“Can you sleep here tonight?” I asked. Cipher usually liked to sleep on his own, away from the others inside a tarp he wrapped around himself like a human burrito.
“Me?” he asked.
“I don’t want to be alone. Please?”
Without answering, he rearranged our sleeping bags so that we were lying on top of one and using the other as a blanket. I faced the fire with him at my back, tucked in tightly behind me. Cipher let me use his arm as a pillow with his other arm draped across my chest. I grabbed his hand and clutched his fingers to me, needing something solid to hold onto.
“Their eyes… the way they moved, it was like they were blind. Can they see us?” I asked.
“Not very well. From what I understand, they mostly track movement, and light repels them, which is why we keep a fire going through the night.”
“How did they find us?”
“Probably sniffed us out or heard us when we were making camp and waited for it to get dark. Usually it’s only a few at a time who will ambush you with no rhyme or reason. Tonight’s attack seemed almost coordinated. They’re getting bolder. Or hungrier.”
“I’ve never killed anyone before,” I confessed.
“I know,” he said softly, mouth close to my left ear so that I could hear him. He must have arranged us with that in mind, just like when he invited me to sit with him on the rocks.
“I thought I’d feel worse about it,” I said.
“If that were a person, you probably would, but it was a Rabid and it was self-defense. They wanted to eat us, and there was no reasoning with them. With Rabids, it’s kill or be killed.”
Rationally, I knew he was telling the truth, but the sounds they’d made as they died sounded very human to me.
“Is that what my mother would have become?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I tried to absorb the violence and terror of the night, the relief I’d felt when it was over and the Rabids were all dead, and my gratitude that none of my friends had been hurt. “I wouldn’t have wanted her to die like that,” I said at last.
“No, me neither. That was brutal and ugly. Not a nice way to go.”
“Is there any medicine to make them better?” Santiago had said that there was, but he may have just wanted me to feel better about him leaving.
“Not yet, but maybe there will be one day.”
“I hope so.”
“I hope so too, but in the meantime, we have to protect ourselves and each other. You probably saved my life tonight, even though I told you to stay on the rocks.”
“I didn’t hear you,” I said again.
“Next time, let me handle it.”
“No.”
“No?”
“You can’t be the only one fighting off Rabids. Who’s going to protect you?” I asked.
He sighed, and I could just imagine the look on his face, part amusement, part exasperation. “I have the feeling you’re going to be a pain in my ass for as long as I know you, aren’t you, Kitten?”
“Probably.” I turned a little so that I could see him. “Will you stay?”
“I’ll stay here till morning.”
I settled back into the cradle of his warm embrace. He gripped me tightly to him, as if knowing it was what I needed, and buried his nose in the top of my hair. I stared at the fire, getting drowsier by the second.
