RP Sunny and Larimar


Three days of full meals had healed her shoulder completely. She wasn’t back to the weight she had been before, but there was life back in her face. She had slept for eight hours the night following Todd’s defensive attack against her. She had gotten enough in her system to bring her fire back, to heal, to prove her resilience. Now, all she had to do was show Todd she had healed.

She had spent the last few days checking towns for his car and had finally gotten a hit in Moab. His car had been there, out by a warehouse, and she had immediately headed there. He wasn’t there– but something else was.

The warehouse was splattered in blood and viscera. Pieces of born and torn flesh lay on the ground, and a butcher knife lay on the ground in the midst of it all. There was an impression in the floor of where he had laid down, presumably after he had done… Well, she supposed there was no beating around the bush. After he had eaten whoever this mess was. She carefully moved around the scene. The blood was still fresh and shiny and dripping down the nearby drain.

This left her no room for thoughts of fancy. Todd was absolutely a cannibal and… she was surprised by how little it bothered her. She was surprised by how little she cared about whether or not he might want to eat her. She walked over to the knife, avoiding stepping in the blood, and picked it up. She examined it, turning it over in her hands as she thought.

Would he actually be willing to give her a chance? She didn’t deserve it. Hell, she didn’t deserve him, though this definitely evened the playing field quite a bit. It made sense that her soulmate was as much of a monster as she was. This meant she wasn’t alone. He was every bit the monster she was. She used her free hand to run her fingers through her hair, the now sleek and bouncy curls running easily through her fingers. She had started taking the time to really care for the curls.

She had also started wearing her lipstick and eyeliner again. She didn’t really want to admit the three things were related, that these things she hadn’t done in months– or in the case of her hair, years– were specifically for Todd. But she couldn’t help the fact that she wanted to impress him. Maybe if she was as pretty as the day they met, if she was as strong, he would want her again, and he wouldn’t be afraid of her.

She knew this line of thinking wasn’t healthy, but that concern had gone out the window the moment he had revealed what he was. She could still feel his teeth crushing the fragile bones in her shoulder, tearing the ligaments and muscle and skin. She could still feel that dazzling pain. She knew that was in self-defense, so she didn’t blame him for it.

It had occurred to her, at some point, that she had been too rough with him that night. It had occurred to her that she could have burned him, or just hurt him somehow in her eagerness. She had no idea the extent of his strength and his durability. She could easily have broken something when she had… well. She could have hurt him. She would have to be gentle next time, she had resolved.

She sighed and pulled some bandage rolls from the inner pockets of her jacket. She wrapped the blade in them, protecting her skin from the sharpness before she tucked it into the back of her jeans, concealing it in case she bumped into someone on the way out. She smiled softly, because despite all her worry and fuss, this meant something.

She was getting close.​
 
Todd had only ever gone back to one of his own crime scene once, the first time he’d killed a man, the mugger he’d chased out of Waterford. He didn’t hear about it on the news until a few days later, but with blurred memories about blood and fear and eating combined with an exhausted fullness, he’d had to go back. Just to see if he’d actually done what he’d thought he’d done. And when he confirmed that, he started to formulate a plan.

He had a pattern for leaving a town when he ate. Moab was a population center, so it was a little different, but he neither stuck around nor left in a hurry. It helped that he’d only been here for two days – one to hunt, and one to sleep. He was able to leave late on his second day, using some of his savings from his last paycheck in Billings to cover the extra night. Paying only for hotel rooms and gas helped stretch out what money he had.

He’d showered and slept, and woken up with a familiar warmth where the cold had been. When he looked in the mirror, the dark circles and prominent bones were gone like magic. He still looked like the same guy, just after fifteen hours of sleep and a square meal. He felt human again.

But, when he was packing his things and going down his list, he realized he was missing his knife. It wasn’t with his kit, or in the duffel bag with his costume. It wasn’t anywhere in the Malibu, either. He had to fucking hope it was at the warehouse. If it was anywhere along the way, that was evidence.

The practical worry helped to distract him from what he had and hadn’t done over the course of this week. It sucked that he thought the life of last night’s victim – another mugger, coincidentally, but taken care of after the fact instead of in front of his own prey – was worth less than that of the girl he’d killed in Zion.

But that girl had loved him. That girl had given up her life to save his. He couldn’t – wouldn’t – consume her body on top of that. And as much as he hated himself, he had to survive so that her sacrifice–

–sacrifice–

Cinnamon?

He stopped outside the warehouse doors, dragged from his thoughts as he realized just standing here that he could smell her. Not in memory, but just like on the cliffside, real and present and heavy against his awareness. It no longer made his mouth water, but the absence of the predator made the pain in his heart all the clearer.

Sam had lived. She was alive. And she’d been here. She was following him, looking for him. Because of the monster he was? He took a deep breath, searching the scent. It was older now, hours at least. There was no sign she was nearby, no sound of her breath. But he couldn’t find any rage in it. He exhaled, slowly, then opened the door.

The blood was still everywhere, but when he scanned the floor, he saw the impression where the knife had been. She’d come, and she’d taken his evidence with her. Maybe she was expecting him to come back for it; maybe she was waiting nearby, or inside. Her scent was already everywhere. But he would hear her, he was sure.

He stepped back from the door, and closed it.

She was going to chase him. She already had. He was lucky a trap hadn’t crossed her mind, or maybe just that she hadn’t expected him to come back. She might’ve already left town ahead of him. He had a month before he’d have to stop and eat, and he’d need to make money on the side. He could go for his PI license now – but that wouldn’t count across county lines, let alone state. He strolled back to his car, deep in thought, ears peeled and nose flaring every so often as the cinnamon scent faded.

If she left ahead of him, where would she assume he was going? He’d already traveled south. Maybe she thought he’d keep going in that direction, into Arizona or New Mexico. Or that he’d go in the direct opposite – north, back toward Montana, probably through nearby Wyoming. He could go back into Cali through Nevada to avoid suspicion; he knew the lay of the land there pretty well, after all. But if she knew anything about him, she’d know that, too. And if she was overthinking it as much as he was, she’d probably guess Colorado. As he started his sedan back up, he knew he needed to pick a direction.

Idaho, then. Northwest, then cut into Wyoming to head east before he hit the Montana border. From there he could decide where to go next. He’d have to move around a lot for the next few weeks, before settling someplace for a quick job for money. He’d want to change his number again, too. If it got bad enough he’d need to change cars, too, but the Malibu was a good car and easy to miss if not for the Montana plates. Maybe in a month or two he’d have enough of a headstart to establish a mailing address wherever he stopped, sit still for a minute, recover and regain his strength, get a new license and plates. Until then, he wasn’t worried.

He was the monster, after all. He knew how to keep a predator from closing in.
 

Sam didn’t catch up to Todd again until Wisconsin, three months later. By then, she had done so much research about him, about his family, and about what he could possibly be that her head was full to the brim.

