Daria curled at his hip, not touching him now, much as she wished to. He needed to sleep. She was a horrible, selfish person who needed to let her lover sleep.

Tagen’s hand came to rest on her shoulder. It was not a human hand. His breaths were already lengthening towards sleep. She wondered what sorts of things he dreamed when he closed his eyes. She thought for the first time of the other alien on Earth in a tangible sense, not as some faceless boogeyman, but as a real being. Somewhere out there, he might be sleeping, too. Somewhere out there, some poor girl—two poor girls, even—might be lying just as Daria lay, with a clawed hand upon her shoulder and the musky taste of him in her mouth, but with fear and pain pooling inside her where Daria knew only love.

Somewhere.

The first snore rumbled from Tagen’s chest. The second followed.

Daria eased away, letting his hand slip and fall to the mattress. He slept on, undisturbed, even as she crawled back and rose from the bed. She looked down at him in the darkened room—his beautiful, naked body—feeling the fingers of that helpless love and dreaming loss play through her still. She loved him, but she couldn’t sleep here. She couldn’t share this lumpy sofa-bed with him and Dan and the faceless E’Var and his two faceless victims. She turned away with a lonely pang, her own hand rising to touch the place where his had lain, and made her way to the door while she could still see it.

Grendel came bolting in the instant the door was open, grumbling at the indignation of being excluded. He leapt up onto the bed and settled at Tagen’s hip, purring aggressively until Tagen’s hand moved in sleep to settle atop him. Grendel’s eyes in the dim light were slits of accusation Daria just couldn’t face. She stepped into the hall and shut the door behind her.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Twenty-Nine

It was a nice night. Warm, but breezy, with a full moon out and plenty of stars scattered across the cloudless sky. Driving around in a decent car with the windows down, smelling barbeque smoke and sprinklers wetting down new-cut grass, with your guy on your right and his hand on your knee was a whole goddamn bag of good n’ fine. If asked, Sue-Eye would not be able to think of a single time in her life in which she had ever been completely happy, but for tonight, at least she was content. Sometimes, that was just what a girl had.

They were circling yet another dot on the map of the Edge of Nowhere. There were ten streets running one way, ten streets running across them, and a bridge separating the residential area from the tourist block. There was a post office and a feed store and a corner market that charged six bucks for a half-case of Coke and two churches and five little stores with the word ‘antiques’ somewhere in the windows and no mailboxes in front of the cute little wedding-cake houses. There were also eight—count ‘em, eight—seasonal hotels dabbed in here and there in all this quaint little clod-hoppin’ beauty, ranging from respectable bed and breakfast joints all the way down to seedy little fishing shacks out by the river. There had to be some kind of Buttfuck-Empty Class Reunion going on, too, because all eight places looked pretty full. Not packed by any stretch, but still, for a place that proudly boasted six hundred and twelve God-fearing souls on the sign leading into town, eight hotels at even half capacity was pretty damn good.

Sue-Eye reached the end of a road named after a tree and rolled back onto a road named after a former President, heaving a theatrical sigh just for effect. “Would you just pick a place already? Jesus H. Christ. I could have killed my way through all eight of these places in the time it’s taking you to pick one.”

Kane grunted, his lips twitching. His eyes moved restlessly from the lights of one hotel to the distant next.

In the back seat, his purple-haired pony hunched a little lower and rubbed restlessly at the window. “We’ve probably been seen by now anyway,” she mumbled. “Maybe we should look at another town.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Sue-Eye hit the brakes and stopped the car, right there in front of the charming little country church with the pancake social advertised right under the Subject of Sunday’s Sermon. “This is the fourth town we’ve been to already,” she argued. “Do you think they have all-night gas stations out in Hicksville? Get with it already!”

“Raven,” Kane said simply.

“Fine. They’re all alike, just pick one.” Raven crossed her arms and turned her face to the window, staring at the church.

“Ichuta’a, drive.” Kane hooked his arm over the back of his seat as the car started moving again and faced his pony fully. “Raven,” he said again, this time with menace.

Sue-Eye had the road to pay attention to, even if it was utterly deserted (naturally, it being all of midnight on a weeknight), so she couldn’t entirely enjoy the trapped-animal look on the pony’s face. But she could see enough of it in the rearview mirror to put a glow in her heart. She went with it, saying, “You know, if we do get caught tonight, it’ll be because you had to do all this dicking around instead of just doing the one job he gave you.”

Kane flexed the claws of one hand warningly, his eyes still on Raven. When he spoke, it was in a voice scarcely louder than the hum of the well-tuned engine, steel disguised with velvet. “We need to have an understanding.”

Raven’s face in the rearview mirror was lost in shadows, but Sue-Eye could still see the pony’s lips, downturned and trembling with unhappiness. She bit her cheeks to keep from smirking, but her hands clenched victoriously on the steering wheel.

“I give orders,” Kane went on. “And you obey them.”

“I picked the town,” Raven said. She sounded right at the verge of tears and Sue-Eye’s glee blossomed.

“Now I’m telling you to pick the place. And Raven, if you don’t obey me, I’m going to have to hurt you, and then I’m going to make you choose anyway. The only difference will be that I’ll also make you help me hunt.” Kane reached out his claw and brought Raven’s chin up. “Don’t,” he said quietly, “fuck with me. I can make you drink blood.”

Raven nodded, the shuddering sound of her breaths robbing the car of perfect silence, and Kane withdrew his hand from her.

“Where?” he asked.

Raven pointed, holding her hand out for as long as it took Sue-Eye to make the turn, and then she covered her face.

“Good girl.” Kane faced front again and returned his hand to Sue-Eye’s knee for the little time it took her to find a parking space. When she shut off the engine and opened her door, his hand tightened, holding her in the seat. His eyes slid her way and he smiled.

She smiled back uncertainly.

“You’d find me humans to hunt,” he said silkily, “wouldn’t you?”

And this, this dark star burning inside her, this was the closest Sue-Eye had ever been to ‘happy’.

“You bet I would,” she said, giving Raven in the mirror a broad grin.

“You wouldn’t care where.”

“Nope.”

“Or how many.”

“Bring ‘em on.”

“You’d work your way through the whole town if I told you to.”

“Tell me to,” she said, meeting his gaze with fierce triumph.

Kane patted her thigh and showed his teeth. It was not a smile. “That’s why I ask Raven,” he said, and got out of the car.

Sue-Eye’s face flamed. She shot an ugly glance into the mirror and if Raven had even been looking a little her way she probably would have done something stupid and suicidal. But Raven had her knees up and her face buried. Sue-Eye shoved her way out into the parking lot and followed the greater shadow that was Kane to the motel office.

The bell above the door sounded, raising a bored-looking man out of his magazine to offer a mechanical greeting, but Kane didn’t go inside immediately. He stood, frowning back over his shoulder at the car where Raven still sat. After a second or two, Sue-Eye heard the slow crunch of his claws digging at the door, although Kane himself was still and grim as stone.