“Why not?” Kane shrugged.

The old man made a cheerful grimace and then waved at them again. “Ah, listen to me rattle on and it half-past eleven. Let me get your key. Room 3 got the best A/C, and you might as well take it for a goodbye. I’ll have a good breakfast laid on tomorrow for you, you just come and buzz me, I’ll have it out. You’re welcome to take any and all with you when you go your way, too. Muffins, mostly, and they ain’t fresh, but they’re not bad.”

“Thank you,” Raven said. She filled in the registration card under the name Cain and Cindy Francisco, with a completely fake address in Seattle.

“You folks should have stayed up north,” the old man remarked, setting a heavy brass key on a plastic tab down on the counter. “Nice and cool, s’ I hear. Even rains now and then.”

“Well, we’re headed back,” Raven told him. “Had to…see my sister’s baby.”

“And don’t they come at the worst times?” he asked merrily. “I hear you, I hear you. Now, it’s thirty-five for the room, and I’ll just run a copy of your driver’s license and let you folks tuck in for the night.”

“Um,” said Raven. “The thing is—”

Kane glanced at her, then slipped a hand around the old man’s neck. It seemed to Raven that he didn’t even move particularly fast, but he must have, because the old guy didn’t even get out the first word of a “What the heck are you doing?” before it was over. She heard the coconut-hollow whack of the old guy’s head hitting the counter, and then Kane’s hand was back in his pocket and he was watching, just standing there and watching, as the old guy crumpled off his chair and onto the floor. He landed facedown and mouth open, blood spilling in a wide ribbon onto the cheap carpet.

Raven must have made a sound, because Kane looked at her. “Wasn’t that the tricky bit?” he asked. He was smiling again, teasing her.

“I could have told him something,” she said.

“His listening days are about to end.” Kane took his arm off her shoulders and moved around the counter. He hunkered down, opening his black pack and taking out that rodlike machine he’d used on the brains of the men Raven had been riding with, but then paused and looked more closely into the motel guy’s face. He grunted and touched a fingertip to the old man’s neck. “Damn,” he said mildly. “I think I killed him.”

“You were going to kill him anyway,” Raven said. Not a smart thing to say, but she couldn’t call the words back any more than she could take her eyes off that little winding stripe of red coming out of the split in the old guy’s brow.

“True. But I wanted to harvest him first.” Kane straightened up, dropping his device back into his pack. “Never mind, he’ll keep. Let’s close down.”

Raven picked up the room key, registration card and pen, wiped down the counter with a fold of her t-shirt, and used the back of her elbow to flip the ‘no’ switch for No Vacancy. “I need to move the car,” she said.

“All right.” Kane yawned hugely, showing Raven two rows of pointed carnivore’s teeth. “But we’d better make it quick.”

She parked the car around the back of the motel, away from the road and casual sight. Kane sat beside her in the passenger seat, tapping his claws on one knee and looking very relaxed for a man who’d just killed a guy and was preparing to sleep in the same building as the body.

The disuse of the season was evident in the musty smell of Room 3. Raven kept the lights off, closed the curtains, and moved at once to the air conditioner mounted in the wall. It started up noisy as a ‘67 Chevy, but it did start up, and it worked pretty fast, howling glacial air into the little room. Kane waved a hand before the vent as he closed the door and looked impressed.

“Nice,” he said, and gave Raven a stinging slap to her hip that held no hostility at all. “Let’s wash up, human.”

She led him to the little bathroom and flipped on the light there, reasoning that the only window here faced the woods and she wasn’t likely to attract any attention. The bathroom wasn’t the smallest she’d ever seen in a motel, but it was plenty crowded with the two of them in it, and she stripped off her shirt selfconsciously, hoping he would maybe realize there was no way she could crawl through the narrow window and so leave her alone.

No such luck. Kane shrugged out of his overcoat and dropped it indifferently on the floor, then unfastened the black band hugging his arm and set it on the counter next to the sink. He rubbed at the pale flesh that exposed with a grimace of pleasure, and then started working his way out of his pants. Raven’s shoulders slumped. He wasn’t going anywhere, and since he was deliberately blocking the door, neither was she. Privacy was a thing of the ancient past, at least for now. Blushing, she sat on the toilet and urinated for what felt like forever, her eyes fixed on the floor.

“Been a while since I used something like that, either,” was his only comment. “Ah, civilization.”

Raven flushed and stood up, stepping into the bathtub to finish undressing behind the curtain.

“Cool water,” he told her. The sound of piss emptying at male capacity was drowned out when Raven turned on the tap. He raised his voice to say, “Gods, I already feel better,” and then slapped the flusher, briefly flooding her with scalding water.

Then the shower curtain was pulled back and he joined her in her hiding place. The water struck him in the chest and came off him in rivers of red-brown dust. Raven unwrapped the little bar of hotel soap and passed it to him. He turned it over in his claws and handed it back to her, and then leaned back against the tiled wall at the foot of the tub and looked expectant.

Yeah, okay. Raven soaped up a washcloth and started wiping him down, beginning with his face. He closed his eyes for one deep breath, and let it out in a low growl. He was still smiling, but there was no cruelty in it now. It was the smile of someone half-asleep and already dreaming. An innocent smile, on the face of the man who still had dried flecks of brown blood under his claws.

Raven washed him, scrubbing gentle as a geisha down his arm to each finger, cleaning each claw—first the left hand, then the right. She rubbed broad circles over his chest, and in short up and downs across his hard stomach. His eyes remained shut, his breath even. He turned around when she paused to re-lather her washcloth, presenting her with his bare back and leaning into his folded arms.

“Warmer,” he muttered. “A little.”

She adjusted the temperature and the angle of the spray, and then began to rub his shoulders with soap. His growl smacked of sensuality. Raven worked the taut muscles of his back, soothing and smoothing him beneath her hands. And he relaxed, gradually and not completely, but he did relax.

Raven knelt, kneading at his hips and buttocks where her own hurt the worst after the long car ride, and he groaned appreciatively into his arms. His thighs flexed as she massaged and cleaned them, spreading just a little for her to work. She went all the way to his feet, and when she’d washed his talons, he turned again.

She worked her way back up his powerful legs and when she reached his hips, her hands working in lather alongside his huge, hanging organ, he reached out to comb a single claw through her hair.

He didn’t speak. She didn’t need commands.

She encircled him with her soapy cloth and stroked, down, around and up again. Water sluiced over her, wiping him clean to be lathered again. She could feel him stirring, stiffening in her grip; she could see his abdomen ripple, see his thighs tighten. She leaned up on her knees and licked just once at the rising head of him with the very point of her tongue. He leaned back into the tiles again. His hand stayed light and playful in her hair.

Raven moved her washcloth to his stomach, to the V-shaped plain above his base, and rubbed in tiny circles, the same circles she now licked all down the underlength of him. She tasted the place his balls should be, and then danced a trail back to his glans. She closed her lips on him and sucked slow and hard as she lashed her tongue atop his sensitive tip.