Heat

“Is that everything?” Kane still had his hand on the car door, waiting to see if she would go back into the house or not. He was wearing his new clothes. The overcoat was too small; its long sides hung down behind him like demonic wings, and left his chest bare. He had no nipples. Fu

“I think so,” she said finally, and he shut the door and went around to let himself in the front passenger seat. She got behind the wheel and he handed her the keys. “Where do I go?” she asked, turning the ancient engine over.

“Find us a road and take us east,” he said, and that was that.

They drove all day, navigating out and around through the winding roads and nearly-roads of backwater Oregon, filling up at towns too small for stoplights and pissing in the woods. It wasn’t so bad. The car was old, but the A/C worked, and the miles had a way of slipping by. It was late afternoon before they found a highway. It was evening when they left Oregon. And it was dark again before Kane’s voice finally growled up and told her to pull over.

Raven yawned against the back of her hand, squinting into the sparse line of headlights. There were plenty of turn-offs ahead of her, but it was something behind her now that occupied her mind. It was important to be tactful, not to give the appearance of arguing, but…

“Do we have to?” she asked.

She sensed his eye on her, glittering black at the edge of her peripheral vision. “I know,” she said hurriedly. “I’m on the edge of unsafe here, but there’s a motel up ahead.”

“Motel?”

“Yeah. I…I kind of thought it’d be nice to sleep in a real bed. Maybe get a shower.” She sniffed at her underarm and pulled a face. “Definitely a shower.”

He grunted.

“Is that a ‘yes’?” she asked tentatively. “I’ll pull over here if you really want to.”

“It’s been a while since I’ve slept in a…bed,” he said, in a low, musing voice. “And I could use washing up.” He shifted around and the weight of his gaze became an itch all down Raven’s right side. “When I’m tired,” he said evenly, “it’s easy for me to…over-react. Any little pause or other harmless thing you may say is going to make me want to rip your head clean off.”

There was no hint of malice in his tone. None whatsoever. He was as calm and conversational as if he were telling her that he liked to go skiing in the winter. She did not doubt him for a second.

“Kane,” she said softly. “You said we were going to be traveling together for a while. You can’t really want me to smell this bad.”

He grunted again and faced the windshield. Then he laughed and said, “No, not if I don’t have to. All right, Raven. Take us to this motel.”

She could feel parts of her she hadn’t even known were tense start to relax. Her back, her arms, her thighs, her stomach—how could a stomach even tighten up?—everything. “Thanks,” she said softly.

“You’ll make it up to me.”

Her stomach tightened up again. All at once, the hatchback enclosing her washed out just a little, and she was flat on her back on the dry grass. She could feel him wedging into her, could feel herself crushed and shoved and rocked by the brutal size and uncaring movements he sent against her. Slowly, the car bled back into focus, but her pussy still ached. He hadn’t even glanced at her since that first time. She’d hoped that part was over.

Kane was looking at her again and now he was smiling.

They were coming up on the motel, but there was still no town in sight. It was just a wide spot in the road, really. A little log cabin office with a strip of six rooms off to either side of it. The vacancy light was lit, but the amenities board beneath it read, not Welcome! or Free HBO and Continental Breakfast, but Gone Fishin. Closed until September. Keep cool.

She wasn’t sure which to believe, but the light was on in the office, so she pulled in and parked. “This could be tricky,” she said, unbuckling herself. Little places like this tended not to be as strict as the bigger ones about showing I.D. when people registered, but flags got raised in a hurry if they asked and no one had any. She’d just have to cross her fingers and hope, maybe spin out that old ‘my wallet got stolen’ story if she had to.

Kane didn’t look concerned. He followed her into the office, which was unlocked, and put his arm around her shoulders as she hit the service bell. It was a strange gesture coming from him, right up until she felt his claws digging at her skin below her shirt sleeve and realized just how close they were to her neck. One quick pull, one rush of heat, and it was all over for her. Her throat went dry at once; she tried to swallow for spit and got only a sandy click for her efforts.

“Easy, human,” Kane murmured. “Easy. You’re going to make him nervous.”

Raven sucked in a breath, let it out slow, and smiled as an old man shuffled into the office from a back room. He was wearing a bathrobe with the unabashedness unique to seniors, and he waved at them amiably as he came to the front desk and eased into the worn cushions of a tall chair.

“I was begi

“Figured what the hell,” the old man said cheerfully. “Might as well hang out the shingle ‘till midnight at least. But I’m meaning to be on my way tomorrow noon, so’s you need to be checkin’ out right on the buzzer of eleven. Not generally so particular, myself, but you see how it is. Damn weather.”

