The prey didn’t make it to his escape vehicle. Cryptid had known that he wouldn’t. There was too much blood in the air. If it was stopped, somehow, it wouldn’t kill him. But it wasn’t healthy, either. When the prey collapsed, it was over; both of them knew it.
That’s why Cryptid didn’t panic as Malachite scrabbled at his shirt for something, shaking almost as much as the predator was. There wasn’t any room for a weapon under the t-shirt, Cryptid already recognized that, but he slowed a little anyway as the man pulled out a locket. Silver, larger. He relaxed, when it opened. A locket.
He gave Mal space to look into it, stopping a pace away. Far enough to step back if desperation returned to the man, close enough to look down and see when the locket was set back down. He waited until the man spit his unoriginal insult before he spoke.
“She’s pretty.” Sorrow slipped past the animal, as the blue eyes studied the woman in the picture. Then his gaze lifted to the prey’s face, and for just a second, there was a perfect window to the two halves of the soul, man and animal, acting in perfect tandem.
The man kept up the sincere eye contact for another second, and spoke softly. “I hope you said goodbye. Honest.”
The monster drew back a fist, and clocked Mal in the temple with the metal bar of the claws.
Being a steel capital, Pittsburgh was full of abandoned factories. After the last spectacular shitshow of a meal, the warehouse district was off limits to him. So instead, he’d found a nice, comfortable abandoned factory around the Strip, and started to set up shop there. Admittedly it didn’t have everything – he didn’t expect to have to eat for another month or more if he could stretch out his resources, once he got started.
Todd sat cross-legged on a metal table. He’d left a few things here, just in case. He hadn’t expected to eat soon, but his big knife, flaying knife, and bonesaw sat around him, and he wore a set of sweats he’d set aside to be ruined in these circumstances. They were cheap, they were black, and they were flammable. It’d save him trouble later, and he was glad he’d thought of it before, because he’d needed to get out of that kevlar and assess his bruising.
On another table, in sight of a nearby wooden chair and its occupant, were various scattered goods and personal effects. A photo album, kept out of reach of the various sprays of blood, but already thumbed through with mental notes on important faces – the pretty woman from the locket, a man about Malachite’s age, and the man in the only black-and-white photo that also featured Mal and the blonde man. There was a green phone, which would need to be cleaned of Todd’s fingerprints after the bout of snooping that earned him messages from coworkers and the name of the pretty woman: Katherine.
She was everywhere. She was Mal’s life outside of the hunt, that was clear from his photo roll and their saccharine texts. Todd kept himself from thinking too hard about a haunting kiss as he looked at the background photo of the woman on the phone. The hunger helped him stay grounded in the present, if nothing else, even if he was reminded by the face of the soon-to-be widow why he didn’t deserve the same kind of happiness that even a man like Malachite had somehow found.
There was other stuff, too. Wedding ring, as pristine as Todd would expect from someone so deeply in love. Then the Jeep keys, various earrings, the locket. He’d taken everything that might let Mal turn into a weapon off his person, and set it with the other relics of Mal’s life.
Speaking of Mal, he was tied to a wooden chair Todd had found that somehow survived the test of time by old rope that wasn’t as miraculous in its survival. Those weren’t the only precautions Todd had taken; he had no idea if Mal could regain the energy to shift his body, and he didn’t give him the chance. He’d stripped off the boots, and then socks, and then taken the next layer down off, too. And he gave the man’s hands the same treatment. They’d sting like a bitch when Mal woke up, but Todd wasn’t taking many chances.
He’d learned a lot about the man called Malachite in the span of an hour, before the hunger had finally banished the calm that came with remembering that his food was a real person and he’d gotten to work on the first body he’d dragged back to his den. He chewed on the thug he’d called Driver Number 3 – the most accessible of all the bodies, and one he was sure was still alive, if out cold; he didn’t even wake up for his own execution – and on the information gleaned from the bits and bobs on the second table.
Malachite’s real name was Jasper Malcolm Torres,and he was 34 years old. He worked with two people, who called themselves Obsidian and Sulfur, and possibly a third person who kept their phone number blocked. Apparently, Jasper Torres hadn’t found it necessary to turn on the setting that required his attention to open the phone, which was how he’d gotten most of the rest of the intel he had. Obsidian or sulfur would send names, places, brief and unhelpful instructions, and then there’d be nothing.
But it wasn’t enough to work with, predictably so. That was why Todd had gotten through the head, organs, ribs, and arms of Driver Number 3 (who was a man named Mark Peters and was much less interesting than Jasper Torres, and nowhere near as pretty), instead of putting Jasper Torres out of both of their misery.
Thoroughly blood-soaked, Todd sat unmasked and cross-legged on the table across from Malachite, feeling marginally more alive than he had when he’d arrived. Still cold, though. The food had helped his miserable body finish mending, nothing more. The bruises had turned the sickly yellow of their final phase of healing, and he could finally breathe without a hitch.
He’d made it through the upper part of the last leg when he heard Jasper’s body sigh. He debated speaking, but he couldn’t be sure just yet if that was sleep or a sign of life. Instead, he bit down with a visceral crunch on the last knee and chewed, blue eyes on his prisoner's face. He'd made a scene; he wanted to see how Jasper Torres would interpret it before saying anything at all.
