Page 59 of The Fire Went Wild
Even though it might not be human at all.
Because I’m not like you?
At least my poor driving kept me from having to answer her question with a lie.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHARLOTTE
Jaxon has, in the last week, crashed my car, kidnapped me, jerked off while I strangled him, came back from the dead, decapitated two men with his bare hands, and fucked me whilst covered in said men’s blood. And yet the only time I’ve seen him show anything approximating fear is while driving through Houston at rush hour.
Thankfully, we left the nightmare of the freeway behind, and I’m having to come face to face with this new one: namely, that I’m about to become an accomplice to murder. Assuming the two men at Jaxon’s house don’t count. Which…
It feels like they shouldn’t?
Maybe this shouldn’t, either, considering I’m handcuffed. But I’m also weirdly nonplussed about this entire situation. Just like I was when Jaxon killed those men. Or when I let him fuck me afterward. When Iaskedhim to fuck me afterward. My fear feels like an afterthought.
“Where are we going?” I ask, mostly to fill up the silence in the car, which sends my thoughts spiraling.
“We’re almost there.”
“That doesn’t really answer my question.”
Jaxon ignores me, the way he always does when I cross that invisible line separating stuff he can tell me from stuff he can’t. I still don’t understand who made these rules. If it’s him. If it’s the other Hunters. Or the god he prays to, the one who isn’t the usual one.
He pulls the car off the main road, and it feels suddenly like we’re not in the city anymore. It’s a neighborhood, but the houses are enormous and sprawling and hidden back from the road by pine trees. The streetlights illuminate things in fits and starts.
“There’s no one here,” Jaxon says suddenly, slowing the car down to a crawl. He leans forward, sniffing the air like a dog.
“What do you mean?”
“The houses,” he says. “They’re empty.”
I can’t decide if I’m relieved or not. I know Ishouldbe, but ever since I woke up in that bedroom in Jaxon’s creepy old house my emotions have been—off. “So I guess you won’t be killing anyone tonight?”
Jaxon looks over at me, his face half-hidden by the neighborhood’s shadows. “No, he’s still here.”
There it is again. Relief? Disappointment? I can’t tell. My stomach just kind of knots around strangely.
Jaxon speeds the car up. “He’s here,” he says again. “But I pretty much only sense him and a few others. It’s like the other houses are abandoned. Like people used to be here but aren’t anymore.”
My skin prickles. and I look out the window again. Even in the dark, I can tell these houses are beautiful. Big midcentury mansions lit up by the street lamps and an occasional porch light. But the neighborhood does feel empty, and there are signs of construction hidden in the dark. Traffic cones. Yellow tape.
“There,” Jaxon says suddenly, pointing across me to a big angular house in a cul-de-sac. It’s framed by sprawling treesdraped in lacy Spanish moss, which I can see because there are floodlights illuminating a circular driveway with a fountain at its center. “That’s where we’re going.”
I swallow, my throat dry. “And how areyou—” I stress the word. “Going to do that? Just walk up to the front door?”
“No.” Jaxon loops around the cul-de-sac and goes back the way we came, only this time he pulls the car into one of the dark, tree-lined driveways and cuts the headlights off. But he keeps driving, and even though I can’t see anything, he somehow knows to stop right before we reach a three-car garage with broken doors.
Jaxon kills the engine.
“Now wha?—”
“Be quiet,” he snaps, and the harshness in his voice startles me. He takes a deep breath, staring straight ahead. “I need you to be quiet,” he says a little more gently.
I immediately want to make a ton of noise, start screaming and carrying on. The neighborhood is onlymostlyabandoned, and I have no reason whatsoever to go along with any of this.
Except—