Quill saved me from the Death Dealers, from the Lost Highway, and even from himself. He’s earned my trust, but this is the first time he’s cared enough to ask for it.
Exploring every inch of my body displayed for him, Quill even touches and kisses the back of my knees. He wants to know what I like and how my body works. He spends long hours between my legs, teasing my pussy in excruciatingly brilliant ways. I almost feel invisible when the two of them get together to play.
I teach Quill everything I know, and he’s a model student. In those first days after our night apart in the woods, I wait for him to lose control of his inner rage.
Except that part of Quill died the night he believed I was gone forever. After feeling as if I’d stolen his power, he’s regained it by facing a pain and fear he hadn’t experienced before.
While I can’t imagine spending a lifetime knowing only death, I do understand how it feels to be under someone’s thumb. I gave my power to John to avoid feeling or thinking. I wanted to remain weak because the fog of that life allowed me to stay the sixteen-year-old distracted by lust long enough to lose her sister. As long as I didn’t change, I would never forgive myself.
Now I have my power back. For good or bad, I’m responsible for me. The pain of bad choices and the consequences of weakness are all on me.
Quill is free too. He traded his masters back in the old world for the hunt here in the Lost Highway. He was still trapped in his former way of thinking. Kill, wait, and kill again were all he knew.
We’re different now, and I can’t help wondering why we were gifted our happiness while so many Death Dealers know only madness and butchery. Why had we gotten so lucky?
“Have a Skittle,” I tell him after night arrives.
Quill doesn’t object. He normally hates eating and says wanting food is a crutch. Now he opens his mouth, so I can drop the candy on his extended tongue. I eat one too and then place the mini bag into the cabinet with the rest of our treats.
“Have you ever danced?” I ask while starting the CD.
“I don’t like that music.”
“Neither do I, but it’s all we have, so we’ll learn to like it.”
I sway to the strumming guitar and head toward Quill. He gives me an odd frown. No doubt he’s thinking about how to avoid my groping hands. Slapping them away was how he once handled them. Now he endures my fingers on his hips.
“Sway to the beat,” I say when he only stands robot-still.
“I’m not interested.”
“I don’t love Skittles or this music or living in the woods, but we need to find the joy in the small things, Quill.”
Hearing his name, he loses the frown and allows me to guide him. I take his hands, and we sway to the rough country beat. Outside the cabin, monsters lurk and the Lost Highway schemes. Inside, I’ve managed to make Quill smile while trying something new.
If living in this place is a battle, we’re definitely winning.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Quill
I turn the woods around the cabin into an obstacle course of traps and early warnings. For too long, I ignored the night-dwellers like the one that attacked Odessa. The creature hadn’t come into the light of the cabin, so I felt she wasn’t a threat even as her kind became savvier about the traps.
The Death Dealer I nearly failed to kill also provided a wake-up call. I’d felt invincible for too long. Or possibly I hadn’t anything to lose until Odessa. Either way, I allowed my standards to slip. No longer would I take for granted that I was on the top of the killer food chain.
Odessa decides we need to burn and bury the trophies. She says we must cleanse the house of Tom’s past deeds to make it truly ours. I don’t argue, even if I’m unconvinced the voices in the basement are tied to the remains in the trophy room.
“I was wrong,” I say later that night. “They’re gone.”
“For now. I’m not getting my hopes up,” Odessa says, wrapping a leg over mine. “Either way, I’m relieved to have them out of the cabin. Now we have a spare room since there’s no way I can get the other room cleaned up.”
Odessa gave up on wiping down her old room after realizing she’d waste our entire cleaning supply to complete the task.
“The scavengers take things from the accidents on the highway. Can we do that?” Odessa asks another night. “We could get in the habit of staking out the highway to see if we can get dibs on supplies.”
“The Death Dealers will be out in force. We won’t take the supplies easily. I don’t know why they allow the scavengers to take things, but they won’t be so forgiving with us.”
“With time, maybe I’ll be enough help that we can get supplies without having to rely on the scavengers.”
“In the Lost Highway, we have nothing but time.”
Odessa smiles at me, taking my words as an agreement to her plan. I don’t mind the idea of hunting and scavenging with her one day. For now, I need her safe at the cabin where I won’t lose her.