Free The Lynnie Russell Trilogy by R. M. Gilmore

life. I’d made that same plea to God, my plea wasn’t answered. His was about to be.
     
    “I don’t know who you are, but thank you. I was what you are now, death. Your sacrifice has freed me from that prison. So many years I walked the night.” His voice sounded like a man who’d given up. He talked low, nearly a whisper. “Find strength were you can, accept what you are, and do everything you can to stay alive. There is no more that I can say; this journey has to be yours.” He looked at my fiery eyes for a long minute. “End this, quick.”
     
    The man dropped his head again. The beast let out another snort bucked its head back, and let out a screeching howl like an elk in heat or the never ending cry of a wolf. I was trapped inside without control, but I could feel the release of the howl. It felt good.
     
    The beast came down on the back of the man’s head with a strong swift strike. The man fell to the ground flat. He wasn’t dead, I could hear him breathing. Just a little knocked out is all.
    The beast nosed the man in the shoulder till he rolled on his back. He was a very pretty man, even if he was all purple. It was a strange mix of colors with the purple man lying on the green floor of the forest. I wondered why he was purple. Why the rest of the world was green. The red haired woman and the others were purple too. But Rusty and Garret weren’t. I wanted to ask the man if he knew why, but of course I couldn’t say anything.
     
    I tried to make the beast stop, to wait till I was human again so I could talk to him. I had so many questions. Instead of stopping, the beast dug its teeth into the man’s neck. The purple blood came out fast and flooded the beasts’ mouth, my mouth. I tried not to pay any mind to what was happening. I tried to close my eyes and go somewhere else. I couldn’t close eyes I didn’t have. Or really, didn’t have any control over. I had to watch the man be eaten, by me.
     
    I wished I could stop. I wished I could throw up, or scream, or cry, anything a human would’ve like to’ve done. The beast didn’t have any wishes. Only its instincts. The man was dying. His heart was starting to slow down and he wasn’t breathing as much. The damn animal I was didn’t give two cents; it was doing what it was supposed to. What that man asked it to do.
     
    I felt bad for him, I did, but he’d asked for it. I felt worse for me, I needed him. He knew what I was. Hell, he’d been the beast himself. I wanted to escape the furry body of the beast. I imagined my hands punching and my legs kicking out trying to tear out of the body. I didn’t have legs to kick with. I was stuck. Forced to wait it out ‘til dawn.
     
    Through the eyes of the animal I watched the man’s eggplant blood run over and around my paws. His blood changed color when he died, I think. When he first got bit it was the brightest lilac I’d ever seen. When his heart slowed to a stop it turned the dark color of an eggplant. His color was gone with his life.
     
    The beast licked the naked man’s face a time or two. I felt like the beast might’ve been sorry for killing him just like I was. But, I felt like he had to die, like it was the time for him to go home.
     
    Me and my beast left the man, naked, and dead in the woods. I prayed for a second that God would take him, that his soul, and mine, were still pure. Oh hell, as pure as they could be considering.
     
    By some miracle my animal turned us around and started back where we came from. Dawn was coming on soon. The air smells different just before the sun come up. Cleaner, more pure. Like God himself comes down from heaven and pulls the sun up over the horizon, leaving a trail of that heavenly scent behind him.
     
    The sky was still dark, but I felt it wouldn’t be long before the day would change me back.
     
    The thick paws of my beast thumped along the earth while it walked me back to my truck. I knew we couldn’t be too close; we’d walked a long