✓ | 2. young blood [STEVE HARRINGTON]

eleven.

CHAPTER ELEVEN:
THE HUNTED

[ THE SPY PART II ]

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            The light bled out of the sky surprisingly quickly, black seeping across the expanse of blue like ink into a pale canvas. Once the light was so dim it was difficult to see, the only glow coming from a far off street lamp and the occasional stars dotted above — the night was cloudy, hiding the mood and most stars, and the ground was even covered by thick silver sheen of mist — the group of five all piled onto the bus. Lucas climbed up the ladder Thomas and Steve had positioned beneath the emergency window in the ceiling so that he could act as a lookout from a position on the roof. The other four remained downstairs; Steve and Thomas sat against the wall, side by side, while Steve fiddled with his silver lighter.

            "So . . . You really fought one of those things before?" Max questioned from where she sat, bathed in shadow, at the front of the bus. As the new member of their group, and having not seen Thomas' powers in action yet, she had, naturally, been struggling to truly believe Lucas' story; Thomas couldn't wholly blame her.

            Steve looked at her and nodded, then returned to messing around with his lighter.

           "And you're, like, totally, one-hundred-percent sure it wasn't a bear?" Max asked sceptically.

          "Shit! Don't be an idiot!"Dustin snapped, pacing back and forth between where Steve and Thomas sat and Max's chair. "It wasn't a bear." He grew still, glaring at her. "Why are you even here if you don't believe us? Just go home."

           "Sheesh. Someone's cranky," Max commented. She pushed off from her chair, heading to the ladder. "Past your bed time?" With nothing else to say, and without casting a single glance back, she climbed up to join Lucas and disappeared into the silver glow of stars.

           Dustin merely returned to his pacing.

          "That's good," Steve praised with a light shrug. "Just show her you don't care."

           "I don't," Dustin said, looking down at the two boys. Steve winked, all while Thomas puzzled again over the mystery that was girls. "Why are you winking, Steve? Stop."

           With another shrug, Steve went back to flicking his lighter open and closed, the clicking of the metal meeting again and again being the only noise to break the quiet, aside from the very distant hum of whirring cars. The sound was far away in Thomas' ears, as if it came from a whole other world.

          Suddenly, the clicking stopped, and silence slammed down. Thomas, at first, did a double take as he took in Steve's absolute stillness, before he shifted where he sat and quietly asked, "You alright? Hear something?"