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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ENDER

The moment I’d said something to Mads about lying next to me, he’d pulled away.

The cold had immediately eaten at me as he huddled in the corner, and I questioned why I couldn’t ever keep my mouth shut.

It wasn’t all that awful having him pressed against me, but still, I did my best to drive him away.

I knew he was too sympathetic of a person and that would be the only way to get him to respond, and it worked perfectly.

But that just led to me feeling guilty. It’s such an irritating feeling.

Before I could say or do anything more, I fell back into the darkness.

Abel haunts my sleep, but I’m too exhausted to pull out of it.

When I wake, I feel worse, making me wonder if there are other shards or pellets or whatever they are still inside of me, pumping the toxins into me.

Resting is obviously not doing anything, so we need to keep moving… if I can find the energy to do so.

As I stir, I realize I’m covered in dry clothes and am quite confused about how that happened. Mads, who is still on watch, is currently playing with a disassembled gun. Where the fuck did he get a gun?

“Why are you still naked but I have my clothes and someone else’s clothes on me?” I ask.

“You were shivering.”

“I don’t shiver.”

“Ah, right. Sorry. You were… flickering your body. Is that better?”

I ignore all of that and slowly sit up, but doing so makes the world spin around me.

“You’re clearly not any better.”

“I’m fine. Why aren’t you wearing any of the clothes?” I ask.

“I already told you.”

“Put them on.”

“I’m doing okay. I fed some.”

The idea of feeding perks me up. “Where’s the guy these clothes belonged to? I’d like to eat him.”

“Out there somewhere… in his underpants, very much alive.”

“You didn’t kill him?”

“He nearly killed me,” Mads says as he uses the barrel of the gun to nudge something. “How long do you think you ran to get us here?”

“I don’t know… I wasn’t moving quickly, but probably two or more hours of moving time. I did take multiple breaks. Why?”

“I’m going to go back. If I don’t live, then move on. If I do, I’ll try to be back by tomorrow evening.”

“Why are you going back?”

“I want to see if there’s something to help you. And I have to assume that if they’re tinkering with the ammunition to make it more deadly, they have something I can use to get us out of here. Hell, even if I just got more ammunition.”

“There’s no way Abel is going to sit back and let you tinker with his shit.”

Mads bites his lip. “He probably has to leave the building to rest at some point, right? I’ll just slither in then.”

“Tell me how your fight went with the guy you got these clothes from,” I say.

“Splendidly well. I kept both eyes, I took his clothes, I rocked him in the skull .”

“The state of your hair tells me you also rolled around on the ground for a bit.”

“I was like a dog that rolls in their kill when they’re done with it,” he assures me.

“You said you didn’t kill him. Now how are you going to handle, oh… ten? Twenty? Thirty of those?”

He’s quiet for a short while. “Well, guess I’m not coming back alive. Will you mourn me? Go to my funeral service? Pretend to be my lover so people think I didn’t die lonely and sex-deprived?”

“Sure,” I say with ample sarcasm.

“Fine, that idea has been unwillingly scratched,” Mads grumbles before crawling over to me.

He’s still naked, so this is quite concerning as he gets closer.

Then he grabs my face and now I’m questioning if this is supposed to be romantic or torture.

“If you murder me… I will… I will… be so fucking pissed.”

“At least it’ll be quiet,” I say.

I watch in confusion as he bites his wrist and shoves it against my face.

I can’t even hesitate or do the whole “What’d you do that for” because the smell of it enraptures me.

I grab his wrist and jerk it to me as I sink my fangs into it and groan.

The taste is so sweet. So perfect. The blood that fills my mouth is unbelievably satisfying.

Have I ever tasted such sweet blood? It’s hypnotizing as it pushes away the pain in my body, even if for a brief moment.

“Alright, getting close to my limit,” Mads says as he gently taps me.

But I don’t want to let go. I don’t want to pull away. Not when this is the best I’ve felt.

