Rebels [Blood Magic, Book 4]

Chapter 3: This is How We Fall

Keel proved much more stubborn than I'd expected.

As the week progressed, Ankor grew gaunter and gaunter from the lack of sustenance. Then the twitching started. Soon after that, the unconcealed staring, like I was beginning to look more like a meal to him by the day. It was reaching the point where I started to worry that if someone didn't feed him, he'd lose control and attack me in my sleep, or worse: slip out of the room and tear apart another motel guest. Then we'd be done for. All the authorities, human and otherwise, would descend on our seedy little pay-by-the-week hideout. Game over. We lose.

I couldn't allow that to happen.

"If you're not going to let him eat, then at least take him hunting with you," I pleaded with Keel. It was a refrain I'd attempted repeatedly over the past few days without success. I had no idea what he was trying to prove with all this, other than to speed along our self-destruction.

"Too dangerous," he said, dismissing me the same way he had every time. "I don't understand why he didn't go on to Texas like the others."

"Because he feels a loyalty to us. Why is that so hard to get through your thick skull?"

Keel shrugged. "What's loyalty supposed to do for us?"

I gave him a hard look. He was deteriorating too. It was impossible not to notice his unkempt hair and wrinkled clothes. "Maybe nothing right now, but in case you haven't noticed: we need friends. We're frightfully short on them at the moment."

Keel's mouth, which wore a perma-scowl these days, tilted down even further. "He can't help us up here, he's baggage."

I cringed as he said the exact thing that Ankor warned me he would.

"Well, we damned well can't send him into the world like that, can we?" I nodded at our roommate, whose glassy eyes had drifted shut once more. He spent more and more time in that peculiar half-waking state. The calm before the storm, I assumed. "He'll lead the sorcerers straight to us."

"Your father should have come back by now." Keel's words were bitter.

"Is that what you're waiting for? My dad?" I couldn't even pretend I wasn't livid. "Newsflash Keel, even without that crown on your head, you still play an active part in your fate. You can't just check out. Look at where it's gotten us."

Keel stared at the crumpled sheets of our bed, his eyes boring holes into them instead of Ankor or me for a change. What the hell was I going to do if he didn't budge? Something had to give.

"Fine, feed him," he said finally, "but I'm not leaving. He makes one misstep and I'll have his head." A threat uttered with the tone of the king who once was.

I refused to let it rattle me. Too much was at stake. "That's hardly fair. He's starving because of you."

"Those are my terms. Take them or leave them."

"I accept," Ankor said, the words crackling past his parched lips. He'd been chugging water from the plastic bottle he kept refilling but it had done nothing for his raw throat. Or his hunger.

I turned away from my sulking husband, and looked at him. He was curled up on the bed, where he spent most of his time now; no longer even interested in the TV, which had held so much fascination when we'd arrived. He expects to die here. The thought entered my head unbidden, but it had that undeniable ring of truth.

Reaching out, I placed my hand over Keel's. His claws were growing out. He hadn't been taking care of that part of his grooming either. "Thank you," I said, but he wouldn't meet my eyes.