She spent the first month going through who Todd was. From the papers she had gotten from his apartment, she had been able to run enough background checks to find the last five places he had lived, and then something interesting had popped up. She wasn’t sure if Todd knew this, but all name changes were public records unless you filed special paperwork. And even then, private name changes could be found if you had the right documents.

Todd Oscar Fowler’s original name had been Lyle Nicholas Hart. Well, she supposed it made sense as to why “Nick Oscar” hadn’t pinged too high on her vibe checker. They were technically names of his. She had found from his name a series of other information– the schools he had gone to, the churches he had attended, the foster families he had been placed with, they were all private documents, but Sam was very good at finding private documents.

What she hadn’t been expecting had been Lyle Hart and Madeline Hart, the serial killer and the apparent cannibal. The Redding Butcher, he had been called. A total of twenty-six kills, if you included his wife, Madeline. She had listened to the interview and dear god. She understood why Todd had changed his name. She wouldn’t have wanted any connection to that either. She even felt… bad about uncovering it. She really hadn’t meant to.

She spent the second month going through monsters. She had started with vampires, but from Vrykolakas to Mormos to Pacu Patis, nothing quite stuck. She had gone for werewolves next but had quickly disregarded that as well. Ghouls had been next on her list, and those had been… closer. But still, they didn’t quite fit with everything that Todd was.

It wasn’t until she found the wendigo that she knew what he was. From the raggedness of his appearance the last time they had seen each other, to the way his teeth had torn through her, to the inhuman noises he had made, to the way he handled her strength, and all the way to his ice-cold skin– Sam was pretty positive he was a wendigo. But that also meant there were other things she hadn’t seen yet. Mimicry was said to be a power that wendigos possessed. Sources were unspecific about how much mimicry they could use but were clear that at least voices were a thing. Speed and agility were common attributes alongside strength. In essence, they were meant to be the perfect hunters of humans.

With all of that in mind, and with all of the combined research she had done, when they had passed through Minnesota, Sam had visited the Ojibwe tribes there, looking into a family name of Snow Owl. The family had been very normal, at least, as far back as Sam could find without going up to the reservation. She wasn’t sure that she would be welcome, nor did she have the time. But her search did turn up a great-grandfather of Todd’s, one who had been suspected of murder, but had fucked off into the forest and wasn’t heard from again.

It seemed likely that it was a family curse, but Sam wasn’t entirely sure as to what caused it to manifest. If Lyle Hart was to be believed, it was consuming human flesh at some point in your life. And if he had really fed little Todd pieces of his mother, well. She imagined that if that hadn’t triggered it, then eating a piece of his foster sister who had committed suicide, well that definitely did. Liz had been one of the last puzzle pieces, and she imagined that had been when it really all began.

All of this was on Sam’s mind as she made her way down Jones Island in Milwaukee. She was going warehouse by warehouse, looking for her cannibal. She was wearing the suit, uncovered under her black leather jacket. She had donned the black leather pants and strapped boots as well. And then, after some hesitation and much debate, she had broken out something old from her vigilante kit. A cat skull mask adorned her face, yellow lenses hiding her eyes. But, she left her hair uncovered, just like she used to as a teenager.

She had gone out of her way to do a few things. Under the mask, and just barely visible below the teeth of it, her lips were stained black from her matte lipstick. Beneath the lenses, her eyes had liner done to look like cat eyes. None of that cat eye eyeliner that was popular, but real cat eyes, outlined with precise strokes. She might have been going by the moniker of Phoenix, but she would always be Wildcat at heart.

She was running along the rooftops of the buildings, her long red curls twisting through the air as her soft and light steps barely made a noise across the metal roofs. She was halfway down the line when she spotted something. Outside one of the more abandoned-looking warehouses, there were a few drops of something dark. She focused her eyes in, adjusting them until she could clearly see the ground as though she were standing down there, bent over it.

Blood. And it was fresh.

She lept down from the building and landed, using her heat to land as softly as possible. She checked herself over. Her clothes were in order, and after a few weaves of her fingers, her curls fell perfectly from their prison near the top of her head. Her breathing picked up a bit as she went still and silent. She touched a gloved hand to the ground, and sure enough, she felt it. Todd’s heartbeat, just inside the building.

She stood back up straight, feeling her heartbeat start to thunder. She hadn’t seen him since Zion Park. He probably thought she was dead. She touched the small bag on her shoulders that was buckled into her jacket. His knife was inside, clean, in a new sheath, and freshly sharpened. She had decided to give it back to him when she saw him again. A smile broke over her face. She held it in her hands as she remembered the look on his face as he had run away from her at the foot of the cliffside.

Sam took a deep breath and pushed the barely-closed door open. It moved softly on clean hinges, thank god. She kept her steps soft and slow, like she was sneaking up on a deer from upwind. Still, she couldn’t help the smile on her face as she moved.

There were boxes everywhere. Empty shipping crates and shipping boxes were everywhere, scattered in tall columns and piles. But between all of them, she could see a figure hunched over. Her heartbeat was in her ears as she rounded a corner, her steps as light as possible to keep from being heard. She saw him, then, for the first time in months.

He looked better than he had the last time she saw him, but not by much. He was bent over a corpse, using his hands and teeth to rip into it. She supposed that had been what the knife was for, after all, so she really wasn’t that surprised. He had cracked the body open, like a shell, and was eating it from the inside out. There was a bloody combat knife nearby, and a little ways away from the blood and viscera, just out of reach of its spread, were a mask and a coat.

She shuddered as she watched him eating what looked like the… stomach? She had never been very good at biology or anatomy in high school, but she was fairly certain it was the stomach. She was pretty sure she should have had a more violent reaction to what she was seeing. Some kind of desire for violence, maybe, the way she normally did around what she considered human predators. But Todd was just following his instincts, just doing what he needed to survive.

She couldn’t fault him for that.

With very precise footsteps, she moved into the space he was in. She kept her hands visible, her hammer holstered at her hip, the straps all still in place, so it was obvious she wasn’t going to pull it out. She swallowed hard and stepped into the moonlight that softly fell through the skylight.

“Please don’t run, Todd. You don’t need to run.”

Her voice was soft, rasping at the edges as she spoke. There was a soft and adoring smile on her face as she looked down at him where he was sitting. She slowed down, pausing just outside the blood, hands raised. She shivered again at the fact that she was so close to him again. Something in her chest loosened, as though she’d been holding some unknown tension there. She could feel her breath coming easier, could feel the harshness in her eyes softening. She absolutely melted at the sight of him, gruesome as what he was doing was.

She’d found him.​
 
Week by week, month by month, Sam had been closing in on him.

Part of him found that annoying at best, and frustrating at worst. The last time had been so close he’d heard her outside the doors and slipped out while she inspected the scene. The blood had still been warm, but hours old. He’d taken a lot longer to eat ever since he’d left his knife behind back in Moab, but he hadn’t taken the time to purchase a new one. He suspected she would be looking for a purchase like that as another means to find him. That’s what he’d do, in her shoes. But he was a predator.

