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“Why?”

“I need to get you out of here,” he said, but didn’t move. “You need to get as far away from me as possible. Run and don’t look back. Don’t ever think of me again.”

I sighed and screwed up my lips. “That’s not going to happen. How can I forget?” He took a deep breath and it gave me pause as his grip on my hand tightened just a bit, just enough to be telling. “Can you…make me forget?”

“No,” he answered quickly. “I can only help you feel better
about things with my persuasion. Help you feel comfortable with a decision.”

“I don’t want to leave,” I said harder. “I need to find my sister. She’s close. Don’t you dare send me away.”

“That’s good.” He nodded, his black hair ruffling in the cold wind. “As long as you’re not with me.” I winced at his words a little, unable to stop myself. He saw and smiled a little, the cruel face making a reappearance. “Don’t forget that I don’t want you here. You need to leave as soon as possible.” He looked around and then down at the redhead. He jerked his gaze back up to mine. “In fact, I’ll get you a cab right now.”

“Why are you so afraid?
What happened to you?”

He didn’t pretend to not understand. “I’m not afraid, Fay. I’m
just not a good person. You don’t want to know me. Trust me on this. I’m doing you a favor.”

He pulled me forward by
my arm out to where the alley met the street. “I don’t believe you.” I tripped over the stony road and he yanked me back up. “I don’t believe you!” I said louder. “You’re being a coward.”

“Why do you want to stay with me?” he asked harshly, turning me to face him.
“You know that I’m not human. I’m. Not. Human.” He stared for effect. It was working. I gulped. “Why do you want to stay with me?”

I decide for once in my miserable life since my parents died, I’d tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me, God. “Because I try to be tough, but I’m not always. Because I might get into trouble again and there won’t be another good guy there to save me like you
did. Because being alone sucks,” he sucked in a hard breath, but I kept going, “and I’m so close, I know it. I just want to find my sister and I’m afraid that I won’t and I’ll be alone forever.”

He shook his head
, his breathing rushing in and out. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Stop. I don’t want to feed off your sorrow.” He opened his eyes slowly, almost as if testing me to see if I’d still be there. He glanced back where we’d been and cursed. “I’ve got to get you out of here.”

“What—” I looked back to see the redhead groaning and getting up. She was awake and rolling up to her feet. Impossible! “She needs stitches at the very least!” I protested. “She—”

“She isn’t human,” he explained. I sighed and ran as he pulled me behind him. “She’ll be fully aware in a minute and be fully pissed on top of that. We need to—”

A loud bang rang out through the alley as it ricocheted off the buildings. I covered my ears and looked behind me, expecting the redhead to be coming up the rear, but there was no one. When I turned back to face Enoch, his hand was outst
retched in a fist in front of his face. When he opened his fist, a bullet fell to the road with a dull clang and my lungs refused to cooperate. “You caught that?” I whispered my anguished question. “Enoch?”

He pushed me behind him roughly and kept his arm around me from behind. To keep me calm, to keep me from bolting, to keep me feeling safe as he growled his words to the group of the men that had suddenly come from out of the shadows? I didn’t know. But I gripped his arm tightly in response and tried with everything in me to keep it together as I looked to my left and right for a way out or something to use as a weapon.

“So who is it now?” Enoch asked in a growl and pushed me with his back, forcing me to retreat backward. “Hatch and Reece are toast. I know that for a fact. I saw it with my own eyes. So who’s the piper now?”

“Maybe I am,” the redhead sputtered and slithered her hand up one of the men’s arm. He shook her arm off and glowered at her.

“You can’t even get a simple task done correctly, Angelina. He should be dead now instead of pestering us, but instead I’m going to have to kill him to get to the girl.” I gasped and felt Enoch’s hand tighten painfully on my arm.

“
The girl is a human,” he growled. “I picked her up a motel and was about to have my way with her before Angelina butted in.” His breaths puffed in the air in front of him. “What could you possibly want with a stupid feeler?”

I flinched at the insult—not clearly understanding it—
though I knew he was just trying to save me. The man tilted his head, clearly not fazed by Enoch’s speech. “She’s going to lead us to Clara.”

I gasped, unable to stop it. “Clara! What do you want with C
lara?”

