Page 29 of Monster Queen Rising

"I will."

He tightens his arms around me and pulls the blanket up over us both. The lamp is low. The mark on my sternum is the deep, the last one I'll ever take. His sits on his chest to match it.

"Sleep," he says.

"You first."

"I can't yet."

"Then I won't either."

"Jen."

"What?"

"You were the first word I had. After everything. You."

I find his hand and lace my fingers into his.

Chapter twelve

Jen

The cars in the lot are wrong.

Daron sees them before I do. We have driven past the building once — a slow pass at the end of the block, plates clean, windows un-tinted — and we are around the corner before either of us speaks.

"Sedan and a van," Daron says. "Sedan has a driver. Van is empty in the cab. Two in the back, minimum. Maybe four."

"How long have they been there?"

"Overnight. Pollen's settled on the windshields. They haven't moved."

He pulls into an alley two blocks south and kills the engine. Jeans, flannel, the shape of a gun under the flannel at his hip. His eyes stay on the building.

"Ten minutes," he says. "If you're not out, I come up."

He stays at the wheel. I walk out of the alley toward her building.

The duplex front door is propped open with a brick, mail piling up in the entryway. I step over it, take the wooden stairs to the second floor, and stop at 2B.

I knock. No footsteps. Just the floorboards shifting. Then a voice, quiet, behind the wood.

"Who’s there?"

"My name is Jen. I'm not with the people in the lot."

"How do you know about the people in the lot?"

"I've been watching them since I drove past twenty minutes ago. I want to talk to you."

A longer silence this time.

"You're alone?"

"At your door, yes. One person in my truck, two blocks away."

"Show me your hands."