And the part of him that was the predator found the situation entertaining. It could be a game, if he let it; a bait and switch, a series of traps, luring her closer to teeth every time but never quite giving in to the hunger. It could be a real hunt, the monster whispered in his ear, each time she came close. Each time he heard her footsteps nearby or a stray breeze pulled the scent of cinnamon through a window from a nearby rooftop. Each of the three times she’d come close, she’d been closer to the end of a meal; he was almost sure she’d figured out a pattern from his last three, so after tonight he was going to regroup, and make a change.

But he needed energy before he could come up with the right strategy. Plus, if she thought he was following the same pattern again, she’d likely try to predict his actions and follow the existing pattern. He’d just have to pay more attention at the end of his meal. The middle, though, that was fine – or he’d thought it’d be fine. He was tired, a little worn out from the running, and was hoping a change of pace would give him the right move to shake her completely. But because he was tired, he was hungry, and although he felt the soft edges of guilt as he ate, he made his way through head and intestine and heart just fine.

The stomach was tricky. Even after the body had died, the stomach was still full of hydrochloric acid. If he was in a hurry, Todd would just eat right through it. But acid burned, and healing from eating it burned through calories he didn’t necessarily have to expend. Given that right now he was trying to conserve and build as much energy as possible, that wasn’t helpful right now no matter how much time it saved. So there was the process of dumping it out into the blood on the floor – and there was already a lot of blood, filling the air with the weight of its smell. The acidic scent burned right through it, and left a not-unpleasant sting in Todd’s nose, clearing it out of everything except the acrid stench. With the stomach inverted and his senses momentarily placated, he took a bite of the organ, and started to settle again, sitting cross-legged on the floor by his kill like a kindergartener with a sandwich.

His teeth were in the organ when he heard her voice. And he froze.

Stupid. Fucking stupid, Todd. He forgot – he’d learned about how Sam operated, but he’d forgotten how vulnerable he was in the middle of a meal. That’s how Arlo had found him. Distracted, mostly content, soaked in blood, his mask set far across the room. The combat knife, his only weapon right now, discarded a short distance away. His eyes flashed toward it, as the rest of his body went rigid and still.

A dozen thoughts came crashing in, all at once. Fight, flight, fight, flight, flight, fight – he couldn’t fight her – she was between him and the door – he hadn’t even looked at her – she didn’t have to be here to fight – what else would she be here for? – oh, god, what else could she be here for?

Slowly, his eyes drifted from the blade to her. To do so, he pulled his teeth loose from the stomach, taking a mouthful of the meat with them. He chewed very gently, like he was sure even that could startle her into the attack. Or maybe draw her attention more to what he was, who he was right now. Her soulmate, a monster. A monster, her soulmate.

There she was, cast in the moonlight. Beautiful, graceful, yellow eyes watching him from behind a cat-skull mask. She’d outlined them in black, making the gold appear all the more brightly. Her lips were black, and her hair shone in the white beams coming down from the roof. She had paused on the edge of the blood, and her voice was as soft and wonderful as it had been in bed when they first met, no longer the hoarse scream begging for him to stay.

Don’t run. Please don’t run.

Half of him perceived it as a threat. She didn’t have her hammer, but Arlo hadn’t needed a goddamn hammer. He still didn’t know what she was. What she did. That was– no. That wasn’t anything. It just scared him, plain and simple. But the fact that she just stood there, dressed like this was a date under her armor, that flooded him with something else, something he knew wasn’t justified but came all the same: fury.

The two met in the middle, caution and rage, and they held him where he was even as he swallowed the bit of stomach wall and gastric acid that had started to burn his tongue despite his precautions. He never lost the tension in his shoulders, his eyes still a little wide, projecting the flash of panic as clearly as if it was written out on his face. It was impossible to say whether it was the acid, the terror of his memory of the last time he was found, or his raw anger that she’d look at what he really was and still think soulmate that made his voice low and harsh when he finally found words.

“Why the fuck are you here?”
 
Sam flinched in response to his words. Her hands went up to her long, shining curls and started to pull through them, mussing them. She looked away, shivering. Watching what he was doing was hard, but she would endure it. He was her soulmate and she was willing to get past it. She looked back and lowered her head like a child being admonished.

“I just– I came to find you. I’ve been looking for you.” She swallowed hard, and in slow movements, she reached up to her shoulders and unbuckled the straps of the bag on her back. She lifted it up and over her head. “I-I have something of yours!”

Her hands shook from the intensity of her sudden feelings. He wasn’t happy to see her. He wasn’t happy at all. She didn’t understand. He’d had the same moment she did, back in Billings. She was sure of it. She just needed to help him remember that. Maybe if she got close enough to touch him again, to hug him. Maybe that would remind him that he had wanted her.

“Listen to me? Just hear me out. You can keep… eating. I just want to talk. Please, Todd, please just hear me out.” She unzipped the bag and reached inside and pulled out the knife. There was a new sheath on it because she wasn’t sure if it had had one before. This new one was black with a silver etching on it, antlers on both sides, a mirrored pattern. She’d had it custom made. She had chosen antlers because wendigos in lore were depicted with deer skulls, with tall antlers reaching up above them.

She tossed the bag to the side after zipping it up, her little vigilante kit tucked away inside it. She turned the knife around in her hands, holding the handle out to him. A peace offering, of the newly sharpened blade. She swallowed again and couldn’t help the way her eyes flicked uncomfortably over the scene before fixing back on him. Just on him. He didn’t need to know how uncomfortable the body was making her. He wasn’t, after all. All she felt for him was a deep want and adoration.

She gave him a small smile, a tentative smile. Then, with her free hand, she reached up and removed her mask, letting her face show. After all, he didn’t have his mask on. She shouldn’t either. It was only fair. Her perfectly made-up face was then visible, her freckles darker than they had been before. She had been spending more time outside during the day than before, and it was evident in the more tightly clustered freckles on her cheeks and nose.

If he ran from her again, she didn’t know what she would do. She didn’t know how she would take it. Not great. She knew that much. Not great at all. It would definitely break her heart again, just like the morning after they had slept together. He had no idea how much she wanted him still, and the lengths she would go to to prove that. Chasing him across the country was nothing in her opinion.

She took him in. Took in those dark, tight curls and those beautiful icy eyes. Even angry, he was beautiful. But of course she would think that. He was her soulmate. There was nothing about him she wouldn’t love, not even the cannibal part. They were meant to be perfect other halves to one another. He just needed to see that.

“Please.”​
 
He could see the disgust in her eyes, in her body language, as she watched him. He could smell her fear. The aversion was natural. She was watching him eat something that was like her. A rabbit approaching a fox she clearly thought was sated. She had no way to know how deep his hunger went; how the thick scent of cinnamon and apples in the air was just stirring the hunger up to a new frenzy. Or maybe that was the fear and disgust.

