“Why don’t you go work off some of that energy before it starts, then? I want to spend a night pretending I’m some rich asshole who could afford this place back when the world wasn’t shit.”
He laughed. “Right. You do that. I’m going to explore.”
“Look what I found.”Phoenix’s voice was full of almost boyish excitement as I came out of the bathroom. The solar here was even better than it was back at the hotel—the water was actually a little warm. They probably had an entire filtration system stored under the island. The brochures had mentioned that—self-sustaining houses.
He sounded so thrilled that I half wondered if he’d found a stash of weapons.
Instead, there was something white and sun-bleached in his hand.
“I opened the gates and looked in. It’s mostly just plants, but look at this.”
I knew what it was. My fingers were shaking when I stepped forward and took it from his outstretched hand. Sun-bleached bones, though if I looked close enough I could see years of red staining along the little cracks.
Of course, the tiger was dead.
No one had been here to feed it, and humans had fucked it up like they fucked everything up—they’d left it caged when it was supposed to be wild.
They’d left it to die when the rain fell.
Fuck.
It was dead. As dead as the world around us—as dead as hope.
As dead as…
“We were never going to see it, were we, Bishop?” Heat stung at my eyes, and I forced the tears back.
I couldn’t. Not now. Not when…
“Who the fuck is Bishop?”
Fuck.
Fuck. No.I could give him everything—everything else.
I couldn’t give him this.
“Phoenix… please… don’t. Not this.”
Outside, the sound of thunder rumbled above us—I could feel it prickling along my skin, driving into my bones. The rain was going to be red, and everything inside me was screaming that I needed to run, run, run.
When I looked at Phoenix, I saw the opposite.
His eyes were lit up with one word.
Kill.
And I knew if I let him, if I gave him this, he might do just that. Kill my soul, devour what was left of me.
I couldn’t do it.
I shoved past him, the skull in my hand falling from numb fingers. Something in my chest split wide when it cracked on the ground, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
The tigers were dead, and the real predator—the only kind that could ever survive—stalked toward me as the rain started to fall outside.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
