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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

JAXON

A mbrose isn’t wrong. This is an awful damn idea, but my whole life I’ve been told you can’t question the gods. They gave us these gifts, my MeeMaw told me when I was twelve or thirteen, not long after my first kill. I think I was helping her in the kitchen, stripping meat and skin from bone. This long life. This strength. When they ask something of you, you best listen.

And I have listened. I’ve been on this planet for over fifty years, counting the time I spent in the ground, and I still look like I’m 30. I’ll keep looking 30 for decades, too. Just like Dad. Just like my grandparents. Just like every other Hunter in this world.

And in all my 50 years, anytime the gods speak to me, I listen. I don’t question it. If they show me a face, a life, I end it. Doesn’t matter who it is, or how difficult it’ll be to make happen. I spill the blood. I make the offerings. I carve the gods’ sigils into old meat and bleached bones and leave them out in the open air for humans to find, even if doing so makes it that much more likely for me to get caught. I listen to Ambrose bitch incessantly about how much more likely it means I’ll get caught, which is worse.

And right now, driving to Texas with the only living woman I’ve ever fucked in the passenger seat of my car, is the first time I’ve wanted to disobey.

Part of it is the quiet. She’s angry with me; I can feel that much. I handcuffed her to the seatbelt so she doesn’t get any ideas about jumping out while we’re on the highway. Now, if she really is a Hunter, then it won’t kill her. But despite what I said to Ambrose, I’m still not totally sure she is. Yeah, when I was letting her kill me, she felt like a Hunter. But right now? She still seems human. There’s still that veil between us, that chasm between predator and prey.

A binding, the gods said, and Ambrose acted like he had heard of something similar. And yet doubt still creeps around.

Maybe you should just trust the fucking gods.

It’s Dad’s voice in my head, because of course it is.

Charlotte sighs, something she’s been doing since we got on I-10. I glance over at her, but she’s staring out the window, the winter sun turning her cherry-red hair into flames.

“It’s another couple of hours,” I tell her. “We can stop at Whataburger once we’re over the border.”

I have no idea why I say that. I think I just can’t stand the silence. Or her anger. The truth is I want her to like me. I want to fuck her again, and make her come, and feel her hot living breath as she gasps out her pleasure. But I don’t want to have to sneak it. I want her to want it, too. Just like she did in the marsh.

“What the fuck is Whataburger?” She still doesn’t look at me.

“A fast food place.” I force myself to focus on the highway. “It’s good.”

“Are you always so—calm about this?” She turns toward me. I feel it, the way the air moves around her. The way her scent catches. A human scent, still. Not Hunter at all.

I tighten my fingers around the steering wheel. “Yes. I told you what I am. I’m not—” Like you . The words are right there. But that’s the whole point of this trip, isn’t it? To prove that, actually, she is like me.

“Right.” She shifts around, the handcuffs jangling against the seatbelt. “You’re—the boogeyman.”

“Yeah.” That’s what Ambrose always calls us, anyway. He’s doubtful about the gods, but that’s just because they don’t talk to him so directly. Sawyer’s the same way. They didn’t grow up like I did, communing with our gods before they killed. But both of them know, instinctively, there’s something otherworldly about our kind. Something that maybe isn’t supposed to be in this world at all.

“So who are you killing?” She says it like she’s trying to be casual, but I smell the whiff of fear.

“I don’t know his name.” The road unspools in front of us, a long black ribbon. A sign flashes by: Twenty-five miles to Lake Charles. Eighty-five miles to Beaumont. Houston just a little further away from that.

“Okay.” She sounds doubtful. “So you’ll just—know him when you see him?”

It feels weird, talking to a human about this. But she isn’t a human, I keep reminding myself. She’s a Hunter, there’s just something wrong with her. Something broken. It’s up to me to mend it.

Assuming I can trust the gods.

Of course you can trust the gods .

Fuck, I hope she’s not human and I’m not about to break this treasure that fell into my lap.

“I know where he is,” I say. “His house.” I glance sideways at her, and she’s watching me, those big dark eyes drawing me. I jerk my gaze back over to the road. “He’s an associate of the two attackers. They all work for the same man.”

