Page 13

Chapter

Thirteen

Syros

I am not the only asshole in the room.

At least, not by Erin’s definition. Since she so keenly pointed out the meaning of the word, it seems only fair for me to judge her under the same standards.

I want to eat her.

But something about her keeps stopping me in my tracks, and I don’t know why.

Considering how deprived I’ve been of food for the last six months, I should have killed her the second I caught her in the woods.

I wasn’t lying when I told her she amuses me. There’s just something about her that piques my interest in a way that no other human has, and it’s not just her intoxicating scent.

She alternates between fear and bravado, which may stem from the same source, and yet she has the ability to stare me down like she is utterly unbothered by what she sees.

I am not simply a creature in those moments when she meets my eyes.

I am not a man, either.

Yet there are other moments, there and gone in flashes, where it seems as though she is eager to study me and figure me out.

Not to mention the way her attention dips periodically to my cock.

Or perhaps I’m interested in the way she sought me out, rather than me having to search for her.

Perhaps I like the feel of her beneath my body a little too much, which isn’t unheard of. I’ve known a few Grims who’ve delighted in their human’s bodies before eating them. Some have even eaten them while their cock was still buried inside the corpse.

There are all manner of ways for us to survive, one of which including finding our pleasure where we can. This world is bleak.

Happiness, joy, desire, all must be found and taken where it can.

But this human, Erin… I’m not ready to kill her yet. Not when there are so many more interesting interactions waiting for us.

My stomach contracts in hunger, and I push the sensation to the back of my mind.

“Fine. Tell me some of your stories.” I approach her cautiously.

She didn’t run screaming from me this time when I let her free from her restraints, and she doesn’t seem to mind being close to me. I’m curious to find out why she acts this way.

Why does she want to talk to me? Teach me things?

Does she find me as intriguing as I find her?

She stares around at my collection with her hands on her hips and her lips pressed into a thin line. “It must have taken you a long time to accumulate so much.”

“I have lived a long time.”

I’m also curious to find out about the random assortment of items I’ve collected over the years. What are they? What do humans use them for? So many questions I’ve gone without answers to for years— centuries .

Am I really going to learn now after all this time?

I’d hate to find out that some of my most prized possessions are nothing more than trash in the human world, but curious regardless. To me they are all priceless.

They are pieces of a world I can’t touch, only twice a year.

“Start with the item you’re most surprised to see,” I say, eager to see where she gravitates first.

The glint of obvious curiosity in her eyes urges me to further pick her brain and learn about her. In the same way, I guess, that she wanted to learn about me. Why else would she be hunting me on the solstice?

Clearly she had some sort of baseline knowledge of what kind of creature she may see. In spite of her shock last night, there had also been something like vindication.

As though she’d known she would find something for later use.

“This is great,” she says, holding up a flat disc that reflects the light of the room. One side is silver and glints with a rainbow reflection, and the other is a pale, soft color. Pink, I believe it’s called—a color that doesn’t exist in our world. “What do you think this is, Syros?”

She clenches it between her fingers and it catches the light, reflecting it outward.

“Some kind of weapon?” I guess, noting the thin edge that could potentially slice through skin.

Perhaps the female warriors of Earth launch them at their victims. At least, that’s what happened when I captured the previous owner and she tried to assault me with it.

It didn’t matter.

She tasted good afterward.

Erin laughs, covering her face with her hand and spinning the disk expertly around her finger. “It’s called a CD,” she says, like I’m supposed to know what that means. “A compact disc. It plays music.”

“Music?” I’m unfamiliar with the term. “Does it make you sick?”

She laughs again, enticing a growl from my throat. “No. You put it in a machine and it sings to you. Like pretty talking. The singing is accompanied by a beat, a pulse, and usually it makes you want to move your body out of happiness.”

I grunt, disappointed that the CD isn’t meant for slicing throats, and move to the next object. Happiness is ridiculous and foreign. There is only survival.

