There’s no reason why my hunger should put them in more pain than necessary.
My claws rake through the furry pelt. My jaws snap around the muscles inside and wrench free globs of meat.
The bloody flavor saturates my mouth with a strange swell of satisfaction mingled with shame.
Maybe not quite as much shame as has gripped me before, though.
Peri materializes while I’m crunching down the bones. I freeze for a second, but as she promised, there’s no anguishor consternation in her expression or the emotions that waft through our bond. She has an unusually thoughtful air.
“You used your killing gaze on the rabbit,” she says. “It was already dead before you jumped on it.”
I lick the last droplets of blood from my jaws and straighten up into my human-like form, willing the green contacts to appear alongside my clothes so my natural eyes are covered. “I always have, once I figured out that I could. It makes the process easier for both me and the prey.”
Peri nods. “You don’t like them to suffer any more than they have to.”
“Of course not.”
She smiles at me, so bright my heart skips a beat. “You see—there’s nothing cruel about you.”
I don’t know how to answer that statement.
As Peri’s gaze slides back toward the trailers, a shiver of anxiety travels into me from her.
I frown. From the timing, I don’t think that emotion had anything to do with my hunt. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, it’s nothing?—”
Peri cuts herself off and shakes her head, momentarily abashed. “I shouldn’t say that. It isn’t nothing. It isn’t good for me to pretend I’m only happy and calm when I’m not.”
She seems to gird herself. “I’m nervous about what we’re going to do today. We need to bash up a bunch of things that belong to mortals… What if it doesn’t bring Viscera to us after all? If it does bring her, what are we going to do with her? Just kill her?”
The uncertainty in her voice makes my gut clench, but I want to be honest with her too. “That might be the kindest thing we can do for everyone involved.”
“I know. I guess that’s partly why I wanted to come with you. To see how killing can be for a good reason too. But I’m not sure it stopped me from being nervous.”
She rubs her temple and then shoots me a softer smile. “But that’s okay, right? It’s normal to be nervous. That doesn’t mean the plan is wrong. We have to dosomething. I don’t want to let her keep wrecking the city either.”
I tuck my arm around her shoulders for whatever comfort that’ll give her, as hard as it still is for me to comprehend that I can comfort anyone. “That’s why we’re doing it. It’s a very smart plan. How we deal with her… A lot of that is her decision. She messed up other people’s lives. She can’t really complain that we’re not allowed to do the same in return to stop her.”
Peri perks up. “That’s a good point! She made the first choice, not us.”
She pauses before cocking her head at me. “I was wondering something, though.”
Her tone is light enough that I raise an eyebrow. “What’s that?”
“The power you can send from your eyes—and the poison from your skin—does ithaveto be strong enough to kill?”
I knit my brow. “That’s what it’s supposed to do.”
“But do you think there’s a way to rein it in so that you only knock the target unconscious or similar? Pull your punch a bit? Like… a lot of poisons are only deadly if the dose is big enough. Less and it simply slows you down or makes you sick.”
The question stirs up all kinds of feelings I don’t know what to make of: denial and doubt with a gleaming thread of hope winding through them. “That’s true. I don’t know if it’d work that way for me. I’ve never tried.”
Peri presses a kiss to my jaw. “Do you want to? I can do my best to help—to balance out the aggressive impulses that drive your instincts.”
I can tell she’d be fine with me refusing… but the hope expands as I consider the possibility. “All right. Let’s see what happens.”
How well can I not-quite-kill something?
