Author's Note: Hey, guys. I'm sooo sooo sorry about the wait on this chapter, and honestly there are no excuses. I know that I ended this chapter on somewhat of a cliffhanger to make things worse, but the next chapter will be up much, much quicker than this one was to make up for that. Scout's Honor!


~Caiden's POV~

Last night felt like a distant nightmare, one that Kael and I both wanted to erase from our memories. Embarrassment coated in shame lined my throat, rendering virtually incapable of speech . All words died on my lips, all apologies.

So instead we walked. Him slightly in front of me, each step sounding wet from our night in the rain. I didn't remember falling asleep on the sidewalk, wrapped in an embrace from what seemed like the only other person in the world. I'd awoken to the sharp smell of cigarette smoke—fresh cigarette smoke, unlike the tobacco-y scent that seemed to follow Kael wherever he went—and watch as tendrils of white smoke danced in the flickering streetlights. The sun was waning in the sky by the time my eyes slid into focus, lazy, grey clouds from the storm the night before swimming through the deep, tangerine colored sky. I'd slept clear through the day, it seemed, and a shy sort of guilt urged me up from my lying-down position.

Kael stood a few feet away with his back to me, one arm tucked neatly underneath the other while his free hand brought a half-spent cigarette to his lips. He flicked the ashes into a passing gust of wind, and I watched with muted fascination as they were carried off into oblivion. He didn't immediately speak to me, although I knew he was aware I was awake.

"Sleep well?" I stiffened, the words sounding unnaturally loud in the general silence of our ravaged city. I brushed a shaky hand through matted, black hair, trying my best to smooth it down from the awkward angles in which it had settled sometime during my slumber. I felt like a child in his shadow, instinctively shrinking away from the unreadable aura that leaked from every pore on his body. Something wasn't right with Kael. It hadn't been right since that dream he'd had. Was I finally starting to crack the shell on this mysterious figure? After almost a week with him, I still only knew his name.

Kael turned to me, and instantly I knew that something was wrong.

Those yellow eyes.. they hadn't looked at me with so much misplaced discontent and menacing interest since we first met. I rose to my feet, soaking wet to the bone but that was irrelevant. I stared at him questioningly, watching as the tip of his cigarette glowed bright orange and shrank to a stub as its user finished it off. The moment was tense and foreboding and I almost didn't want to hear what he had to say.

"Okay.. I guess I'll take that as a yes." Kael shrugged, tossing the cigarette bud into the rain-drenched storm drain along the curb. He took a step toward me, and then another until we were face-to-face, the familiar scent of tobacco weaving around me like the slithering cords of a snake. I felt constricted. "So.. I've been thinking about last night, Flea, and I've realized something. You and I are at our wit's end. No.. seriously. I'm having fucking Back to the Future flashbacks and you're.. well, you're losing your mind." He grinned lightly, amused by his own joke as he usually was. It did nothing to diffuse the tense situation, however.

"So.. I've decided what's a better way to relax than to play a little game, hm?"

Instantly, every muscle in my body tensed. That foreboding tripled and then quadrupled as Kael took a step back away from me. He was creating distance, moving back and toward the building beside the one we'd spent the night in front of. "Game?" I heard myself question, the hint of uneasiness clear beneath my words. There were no such things as 'games' in this world.. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, briefly contemplating shedding the bluish black hoodie that I'd traded my original one for when Kael had decided to raid a section of Riverdale Mall in search of living meat. There had been no one there, of course—holing up in malls was the idea of fools and Hollywood directors—but at least I'd gotten myself a nicer hoodie.

"Yes, game. You might want to pay attention so you know how to win it, hm?" Kael's voice sliced through my thoughts, the bitterly sarcastic tone as corrosive as battery acid. I watched him with a wary eye as he reached slowly into the pocket of his jeans and, with a small 'tah-dah', produced the slightly rain-damaged, glossy photo of my sister.

I think for a moment the world stopped. My heart, my head.. everything. It was like a shot straight through the chest, painful and sharp, and I swore I felt myself stagger. That picture.. that was my only motivation for staying in control, hell for living. We hadn't seen a living soul in what felt like years, but every time I looked down at that broadly grinning face complete with two missing teeth, I felt as if they were all still alive somewhere. Waiting this out, waiting for me..