His brow was furrowed as he watched her fiddle with the bag. He stood up, stood slowly. He didn’t move away from her. Maybe he was as morbidly fascinated with what she was doing as she was with his meal. He watched her remove a knife – a long butcher’s knife, one that smelled like cleaning oil and not blood, in a sheath that smelled like real leather. He stared at the pattern on it, etched in silver.

Antlers. Like the one he’d dropped in Zion. His hand curled into a fist at the memory of pain – and in the sudden wave of fury. Because the knife meant only one thing. It meant the worst possible thing human prey could offer to a predator like him: approval.

He dropped the stomach. His appetite was far from gone, but he tossed it onto the corpse as if it had burned him. A small hint at the fury that pulled his shoulders tight, that burned with glowing light in his blue eyes as he turned them back to Sam.

“I can’t take that.” His voice was crisp and hard, but came from somewhere low in his chest. His predator started to unfurl in his body language, as he got taller, unrolling his shoulders, forcing his breath to be even but deep. The flush in his face was invisible under the gore staining it in streaks from the hairline to his chin, radiating outward from his mouth.

“Goddamnit, Samantha. Take a step back and look at this. Look at this –” he pointed to the corpse, to the blood, to the half-eaten stomach “– and at this.” He gestured to his whole body, to himself, covered in blood, tense and open and aggressive and hungry.

Above all else, hungry.

All hunger, hunger that took and took from the people, the human people, who were stupid or desperate or just blind enough to think they could love that, the stupid rabbits that thought a coyote would have mercy on them because they were different. Ones that would die the second they realized they weren’t, or maybe seconds before. Ones that were so broken by the idea of him, who were so desperately convince they loved him, that – that what? That they would hand him the tools he used to better eat their – her – her own kind. And her, herself. She’d felt his teeth. She’d seen what he was, and even though she’d survived, she didn’t learn from the lesson. She used her strength to come back. Back where he could kill her, eat her, fill himself with her and leave nothing behind.

Hunger above all else. Except, right now, the flash of rage like snow blindness.

“I don’t want to talk. I don’t want that. And I don’t. Want. You.” He bit out the words, and when guilt tried to creep in for the pain those were going to cause, he instead filled the space with more anger. His brain reeled as the anger became so much – and he had no idea why it was so much. He only knew he needed it out, even as his voice rose from low and deep to a harsh shout in gradual crescendo. If he’d felt safe closing the distance, he would have. Instead he stood still, the fury radiating off of him in waves and words that someday, he might regret.

“No. Fucking fine. Fine! You want the goddamn truth? You want me to want you? I do already. I want you – to run, Sam. I want to chase you like a greyhound chasing a rabbit. I want to feel the fear and the desperation in every step. I want to catch you just to cut you open and fill the air with your blood and pain and adrenaline and let you go again, and to rinse and repeat until either my starvation is cutting me to the bones or you have no more running or fear to give me. I want to eat you alive, bite by fucking bite. You think your shoulder hurt when it gave? Well, Freckles–” he chuckled darkly, and lost no momentum in doing so “Every bone I could break like that, I would. I’d tear off your limbs and keep your wounds bound enough that you would be conscious to see them disappear. I would rip you open and make sure your eyes stayed on me as I pulled out pieces of you you didn’t even know you had. And when you finally fucking die you’ll do so knowing there is going to be nothing left for the people who do love you to find again.”

He panted at the end, eyes now damp, but still clear with fury. He swallowed hard. Despite the speech, his mouth was not dry. Far from it. And he hated that. And she should hate it, too. Fear it. She was disgusted by him – she should just accept that.

“That’s what I am, Sam. The man you slept with was just a sated animal. Not hungry enough to try to take you that way. That, Samantha Walsh, is why you need to fucking leave. Or fucking kill me and get it over with. I don’t fucking care which at this point. But I’m not taking that knife. And I cannot love you. The sooner you get that through your thick skull, the better for both of us, whatever you decide.”

And that, Sam would know, was the purest truth – and the worst kind. The kind that he believed no matter the evidence, etched and ingrained into his heart and soul and teeth, that shone out of those furious predator’s eyes, and was exhaled with every breath.

He could not love her. He refused to give her what his animal thought love was. And she would have to live with that – or die with it.
 
Sam flinched at every new word. Everything he said was pinging as the truth, and she could feel her heart breaking. She looked down at the knife, still in her outstretched hand, frozen as she was. She leaned over and gently set it down. It took her a few moments, but then she straightened back out, and her smile was sad as she looked at him, tears spilling down her face in dark rivers.

She looked at him for a moment, her eyes unfocused as she thought. Was she really willing to tell him the truth? Was she ready for that? Would he look at her with disgust, with that anger still etched into every piece of him? She knew he would. She knew he would because she was disgusted with her own desperation, with the terrible self-worth that she had. God, if he didn’t– if he wouldn’t–

She wanted to yell back. To scream at him and rage and tell him that he was the one being stupid, because of course he could love her, he was human. Humans were built to love one another, and even more so soulmates. But she didn’t feel any rage. She felt nothing but a chill settling into her bones. A deep chill, one that made her aware how terribly heartbroken she really was.

So it was with those thoughts, in what must have been only a few moments, but felt like an eternity, she said in a soft voice, one so full of defeat and despair, “Maybe I don’t care. Maybe, if that’s the only way you’ll have me– You’re my soulmate. I just want the chance to love you. And if I can’t have that, I’d rather you kill me.”

She stripped her jacket off while she spoke, a strange kind of smile on her face. Then, she reached up to the back of her neck, her hands shaking, and she partially undid the zipper there. Just enough for her to roll down the high neck of her suit. Just enough to roll down the high neck of her suit, and bare her throat to him, to fold it down to her collarbones.

She kept eye contact with him the whole time, her eyes bright and shining as the tears kept falling, as the thick black lines under her eyes were washed away. She kept that strange smile. That strange smile that almost seemed like she was at peace with the decision, almost seemed like her broken heart had taken over. She gently touched the skin at her throat, then dropped her hands to her sides.

“You want me to run? I’ll run. I’ll give you the best chase you’ve ever had. You want to kill me and eat me? Then just fucking do it because I won’t kill you. Just tear my throat out. Please. I’m begging you not to make me live like this anymore if you don’t want me. I don’t want to live if you don’t want me. Do you understand me? I can’t live if you don’t want me. So just do it! Chase me, hunt me, tear me apart. I want you to. I want you– I want you.”

She spread her hands out away from her body in a gesture of openness. Her tone had become hysteric, her voice lifting with every word until she was yelling, the same as him, but so different from him. Her yelling was laced with an edge of something, something dark but light, something that made her voice strain in a particular way. Almost as if she was laughing while she spoke. Almost as if she was happy to say these words. She took steps toward him, small ones, while she spoke, the knife forgotten behind her.

