Chapter 19 Theo
THEO
Isit on an old log, watching Chloe and Oliver through the flicker of firelight. My heart feels light and fluttery and strange, but at least any traces of the killing moon have vanished. All I feel is… excitement.
Yes. I think that’s what it is.
Oliver took longer than I expected to collect Chloe, even with the invitation he made me write for her.
It worked out, though, because it gave me time to set up our camping site: two big tents that I collected from victims, both clean of any blood.
Sleeping bags, too, although Oliver did tell me he didn’t need one.
And the fire, currently crackling in a circle of big grey stones.
Both of them are happy. I sense it, but I can see it, too.
Oliver is beaming, his mouth sticky from melted marshmallows.
Chloe smiles down at him, the firelight making her skin seem to glow in the darkness.
She’s roasting the marshmallows for Oliver because he kept burning them, turning them into blackened, smoking coals.
“See?” she says, pulling her stick out of the fire.
“This is what they’re supposed to look like. ”
She has three on the stick, all a perfect golden-brown. Oliver grabs for one. “Careful,” she says gently. “You don’t want to burn yourself.”
Oliver snatches the marshmallow anyway, hissing before he pops the whole thing in his mouth. Then he moans and falls on his back and kicks his legs around, which just makes Chloe laugh, that sweet twinkling sound that chimes like the stars.
I’m on the opposite side of the fire from them, and the flames feel like a wall separating us. Even so, I’m much closer than I usually am in these kinds of situations. Usually, when I watch people roast marshmallows and laugh, I’m in the trees, and I’m planning how to kill them.
I don’t feel that now, though. If anything, I want to freeze this moment so I can look at it for the rest of my long and violent life.
“Do you want one?” Chloe asks. I think at first she’s talking to Oliver, but then I feel her eyes on me in the dark. She stands up, the flames illuminating her bare legs, and holds out the stick. “I made three.” A shy, faltering smile. “One for each of us.”
She’s happy, but she’s also scared. Well, scared is perhaps too strong a word.
It’s certainly not the terror I’m used to feeling from humans.
But there’s some trepidation in the way she looks at me, along with a kind of hopefulness.
Like she’s happy, and she’s worried I’m going to make her not-happy.
I don’t want her to be not-happy.
I nod yes, and Chloe walks around the fire, crossing that boundary I thought of as impassable. Then she sits down on the log I’m using as a chair and offers me the stick.
I pull off the marshmallow and take a bite. Suddenly, I understand why Oliver reacted the way he did.
“It’s good,” I sign, my fingers flashing in the firelight. “Very well toasted.” I don’t know what else to say.
Chloe smiles. “Thanks.” God, I love it when she speaks instead of signs. I do appreciate that she can talk to me in that way. But her voice makes my blood spark.
I watch as she bites into the last marshmallow on the stick, her teeth flashing in the firelight. There’s a moment where I imagine her tearing into flesh, where the melty sugar turns to white sinew, and the firelight almost looks like blood on her face.
I suck in my breath, heat flooding through my body.
Chloe finishes the marshmallow and peers up at me through the uneven light, and I feel a faint shift in her emotions. Arousal and confusion and that quivering trepidation, all wound together.
“Why’d you invite us camping?” she asks.
I freeze. How the hell am I going to explain the killing moon to her?
I’m saved, though. Over on the other side of the fire, Oliver yelps and yanks his marshmallow stick out of the fire, the end burning like a torch.
“Drop it in the fire!” Chloe shouts, jumping to her feet. Oliver wings the stick forward into the flames, and it sparks and sputters. She breathes out, and I try not to enjoy the spike of fear and adrenaline it caused in her.
“Why can’t I do this?” Oliver signs, his scowl clear in the firelight.
Chloe laughs. “You can’t put the marshmallow in the fire, silly. Here, let me show you again.” She glances over at me, and I feel it, that tug toward me. But it’s only for a second, because then she’s on her feet, walking to the other side of the fire. The human side, I think numbly.
At least I got out of answering her question.
I settle back on my log and watch her with Oliver.
Watch her thread the marshmallow on a fresh stick and place it in his hand, then show him how to hold it a few centimeters from the fire until the heat makes its surface crack with gold.
Oliver grins, and their happiness is as warm and undeniable as the heat of the fire.
It’s such a rare human emotion for me to experience.
Usually, the only time I feel it is those seconds before I snatch it away.
But not tonight. The call of the killing moon has finally quieted, and I don’t see either of them as trespassers. Not with me here with them, out in the open, the firelight looping us together.
It’s all working exactly as I hoped.
It’s a little before midnight by the time Oliver falls asleep, crawling sleepily into his tent. Chloe zips it shut for him and then stands with her arms crossed over her chest, watching the entrance like she thinks he might burst out, screaming, the way campers here usually do.
