Chapter 21 Zak
ZAK
I finish toweling off after a quick shower in the motel bathroom, mussing my hair to free more water droplets.
I didn't want my tender-hearted shifter to see me again for the first time while I was covered in old blood from street fighting, so it's pretty fucking convenient that the thrall I hijacked decided to hypnotize our way into this joint to grab a shower of his own after running a few errands.
We're in Illinois now, in some dinky, ridiculously wholesome small town. The thrall tells me this is where my shifter—Heidi, he says her name is—lives. At least she did, before the Upheaval.
We're gonna go look for her once he gets off the damned phone.
Strolling out of the bathroom, I grab my clothes off a table and start redressing, picking up on the convo he's having on a cell phone he also swiped using hypnosis.
Useful little gift, apparently.
Annoying as all fucking hells when you're under it, though.
"…to hear that he's fine. I figured he would be, with that crazy doomsday bunker of his," Ian says, pacing in the motel room and rubbing his throat like it’s hurting him.
"That's the whole reason I left the dogs with your old man in the first place.
What? Yep, the whole shebang. Checkup, vaccinations, grooming, spa, whatever else they offer—just make the fluffballs pretty and send them to the coordinates in Maine I sent you. Then you and I will be even."
A few minutes later, when he's done with the call, he hangs up to face me. Gotta say, the thrall cleans up okay. Looks a hell of a lot better than he did a few hours ago.
"Why the fuck're you getting dogs sent to Maine?” I arch a brow.
"Long story. Here," Ian adds, reaching into his pocket before tossing me something.
I've got no fucking clue what it is when it lands in my hand. There's a bit of metal stuck through it, but otherwise it looks like a rock.
"It's a mytherun broach," he explains, pinning one onto his own clothing.
He's now dressed in a black sweater, jeans, and new shoes he grabbed from a nearby store.
"They're not common, but these were on display at the store, so I swiped them.
It will keep Heidi from having to experience everything we're feeling.
Good thing, because there's no fucking way I'm going to force Heidi to feel this painfully ravenous when we find her," he adds, grimacing as he swallows.
I've never heard of mytherun, but if it will make my girl's abilities less painful for her, I nod and manipulate the metal until it's tightly stuck into my jacket.
"Ready?" the thrall checks.
To see my girl again? I've never been more ready for anything. I'm salivating already, thinking about her taste and her smell and her soft voice.
"Sure am. Wanna be my backpack this time?" I joke.
Ian makes a face. "For the last fucking time, I'm not getting on your bike. I'm faster on foot, and you'd just end up with my fangs in your neck going sixty on a back road. Not a good idea."
I follow him out of the motel room and down the metal stairs into the overcast parking lot, frowning as I realize something.
"You're really fucking unstable right now, huh?"
"Thanks for noticing."
I grip the thrall's arm, forcing him to face me in the parking lot. Even though he's cleaned himself up, I don't miss the way his blue gaze darts to my neck again—or the way he swallows hard as hunger crosses his face.
"Hey," I level with him. "You gonna kill Heidi?"
Ian's eyes snap to mine, that hunger transforming into shocked, insulted fury. "What? I would never. I could never hurt her, let alone fucking—"
"Great. Because if you did, I'd have to murder you to avenge her.
" I release his arm, brushing off his shoulder.
"Not really interested in doing that, 'cause believe it or not, I happen to like you.
So here's the deal: gorge yourself all you fucking want on me without draining me dry, but you're not gonna so much as touch her until you're less bloodthirsty and…
" I gesture at all of him vaguely. "Y’know. "
"Deranged?" he offers, self-aware.
"Yeah, that," I laugh. "Don't get me wrong, I don’t mind deranged behavior, but not if it puts our girl at risk."
Ian makes a face. "What did you just say?"
"I said I don’t mind—"
"No. You called her our girl."
I shrug. "You're in love with her, I'm in love with her. What the hell else would we call her?"
"You aren't going to pull some demon shit on me, like trying to kill me once we find Heidi so you can keep her all to yourself?"
"You said you grew up with her," I point out, jangling the keys in my jacket pocket. "Assuming she liked you then and likes you now, killing you would probably get me in the doghouse with her, right? So no, I won't pull anything on you. No point in doing that, so long as I get to love her, too."
He studies me for a moment before, once again, tingling pricks down my spine. His irises deepen in color, trapping me so I can't look away.