“Fun fact. If you don’t kill me, you can keep snacking on me later. But if you murder me, that’s just it. All gone.” He plucks me in the face, and I jerk back.

I lick some blood off my lips. “I wasn’t going to kill you.”

“Good to know.”

“Why’d you do that?” I ask as he nabs the spare pants and pulls them on.

“Because as I was wallowing around in the leaves with a vampire I’d purposely let go and turned my back on—the very man who was going for my eyes while yelling ‘You don’t need your eyes to talk!

’—I realized that maybe I fucking suck at fighting.

If I’m getting out of this alive, it’s only going to be with my feisty guard dog.

That is you,” he says as he pats me on my head.

“You will get me out of here very much alive.”

The words put a sour taste in my mouth. Of course I’m meant to fight and kill and do as I’m told. That’s what I was created for. “I see.”

“I’m going to just sit back and cheer your half-dead ass on. I can incentivizeyou in different ways. Like… you can have my blood, my body, or my heart.”

His teasing words still me. Was it a joke? I don’t quite know how to tell. Everyone who wants something from me never gives me anything in return. Not that I want most of what he’s offering. “I only want one of those things.”

“My heart? Oh my.”

“Sure, I want your heart to pump more blood into my mouth,” I grumble. “We need to get moving while I can stand.”

“I can try to dice you up again to see if I can find more shards in your shoulder, but at this point, I’m not quite sure that bleeding you out by cutting you open and fingering around in there would be ideal when I didn’t see anything more last time.

I’m just afraid of you losing more blood.

The best thing would be if we could get you a scan at the hospital, but funniest thing ever, we’re in some giant forest in Canada. Hilarious, right?”

“When the fuck did we end up in Canada?”

“That’s why it’s a funny story and I don’t know.”

“Let’s go,” I say as he finishes dressing himself. “I’ll get you through this and then you can go your own way.”

“I kind of thought after our near-death experience that maybe you’d take me out on a date…

you know, in exchange for the attempted homicide.

It’d be the cutest story to tell our kids.

‘Papa, how’d you meet Other Papa?’ ‘Well, my darling, he was so attracted to me he decided to eat me so no other person could ever look at me again.’ See? Romantic.”

“You just said you wanted me to be your ‘guard dog.’ I will get you out to make up for what I’ve done. If you’re wanting more, tell me. Now let’s go.” My voice comes out sharper than I meant it to, but does it really matter?

Mads hesitates. “Ender… I feel like I said something wrong. Suddenly, I feel like the bad guy here?—”

I ignore him and slip around the water to try to stay dry as I go out and begin walking.

“Wait. We’re heading this way,” he says as he points south.

“You know this for a fact?”

“No, but I have to assume the asshole lied to me. He told me that when he comes in, he’s driving east, but I have my doubts he was really helping me…

you know, after the brawl. The map on his phone wasn’t fully loaded, but it was loaded farther to the south, telling me that he came in from the south before he lost reception. ”

“Makes sense,” I agree. “Let’s head that way, then.”

I’m not in much of a condition to run, so I start off walking in the hope I’ll feel more lively the more we move.

“I’m sorry,” Mads says.

I look over at him. “For?”

“I was making a joke earlier and I feel like something I said bothered you. If you talk to me, you could explain what it was that bothered you so I don’t make the mistake again.”

“It didn’t bother me,” I say, unsure why he thinks I care about something he said enough to be bothered by it. I only care about Rylee and that’s how it’s going to stay. He can say whatever he wants, and it doesn’t bother me at all.

“You know you don’t have to lie about everything, right? Sometimes you can tell the truth. And it’s okay to feel upset over something. It would just help if you told me why so I knew.”

“What about you? How much are you lying about? Are you really just some innocent vampire who joined the council however many months ago? You know what? I don’t care. I just want to get home and keep Rylee safe from that monster. That’s it. That’s all.”

“It seems like he wants you, not Rylee.”

“Because… he doesn’t know much about her.”