They all stood silent except for the man who had been speaking. He smiled. It was the most evil thing I’d ever seen. I covered my mouth with my palm, knowing my mistake had been grave, knowing I’d given the enemy exactly the ammo they’d wanted. I didn’t know why they wanted Clara. That didn’t make any sense. But it was Enoch’s reaction that surprised me the most. He looked at me over his shoulder, his jaw clenched, his eyes angry. “How the hell do you know Clara?”

I felt my lips part. I dug my nails into his arm. “How the hell do you?” I whispered.

“That’s enough
of the family tree for now,” the man said with a chuckle. “Just send her on over and we’ll be on our way.”

“What for?” Enoch growled, still looking at my face.

“Bait.” I heard the smile in his voice. “Come on. Red rover, red rover, send Fay right over.”

Enoch sighed and pushed me back even further as he turned to face them again.

“Do you trust me?” he asked in a low voice as he pushed harder and faster.

“Yes,” I answered without hesitation.

His eyes closed at that admission.
“Hold on tight to me.” 

In a second before
I could think of what he was doing, he snatched me against his chest and sent us sailing over the dock’s edge into the water. I could hear cursing and yelling, even some loud bangs that had to be gunshots, but I just held on tight.

A deep voice boomed, “Don’t shoot! We need her alive!”

We landed in the freezing water and he pulled me under further and further. We swam hard toward the opposite dock. If we surfaced before we made the cover of it, they’d kill us for sure.

The deeper and further we got, the more I
tried to stay calm and hold my breath, feeling the burn and ache in my lungs. I needed to take a breath soon. I was trained in holding my breath. I had been put in a chamber with tear gas when I went through boot camp, more than once. I knew how to hold my breath. But we’d been under for a long time.

I started to panic and
began to fight him. He didn’t understand that I couldn’t
not
breathe like him, that I need air more often—and then his lips were on mine. I couldn’t see much in the murky water, but I could see that his eyes were open. I tensed, still fighting inside, but he held tight and smoothed my cheek with his thumb. I relaxed my muscles, and opened my mouth under his, blowing my air from my nose. He wasted no time in giving me new air in return.

I worried about him for a split second before I remembered that he wasn’t human, number one, and number two, if he was offering obviously he had some to spare. He leaned back and nodded his head as if to ask if I was good to go. I nodded back and he pulled me forward, putting a hand under my butt and pushing me forward to give me a boost. He stayed right behind the whole way. As soon as I saw the docks in the water, it was like a cue for my body to gain some little spurt of energy.
Adrenaline.

I took off, determined to get there as fast as I could. My lungs ached and burned, and when I surfaced, I tried not to gasp and moan so loudly in case anyone was close. He surfaced in
front of me and wasn’t even winded. I tried to calm my breathing, but it was hard to do with him watching me so intently. “Stop it.”

“What?” he asked, but the smirk he tacked on let me know that he knew exactly what was up.

“It sucks that you don’t have to breathe.”

“Or eat. Or sleep.” Then he looked at me seriously, right into my very soul. “But you don’t ha
ve to feed off anyone’s emotions either. Their anger, their hatred, to taste it on your tongue.”

I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“For thinking about my sister even after you asked me not to.” My teeth chattered. “I don’t know what sorrow taste
s like, but I can imagine it’s not good.”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair
, sidelining my subject. “We can go. You have to get out of this water.”

“I’m fine,” I lied. “We should wait and make sure it’s safe.”

“You’re freezing to death,” he barked back. “I’ll handle them. It should take them a long time to make it to this side of the docks. Let’s go and get you that room I promised you. And you can tell me how you know Clara Hopkins.”

I shivered again as he said my sister’s name
, because the amount of malice that came with it made my skin crawl.

             
It wasn’t the first time I’d hotwired a car and it wouldn’t be the last. Miss goody two-shoes hadn’t protested, which meant she either really wanted to see her sister or she was a lot colder than she was letting on. Her lips had begun to take on a slight bluish tint. I debated going to the hospital instead of the hotel, but she assured she was fine. Her logic was if we stole a nice car, chances are that the person would have good insurance and wouldn’t be hurt financially from it. If we stole a beater or some hunk of junk like I had planned to do, then some poor sap would more than likely be losing his only means of transportation and have no way to replace said transportation. She had a point, I guess. So I cranked the heat as high and as hot as it would go as soon as we got into the black as night Lexus IS C.

             
The GPS in the car told the opposite direction of the docks was west. Perfect. I followed the roads out, trying to block the sounds of human chattering teeth, and fled as quickly as I could without drawing attention to ourselves. It would have taken them twenty minutes to drive the distance to the opposite dock and it was getting close to fifteen. I wanted to be long gone before they were close.

