Chapter 11
We check into the motel around midnight.
It looks exactly like the kind of place where people get murdered in movies, and I wish I were exaggerating.
There’s a long strip of peeling doors and a buzzing neon VACANCY sign with half the letters burned out.
Behind the front desk, a guy watches something on his phone with the volume cranked way too high.
And just like the girl at the gas station, he doesn’t care about the rest of the world.
I guess that’s just how it is in places where only broke travelers and shady people stop.
I’m tired down to my bones. My muscles feel like jelly, even though I barely moved in the car. And somehow, even so, my brain is still sprinting laps inside my skull.
We get a room with two double beds. Then we head back to the car to get Mark out.
He’s still tied up—tape still over his mouth, wrists bound, ankles bound, the whole ordeal. His eyes flick back and forth between us and the motel. Not panicked anymore, but angry. Really angry.
“God, Mark.” I drag a hand down my face. “You’re exhausting. Even when you’re not talking.”
He muffles an angry response.
I know he’s been through some torture, but he should be thankful to us. If not for our hospitality, and my growing hope that I’ll get to kill him someday, he’d be in jail by now.
We’ve got everything we need to get him on the police’s radar.
“You’re going to be polite and do as we say,” I tell him. “Or I swear, tomorrow your mom gets a call that her living room is being seized because her dear son is a criminal.”
His stare locks onto me and doesn’t let go. If looks could kill, I’d be dead twice.
I shrug and turn to Talon. He makes a tsk sound and leans into the car, bracing one arm on the roof.
“I really wouldn’t scream if I were you,” he mutters.
Then he peels the tape off Mark’s face. Slow. Mark winces as it tugs at his skin.
His first inhale is messy, wet with spit and fury.
“You’re all—“ he starts, his voice raw.
Talon claps a hand over his mouth.
“Shut up,” he murmurs. “Don’t give me a reason to hurt you more.”
Mark’s eyes flick to mine again.
“I’m going to remove my hand,” Talon says. “You’re going to behave. Nod if we understand each other.”
Mark stares at him for a long, spiteful second.
Then he nods.
Talon lets go.
Nathaniel opens the door on the other side.
“I’m going to untie you,” he says. “But don’t think about running. We’re faster than you.”
Mark scoffs under his breath. “You think I’m going to bolt barefoot in the middle of nowhere? Where would I even go?”
“A morgue would be ideal,” Talon says brightly.
Mark’s eyes flick to him, then back to me.
“You’re really something, you know that?” he says quietly to me. “These… freaks threatening me, tying me up… You’re pathetic, Skye.”
Talon moves before the last word fully lands. He hits Mark hard and fast, right in the ribs. Mark folds with a strangled grunt.
“I told you,” Talon murmurs. “Don’t give me a reason. Up.”
Cassian and Talon haul Mark out of the car.
“If anyone asks,” Talon murmurs to me, “he’s drunk and we’re putting him to bed. Try not to look like you want to stab him, okay, Little Grim?”
“I always look like that,” I whisper back.
“I know, baby. But try to think about something else, okay?”
We cross the parking lot. The front-desk guy barely glances over when we pass. He clocks Mark’s unsteady gait, but I guess he’s learned to look the other way.
We reach our door. I unlock it and push inside.
The room is smaller than it looked in the faded lobby photo: two beds with ugly floral bedspreads, a nightstand, a sticky-looking carpet, and a bathroom door hanging half off its hinges.
But it’ll do.
“Way worse than our hospital, huh?” Talon asks.
They march Mark into the space between the beds and shove him down. He hits the carpet, and Nathaniel is on him a second later, retightening every knot Mark loosened outside.
He might be tied up again, but he’s still going to be too close to me tonight. I didn’t mind him being in the car, because that was different. But having Mark in the same room while I sleep feels like hell.
“Smaller,” I say.
“Meh. We’re going to push the beds together,” Talon replies. “Make one big bed while Mark sleeps on the floor.”
At the same time, Nathaniel ties Mark’s hands a little too tight, and Mark grunts.
“This treatment is beyond excessive,” Mark hisses. “You’re going to cut off my blood flow.”
“Really?” Nathaniel asks evenly.
“Yes! I can’t feel my fingers.”
Nathaniel ignores him completely. Cassian tosses him the roll of tape, and Nathaniel rips off a fresh strip. He slaps it over Mark’s mouth again.
Mark’s eyes burn as they follow me when I move.
I busy myself by pretending to check the lock, sliding the bolt back and forth. The room really does feel small. The air feels thin.
