Page 15 of Aberrant Monsters
I tried to catch his attention with a smile. “He’s not a New Blood.”
The inspector ignored me. “You hear me, mutant?”
Telarion lifted his head, and the inspector tensed, blinking rapidly before regaining his composure. “You can’t be on this train.”
“And yet, here I am,” Telarion drawled in a whiskey-and-smoke tone, underlaid with gravel.
The inspector frowned. “No New Bloods.”
But he didn’t sound so confident now, and as Telarion unfurled his epic form from his seat, expanding to take up space and eat up air, the inspector backed up, suddenly unsure.
I quickly stepped between Telarion and the human. “We’re getting off now anyway. Cinderwood Station.”
The human nodded, throat bobbing. “Good. Do that.”
The train came to a halt and the doors slid open.
I headed for the exit, but Telarion lingered, his eerie green eyes fixed on the ticket inspector with a glow I recognized as hunger.
Shit.
I grabbed his hand and pulled.
He didn’t budge, but he did break eye contact with the human and dropped his gaze to my hand on his. A surge of carnal hunger ripped through me, and I released him quickly, turning my face away to hide the bloom of heat in my cheeks.
“Come on.” I stepped onto the platform and looked back to find him framed in the doorway, coat flapping in a breeze that wasn’t there. “Hurry.”
He took a casual step off the train and practically floated to the ground as if he had all day.
The doors slid shut behind him and pale, smudged faces stared at us from behind glass before the train whizzed off, leaving an echoey silence in its wake.
I crossed my arms under my breasts and glared at him. “You were going to eat him, weren’t you?”
He slow-blinked. “I considered it.”
“You can’t just eat everyone who pisses you off.”
“I can. But I understand it makes you uncomfortable, and so I refrain.”
“Oh, how sweet.” I turned and stomped off toward the steps leading up to the street.
I didn’t need to glance back to know he was following. I could always sense when he was near. After all, he was a part of me. Unwanted but inexplicably interwoven into the fabric of my being.
And that was what we needed to change.
That was why we were here in Cinderwood, a part of the city home to the mystics and the psychics. Humans who were more than human but not New Bloods. Cinderwood was where you went to buy charms and spells or have your future told, and tonight, if my intel was correct, we’d find the answer to our problem.
* * *
Our amicable quest tobe free of each other hadn’t been going too well. Our union was unheard of, and so far, every lead on reversing it had turned out to be a dud.
This had to be different.
I trudged down the frosty street, hands tucked into my jacket pockets. My boots made crunching sounds where frost had created a blanket on cement. It was barely October and the temperature had already dropped enough for my breath to mist in front of my face.
“You’re cold,” Telarion said.
“Your observation skills never fail to astound me.”