"Are you telling the truth?"
"Yes," I huff.
It's annoying as all hells that he's able to hypnotize me, but I also get it. I'd use the same shit if I could, since trust is a luxury I haven't gotten much of in my life.
Ian releases me and finally nods. "All right. I'll take you to our girl's house."
"Well, this is… what's it called again?" I squint at the empty forest next to a bend in a back road outside Koasville, wracking my brain for the right English word. "Right—acclimatic."
"Anticlimactic," Ian corrects, distracted with scowling at the edge of the road like it's betrayed him.
"Sure, that one."
The English language makes no sense, anyway. It's so inconsistent, random, and full of slang that changes all the fucking time, so what does it matter if I'm off a couple of letters?
"I swear the road leading to her house was right here," Ian huffs, glaring at the trees. "Something's not right."
"Is the something not right your thrall-scrambled memory?" I check.
He ignores me, moving forward into the woods to search through the trees for a moment before ending up beside me again with a deep frown.
"This doesn't make sense. Heidi loved her place.
Even if it was destroyed during the Upheaval, she would've rebuilt it—and how would the entire road be gone without a trace?
" the thrall mutters to himself. Then he squints at me.
"Earlier, you healed yourself with some kind of demonic dark magic.
Any chance you can use that to figure out what's actually going on here? "
"Would if I could, but my magic's weak as shit," I admit.
Ian's attention slides to my neck before he looks away, rubbing his own throat as his voice gets raspy and dry. "Damn it."
"Need another fix?"
"No, what I need is to find Heidi."
He paces angrily for a moment as thunder rumbles in the distance, the evening sky dark with the promise of rain. Ian finally stops, covering his face and taking a deep breath.
"Any chance you can make your pulse shut up? I can't fucking think with it taunting me."
I snort, holding out my arm. "Just slurpy-slurp already."
"Don't call it that."
"Fine, it's chompy chomp time."
"No," he snaps.
"Why not?"
"Because I'm so fucking sick of feeding. I fed earlier," Ian mutters, tearing at his hair as he glares at the trees around us.
"Yeah, on me, I remember."
"And then on a wild coyote, and then on some old asshole checking out a preteen in the motel lobby, and then on a motel worker who admitted to sexually harassing his manager," he lists off-handedly, starting to pace.
I size this fucker up, impressed. He's built kinda like me, so where's he stashing all that blood?
"Are there bloodsucking competitions, like what humans do with hot dog eating contests? Because holy shitballs, I bet you'd have it in the bag."
“Ha, ha,” Ian deadpans.
"What'd you do with the bodies?"
"I don't kill every time I feed," he grumbles before sighing, looking longingly out at the trees again.
"We should go back to Koasville. I can hypnotize some people, ask around to see if they know anything about where Heidi is now, if she's not here.
With her being all over the news like this, I really don't like—"
He cuts off as we both hear a car approaching. The thrall blurs into hiding in an instant. I already parked my bike down the road a bit, where we first started looking for our girl's missing residence, so I slink back into the trees nearby, crouching slightly behind a half-fallen one.
Soon, a light blue car rolls into view from around the corner of the back road. It slows before turning into the exact spot where Ian was just bitching about the missing road, disappearing in an instant.
"No fucking kidding," I grin, walking back out to examine the impressive magic concealment.
Ian darts back out of hiding and moves toward the place where the car just disappeared.
"Go ahead," I tell him. "I wanna see if the wards lop off your foot as soon as it crosses through."
He stares at me. "I thought you said earlier that you happen to like me."
"I do, so it's lucky for both of us you're a siphon—anything that gets lopped off will regenerate," I shrug.
Ian rolls his eyes at me and approaches the concealment spell. I follow watching closely, hoping for these wards to be violent, since I never mind a good, bloody surprise. He sticks a hand through to test it first.
Nothing happens.
"Damn," I sigh.
"You're doing a shitty job convincing me that you don't secretly want to kill me," he informs me.
"Again, you're useful to me, and I like you, so why the hells would I wanna kill you? Paranoid, much?"
The thrall makes a face. "Maybe I am. Force of habit, I guess. Come on."
He steps through the spell, and I'm right beside him. Vaguely, I feel a wash of magic buzz across my skin. I know little enough about magic outside of demonology that I don't pay it any attention.