Chapter 16: Bumps Along the Way

Ruidoso, New Mexico

CALEB

Damnit. This was our second day in this place and we still hadn't found the Benandanti. Patience wasn't one of my strengths. I often jumped into stuff without thinking. A bad old habit from my human years that I'd kept with me. Time wasn't something I had in tons back then. That 'life is short' mantra that'd been branded in my head had been responsible for my impulsive nature. Still was. Even if the life I led now defied that on its full extension. Lack of time, of years, wasn't a problem anymore.

But that hadn't changed anything. And it played against me in this new life, especially in this mission where every move and every second counted.

"This is so boring," Nick sighed next to me. "I'm almost wishing for the Benandanti to come and find us. That would spice up things a bit." He kicked a small rock, sending it against a tree.

"What, wishing for your death?" I asked him, watching a dragonfly buzzing around. My patience was slipping away little by little, and hearing Nick's complaint only worsened it.

"No, just bored as hell."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. We were keeping our post in a thick wall of trees that surrounded one side of an upscale neighborhood, listening to scattered conversations, trying to spot something that would give off the Benandanti's location.

Our eyes weren't the only ones that held great sharpness. All of our senses were fully developed. And hearing came up as the most acute one. We could be six miles away from our target and still hear it. It required a lot of focus at that distance, though, and it sucked up all of our energy sometimes. Searching in a sea of voices that stretched out over several houses could have fried our brains. That's why we'd chosen to close the distance and had come straight into the neighborhood.

Massimo and Ben were on the other side of town, doing the same wearisome thing, and still with no results. Not finding the Benandanti was a source of anxiety. We couldn't let him, or her, find us before we did. It would mean our end right there.

They were, in fact, our worst nightmare.

What we did have to our advantage, however, was our untraceable scent. No one, not even the loser pack living here, could smell us. A gift we'd been conveniently given by our father, Balthazar. If those losers' noses couldn't catch us, they couldn't inform the Benandanti of our arrival, which gave us a lot more time to wander around. We just needed to be on our guard and stay out of the public eye.

Gavran, on the other hand, was in charge of finding the Keeper. But I didn't know how that was going for him. He hated being interrupted while on search mode. We had to wait for him to contact us.

"Oh, you have to hear this," Nick suddenly said with a grin. "Look for the house where the dog is barking."

I reached out and listened. "They're going to kick out the dog from the house?" I arched my eyebrow.

"Not 'they,' her. The little fella peed on her new, expensive shoes, so she's freaking out." He laughed.

"Talk about overreacting."

"It's a woman. What would you expect?"

The late morning sun glowed fiercely in the skies. Golden light seeped through the canopy of leaves above, touching the earth as if with sheer long fingers. Though the air was cooler than the steamy one outside this shadowy shelter, the dark clothes covering my body were soaking up the warmth. My shirt was glued to my lower back, damp with the sweat dotting my skin. The chirp of crickets in the background brought to my mind visions of jungles.

This is a freaking sauna.

I peeled off my shirt.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm hot," I told him, stuffing half of the shirt in the back pocket of my jeans. The rest was dangling, brushing my thigh.

"Say that to a girl," Nick snorted. "All those bare muscles don't work with me."

I glared at him.

"What?" he shrugged. "They don't. And that pretty face of yours doesn't either, so stop that sexy dirty look of yours. You're wasting it."

I stepped closer to him. "If you don't shut the hell up," I said slowly. "I'll make you eat the dirt under your feet and then make you swallow it along with your words." I wasn't in the mood for jokes. The high temperature had only kicked my temper up a notch.

"Great. I'm hungry," he said with a smirk.

Perfect.

I punched him in the stomach. "There. You won't be hungry anymore."

He staggered back, letting out a big gulp of air and pressed his hands against his abdomen. "Asshole," he breathed, laughing through the pain.

"You asked for it." I leaned against a tree, satisfaction pulling up the corners of my mouth into a smile. "I solved your problem, didn't I?"

"Wrong," he said, finally straightening himself up from his hunched posture and squaring his shoulders. "I'm always hungry. We're always hungry," he added. "And don't tell me the smell of eggs and bacon doesn't bring your appetite to boiling point."

He had to point that out, didn't he?

