She's not a piece of me, but she has me trapped.
Though Lochlann related to the words, for the first time, he hesitated when he thought of Guinevere Haze. Guinevere had stalked him, haunted his thoughts and his actions, manipulated him, cut him, and utterly possessed his body more thoroughly than a ghost or wraith ever could.
But that had all changed.
He couldn't pinpoint when. There wasn't one specific moment, no single ahah incident. There had been the time she apologized to him, the time she cried, the time she told him she was human. The time he saw her, vulnerable and broken and bruised in the hospital room. He did not want to think about it too much, because he might start to realize there were times before that, like a slow trickle slowly breaking down a damn. She'd stolen more from him than his amulet.
The woman that possessed him and haunted him no longer kept him trapped....did she?
After all, Lochlann left....but he came back because of her.
Was he really free? Or was it that something else, something besides Guinevere, was trapping him?
Lochlann had his demons, but they weren't physical ones any more.
The slow stream of energy leaving his body was a cool glass of water on a blistering day. Lochlann craved. He wanted sex, he wanted a drink, he wanted something to make him sleep. He wanted Addy to love him. He wanted to apologize to Emily. He wanted to talk to Chloe. He wanted to do something to make Kaya actually proud of him. Lochlann craved a lot of things and not all of them were physical.
And when William fed on him, Lochlann felt like....
Like maybe he could sleep.
"Well," Lochlann said, and for a while, that was all he said. He wanted to close his eyes, but he knew what would happen if he did. Did he care?
Yeah. He wanted to wake up one day with Addy wearing his shirt.
And that wouldn't happen if he let William kill him, even though his felt good. As for the demon? He said, "Fuck her."
Lochlann knew it wasn't that simple. If it was, William would have already done it.
Fuck, he really didn't want to relate to this guy either. Lochlann's eyes flickered open again and caught sight of the person laying beyond them. He groaned.
"Doc," Lochlann said. "Fuck her. Seriously."
He took a deep breath, brought his own hands up to William's shoulders, and pushed the other man off of him. The sudden stop in the draining left him feeling like a cold sweat broke over him, his body trying to replenish the energy it missed. Like most drugs, Lochlann was already building a tolerance to this, but the effects were unpredictable. He rolled onto his stomach, pushed himself up, and took a few hesitant steps away from the doctor.
"Fuck. Her,' Lochlann said. He scooped up the emptied vase, then took a few more steps away, turning his back on the doctor now.
He bent over the body on the ground and Lochlann took a deep breath, picked it up, and tossed it over his shoulders fireman style. He almost collapsed from the motion.
The air smelled like burned cigarettes and pine needles. The distant moisture of the lake called to him and Lochlann knew he would succumb soon.
He stood very still while he tried to regain his balance. He wasn't going to make it very far.
He didn't need the doctor to know that.
"I imagine it must be hell, to have the thing that killed you living inside of you," Lochlann managed. The words were slow, hesitant, as though Lochlann wasn't sure he'd actually said them.
"It must be lonely," he said, and then Lochlann left, making a few hesitant steps down the path. He tried to look confident as he left, tried to give the doctor no indication that, if he grabbed Lochlann now, he'd be done for. Lochlann moved faster, carrying the body with appeared ease, and once he was out of sight, Lochlann secured the person up in a tree.
He took the vase and Lochlann dropped his amulet in it, buried it beneath the tree.
He dove into the lake.
Felt his humanity slough off of him.
And slept.
