one, and number two, if he was offering obviously he had some to spare. He leaned back and nodded his head as if to ask if I was good to go. I nodded back and he pulled me forward, putting a hand under my butt and pushing me forward to give me a boost. He stayed right behind the whole way. As soon as I saw the docks in the water, it was like a cue for my body to gain some little spurt of energy. Adrenaline.
I took off, determined to get there as fast as I could. My lungs ached and burned, and when I surfaced, I tried not to gasp and moan so loudly in case anyone was close. He surfaced in front of me and wasn’t even winded. I tried to calm my breathing, but it was hard to do with him watching me so intently. “Stop it.”
“What?” he asked, but the smirk he tacked on let me know that he knew exactly what was up.
“It sucks that you don’t have to breathe.”
“Or eat. Or sleep.” Then he looked at me seriously, right into my very soul. “But you don’t ha ve to feed off anyone’s emotions either. Their anger, their hatred, to taste it on your tongue.”
I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“For thinking about my sister even after you asked me not to.” My teeth chattered. “I don’t know what sorrow taste s like, but I can imagine it’s not good.”
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair , sidelining my subject. “We can go. You have to get out of this water.”
“I’m fine,” I lied. “We should wait and make sure it’s safe.”
“You’re freezing to death,” he barked back. “I’ll handle them. It should take them a long time to make it to this side of the docks. Let’s go and get you that room I promised you. And you can tell me how you know Clara Hopkins.”
I shivered again as he said my sister’s name , because the amount of malice that came with it made my skin crawl.
It wasn’t the first time I’d hotwired a car and it wouldn’t be the last. Miss goody two-shoes hadn’t protested, which meant she either really wanted to see her sister or she was a lot colder than she was letting on. Her lips had begun to take on a slight bluish tint. I debated going to the hospital instead of the hotel, but she assured she was fine. Her logic was if we stole a nice car, chances are that the person would have good insurance and wouldn’t be hurt financially from it. If we stole a beater or some hunk of junk like I had planned to do, then some poor sap would more than likely be losing his only means of transportation and have no way to replace said transportation. She had a point, I guess. So I cranked the heat as high and as hot as it would go as soon as we got into the black as night Lexus IS C.
The GPS in the car told the opposite direction of the docks was west. Perfect. I followed the roads out, trying to block the sounds of human chattering teeth, and fled as quickly as I could without drawing attention to ourselves. It would have taken them twenty minutes to drive the distance to the opposite dock and it was getting close to fifteen. I wanted to be long gone before they were close.
Clara and Eli must be in the midst of a big rebel camp for them to be searching so diligently for them. I looked over at her blue tinted lips and knew that even though she was going to be fine, she was still uncomfortably cold. Her teeth still chattered against each other and it pissed me off how much I hated that sound. I shouldn’t care, but I did. I looked around the car and actually made a noise in the back of my throat at what I found. I pulled the jacket from the back and placed it around her as quickly as I could and still drive carefully.
She looked at me in surprise. “Thanks.”
“You’re teeth are still chattering,” I barked.
“It do esn’t work like that. It’s bone-deep,” she muttered. “I need a hot bath,