Thomas Neely drove seventy-an-hour against the wind, the gushing heartbeat of an empty interstate breathing life into his lungs and fire into his belly.

It was a good night to kill a man.

The old shotgun he'd brought along sat strapped in the passenger seat, a precious, glass-boned baby, wrapped in a leather pelt. Her case was worn and frayed on the edge and ruffling into the wind.

A gun like this could take a wolf's head off. Most certainly, most certainly.

Don't make me a killer, the kid screamed inside him. His body reacted to the sound like a child to a mother's coo. Raven's heart doubled and he tightened his fists around the wheel to reign in the shell he'd taken as his own. He was in control. Kid wouldn't kick him out, not yet. Not until he purged the world. Not until he gave it a little shining.

God did he miss it.

Children and animals—those were the purest of God's creations. Put on this earth with no ill-intention beyond the natural nip of survival—and even then, one couldn't draw blood with fresh-cut teeth. They were the only things in this world that were truly good, and so he was good back to them, the way God willed him to be. He'd always been good with animals, Thomas. Not so good with kids, but they were pure all the same. He'd never hurt them—never. But as he grew, strange, fascinating urges bloomed in him. Violent, terrible little monsters.

He developed a fond fascination for true crime, murderous documentaries, menacing faces in the morning papers. He printed them to mind and brought them back in mid-lecture daydreams. A knife in the eye of a homicide suspect from Seattle. Hands around the throat of a kidnapper, suspected of sex-ring involvement. The burning flesh of a Klansman who'd murdered a mixed-race couple in Kentucky. He imagined their deaths fondly, but he didn't know what it was to kill back then.

Thomas Neely only knew that he wanted to.

Don't make me a killer, the kid said again.

This time, Raven replied, "I'm the one doing the killing."

Saying it aloud lit a desperate feeling in his chest. Raven eased on the gas pedal. Seventy-five...seventy-eight...eighty. He was a sick man and he knew it too well. He wanted to hear the bones crepitated beneath his bullets. He wanted to smell the blood.

Hurry.

"Hurry?" Asked Raven. "Thought you didn't want me to do this?" A wash of black swooped beside the Jeep and careened beneath an overpass, sailing up into the night sky. The crows.

I didn't. I don't. I do.

I want him back.

"Then I'll ask you again. Is he worth killing for?"

Yes.

Raven snapped up his blinker, sheerly out of habit, and road up the slow inclining exit. The kid knew these streets—he must've, because somehow, Raven didn't need directions. A left here. A right at the bike shop. A straight line for three miles and a sharp left through oncoming traffic.

The roads were empty and the air was crisp. Frogs sang him ribbits of a sweet hello as he pulled off onto a gravel road at a large, city-side pub. The kinda dive bar folks hit up when they could spare eight bucks for a beer. The kinda folks with flashy cars and enough good looks to leave with other folks who could spare eight bucks for a beer. The parking lot was empty, though. The neon closed sign glowing red and menacing in the window.

If the rogue was really here, the place must've been rented out for the evening.

"I should've dressed up," said Raven, lifting the sizable gun from its case and slotting shells into its chamber. Three would have to do. In any ordinary case, three was always enough.

He left the engine of the Wrangler running and dropped down into the gravel, smells of the near city wafting in on the backs of ocean mist. Wings batted at the back of his head and Raven welcomed the thorns of its sharp toes as the first blackbird hooked onto his shoulder. Another descended from the trees above. Another from a power-line. By the time he reached the front door of the pub, several crows sat on his shoulders, stacked side by side like battle pauldrons. Their heads twisted and their oil-eyes glinting in the flash of the neonclosedsign. His little unlucky things.

Raven hooked the barrel of the gun through the handle on the door and shoved it open.

Laughter cooed from the belly of the building and silenced again as the door shut behind him. Its slimy echoes crawled the walls like centipedes. The bar was particularly lavish, red carpet soft beneath his feet, fine glass glinting from the shelves of liquor and flute glasses. He was surrounded—wreathed in glinting, shining things. Mirrors and roses and crystal chandeliers—

And wolves.

