Humans. The further they lived from one another, the more vulnerable they made themselves, and the more reckless they became about guarding their lives. It was almost like they wanted to die, separating themselves from the herd in the hopes of attracting a passing predator.
Kane entered, primed for ambush. The inner room was muggy and stank of sweat and mold, so old and so ingrained in its environment that he doubted the humans who lived here even were aware of it anymore. He gestured for Raven to follow him, and heard her unskilled step on the porch as she obeyed. There was a stairwell in the corner of the room. Experience told Kane the bedrooms would be on the upper floor, but he checked the rest of this level first.
The kitchen beckoned. There were dishes still thick with scraps piled in the sink and the smell of meat and smoke was heavy in the air. Kane waved Raven over and put a hand on her shoulder, moving his lips right against her ear and giving his next command in a voice only a breath above silence.
“You need to drink,” he told her. “Slow. But as much as you can. And we both need to eat.” He put a claw right to her face and added, “If you try in any way to warn them we are here, I’m going to kill them anyway and the food you eat will be pulled from their own bodies.”
Raven paled even further, if that were possible, and she nodded.
Kane stepped back and watched while Raven opened cupboards and found a drinking glass. She went to the cold storage and filled her glass with something white, her face expressionless. She made very little noise.
Kane growled low approval when she started to drink and left her to it. She wasn’t as quiet as she thought she was; he would hear her if she ran and he was prepared to abandon the house to keep her. But he didn’t think she’d run.
Upstairs, he found his prey at last. Two humans—a male in one room and a younger female in another, the overpowering scent of their sweat betraying their genders from the hall. Both were sleeping. And if they’d turned off the light in the kitchen before they’d gone to bed, they might have been able to wake up in the morning. Life was funny.
Males tended to be stronger and more aggressive than females, so Kane moved on the male first. The human was snoring loudly enough to cover Kane’s approach, but he wakened just as Kane reached the side of the bed. He managed half a shout before Kane’s hand muzzled him, and he struggled ferociously as Kane swiftly flipped him onto his face. It ended with the dull snap of bone beneath the muffle of a pillow and Kane harvested the precious fluid the human’s brain provided in silence.
The female in the other room uttered a sleepy query and Kane went to meet her, ejecting the spent gland from his harvester as he went. She was already lying back down when he opened her door, but she was quick enough to fly up again at the intrusion. She tried to scream, but Kane leapt, smashing the legs out from under the bed when he landed and crushing the breath from her body. He covered the human’s mouth and shouted for Raven, just to know that she was still in the house.
She came, her footsteps echoing clumsily on the stairs, but stopped when she reached the bedroom door. She looked at him, at the struggling female he pinned. Her face crumpled. “You said I wouldn’t have to help.”
“Don’t help,” he said, and rolled the human onto her side. She was still struggling weakly, like the bird whose breast he had broken, and there was blood flecking her lips as she sucked in her gasping breaths. Time was limited; the gland could not produce its chemicals once the human died. “Just stay where you are.”
He worked quickly, struggling to find a good snapping-place on the back of the young humans underdeveloped skull. Finally, he was reduced to picking up a heavy-looking lamp at arm’s reach and crudely bashing her open. He located the necessary material, feeling the female’s body torpidly squirming as she died. He had nearly filled one ampule. It was a start.
A metallic rattle distracted him. Raven was at the human’s closet. She had pulled some clothing from the articles hanging there and was putting it on over the top of her ruined string-shirt. Her shoulders were shaking.
A good idea. The male in the other room was big, for a human. If Kane was going to be doing much travel by groundcar on the human’s roads, it would be smart to have a disguise.
“Stay close,” he said, and got up.
“Can’t I please go back downstairs?” Raven’s voice was broken, her eyes shining with desperation since her body was too dry for tears. She clutched both her hands before her, miming shackles, and said, “Please? Please.”
Kane glanced at the bed. Blood had soaked the pillow already, was dripping onto the floor. Without answering, he went to the wall and thumbed the switch that operated the light. He went to Raven, catching her wrist though she tried to cringe back, and dragged her to the bedside. He put her before him, his free hand closing on her jaw, aiming her at the body on the bed.
“Take a good look,” he said, unconsciously giving her the same words (and in much the same way) as Uraktus had given him, years and years ago. “That’s death. That’s what I deal in. Look at it. Smell it.”
Raven trembled in his grip. Her eyes were huge, staring. “She’s just a kid,” she whispered. She looked away, at the papers and human images that coated the walls, at the soft toys and pink-colored objects that cluttered the floor. She pushed back, blindly seeking the comfort of Kane’s chest; Kane, who had done the killing.
He patted her arm reassuringly and studied the dead human without much interest. He didn’t think she was as young as Raven believed. The female’s chest-bumps were full and firm, the scent of her musk was mature. She was young, but not that young. Death just had a way of shaving off the years.
Raven turned around and pressed her face into the crook of Kane’s arm. She made that sobby sound, but just once. “Are you going to kill me?” she asked.
“That’s up to you.”
“I want to live.” He could feel her breath on his bare skin. She said it again, as though trying to convince herself. Then she stepped away from him, her arms wrapped around her middle and her head bent. When Kane left, she followed.
In the male’s room, Kane found only a few items of value to him. Foot covers, heavy and grimed with use, but sized to fit even over Kane’s talons. A long coat, ill-fitting and much too heavy to wear all the time, but an essential thing, he thought, if he was to move for any length of time among humans. A head-cover, wide-brimmed, which Kane took solely to keep the sun out of his eyes as he walked. And finally, sitting right within easy reach of the bed, a weapon.
It was a hand-held pellet-projectile device, black and stinking of oil. Kane picked it up, feeling it heavy in his hand, and gave the dead male on the bed a long look. If he had reached for this instead of shouting, Kane would be dead on the floor right now. Life. Funny.
But he liked the thing. He like the dull gleam of it, the lethal feel of the metal. He glanced at Raven; she was gazing tight-lipped at the corpse. “What’s the name for this?” he asked, hefting the weapon.
“It’s a gun,” she answered dully. “I don’t know what kind.”
“Do you know how to work it?”
She dragged her eyes off the bed and finally came over, holding out one hand.
“Don’t touch it,” he said, pulling the thing back out of her reach and smiling faintly. A part of him was coming to approve of his human, and he thought he might eventually come to like her quite a lot, but he was light-years away from trusting her to hold a weapon. “Just tell me.”