Where Dark Things Wait: Night Creatures Book One

Chapter Twenty-Five - A Decision to Regret

"I'm not sure I'll ever fully forgive Maloney for this," Eorl said when he pulled into the park and ride on the outskirts of Durham, and his dark brows tugged low over sombre eyes.

Come morning, Kalyna would catch a bus into the city centre, then she'd become one of the lost and forgotten once more. She wouldn't matter to anyone, and no one would matter to her. That seemed so much simpler.

"She's your friend," Kalyna answered, because according to everything she'd heard, that was the truth. "As much as I think Maloney overstepped, she was responding to a dangerous situation that slipped beyond her control. You'll forgive her. I just can't. I can't trust her, but then I'm not sure there are many people on earth that I could trust now. I've spent too long on the outside."

His palms cupped her cheeks, stroking below her eyes as he admitted, "I had hoped that you might learn to trust me, and the fact you now won't get the chance seems like a steep price to pay for Maloney's error of judgement."

Without giving her a chance to argue, he tugged a notepad from the glove box and began scrawling digits onto it, telling her, "The first number is my personal mobile, the second my room's landline, the third is Major Marcellus Nerva's phone, and the fourth is the compound's switchboard. Do you have a mobile?"

She shook her head, admitting, "I can't always keep one charged or topped up, and a phone is just something to be stolen."

"Then keep this somewhere safe. Memorise my number if you have to, and if you ever need help, find a phone. Alright?" he demanded.

She nodded as he pressed the slip of paper into her palm. The tight feeling in her chest stole her ability to speak, though, and her vision blurred. It had been so long since anyone had cared enough about her to give her a phone number or offer help if she needed it. As words were momentarily beyond her, she kissed him again, one rough kiss that said she didn't want to leave him, that said they might have had more potential than either of them had allowed, and that she was sorry it had been the wrong time and the wrong place.

"Goodbye, Dunstan Eorl," she managed to choke out, then she threw herself from the Land Cruiser and stalked towards a bus shelter, determined not to look back. Only tears rolled over her cheeks, and a sob escaped her lips as the car pulled away behind her.

What the fuck had she done?

Had she just hit a self destruct button? Had it been a mistake? Should she have endured Maloney to keep Dunstan, and Isemay, Alad, and Zhak? Should she have stayed for the mission, even though Maloney had betrayed her trust so completely?

She wasn't sure she'd made the right decision. Dunstan had done the only thing he could, giving her what she said she wanted, but was it really what she wanted? The pain in her chest said it wasn't, and another choking sob escaped her, because for the first time in five years there had been the possibility of friends, of community, and she'd run away at the first hurdle. She'd run away because she no longer remembered how to navigate a world where other people reacted to fear, or duty, or friendship, or any stimuli at all. For so long, there had only been her, alone, but she hadn't let herself feel the crushing weight of that loneliness nor recognised the way her solitude had twisted her ability to interact with others.

Once under the bus shelter's canopy, she slid down the block-built wall to sit on the pavement, feeling the familiar chill through her jeans. She looked at the slip of paper in her hand - at the list of phone numbers on it - and despite her doubts she read and re-read the first one, committing it to memory in case she ever plucked up the courage to make that call. Then she slid the list of phone numbers into her back pack, and gave herself over to her misery, crying until she could cry no more.