Page 61 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
“We may have to steal,” I continue. “I…don’t have anything on me and—”
“I have money.” Three scratchy words but it’s enough.
I arch a brow. “Hope it’s a lot. I have expensive tastes. But I’ll pay you back, I swear.”
He doesn’t look amused and there’s something haunted around his eyes. He always looks sad and guarded but now, when I search for the signs, I see he seems frightened, too. The way his mouth is pressed together, his jaw clenched, a furrow there between his dark brows.
He has more to lose when we are caught.
I will be scolded, perhaps Mads Bentzen will visit me or punish my parents, but I will be fine.
He, though…
“I’m sorry you had to carry me so far,” I tell him, meaning it, the only thing I can think to say that isn’t directly about Stein. The way he winced up the parking garage stairs, I know he is sore. I don’t allow myself to think of why. “I’m sorry I couldn’t dodge the needle. I should’ve fought more, I…” I glance down at my bare knees, little goosebumps along my skin. “I wish I could have killed Stein. I wanted to when I hit him. But it wasn’t enough, was it?”
There is a stretch of silence and my cheeks heat. Maybe I am silly for thinking he cares for me at all; hedidset up a nice little torture area for me. And I need to ask about his animals and his lab. Maybe I am only a specimen to him. But before I can turn away, hide my face, he speaks.
“No one has ever hurt someone for me.” His words are halting but clear. “It was…nice.”
I lift my eyes to his, squinting a little with amusement. I think of what he did to the guard, and I’m sure I wouldn’t use that term for it, but I do know what he means. “Nice?” I can’t help the laugh that slips free.
His expression doesn’t change. “Yes.” Then some sort of internal cloud seems to darken his eyes. “But…” He doesn’t look away. “We can’t run forever, Karia.”
Immediately, I want to tell him I would. We could. But I know with Writhe searching for us, we will be found. I am not yet ready to accept defeat so easily, though. I will steal as much time as I can with him, even if he does think I am only something to dissect.
“We wait here until the mall opens. We buy new clothes. Then we find a place to hide, until we can’t. Okay?”
He studies me for a moment, guarded, the way his brows pull tighter together, and his lips do the same. But slowly, carefully, he nods.
I start to turn away, ready to lean my head against the window and get some sleep, despite the fact it is a riskandI would much rather lean againsthim,when he speaks again.
“When?” he asks quietly. “When did you decide to… run with me?” He doesn’t look at me as he asks it, sitting perfectly rigid in his seat, gloved hands on his thighs as he stares at the floorboard, littered with French fries and cannibalized chicken nuggets.
For this moment in time, he seems oddly wholesome here, in this domestic scene of some family’s van.
I hope whoever owns it is sleeping soundly in a bed, their children down the hall or maybe piled in with them.
I hope they are not living a life like ours; that perhaps they needed gas or an oil change or someone to drop them off in the morning, but I pray they don’t feel a fraction of the heartache Sullen Rule does.
“I never made a choice,” I say quietly, wanting to shift over to sit closer, but scared he doesn’t want the same thing.
He lifts his head then, eyes latching onto mine.
“There wasn’t one to make. I was always going to follow you, Sullen.”
Chapter24
Sullen
The Halloween storm rages outside the hotel, and I watch it from the atrium.
Blood is sticky on my skin. The hoodie doesn’t help, neither does my shirt beneath it, all this heat trapped under my layers and congealing with the wounds from my fresh dermal piercings. It shouldn’t have bled so much or hurt so badly. Stein taunted me that it wouldn’t, that inserting titanium under my skin would simply raise me higher to God. An excessive element on earth, it was only natural I absorb it too, he said.
The six piercings along the top of my spine felt…strange. But it was a manageable pain.
The way he pulled my shirt on afterward, then ripped it up—ensuring the fabric snagged on the new jewelry—and repeated the process six times before he found the most “appropriate” thing for me to wear beneath my hoodie tonight caused the stinging sensation. The blood. And the feeling as if my back is now in flames.
And for what? All that dressing and redressing and I am not to be seen nor heard tonight, when the hundreds of members of Writhe gather together for their sporadic group orgy. The otherchildrenwill be here, of course. Sixteen, we are old enough to socialize.
