My psychic attempts to connect to him failed. I resigned myself to that as I listened closely to the air around me. And soon, I was listening closely for Kane's next words. The air around me calmed.
"It only gets harder," Kane said. "Why doesn't anyone tell you that about growing up?"
They're trying to scam us about growing up, Kane. I let the thought float up to the center of my head. I focused on Kane's face, specifically on the image of him next to me before he went away. Or I went away. I focused on the hard tilt of his scowl and the way he used to rile me up so easily in our practice fights. Our sparring was a dance, even if nobody else saw it. I moved forward and he reacted perfectly. It was more beautiful than any waltz, with a subtle humor to it. He met my flaws in combat exactly where his own began. We were two sides of a coin that someone had flipped, only for it to fall through the bars of a storm drain. We were never supposed to make it, either of us.
But we did, didn't we? I sucked in a breath. All I could hear was the occasional buzz of my comm, Holt telling the twins to quiet down, and the unspoken words that couldn't seem to reach Kane no matter how hard I tried. Please, Kane. I'm here. I've always been here. It doesn't seem fair that you're the only one who gets to torture me. We've already faced enough together. Memories of the sanitarium came back to me. We had been given the choice to hurt one another or be hurt ourselves. Too bad they put two gluttons for punishment up against each other. Then there were the charged moments and the heavy air before our first kiss at the Hive party. I could still feel him pressed against my lips and remembered how I had been bold before that moment. I knew I was flirting with him, and I didn't care who saw, least of all Lyra, whom we’d shocked so badly.
They don't have a monopoly on human-vampire romance. I smirked to myself. I felt so connected to you. I guess sort of like now, even though I didn't do this on purpose.
The silence came. A slow, creeping sensation of being watched tingled in the back of my mind.
Kane… are you listening to me?
It felt like someone was standing beside me, breathing in my ear. It was as if he was here with me. In the distance, something gave a long, high-pitched whine.
"Presence spotted in the trees," Holt said urgently. "Taylor, there's a supernatural energy signal approaching you. It'll be upon you in moments. Prepare yourself."
The whine stopped, and I turned to face my fate. Wherever Kane was, I would do him proud with a good fight today.
16
Roxy
The ploy had worked. Even though I lacked a certain outrageous loudness like our vlogger had, my presence had drawn the creature out. Something was coming for me, but why had it taken so long? I had been here for hours in the cold winter air.
I studied the landscape in front of me for any sign of trouble. The nauseating green color of the lake on the side of the Leftovers was the worst thing in my vision. There was no sign of movement from where I stood, but then again, I did actually believe the neighbors when they said it was invisible. Holt and the rest of them had spotted something on the scanners, but it could've been another creature.
"Make your way toward me, but stay hidden," I told my team. "There's no sign of the creature yet, and I don't want to scare it off if it sees I'm not alone. We have no idea how this thing perceives its environment. It might rely on senses other than sight.”
“Other senses?” Jones asked with a snort. I ignored him. My focus needed to be on the monster, no matter how much he was annoying me.
"Copy that," Holt said. "Left side is moving in."
"We're coming, too," Colin said evenly. He was partnered with Jones, who probably didn’t know him well enough to pick up on his strained tone. Apparently, he wasn’t enjoying the company.
I winced. Sorry, Colin. Personality-wise, he and Holt would probably work best together, but as the only two stabilizing forces on my team, they wouldn’t be paired often. I’d try to remember to give him the twins next time, but I had bigger problems at the moment.
I tried to root myself confidently in the road. My team had spread out before our operation to get a better view of the place, while occasionally spotting me in their scopes, but I needed their scanners the most. The closer they were, the more accurately we could see what we were dealing with. I couldn't hold a scanner in my hand if I hoped the creature would come up to me. We couldn’t risk any electronic interference spooking it with a high-pitched sound. It was common with these devices, or so the techs told me.
"The creature looks like it's hanging out a few yards off the road. It was charging, but it's lying in wait now, probably taking a good look at you," Evans said. I raised my brows. What a lovely thought that was. "Look northwest. That's what my scanner is telling me."
I followed her directions, seeing nothing but a collapsed house with a sad broken mailbox out front. Someone or something had torn the little red flag off.
"I don't see anything," I reported. Surely, even if it was invisible, the grass would crumple underneath the monster or its body would disturb the undergrowth.
A pinprick of fear hit me. Unless it was already much closer than I thought…
Jessie groaned. "It might not be there at all. Couldn't this just be a fluctuation?"
"Our scanners can differentiate those," Holt
