I was fairly certain that the kind of person who picked up girls on the side of the road wasn’t the kind of person you wanted to be alone in a car with for any extended period of time. I suspected this was doubly true if you were covered in your own blood and wearing the shredded remains of a T-shirt that had most definitely seen better days.
Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers. I needed a shower. I needed fresh clothes, and I needed to get off the side of the highway before some well-meaning passerby called the cops. My options were severely limited, and of those, Eddie seemed like the best bet. He had a proto-beer belly and biceps that told me he liked to feel strong. I knew the second I saw him, pulling into the gas station, that he would pick me up when he pulled out, no questions asked.
I also knew he’d probably try to take a little something in return.
Don’t do this, Kali.
I wasn’t sure whether Zev meant those words as a warning or an order, but either way, I didn’t feel particularly compelled to listen. Whoever or whatever he was, he was nothing to me, and I was used to taking care of myself.
I had a knife strapped to my calf and the instincts of a killer.
I’ll be fine.
Besides, I’d already almost died once today. That really had a way of putting things in perspective. So I got into Eddie’s car. I relegated Zev’s voice to the back of my mind, and I bided my time. We had made it to the outskirts of town, about a mile away from the university, when Eddie pulled off onto an access road and put one hand on my shoulder.
“I’ll kill you,” I said conversationally. The words weren’t a threat—more of an observation, really, and it disturbed me that I could be so matter-of-fact about taking human life. I’d never felt the need to hunt anyone who fell on that side of the natural/preternatural divide, but the hunt-lust was already building up inside of me, and I’d had a really bad morning.
“Excuse me?” Eddie asked, gob-smacked and so fatally stupid that I almost couldn’t stand to look at him.
“Don’t touch me,” I clarified, the air around me pulsing with a rhythm I recognized all too well. One that wanted me to lay a trap. To hunt. To kill.
“Hey now, sweetheart. I could have called the cops when I saw you. Still could. Girl like you, looking like that—”
Eddie’s hand ventured from my shoulder down my collarbone, and something inside of me snapped. One second I was me, and the next, I’d been pushed outside of my body, and I was watching my mouth move and listening to words that weren’t mine snaking their way out of my lips.
“She probably wouldn’t kill you. She has a certain fondness for humans, thinks she’s one of them.”
I watched, disembodied, as a dangerous, glittering smile cut across the features of my face, and I flashed back to the moment at the ice rink when I’d lost control of my body, when something or someone else had thrown it out of the dragon’s line of fire.
“What in the blazing hell are you talking about?” Eddie didn’t remove his hand from my collarbone, but it didn’t venture any lower, either.
“The girl won’t kill you, but I will. I’ll take this knife and slit you from the throat down, split your body in two along the lines of your delicate human spine.”
Zev’s voice was lower than mine, almost mechanical in the way it left my mouth.
I fought for control of my own body.
I can handle this!
I am handling this, Zev said calmly, and I knew by his tone of voice that he wasn’t arguing with me. He was simply stating a fact.
I was beginning to wish I’d never gotten into a car with Eddie.
Eddie—who was likely coming to a similar conclusion himself—stupidly persisted in trying to make a point with the creature wearing my body.
“Now, look here, girl.”
“Leave.” In the span of a heartbeat, Zev had my knife in his hand, and he dragged the point gently across the surface of my assailant’s Adam’s apple. “Run.”
Eddie froze. “You crazy bitch.”
Within a second, Zev had the edge of the knife pressed to the underside of the man’s chin, hard enough to draw blood. Small red spheres beaded up on the surface of Eddie’s skin, coating his stubble.
Zev licked his lips.
Or rather, he licked mine.
My tongue. My lips. My hand holding the knife.
I clung to that thought, and somehow, my mind overpowered Zev’s and shoved him out.
The ouroboros on my stomach burned like dry ice, like fire.
“I don’t think he likes it when you call me a bitch,” I told Eddie dryly, trying not to sound as thrown as I felt.
“He?” Eddie’s Adam’s apple bobbed upward, and my eyes lit on a series of tiny cuts in the surface of his skin.