"Give it back, Kael." I feigned disinterest, but inside I was crumbling. No. Kael, don't do this to me.. What happened to the Kael of last night? It'd felt like then he'd cared for me, if only a little.

"Ah, ah, ah.." He continued, wagging his finger and giving the picture a slight wave so that it fluttered in the small breeze. "This isn't a very hard game to win, don't worry. All you've got to do is..

catch me."

The words still rung in the air and in my ears before Kael had disappeared.

Anger.

Red hot, blinding anger. It was overwhelming. I watched him take off into the sky as if he were being reeled up by a proud fisherman and disappear, and all at once I succumbed to the anger.

The voice.. it wasn't back quite yet, no, but I was afraid that if I let myself be controlled for very long by such hostile emotions, it wouldn't take too much time for it to return.

He's teasing me..

I knew it. He knew it. But still.. I wanted to win whatever fucked up little game he was playing with me. I looked left and then right, assessing my options, before settling on an alleyway created by two buildings built practically atop one another. Kael would expect me to immediately pursue him, but what he did not seem to realize was that beneath it all, I was a hunter, a stalker. I was made for games like this. I wanted to do what he least expected me to do. I squeezed down the alley and, about halfway through, I knelt. The power gathered in my legs almost instantly, and for a second I was caught off-guard. "I'm never going to get used to this.." I murmured aloud to myself. The idea of jumping like I did was still so new, so unsettling. But still.. I could dwell on disturbing matters later. I had a game to win here; after all, I was tired of Kael thinking he could toy with me whenever he pleased.

Like a rubber band snapping, the tension in my thighs and calves instantly released and the edge of the building suddenly looked a whole lot closer than it was before. My human instinct was to flinch, to cover my head and face to protect me from the imminent crash.

Weak.. insuFF-erable, frail, fra-GILE..

The sensation was.. horrifying. I could feel the voice stirring, probing my mind, but no longer was it screaming what my instincts reflected. No more one word commands. It was.. insulting me. Each word stressed, hissed by a foreign tongue. For a second I forgot I was suspended in midair, and perhaps that was what saved my life. Hands extended automatically when I involuntarily relinquished control of my actions, dangerously sharp claws digging into the rough brick and easily hauling the weight of my body up and over onto the roof.

My vision sharpened, untouched by the cover of darkness, and instantly I zeroed in on Kael who still stood on the far side of the structure searching the ground below for me. A thrill ran through my body, all senses instantly heightening. Every downy hair was so very, very receptive and the features of the night were all so strangely clear.. the light shifting of the wind, the distant calls of an unknown bird.

Irrelevant.

Kael was my target. Kael was my prey.

In that moment, it all became so clear. I was no longer in control. I'd awoken the voice, pissed it off no less. It was going to kill Kael, my last thread of sanity and insanity in this entire situation. No, not prey. Can't hurt him. Don't hurt him. I pleaded as my body knelt into attack position once more. Surely Kael could hear the inhuman noises rising from deep within the back of my throat and sense that something wasn't quite right, couldn't he?

I wanted to strangle Kael for being so.. so stupid! He himself had called me 'psycho'. I'd finally regained some of my humanity, but just like that it'd been snatched away. Last night swam lazily in the back of my mind. Never had I seen him so concerned for me.. so.. scared. He'd comforted me while my mind warped and bent into unidentifiable shapes before it all faded to blackness.

But just like that, we were back to square one.

Curious eyes locked with my own as he turned and stared at me for a moment, eyebrows slightly knitted. In that instant, I was in the airborne again, a piercing screech permeating the air between us both.

So this was how it would end. I winced on the inside, waiting for the killing blow, for my body to collide with his and either knock us both over the edge of the building and onto the unforgiving ground below, or for me to pounce and tackle him like I wanted to and, in a fiery rage, reduce him to nothing more than bloodied rags.

