Page 94 of Visions of Darkness

But there were moments when that ferocity would slip.

For the barest moment when he’d glance at me. As if he found some kind of solace that I was there. Real and whole and safe.

During that time, I’d tried to process the events that had happened over the last twenty hours. To catch up to the change and to prepare myself for what was to come.

“Good. You need to keep up your strength.”

“I know.”

Pax moved around me and pulled out the contents of the bag. Two cheeseburgers and two orders of fries. “Sit.”

I complied, pulling out the chair and sitting across from him. He didn’t hesitate to dig in, wrapping his mouth around the burger before he began to chew. The muscles in his jaw flexed as he ate, red lips almost hypnotizing as I stared.

A tiny scowl pinched between his brow since I was just sitting there, and I dove in, groaning a little when I bit into my burger.

“I always wondered what it would be like if I met you,” I finally chanced once I’d eaten half. I took a fry and dipped it in ketchup, watching him from over the table as I placed it into my mouth.

“Don’t quite add up to what you’d imagined, do I?”

In contemplation, my teeth raked my bottom lip. He tracked the movement with that searing gaze.

“I think you’re exactly what I imagined. Fierce and brave and wearing the kind of chip on your shoulder that only someone like us could earn. Walking around with an edge of aggression. Suspicious. Never trusting a soul you meet.”

“That’s because people can’t be trusted.”

I popped another fry into my mouth to buy myself time before I tilted my head as I looked at him. “You believe that of everyone? That they’re fundamentally bad?”

He grunted as he took another bite of his burger.

I wondered if it made me a freak that I wanted to reach out and run my fingers through that rough sound.

It wasn’t as if I had any experience in that or had anything to compare this feeling to, but I knew well enough that I could never feel this way with anyone else.

“I think people are easily swayed,” he answered. “Deluded into what they want to believe. Opening themselves to wickedness anytime they want something badly enough. Excuses conjured in their feeble minds as vindication for their actions.”

Air wisped from my nose.

Pax arched a severe brow. “You don’t agree?”

“I think humanity is more complex than that, and our survival instinct often presents itself as greed. I felt it distinctly when I was in the facility. When I could feel the emotions radiating from everyone around me. The desperation to survive, while the hopelessness to do it was all consuming.”

I paused before I asked, “What about this woman, Maria? Are we going to trust her? Contact her?”

The piece of paper with her number on it burned in my pocket.

Uncertainty crested in his spirit. “Not sure that we can trust her, but I think we need to at least try to figure out what she was trying to tell us.”

“It feels insane that someone recognized us.”

Pax chewed on a fry. “I know.”

He wavered before he continued, “You felt it, didn’t you? Earlier? The Ghorl who was feeding thoughts into that trucker’s mind?” The question grated, Pax finally giving voice to what we’d both known when we fled from the motel earlier this morning.

I was being tracked.

Hunted.

“Yes.”

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