“Where are you from?” she blurted.
“I wouldn’t be doing you any favors by answering that,” he said. “I’ve already told you too much.”
“Why? Is it a secret?”
The exasperated sound again. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“Inquiring minds.”
He rolled his eyes and started walking again. Scowling, Lilly caught up with him.
“How did the hellhounds get here?” she asked.
“Why did you come back to help me?” he shot back.
“I didn’t. I was chasing my dog.”
“You didn’t have to stop.”
“Quit deflecting. Why are there hellhounds in these mountains?”
He exhaled heavily. “They were left behind.”
“By?”
“By someone who shouldn’t have been here in the first place. Your world and mine, they aren’t so different. They both have good guys and bad guys.”
“What do you mean, your world, my world?”
“Does your world have hellhounds?”
“No.”
“That’s what I mean.”
Lilly frowned. “So where the hell is your world?”
“Close.”
She didn’t like that double-edged response. Did he mean close to hell or close to here? The hard set of his jaw told her she wouldn’t get any more out of him, though.
Lilly tried coming at it from a different angle. “And you can just go back and forth between our worlds?”
“For limited periods of time.”
“Like a weekend pass?”
“That would imply I want to go where they send me.”
“You didn’t want to come here?”
“No.”
“Why not?” she asked, indignant.
“It’s never as nice as the brochure.”
She let that settle into her confusion. He hadn’t wanted to come here, but he’d been sent. To hunt hellhounds. With a machete. Hellhounds. Something humans weren’t meant to see but he could. So what did that make him?
She sucked in a shaky breath. “What about the ones that got away?”
“I’ll find them. Eventually.”
“And then you’ll go home? Back to your other world?”
He gave her another sideways look that did the talking for him.
Right. If he told her, he’d have to kill her. Best thing she could do right now was shut up and run. Fear made her calculate how fast she could get away and fear kept her by his side. She was screwed either way.
“Should I be afraid of you?” she asked.
He stopped and turned so suddenly she plowed right into him. He steadied her as he stared into her eyes. His glimmered with something she couldn’t define, but he touched her face again, as if he couldn’t help himself. His warm hand against her cold cheek, he leaned in. As if drawn. “Yes,” he said, his breath a hot burst against her temple. “You should be afraid.”
But fear wasn’t the emotion those words inspired. Lilly thought it might be a good time to breathe, but she couldn’t seem to do it until he stepped away. She had more questions—of course she did. But she kept them inside as they trudged on in silence. Her boots sounded loud against the dirt and grit. Her heartbeat sounded louder in her ears.
Alex kept the unrelenting pace, but now she noticed a limp on his right side. She remembered watching that leg being jerked, like something big had a hold of it. Her gaze moved to his arm. The sleeve of his coat had a sheen that looked like blood. How badly was he hurt?
She didn’t ask that either. Her silence seemed to trouble him, though. She intersected several sideways glances but she couldn’t tell what he might be thinking. Maybe he was wondering how to ditch her and she wouldn’t have to worry about running away before she led him right to her sister’s isolated cabin.
“Humans aren’t supposed to know about things like hellhounds,” he said as if she’d been peppering him with questions and finally wormed the answer out of him.#p#分页标题#e#
It was the second time he’d worded it that way and she couldn’t let it go, no matter the voice of self-preservation shouting in her head.
“Humans?”
“You should think they’re a myth, not have to gun them down to stay alive.”
She kept her voice steady, when she wanted to exclaim. “What about you, Alex?”
He shot her a guarded look.
“Shouldn’t you think the same thing?”
“No.”
Because he wasn’t one. She heard it loud and clear. But he certainly looked human.
“You look human,” she said.
“It’s intended.”
Something deep moved through those words, something she couldn’t begin to guess at, but she felt the confusion and frustration behind them. She wanted to pry, make him tell her what it meant, all that feeling shadowing his eyes.