Lovecraft

Chapter 7: The First Night

His bedroom was sparse. A bed, a nightstand, a single lamp. No photographs on the walls, no personal touches. It was a room designed for sleeping, not living. A room that said I don't plan to stay.

Kael pulled a blanket and a pillow from a closet and tossed them on the floor near the door.

"I'll be here," he said. "If he comes back, he goes through me first."

Mila stood in the doorway, hugging herself. "You really think he'll come back tonight?"

"No." Kael sat on the floor, his back against the door, his gun resting on his thigh. "But I don't take chances."

She should have felt safer with him between her and the door. She did, logically. But there was something intensely unsettling about lying in a stranger's bed while that stranger sat watch on the floor, a weapon in his hand. It was intimate in a way that had nothing to do with s*x.

She climbed onto the bed. The sheets smelled like him. Clean, sharp, faintly spicy. She pulled them up to her chin and stared at the ceiling.

"Kael?"

"Yeah."

"Did you really not know he was going to kill Anna?"

Silence. She thought he wasn't going to answer. Then, quietly: "I knew he was capable of it. I didn't know he'd do it that night. If I had…" He trailed off.

"If you had, what?"

"If I had, I would have warned you. Maybe you could have saved her."

She turned her head on the pillow, looking at him. He was a dark shape against the door, his face lit only by the thin line of light from under the door.

"Why should I believe you?"

He was quiet for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was different. Rougher.

"Because I know what it's like to lose someone and know you could have stopped it."

Lena. He meant Lena.

Mila closed her eyes. She didn't know if she believed him. She didn't know if she trusted him. But in this dark room, with a monster outside and a killer on the floor, he was all she had.

"Goodnight, Kael."

A pause. Then, so soft she almost missed it: "Goodnight, Mila."