“Okay,” Talon says, clapping his hands once. “Watch schedule. I’ll take first. Cassian, second. Nathaniel, third. Skye gets to sleep because she’s our favorite. And also because she already died once, which we should try not to repeat.”
I choke on a laugh.
“I can take a watch,” I say.
Nathaniel shakes his head. “No. You need rest. You didn’t sleep at all in the car.”
Right. Like I could relax in here with that piece of shit. We should’ve found another way to handle him. Like… I don’t know. Bury him. He could wait patiently in a grave, suffocating every now and then.
But you know what they say: keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Besides, we didn’t have time to dig one.
Either way, it’s hard to stay in this room. I take a deep breath, and it still isn’t enough.
“I’m going out,” I say, reaching for the door.
Cassian’s head snaps up. “Alone? No.”
“I’m not going far. I just need… air. Two minutes.”
“We shouldn’t split up,” he says.
“I… I can’t breathe, okay?”
He doesn’t look convinced.
“I’ll go with her,” Nathaniel says suddenly.
I glance at him, and he’s already hanging his backpack on the wall opposite Mark. Cassian nods, and I open the door and step out before I suffocate.
The night hits my face like a bucket of cold water. The air smells like damp concrete and someone’s terrible cologne, but it might be the most refreshing thing I’ve ever felt.
The relief is just… instant.
I walk a few paces down the walkway, hands shoved into my pockets, and notice two crows sitting on the sagging roof across from our room.
I stop to watch them for a while, and a moment later, Nathaniel joins me.
He says nothing, just stands there.
“Sorry to bother you,” I say. “You probably wanted to shower already, or something.”
He breathes out quietly.
“Skye,” he says. “You don’t bother me.”
He says that, but I know he’s a clean freak. He’s a lot of kinds of freak, but hygiene is definitely one of them.
“Yeah. Sure…”
He doesn’t respond. In fact, he doesn’t look at me. He just stares into the expanse of darkness in front of us. We’ve been driving for nearly twenty hours. We’re all dead tired. And here I am, dragging him out for air because Cassian wouldn’t let me go alone.
“Do you think I’m weak?” I ask.
I don’t even know where the question comes from, but it does. The moment it’s out, I know I need the answer.
And I know Nathaniel’s the type to hide a lot from the world, so I turn my whole body toward him, searching for anything—any twitch, any hesitation. If he lies to me, I want to catch it.
Nathaniel turns his head just enough for the neon light to catch the edge of his profile.
“I think you’re carrying something no one else here can understand,” he says. “That’s all.”
For all my suspicion, there’s nothing in his expression that suggests deception.
And it’s a little… strange to accept. Because just look at him… He’s like a master at reining in emotions.
“I’ve treated people who were hurt by others,” he continues. “And every time, they told me their injuries weren’t just physical. The same goes for you.”
I swallow.
Right. The doctor past.
“Do you ever miss it?” I ask. “Being a doctor?”
He seems surprised by the question, but then he exhales through his nose and relaxes a little more against the railing.
“I used to,” he replies. “It felt like the perfect place for me, back in the day.”
“I can see that.”
“But when I met Cassian and Talon, and found a new purpose in uncovering the truth, I knew it would come with a compromise. The lives of people who fall in line with the system are full of rules.” His eyes narrow in a dreamy sort of way, like a man who’s made peace with something that haunted him for a long time.
“I realized I don’t like rules. Not even the ones that suited me best.”
I study the small details of his face. His piercings glint in the light.
He’s a strange man. A walking contradiction.
Sometimes I think he’s being swallowed by guilt when he remembers all the things he’s done.
Like Talon. And then, in the next breath, he’d do it all again for some larger purpose.
He isn’t as hardheaded as Cassian, and he says he doesn’t like rules, yet he keeps making them for himself every step of the way, as if control is the only thing keeping him steady.
He’s many things at once: human and alien, made of stone and yet fragile on the inside.
I don’t get it.
But I don’t have to get everything about him to know how I feel.
“Is that why you got all these?” I ask, lifting a hand to touch the piercing in his lip. The skin there is warm and soft.
Nathaniel goes still, as if my touch arrests him.
Come to think of it… he likes to touch me, but I touch him so rarely.
His eyes drop to my mouth for a brief, scorching second.
“Partially,” he says. “I was advised against them in my previous profession.”
“Right.”
My finger drags along the line of his lip, grazing the edge where metal meets skin.
His pupils dilate.
“There’s still so much I don’t know about you,” I breathe, giving him a glimpse of my thoughts.
“I’m not very interesting.”
“That can’t be right.”
“Skye,” he says quietly.