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The thought comes to me out of nowhere. Not just the thought but the image of it: my skin drenched in blood as I thrust into her, smearing her breasts with crimson, making her lick it off my fingers⁠—

I squeeze my eyes shut and breathe out. Focus. I can’t show up in our room covered in blood. I need to be quick, and clean, and methodical. I’m taking care of an urge, that’s all. That way, I’ll be able to focus on the kill that matters.

I peel away from the door and move down the walkway, keeping my steps as light as I did when I was inside. There aren’t many people at the motel; when I put out my senses, I count five of them. One is the clerk at the front desk, which would be an astonishingly stupid choice. One is Penelope. That leaves three options. Two men. One woman.

A woman. My skin feels hot and itchy. That’s what I wanted when I captured Penelope. I needed to kill a Mary.

The thought tugs at me, but it feels sour, too. Almost like it’s… unfair to Penelope, somehow.

You’re not going to fuck her, I tell myself, moving quickly toward the presence. She’s three buildings over, and it feels like there might be a man with her, too, although maybe he’s just in the next room over. I can’t decide if I hope that’s the case or not. It would be easier if she were alone, but my blood is pounding. Two deaths would be a sweet thing right now. Buy me more time to plan my kill in Clifwell.

The presence is on the second floor, and I follow it up the steps, tracking the scent. The snow muffles everything, but I’ve got plenty of practice doing this, and it takes me no time at all to wind up in front of room 209, breathing through the walls.

The man is in there. They had been fucking. I can smell that, too, faintly, the scent of their desire, although they’re both sleeping now. I hear the quiet rhythm of their hearts beating just out of sync.

The wind picks up, blowing a glittering cloud of snow across the walkway.

And then I hear the voice again, soft and reedy and whistling. Get inside. Spill their blood.

“You are here,” I breathe out, watching the words condense on the air.

Get inside.

The urge to kill thickens inside me. Fine. It’s clear what the gods want me to do, and it’s not to ask questions. There are two ways to get in that hotel room. One is to knock and hope someone answers. With them as sound asleep as they are, I’ll need to knock loudly. The other is to break both of the locks on the door, which is much harder to do but somewhat quieter, if I do it correctly. It’s a trick I learned back in the ‘60s, following the highways across the country. A useful one, when you need it.

I squeeze the door handle, take a deep breath. The wind blows across the back of my neck, and I think of Mary smiling at me in the woods. And then I think of Penelope doing the same, and her face is clearer, her smile brighter.

I twist my wrist, sharp and sudden, using every ounce of my Hunter’s strength. There’s a terrible metallic scraping sound, and when I take my hand away, the knob and its card scanner hang crooked and loose.

The world is quiet around me. The inhabitants of the room are still asleep.

There’s still the safety lock, of course, and that will be louder. But with how empty the motel is, it should be okay.

I brace my shoulder against the door, breathe out, and then slam my way through. The lock pops out as the door swings open, revealing the inside of the room. It’s identical to mine, except there’s no Penelope inside. Instead, there are my two victims: a man and a woman entangled naked together under the bedsheets.

“Blake?” the woman mutters, the words slurred with sleep. She’s not a Mary, that much is clear. Her hair is blond and cut short, and even asleep she has the air of a rich woman. A snob. “E’rything okay? Being loud.” She rolls over, burying her face into the man’s neck. He doesn’t move, his sleep deep and certain.

I ease the door shut behind me, then quietly drag over the chair to lodge it in place, since without the locks it’ll hang open, letting in cold air. I’m lucky that they didn’t wake up. This way, I can take my time.

I look around the room, taking stock of the shadows. We can see in the dark, my kind, but I don’t see anything terribly interesting. A suitcase in the corner, hanging open. Clothes strewn about, including a flimsy negligee. A bottle of lube on the counter, a bouquet of roses left next to the table, the gesture forgotten.

I’ll kill the woman first. A man is less likely to scream, and this man is so dead asleep, perhaps he won’t wake up at all.

Spill their blood, the wind whispered, but blood is too messy. All I want right now is death. I ease onto the bed, the mattress creaking beneath my weight. The sound reminds me of Penelope, and the thought of her stirs my blood as much as reaching toward my victim does.

I wrap my hand around the woman’s mouth and roll her onto her back. The sound of her body waking up is riotously loud, but I’m ready for it. When her eyes fly open, there’s only a half second of confusion before the terror seeps in.

She tries to scream, but the sound is muffled by my palm. I straddle her, pinning her down the way I did Penelope, and I hate that it makes me hard. Feels unfaithful somehow, doing this to another woman even if the circumstances are completely different.

She thrashes against me, her panic rising. That’s the sweetness I was looking for, the sweetness I can’t—won’t—take from Penelope, same as I refused to take it from Mary. I breathe it in as she fights against me, the thump of her legs beneath the blanket louder than her panicked moans.

The man stirs a little.

There’s no need to drag this out. I dig my fingers into her cheeks and wrench her head to the side, sharp enough to snap her spine. I drop my face down to hers and breathe in her last, rattling breath.

Warmth floods through my body, a sensation that at once is and isn’t like lust. I lick my lips, like I can still taste the woman’s last breath on my skin. It wasn’t enough, that quick and easy kill.

I look at the man. He’s still asleep, more or less, although some half-waking part of him knows something’s wrong, because he mutters wordlessly in his sleep, like he’s having a nightmare.