The night is wide and warm and full of wondrous noise. Voices echo through the trees. The host pushes his way through the dark, dodging roots and boulders with ease. Part of his quickness is memory—he has come out here a hundred times in the last few months—but the host is lither than he seems, too. He looks as unassuming as most humans do, but most humans don’t have a viper coiled in their chest, hiding just under their skin. Most don’t hunger like the host does.
This host’s hunger is all his own.
He lurks in shadow, silently watching the cabin. Like a snake never regrets swallowing its prey, the host is learning to set aside his guilt. Before the Dark leaves him, the host will be unafraid of the shadowed corners of his heart.
A boy separates from the party. He drunkenly ambles away from the light of the cabin into the twisted, swaying junipers along the shore. The host inhales the night air and it smells like fresh water and soil. It smells like peril.
The host is afraid.
He is excited.
“What if they catch us this time?” the host asks. “I shouldn’t be here.”
They cannot catch a shadow, the Dark breathes. They cannot catch someone who was never here.
The host nods. He knows how to hide. He’s been doing it his whole life. He’s been hiding the very nature of who he is. He’s been hiding so long that indulging in this violence feels like a lie when it is his only truth.
The boy continues down the slope toward the water. He is oblivious to the woods around him because he believes he has nothing to fear. It is this kind of ignorance that makes it so easy for the host. The boy stops at the shore and faces the water.
The host stands behind him, just out of sight. The moonlight on the lake ripples white over the boy’s face, but the host’s face is shadowed by thick boughs of juniper.
His heart beats with fear and anticipation in equal measure.
Now is your chance, the Dark whispers. Take it.
The host hesitates when the boy turns to look at the trees. His eyes are wide and brown, but they do not fear.
Not yet.
The host’s heart beats once, twice, and then he moves.
By the time the boy understands that he is not alone, the host has him. By the time he understands that he will die, it is too late to scream. Farther in the trees, the cabin is emptying. The children laugh and, only feet away, the boy is gone.
The host has never felt stronger. The Dark has never felt stronger.
16
Sunny Side Up
The first thing Logan smelled in the morning was bacon. Bacon and cat hair and the faintly sweet scent of Red Bull. The ceiling looked like the crosshatched one in her motel room, but the lighting came in from the wrong side of the room.
She wasn’t supposed to be in her room, anyway. She’d fallen asleep in the back of Ashley’s truck. Or at least, she was pretty sure she had. Everything after the kitchen was hazy.
Logan sat up and a pile of blankets fell to the floor around her. She hadn’t slept on a bed at all, apparently. The futon under her was mostly spring and no cushion. Elexis sat a few feet away playing a video game.
Like hers, Elexis’s room was connected to the room next door. The door between them was wide open, and considering the lack of bacon or cats in Elexis’s half, Logan guessed the smells were coming from the other room.
She stood, carefully clutching a blanket around her shoulders to hide the mussed black dress she’d worn out the night before. A mirror hung on the wall over the futon, forcing her to face the monstrous version of herself who’d spent a full night in makeup. Her eyeliner was smudged into a streak of black that made her look more like a demon than a girl.
“Morning,” Elexis said. Logan couldn’t see his face, but the smugness was clear in his voice. “Sleep okay?”