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Spill his blood.

I want to. My cock throbs in my pants at the thought of drenching myself in his insides. If Penelope were here with me, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself, because then I’d fuck her in the mess until she was screaming out my name.

But I can’t. I need to keep things clean and quiet. This is an appetizer, I remind myself, and Penelope is waiting in the motel room, and I don’t need to fuck her in blood to calm my own blood down.

I crawl off the woman, keeping my eyes on the man. Now that he’s more awake, I can tell he has the same snobby air that she did. These people feel wealthy, and I wonder what they’re doing here at the Mountain Thistle Motel. Surely they have nicer options if they want to fuck in secret.

“Ella?” the man mutters, stirring around, moving close to her dead body. “Why don’t you come over here?” His hand gropes over her. I watch him, my heart pounding.

Spill his blood. Cut his throat. Tear out his insides.

It’s not the wind talking to me now. It’s the shadows. They’re gathering in the corners, and I squeeze my jaw, and I wonder why it’s here of all fucking places that the gods are talking to me again after decades of silence.

The man nuzzles up against the woman, groping at her breasts. He chuckles to himself, grinds against her. “C’mon,” he murmurs. “Let me have it one more time.”

Something in me is hot with the anticipation of what will happen when he discovers his lover isn’t breathing. But I also hate that part of me. I hate that kind of cruelty because it makes me into the monster that Mary would have despised.

Would Penelope despise it, too, even with her Hunter family?

It doesn’t matter. The man grunts against the body of his lover, and I act quick as a snake, grabbing his head with both hands and wrenching it as hard as I can. Too hard. The spine severs completely, and bone juts up through the skin with a spray of blood that splatters across the woman’s face. I jerk back, gasping with pleasure at the sight of my handiwork, the two corpses I left behind, their bodies akimbo beneath the blanket.

I slide off the bed, dragging down my zipper and pulling out my erection. I stroke myself, staring at them, but it doesn’t feel like anything. It doesn’t slake my lust.

I want to be inside Penelope, not thrusting into my hand.

I stumble backward into the bathroom. Flip the light on. The sight of myself in the mirror is a shock; I look wild and manic, my hair damp from the melted snow. I push my hands through it, slicking it back, then remember the blood. There wasn’t much, just a few drops on my right wrist and arm, and I wash that off. DNA evidence isn’t something a Hunter has to worry about, but I don’t want Penelope to know what I did. I’m afraid she won’t fuck me if she does.

And god, I need to fuck her. Now.

I check myself in the mirror again. I put my cock away, its heaviness uncomfortable in my pants. Turn off the light. Go back out into the room.

They’re still dead. The curtain moved a little at some point, letting in a triangle of white light that falls across the woman’s face, her eyes open and unseeing, her lips speckled with her lover’s blood.

It wasn’t enough, but it’ll do.

What I need now is Penelope.

17

PENELOPE

I’m losing my fucking mind. Why did I tell Victor about hearing the gods in that hurricane when I was a kid? I’ve never told anyone that in my entire life, not even Callie, and she has, on more than one occasion, let me vent about our upbringing even if she didn’t have anything to contribute. After all, our family’s religion was designed for her, not me.

And yet it just… spilled out of me. The thought had been niggling at me all day, probably due to this sudden, out-of-nowhere storm. I even looked it up on my phone, and sure enough, the weather report was calling it a freak weather event, that the conditions had formed so suddenly that the meteorologists had hardly been aware it was happening.

I don’t believe in the gods. I don’t want to believe in the gods, anyway. But they’re looking more and more real when a sudden snowstorm has me stranded in the middle of the mountains with a Hunter that I can’t stop thinking about.

I flop over onto my back and blink up at the ceiling. It’s the middle of the night now, and everything’s quiet and still except for that rattling heater. Victor let me have the bed, told me he didn’t need to sleep. I was tired enough that I fell asleep easily, my thoughts a cottony whirlwind of fucking him earlier, of hearing whispery voices in the wind, of thinking about Adrian waiting for me in Clifwell. The snow didn’t make it that far down the mountain, according to the weather reports. It was localized up here⁠—

Right where Victor and I were driving together. Right where it could strand us in this shitty, cheap motel.

I roll onto my side, shifting around, trying to get comfortable. I need sleep. Whether the gods stranded us here or not, Victor and I will be going our separate ways tomorrow. The gods, if they’re real, don’t control my life. I’m not a fucking Hunter.

The heater kicks off, plunging the room into true silence. I lie there in the dark, listening for the sound of Victor’s breath, a rustle of clothes or a squeak of plastic as he shifts around in the chair by the window. Nothing.

“Victor?” I sit up, blinking out at the room. It’s brighter than you might think, the floodlights outside reflecting off the snow and streaming that pure, Arctic light in around the curtains. The chair by the window is empty. I look over at the bathroom; the door’s open, the light off.

He’s not here.