The wind blows across the lake, making the fire gutter, and she turns toward me. For a minute, we just stare at each other.
Then she signs, “His parents left him alone. Did you know that?”
I tense up again. Then, sensing an opportunity, I nod. “It’s why I thought to invite him camping.” I’m certain she can see the lie in my hands.
Or maybe not. Her shoulders soften a little, and she walks around the fire and comes to sit beside me on the log, crossing her legs so she can lean forward and look into the flames.
“My friend says I shouldn’t trust you.” This, she speaks, breathing the words out like smoke.
Her friend is right, of course. Anyone who knows what I am would say the same thing. And yet I still brush my hand against her shoulder to get her attention. As soon as her big, luminous eyes fix on me, I say, “But here you are.”
Uncertainty flutters across Chloe’s face. “I didn’t want to leave Oliver alone.”
“I won’t hurt him.” I pause, watching the shadows move across her skin. “Or you.”
Chloe drinks me in. “My friend would say this is a trap.”
“Did you tell her about it?”
Chloe gives me a sly, slow smile. “No,” she says. “When Oliver showed up, I didn’t really think about it all. I just—” She breathes out. “I just wanted to see you again.”
For a second, it feels like the world comes to a standstill. This peninsula, these woods, Hanging Lake—they’ve been my entire world for years. For decades. And she just froze it in time.
“Why?” I ask, the movement small and uncertain.
Chloe trembles. “I don’t know.”
But I do. I can smell it on her. The arousal. The lust.
“It wasn’t because of the other day in my cabin?”
Immediately, all of Chloe’s blood rushes to the surface. And I can’t help myself. I grin.
“That’s why I wanted to see you again,” I say.
“I’ve never seen you smile before,” Chloe mutters sullenly, which isn’t true. I know I smiled at her while I was fucking her.
I don’t bother to correct her, though. “I don’t usually have a reason to smile.”
Not unless I’m killing someone, of course. Plenty of my victims have seen my smile before they died. But this is different.
Chloe breathes out, her breasts rising and falling beneath her shirt. I suddenly want nothing more than to see them again. To shove her shirt up and close my mouth around her pebbled nipple. To taste her sweat on my tongue. To feel her racing heartbeat.
“What’s so special about me?” Chloe says. “Why don’t you want to hurt us?” This last question, she signs, tilting her head toward the tent.
“Oliver is a kid,” I respond. “I don’t kill kids. And he reminds me of how I was when I was younger. Before I died.”
The wind gusts again, stirring Chloe’s hair around.
“Is he a Hunter, too?” she whispers.
I shake my head no.
She breathes out.
“As for you,” I say. “I told you the night we met.” My heart hammers. “You’re beautiful.”
Her body responds to the compliment, all that heat and sweet scent perfuming the air. I don’t just want to taste it, I realize. I want to hunt it. I want to hunt her. Not to kill, though.
I shift closer to her. She doesn’t pull away. Her arousal blooms, hot and sweet on the wind.
“Are you going to kiss me again?” she murmurs, so soft I almost think I’m imagining it.
I stare at her for a moment, my breath tight. “No,” I sign. “I want to chase you first.”
Her fear bursts like fireworks, hot and bright and dazzling before they sparkle back into the darkness. But, like fireworks, it leaves behind a smoky trace of excitement.
“I want to chase you,” I say, my hands shaking. “And then I want to fuck you when I catch you.”
Chloe sucks in her breath. “What about Oliver?” she signs.
“I can sense if he wakes up,” I sign back. “You know that, right? From your friend?”
Chloe’s lips part. Her breasts push against her thin shirt.
“I can sense humans,” I continue. “If they’re awake or asleep. If Oliver wakes up, we’ll come back.”
“You can sense me, too,” she signs, and it’s clear to me she doesn’t mean it as a question.
All I do is nod.
Blood rushes to Chloe’s cheeks. “You can sense what I’m feeling now.” Her hands flutter against my chest.
“You want to be chased,” I say.
The fire flashes in the darkness, casting long shadows across the campsite. Chloe stares at me for a long time, and I can feel all those emotions warring inside her—lust and fear and excitement. “Yes,” she whispers.
I stand up. It does not escape my notice that my cock, already painfully hard, is just inches from her face. But I refrain from doing anything. Not with Oliver here, even if he is asleep in the tent. His slow, steady breathing is more than clear.
I hope he stays like that long enough for me to expel all these demons churning around inside me, hungry for a chase. Long enough that I can sink into Chloe’s wet, hot cunt one more time.
Chloe rises too, her movements shaky. I don’t take my eyes off her as I pick up the big bucket of lake water I put next to the fire.
“Then run,” I sign.
I tilt the bucket over and dump all the water on the flames, extinguishing them in a swell of pale smoke. The darkness melts around us.
Chloe sucks in her breath—
And then she takes off into the pitch-black woods.