“If all you see me as is food, then just eat me already. Stop letting me chase you. Stop letting me suffer. Just stop me. Please." Stop me, kill me, because I can’t stop myself.

Despite everything, there was something in her eyes still. There was a bright shine, one of adoration and want and love. One of love.

She stopped a few feet away from him and took him in for what she thought would be the last time. His curly hair, and his bright eyes, still so beautiful despite his anger. God, he was beautiful. Even covered in blood, even angry, even trying to scare her away, he was beautiful and shined just like the most brilliant star.

"Love me the way only you can."​
 
He’d broken her.

He knew that was how this was going to end. He could see it in the joy she took as she offered him her throat, offered her softest part to teeth that had already broken her. He saw the look in her eyes, the look that wasn’t at all like the animal resignation he waited for in real prey. But he had seen that look before, that softness, that gentle embrace of the horror of what she loved really was.

“That’s not love.” He spoke half to her, and half to himself, shaking his head. The angry edges softened, but were still sharp with something else entirely. Pain. Pain in knowing that he’d done this. A moment of weakness, and he’d done this to her. THere was no way to forgive himself for that.

But he couldn’t just embrace the mistake, either. That wasn’t love. This wasn’t going to be love, either, but he hardened his heart to the pain in what he was about to say next.

“I can’t. I can’t – you can’t understand. The hunt is a high. If I fall to it once, even if it’s what you want, I won’t be able to stop. I can’t let myself become – that again. I won’t. And you – you can’t understand. And I’m sorry, I’m sorry for – I’m sorry.”

He took a deep breath, steeled his face. He was being selfish. He knew that. But he had to, now. Which was more important – the misery of one girl who couldn’t let him go, or the blood of all the people who’d come after her? The answer felt clear. So he set his jaw, and spoke with more conviction than he felt in his heart. His eyes, which had dropped to the knife, now met hers again.

“I will not give you my hunt, and I won’t take you. I’ve done too much work on myself to fall for you.”

He took a step back. The warehouse had a second exit. Most of his chosen dens did. Just in case. He was leaving the body behind, and he hated to waste it. But it was better. There would be other bodies, people he wouldn't be tempted to chase. People who didn’t smell like cinnamon sugar and fresh apples, people who didn’t bare their necks to him and beg him to give the order to run.

He pitied her. He couldn’t hide it in his eyes, in his voice, as he backed slowly away, building up tension in his body for what would be a dash for the door. His face softened again even as the rest of his body pulled tight.

“The only person who can stop you is you, Sam.”

He stopped for a second, just a second, and took her in. He’d ruined her. He seared the image into his mind, that image of what thinking a monster like him could love had done to another living person.

“I hope you find a way to learn how. Without me.”

And he turned, and released all the pent-up energy in a sprint for the exit.
 
No.

No, no, no.

That wasn’t how this was supposed to go. That wasn’t what he was supposed to do. No, he was supposed to kill her, he was supposed to give her some kind of release, a release she couldn’t give herself even if she tried. She had survived a thousand-foot fall. She had survived a bullet through her skull, granted it had missed her brain, but it had shattered parts of her spine, and still, she had walked away.

Sam couldn’t kill herself, and he didn’t understand that that was going to be the only thing that could stop her. That was going to be the only way he would stop being plagued by her. He had to kill her. He was likely the only one who could kill her other than… him. She couldn’t stop herself. Not when every fiber of her being was pulled to him. Not when everything inside her wanted everything inside him.

And still, he was running again. Why didn’t he understand that she was going to keep chasing him? Did he not understand, or did he not want to understand? Did he really think that she was capable of stopping herself? Of preventing the inevitable from happening?

One of them had to die, and it wouldn’t be him. It had to be her.

The moment the last word was out his mouth, she was already ready, She channeled heat into her muscles, into the coils of tension and she took off after him, a scream coming unbidden from her throat. It left the taste of iron in her mouth as she ran, ran as fast as she could. Maybe if she could just touch him again– maybe if she could just have that connection again, he would understand–

She pushed herself, ignoring the burn that immediately began in her thighs as she started to gain ground. She was faster. Sam was faster. Sam could catch him. She just needed to move a little further, a little faster, and then she could wrap him in her arms again and she could apologize for what she had just done, could show him how much she wanted him.

She was right behind him, close enough to reach out and touch him. She pushed herself harder, reaching a hand out in front of her to grab the back of his shirt. She could do this. Sam was faster than Todd, for all he was designed to be her predator, she was faster than him. Her fingers brushed his shirt, pressed against the skin of his back– but before she could dig her fingers in and pull them both to a stop, to throw her arms around him just like she had done at Zion, something in her leg snapped.

It went snap and all the tension in her leg disappeared and her leg started to scream in pain. She fell, turning just in time to hit her side instead of her face, and another scream, this time one of pain, was ripped from her throat. She saw stars when she hit the ground, and immediately pulled her leg up toward her chest as she gasped in breaths.

She had torn the muscle completely, and from her guess, it was practically shredded. She started to cry, trying to push herself back to her feet. She looked out and saw him as he reached the other door, and in the most desperate and broken voice, she screamed after him.

“Don’t leave me!! Please, Todd!” Her voice cracked at the end of his name, and in another breathless cry, she pleaded with him, “Take me with you!”

She knew already, he wouldn’t give her the answer she wanted, if he answered at all. He wouldn’t come back for her. He wouldn’t even kill her. But she knew something he didn’t, what this would mean.

Sam was going to be Todd’s curse.​
 
He felt the scream. A wave of heat came with it, bearing the scent of blood – her blood. He clamped down on his tongue this time as a silent expression of his self-loathing when he felt the hunger leap up. She couldn’t see it – or she wanted it.

He felt the heat close in like a roll of thunder, focused entirely on running. She was behind him, cutting the distance. She was much faster than he’d given her credit for, and there was a second when his teeth were set on edge as though ready to react, to respond, to fight off whatever sign of affection she wished to give him as her hand brushed the back of his shirt, sending a shudder through his body –

And he heard the long-since familiar snap of bone, followed by a shriek of pain.

His heart wanted him to turn back. His too-soft, almost-human heart broke at those sounds, the same heart that had melted when she asked him to bed, had frozen and shriveled when she pushed him to the literal edge. His trail would be lined with big, dark spots on the concrete floor, as if it had rained. His heart wanted him to turn back.

But his head knew better. His head knew better than to look back at her, broken as she was in mind and body both now, and trust himself to be human for her. He couldn’t love her, not more than the hunger did. And she had a hunger of her own, now. Now she was chasing, and now that he’d refused the predator, his mind turned to its prey instincts, and those instincts said to run.

And, for the first time in a long time, he let his animal win. He ran.
 

Bismark, North Dakota
Six Months Later


Mercy Robbins had been missing for two weeks. She hadn’t been with the Bismark’s branch of Slate for very long, but she had quickly become a favorite of both Ame and Smokey. She’d been like the little sister both women had wished they’d had. They had spent most of her time with Slate hands-on in her training, assisting the young meta who had no control over her powers in trying to channel them. Her ability to completely restructure her own bone structure had been fascinating, and between the two of them, they were able to provide her with enough instruction for her to control it with a modicum amount of success.