But all I felt was asphalt. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Kael perform a rather skilled roll and right himself, confusion written all over his bewildered expression. "What the hell are you doing..?" He demanded, starting to finally realize what was going on no doubt based on how hard I'd jumped. This was no longer a harmless game of tag.

Claws dug deep into the material of the roof, pebbles and other small stonesbiting into the soft pads of my fingers as I braced for another pounce. The demon within me would not rest until its target had been terminated.

My shoulder resisted, however. It was a distant pain that was slowly eating its way into my consciousness with every tensing of muscle in that area. Despite the unbelievable rate at which my body was healing itself, the wound on my back was still relatively sensitive. The small scratches and cuts around the large bite wound were all distant memories by now, but the true injury, the chunk of painful flesh missing required a tireless effort from my body, one that all of this jumping no doubt hindered. But even still I could feel the skin stretching, tearing as new blood threatened to start flowing. Perhaps this was what saved Kael's life. I felt myself stumble and hesitate as discomfort flared, the pounce only a fraction of as powerful as it should have been.

Whimpering in annoyance, I watched as Kael bridged the distance between the building adjacent to the one we currently fought on with an expert catch via his tongue. Once a safe distance away, he turned to me and heaved a frustrated breath, cupping his hands over his mouth as he prepared to speak.

"Flea, this was supposed to be a fucking game. What the hell is your problem?" He shouted. I wanted to reply, to desperately explain that this wasn't me. I wasn't a vicious killer. For the first time, I could see through the eyes of the.. thing.. that dwelled within me, something I almost didn't wish would happen. I wanted the long, blank gaps in my memory. At least then I would have nothing to own up to, nothing to be responsible for. I was a silent observer, a prisoner of my own mind.

Offering no response, I growled almost mockingly at him. The thoughts I had, the pure insanity that left me reeling was what this thing was listening to, this other me. It leapt, strong and accurate, and landed only feet from where Kael stood. I could see the gamut of emotions dancing across his face as he contemplated the choices presented to him. Keep running..? Confront me..?

All the while I paced back and forth like a caged animal, sizing him up, allowing the anger I felt to smolder and burn into a festering heat. Would my entire life be like this?

"I don't want to hurt you, Caiden.." Whispered Kael, a grim solemnity in his voice. He watched my every move, golden eyes burning with an intensity I didn't think a person as laid-back as Kael was capable of. My answer to him came swift, and mentally I clenched. The air whistled about my hoodie as once again I was airborne, targeting Kael as if my very life depended on it. Move, Kael.. please..

I'd never truly felt his tongue before, as strange as that may seem. He'd brandished it several times to me like a proud trophy, even used it as a leash of sorts to keep me from doing what he disliked, but never had I paid attention to its unique texture. It was rougher than I expected, more leathery like raw sinew versus the usual soft smoothness of a regular tongue. It snaked around my left thigh at first, winding upward like a deadly vine as it wrapped around my abdomen and neck.

Despite the immediate rage associated with retaliation from Kael, there was something I noticed about his grip on me.. There was no pain of constriction like I knew he was capable of. I.. I vaguely remembered watching him strangle one of the creatures that had taken over the city, the fog surrounding the mysterious wound on my shoulder slowly starting to clear. He could kill me with a slight tightening of the part of his tongue surrounding my neck.. and honestly, I wouldn't blame him for doing it.

Eyes narrowed in concentration, Kael did tighten his grip a minuscule amount, but it soon became apparent why. Using the momentum from my own pounce, he tugged me—still in midair—safely over his head. I'd overshot my target. That was all the monster roared.

I only saw a glimpse of him before I hit the pavement hard and rolled over and over again, flashes of the cloudless sky and gravelly roofing sending me into a sense o whiplashed vertigo before I finally slid to a stop. My body felt weightless and numb for the briefest of seconds, the blood all rushing to my head at once. A thought.. a beautiful thought that was my own filled the emptiness, and it started to seem that this crash had brought me back to my senses.

But there was a command I did not issue. I felt it first.. felt my shaky arms pulling forth from their splayed positions to support my body weight as I wheezed and coughed, trying to regain breath that had been stolen upon impact. I turned, painstakingly slowly to stare at him, lips drawing back from pointed teeth. It was still there.. that hollow thought had been but the product of the initial shock, but I was not in control.

