Chapter 20
After nearly twenty minutes searching the area with my phone light and Moro, I realize Cairo is gone. That, or he’s somehow hiding his scent from Moro, who seems just as eager to find him as I am.
“Come on,” I call Moro with a sigh, leading the way back to the car.
My hands are shaking, causing the light from the phone to waver a little, and it’s cold enough that I’m really starting to feel it.
Especially since I’m not exactly dressed for anything other than bed or a gentle late summer breeze.
I turn the heat up the moment I sit in my car, giving an all over shiver as Moro pants and stretches out in the back seat.
She isn’t as relaxed as usual, though. She whines on the drive back down the mountain, and fidgets more than her normal amount. But I can’t blame her. I hate that we didn’t find Cairo, and worry itches at me.
What if he isn’t okay ?
What if Tyler hurt him badly enough that he won’t be able to heal like he did last time?
The worry plagues me the whole way home, until it’s a knotted pit in my stomach that I can’t shake.
When I finally pull into my driveway, I cut the engine and rest my head against the steering wheel with a sigh. There’s nothing else I can do here.
Moro’s bark startles me, making me jump.
I sit up and look at her, twisting to glare at her over my shoulder.
“What’s your—” She cuts me off with another bark, her ears stiff and her eyes fixed on something I can’t see.
The wolf dog isn’t paying me the least bit of attention, though I don’t know why.
Fear creeps over me, along with the sudden worry that we aren’t alone here.
Hadn’t it only been a few days ago that the creature was in the woods behind my house?
What’s to stop Tyler from figuring out where I live, and coming here to take revenge on Moro or me for getting in the way of him killing Cairo?
Sitting in the car isn’t helping, though.
I’d rather be in the house, where I have more to defend myself with, just in case.
But when I open the driver’s side door, Moro surprises me by lunging forward and over me, stepping on my thigh and my spleen hard enough to make me gasp and arch off of the seat, hampered only by the seatbelt.
“Moro!” I gasp, voice breathy with pain.
“Wait!” She doesn’t. Even as I fight the seatbelt and almost clock myself in the face with it, she disappears behind my small house.
At last I’m able to stumble after her, barely managing to slam the car door behind me.
Her barking is the only thing I can follow, but as I worry that she’s disappeared into the woods, I see her grey and white coat illuminated in the moonlight shining into my cleared backyard.
She prances worriedly around the stairs of the deck, her tail up and waving like a flag, her movements are almost concerned as a soft whine sounds in her throat.
Cairo groans and sits up from my bottom step, trying to fend off her affection. “You make it impossible to go anywhere without everyone knowing,” he complains, his voice hoarse as he tries to hold her at arms’ length and fails. “You know that, Moro?”
I can’t help it. I take a sharp, surprised breath, quickening my steps until I’m all but running toward him. “Cairo!” I call, flushed with sudden relief at his presence. “Holy shit! We looked for you up on the mountain for?—”
“Twenty minutes, give or take, judging by how long it’s been,” he cuts in sourly, rolling his gaze up to meet mine with a flat, pained look. It’s then that I see the blood and the wound marring his shoulder and the base of his throat.
I don’t stop jogging toward him, even when he bares his too-sharp teeth at me and his eyes flicker in the moonlight.
While it should give me pause, it doesn’t.
Not at this point. I kneel in front of Cairo when Moro moves with a whine in her throat, but when I reach for him, he grips my wrists with a low, frustrated growl.
“I don’t need your help, little bird,” he tells me flatly.
“Maybe not, but you did show up on my back deck. In case you didn’t notice.” I shake his hands off of mine, my eyes fixed on the gouge in his shoulder that makes my stomach twist with nausea. “Cairo…” God, it looks bad, but I don’t want to say that out loud.
He grumbles under his breath, but lets me sink down beside him on the steps, my teeth biting into my lower lip at all the blood. It’s impossible to ignore, and I take a long, shuddering breath. “You’re bleeding.”
“Yeah,” he agrees with a small smirk in my direction. “That’s what happens when cursed things fight.”
Cursed. It’s the second time he’s used that word, and again it sticks in my head like it’s important.
“Yeah, but like, you’re really bleeding. Is it—” I have to swallow the first three words that come into my head, before I take a breath and try again. “Is it fatal?”