They were going to send her to Malachite out in Philly to be taught by someone who also rearranged their entire body. They had already gotten the clearance from Obsidian himself to send her their way. She was going to go spend a few months there and then come back to help run the Bismark location. That was why when Mercy disappeared, Ame and Smokey had immediately started looking in all her usual locations. They hadn’t been worried at first. Sometimes she would go off on her own and then turn back up.

That hadn’t been the case here.

No, Mercy had not turned back up, leaving Ame and Smokey to search for her frantically. They had called Malachite several times, to no avail. She wasn’t in Philly, and she wasn’t in Bismark, and she wasn’t anywhere.

Not, that was, until they found her clothes in a warehouse out on Willow Road off the Missouri River. There was no body, no nothing, just blood and a set of torn clothes. Ame had held Smokey while she had cried, the two of them standing in the warehouse at nearly three in the morning after one of their subordinates found it. There was nothing they could do. The amount of blood, the amount of gore, there was no way she was alive.

Of course, after the sorrow came the anger, and both of the women came away from it ready for war. Tracking him down had been hard. It had taken another two weeks to find him, but thanks to another similar murder on the hiking trail off 94, they had pinned down where he was when he headed out to Washburn. The warehouse they predicted he’d use was hard to find, dilapidated, and just like the one he’d used in Bismark.

Then, they just had to wait.​
 
Even as a partial meal, the girl hadn’t been enough. He’d gotten more organs from her – she wasn’t a big girl, which was part of the problem. Liver and heart first, as usual. Then kidneys. Then a handful of other small pieces that could be eaten quickly before his instincts gave him the warning.

It was better than usual, but it wasn’t enough. Even taking her limbs with him wasn’t enough. He’d wanted to push to three weeks or a month this time. He knew the next meal would be even smaller, but if he was hungry enough, maybe he’d get through it fast.

But it wasn’t enough, and his bones ached, and he needed to get out of Bismark.

He’d had to hotwire the Malibu when he left Superior – the keys had been left behind in the warehouse, with his coat and other implements. He’d picked up a cheap kitchen knife and a hand sharpener to do the job his former butcher’s knife and later combat knife had done. It’d be easier to replace if he had to drop it and go. The same with cars, really. He’d driven the Malibu an hour back through Duluth and into the Hermantown suburb before hotwiring a Camry and leaving his faithful little sedan behind. It’d done him well, but he couldn’t risk her following that, this time. There was no more taking risks.

He’d hunted the first two times, and then for the first time since Liz, he’d scavenged. There were a lot of victims in the big cities he passed through, and there were plenty of loosely closed hospital morgues. He went from being a full-time predator to feeding on the long or soon to be dead– victims of muggings, accidents, circumstances, medical issues. It wasn’t easy, but it’d thrown her off, for a while.

Not for long, but for long enough for him to get his head start back. Long enough to keep it, more or less, for the last six months.

Mercy had been a scavenging. A fresh one, too. The name itself made his bones feel damp, and he remembered her face, miraculously intact. She’d been the only body still edible in the apparent remains of a gang shootout; the rest were too full of metal and gunpowder to be palatable, even in his condition. He needed intact organs for their nutrients. He’d gotten through most of her abdominal cavity before the curling cinnamon scent of Sam wafted through the warehouse and he’d slipped out the back.

After Mercy, two weeks had passed without incident. He was pretty sure she’d assumed he’d just moved on right after that, which is what he’d wanted her to think. It’d bought him time, and the chance to backtrack or pick a new direction. But Mercy hadn’t kept him satisfied for very long. He’d gotten out of town after Mercy, but he hadn’t gone far. He’d hoped to throw Sam off. He’d gotten past the heart and into the liver when he caught her scent. Somehow, she’d found him faster, and he’d run. In the forest, he was at an advantage, and he’d stayed hidden until morning. Then he’d gone back to Bismark, and in the intervening weeks had decided a fresh kill would be a waste of time out in the open.

So tonight he’d raided the state Forensic Examiner’s office. It was the freshest body – a few days, maybe. Male, about the same size as the hiker. Decomposition was in progress, he could smell it – but taste and sanitation were the farthest things from his mind right now. It wasn’t like it could make him nauseous, or even sick. And it wasn’t like he’d be eating the whole thing.

He put the Impala he’d borrowed for today’s purposes in park. Tomorrow after he slept, he’d need a new car. But tonight the Impala was doing the job. He got out, and then… paused. There was something in the air outside the abandoned warehouse. The wind was swirling it around lazily, and he looked into the darkness to try to find a source.

He didn’t panic, because it wasn’t cinnamon. What it was was – two scents, two distinct base scents that every person carried; milk, or maybe soap, for the one, and something earthy and grasslike for the other. There were surface scents, too – currants, jasmine, cedar, sandalwood, musk. But those were all jumbled. The two base scents were definitely recent, and distinct individuals.

He kept one hand on the door, his mind racing. He could go. In fact, he should go. There were other empty warehouses; this was just the one on the way out of Bismark. Or he could find a cave or trail, but after last time, that wasn’t exactly appealing to him.

He just had to hope they were gone, then. Even though his predator itched for a potentially easy kill from a pair of humans wandering too close, and his prey warned him that this was dangerous and far too much of a risk, he sighed and closed the door. He had to eat before he moved on.

He pulled the corpse, still in the black body bag, out of the trunk, and hefted it over one shoulder. He took the kitchen knife from the floor next to it, then locked up the car and headed into the warehouse. No distraction could pull him away from basic survival needs, no matter what his instincts were saying. And if it was a pair of nosy or otherwise hormonal humans – he ignored the part of his brain that kept trying to indicate these were either furious, or deeply terrified people – then he’d take care of them. It wouldn’t take much. And maybe he’d even have time to take the necessary parts out of them before Sam came running toward the commotion.
 

The rafters weren’t a comfortable place to wait. They had to stay absolutely still in order to not alert the man they had been tracking. Absolute silence, absolute patience. Luckily, Ame and Smokey’s rage was strong enough to keep them from moving, from twitching, from doing anything other than breathing. They simply watched, watched the two doors, until finally, one of them opened.

When the door opened, they hadn’t been sure what they were expecting. An ex-marine, maybe, based on the crime scene from the meeting gone wrong that Mercy was supposed to be leading. So much gunfire, and everyone was taken down so efficiently, of course, this had to be an ex-military guy.

But now, as he walked in, they had to reevaluate what they had thought about the whole incident. Because this was a twenty-something, rail-thin young man. He had a body bag thrown over his shoulder, which was impressive, but it was still practically a child. Something else had gone wrong at the meetup then, something unrelated, and he had taken Mercy like a scavenger would take a dead body on the side of the road.

