“Why? So you can figure out how best to fit me conveniently into your plan?”
Nico didn’t bother denying it. “I’m not like your friends, I’m not civilized. But I’ll tell you about me if you tell me about yourself.”
I’m not civilized. No, he wasn’t. But there was something wistful in his words. “What are your friends like?” I asked, suddenly curious.
Nico’s lean frame tensed. It had never been fully relaxed, but it had been slowly unwinding since we’d started talking. “I choose not to make friends.” Again, his words were carefully calculated.
“That must get lonely.”
“I’d rather be lonely than guilty of killing another person.”
I stiffened. “I asked who you were friends with. Do you kill your friends?”
Nico’s laugh was hard. “I don’t kill them. They get killed because of me. Because they’re my friends.”
I fell silent. There it was again, the pain. “Why? To hurt you?”
“To hurt me. To break me. To isolate me. To make me vulnerable.”
The words fell like stones. Nico’s voice was charged with unbearable emotion. It had worked, I thought. He was hurting.
“I’m sorry.” Nico opened his mouth, probably to tell me that he didn’t need sympathy. I cut him off. “I’m sorry and I don’t care if you don’t want sympathy. It won’t make you weaker to accept sympathy, will it?” I couldn’t help my curtness. He was hurting and I wanted to help him, but he’d never let me. It was hard, sitting next to someone in so much pain and trying not to comfort them.
“Sympathy and pity are two different words for the same thing. I don’t need pity. I’m fine. They haven’t won, and they never will.” Nico shot back.
I was silent for a moment. “They? Is one of them the same guy you told me you were hunting? The one who draws out torture?”
Nico’s lips twisted. “No. All of the ones who took the people I was close to are dead now.” There was savage satisfaction in his voice and his face. He looked me dead in the eyes. “Like I said, I’m an excellent hunter, and I don’t give up. They tried to run, but it didn’t help them, once I got their scent. They were dead men as soon as they took my friends.”
I shivered. Nico was no longer leashing in his deadly aura. “So who are you hunting now? Why are you here?”
“Not yet. I asked about you first.”
I gave a resigned shrug. “What do you want to know?” I didn’t wait for him to tell me. “I’m seventeen and a senior at my high school. My mom is a single mom—my dad left before I was born. I don’t miss him or really care about him: my mom is more than enough. I’ve been doing mixed martial arts for a couple of months: I’m not that good at it, but its fun.” I shrugged again. “What else…I like to sing and play the guitar, and I write songs. It’s just a hobby of mine, though.” I thought of Mom and grimaced.
“My mom is going to be crazy with worry tomorrow. She called and I told her I was having a sleepover. She’s going to go by my friend’s house at eleven tomorrow and realize I lied…” I groaned, putting my head in my hands.
Nico looked away from me, up at the tiny window at the top corner of the cell. The setting sun cast deep shadows on half of his face, illuminating the other half in brilliant orange-red. He really is beautiful. Right now his face was smooth, but something about him made me ache. “Sorry.” He told me quietly.
I looked at him as he glanced over. “For what?”
Nico laughed, and whatever expression had put that ache in my heart was gone. He was guarded, and I couldn’t pick one emotion out from the many in his eyes. “I’m the reason you’re here, remember?”
I shrugged, knowing it was true. “You didn’t do it on purpose. And you’re protecting Carmen, whoever she is.”
Nico didn’t reply. Instead he lifted a hand to his chest, and pain flitted across his face. I didn’t ask: he wouldn’t tell me, and it was none of my business. “All right, I told you about me. Your turn.” I told him, changing the subject.
Nico watched me for a moment before speaking. “I’m eighteen. Both my parents died a long time ago. I have a little sister who’s being guarded by Carmen right now: Carmen will keep her safe for as long as she can, which means I need to keep Carmen safe.” He shrugged. “That’s it.”
We were silent for a few beats. I didn’t even entertain the idea of offering sympathy for the death of his parents. “Tell me about your sister, then. What’s she like?”
Nico smiled—a genuine, warm smile. All the conflicting emotions in Nico’s eyes receded, as though the thought of his sister drove away all his demons. I blinked, shocked and warmed at the same time. “Jenny’s really sweet. She’s thirteen now, and she’s ready to change the world.”
Nico could see the question in my eyes. “One of the five men who killed my friends over time also tried to get at Jenny. She escaped, and then I went after him.” The fury in Nico’s voice was mingled with that same savage triumph as before. “Out of all of them, his death was the hardest.” Worry creased Nico’s brow. “Jenny doesn’t exactly appreciate the shelter, but she’ll just have to deal, for now. I can’t imagine the uproar she’s causing to try and find me.”
I didn’t like the worried look in Nico’s eyes: I wanted to protect him. Nico had said himself he could kill me without even trying, so how could I defend him? But there was something about him that made me want to make sure he never got hurt again.
“How long have you been here?” I glanced around the dismal cell.
Nico shrugged. “I’ve lost count of the days—probably a few weeks. What’s the date?” When I told him, surprise flared in his face for a moment. “It’s been longer than I thought.” He muttered. “A month and a few days.”