             
Clara and Eli must be in the midst of a big rebel camp for them to be searching so diligently for them. I looked over at her blue tinted lips and knew that even though she was going to be fine, she was still uncomfortably cold. Her teeth still chattered against each other and it pissed me off how much I hated that sound. I shouldn’t care, but I did. I looked around the car and actually made a noise in the back of my throat at what I found. I pulled the jacket from the back and placed it around her as quickly as I could and still drive carefully.

She looked at me in surprise. “Thanks.”

“You’re teeth are still chattering,” I barked.

“It do
esn’t work like that. It’s bone-deep,” she muttered. “I need a hot bath, then I’ll be fine.”

I
stayed quiet, letting her fall asleep, and drove the next three hours in complete silence. She slept restlessly and I knew she wasn’t really resting, but her body was forcing her to sleep. She turned and tossed, pulling the jacket up to her neck over and over. I pulled into a motel and left her in the car to get a room. A motel was less conspicuous. People usually rented motels by the week, not the night. And it was all ground level—easier to keep watch.

I
parked in the back by the fence and trash bins. I snuck out quietly and came out with the old brass hotel key in my hand. I stopped when I saw the door to the car open. I blinked and turned in a circle in the dark parking lot.

“Fay?” I hissed and ran to the car as quickly as I could, not even caring if someone saw the blur of it. The jacket was on the seat, but she was gone. I turned and searched the lot with my eyes, but couldn’t move from that spot. Why would she leave the car? Or did someone take her? Had they caught up to us so quickly and I hadn’t noticed? Had I let them take her because I’d been so preoccupied? “Fay!” I yelled.

My shoulders slouched. I should’ve been happy, but I was anything but. She wasn’t mine to keep. I was on a mission to find my brother and she had just been a distraction anyway. I shook my head ‘
no
’. That was until I found out she knew Clara.

I scrubbed my face with my fist and cursed as I slammed her door. When I turned back to the hotel, I saw a swath of dark hair as it rounded the corner. I felt my brows come together. Once again, not caring who saw me, I blurred over to the building and didn’t stop until I was right behind whoever the woman was. I grabbed her arm and made her turn to face me.

She gasped and pushed hard into my chest—this intruder’s chest—with the palm of her hand. The tears on her cheek and chin cracked something inside of me. Her eyes met mine and her lips opened to release a strangled noise that sounded like a plea more than anything else.

“You left me,” she accused.

“I went to get a room.”

She sighed and let her hand fall from my chest. I kept her arm in my hand however. “You parked in the back of the lot in the dark. I was alone when I woke up.” She sniffed. There it was again. The cracking in my chest. “I thought…you left me.”

“Why would I do that?” I growled, so completely pissed with how she controlled me. She didn’t know it, but she did. I was actually scared in that parking lot back there. Scared! Me! Scared that something had happened to her. And here she sat
crying beside the motel because she thought I left her. Why did she care anyway?

Ahh…. I nodded. “Ah. Thought you were going to have to sleep outside again, huh?” She squinted, but I grinned. “Don’t worry, princess.” I shook the room key in front of her face. “I got you that room, just like I promised.”

I didn’t let go of her arm as I practically dragged her to the other side of the motel. I unlocked the door and pulled her inside. She didn’t say a word, just crawled into the bed.

“I thought you were going to take a hot bath?”

She sniffed again and pulled the covers up to her chin. “I just want to sleep.”

I locked the door and turned to look
at her, tightening my fists. She was facing away from me. “I thought you said you needed a hot bath to feel better, so you wouldn’t be cold anymore. I can’t think with your teeth chattering—”

She sighed so quietly, but it still stopped me dead. “Enoch…just leave me alone, okay?”

And then her sadness hit me. I gripped the arm of the chair as I eased into it and tried not to make an audible sound that would let her know I was feeding from her. Her grief threatened to swallow me where I sat. I didn’t dare move as I bore through my body’s acceptance of what she was offering. She didn’t even know what she was doing. Her shoulders shook a little under the covers. I knew she was crying still, but she had no idea that by doing so she was sending that putrid taste right to me.

I gripped the fabric so hard in my fists that I heard it tear
under my fingers. I opened my eyes to find she had rolled over and was staring at me in astonishment. Her eyes were even wetter than they’d been outside.

