The sun rose, and still Kane slept. Raven looked at the pictures on the walls. Family photos and horses and trains and Jesus.

When he woke up, it was all at once. One second, soundly sleeping. The next, standing up and looking around the living room. He sniffed the air, glanced upwards, and grunted. She wondered if the bodies had started to stink yet, if he could smell it already. She imagined them lying there, blackening and bloating and drawing flies.

Then he was looking at her, running those empty eyes down her from head to toes and back again. “Anything hurt?” he asked. He put a claw below her chin and tilted her back to study her eyes.

“No.”

He put his thumb into her mouth and she opened like a baby bird and felt the touch of him on her gums and then her tongue. He grunted, looking satisfied, and then stepped back. “Let’s eat.”

The chicken was all gone. Raven made eggs, frying up all eight of the ones she found in the fridge, and dumping the shells into the sink with the dirty dishes. She’d run water over the whole mess when they were done here. They couldn’t get fingerprints off wet things, could they? And she’d remember to wipe down the dials and stuff on the stove, the refrigerator door, anything else she’d touched.

After breakfast, Raven started pulling down boxes of cookies and crackers to take with them in the car. Kane watched her, walking behind her as she carried things out to the yard, and holding doors for her as she passed. The dead man’s keys fit two of the vehicles in the driveway: a fairly-new pickup and a rusty old hatchback. She took the hatchback. She couldn’t drive a stick.

“Is that everything?” Kane still had his hand on the car door, waiting to see if she would go back into the house or not. He was wearing his new clothes. The overcoat was too small; its long sides hung down behind him like demonic wings, and left his chest bare. He had no nipples. Funny, the things you notice.

“I think so,” she said finally, and he shut the door and went around to let himself in the front passenger seat. She got behind the wheel and he handed her the keys. “Where do I go?” she asked, turning the ancient engine over.

“Find us a road and take us east,” he said, and that was that.

They drove all day, navigating out and around through the winding roads and nearly-roads of backwater Oregon, filling up at towns too small for stoplights and pissing in the woods. It wasn’t so bad. The car was old, but the A/C worked, and the miles had a way of slipping by. It was late afternoon before they found a highway. It was evening when they left Oregon. And it was dark again before Kane’s voice finally growled up and told her to pull over.

Raven yawned against the back of her hand, squinting into the sparse line of headlights. There were plenty of turn-offs ahead of her, but it was something behind her now that occupied her mind. It was important to be tactful, not to give the appearance of arguing, but…

“Do we have to?” she asked.

She sensed his eye on her, glittering black at the edge of her peripheral vision. “I know,” she said hurriedly. “I’m on the edge of unsafe here, but there’s a motel up ahead.”

“Motel?”

“Yeah. I…I kind of thought it’d be nice to sleep in a real bed. Maybe get a shower.” She sniffed at her underarm and pulled a face. “Definitely a shower.”

He grunted.

“Is that a ‘yes’?” she asked tentatively. “I’ll pull over here if you really want to.”

“It’s been a while since I’ve slept in a…bed,” he said, in a low, musing voice. “And I could use washing up.” He shifted around and the weight of his gaze became an itch all down Raven’s right side. “When I’m tired,” he said evenly, “it’s easy for me to…over-react. Any little pause or other harmless thing you may say is going to make me want to rip your head clean off.”

There was no hint of malice in his tone. None whatsoever. He was as calm and conversational as if he were telling her that he liked to go skiing in the winter. She did not doubt him for a second.

“Kane,” she said softly. “You said we were going to be traveling together for a while. You can’t really want me to smell this bad.”

He grunted again and faced the windshield. Then he laughed and said, “No, not if I don’t have to. All right, Raven. Take us to this motel.”

She could feel parts of her she hadn’t even known were tense start to relax. Her back, her arms, her thighs, her stomach—how could a stomach even tighten up?—everything. “Thanks,” she said softly.

“You’ll make it up to me.”

Her stomach tightened up again. All at once, the hatchback enclosing her washed out just a little, and she was flat on her back on the dry grass. She could feel him wedging into her, could feel herself crushed and shoved and rocked by the brutal size and uncaring movements he sent against her. Slowly, the car bled back into focus, but her pussy still ached. He hadn’t even glanced at her since that first time. She’d hoped that part was over.

Kane was looking at her again and now he was smiling.

They were coming up on the motel, but there was still no town in sight. It was just a wide spot in the road, really. A little log cabin office with a strip of six rooms off to either side of it. The vacancy light was lit, but the amenities board beneath it read, not Welcome! or Free HBO and Continental Breakfast, but Gone Fishin. Closed until September. Keep cool.

She wasn’t sure which to believe, but the light was on in the office, so she pulled in and parked. “This could be tricky,” she said, unbuckling herself. Little places like this tended not to be as strict as the bigger ones about showing I.D. when people registered, but flags got raised in a hurry if they asked and no one had any. She’d just have to cross her fingers and hope, maybe spin out that old ‘my wallet got stolen’ story if she had to.

Kane didn’t look concerned. He followed her into the office, which was unlocked, and put his arm around her shoulders as she hit the service bell. It was a strange gesture coming from him, right up until she felt his claws digging at her skin below her shirt sleeve and realized just how close they were to her neck. One quick pull, one rush of heat, and it was all over for her. Her throat went dry at once; she tried to swallow for spit and got only a sandy click for her efforts.

“Easy, human,” Kane murmured. “Easy. You’re going to make him nervous.”

Raven sucked in a breath, let it out slow, and smiled as an old man shuffled into the office from a back room. He was wearing a bathrobe with the unabashedness unique to seniors, and he waved at them amiably as he came to the front desk and eased into the worn cushions of a tall chair.

“I was beginning to think maybe you weren’t open,” she said. Her voice sounded too loud and inanely sunny, but Kane’s claws didn’t prick a warning at her. It must be all right.

“Figured what the hell,” the old man said cheerfully. “Might as well hang out the shingle ‘till midnight at least. But I’m meaning to be on my way tomorrow noon, so’s you need to be checkin’ out right on the buzzer of eleven. Not generally so particular, myself, but you see how it is. Damn weather.”

Kane emitted a single cough of laughter and nodded. “Damn weather,” he agreed.

The old man nodded vigorously, leaning forward over the desk. “Got no pool, that’s the problem. Used to be a man could make a living on summer trade ‘n deer season and such with a little premium cable and a muffin in the morning, but can’t be done these days. This weather! Pardon my French if you’re religious, but this goddamn heat!”

“Amen,” said Kane, and Raven blinked at him.

“I’m too old for this crap,” the motel man grumbled good-naturedly. “I got a place up by the lake Ontario-way I ain’t seen in five years, killing myself down here as I am. And so tonight I’m thinking, no hide or hair of customer in five days, and this damn weather, why not?”