Gently Cairo reaches up to prod at the wound, wincing as he does. He comes away with blood that he examines, then lets out a rough breath, looking more irritated than panicked. “No. It’ll take a lot more than this to kill me.”
“Not much more,” I can’t help but reply, and that makes Cairo turn, grabbing my wrist that had been heading to touch the wound.
“ Much more,” he disagrees, his eyes shining in the moonlight with that creepy, unnatural glimmer.
“Here.” He tugs me forward, until my hand is splayed across his chest, blood slick against my palm.
“You feel how he tried to claw out my heart? We don’t need to worry about bones as much as humans.
He could reach in here and just grab it.
That would do the trick, and I’d be just as dead as any human I’ve eaten. ”
Cairo’s words don’t exactly comfort me, and he shifts my hand until my fingers brush the unmarred side of his throat.
“The only other way he could’ve done it was to tear off my head.
Not just break my neck or slit my throat.
He’d have to rip my spine and everything connecting it, until he could make sure my head and body weren’t still connected by even one sinew.
” My stomach twists, clenching, and I make to move away, but he won’t let me.
Instead my fingers clutch lightly at his throat, and I feel him swallow under me.
“That’s the only way you can die?” I breathe softly, not realizing how close I’m leaning. “Tear out your heart or cut off your head? That’s very vampire-lore of you.”
He snorts, shaking his head, and Cairo releases himself from my hand to settle back on my stairs, where he’s definitely getting blood all over the wood.
“I suppose setting me on fire would work. We are quite flammable. But because of that, it’s not something we’re willing to do to each other.
” When Cairo heaves himself to his feet, I’m up with him, immediately gripping his wrist even though I know I couldn’t stop him if he wanted to shake me off.
“Wait,” I breathe. “Please don’t go.”
He wavers. I can feel him consider my words even as he stares thoughtfully at the trees. But when I tug lightly on his arm, Cairo pauses, giving me a look over his shoulder. “Just for now,” he agrees at last, seemingly unsure of the commitment. “I have to eat in the next day or so.”
“I could fix…” I trail off when I realize how stupid that sounds, and his eyes narrow as he pins me with his amused gaze.
“No, little bird. I don’t think you want to be involved in my meal plans.” He rolls his shoulders with a grimace that only makes fresh blood soak into his shirt, and I hear the grating groan in his throat from pain.
“Come on.” Before he can change his mind, I pull him up the stairs, though he’s definitely putting in all the work for himself.
He doesn’t need to lean on me, or even really need to let me pull him along, as my blood-slick fingers fumble at the unlocked back door.
I can hear his derisive scoff, and I’m sure he’s burning to tell me something about my lack of common sense.
But honestly, it appears I forgot to lock it after letting Moro out for the last time before bed. “God, you’re such a mess,” I mumble, when I’m able to see him in the low light from the living room lamp. He turns away from it, eyes squinting shut, and it gives me time to catalogue his wounds.
“Your clothes are wrecked,” I add. “I don’t suppose you have some secret stash nearby? Surely you don’t just roam naked in the woods when you aren’t, I don’t know, terrorizing people or living in asylums for fun?”
Cairo snorts. But let’s me drag him back to my bathroom, the same place I first brought him when he showed up here injured and filthy. Though this time is definitely worse, and I’m not quite as afraid of his sharp edges as I had been then, though it’s only been such a short amount of time.
“Cairo…” I sigh as I look at him in the light from my bedroom, having not turned on the bathroom light.
He prefers the dark, and I would be able to tell even if he hadn’t told me so.
Unfortunately, I don’t have magic—or cursed—glowy eyes, so I need at least a little light to see him by.
Just like last time, Moro hops up onto my bed, stationing herself as lookout even though she’s curled up in my usual spot instead of standing sentry duty.
“What’s wrong, little bird?” He flashes his fangs at me in a grin, and obediently leans down so I can peel his mangled shirt off over his head. “Don’t like what you see?”
“Of course I don’t like seeing you all fucked up,” I’m quick to snap, though my voice is light and without any real malice. “You don’t think he’ll come here, right? To like, finish you off?”
Cairo shakes his head. “Tyler doesn’t know where you live, or I wouldn’t be here. And he’s never been a good enough tracker to find anything. Except for Hattie.” He rolls his eyes. “I think she’s some kind of magnet for him, but that’s not important.”