Ame swallowed hard and looked up to Smokey, who was watching intently. The dark-haired man laid the body bag out on the floor, right in the middle of the most open section of the room. They had gone through and blocked off most of the warehouse via debris and crates. The only real paths were to both the exits, narrow paths that could be easily blocked off.

They watched for a minute, making sure he was absorbed in his task before they did anything. They watched as he removed the body and laid it out, as he “cut” the hands and feet off the body. Well, it was more like sawing the skin and tendons away and then ripping the appendages off at the bone. He put those back in the bag. They watched, puzzled, as he worked. When he cut open the inside of the body, they were still confused as to what was happening.

He pulled out the intestines and tossed them to the side. The two women looked at each other and blinked in surprise. It wasn’t until he bit into the liver that Ame drew in a sharp breath.

With that, Smokey moved. She grabbed Ame and blinked. They disappeared from the rafters in a flash of grey smoke and reappeared down by one of the exits. She blinked again and she was in front of the other entrance, effectively blocking him in. It was absolutely silent, but that didn’t matter when it let off a cloud of grey smoke that was visible in the dying light from outside and the barely lit lights above them.

Ame crossed her arms and watched with building anger as she leaned against the nearest crate. She raised a hand and the light above them crackled and a line of electricity shot from the bulb, shattering it. It traveled in an arc straight down to her hand, then crackled around and through her body. She passed the bolt back and forth between her hands like they were Tesla coils.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here? Wanna tell us what the fuck you’re doing here, pretty boy?”​
 
He froze when he heard the breath. He raised his head, eyes trained on the door. The benefit of a body already in rigor mortis was that there wasn’t fresh blood to distract his senses. He could smell the decay on it, of course; and the meat was much tougher than a fresh kill. But part of the reason for his switch to older bodies was the fact that his senses stayed open for the eating process.

No more sounds came, but he noticed the strength of the scents. One grew stronger than the other – currents, musk, jasmine, wood. The one that had a baseline of milk or soap. He looked up, blue eyes catching the dim light of the warehouse as he studied the rafters. Nothing. He slowly set the liver down –

And jumped to his feet at the sound of shattering glass. The reflective blue eyes locked on the woman, and for just a second, he saw a mane of red hair that wasn’t actually there. He felt his heart slow down, felt himself calm down. It wasn’t her. Whoever this was, she wasn’t her.

His posture lost the predatory tension. He looked down at his blood hands, and wiped his hands on the front of his shirt. When they were clean enough, he wiped his face on one sleeve. Maybe he’d been pretty, once. But now he was pale, shades paler than he’d even been in Billings. He had a perpetual five o’clock shadow that did very little to hide all the angles of his face. His eyes were hollow, but bright and alive as they followed the arc of the purple light between the stranger’s hands.

Another meta. That was just his luck. Except – this was the other one. This was the one with the grassy base scent. The other one was around, somewhere. He kept his ears peeled. His eyes, however, stayed on the first interloper.

“Sorry, miss,” he said, quietly. His shoulders had a slight roll, his head was a little lowered. His eyes never quite met hers. His hands slid into his pockets. He got the sense she wasn’t actually asking why he was here, given what she must’ve seen already. “I didn’t realize this place wasn’t abandoned. I can get out of your way. Sorry for the mess.”

He didn’t move to walk away just yet. He smelled the anger burning in the air, and knew there was more to this than just trespassing on the wrong place at the wrong time. But if he handled this quietly, rationally, maybe he could at least go in peace.
 

“‘Sorry, miss’ ain’t gonna cut it, sugar.” A voice with a thick southern accent rang out. Smokey examined her nails by the other exit, a soft smile on her face. Her mane of tight curls shifted as she shook her head, her dark eyes landing on the man’s face. Her bangs blocked some of her eyes from view, making her already dark eyes look pitch black.

“You see, darling, you apparently ate a friend of ours. A really good friend. And we want to have a talk with you.” Ame let the arc of electricity shoot from her hand outward into a bigger arc before drawing it back in. Playing with it, putting on a show, demonstrating just how fast she could kill him. Smokey on the other hand pulled a gun from a thigh holster beneath her oversized button-down.

“See, sugar, we want to know whatcha’ are. We want to know why you eat people.” Smokey checked the gun, flipping the safety off with an audible click. She would fire first, should the man try anything against them. Shooting out a kneecap would suck, but it would keep him alive before they had to resort to Ame frying him.

“Are you a freak cannibal, or are you a freak meta? I’ve never heard of a cannibal eating people raw before.” Ame fluffed up her two-toned hair as she spoke, letting the electricity arc around and through her face as she did so, until she was electrified inside and out, glowing like some kind of deadly fish waiting for its prey.

The two women strolled down their respective aisles, closing in on the choke points they had set up. They stood at them, ready to move, ready to react, should he make them. Really, if he was a meta, they’d rather not kill him. Strange though he was, he hadn’t actually killed Mercy, even if he had eaten her corpse. He hadn’t done anything inherently wrong. And their orders about when they found metas, well, it definitely wasn’t to kill them.

If this meta was a predator, a real predator, as it was starting to look like he might be, then Obsidian was going to want to know about him. If this was more than just some freaky cannibal, their boss would want to know. He would want to have him.​
 
There she was. Todd looked over his shoulder at the other one, shifted his weight to turn a little so he could have both of them in his periphery at once. He listened to them pass the conversation back and forth. He read their actions for what they were – warnings, not threats. They saw him as dangerous. That would’ve been funny, if he hadn’t already known that he very much so was.

Well, he’d eaten from two people in Bismark. The hiker, and the girl. And these two didn’t seem like they’d be much invested in a hiker.

“Mercy.”

He said the name solemnly, then sighed and plopped down on the ground, cross-legged, like a kindergartner. He wasn’t afraid of either of them, and he was showing them they had no reason to be afraid of him, either. Or at least worried about his potential actions.

“Respectfully, I – don’t really think being a metahuman and being a cannibal are mutually exclusive. ‘Human’ is in the name.” He swallowed, then forced himself to relax the rest of the way, taking his hands from his pockets to rest them on his knees. “But I’m not normal, no, and if I had a choice, I wouldn’t eat – like this. I’m what’s called a specialist predator, or a carnivorous specialist. A good example’s the Canadian lynx, which predates almost exclusively on the snowshoe hare. I could go into detail about how the two animals keep themselves in natural balance due to their mutual reliance but– I’m guessing you don’t want to hear about that.”

He didn’t suggest bringing up his theories about his own ecological significance, either. He didn’t really want to talk about it, and he had a feeling if they didn’t want to hear about lynxes, they might want to hear about him, whatever he was.

“Due to– well, I’ll call it a recent territory shift, I’ve had to change some of my habits. I’m still getting used to some of the boundaries when it comes to scavenging. It’s not enough, I know. But I am sorry. I’m leaving tonight, if that helps, after I’m done here. I won’t be a problem for you anymore.”
 

