Chapter Nine

Before dawn, Sera packed with shaking hands and a mind gone strangely calm. The tea had not given her courage so much as direction. In the quiet after Caliban vanished, the herbs had opened the sight she feared, and with it came threads of knowledge she had not asked for: the cemetery, the mausoleum, the abandoned house, and the basement where Jack slept in stolen darkness. Caliban had carried those places in his ruined body the way a beaten dog carried the memory of every blow. When she had healed him, some part of that memory had passed to her. By the time the first gray light pressed against the curtains, Sera understood that running would only teach Jack how far she could be chased. If she wanted the night to end, she would have to turn toward it.

At the hotel door, she paused. Caliban’s presence lingered in the hallway, faint and trembling, not quite gone. “You don’t have to go back to him,” she whispered into the empty air. For a moment, the shadows near the stairwell thickened. Yellow eyes opened there, wet with hunger and shame. Caliban did not step forward. He only watched her with the torn, frightened loyalty of a creature who had never known mercy without punishment.

“Help me end this,” Sera said. “Not for me. For whatever part of you still knows the difference between fear and love.” Caliban flinched as if the words had struck him. Then, with a low whine, he lifted one claw and pointed—not at Jack, not at the hotel, but toward the place where Jack kept the soil that bound him to the world. Sera understood. By sunrise, she had emptied her room, left the note on the bed, and gone where Caliban’s memory led her. She found the sack of earth beneath Jack’s ruined mattress, carried it away, and soaked the bed in holy water until the cotton gleamed in the gray light. When she was finished, she vanished before the dark could betray her.

Jack woke at dusk and stretched with the slow luxury of a predator certain the night belonged to him. Hunger clenched low in his belly, sharp enough to make his mouth water. He slipped from the dark bed in the basement of the abandoned house and rose into the evening, moving through shadow as if it were another skin. A park lay nearby, green and ordinary beneath the first stars. Couples wandered the sidewalks. A man in running clothes paused beneath a streetlamp to stretch while his dog nosed the grass beside him. Jack smiled. “Breakfast for me,” he murmured, “and something small for Caliban after last night’s training. We both need our strength.” Before the runner could draw breath, Jack was in front of him. One hand clamped over the man’s mouth; the other closed around his throat and dragged him into the shadow of trees. Jack drank until the man sagged boneless in his grip. The dog lunged, barking once before Jack kicked it hard enough to silence it. When the animal twitched in the grass, Jack dropped the drained body and lifted the dog by the scruff. He turned back toward the basement, already listening for Caliban. They would find Sera tonight. It was time she learned what happened to those who defied him.

He called for Caliban through the bond between them and frowned. The answer came faintly, frayed at the edges, as if the beast had crawled somewhere deep and hidden to lick his wounds. Jack stopped in the yard and listened, irritation sharpening into suspicion. “Where have you gone?” he whispered. “I gave you the whole day to heal, and still you skulk away from me?” He tossed the injured dog into a nearby yard, no longer interested in it. Perhaps Caliban had taken refuge in the cemetery. Perhaps the fool thought distance could protect him. Jack reached the cemetery gates and shoved them open. The iron creaked into the quiet like a warning. Inside, the mausoleum stood empty except for disturbed dust and dark stains drying on the stone. He smelled them at once: Sera, clean herbs, moonlight, and the ruined trace of his beast. Jack kicked the door hard enough to crack the frame. “I can barely sense him,” he snarled. “What has she done?” Sera herself had vanished from his reach.

He followed the faint trail through the city to her hotel. Her room was empty. The closet stood open, the drawers pulled wide, her bags gone. On the rumpled bed, however, a note waited in Sera’s delicate hand.

Jack,

Who hunts whom? Soon, you will not be safe even in the dark.

S.

Jack crushed the note in his fist, then tore it into strips. The room seemed to tilt around him. Sera had not run blindly. She had planned. She had left him a message because she wanted him to know. Rage drove him back across the city to the abandoned house. He descended into the basement, already tasting vengeance, and stopped at the foot of the stairs. His bed had been slashed open with a long, sharp blade. The sack of earth—his earth, the only soil from home he had carried with him—was gone. In its place, the ruined mattress and polished cotton sheets lay soaked through. Jack seized the wet fabric. Pain exploded across his palm. He howled and flung the sheet away, staring at the blistered flesh. Holy water. The word burned worse than the wound. Only Caliban had known this hiding place. Only Caliban could have led her here. Jack turned toward the open night, fury hollowing him out until nothing remained but punishment. Caliban would suffer for this. Sera would suffer more.

And somewhere beyond the reach of his rage, Sera opened her eyes and felt the night closing in around her.

Hours earlier, before Jack discovered what she had done, Sera had opened her eyes in the second hotel room and known he was there. “Sera.” It was Jack’s voice—baritone, slick, and oily. Her thoughts raced. What if this doesn’t work? What a fool I can be. He’s too dangerous. I’m too new to this life. But he’s here now. No going back. Keep the faith, Sera. Remember, you’re in a battle. She stood to face him, feet planted firmly on the floor, hands on her hips. She glared at him.

“Well, well, well. No shrinking violet, are you?” Jack slipped in front of her, glaring back.

Sera stood her ground. “I don’t remember inviting you here. I thought you couldn’t enter anyone’s place uninvited.”