The smell was actually intoxicating. It coiled up into the air in warm, rich scents that watered my mouth. It was a Sunday and a lot of families were having a late breakfast. I could hear the steam hissing through tea kettles, the sizzle of sausages against metal, the rustle of cereal boxes, the clinking against china and, most of all, the scraping of chairs being brought together around tables-parents and offspring coming together to share a meal. Something I didn't know of. My breakfasts used to be cold sandwiches in parks, often in the company of pigeons-a lot of them one-legged.

I'd never known the warmth of sharing a meal with people who loved me, in a place I could call home. Loneliness had been my only companion back in the days.

"Do you ever wonder what is it like?" Nick said in a whisper, lost in thought.

I looked at him. "Wonder what?"

"Having a house, a warm meal-A Mom..." He sighed, longing lacing his words. "Or having a pain in the ass little sister." He gave a small smile.

I lowered my eyes. Nick was the same as me. Though we were from different places, different continents, we had the same lonesome past. We understood each other. That's why when he'd found me roaming in a dark alley, jobless, a quick offer to join him had been made.

We were part of a big family now, and we had a goal. But that little corner in our minds, where our mirthless past was locked in, opened up old feelings sometimes. It didn't let us walk our path freely, as if we had a permanent pebble stuck in our shoes.

"I once had the chance to be with a family," I said, suddenly reminded of that short period of time. I didn't like to talk about it. The memory hurt. "It was just for less than a month. I was in New York back then."

Nick turned to look at me, losing his faraway gaze.

"They offered me to work for them. I had to clean the apartment, do the laundry, care for bedrooms, and even cook sometimes- a maid, of sorts."

He chuckled.

I shot him a glare.

"Okay, okay," he pressed his hand against his stomach, as if fearing another punch. "Sorry. Go on." Then, as if he couldn't let it pass, he added, "But you have to admit it's dead funny."

I gave a soft shake of my head. "It was like winning the lottery for me. Aside from earning good bucks, I had a room, warm food-I just couldn't believe how much trust they were putting on a sixteen-year-old stranger." I crossed my arms over my bare chest. "But the best part was the little girl. She was an only child, so having me there was like an early Christmas for her. I was her new puppet. She loved to play Hide-and-Seek with me-I found her once hiding inside the dryer-and she was a little chubby so..." I snorted a laugh.

Nick was smiling, as if he was picturing the whole scene. "How old was she?"

"Eight," I told him with deep affection, warmth blossoming inside my chest. "She was like the little sister I never had."

A heavy pause followed, both of us deep into the clouds of our minds. Images of the little brunette girl smiled at me. That beautiful sparkle in her eyes glowing like two little stars over a green and brown ocean.

"So, what happened?" Nick asked, pulling up his haunted blue eyes to mine. "If you enjoyed so much being there with them, why did you leave?"

"For the exact same reason. They made me feel as if I was part of the family, and I knew that one day or another everything was going to end. I mean, how much could've that lasted?" I shrugged, scrapping my bare skin against the tree bark. "I knew the fall was going to be hard if I didn't get away fast, and they wanted me to-" I trailed off. "Nick?"

He wasn't looking at me anymore, nor listening. His nostrils were flared, open in anticipation, and his nails had sharpened, deadly as knives. He was staring through narrowed eyes at the girl jogging on the walkway, brushing past the edge of the tree line. White cords fell down from her ears, swinging around her neck. She was listening to music-an easy prey.

Silence fell upon us. The crush of her shoes against gravel the only sound touching our enhanced ears.

"It looks we found ourselves a meal," Nick said, breathing heavily. His sturdy chest moved up and down beneath his black shirt.

I shoved my hand to his forearm, imprisoning him there as hard as I could. "Don't." I warned through my teeth. "The last thing we need is to draw attention to ourselves with a missing girl."

"It won't." He tried to pull away.

I restrained him harder, my veins jumping from the exertion. "Think with a cold head, Nick."

"I'm thinking, Caleb." His mood was darkening. His muscles beefing-up. "That girl is planning to run away. I heard her talking on the phone minutes ago. She fights a lot with her parents-and she just had a fight with them. No one will suspect." He jerked away his arm from my grip.

And before I could react, he'd launched himself on the girl. I heard the crack of her neck. I heard the thump of her limp body being tossed onto the ground. Then, the rich scent of warm blood swirled in the air.