He huffed. “Yes, that. You yelled at Kase already, but you haven’t said anything to me.”
“So? If you just want someone to yell at you, I bet you could find something like that here in hell. Seems like a kink you could pay someone for.”
He sat beside me, right up against my side. “Silence is far worse than yelling. People don’t yell unless they give a damn. Silence comes after that, when they don’t give a fuck anymore.”
“Speaking from personal experience?”
“More than I’d like to admit.” The way he said it told me the conversation was over, and yet there was far more to it then he’d let on.
Which again reminded me how little I knew about him. He was a mystery. Funny, charming, but with a darkness inside him that ran deep.
“I don’t know what you want me to say. You had every chance to tell me the truth, but you didn’t. I know you’d prefer not saying anything that might get you into trouble, but there are limits. It makes me wonder just what else you’d do if the paycheck was right.” I frowned for a moment. “Is that sort of behavior what got you kicked out of the guild?”
He snorted. “No, trust me, morals in the guild are a joke. They don’t kick people out because of a lack of ethics.”
“So what was it? You want me to forgive you? To move past this? You’ve got to give me something, show you want to change things. Tell me what exactly you did that got you kicked out.”
He tipped the waterskin back and gulped like it was a bottle of liquor and he needed to wash away the taste of the unpleasant question. Finally, he dropped it in his lap. “I killed someone. No, that’s not right. I killed quite a few someones. The entire council and the Magistrate. It seems that while there aren’t a lot of lines that can be crossed with the guild, that’s one they don’t take lightly to.”
“All they did was kick you out? Seems like a pretty light sentence.”
“They didn’t even kick me out,” he said. “I left. I walked away, but you know me. I don’t like to cross any bridges unless I burn that bitch to the ground.”
“How many did you kill?” A sickness in the pit of my stomach made me swallow hard.
“Fifteen, not including the Magistrate.” He said it like he was counting fence posts, as if they weren’t people he was admitting to killing.
Yes, I knew the four men I’d ended up spending time with had killed people. I chose to ignore it most of the time, but I wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t that he’d killed, it was how little he seemed to care, as if those people’s lives meant nothing.
How can someone be so callous?
“And you don’t care at all?” The whole forgiving-him thing had gone out of the window. I had no intention of forgiving him, let along ever trusting him again. “None of them bothered you?”
“One,” he admitted, voice soft. “It shouldn’t have, but I guess even I’m not quite as heartless as I like to pretend. The Magistrate was harder to accept. Not that hard to kill, not for me, but there? At the end?” He let out a soft sigh. “Yeah, I hesitated.”
“What was so special about him?”
Grant rose from the boulder, hopping to his feet and brushing his hands off on his jeans. I didn’t think he’d answer at first, as he readied himself to get back to the trek, but then he turned toward me, an expression on his face so unlike any I’d seen on him before. Regret? As close to it as I could guess.
“The Magistrate was my father,” he said, then handed me the water. “Drink up. We’ve got a long day ahead of us still.
His answer didn’t make me feel any better about him…
* * * *
Something moved just outside the edge of the campfire light, where everything went from an orange glow to the dimness of the realm.
Whatever it was shifted around like a creature stalking prey.
How did no one else notice it? How did they not see it? I didn’t have the same predator senses as they did yet I sure as fuck saw it.
Hunter wasn’t at the campfire, but the other three were pressed in tight, as though we were on some wonderful camping trip—one big, happy, dysfunctional family.
I opened my mouth to mention what I kept seeing, the rustling of twigs and leaves that was barely audible above the crackle of the fire.
Kase cut me a sharp look with an almost imperceivable shake of his head.
So maybe I wasn’t the only one to notice.
Ignoring it seemed stupid, especially from men who were more than capable of doing something about whatever it was, but what did I know?
I could play their little game, too, and somehow act as if I didn’t notice the massive thing shifting around, readying to strike, to devour one of us.
Probably me, with my luck.
The thing was big, whatever it was. It crept along the darkness, a smoothness to its movements that screamed danger.
“You should eat,” Grant said, though an odd tone in his voice said he paid little attention to me despite speaking to me. “You don’t want to lose your strength. There’s still a long walk ahead of us.”
“I think I’ve had all the hell critters I can stomach.”
I expected a snarl before the thing in the dark attacked. That was how it always happened in the documentaries.
However, as was often the case, reality was a lot different than the shows. Something dark and shadowy came barreling at me without the decency of a warning.
Before it struck me, however, Grant lifted his hands, those strange words falling from his lips. The creature stopped mid-air, but it wasn’t the shadow I’d dealt with, the one that plagued my every step.
Instead, this thing was better formed, like a creature