My shoulder throbbed in unison with the general pain throughout the rest of my being, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered to this animal. It would attack relentlessly until either it or its prey was dead.

I remained in my crouched position, injured arm hovering an inch or so off the ground like a wounded beast. My anger toward Kael had multiplied tenfold from the throw, and, as our eyes locked, I found myself wanting to look away. I could not meet his gaze.. No.. the monster could easily but I wished I could close my eyes. He looked so disappointed.. so hurt. This is your fault, you stupid bastard. I hoped he knew it, too. This was punishment for pushing me to my wit's end.

The monster closed the distance between it and Kael through slow, careful steps and came to a stop about thirty feet in front of him. Mentally I willed him to run.. if he fled, he could get away. There was only so much more jumping I could do with this injury without incapacitating myself in the long run. Both the monster and I knew this, and this was the reason why it was determined to make this kill swiftly.

Kael did not move.

The monster stared at him, lips drawn back from maliciously pointed teeth as it let out a guttural warning growl. Somewhere deep within it craved the chase that it knew it could not hunt of a kill was half the satisfaction, although now it was confused by Kael's defiance. It sniffed the air for something peculiar, some explanation.

Finding none, I prepared to jump. This would be it. The Leap of Death, so to speak. Nails gripping the gravel for leverage, I propelled myself into the air for what I knew would be the final time. The sensation of not only flying but being one hundred percent in control of my flight was nothing short of overwhelming, and I wished I could enjoy it under different circumstances.

The distance between us went from thirty to zero in seconds. I was mesmerized by his blank expression as I neared from above. Kill me, Kael.. Kill me or I will kill you.. The pain I felt that came from within was far more intense than everything I'd felt so far on my hellish journey put together. It was the pain of losing a friend—my only friend—at the hands of something I could not control. I waited for the sharp sting of that tongue being wrapped around and snapping my throat, for the constriction of it around my midsection. But there was nothing.

The power behind our collision was enough knock Kael from his feet. He hit the ground hard and slid on his back all while I maintained my position on top of him. There was an arrogant sense of victory that the monster flaunted as if it were teasing me. I felt sick.

"Remember this?" Kael's voice was low and steady despite his predicament. Each breath he took was short and shallow and from my vantage point I could tell he was fighting away another coughing fit. I was on top of him, legs straddling his waist and claws armed and pointed, ready to rip apart everything that made Kael what he was. I did not want to feed so much as to destroy, to steal away a life for no real reason.

But there she was. For a moment, for one blood-curdling, terrifying moment, I thought the grinning face in the water-logged photograph was real. True innocence stared up at the monster from the picture that Kael brandished like a weapon, the soft grey of Casey's gaze slicing easily through crimson and straight into jade. She continued to smile her toothy grin even as she stared evil in the face, uttering no words but murmuring to me everything that I needed to hear.

Find me.

Those cavernous grey eyes were suddenly so, so dead and I was screaming an inhuman scream that echoed off the buildings and all around. The monster knew.. It knew that the picture had something to do with its steady loss of control and suddenly it wasn't so cocky anymore. "What happened to finding your sister? You let this thing control you, Caiden! This isn't you!" I tried focusing on his face, tried reminding myself that Kael was not the enemy that I perceived him to be. But the battle I was fighting started to feel more and more hopeless as I felt myself slowly retreating back to that cold, dark corner of my mind. All of this was confirmed by a swift, clawed swipe that not only sliced Kael's hand but sent Casey dancing away in the post-stormy breeze.

It was in that moment when I truly felt like giving up. It was as if my last thread of humanity had finally been severed, and there was nothing I could do about it. I saw the recognition on Kael's face, and golden eyes widen an exponential amount. Had his plan failed? They read, and if I could have I would've laughed. What he'd done seemed so cliché.. Show the monster something from his past life, something he cared about, and all will be fine again. Perhaps it worked in bad horror movies, but I was an exception.. at least that was what it felt like.

