Page 69 of Run Like the Devil

I felt like I was finally home.

* * * *

A few hours later, I sighed and rubbed my eyes.

What a long fucking day.

Wait, no, forget that. What a long fucking life! It felt like one disaster after another, as though I just jumped from one fire to the next, never getting a real rest.

I recalled flipping tortillas on the stove when I was a kid, the way I’d grab it with my bare hands. It burned but I did it so fast it never really hurt me.

That felt like my whole life, except I never got a break. The heat would burn at my fingers, but I’d move from one to the next so fast that I never got a break but moved fast enough to not kill me.

And it was exhausting.

“We don’t have much food left,” Gorrin said as he peered into his pack.

“Sorry,” I muttered, wrapping my arms around my legs as I recalled how the fake Lords had torn my pack away.

“I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad.” Gorrin closed his bag and set it aside, his body pressed up against mine.

Since they’d found me—or had I found them?—they’d been unwilling to let me be even a foot away from one of them. For whatever reason, the Path seemed focused on destroying me, and the last time, it had snatched me right away from Gorrin.

It meant they were being overprotective.

And it meant one of them would lose a limb when I had to go to the bathroom the next time if they didn’t give me some space. I sure as fuck didn’t plan to try squatting together like some weird synchronized peeing thing.

“You should blame me. I lost my pack which had a lot of food in it.”

“You were attacked by four assailants. Your survival is more than enough. We will make do with what we have, or we will find other sustenance. The book and Koller both implied that the fruit from the trees is edible.”

“Yeah, because eating random shit here is a great idea,” I snapped, then sighed and rubbed at my temples. “I’m sorry—it isn’t your fault. I’m just frustrated with this all. I feel like I get why people go mad here.”

Gorrin wrapped his arm around my shoulders, pulling me against his side. The warmth helped ease my mind a bit, as if a reminder that I wasn’t alone in this all. “Humans need purpose. It is one of the things that makes you all both dangerous and interesting. Other creatures simply do what needs to be done or whatever they wish to do when they wish to do so. Humans think further ahead than that. They need a direction. Without that, they can’t find happiness or contentment. This place steals that from a person. It forces us to wander along a Path with no ending, with no hint as to when we may escape or how long that might take. That can break the minds of humans.”

“But not yours?”

He shook his head. “I am not human. I was created with the understanding that my task was to aid Hubis. That was my direction, my purpose. I do not need a purpose or direction beyond that.”

“But you don’t follow him anymore.”

Gorrin peered over at me, a fleeting glance that lasted only a split second before he looked away. “No, I don’t. I found something else to follow, something that matters far more to me. This place feeds and magnifies my fears as it does anyone else’s, but it doesn’t risk my sanity as it does yours.”

“So we’re all supposed to just wander around until we starve or go mad? And you considered yourself some sort of tactician?”

Gorrin said nothing back, his fingers tightening on my shoulder as if he knew no words would reassure me. What was there to say? It felt a bit like when people knew death was coming, that there was no escape. Lying to each other was pointless. Sometimes all a person could do was be there with the other one, just face the hopeless situation together.

My gaze moved toward the forest, away from the Path that Gorrin had led us back to.

That’s it…

“We need to leave the Path,” I said.

He jerked his gaze to the side, his eyes narrowed. “That is a terrible idea. The Guardian is out there, and each time you have found yourself trapped, it has been off the Path. We’ve been fortunate to find our way back at all, even with my skills.”

I twisted so I could face him, trying to make him understand. “We want to get to where no one else has, so we have to do what no one else has. That’s what Koller told us. Maybe the Path itself is a trap, just a lure this place uses to keep people going, to give them hope only to destroy it over and over again. There’s no telling what we might find if we leave the Path.”

“Like more dangers than we can even guess—”

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