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I wondered if he’d ever heard anyone laugh before. Surely he had? Human emotions didn’t seem too foreign for him to understand, so he must’ve known joy too.
“Hiding is safer,” he said, mixing several recorded voices. “Papa can’t find us.”
“Parker is dead,” I assured him. “My friends killed him.”
At least, that’s what they’d told me. Chris, Charlie, and Phoenix had blown up the lab where they were apparently growing a bunch of Parker clones using some weird red crystal. The entire story sounded too freaky to believe, but I knew they wouldn’t lie to me about that. If they were sure every Parker clone was dead, then I believed them.
Ghost was quiet for so long that I started to wonder if he’d left.
“Ghost?” I put my arms out, feeling for him. “Are you still there?”
“That thing calls Parker its papa,” he said.
Finally, it dawned on me why he’d gone quiet. The guy might have tortured him, but he still saw Parker as his parent, and I’d just told him his only parent was dead. I clenched my fists on my thighs. “That asshole was never your father. It takes more than providing food and a roof to be a dad. He hurt you, Ghost. You shouldn’t feel bad for him.”
There was a brief pause before the first lines of a song came out of Ghost. “Love hurts.”
“Not like that,” I promised him, shaking my head. “It’s not supposed to hurt like that.”
He huffed loudly, and the leaves started moving again, almost like he was digging in them. He tossed another few twigs into the fire and seemed to pad around in circles before he stopped moving.
“Ghost?” I called, but there was no answer. Me and my big mouth had probably scared him off.
I sighed and scooted closer to the fire, stretching out my hands to warm them against it. Eventually, I was going to have to try to make my way home. Considering I was out in the middle of nowhere and had no idea where I was, let alone which direction home was in, though, I didn’t know where to start. Maybe if Ghost came back, he’d show me the way, but I doubted it since I seemed to have pissed him off.
Way to go, Axel. Can’t do anything right today, can I?
A twig snapped and there was a flurry of movement next to me. I gasped as thin, fleshy bands of invisible tentacles curled around my middle and yanked me against a hard, armor-plated chest. Claws curled around my shoulders and there was heavy, snarly breathing in my ear. Very distracting heavy, snarling breathing that sounded way too much like animalistic sex grunts that were starting to make my dick hard again.
Weird association, but okay. I chalked it up to desperately needing to get laid.
The world seemed to fall completely silent for a beat. All I could hear were Ghost’s sexy snarling breaths in my ear and the sound of my own blood pumping.
Then a giant blue cat monster leapt out of the brush nearby with a deafening roar, claws extended. Ghost unfurled himself from me and flung himself at the cat monster. I couldn’t see him, but I saw the impact, and I saw the deep gashes raked across the other monster’s chest.
Honor jumped off a small rise, wielding a cattle prod in one hand and a machete in the other. Ghost let out a terrifyingbellow as electricity raced down the cattle prod, but Honor stood his ground.
Oh no. Please no!
Before I knew what I was doing, I was on my feet, racing to put myself between Honor and Ghost. “Ghost, no!”
“Get out of the way, kid!” Honor shouted.
“Put down the cattle prod!” I demanded.
Honor scowled. “Don’t think so. That thing is dangerous and electricity is the only way to put it down, so unless you want to be fish food in the next two minutes, I suggest you get the hell out of the way!”
“He’s not dangerous!” I insisted. “He’s friendly!”
Before I could say more, Ghost curled more tentacles around me and yanked me away. “Mine!” he shouted in a borrowed voice. “Stay away! Axel is mine!”
“It’s an irqed!” shouted the cat monster.
An irqed? That couldn’t be true. Irqed were supposed to be incredibly violent, territorial, and especially monstrous. Ghost didn’t even want to hurt trapped rats. He’d wanted to be friends with them, for fuck’s sake. There was no way he was a violent monster like an irqed!
Honor froze, eyes widening. “Axel, did you feed this monster?”
“What?” I struggled against the invisible tentacles holding me tight. “What the hell’s that got to do with—”
