“Well, I hate it.” I’m near the bed now, so I reach behind myself and grab a pillow, and then I throw it at his head.
My aim’s good—it beans him right on the nose. He roars, and then he speeds up, jogging after me. He manages to pin me against the wall only three feet away from the bed. The only thing I can see around his massive frame is the shattered end table I stole the chair leg from to defend myself against his insane brother.
His face is inches from mine when he says, “Whitney, you will sleep beside me, and you’ll be just fine.” His lips curl upward into a smile again. “I quite liked it last time.”
“You—you did?” The words barely emerge audibly. “I—” I swallow. “I really don’t think I’ll be able to sleep anyway.” I feel 110% awake right now. 120%.
His hands slide behind me so quickly that I barely realize what’s happening until he’s holding me under my knees and behind my back, and then he sets me gently on the bed. He shifts me over, and then he climbs onto the bed beside me. “I’ll keep you safe, little one. Now, sleep.”
I feel a push as he says it, and a wave of exhaustion rolls over me.
“You were using the bond to mask your needs, but I’m using it now to bring them to the fore. I can’t have you weak when we meet the government in a few hours.”
The last thing I see before I fall asleep is his watching face. My gorgeous, powerful, and somehow still gentle death lord. A small twinge of guilt strikes just as I fall asleep, knowing that my family will be waiting, ready to use me to incapacitate him very soon.
When I wake, I yawn and stretch. As soon as my eyes focus, it’s clear that he’s gone out. Xolotl’s squatting across from the bed, holding a drink carrier. “The woman at the coffee shop said these were their four most popular drinks.” He crosses the room and thrusts a bag toward me. “And these are their most popular breakfast foods.”
Starbucks.
He went out to get me Starbucks.
I manage to destroy two of the coffees—the real coffee; I hate the fluffy crap—and then I eat a muffin and a danish. That’s when I realize something. The sticker on the cup holder’s in Spanish. “Wait, where did you say you went to get this?”
Xolotl stands. “I think we should go.”
Only then do I realize the sun’s definitely already up. “We’re late.”
“I’m never late.” Xolotl smiles. “I don’t allow humans to dictate times to me. You reminded me of that.”
“What if they’ve left by now?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I can always draw them back to me now that I know the location of their military base, but it’s best to set our positions up properly from the start. I dictate the terms. Not them.”
Drawing them back will involve killing another massive group of people, I’m sure. But taking over the military will also involve killing a lot of people, only, he’ll be using other people to do it. I just can’t really embrace his premise that things like war and plagues help humanity stay healthy. It’s like he’s saying that humans can’t thrive without suffering.
“Are you ready?” He’s waiting for me, having cleared the pile of rubble out of the doorway.
“I still want to know which Starbucks you went to.” I look at the pastry bag, and I realize the sticker that held it closed is in Spanish, too. In fact, it looks exactly like the stickers they had at Starbucks when I was in Columbia on that study abroad. “Xolotl.”
He sighs. “While you’re awake, you shield your thoughts. When you sleep, I see things sometimes, and if I see something more than once, I know it matters. I find myself becoming vested in the memory. I can’t have my general distracted by past wrongs. It would be unsafe.”
“What things are you talking about?” My cheeks heat a little, because I had a pretty strange dream about me and Cobalt Blue last night. He kissed me, and I know it’s because Xolotl got all close to me before, but it was unsettling. I didn’t like it at all. Or maybe I liked it so much when I wasn’t in control of my feelings that I’m now desperate to hate it enough to offset my involuntary response.
“I decline to answer.”
“No, I overrule that. You have to tell me. What past wrong?”
He frowns. “We need to leave. As mentioned, we’re late.”
I lean back in bed. “I won’t be leaving until you tell me what you did.”
He rolls his eyes. “Fine. You had a nightmare again—a dream of the night the man attacked you. He shredded your purse, but in the second dream you had, he also did other things.” His nostrils flare. “Distasteful things.”
“And?” I stand now, worried. “Listen, those were just dreams.”
“I think not,” he says. “They felt like repressed memories, and the more you remembered, the less I liked the perpetrator.”
My detached, impartial killer seems to have developed more emotions about things. I did want to change him, but now that I have, I find it concerning. Sometimes we really don’t know what we’re trying to do until we do it. “Where did you go, Xolotl, and what exactly did you do?”
