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And then I attack.

It is quick, just like I expected. I kill the one on the left first, lunging up to him and slamming my blade into the side of his neck, cutting through all the fat blood vessels there, which I can feel like drumbeats on the air. It cuts him off mid-word, and there’s a two-second gap before the other realizes what’s happening. He turns toward us just as I pull out the knife, spraying more blood, and then he screams, scrambling to his feet, fumbling around at his jeans for what I can only assume is a gun, even though he’s not wearing a holster.

“What the fuck?” he shouts. It’s the one who said that terrible thing about my perfect prey, and I slam my blade into his belly so he won’t die right away like his friend. He shrieks again and falls backward against the glass coffee table, which shatters with his weight, glass flying everywhere like diamonds. He stares up at me, mouth opening and closing, eyes wide.

I let him see my face after all. He recognizes me from the bakery, a little furrow of confusion between his eyes.

I crouch over him and breathe in deep, inhaling the salty, coppery tang of blood. It all happened so quickly that I didn’t have a moment to feel the release, but I feel it now, like a calming current rushing through my blood. My first kill in fifteen years.

“Who—” he gurgles, but doesn’t finish the question. Maybe he decides it’s not important. “W-why?”

I just look at him, not speaking. There’s no answer to that question that he could understand. I marked him and his friend because of what he said about Edie, it’s true, but that’s not thewhy. That’s a humanwhy,and mywhysare different.

I’m a Hunter. I hunt. I cull. I wash my hands in blood because that’s what the universe has chosen for me.

“Why?” he asks again, crying this time, tears turning his eyes to glass.

I grab at his hair. He lets out a terrified whimper of fear, which surges adrenaline through my entire system. My cockstrains against my jeans, and the pressure’s gonna make me come quick. But that’s not the important part. Not really.

I press my knife to his throat. He gasps with terror.

Then I dig in with it, slow and careful. Blood beads up like a string of rubies. I cut and I cut. Cut through skin and muscle and snapping tendons until I reach the fragile notches of his spine. Then I wrench through those, too. His blood splatters hotly across my face, and I lick it off my lips as I work.

I feel it when he dies, a shudder in the air. I breathe it in. Come in my jeans, a quick explosion of pleasure. An afterthought.

And then I keep cutting until he’s free.

CHAPTER FIVE

EDIE

have u eaten?

Istare down at Charlotte’s text, my hands shaking. No, I have not eaten. I brought my groceries home and put them away instead of hurling them out into the woods like I wanted, and I think that should count for something.

My phone dings again.

Charlotte

don’t make me call u

I sigh, slide the phone away, and cradle my head in my hands. I keep replaying the scene from the bakery in my head. The two redneck assholes sniggering in the corner, whispering where I can’t quite hear even though a lifetime of being an East Coast socialite’s fat daughter has primed me to know the signs. I keep hearing it, the wordhuge, over and over. I fucking hate that word. Scott always used it.

Those pictures of you when you were a kid—damn, you were huge, weren’t you? So muchhotter now.

Should you be eating that? We don’t want you getting huge.

The fuck is that psychiatrist telling you? Doesn’t she care you’re getting huge?

My phone rings, cutting through my thoughts. Charlotte’s face is on the screen, made up with weird makeup from some art gallery opening or another. She uploaded the picture herself years ago.

I know damn well if I reject the call she’s just going to keep calling back. I answer with a sigh.

“You better be eating the best fucking meal of your life,” she says as soon as I answer, her photo replaced by the video chat of her sitting on her little patio, the wind blowing her hair into her face.

“Wow, not even a hello,” I say dryly. “And you know that kind of thing isn’t exactly helpful.”

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. I know you didn’t eat. Why not?”