I half expect him to say, Good. I wondered when you’d finally shut up.

The only reply is a deep, atavistic rattling noise, and I tense. It’s primitively terrifying on a cellular level. It’s not Barrons behind me.

It’s the beast version of the man.

I hear the scrape of taloned claws on the floor as he prowls into the bookstore, the prehistoric panting around what sounds like a death rattle caught in its chest. The beast version of Barrons is death: a primeval executioner at the top of his game. Although I’ve seen him transform partially on multiple occasions, I’ve only seen him wearing its full skin twice. Both times I was acutely aware that I was in the presence of a thing not at all human, governed by vastly different imperatives, a beast that had no mercy for anything but others of its kind.

It’s behind me, beside me, then the creature passes the couch and hulks into my line of vision.

I sit motionless, staring up at it. Nine feet tall or more, its skin is ebony, it’s nude and enormously male. Massively muscled, with thick veins and tendons, it has crimson eyes with inhuman, slitted, vertical pupils. Three rows of long, deadly horns at bony intervals frame each side of its head and there are bits of bloody things stuck on them.

Its prominent, crested forehead is a throwback to ancient times. It has long, lethal black fangs, and when it snarls—as it’s doing now—like a lion, it becomes all teeth and deep, rumbling roar.

It’s horrifying, it’s bestial, yet in this form I still find Barrons savagely beautiful. I’m envious of how well he’s engineered to survive, to conquer, to outlast apocalypse.

I remain completely still. I’m invisible.

It whips its head to the left and looks directly at me, peering down through matted hanks of black hair.

Well, shit, I realize, I’m making butt-cheek-shaped indents on the soft leather.

It’s holding the severed heads of Kiall and Rath, still dripping a bluish-black blood.

“Some crimes,” I quote Ryodan stiffly, “are so personal, blood-vengeance belongs only to the one who suffered them.”

The beast snarls at me and gouges the floor with a taloned foot, ripping long gashes into the priceless rug. Crimson eyes flash. So much for the damage my heels do. I’ll remind him of this the next time he comments on my shoes.

“I wanted to be the one that killed them,” I say, in case I hadn’t made myself perfectly clear.

It roars so loudly, the windows rattle in their panes, then stalks forward, shaking the severed heads at me in wordless rebuke, crimson eyes flashing.

I stare into the princes’ faces. Eyes rolled back in their heads, their mouths open on screams. Faces don’t freeze like that unless pushed to breaking, where death itself becomes the kindness.

Around enormous fangs, the beast snarls, “You had ample time. You didn’t. Your time ran the fuck out.” Its horns begin to melt and run down the sides of its face. Its head becomes grossly misshapen, expands and contracts, pulses and shrinks before expanding again—as if too much mass is being compacted into too small a form and the beast is resisting. Massive shoulders collapse inward, straighten then collapse again. The princes’ heads thud wetly to the floor. The beast gouges deep splinters of wood up through what used to be a priceless rug, as it bows upon itself, shuddering.

Talons splay across the rug and become fingers. Haunches lift, slam down, and become legs. But they aren’t right. The limbs contort, the bones don’t bend where they should, rubbery in some places, knobbed in others.

Still it bays, but the sound is changing. Its misshapen head whips from side to side. I catch a glimpse through matted hair of wild eyes glittering with moonlight, of black fangs and spittle as it snarls. Then the tangled locks abruptly melt, the sleek black skin begins to lighten. It hits the floor, convulsing.

I can’t help but compare it to the sudden swiftness with which Ryodan transforms. Although both can become the beast quickly, Barrons’s reversion to human is lengthy.

I enjoy the beast, Barrons had said. Ryodan enjoys the man.

Although both are animal, they prefer to stalk different terrains. Ryodan dons the concrete and glass of the urban jungle like a second skin. Barrons glides into the dark, primitive, forested jungle with the lusty hunger of a long-confined, feral lion escaped from a zoo.

Suddenly it shoots up on all fours, head down. Bones crunch and crack, settling into a new shape. Shoulders form, strong, smooth, bunched with muscle. Hands brace wide. One leg stretched back, the other bent as it tenses in a low lunge.

A naked man crouches on the floor.

Barrons lifts his head and stares straight at me, a few feet above my indent on the sofa. “It was my crime, too. I may not have been there to see it, but I’ve seen it in my head every fucking day since.”