Jack smirked. “Everyone’s invited into a hotel. Did you really think you could get away from me?”

“Frankly, that was the idea. I would have thought you’d taken the hint by now.” Sera kept her gaze fixed on him.

Jack grabbed her chin with his right hand and squeezed. “I could kill you without dropping a heartbeat.”

“You have a heartbeat?” She shoved his hand off her chin and stepped aside. “If you kill me, you won’t get what you want.”

“Don’t be so sure I still want that. Maybe I just feel like toying with you—killing you in stages.” He licked his index finger, dragged it down her neck, then pushed her head to the side to examine the healed wounds. Shoving her away, he spat the words. “How? How did you do this? No one gets rid of my bite.”

“Not as powerful as you thought,” Sera said, spitting the words back at him.

He grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off the ground. “I’ll snap you in two and suck out your life before you hit the floor.”

Gasping for air, Sera swung her right foot back, then arced it forward into his groin. He laughed and squeezed harder.

Airless, she stopped struggling and turned her gasp into muffled laughter, staring at Jack as she did. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the scalpel. The blade flashed in the fluorescent hotel light. He slashed her left arm from elbow to wrist in a neat curve. Bending closer, he inhaled the scent of her blood and slowly lowered his mouth toward the wound. Before he could touch her, a body crashed into Sera, tearing her from Jack’s grip and hurling her into the wall.

Caliban burst into the room, ramming her out of Jack’s grasp. Furious, Jack lunged at him and slashed his face three times before Caliban ducked aside. Grabbing Sera, the beast lifted her through the window and into the night, eluding an enraged Jack, who howled from the hotel room. Sera winced in pain yet clung to Caliban as they sped through the darkness. Behind them, Jack’s fury tore through the air. Caliban glanced back. Lights flooded the area. Police cars glowed red and blue, their screaming sirens cutting through the night.

Caliban raced to Erie Cemetery, not far from Jacob’s Field and the downtown hotel. He laid Sera on the grass beneath a canopy of old oak trees. Curling his body around hers for warmth, he licked her wounds clean. The blood from his own wounds clotted as he worked. In his guttural voice, he whispered, “You’d best learn not to anger him.”

Sera watched as the beast cleaned her wounds with a rough but gentle tongue. The simple, repetitive motion calmed her. When he spoke, she gazed into his large, sorrowful eyes, which gathered the scant light from the night sky. “Why did you stop Jack?”

He pondered for several heartbeats. “He’d be angry with me if he killed you. And he would have killed you, I mean.” Caliban touched the torn lines on his face.

Sera sat up until she was face-to-face with the dark one. Lifting her hand, she traced the slash marks on his face. The beast cowered, and Sera drew back. Then the companion stepped closer. She stroked his face again, touching him tenderly with her fingertips. “Poor beast.” He closed his eyes and rocked back and forth on his haunches as she whispered, “Why did you save me?”

Still rocking, Caliban replied, “Because Jack needs you to make him human again. He wants that—to be powerful and human, to feel his own blood pulsing through young veins.”

“Why are you helping him?”

“I need you to do what he wants,” Caliban said, though the words sounded less certain than before.

Sera watched Caliban as he wriggled into a comfortable position on the grass. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a credit card. “Caliban, I’m going to find a warm, dry hotel room where I can shower and sleep peacefully—not on the wet, cold ground. Are you coming?”

Caliban grabbed her wrist. Gently, she pried his fingers loose. “Stay. Here.”

“I’m going.” Sera reached out for his hand. “Are you coming with me?”

He snorted. “I can imagine the hotel clerk if we walk in together.”

“Shall we find out?” She turned and strolled out of the cemetery.

The beast stood up and trotted beside her. “You would walk in with me?”

“Yes.”

He tried to smile, but the act felt too unfamiliar. Instead, he walked silently beside her. They found a motel four blocks from the cemetery. The sign was missing letters, but in flickering yellow neon it read, “We come” and “ otel.” “Well,” Sera said, “let’s get a room.” As she headed into the lobby, the beast vanished into the night, returning only after she had secured a room and started toward it. Without turning to him, she asked, “Will you be protecting me all night?”

“Yes.”

Once inside, she showered, wrapped herself in clean towels, and washed her muddied, bloodstained clothes in the tub. Funny that the clerk didn’t even ask about those. She hung her clothes on hangers over the door. “Caliban, your turn.”

He looked at her like she was crazy.

“You stink, no offense intended.”

He huffed but headed into the bathroom, leaving the door open. For a while, Sera watched him try to figure out the handles, then the water temperature. He tasted the shampoo and spit it out. Finally, he stepped cautiously into the shower. Sera turned her gaze away, smiling when she heard him sigh.

After a while, he called from the shower, “Why aren’t you afraid of me the way you are of Jack? I could rip you apart with one swift motion of my arm.”

“Because you tell the truth. In my experience, someone truly evil is full of lies and deceit. You are not. Besides, you already said you won’t hurt me tonight, and you proved it with Jack earlier. I believe you.”

Not knowing what to make of this, Caliban quieted.

She called back to him, “Thank you for saving me—and for protecting me tonight.” She heard Caliban step out of the shower and the rasp of a towel over fur. When he strolled into the room, her large blue eyes fixed on him. “I have a favor to ask, Caliban. Would you do something for me?”

He frowned.