More wolves than he had anticipated.

Several shot up from their seat at the sight of the gun in his hands. Some staggered back and some stumbled fearfully to the ground. The one with the sunglasses was the first to move, reaching for something in the breast pocket of his suit.

Bad or decent was a game Raven often played when he was alive. His mother called him gifted, but it was a matter of fine details. One hair out of place could reveal a man as either bad or decent. There was never a good. There was sometimes an in-between.

In the moments it took the man to untangle his weapon from the constricted grip of his tight suit, Raven read him like an instruction manual. Dirt beneath his nails. Scratches on his neck. Freshly scabbed, splayed wide, finger-width apart.

Evil, he decided. Then he pulled the trigger.

The birds scattered at the blast, bullet tearing into his shoulder and sending the rogue tumbling into the red carpet. Blood spattered the empty dining tables around them—wet the carpet in a darker shade of red, stuck to pale faces and porcelain dinnerware. A scream rang out and his hands jolted toward the small blonde girl who cried and ducked into her hands. Not her. His aim snapped at the slight shift of movement from his left. A tall man, admittedly handsome—but only because Raven didn't have his mortal body to compare the handsome man to—reached into the breast pocket of his jacket.

Fingernails clean. Neck unmarred. Clothing unruffled, stance shameless.

"Help me out, kid," said Raven when he couldn't find a mark on the salt-and-pepper man. "Bad or good?"

Gannon.

"I didn't ask his name."

The kid said nothing.

A flash of silver exited the seam of his pressed jacket, but it wasn't a gun. Raven had been expecting a gun. He hadn't been expecting the blade that hurled toward him until it bit bone-deep into his shoulder. It tore through him like butter, a violent pain chewing through his severed nerves. He snarled but kept his aim fixed. He'd taken a hundred bullets to his back. This was nothing.

Do it, said the kid. Kill him.

"Now you tell me."

The man looked startled now, searching his pockets for a second knife. Raven lifted the gun, took aim and whispered, "Don't look."

The shotgun coiled back against his shoulder and with it, a burst of hot pain. But as always, his aim was superb. The salt-and-pepper man hurled back in a spray of blood, his limp body whirling to the ground beside the glass-shattered shades of the first. More blood this time, a piece of something pink splashing in a scotch glass on the poker table.

He turned his gaze to the rest of the party. A woman with purple hair sat with a hand curled around her lips—trying to seem calm, though she shook. Boy, did she shake. The fair, tall looking man who sat beside her gazed up at the weapon with a look of sheer exhaustion. His hair, suit and face were freckled in a spatter of blood that he hardly seemed to mind.

"Remind me to opt out of Rico's future parties," he muttered.

Rico. The name ignited his gut in fire—sparked his bones up like lightning.

Kill him, the kid said without a moment. Without a breath. Kill Rico.

Raven stepped closer, the shattered glass of a startled, toppled drink cracking beneath his feet. "Where is Rico?"

When the fair man answered with a simple shrug, Raven turned the gun on the woman.

"He left," she said, urging the tiny blonde from her chair and away from the gun. The little wolf hurried off and crouched behind a lounge chair by the bar. "Got into a scrap with the hound. Needed to see a den medic."

"The hound," asked Raven, ripping the blade from his shoulder. "Where is he?"

"The cellar—"

"Show me."

She stood slowly and Raven followed at her back, a steady eye on the wolves still in the main room. The fair man took a drink from his glass of scotch, while the younger wolves crouched beneath tables, too frightened to move.

They traveled down a hall made of mirrors, everything glinting beneath bars of recessing golden lights. Raven hated mirrors. Fucked with his eyes.

"I don't know what he did to him," the woman said, guiding him down a set of declining steps. "I left for a smoke when the screaming started."

Screaming, Raven heard the kid echo. Desperate fists beat against the walls of his chest.

He shoved past her and into the cellar door. It swung open with a terrible whine to the dark innards of a cluttered wine cellar.

