Page 19

“However, I’ll let you stay in my house if you promise to behave.”

Her eyes widen. “Your house?”

She sounds surprised, but honestly I am, too. I don’t let humans in my home. However, I can’t put her back in the cabin. The cabin is for Marys, and that’s not what she is. Because a Mary wouldn’t know about the old Hunter initiation ritual. A Mary certainly would never have recited the prayer from memory.

I drop my eyes down to Penelope’s hand, the one clutching the knife to her chest. I went through the First Death myself, many years ago, although it was my father who performed it, as was the tradition in my family—fathers initiate their sons, mothers initiate their daughters. I hadn’t thought about it in decades, not until I heard the words of the prayer in Penelope’s soft, musical voice. She pronounced them perfectly, that old raspy language of the gods. For a half second, it brought everything back: the sharp burning pain of the wound in my neck, the heat of my blood gushing over my chest, my father’s hand on my shoulder as he said the prayer that brought me into manhood and Hunterdom both. You must die, my father said as everything was fading, to be reborn.

I hadn’t met Mary yet. There was nothing, at that moment, that would make me want to stay in the human world, and all I could think about as I passed into the darkness was the promise of my first kill, which would be mine to take after I revived.

A gift from the gods I disavowed eight years later.

The wind gusts, dragging me back into the present. Penelope is still staring at me, still clutching her knife.

“What’ll you do if I refuse to stay?” she asks.

It takes me a moment to register what she’s saying.

“Refuse what?” I snap. “A warm bed and a hot meal? Not dying?”

She glares at me, trying to mask her confusion. I sense it, though. She doesn’t understand why I’m keeping her alive, and the truth is, I don’t fully understand it, either. The need to show her my face, to slide her from victim to not-victim, came over me as powerfully as my need to kill does. It almost felt like someone else was guiding my hand.

“Won’t kill a Hunter’s daughter,” I snap. It’s as good an explanation as any, even to myself. “Not even a human one. You can stay in my house until I decide what to do with you.”

“If you won’t kill me,” she counters, “what else is there for you to do with me?”

Now, it’s my turn to glare at her. I don’t know, that’s my answer. Fucking her and then showing her my face went against every instinct in my night-black soul. I’m sure something has to come next, but I don’t know what it is.

The wind gusts again, and Penelope tries not to let me see her shivering. I don’t particularly like this wind. It feels heavy, like there’s something traveling on it. Something ancient, something evil. Something I worshipped as a boy but haven’t done since the day it took the first Mary from me.

“We’ll talk about this inside.” I grab her by the arm and pull her with me through the trees, toward the footpath that will lead back to the Gas and Go and my house behind it. Penelope doesn’t fight me at all. Part of me still hopes she’ll swing that knife and plunge it into my belly, especially with that dark presence on the wind, mocking me. Reminding me of all that I lost.

“What’s your name?” Penelope asks suddenly. Her voice has pitched low again, whiskey-rough. I try not to think about her screams when she came.

I look over at her.

“If you’re going to keep my prisoner,” she says, “I’d like to know. I’m Penelope, by the way.”

“I figured. I saw it on the knife.” I fix my gaze on the path ahead, where I can just make out the floodlights gleaming through the trees, shining the way home. “Victor’s my true name.”

I’m not sure why I told her that, why I didn’t give her one of my many false names. I suppose it’s the same reason I didn’t kill her, why I took off my mask in front of her.

“Well, Victor, are you really going to feed me?”

I sigh. “If you don’t want to eat, you don’t have to.” We’re almost to the house, thank god. I’m tired of being out in the woods. “But I’m hungry.”

She doesn’t say anything. I don’t let her go, even if she isn’t fighting me. I don’t think about how I like the surprising firmness of her arm’s muscles beneath my grip.

We step out of the tree line, right into the little courtyard between my house and the Gas and Go, which I shut down after I locked Penelope in the cabin. The signs are dark, the door chained up. I can feel Penelope taking it in: the store, then the long metal building jutting out behind it.

“That’s your house?” she says. “It looks like a storage unit.”

I don’t say anything to that. She’s not wrong. I march her up to the door, past the pile of split logs. The axe, of course, is in the storage shed. Don’t want it rusting.

We go inside, and I finally let her go, although I keep my senses up, in case she tries anything. It doesn’t seem like she’s going to, though. All I feel from her is a confusing blend of emotions as she takes in my home. It feels weird, having a human in here. Having anyone in here, truth be told.

My home is simple, I know that. One big room, really, although I hung curtains from the ceiling to divide my bed from the rest of the space. The bathroom is the only thing with walls, and those are flimsy things I put up myself. Furniture’s old and worn, most of it junk I picked up at the dump down at the base of the mountain. A new TV on the wall—that’s probably the most modern thing.

I never think much about how I live. It serves my needs, and I spend most of my time over in the Gas and Go’s back room anyway, watching for Marys. But having a woman in here, a woman I’ve fucked, leaves me agitated. It’s like I’m seeing the sad state of everything through her eyes.