I liked this too much, I knew. The lack of safety.
But more and more over the years, I’d taken these risks, and I knew one day, these timid acts wouldn’t be enough.
I’d want more.
I blinked at Priest’s bike before walking over to the only lit room in the motel block. In all my years of knowing him, it occurred to me that I still had no idea where he lived. Maybe he stayed permanently at this pink shit stain of a motel.
The thought saddened me and spurred me forward.
I knocked at the door, but no one answered.
My heart was in my throat, my skin rippled with goose bumps.
There was something in the air here like static. Something that told me not to enter the room at all costs.
So, of course, I did.
The knob turned easily in my hand, but the door fell completely inward as I opened it, the entire panel crashing to the floor and alerting whoever was inside to my presence. It had obviously been knocked in before.
I froze in the doorway, my foot suspended in mid-air.
“Hello?” I called out softly. “Priest, are you in here?”
There was no response. Only the low throaty hum of the fan in the bathroom, a wedge of pink light triangulated against the opposite wall.
The air was stale and musky, but beneath, there was a different odor, something sharp and antiseptic as the hospital I’d just convalesced in.
Something like bleach.
My heart was in my throat, pumping so madly it was difficult to swallow. I dipped down to grab the little knife from the strap around my ankle, hidden by my frilly white sock. It had been a gift from Priest a long time ago, after I’d nearly died in a cabin fire with my sister, Harleigh Rose, and Mute. It was one of two gifts he’d ever given me. I kept it on my person all the time, even when I went to bed. It was a flat, straight blade affixed to a wooden base carved into an elaborate Celtic cross. My fingers curled easily over the hands of the cross, so it sat balanced in my palm.
This was the first time I was using it.
As I crept closer to the bathroom, my ears strained so hard they almost vibrated with the pressure.
Still, nothing.
With the toe of my shoe, I gently pushed open the bathroom door.
I don’t know what I expected, maybe a monster to jump out from behind the shower curtain.
Nothing happened.
The gaudy pink shower curtain was partially closed, but sheer enough that I could see there was no one lurking in wait.
The room was empty.
No monster, no Priest.
A wave of shame and disappointment ran through me like a ghost, leaving only a cold, clammy sensation all over my body.
How could I have been so stupid to follow a dangerous path just hoping Priest would be at the end of it? And what did I expect him to do even if he was? He was a murderer, a psychopath. What made me think he would be soft for me? Fall out of darkness into the light of love with me?
I was just a girl.
Apparently, a pathetic one with a death wish.
My shoulders sagged, and I suddenly felt exhausted, my injuries and the long day catching up to me in one nearly mortal blow.
I turned to go when something virtually imperceptible caught my eye in the mirror, just a glimmer of pink light on metal. Slowly, my heart a dead weight in my chest, crushed by the weight of my held breath, I looked back over my shoulder at the mirror across from me.
And screamed.
Because a man all in black was on the other side of the door from me, wedged between the wall and the shadows cast by the open door so that I hadn’t noticed him at first glance.
It was only the telltale flash of a gun pressed to the wood aimed directly at my head on the other side that gave him away.
I screamed so loudly the sound seemed to tear through my lungs, shredding them like tissue paper. I only had time for that, the single bright exclamation of panic, but it was truncated by the hooded man.
The door flung into me, forcing me to stumble backward from the bathroom. Before I could recover my equilibrium, he was on me.
The iron cold weight of his hand wrapped around my throat so tight I could feel the force of each distinct finger. Using his momentum, he forced me against the wall opposite the bathroom and pinned me there like a butterfly caught in amber.
I don’t know why I didn’t struggle.
There was something there in the air, something heady and intoxicating. It was in the shallow drag of breath I swallowed before he squeezed my neck even tighter.
The scent of cloves and tobacco.