I shut my eyes, not wanting to feel anything. Emotions were dangerous, and I needed to focus.
“And besides, what a ten looks like for Threx is not the same for you.”
I stared at Nathem, considering what he had said.
“He’s never had her body; you have. That extra mile, that surrender, will come quieter… for you both.”
I sat in that thought for a long time while Nathem drove the back roads of Reaper territory, watching the way the green inthe pines blurred through the tinted window. The idea of giving Daphne more made everything inside me feel indifferent. I had already offered her my love, which, until her, was nothing more than a brain cocktail of attachment hormones and a failure of human evolution. I’d given her my body and all its dark, violent things. Hell, I did not keep her, even when she begged for a title. And most of all, I agreed to coexist with Threx. For most fucking people, that would be a goddamn eleven.
But it wasn’t.
I saw the difference.
Threx broke for her, his soul lighting her up when she placed her halo on his head. It was blasphemous against the cold logic of my prison, but I couldn’t look away. I didn’t have a body like he did; I was a place, a seat of power, the cage holding us both.
“Is that it?” Nathem pointed to a silver Airstream perched in the middle of the clearing. “It doesn’t seem like anyone is here.”
I searched for signs of life, but there weren’t any. A red flag.
“I’ll bet you five hundred right now, whoever is in there is dead as fuck!” Nathem called it outright, putting his gun in his lap.
But why would a Reaper lead Threx to one of their body stashes? That part didn’t add up.
“Park here,” I instructed.
“What?” Nathem turned. “We can’t just walk in there without backup. What if it’s a hideout?”
The smell of rain and rot suggested otherwise.
“I don’t think it is. But you can stay behind,” I gave him the choice. “This is something I need to do.”
Nathem held his ground as I opened the door into the quiet forest, noting the absence of birds and background noise.
“Here,” Nathem threw me a face mask. “It is mostly for the smell.”
I nodded when he settled beside me, ending the last of his cigarette on his boot.
“Ready?” he asked, and I shot him a half-smile. Nathem may be a therapist from hell, but he was loyal to the very end.
We moved into the clearing together, scanning for red lights, tripwires, hidden cameras, anything that might send us back. Not that it mattered. If the space belonged to the Reapers, they already knew we were here. One of the perks of federal backing was eyes in the sky.
“Think they are watching?” Nathem searched the trees. “It’s oddly empty,” he added, stopping short of the staircase leading inside. “No parameters? No safety tactics? This is one hell of a mind-fuck.”
I bit my lip under the mask.
“Yeah, something is not right,” I agreed, offset by how this all felt just a little too pedestrian.
I filled my cheeks full of air to dampen the stench of death before kicking the door open with my boot.
“What the fuck?” Nathem peered into the dark, throwing his hand over his nose.
The space was ransacked; kitchen utensils were flung about, papers lay dead in corners, and the walls were completely covered in red and purple yarn. I hit the lights, and ten vultures kra’d.
“Get down,” Nathem shouted, pulling me back when a flurry of wings flew through the shattered glass. “Oh. Fuck,” he gagged, craning his neck to get a better view of the stringy carcass dead on the floor.
Why in the hell would the Reapers want Threx to come here?
I stepped in, Nathem’s eyes blowing wide to search for any reasoning to this madness.