He was going to need her again before it cooled, he was sure. And when night fell, they needed to travel. Kane growled, thinking.

At last, he lay down, pillowing his head on one arm, and gestured for her to slide right up against him. He put his arm around her waist, able now to feel every breath, every slight movement. He smiled and shut his eyes. “Sleep,” he said. “When I want you, you need to be ready.”

She didn’t answer, but that was all right. Just the feel of her body beneath his arm was all the answer Kane needed. He drifted off to sleep.

*

“Why, baby? Mary, why?”

Those were the last words Raven’s mother had said to her, and now, lying beneath the arm of this…this Devil-thing that had captured her, the girl who had been born Mary Frances Carter realized they would probably be the last words she ever heard her mom say. Of all the loose ends Raven had left behind her in her life, that echoing, unanswered question bothered her the most.

Why had she done it? Why run off to California and join the throngs of teenage runaways? Why change from Barbies to doobies in less than a week? Looking back, even from the tremendous vantage point this horror had gifted her with, Raven had no idea what had prompted her to run. All the other runaways she’d hung out with in L.A. had dramatic stories of rape, incest, drugs, beatings, or some combination of all four. Not Raven. No, little Mary Carter had a dad who believed in barbequing on the weekends and a mom who understood that teens should never be seen at the mall with their mothers. She couldn’t remember ever hearing a raised voice in the house, unless she counted the time Dad set the curtains on fire trying to make waffles. There was no bratty little brother, no bitchy older sister. There was no reason. Mary just left.

And now look at her. Look at her lying under the arm of this inhuman killer. Look at the jizz drying on her shirt and on her face. Look at the bruise on her arm where he injected her, not to mention the other bruises where he’d hit her. Things like this didn’t ‘just happen’. There had to be a reason. There had to be a point where it all went wrong. If she only knew what it was, maybe it would also show her the way out. So why, baby? Mary, why?

She’d said her name was Cindy when she first arrived in L.A. Back then, she really believed the cops gave a damn, and that she’d be arrested and sent home if they found her out. So she kept a low profile during school hours and ran around the city like a wild animal all night. She’d never been scared; the sirens, the smog, the noise, the occasional gunshots, the whackos and crazies, all of it was exhilarating. She fed on the excitement and confusion of it. She met everyone, tried everything.

Her heart was breaking. God, she could feel it breaking, all hot and cold and hurt as it pounded inside her. She wanted this to be a dream. She wanted to be back in L.A., stoned and drooling over the back of someone’s moldy old couch. She wouldn’t even mind if she woke up in the middle of her own gangbang, as long as she didn’t really have to be here.

Did she really think she’d known what a bad guy was? Her first week in L.A., she’d fallen in with a group of Goths and their middle-aged whacko leader. He told her he was a servant of Satan and gave her a mattress in his basement to sleep on. He introduced her to absinthe and bloodletting, told her that her true name was Isis, and informed her that the Devil wanted her to be the blood virgin during their rituals. Raven could even remember feeling a tremendous sense of pride and importance as she’d counted out drops of her blood into the black goblet they all drank from, all the while laughing at anyone who actually believed the Devil was real.

Well, here he was. The Devil’s breath was on her neck. The Devil’s arm was on her hip. The Devil’s spunk was in her mouth, and obviously, her virginity had never been high on his list of wants.

Being a fake vampire got boring after a while, and ‘Isis’ couldn’t help but notice that the little cult’s leader was finding more and more reasons to have her naked during Circle. She left during the middle of the day, while all of them were sleeping in their stupid fake coffins, leaving all of that witchy-crap and the name of Isis behind her. By the time sunset had rolled around, she was dropping Ex and Foxxy on the beach and dancing with glowsticks. At some point that night, she wandered over to where two ladies had started an impromptu school in the art of good head. Seemed like fun, and one thing led to another. So much for virginity.

Not that she ever regretted it. There were guys in this world who would give a girl a few bucks, a joint, or a cheeseburger just for a blowjob. Raven, and she was Raven by this time, never went hungry for long after that.

She told herself she wasn’t hooking unless she had a pimp. The next time she took stock of herself, she realized she’d somehow acquired an asshole who brought guys to her, took half her money, and slapped her around sometimes. So she told herself it still wasn’t hooking unless you were doing it for drugs. But fucking for drugs was easier and a hell of a lot faster than fucking for cash and then going out to buy drugs. Why not cut out the middleman, you know? In the end, she realized that anytime you weren’t fucking for fun, regardless of what you told yourself, honey, it was hooking.

So it was time to move on. Hop a bus, head cross-town, on to better things. She’d called her mom to ask for money, but all she got (apart from that awful, haunting question) was the offer of a bus ticket home.

Home? Fuck that noise, Raven was home! She went to San Francisco, falling easily into the post-modern happy-hippie feel of the place. She tried her hand at face-painting on Fisherman’s Wharf, sometimes bluffed her way through a Tarot card reading, and when money got tight, well, there was always someone with his dick out, and Raven knew what knees were for. In the meantime, there were parties every night, and weed and Ex were everywhere. She was having fun. She was in control. She was up for anything.

And one day, floating on a cloud of drugs and good sex, the thought of hitching up to Seattle dug into her brain and it seemed like such a good idea at the time. Raven could remember this plan being greeted so warmly by her friends that they gave her a big going-away party with lots of hugging and making out and drinking and smoking. Someone gave her a huge bag of joints to send her on her way, and then she hit the road.

Halfway there, Raven sobered up enough to realize that Seattle sucked. And the very next car that stopped for her had two guys in it who said they were on their way to New York and would she like to go along? Hell, yeah. Would she mind trading a little slice of her pie for the privilege? Ain’t no thing, fellas. And then they turned out to be assholes, but so what? They were dead now, weren’t they?

She wanted the thought to comfort her, but it only brought home the too-real fact that she had traded a couple of assholes for the Devil himself. Christ, why hadn’t she just gone along with them?

Why, baby?

Raven rolled onto her back, away from her mother’s unhappy and horribly confused phantom, and saw the Devil’s eyes slide open. They stared into her, as black and empty as the eyes of a shark. There was nothing in those eyes that Raven could reason with. She said nothing, and soon he shut them again.

Raven could feel herself wanting to tremble and bit down on her panic with all the iron she had left. It was too damn short a distance from shaking to crying, and if she started that shit, she’d never stop. The human mind wasn’t fragile, but it was mortal, and once it broke, it was gone for good. She couldn’t afford to go even a little bit crazy in the company of this inhuman thing. She could spend the rest of her life forgetting that this had ever happened to her, but first she had to live through it.