There is struggle and bloodshed and a nagging hunger which is never satisfied.

“And this?” I pluck a small, hooked metal object off the wall. “Is this at least a weapon?”

She takes it from me, turning it over in her hands to examine it, before shaking her head. “It’s a can opener, but I guess you could stab someone with it if you really wanted to. The sharp part cuts through cans that contain food and keeps it fresh for long periods of time. Things like peaches or beans.”

My stomach grumbles again at the thought of food. What sorts of things could humans possibly store for later?

“What are peaches or beans?” I ask.

“It would take too long to explain our agriculture system to you.” Erin is distracted.

We go around the room as she explains wildly foreign concepts to me—bubble gum, makeup, telephones—and I’m quickly overwhelmed by how wrong my assumptions were about these things. There are no weapons, either.

This is interesting, and I have no idea of how long I stand there, listening to her talk and elaborate the purpose behind each object I point out.

I’m fascinated.

Her voice isn’t entirely unpleasant, and in fact, it begins to grow on me the longer she tells me about the things I’ve collected. Soft, alluring, sweet. Things that also don’t exist in our world.

Everything here is a mix of darkness and danger.

The beauty died out long ago, leaving a very desolate, unappealing place. The food is almost nonexistent, and it’s all because of them .

They are the invisible horrors that wander through the trees, sucking the life out of everything they find. No one knows where they came from, but they infected our world like a disease, forcing Grims into the shadows. They are the only creatures that can outmatch us, the only creatures we fear.

Ripping the throat out of my enemy? Easy.

Doing so when the enemy is completely invisible? Not so easy.

They are the reason we travel through the portals twice a year, because we have no other option. Seek sustenance on Earth, or perish.

It’s enough to sustain us, but only just so.

My fellow Grim and any others trapped in this existence make the best of the only life we have ever known.

“Do you know what this is?” I’d been too lost in my thoughts to notice Erin grabbing a large pouch off the wall and rummaging through its contents. She’s holding up a machine that fits in the palms of her hands.

It has a long metal stick poking out of the top that can retract into itself, and there are pressable shapes on the front. If I had any idea before, I already know it’ll be incorrect, so I simply shake my head, wanting to hear her description of it.

“It’s a radio,” she says, turning the knobs left and right and flipping it over to look at the back. “My grandfather had one just like this a long time ago. The batteries are probably dead, so I doubt it works, but it also talks or sings to you. It allows you to hear the voices of people who are far away, or listen to music.”

She pops off a piece from the back that I’d never noticed before and pulls out two tiny cylinders. She holds them out in her hand for me to see.

“Do you have any of these lying around? I know it’s a long shot. Not many people carry batteries in their pockets these days.” She sounds hopeful.

I move across the room to a smaller pouch hanging by the door, another thing I found on Earth a few years ago, and pull the strings around the top loose. There are a handful of cylinders in various sizes, but I have no idea which ones she needs. Rather than fumbling through the bag, I carry it back to Erin, shoving it at her.

“Like these?” I ask.

Her lips curl into a smile and she nods. “Yes. Exactly. Let’s see if any of them work. Then you can listen to music yourself and see what I’m talking about.”

Slowly, painstakingly, she digs through the batteries and tries all the ones that fit, flipping them this way and that until she finds some that seem to work.

Her smile splits her face and adds beauty to her features that I may not have noticed otherwise.

Pleased, she sets the radio down on the bench by the door and fiddles with the buttons again, explaining what she’s doing as she goes. I’m eager to see what kind of noise could possibly fill her with such excitement, watching her movements intently until the machine screeches to life with a feral hiss that makes my hackles raise.

It sounds like a chorus of death, scratching at my skin until I feel the need to tear the flesh from my bones, but Erin’s eyes glimmer with excitement. She fiddles with the knobs some more, and the hissing becomes louder and angrier.

My paws go to my ears, which does little to block out the infuriating sound.

Maybe I’ll just kill her and the radio to get this over with.