Page 49 of Starve
I’m too slow.
He’s up and moving, ignoring my words and my cry of his name. With my hand reached out, I barely manage to brush his arm and feel his muscles jerk under my touch, before he flees into the woods in the opposite direction from where Tyler went.
“Where is he—” I turn to look at Agatha for answers, only to find that she’s gone as well.
I’m alone with Moro at Bluebone Ridge, with only blood on the steps to prove that the others were ever here at all.
But I can’t focus on wondering how they move so fast, or where Agatha and Tyler have gone. Frankly, I don’t want anything to do with Tyler at all. Only one thought echoes in myhead as I jog back to my car for my phone, following the bright headlights that are still the only real source of consistent light in the courtyard, except for the moon.
I have to find Cairo
Chapter 20
After nearly twentyminutes searching the area with my phone light and Moro, I realize Cairo is gone. That, or he’s somehow hiding his scent from Moro, who seems just as eager to find him as I am.
“Come on,” I call Moro with a sigh, leading the way back to the car. My hands are shaking, causing the light from the phone to waver a little, and it’s cold enough that I’m really starting to feel it. Especially since I’m not exactly dressed for anything other than bed or a gentle late summer breeze. I turn the heat up the moment I sit in my car, giving an all over shiver as Moro pants and stretches out in the back seat.
She isn’t as relaxed as usual, though. She whines on the drive back down the mountain, and fidgets more than her normal amount. But I can’t blame her. I hate that we didn’t find Cairo, and worry itches at me.
What if he isn’t okay?
What if Tyler hurt him badly enough that he won’t be able to heal like he did last time? The worry plagues me the whole way home, until it’s a knotted pit in my stomach that I can’t shake. When I finally pull into my driveway, I cut the engine and restmy head against the steering wheel with a sigh. There’s nothing else I can do here.
Moro’s bark startles me, making me jump. I sit up and look at her, twisting to glare at her over my shoulder. “What’s your—” She cuts me off with another bark, her ears stiff and her eyes fixed on something I can’t see. The wolf dog isn’t paying me the least bit of attention, though I don’t know why.
Fear creeps over me, along with the sudden worry that we aren’t alone here. Hadn’t it only been a few days ago that the creature was in the woods behind my house? What’s to stop Tyler from figuring out where I live, and coming here to take revenge on Moro or me for getting in the way of him killing Cairo?
Sitting in the car isn’t helping, though. I’d rather be in the house, where I have more to defend myself with, just in case. But when I open the driver’s side door, Moro surprises me by lunging forward and over me, stepping on my thigh and my spleen hard enough to make me gasp and arch off of the seat, hampered only by the seatbelt. “Moro!” I gasp, voice breathy with pain. “Wait!” She doesn’t. Even as I fight the seatbelt and almost clock myself in the face with it, she disappears behind my small house. At last I’m able to stumble after her, barely managing to slam the car door behind me.
Her barking is the only thing I can follow, but as I worry that she’s disappeared into the woods, I see her grey and white coat illuminated in the moonlight shining into my cleared backyard. She prances worriedly around the stairs of the deck, her tail up and waving like a flag, her movements are almost concerned as a soft whine sounds in her throat.
Cairo groans and sits up from my bottom step, trying to fend off her affection. “You make it impossible to go anywhere withouteveryoneknowing,” he complains, his voice hoarse ashe tries to hold her at arms’ length and fails. “You know that, Moro?”
I can’t help it. I take a sharp, surprised breath, quickening my steps until I’m all but running toward him. “Cairo!” I call, flushed with sudden relief at his presence. “Holyshit!We looked for you up on the mountain for?—”
“Twenty minutes, give or take, judging by how long it’s been,” he cuts in sourly, rolling his gaze up to meet mine with a flat, pained look. It’s then that I see the blood and the wound marring his shoulder and the base of his throat.
I don’t stop jogging toward him, even when he bares his too-sharp teeth at me and his eyes flicker in the moonlight. While it should give me pause, it doesn’t. Not at this point. I kneel in front of Cairo when Moro moves with a whine in her throat, but when I reach for him, he grips my wrists with a low, frustrated growl.
“I don’t need your help, little bird,” he tells me flatly.
“Maybe not, but you did show up on my back deck. In case you didn’t notice.” I shake his hands off of mine, my eyes fixed on the gouge in his shoulder that makes my stomach twist with nausea. “Cairo…” God, it looks bad, but I don’t want to say that out loud.
He grumbles under his breath, but lets me sink down beside him on the steps, my teeth biting into my lower lip at all the blood. It’s impossible to ignore, and I take a long, shuddering breath. “You’re bleeding.”
“Yeah,” he agrees with a small smirk in my direction. “That’s what happens when cursed things fight.”
Cursed.It’s the second time he’s used that word, and again it sticks in my head like it’s important.
“Yeah, but like, you’rereallybleeding. Is it—” I have to swallow the first three words that come into my head, before I take a breath and try again. “Is it fatal?”
Gently Cairo reaches up to prod at the wound, wincing as he does. He comes away with blood that he examines, then lets out a rough breath, looking more irritated than panicked. “No. It’ll take a lot more than this to kill me.”
“Not much more,” I can’t help but reply, and that makes Cairo turn, grabbing my wrist that had been heading to touch the wound.
“Muchmore,” he disagrees, his eyes shining in the moonlight with that creepy, unnatural glimmer. “Here.” He tugs me forward, until my hand is splayed across his chest, blood slick against my palm. “You feel how he tried to claw out my heart? We don’t need to worry about bones as much as humans. He could reach in here and just grab it. That would do the trick, and I’d be just as dead as any human I’ve eaten.”
Cairo’s words don’t exactly comfort me, and he shifts my hand until my fingers brush the unmarred side of his throat. “The only other way he could’ve done it was to tear off my head. Not just break my neck or slit my throat. He’d have to rip my spine and everything connecting it, until he could make sure my head and body weren’t still connected by even one sinew.” My stomach twists, clenching, and I make to move away, but he won’t let me. Instead my fingers clutch lightly at his throat, and I feel him swallow under me.
