Page 89 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

“Has she told you anything?” He grabbed a fresh pair of black sweatpants from his closet and tossed them to me. “Put these on.”

“Can’t stand me naked?” I quickly pulled them on, unsuccessfully trying to brush off the fact that they were not mine and noticeably too small. “And no. Whenever I ask, she immediately shuts down. You?”

“The opposite,” he said, toying with the thick gray drapes covering his windows. “And same. She always refuses.” Releasing the fabric, he strode to the door before me. “She keeps murmuring ‘okay’ over and over in her sleep.”

“You watch her sleep too?” I asked as we jogged down the dimly lit hallway, only a few of the light bulbs installed in the ceiling turned on. In most houses and buildings, we maintained a certain level of illumination day and night. Sight was the main sense humans relied on, and losing it meant putting yourself at a disadvantage in case of an unexpected attack.

He snorted. “That’s the part that’s surprising to you?”

One of the many.

But I kept my mouth shut.

We hurried down the stairwell leading to the main exit out of the building. Across the street from us, pacing the sidewalk around an umbrella pine growing through the cracks in the concrete, she paused to sink her flipped-open knife into the trunk, and with each thrust of her blade, repeated, “No.” She switched her knife to her left hand, flexing the right from how it must have cramped, and pointed the sharp tip at us as we approached. “No.”

“You are in our compound, Kali. Not in Ilasall.” I took the weapon easily from her quivering grasp, flipping it closed and stuffing it into the pocket of Zion’s sweatpants stretched around my hips. She could hurt herself in this state if she was not careful. “You are safe.”

“Ilasall,” she whispered, hugging herself around her midriff, rigidity locking her joints as she stood as still as a statue. “They know. They know. They know.” Her whispers became an endless loop as she stared ahead, vacant-eyed, lost in her nightmare, eerie and all-consuming.

“What do they know?” Zion asked. “Is it about the wristbands we found on your pillow?”

“I ca— I can’t tell you.” She fixated on the scattered gravel on the sidewalk. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I ca?—”

“It’s me and Zion. No one else.” I interrupted her chanting, pinching her chin and raising her gaze to meet mine. “Talk to us.”

The night’s wind breezed past us, and its chill turned her face to steel. “No.” She staggered a few feet backward, toward the pine tree, its mushroom-shaped needle foliage hovering above like a cage about to encase her. “You can’t make me. I don’t belong to you. There’s no law stating I have to tell you anything.”

Her refusal was like a barbed wire looping around my ribs, its razor-sharp tips cutting into my flesh. She was hiding whatever was causing her so much distress that it was eating her up from the inside and locking her away behind the self-made bars.

I invaded her space, her back pressing against the jagged bark, and cupped her face. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” My thumbs caressed her cheeks. If such a possibility existed, I would never stop touching her. “But you will talk. If not now, then later. You will. Because I will not stand aside and watch you crumble. I will not hold you while you shatter into pieces from how angry you are.” Her skin burned from whatever had happened to her. Whatever she might have done. “Sleep with me tonight.”

She straightened up with a jolt. “Why would I? I have my own bed. And if you mea?—”

“I am not letting you spend the nights alone from now on. It’s too dangerous.” A soldier with orders to kill had managedto sneak through the maze of streets into the center of our compound, our central building, and our rooms. I was not going to put her life in jeopardy by not providing protection. “That soldier might not have been alone.”

“He was there for you and Zion too, not just me.” She ducked away from me. “Who says I’d be safer in your room?”

“She’s right. And there’s a corpse near your bed, so she can sleep in mine,” Zion said, and beckoned her with a finger as he walked backward to our central building.

“Can’t I sleep with Jayla or Eislyn?” Dragging her feet after him, she glanced at me over her shoulder. “I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.”

“Nope.” He ushered her to the entrance. “My bed is bigger.”

“If I’m sleeping in your bed, then you’re spending the night on the floor,” she huffed. “Try anything and I’ll stab you.”

He slapped her ass in response, and she punched his upper arm, muttering profanities, their string cut off by the door slamming shut.

I rubbed at my face, the migraine’s claws creeping up from behind to dig into my temples.

Alive.

They werealive.

Cold numbedmy fingers as I washed up in the bucket of water we kept in our underground, scrubbing myself clean of any residue from the soldier’s clammy remains I had heaved from my bedroom and dumped on the steel table in our underground.

I flicked the water off my hands. How had they gotten intel on Kali? Tonight was not the first time they had sent someone to take Zion and me out. It had never brought them the results they sought. But her… It made things different. They knew she was important to us, that they could get to us through her. Without even the mark of a tattoo, which was what I had suspected they used to see as a sign of who to target. Not anymore.

I slammed my fist down on the shining metal surface and the soldier’s body wobbled from the force. The rattling reverberated from the damp and moldy walls, the echo a hint of what was about to come—a fucking mess.