His voice was quiet. It wasn’t desperate or hopeless, but calculating. I wondered if I’d have held up nearly as well if I were him. No way in hell. I looked away from Nico, towards the door. “It can’t be long. You said Jenny was working to get you out.”
Nico’s dark eyes captured mine. “Of course.” He wasn’t listening to what I said, I could tell. He was thinking. “We’ll get out of here for sure.” Nico told me quietly, complete conviction in his voice. He’d seen my worry.
We both went quiet. For the next few hours, nothing was said. Neither of us slept, and I didn’t even feel tired or hungry. I was just watching Nico: the glimmering, ever changing emotions in his eyes, the occasional flicking of his head to get hair out of his eyes, the calm, even breathing.
The moon had been up several hours when Nico spoke. “We’ll be getting out of here soon. But you have to promise me something, right now.”
Dark eyes smoldered at me. I met them, already used to the intense passion in their depths. “What?”
“You have to trust me, at least until I get us out of here. And then you need to go back home and stay safe, and never breathe a word about me to anyone. It could get you in trouble.”
I didn’t hesitate. “I promise.”
Nico paused a beat. “That was fast.”
“You weren’t asking anything hard.” I countered.
“I asked you to trust me.”
“And?”
“I’m not a trustworthy person.”
“What makes you say that?”
“What makes you think even for a fraction of a second that I’m safe for you to trust?” There was an edge to Nico’s voice.
“You said you were getting us out of here. You’re the only one I’ve got right now.”
“I could kill you right here, right now.”
My eyes narrowed. “You keep bringing that up. You won’t do it.”
“How do you know?”
“I trust you.” It was insane, but it was true.
“My friends trusted me, too.” There it was again, that pain.
I watched Nico for a moment. “They were right to do so.”
“They’re dead now because of me. One at a time, my five closest friends. All separate incidents, all people with the right idea. Lure me, kill me, use me.” And they broke you, too.
“You tried your best to save them. And you avenged them. You said yourself you didn’t stop until it was done.”
“How can you know that I tried my hardest?” Nico challenged.
I looked him right in the eyes. “If you hadn’t tried your hardest, you wouldn’t be alive right now. You wouldn’t have allowed yourself to live.” It was true, and I knew it even within a few hours with him. “And you killed their killers. Justice.”
“Murder.”
“Do you regret it?”
“Hell no.”
I tried to phrase my thoughts carefully. “Killing is a hard thing to do. It takes a certain something that I don’t know if everyone has. You said earlier that too much darkness rots the soul. Some rotten souls need to be killed.”
Nico watched me for a long moment. “I also said that I didn’t think you had what it took to kill someone. I take that back.”
I was silent for a little bit. “I think you were right when you said I couldn’t kill someone. Something changed for me in the last few hours.”
“Did it?”
“I know now that if I needed to, I would kill.”
“Everyone’s definition of necessity is different.”
"If it would save someone I cared about. If it would stop others from hurting. If it would save my life. I wouldn’t do it for religion, because I don’t have one and I’d never get that extreme anyway. I wouldn’t do it for money, either. I’d do it for people.”
Nico nodded and turned away. He paced the room slowly a few times, stopped. Looked back at me. “You’ll survive.”
“What?”
“You’ll survive. I thought that you might die before I could get you back to your safety.”
“What made you change your mind?” I thought of Nico’s first calculating looks. I wondered what had made him decide I might not survive in the first place.
“You said it yourself. Something changed for you in the last few hours. That something might save you. We’ll see, won’t we?”
“It would be inconvenient for you if I died.” I stated, remembering his words from before with a flash of anger. But crazily enough, I could understand what he’d meant. I’d never do the same or be able to think the same way, but I could understand.
“It would be. It’s in my best interest that you survive.” Nico said neutrally.
I felt the temptation to go off on him like I had earlier. But this time, I just nodded. After all, life wasn’t about bad guys and good guys. It was about survivors.
~~~
Nico POV
Danielle fell asleep slowly, and until she couldn’t keep them open, her grey-blue eyes followed me. She was lying right in the path of the moonbeam, and her hair shimmered in the wavy places, so light it was almost silver. At first glance, Danielle seemed like a washed out person: pale skin, light hair, stormy grey eyes. Fragile. Breakable.
Inconvenient.
She was anything but: I’d discovered that within the first fifteen minutes. She had the will to survive.
Right now Danielle was sleeping peacefully, but I couldn’t help wondering exactly what she was thinking. She’d suddenly been thrown into this crazy situation for no reason, and now she was just going to have to deal with it until I could find a way to get us out of this place. Your fault.
Yes, it was my fault: my fault that I’d been caught and my fault that Danielle had been kidnapped.
What were you supposed to do? I demanded myself. Kevin and Matt had been on the verge of killing me. I’d needed to give them something, and I’d made up a description that was the opposite of Carmen and unlikely to be found. How many pale, slender girls were there with wavy, silvery blond hair and dark grey eyes? How many of them were seventeen years old and lived in a fifteen mile radius of this building?