Kane emitted a single cough of laughter and nodded. “Damn weather,” he agreed.

The old man nodded vigorously, leaning forward over the desk. “Got no pool, that’s the problem. Used to be a man could make a living on summer trade ‘n deer season and such with a little premium cable and a muffin in the morning, but can’t be done these days. This weather! Pardon my French if you’re religious, but this goddamn heat!”

“Amen,” said Kane, and Raven blinked at him.

“I’m too old for this crap,” the motel man grumbled good-naturedly. “I got a place up by the lake Ontario-way I ain’t seen in five years, killing myself down here as I am. And so tonight I’m thinking, no hide or hair of customer in five days, and this damn weather, why not?”

“Why not?” Kane shrugged.

The old man made a cheerful grimace and then waved at them again. “Ah, listen to me rattle on and it half-past eleven. Let me get your key. Room 3 got the best A/C, and you might as well take it for a goodbye. I’ll have a good breakfast laid on tomorrow for you, you just come and buzz me, I’ll have it out. You’re welcome to take any and all with you when you go your way, too. Muffins, mostly, and they ain’t fresh, but they’re not bad.”

“Thank you,” Raven said. She filled in the registration card under the name Cain and Cindy Francisco, with a completely fake address in Seattle.

“You folks should have stayed up north,” the old man remarked, setting a heavy brass key on a plastic tab down on the counter. “Nice and cool, s’ I hear. Even rains now and then.”

“Well, we’re headed back,” Raven told him. “Had to…see my sister’s baby.”

“And don’t they come at the worst times?” he asked merrily. “I hear you, I hear you. Now, it’s thirty-five for the room, and I’ll just run a copy of your driver’s license and let you folks tuck in for the night.”

“Um,” said Raven. “The thing is—”

Kane glanced at her, then slipped a hand around the old man’s neck. It seemed to Raven that he didn’t even move particularly fast, but he must have, because the old guy didn’t even get out the first word of a “What the heck are you doing?” before it was over. She heard the coconut-hollow whack of the old guy’s head hitting the counter, and then Kane’s hand was back in his pocket and he was watching, just standing there and watching, as the old guy crumpled off his chair and onto the floor. He landed facedown and mouth open, blood spilling in a wide ribbon onto the cheap carpet.

Raven must have made a sound, because Kane looked at her. “Wasn’t that the tricky bit?” he asked. He was smiling again, teasing her.

“I could have told him something,” she said.

“His listening days are about to end.” Kane took his arm off her shoulders and moved around the counter. He hunkered down, opening his black pack and taking out that rodlike machine he’d used on the brains of the men Raven had been riding with, but then paused and looked more closely into the motel guy’s face. He grunted and touched a fingertip to the old man’s neck. “Damn,” he said mildly. “I think I killed him.”

“You were going to kill him anyway,” Raven said. Not a smart thing to say, but she couldn’t call the words back any more than she could take her eyes off that little winding stripe of red coming out of the split in the old guy’s brow.

“True. But I wanted to harvest him first.” Kane straightened up, dropping his device back into his pack. “Never mind, he’ll keep. Let’s close down.”

Raven picked up the room key, registration card and pen, wiped down the counter with a fold of her t-shirt, and used the back of her elbow to flip the ‘no’ switch for No Vacancy. “I need to move the car,” she said.

“All right.” Kane yawned hugely, showing Raven two rows of pointed carnivore’s teeth. “But we’d better make it quick.”

She parked the car around the back of the motel, away from the road and casual sight. Kane sat beside her in the passenger seat, tapping his claws on one knee and looking very relaxed for a man who’d just killed a guy and was preparing to sleep in the same building as the body.

The disuse of the season was evident in the musty smell of Room 3. Raven kept the lights off, closed the curtains, and moved at once to the air conditioner mounted in the wall. It started up noisy as a ‘67 Chevy, but it did start up, and it worked pretty fast, howling glacial air into the little room. Kane waved a hand before the vent as he closed the door and looked impressed.

“Nice,” he said, and gave Raven a stinging slap to her hip that held no hostility at all. “Let’s wash up, human.”

She led him to the little bathroom and flipped on the light there, reasoning that the only window here faced the woods and she wasn’t likely to attract any attention. The bathroom wasn’t the smallest she’d ever seen in a motel, but it was plenty crowded with the two of them in it, and she stripped off her shirt selfconsciously, hoping he would maybe realize there was no way she could crawl through the narrow window and so leave her alone.