Page 46 of How to Entice a Fiend

He glances this way and that like there might be an out that I hadn’t noticed myself. “Well, uh… I mean, I know the way back to the compound. Then from there, there’s a dirt road leading out which we take to get back to the city.”

“Which direction?”

“Let me think… the sun is always in my eyes as I drive in. So… whatever way the sun rises… east? Is it east? West? Fuck if I know. I just know I don’t want to die.”

“Why does he want Ender?”

“I really don’t know. That fucker is crazed. He just rushed through and slaughtered a bunch of vampires with ease. It was like he was playing with humans. He fuckingatethem.”

“Give me your clothes,” I demand. I’m honestly getting pretty good at this. Maybe I just needed to be pushed to my limits to learn my badassness.

“You can have them all!” he says as he starts stripping his shirt off with speed. When he lifts it, I see he has a gun.

“Hands up!”

“O-Of course! I don’t even know how to use the thing! Ha. Save me.” He lets me take the gun, but when I do, I see that his phone is in his hand.

“And your phone.”

“It doesn’t work out here.”

“What were you doing on it?”

“J-Just reading a book.”

“Open it.”

He does and as he continues stripping for me, I open the map. While it’s not registering much, it does show me the area we’re in. The issue comes in when I zoom out, and it shows me that only a small area was loaded in and none of that area shows me a road of any kind.

“Where are we?”

“A national park in Canada.”

“Excuse me? At what fucking point did we end up inCanada?”

“I don’t know. I just like… drove into work and you were there. You were the talk of the compound. I didn’t think I’d actually get to meet you.”

“You need a different job,” I say. “Clothes.”

“Oh right, right.” He hands me his hoodie, shirt, and trousers, all of which he’s removed. “Can I please keep my underwear? If someone sees me with no underwear…”

“Are you going to tell anyone you saw me?”

“No, of course not.”

“Are you lying?”

“I promise. I really didn’t want to be involved in any of this.”

“Because if you tell someone, I’m going to kill you.”

“I won’t!”

A part of me wonders if I should take him back to Ender, but I know Ender would likely kill him and then what? I’d have the dead body of some foolish young man to deal with.

“Alright, I’ll let you go, just… don’t fuck me over,” I say as I debate keeping the phone. It really serves little purpose now and they could use it to track us. I drop it on the ground and cock an eyebrow at the man now standing in his socks and underpants.

“I won’t, I won’t,” he promises me.

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