Hand dripping fresh blood, Kael reached up and gripped either side of my face in a touch so tender that for a moment I was taken aback. The sleeves of his jackets slid back just a touch, revealing the faded markings of my claws. I'd hurt him so much, and through it all, he'd been there. From the beginning.. He had been there.

The touch, however, was met with resistance. I felt so much like a wild animal being held down, the angry emotions flaring and dancing throughout my body in the guise of adrenaline. No longer was the grip inviting, and I fought against it, tugging and pulling, wanting to get free. All of this.. all of it confused beast, and the desire to kill faded and transformed into a powerful want to escape. It'd announced Kael to be a serious threat when he and I first met, and now it seemed to be reevaluating that decision as being the correct one.

"Focus on the sound of my voice. You can beat it, Caiden. You're stronger than it is!"

I'm trying! I wanted to scream back in frustration, but the only sounds I made were the distressed screeches.

Help me. It was Casey's whisper. Help.. Please.. My parents' voices mixed in with her single, tiny one, clawing at the insides of my already broken mind, encouraging the chaos that already existed there. More and more cries joined in until it was an indecipherable whine of a million voices that rose louder and louder in my ears until I felt the words replacing the screams that left my lips, although they maintained its desperation and volume.

"Help me! Help-" Over and over again I bellowed, the phrase so high-pitched and shrilly that I could hardly recognize it as my own voice.

And then there was silence.

Everything stopped. My shouts. The voices. The rapid jerks from a body that I was not in control of.

It was Kael. What I saw.. No rather, what I felt had stunned me into a silence born of simple disbelief. One hand propping him up to shorten the distance between us, while the other gripped a good handful of the hair on the back of my head to keep me from pulling away, he'd pressed our lips together in pure desperation.

The warmth seemed to radiate from everywhere and nowhere. I couldn't move, couldn't close my eyes as Kael had done. His face looked so passive despite the situation as if we were two lovers simply sharing a casual liplock after a lovely evening out together, and somewhere in the back of my mind I took note of a tiny freckle underneath his left eye that looked so out of place on his otherwise fair complexion.

The cause of the sudden silence within me was incomprehensible, and I won't even begin to pretend to understand it. But I basked in the warmth that was Kael and only Kael, wholly grateful for his presence. Everything about him seemed so vivid: the faint smell of tobacco that followed him around like a second shadow, the tufts of unruly brown-blonde hair that refused the conform to the rest of his head..

But just as quickly as it'd started, it was over. Kael drew back abruptly and started to cough, the hand he had previously been using to hold me in place now covering his mouth as he groaned in impatient annoyance. All I could do was stare, distantly fearing that the nightmare wasn't over yet. Despite this, I knew that the fatigue, the pain from my shoulder.. all of these things were quiet indicators that the beast had retreated, that my body was my own again. Instead of relief, I felt only wooziness, a lightheadedness associated only with inexplicable exhaustion.

Kael's coughing spell passed, and the air filled with a pregnant, almost peaceful calm. He assessed me with an unsure eye at first, before he uttered with a slightly tired grin, "Green means go." And gently flicked the tip of my nose. It was so strange how quickly he could switch between somber and playful.

He looked me up and down, one eyebrow arching slightly higher than the other and it was then that I realized I was still on top of him. The position felt compromised and awkward.. especially after.. what had just happened. It felt stupid to care about something that should be so frivolous and small, especially in light of what we'd both just gone through, but I was embarrassed and confused anyway as I slid off of him and instantly brought my knees up to my chest.

"You have no idea how long I've been waiting to do that. Didn't think it would work. Glad it did, though." Kael mumbled, words muffled as he sucked on the side of his hand where I'd scratched him. It didn't seem to be bleeding anymore, but I knew that it had to hurt like a bitch. I didn't immediately answer him as I tried to understand where he was going with all of this and in spite of the tiring fight that left me feeling quite close to passing out, I allowed myself to smile as well. The gesture felt so out of plac e. "So.. Uh.. this count as our first date, then?"

Kael turned to me, caramel eyes narrowed before he broke into unbridled laughter that was a welcome replacement to the screams that had previously echoed around us. It was then that I decided that, next to Casey's voice, Kael's laugh was the most wonderful sound in the world.