On a single table in the center of the room, a shape slouched, unmoving. The place stunk of old wine and pennies and hot blood gone cold. For every step he approached, those fists beat harder.

Let me out.

Raven wouldn't. Not yet.

The closer he drew, the more clearly he understood the pools of blood beneath curled fists and the red, wet bandages around each finger.

Let me out!

Raven crouched to see his face—stuffed in the blood-stained arms of his once-white dress shirt. His eyes were shut and his complexion was pale, his cheeks wet with tears and sweat. At a single touch to the pulse of his neck, he came alive. Before he could speak or swallow, a blade met Raven's throat. The sheer fear in the hound's ever-dark eyes was debilitating—the kind of horror that came before dying. The kinda look he'd seen in the eyes of a man before the bullets bit.

Something wilted in Raven—the kid, probably.

The blade was cold and edged against his Adam's apple. Any harder and he would've cut the skin—but recognition registered in those black animal eyes and the blade clattered to the ground.

"No." His head lulled as he shook it. Heavy. Hung by fraying strings. "Why are you here?"

"Don't sound so happy to see me," Raven said. He reached for the boy.

Don't, said the kid. Ask him first.

It seemed like an unnecessary waste of time to Raven—especially with the hound looking like he might pass out any moment—but he let out a sigh and did as the boy in his head told him to do. "I'm going to touch you," he said, then he took Bailey by the wrist and slung an arm over his shoulders, heaving him up from the seat. The woman held the door for him as he dragged the hound up the steps, a bony waist in one hand and the shotgun in the other.

Let me out.

"Soon, kid," Raven whispered. "Soon."

The classic music of the pub grew further defined as they followed the woman back to the main room, shotgun barrel nudging her between the shoulder blades. He trusted she wouldn't turn on him, but if she happened to snap those pretty teeth in his direction—well, Raven knew how to shoot just fine with one hand.

They stopped where they'd met, beside two bleeding bodies and a blood-flecked poker table. He lowered his aim. The hound was growing heavier. "I'm going to leave this place in about sixty seconds," Raven said, trading off his gaze between the woman and the fair-haired man, stroking lazily at his poker chips. He gestured with his gun to the younger wolves, curled and shaking in their corners. "One of you be a sport and clean this up, huh?"

Then Raven turned toward the doors, Bailey an anchor on his side. He wouldn't grip—wouldn't hang on, so Raven carried most of his weight on one arm. Needed to get him to the car. Needed to get him home.

They were nearly at the threshold when Raven paused and turned back to the wolves. Two of the boys had knelt by the dead bodies of their former leaders. The woman brushed tears from the blonde's eyes. The fair-haired man still sat at the table, a glass of scotch in his hand.

"One more thing," Raven said. Then he lifted his gun and turned his eyes away before he pulled the trigger. Bailey flinched into the side of his neck once, then again when the fair-haired man hit the table with a thud.

Never trust the in-betweens.

They were nearly halfway home when Raven left Matt's body.

He woke with a gasp of cold night air and dried blood, gripping the steering wheel for the life of him. He'd seen everything this time. Every moment that Raven had control of him, he watched from behind all-seeing lenses.

"Cowboy."

He'd killed them. Raven had killed three people. With his hands.

These hands killed people.

"Matt!"

He snapped to attention at the sound of Bailey's voice, too late to realize the semi in front of them had slowed drastically to turn off onto an exit. He wrenched the wheel and the Wrangler veered, tires burning into the earth, frame groaning. He gained control of the wheel and they rolled off of the interstate, into the declining verge. Tires bounced against the lumpy terrain of a declining hill, tossing him roughly into the steering wheel—back into his seat again. Eventually, the brakes held and the Jeep came to a halt on a flat slope of grass.

Matt ripped his keys from the ignition and shoved his way out of the cabin. His feet went numb and he stumbled into the grass. It felt like a fist had crimped around his throat. Like the vise of it was squeezing the blood to his head. He was dizzy. His shoulder ached and pulsed like a heartbeat.

