39. Remembrance
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
REMEMbrANCE
Saya Claymore
Motorcycles feel more reckless than cars.
For one, the only thing I feared in the last car I travelled in were the two strangers in red cloaks taking me to a feeding ground.
Being in the car didn’t bother me. With this contraption, it’s nip of wind, as well as Serun’s driving. He is daring. Carefree.
I still have my eyes closed, refusing to open them, but I feel everything. He tips the bike from left to right, slowing sometimes, only to speed up a moment later when the motorcycle straightens.
Olivia must be close, as I can hear her chanting, “Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me.”
We aren’t exactly silent.
My fingers tighten in Serun’s clothing, gripping higher than he said, almost reaching his chest when the bite of his icy hand untangles mine and lowers them back around his waist. He did the same when I lifted my legs higher, only for his clawed hand to gently push me out of my strange foetal position.
“We are out of the woods,” he declares. When he does, the lumps and bumps of the road smooth over, and the motorcycle doesn’t tremble as much. “The stars are beautiful tonight.”
“I believe you,” I whisper.
He grunts, and I can sense his smirk. “It will take us a couple of hours to get to the hotel in Skulire.”
“If it is that close, why are we stopping there for the night?”
“There’s a merchant who sells good blood. He also gathers information about surrounding cities. It will give me a clearer idea of which places to avoid. I’d rather not deal with any remaining echoes.”
“Why don’t you kill them on our way?”
“With you?” His voice drops lower. “I’d rather not attempt it while you are topside with me. Avoiding them is easier, and I will get the Death Spirit to deal with it. It’s the reason Maeve took a chance on him—he cleared up most of them in Belmore. We need more like him who aren’t afraid.”
“And you can’t do it?” My breath catches when the motorcycle leans to the right before levelling out again.
“I have deals with the slayers. If I go about topside killing echoes, and they hear about it, the story will easily become twisted by fear that I am killing off humans, and they will break our treaties. Right now, they don’t enter our borders, and I don’t interfere with what they’re doing unless it is a broken law.
” He takes my hand again, repositioning it lower.
“I’d rather not deal with them. They give good blood, and if they stop, that’s less blood for the Undercity. ”
“And if the nightwalkers become starved…”
“They will turn against the humans there. Most have Feeders, but with the way the world is going—overindulging—I fear what would happen if supplies were limited,” he admits, his voice soft and filled with concern.
He must have a thousand thoughts running through his mind all the time. Serun isn’t just the Lord of the Undercity. He rules Naylen. One misstep, and it won’t just be a limited supply of blood. There will be anarchy among the starved.
Slayers and nightwalkers will turn on him.
And if he gives up, he might leave Naylen for good.
“Truen…” I begin, opening my eyes enough to see our surroundings blur past in a mesh of colours. “Is that a dying country?”
“Most of it,” he says, with no emotion. “As much as the Nightwalker Lord there wants to see otherwise.”
“Were you still…human?”
“Yes.”
His answers are getting shorter. But I am certain if I asked to bite him, he would offer himself up without hesitation.
It must be hard for him to talk about, just as I find it difficult to speak of my Blessed, but my thoughts can worm their way through the trauma, prying open memories I’ve sewn shut.
“That woman…did she become a friend?”
He laughs, causing my stomach to tense. An icy hand grabs mine, breaking it free from the safety belt I’d woven from my arms, and his mouth brushes my knuckles. “Kamai, I wasn’t lying when I said you are my first everything.”
“Oh…”
“It wasn’t something I wanted before you.”
“Okay…” Now I can’t talk.
“But there was a moment in the private room where I feared my thoughts lured you to me…I questioned whether it made you want me, and I didn’t like it.
I want your soul. I want to claim it without this fiendish power getting in the way.
” He lowers my hand, and I pin my arms around his waist again. “And she wasn’t a friend.”
Why am I jealous? I’m becoming like I was with Jax. Whenever Laura looked at him with lust, I wanted to kill her.
The idea brought me joy.
The idea of fighting over a man has an irritable note stirring in my mind and clenching in my intestines.
I could smother Laura. She was human, and easy to threaten. A nightwalker, though, would be a challenge. I’ve killed one, but that was by surprise. My magik is still difficult to access.
I may as well be human because the only thing that I can produce with magik is my glamour, and I don’t even like wearing it.
A drawn-out, tired sigh escapes me, and I tip my head up to the sky, opening my eyes fully this time. The stars remind me of a road, patterned across the sky, making its way towards the lights ahead before fading around a ring of white on the horizon.