I could so easily see Danielle living the normal life she’d described: going to school, doing a sport three times a week, doing homework, hanging out with friends, writing her own songs and playing her guitar. She didn’t belong here: she had a life outside of danger and fear. My life was danger and fear.
A shadow passed over the cell window, blocking out the moonlight for a moment. I straightened, thinking that maybe it was someone coming to see if I was here. But there was only silence. I leaned back against the wall and touched my chest gently, hating the feeling of pain that accompanied my touch.
I laid myself carefully on my back and stared up at the dark ceiling and prayed that no dreams would come tonight.
~~~
My eyes snapped open to nearly complete darkness. The moon was out, but it must have been half hidden by a cloud. The floor underneath me was hard cement and I gingerly sat up. What had woken me up? Was someone coming?
Then I heard it again: a ragged gasp. My head snapped to the far right wall, where Nico was sleeping. “Nico?”
No answer.
I got up and moved over to where he was lying down. He was perfectly still, but his face was twisted. “Nico? Are you okay?” Was this a nightmare, or was he hurt? Suddenly, I was afraid again.
Another gasp fought its way out of his throat, but this time it was more like a muffled sob. “Jenny.” The whisper was low and rough, full of pain. Nico’s face contorted: he was having a nightmare.
For a moment, I was frozen. Nico had demons, all right, but he fought his own battles. I very much doubted he wanted me to wake him up—he’d see that as weakness. Then: “God damn it, don’t hurt her! Not her, she’s the only one left!” Nico came awake suddenly as he shouted the words, jerking forward as though to fend off an invisible enemy. Then suddenly he stilled, and I saw awareness flood back into his mind. He dropped the arm he’d raised in attack and was silent for a beat, not looking at me.
“Are you…Jenny’s safe with Carmen. No one will touch her.” I fumbled for words, hit right in the heart by his words. She’s the only one left.
“Shut up.” Nico ground out. He was fully awake now, and so was I. In one swift, graceful movement, Nico bounded to his feet and launched himself at one of the walls. His fist connected hard with the concrete, and in the moonlight I could see it start to bleed. “Fuck.” Nico didn’t seem to register the pain, whirling to face me instead.
“She’s not safe. She’s never safe, because she’s my sister. And she’s the only one left. If someone wants to get to me, they’ll go through her. I won’t have her die because of me. I can’t. Not another one.” Nico wasn’t talking to me, and his savagely lethal expression was fixed somewhere far away from this room. “I need to get out of here. For now he’s happy because I’m out of the way and he hasn’t heard of me in a month, but as soon as I’m out of here I’ll be on the hunt again. Jenny will become a target again. I won’t let him kill her. I’d rather die.”
I believed him.
“You said Carmen was watching over her. Do you trust her?”
“I don’t trust anyone.” The words whipped through the air.
“You trust Jenny.”
Nico stilled and looked at me. “I’m talking as though she’s already been killed: as though I’ve already failed.” He whispered in horror.
What could I say to that? “She’s alive. She’s safe for now. Carmen is doing her job.” My gaze went to his hand. “Your knuckles are bleeding.”
“I don’t give a damn about my knuckles.” Nico snapped. He looked tired and stressed and a hundred years old. “Go to sleep, Danielle. I don’t need someone to comfort me.”
“Everyone needs someone.”
“Yeah, and I need Jenny. Therefore, I’ll do everything I can to keep her alive. Damn it, she’s thirteen!”
“You’re eighteen. You’re still young—barely a legal adult.”
Nico stilled, watching me with those wild eyes. Anger, love, fear, sadness, desperate determination. “Am I? It doesn’t feel like it. Sometimes it feels like I’m older than the hills.”
Then he cursed. “Fuck, I wouldn’t be saying any of this if it weren’t three in the morning and if I weren’t so goddamn scared. I can’t lose her. What do I have left, if I lose her?”
I had no answer. He was hurting so badly, and I couldn’t move forward to take him in my arms and tell him it was going to be okay. He wouldn’t accept that, and I wasn’t sure I could either. I trusted Nico, but if I comforted him I’d open to him, and that would be a big mistake.
Nico suddenly sagged. He passed a hand over his eyes, and he just looked tired. So, so tired. “Go to sleep, Danielle. I’m sorry I woke you up.”
I almost ignored my logic and hugged him right then. I even took a half step forward, but he lifted his head and looked at me. His dark eyes nailed me to the spot: they were burning as always, but the only emotions visible now were grief, fear, pain and desperation. “Just go to sleep.”
I lay on my side facing one of the walls to give Nico some privacy. There was no reason for me to cry, there really wasn’t. Maybe it was the stress at having been kidnapped. Maybe it was the stress of fear, the stress of not knowing. All of those things, maybe. But it definitely wasn’t because of Nico’s eyes. It wasn’t because he’d been robbed of a childhood, because he was so scared and helpless, or because he was hurting so badly with no one he’d let help him. It wasn’t because of him.
I cried without making a sound, and so did Nico. Silence had stepped into the room, and it would keep us company through the night, shooing away sleep.
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