I felt so guilty
knowing that I was the reason that she’d been crying outside and I may even be the reason she was crying now.

Guilt.
Me
.

I knew I was being an ass—I was doing it on purpose. I didn’t want her to like me, not even a sliver, but it still hurt to think that I was causing this human more pain when she was obviously in so much already.

“What does sadness taste like?” she whispered. “Or sorrow, grief, or…loss?”

I let my death grip on the poor cheap polyester go and leaned my head back, closing my eyes so I didn’t have to look at her when I answered.

“Rotten.” She gasped, but I kept my eyes closed. “It didn’t always taste that way. Back in the day, I reveled in the taste. It was what you could imagine your favorite drug would feel like. Sweet and heady, heavy, but light and creamy. I chased it and produced it. I would have done anything for it. I lived off it. It’s what devourers do. We survive off emotion and I never wanted anything else.” I peeked my eyes open, unable to stop myself. I needed to see the look of hate she had to be sending me so I could get her out of my mind and think of this as the mission it was, move on, and stop looking at this human as some…prize. Some…girl.

My eyes met hers and she was studying me. It was clear she was waiting for more of the story, giving me the benefit of the doubt. There wasn’t a trace of hate, judgment, or disgust in her eyes as she watched me. She just waited, knowing with certainty, that there was more to tell.

I had never had someone have faith in me before.

I gritted my teeth. “What?” I barked. “You don’t believe that I’m the monster I say I am? You think that just because you’ve only seen the tame me that I’m not—”

“I believe you,” she interrupted and shook her head. She sighed and shivered, pulling the blanket around herself tighter. “What I don’t understand is why you’re trying so hard to make me hate you.”

I snorted. “
So you don’t get any girly notions that this trip is anything but what it is.” I crossed my ankle over my leg and glared at her to drive my point home. “Now—how do you know Clara?”

She scoffed, barely. She gave me a sad look and then rolled back over. “Goodnight, Enoch.”

I wanted to fight with her, but knew when her breathing was slow and steady not even two minutes later that I had made the right decision in letting her sleep. She was exhausted.

I grumbled under my breath and rolled my eyes. I didn’t know how to take care of a human. They needed to sleep and eat and all sorts of things that I took for granted. I loved to sleep. It was one of my favorite pastimes, but I didn’t need to do it.

Human bodies were useless. They gave out on them daily. Every day they had to recharge. What was that about? That sucked. Eating three times a day. Going to the bathroom constantly. And now here I was, dragging this human across the United States and she was pissed at me, which was what I had wanted, and I still needed to feed. The fight with the Horde earlier had helped a lot, but her little sorrow session had barely tipped the iceberg of what I needed to survive.

Tomorrow, I was going to be right back where I started, dragging, needing to feed, and cranky as all get out.

I scrubbed my face with my hands and looked over her. I got up and walked over to look down at her, checking her forehead to make sure her skin was warm and normal temperature. She felt normal enough temperature wise, but her skin… I moved my fingers to her cheek, remembering when I had touched her cheek in the water to reassure her. She had been about to freak and it was all I could think to do.
              She was softer than any woman had a reason to be. I thought back to that night in the alley. She was softer than that woman, too. I closed my eyes against the onslaught of memories. Maybe I was going about this all wrong. Maybe being an ass to this woman wasn’t the best way. She’d been through a lot and she had tried to help me. And just now when I explained what I was and how I lived…how I fed…there was no judgment in her eyes. No fear.

I smoothed her hair behind her ear and pulled the covers up to her chin. Then I pulled the blanket off the other bed and placed it on top of her, too. She moaned and squir
med around to get cozy, sighing happily as if the warmth helped things. I felt that sigh all the way to my gut, though I would never admit it to anyone.

I settled back into the chair and found myself staring at her face
all night until morning. She opened her eyes when the light through the curtains made its way across the room, reaching her and saying its hello. I decided to spend this new day in a different way. I was Enoch, the ass everybody hated and thought was a bastard, but who I chose to be now that I had a fresh start, a clean slate? That was just that—my choice. She didn’t know me from Adam. For whatever reason, I was given a clean slate in that alley that night. I was a different devourer now and it was my choice what I did from now on.

She looked at me and then at the bedspread. She studied those ugly, tacky
fabric triangles. “Did you sit there all night?” she asked softly.

I smiled slightly. “Why don’t y
ou go get your hot bath now. Then I’ll buy you some breakfast before we hit the road.”