn't scare her, because that is what he'd wanted to hear. Always. Forever. That's what he'd wanted.

If Lochlann could cry, he would.

But they had to go.

Her hands were on his shirt, drawing him back to her. His bottom lip jutted out in what looked like a pout, but really, it was Lochlann trying to find the words to explain this. It was so hard to think. he was looking at the way her hair stuck to each other when it was wet. It was adorable. She smelled so good.

"Not forever," Lochlann said. "Never forever. It's safe for you here, Addy, and I want you to be safe. But it's not safe tonight. There's these people and they're coming and--"

Lochlann jerked again but he kept his eyes on her.

He was shaking.

He was going to lose it soon.

"I never meant to hurt you," he said. "Don't believe anything else from me, but believe that."

He took a step back, breaking out of her grasp, and then one more, and into the rain. It was like washing something dirty off of him; the air around him shimmered and disappeared. One minute he was Lochlann, the next minute he was something else.

He was the night.

He was large, taller than the other horses in the stables, but thin. His head was long and narrowed and his body was streamlined. Lochlann looked like a race horse, the kind of animal built for speed.

But there were things that were wrong with him, like the way his eyes were narrowed towards the front, a predator with depth perception, and the way his teeth were rowed to have sharp and jaggged pieces hidden behind his normal teeth.

He was hypnotic, took. His body seemed to hum with something in the rain.

"Addy," Lochlann apologized. "We have to go."

It was his voice from a monster's mouth. The rain seemed to roll off him, like his skin was oiled some how. He looked dry and warm and very much like something that needed to be ridden.

"I'm sure," Lochlann said, and he sound sure. He'd never sounded more certain of anything in his life and that was because he was terrified.

He looked confident, steady, an animal that you could trust, but Lochlann was a nightmare ball of indecision and hunger. She looked, so, so good to him. He'd dreamt of drowning her before. Even that night, when they fell asleep on the roof, he'd dreamed of the way her hair would float to the surface and what her skin would taste like against his teeth.

But he didn't want to kill her. She was his best friend. She made him feel safe and more than anything, Lochlann wanted to be safe.

If he were still a man, he would have put his face between his hands and sighed to try and lessen the pulsing sensation in his skull and the tearing in his heart.

There was a noise in the distance and Lochlann lifted up his front leg and his skin quivered. It sounded like someone was calling his name.

"We can't go inland," he said. "They'll catch us there. Please, Addy, please, we need to go."

Loclann dropped his front legs and bowed before her, giving her the easiest way to swing onto his back. His body hummed with magic.

She'd never ridden a horse before.

Lochlann wished he'd taken her to the stables. He wished he'd shown her how to saddle one of the quiet mares or geldings and taken her on a trail ride through the woods, far away from the beach and the lake, where he could have shown her how to trot and canter before stretching out into a gallop.

He wished he didn't show her like this.

Lochlann was the night. He was moving through the rainstorm once he felt Addy's body settle on top of his own. He was so fast it might take her breath away. His hooves barely seemed to pound against the pavement while he moved and instead, it seemed like they were gliding through the night. The rain fell diagonally like shooting stars but he didn't seem to notice.

When his hooves did touch the ground the clatter sounded like a drum pounding and chanting water, water, water, water.

Lochlann did not worry about her falling. She'd be tangled in his mane by now, caught up against his body. No one ever fell off a kelpie or a cabyll-ushtey.

he was running through the town, through the streets, taking a beeline straight through the area and now his heart was racing and pounding and the blood was pumping in his ears and there was a voice, a light shining from behind them, and it sounded like a police car and someone shouting

Lochlann Cabyll-Ushtey, you are under arrest, cease your movement and release--

But Lochlann couldn't hear it. He couldn't hear anything. He couldn't focus on anything except for the weight of Addy whom he loved, whom he would die for, whom he wanted more than anything and he needed to be safe and he needed her to be safe and the only place they could be safe was--

The ocean.

"Lochlann!" a voice shouted through a megaphone into the rain. "Stop!"

And Lochlann ignored it.

"Addy," Lochlann said. "I'm not going to hurt you."

Then, he jumped over the side of the cliff and felt his breath leave his lungs while they crashed into the stormy waves.

The water crushed against them, hitting the pair with waves and forcing Lochlann's body in directions he didn't want to go. If it was just him, he would have dived far beneath the surface and moved with the familiar currents, but up top, in the storm, everything was uncertain.

He couldn't take Addy under.

But oh, god, did he want to. He made a keening noise deep in his throat, something like a wail, something that didn't sound human or equine. The waves sent him back, back, and he hit something, but he pushed up against it with surprising speed and breached one wave, then another, then another.

He wasn't talking because he was the least human he'd ever been. His muscles worked beneath her legs, pumping through the freezing water. if there was any consolation, it was that his body was scalding hot, and he almost seemed to have steam splash off his face where the water was leaving him.

There was an iselet somewhere up ahead. he was disoriented. he was treading water, trying to make his way. Something inside of him wasn't working. He realized the water was stained funny because there was blood

his blood

her blood

just blood

Because he'd been pushed up against a reef or a rock or something, something and now he was panicking and thrashing and trying to get Addy out of the water

Lochlann dived beneath the surface with no warning and pulsed through the water. He was able to move quicker now, and oh god, the water felt so much better down here. Why didn't he stay down here, why didn't they both just stay down here--

both?

Fuck

Fuck

Addy

Lochlann breached the surface then, just after a wave crahsed, so the two of them could gasp for breath in the sea foam. The water was getting worse which to Lochlann was a good sign.

There was going to be land.

He could get her there

or he could dive under the water.

His stomach throbbed. Something in his side twisted and lurched. He couldn't hurt her, he wanted her, he wanted to

Lochlann wailed. He charged forward, moving through the water again, and again, and diving and surfacing until his nose was bleeding and then, finally, his hooves collided with something and he pulled himself and Addy onto the beach and out of the waves.

He was so, so hungry.

Lochlann was shaking. His body was all wrong, this was wrong, the girl on his back should be on the water. Why was he coming out of the water? They should be back in. She was still breathing, he could tell she was still breathing, he couldn't eat her if she was--

She was Addy.

What the hell was wrong with him?

Lochlann was still shaking. It took every ounce of energy he had, every single morsel of self-control, but he turned himself back into a person and collapsed onto the beach with Addy ontop of him.

"Addy," he said. "Are you okay?"

They had to keep going.

They weren't safe. He wasn't safe. She wasn't safe. His head was spinning.