Page 38 of Creatures that Breathe

I’d move in with them. I’d do what I was sold for. I’d obey the rules and lie to myself that it’ll all work out until one day I implode.

I open my eyes. “I’d find you.”

It’s so dark, I can’t see my irises. The small red dot of the coffee maker flickers on the glass.

An arm weaves around my waist. I don’t jump, I relax, crane my neck back, bathing in the heat. Cross’s face is drawn, eyes narrowed. “Close your eyes,” he orders, low, commanding, almost too quiet to hear. “Keep them closed.”

The air around us crackles wildly with his power, the tendrils of black I saw in the ring have returned, roiling and crazed. The set of his jaw, the firm hand on my hip are trained. Military.

Is he trying to make me forget him again? “No, you—”

His hand covers my mouth, calluses rough against my lips. “Yes,” he hisses, using a tone that’s commanded creatures to death. He pulls me tighter to him, like he’s trying to hide my entire body in the cradle of his. He probably could. I wrap my fingers over the tense muscle of his arm, holding on as his warmth seeps into me. It’s like standing against a hot stone.

The red dot blinks away. Coffee’s on.

“Don’t worry,” Cross murmurs, the words vibrate through my skin. “I’ll catch you this time.”

I’m not falling? I jerk in his hold, wondering what’s gotten into him.

A noise sounds behind us, metal rolling on tile like a loose quarter.

His breath is hot against my neck, muscles taut against me. “Don’t move.”

The runaway quarter starts to hiss, something smells sweet and hazy. A bang erupts from the far end of the store, trailed by a glittering crack. The window splinters in front of me, cracks spidering out from a thumb sized hole three inches left of my head. A gunshot?

Is someone shooting at us?

My stomach drops through the floor.

The question, the fear, the realization that the quarter is a smoke grenade don’t form fully before Cross throws us through the window. He twists so his shoulder punches the glass, and we crash into the street.

Air shoots out of my lungs, and I groan, sprawled on top of him. I scramble to roll off and my heart stops. The world is on fire.

Chaos everywhere. Bright. Loud. Suffocating.

A building high inferno bathes the pavement in tortured orange and red. Creatures swarm the road in a crazed panic. Running, slumping over, breathing through bunched up cloths. Someone’s shouting. Others are too.

The acrid stench of burning assaults my senses. The noise shoves needles into my ears.

Cross’s power was like being in a sensory deprivation tank, and I’d grown used to it, to hearing his breaths, feeling only his warmth, existing in a realm of just us two.

I wipe the stinging smoke from my eyes and stagger to my knees. Horror gnaws at my chest. Bile rams up my throat.

Cross yanks me to stand by the biceps, grip tight and demanding. My muscles are wet sand bags as he pulls me forward, urging me down the street, away from the blaze.

“Save it for later,” he grits, glancing behind us, either not seeing the wreckage or peering through it, searching for danger. “Keep walking.”

I try. A thousand things are registering, jamming up my senses until all I can hear is blood beating in my eardrums.

I sway, unsteady waves of nausea knocking my feet from under me. My knees buckle and my arms burn when Cross refuses to let me fall.

“I did it,” I rasp, losing grip of his hand, stumbling. Concrete shreds my stocking, tears a line up my calf. I buckle into it, curl around myself like a lifeless sad sack, the confession shooting out of me, “It wasn’t supposed to … it was a distraction.”

“Survive first. Regret later,” Cross orders, unfeeling, looming above me with an edge of detachment.

Did he not hear me? “This is my fault.”

Cross mutters something at the dreary gray sky. It sounds very possibly like leave her or unbelievable. Which I translate to the same damn thing.

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