When Elvira Met Bettie Chapter 28 (Patreon)

Thunder rumbled; clouds full to overflowing with violence impatient to be born. Up above the lush, rolling hills that held this swamp. Yet stars blazed above, working their illumination between patches of wind-torn clouds.

Off in the distance, some animal wailed an eerie cry. It carried across the swamp, momentarily the loudest thing that the five survivors could hear. But none of them paid much attention to it. They all had their own noise to make and listen to.

Then Bettie’s rhythmic footfalls became the loudest there was. Still lost in the infinity of the wilderness, but they were there, as a candle is in the night. A sound that refused to let the spectral stillness hold sway.

The strike of her shoes upon the ground scattered mud, left sucking footprints behind her as she mindlessly pulled her shoes free of the muck to add still more distance to what she’d already traveled.

Lightning momentarily shattered the world, letting in a kaleidoscopic view of the surrounding trees as Bettie walked with increasing speed along the pitch-black path she had chosen. Bettie didn’t know where she was going. Her mind was unsettled and she timorously tried to set up a hum, a song, to distract herself from just how disconcerted she was.

The lightning exploded again, startling Bettie. Then there was the aftershock of thunder blasting in her ears. It would storm soon. There was tense, chilled heat—a humidity that would be broken by a downpour of rain and however much lightning the thunderclouds still had in them.

She probably should’ve stopped moving… surrendered to the shadows all around her and held still until she could get her bearing… but the white flashes of brightness let her see there were no obstacles in her path, nothing to fear except the blackness that crept back around her to the accompaniment of rattling thunder.

And so, tempted by those glimpses of her surroundings, Bettie kept going. Putting more distance between herself and Izzy, as though that could put what he’d done further from her mind.

She thought of the darkness almost as protection, cutting her off from Izzy, preventing him from pursuing her with some explanation or excuse, something to make her forgive him when she wanted to be angry at him. More than that, when she wanted to forget all the meaning he held in her heart.

It would’ve shocked her to know that, to eyes other than hers, the darkness was nothing. That eyes not human intently watched her movements, obsessively memorized and rememorized the shape of her body.

It pleased him. The anticipation of further pleasure held him in the darkness that blanketed the grounds, waiting as the shadows lengthened and Bettie sent herself further and further from those who could thwart his desires.

Had Bettie turned around when the sky briefly flashed, opening up the darkness, she might have seen the figure that was not quite beast, but hardly a man. He did not sneak, but was still. Allowing Bettie’s own ignorance and inattention to blind her to him.

Had she looked into the silent shadows of the overgrowth, she would’ve seen the beast-man resting his weight casually on his haunches and elongated forelimbs, regarding her openly. He saw her and though she was not his species, not for thousands of years of evolutionary deviation, he could read youth and health and a worthiness to mate in her supple movements.

Lightning struck again, bringing down a heavy tree with a blinding pulse of light. Bettie covered her ears, turning away from it, but there was no escaping the overwhelming fall of thunder upon the landscape.

She opened her eyes and thought she saw something burning, twin flames in the brush like glowing coals in a fireplace. Then a tiny fork of lightning scorched the skies and she saw the looming figure those eyes belonged to, seeming to tower over her even from a great distance.

Bettie told herself that she couldn’t have seen it right. Her imagination was running away from her. It had to be a raccoon or some other normal animal… she’d mistaken shadows and outlines for overpowering bulk.

But maybe too she shouldn’t be this far out. Even with the bear dead, she shouldn’t have wandered so far from the group. Maybe she should get back now—maybe she should hurry!

Bettie bolted out of the indecisive stillness she’d been frozen in, running back the way she’d come. The thunder had deafened her. Her footsteps in the mire, far from sounding louder as she pounded the ground with her swift steps, seemed muted, underwhelming. The sound of someone not even making a dent in the immense distance they had to travel to safety.

Lightning raked the sky again, painting the landscape with a strobing fury of white and blue, and in that ferocious light she saw him in front of her. He had not approached. He was simply there. His massive size no trick of distance. His power obvious in his bulk and the way he held himself. His eyes now so close she could tell they were looking at her, devouring her anticipatorily, as she herself would eye some tiny, tasty morsel that had drawn her appetite.

Bettie froze. Her emotions gagged her, all trying to be felt at once: disbelief and awe and horrible fright. She saw his bared teeth, his blazing eyes, the ferocious growl from deep in his powerful chest. She couldn’t move. Her legs were petrified. Her arms fell limp to her sides; her very body seemed to know the impossibility of defending herself against such a hulk.

“Oh… oh God…” Bettie gasped as he moved toward her on all fours, brawny knuckles striking the ground so hard she felt the reverberations through her heels.

She had to scream. Scream and hope someone heard her, came to help. She tried, but couldn’t. She had no voice, no will to try to outshout this thing’s deep-throated growl.

Her imagination flew from her. Would those long, thick arms rip her apart? Those sharp fangs rend her flesh? Would she be devoured, piece by piece, all of her consigned to the creature’s belly, in which she wouldn’t even make a bulge?

Terror overcame Bettie. She turned to run and her luck finally ran out.

Her foot caught a protruding root. She pitched through the darkness, sheer fright depriving her mind of oxygen on a descent that seemed to take hours, before she hit the ground. It was not an impact jarring enough to rob her of consciousness, but the sudden jolt was too much for her harried mind.

She blacked out, her terror mercifully muted by the blackness that had already surrounded her. Now it seeped inside her and made everything so blessedly quiet…

***

Gordon Vought reached them just as the brute approached Bettie. He stopped, horrified only so much as he could comprehend the insane scene before him. He tried to reason to himself that it was a man in a costume, it must be, but deep within him, the prey-mind knew a predator, not an equal.

He slipped his pistol into his hand, readied it, and took a few cautious steps forward. Still unable to believe what he was seeing.

The creature was big, well over six feet. Its shoulders were broad enough that, were it ever to lay eyes on a doorway, it would have to turn sideways to pass through. Its biceps were thick as Bettie’s thighs, its chest as broad as a tree trunk. A gray-flecked beard hid the jutting rock of its jaw and a shaggy mane did the same to obscure its rigidly brooding brow. The only part of its face not misted by some amount of hair was its eyes, which burned the color of amber.

Its claws were long, sharpened as knives, and its teeth were filed to points as well. Its body was a collection of muscles, all bulging into each other’s space. Veins thick as jungle vines ran the length of its flesh. Bettie couldn’t have rounded its chest with both arms. She’d barely be able to hug one of its massive thighs. And hanging between those thighs was the biggest muscle of all.

It wasn’t just a beast. It was a man.

Gordon aimed at the beast-man, sure he could hit it, before lowering his gun. He might hit it, but he bore an equal chance of hitting Bettie, or angering the creature so much that it would maul her instead of simply investigating. He would have to wait until he had a clear shot.

At the very least, the beast-man didn’t seem to be aggressive, not interested in eating Bettie like it would some quarry. It petted her. It sniffed her. It examined her garments as though it had never before encountered an animal that wore something other than its own skin. Then it lifted her dress and saw what was underneath… the same voluptuous femininity that had entranced Gordon as well.