Ame and Smokey shared a look. The kid had sat down and wasn’t even looking at them. He seemed almost defeated. But, he gave them an honest answer, or at least what they thought was an honest answer. Ame gave Smokey a look, her brow raised, then nodded toward him. Smokey shook her head quickly. If they asked him what he meant they’d be there all night, and Smokey and Ame didn’t want to spend the whole night in a freezing cold warehouse.

Smokey turned over what he’d said in her head. She could tell Ame was doing the same, but she was the first to speak. “Tell me then, darlin’, do you do other things? If you’re some perfect predator, you got what? Sharp teeth and nails? Strength and speed? Transform into a monster? Whatcha’ got going on under the hood, baby?”

Smokey knelt down at her post, bringing herself into a resting position. She holstered her gun, very slowly, then raised both her hands to indicate she wasn’t going to attack him. Ame sighed in response and threw the arcs of electricity up and into the air. They sparked out in wide arcs, grounding themselves back into the exposed electrical wiring around them. It would be easy enough to pull it back if she needed it.

Ame sat down and threw one leg over the other, keeping them both outstretched. She was in a far more vulnerable position than Smokey, who seemed inclined to remain ready to move. Ame thought for a second and then gestured to the body. “Eat. We aren’t going to stop you. No point in doing that while you look like you’re starving to death, man.”

Smokey nodded her agreement to this. After all, it wasn’t anything too disturbing. Their boss did something similar. He didn’t eat people, but he did eat people. And that was enough for them to be chill about what was going on. Was it gross? Yes. Was it the end of the world horrifying? No.​
 
Both of his visitors – or hosts, maybe – followed his lead and sat down. He glanced between them again, then reached for his knife instead of picking up the partially chewed liver. He started to worry away at the nearer elbow while he started at answering the questions.

“Well, heightened senses. A good nose – I knew you two had been around, but not that you were hear. Not quite as good ears, but better than average. While I’m consistently faster than a normal person, but I work best in short bursts. Designed for ambushing. Stronger, yeah.” He set his hands at the elbow, then ripped, dislocating the joint and using the knife to cut through the rest of the meat to make his point. Then he turned to the one with the strong Southern accent. “Plus, I can do this.”

He held up the piece of arm where they could see it, then put the end where the two bones met in his mouth, and crunched down. The bone gave with even less resistance than usual, post-mortem. He did have to tear a little at the stale meat, but it gave way.

While he chewed, he realized that he wasn’t actually uncomfortable with them seeing this. Would it be worse if he’d killed this man? Probably. But they were being very accepting of this, without the hints of obsession he’d seen in Sam’s eyes. He swallowed before he spoke again.

“Anyway, nothing sharper than normal, no. I don’t know what else is going on ‘under the hood’, either. I’m not even sure where this much food goes, if I’m being honest. It uh– doesn’t help that I haven’t had a full meal in a while.”

He tapped the forearm on his palm as he thought about that. He hadn’t eaten a complete person since – Moab? No, after that. Milwaukee. After that? Maybe once or twice. But not regularly. Not often enough. He knew. If he slowed down too much, she’d find him.

But with other people here, maybe he could take the risk. A little more of the tension died in his shoulders, in his neck. Yes, these women were dangerous. But so was he. And they weren’t invested in what he was doing because it was him doing it.

He took another bite of the stranger’s arm, and waited for more questions.
 

Smokey and Ame watched in rapt fascination as the young man cracked through the bones with his teeth. Now that, that was impressive. Smokey and Ame exchanged glances again and Ame made the universal sign for a phone, holding it up to her ear. Smokey nodded and pulled a cell phone from her other pocket, pushing the oversized shirt aside and revealing the sports bra and leggings she wore underneath. She started scrolling through her contacts while Ame took over the conversation.

“Why the change in eating habits recently? You said it's a territorial thing? Does that mean there’s more like you and one muscled you out of your usual area? Or… are you being hunted?” Ame hadn’t missed the way the man seemed to relax, the tension with which he’d held himself disappearing. Something was up, and having the safety of Ame and Smokey likely meant that something else was after him. A competitor, based on the way he spoke about himself with animal terms. Or maybe something worse.

What made prey out of the thing that made humans prey?

Nothing good.

On the other side of the room, Smokey’s phone began to ring. It rang twice before the other end of the line picked up. A slow, soft voice answered, with just a hint of a lilt, and just slightly lower than you would have expected from a man who looked like Obsidian. “Yes?”

“Sir. We found something. A meta. Eats people. A predator.”

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line, and then a soft but happy sounding sigh. “Can you keep him there? Until I can fly out in the morning?”

“Doable, I think. Doesn’t seem to want any trouble, sir.”

“I’ll be on the first flight out.”

The other end of the line beeped as it went dead, and Smokey tucked the phone back in her pocket, nodding to Ame. Ame nodded back but didn’t take her eyes off their new cannibal friend. Then, she smiled, the first genuine smile of the night. “What’s your name, kid? I’m Amethyst. She’s Smokey Quartz.”​
 
“God, I hope there aren’t more of me.” He laughed a little, a laugh that came from somewhere around his heart. Real, lightweight and unburdened by whatever else sat on his shoulders. He turned the arm over in his hands and shook his head. “No. Someone – like us, I guess. Meta. I guess I said territory. What I meant was hunting patterns. Settling down in one place for too long…”

He sighed again, remembering Arlo. He’d almost forgotten about Arlo. Surprising, what another dangerous person could do. What Sam had shown him, what she had done.

“It’s not really in the cards for me,” he finished, and took another bite. The phone was ringing. He’d told them his hearing was above average, but not how good. It shouldn’t be good enough to hear the other end of a phone conversation.

It was, in fact, good enough for that. He placed their boss’s voice in his memory bank for later, but with the tension of being chased fading, some old mental habits were quickly starting to re-form. He needed information about these people. If they were local, and their boss had to fly out here, then they were part of a larger organization. They were both metas, he assumed. They were interested in finding out he was a meta. Their boss might want a metahuman predator.

Pieces that didn’t quite fit, but didn’t exactly paint a good picture.

“Nick,” he said, when Amethyst asked his name. He saw the earnestness in her smile, and couldn’t bring himself to lie to her completely, even if they were giving him pseudonyms. They were far enough from Redding, California for him to be comfortable giving his old name until he had a better idea of who they were. “Nick Hart. I’m not sure if I can stay long enough to meet your boss. I, um… I’m not sure when my friend might catch up with me again. It’s best if I move on when we’re done here. I really don’t want the two of you in trouble because of me.”

And he meant it. They were dangerous, but the memory of the wave of heat Sam had given off when she chased after him climbed up his spine with a slight shiver. He’d been lucky. And after that, he’d been smart. Luck didn’t last forever, and it wasn’t smart to stay here. Especially if it risked putting more people in the line of fire. Literal or metaphorical.
 
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