Page 21 of Stalk the Dark
“We handed the cargo over to his staff.”
“He has staff? Aside from the bat boys?”
“The bats are his creation. He made them a long time ago, and they serve him unequivocally. They don’t have the intelligence to do much else.”
But he was wrong. Godor was different. “Creatures evolve.”
“Not these creatures. They sleep when he sleeps and wake when he wakes. In the grand scheme of things, they’re just children.”
“Then how do you explain the one that saved me?”
He sighed. “I guess I can’t.”
The road ahead opened out, fields stretching either side of us, gray and gloomy under heavy cloud cover. I didn’t have an aversion to shitty weather, but a little sun was always nice.
“Does the sun ever shine here?”
“I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “But it certainly creates an ambiance.” He threw a smile my way, and if I was poetic, I’d say that smile was like the sun breaking cloud cover. But poetry was for romantics, and romance didn’t belong in the Order.
We fell into companiable silence for a fewmoments, just the distant sounds of nature and the whistle of the wind beneath the clatter of the wheels and the rhythmic beat of hooves on the dirt road.
“Why did the Order choose to send you?” Ordell asked suddenly. “Is there some test? Some special skill or qualification for the job of a watcher?”
I’d wondered the same thing when they’d handed me the transfer. “If there is, then I don’t know about it.”
“But you took the job anyway?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You don’t say no to the Order.”
He lapsed into silence once more. “You think you can control him?”
“I have to try, right?”
“Yes…yes you do but be wary. From what I’ve learned, Ezekiel loves to play games. Do not trust him.”
“I don’t intend to, but I might let himbelieveI do.”
He chuckled. “Smart.”
“Okay, my turn to ask some questions. You know way more about me than I do about you.”
He sat back, arm rubbing against mine. “Ask away.”
“Have you and Hemlock always been hunters?”
“For as long as I can remember,” he said. “We never stay in one place for long.”
He sounded almost wistful about that, and for some reason I needed to understand why. “Where is home? I mean, where were you born?”
“A place in the Rim. It’s gone now.”
My spine straightened. “You lived in the rims?”There was so much I didn’t know about the Rim, and to be speaking to someone who’d lived there was an opportunity not to be squandered. “What is it like?”
He considered for a moment before speaking. “Wild. Free. Dangerous.”
Three words. That was it? I sat back, disappointed. “You could say the same about many of the places beneath the dome.”
He chuckled, low and sexy. “I suppose you could. I tell you what, let’s make a deal. Survive the year, and maybe I’ll take you on a tour of the Rim.”
