believe that.”
“But you know that, don’t you?” he asked. Once again, the tears welled up in her eyes. She nodded, crying, tears streaking down her cheeks, unable to say it aloud. “Then what do you imagine we should do?”
“Run away,” she sobbed.
“That’s what I did last time. All I did was forget. I don’t want to do that again. I don’t want to forget. Not now, not you.” He looked at the floor, his eyes wandering to the pike beside him. “This time I need to stay and fight.”
“No! No, no, no,” she protested. “They’ll kill you.”
“I’m not so sure of that.”
“I am. These are creatures that live only to kill—to kill and cause suffering. That’s not who you are. That’s not who you were meant to be.”
“I might be more capable than you give me credit for,” he said, mildly offended.
“It’s not about how capable you are; it’s about how far you are willing to go. These creatures will chase you to the ends of the earth to get what they want. They will kill anyone who gets between you and them. They will hunt you till they draw their last breath. Are you willing to hate that much? Can you chase them for that long?”
“You never know,” he answered.
“I do. I’ve seen what’s in your heart.”
“So you want me to run?” asked Ewan.
“Not just to run, to run away with me,” she said. “To L.A. Like we planned.”
“But they’ll come after us.”
“I’ll talk to the council. If I tell them we’ll leave, never to return, they’ll have to grant us passage out. They don’t want trouble any more than we do.”
“So they’re afraid of me?”
Mallaidh shook her head. “Colby. Everyone’s afraid of Colby. No one knows what he’s going to do. And nobody wants to find out.”
“Colby . . . ,” he sighed.
“He’s our best hope. As long as they’re afraid of him, you and I can get out of here.”
“What about him?”
“Colby? Ewan, Colby’s been taking care of himself since he was eight. He’s the last person in this world we need to worry about.”
“When do you want to leave?”
Her eyes grew wide and, for the first time since arriving, she smiled. This conversation was really happening; she wasn’t dreaming it. “Tonight.”
“Then go. Do what you need to do. Buy us some time. If you’re not back by dawn . . .”
“If I’m not back by dawn, what?” The ominous sound of that broke apart her smile, crumbling it before him.
He paused. “Just be back by dawn.”
She grabbed him tight, kissing him, cradling his head with her hands while ruffling his hair with her fingers. “I love you, Ewan.”
“I love you,” he whispered back.
She turned and left without saying another word, breezing out the door—which Ewan immediately locked behind her—and disappearing into the night.
Ewan slumped onto the ground, propping his back against the door. She was gone, and with her the soothing presence that had held the beast at bay. His heart was pounding, his head was throbbing, every molecule in his body was thundering to the same, painful rhythm. Everything beat in unison. Thumthum thumthum thumthum thumthum. Then came the whispers—soft at first, steadily growing, a white-noise static against the background of his thoughts. He reached up to grab a fistful of his own hair and realized he wasn’t wearing his cap. He needed his cap; he was suffocating without it. What at first he had confused with the weakness of his broken heart, in truth was the drying blood of his cap across the room.
There it was, draped over a chair, drying in the midnight air. He wobbled to his feet, his knees buckling, just strong enough to stand him up and stumble him across the room. His fingers swept the chair, snatched the cap off with the sharpened end of a fingernail. Ewan breathed a sigh of relief as he slipped it on, but it proved to be little comfort. Something was wrong. His cap was almost dry, only the tiniest bit of dampness remaining.
He’d only splattered it with blood; he’d never soaked it. His cap was drying out. And that meant he was losing his strength, strength he’d need if Mallaidh didn’t return on time. He needed blood. But that meant he needed to kill and Ewan didn’t want to kill anybody, not anyone human, at least.
His chest tightened, he swallowed hard, choking on cotton. This had gotten very bad, very quickly. He wouldn’t make it to morning. The pike whispered to him