“Oh yeah? And how do you know that?”

The gods are whispering, low and raspy. Arguing with each other again. The Unnamed wants me to tell her. My Guardian says I have to wait until she’s been Awoken.

“I just do,” I say sharply, and they go silent. “Don’t worry about it.” I keep staring at the road, and I’m not sure why I say this next part except that it feels right, saying it to her.

“I won’t let anything happen to you.”

The sun’s just starting to set when we arrive in Houston. Cities always put me on edge—all that humanity crushing in around me turns my blood hot and vicious. The gods tend to retreat, too, leaving me on my own with all that prey.

And Houston’s worse than most. It’s so big and sprawling and the freeways feel like ropes pulling tighter and tighter around my chest. I take deep breaths, clenching the steering wheel as I pull into a glittering river of cars.

“Are you okay?” Charlotte’s voice startles me.

“I’m fine.” I keep my gaze fixed firmly ahead even though I can feel her watching me. Taillights flare red, and I slam on the brakes too hard, making the car jitter to a stop.

“Not used to driving in the city, huh?” She shifts, the handcuffs zipping along the seatbelt. “You want me to take over? I drive in Los Angeles all the time.”

We’re stopped in traffic, so I risk looking over at her. She’s smirking at me.

“Why?” I ask. “So you can escape?”

She shrugs, eyes glittering with amusement. I can almost pretend she’s flirting with me, which is a weird feeling. “How can I escape with you in the car?”

Traffic jerks forward. Taillights blink around us like the lights on the Christmas tree I wasn’t allowed to have as a kid. “You could kill me again.”

I mean it as a joke, sort of, but Charlotte just frowns. “Yeah, and you’d come back. Because you aren’t?—”

I jerk the car forward as the traffic clears up a little, and Charlotte says, “Human,” in a kind of vague daze.

“I probably wouldn’t come back as fast as I did a few days ago.” Whatever block in the road has vanished, and I pick up speed, my heart thudding as the cars press around me. I can sense every fucking human inside every fucking one of them, and it makes me feel hot and itchy, like I’m coming down with a fever. This is why I stay in the marsh.

“Oh yeah? Why not?”

I pull the car into a clear spot on the highway. I don’t technically know where I’m going. I don’t know these freeway names or these exits. I don’t recognize the gaudy strip malls crowding up against the highway. But at the same time, my gods are guiding me forward. I know I won’t be on this freeway much longer.

“That’s complicated,” I say, cursing myself a little. I’m distracted by everything. The driving. The upcoming kill that I’ve done absolutely nothing to prepare for. The kill that I’m not even supposed to execute.

I glance over at Charlotte, curled up against the door, arm at an angle to account for the handcuff. Staring at me. “You always do this.”

I put my focus back on the road. Move over to another lane. Our exit is close. I can sense it the way I can sense the humans, an invisible trail leading me to my prey.

“Do what?”

“Tell me just enough to be annoying.”

I smile. She doesn’t smell the way a Hunter should, but she does sort of feel like one. A human would be terrified right now.

I wonder, vaguely, if she even realizes how strange she is.

“Because these are things you aren’t supposed to know,” I finally say. A sign flashes by— Gessner Road, 2 miles —and my heart sings. That’s it.

“Because I’m not like you?”

The question shoots straight to my heart, and, just for a moment, my Guardian rises up above the roar of humanity to shriek one word: Wait .

I know what it means. Don’t tell her yet. Let her discover it when she sinks the knife I brought into the chest of her first real victim.

Don’t tell her anything until she’s broken her binding.

But at the same time—I don’t want to lie to her. I’ve never wanted to lie to her.

Thankfully, our exit materializes ahead, and I swerve hard to get in the lane. Charlotte shrieks and grabs at the dashboard with her free hand.

“Sorry,” I mutter.

“Let me drive!” she shouts.

“We’re off the freeway.” I pull up to the light. I need to turn left and slide under the underpass and disappear down a winding, leafy street that will lead us to the human heart that beats louder and more urgent than all the rest.

Well, except for one—the one in the seat beside me.

Even though it might not be human at all.

Because I’m not like you?

At least my poor driving kept me from having to answer her question with a lie.