He slumped down on the grassy hillside and poured a shaking breath into his hands. He killed them. He killed them.

I killed them, said Raven.

"With me. You killed them with me—"

You were only my getaway driver.

Matt swallowed down the taste of vomit and turned his head to the sky. Stars peppered the nautical night so clearly here, coating the horizon like little glass fragments. He watched them, felt them, breathed them in.

Then Bailey took a seat beside him.

The silence was filled occasionally with a passing car or a plane, leaving the airport nearby. But for the most part, they sat in the sound of croaking frogs and singing crickets. The world was awake and alive. Planes cut the sky and the windows of a fast-food joint glowed in the distance. The heartbeat of the world hadn't stopped, but it felt like it should've.

"I was never going to take you to them."

For a strange, surreal moment, Matt had forgotten Bailey was there. He reached out for him—to know he wasn't another figment. His hand clasped the cold back of his neck, and in a strange, fragile moment, Bailey leaned into him until they knocked together at the forehead. "I was never going to take you to them," he whispered again.

Matt hated the way his voice shook. Hated it more when Bailey pulled back. Hated the way his eyes sheened when he ran his bandaged fingers through his gelled hair.

"You shouldn't have done that. You should've have gone there."

Matt's breath shook, too. "Bullshit, I shouldn't have. You're covered in fucking blood." For the first time, he saw the deep gash that ran along Bailey's cheek. It'd been half-hidden by his hair—now it glinted, an open wound in the light of a waxing moon. He reached out to touch his face, hadn't been thinking. "What did they do to you?"

Bailey shot up from the grass, far away from his reach. He paced the earth, his damaged fingers fisted in his hair. "Do you have any idea what he'll do when he finds you?"

"He won't find me," Matt said. "I'll call Quentin, I—"

"He knows where you live!"

"He's one guy, Bailey."

"You don't get it. You don't know Rico."

"What don't I know?" Matt asked. "That he's pissed I burned his den? That he wants me dead? I don't give a fuck about Rico—"

"You should!" Bailey shouted. "He stops at nothing to get his hands on the things I love and then—"

He paused then, the silence vanquished by the moan of passing engines. Matt could tell by the defeat on his face that he knew what he'd said, knew Matt caught it. Bailey dropped his arms to his side, and stood there in the sea of stars. His dress-shirt torn a button in and stained with blood up to his elbows. His hair gelled back and curling at the ends. A few stray lock, fallen from the widow's peak of his narrow forehead.

He wasn't going to acknowledge it, so Matt wouldn't acknowledge it either.

Beneath the restless sounds of the night, Matt felt like he was whispering. "Tell me the truth. About the rogues. About the deal you had with them."

"There was no deal," Bailey said. "There was, but it wasn't real." He slumped back down into the grass beside Matt, clenching his rib and staring at the bloody bandages on his fingers. "After Quentin kicked me out, I tried to find sanctum with Leo, but Rico found me before I could even make it past the mountains. He heard about the queen's plans to burn the dens. Gave me a deal. Sent me off to Quentin to act as a mole. I thought I could pretend long enough, and then go through with everything at the last second. A knife in Rico's back. Sanctity in Quentin's pack. " For a third time, Bailey muttered, "I was never going to take you to them."

Carefully, Matt took him by the hand. Muscles tensed visibly in his arm, so Matt held it only long enough to take the bandage from his pinky. The skin was stained red beneath, but the flesh unmarred. "What did they do to you?"

As expected, Bailey took his hand away and crossed his blood-sopped arms. When it was clear he wouldn't answer, Matt stood on his shaking legs and made his way back to the Wrangler. "Fine. Let's go home."

For the rest of the ride, Matt drove with his cell phone propped against his ear. First, he spoke to Jaylin, then to Quentin, who went unusually silent when Matt uttered the words, "I killed Gannon." But Quentin did what Quentin was always so exceptional at doing: he summoned his steely alpha voice, asked for the address of the pub, and assigned three sentinels to watch over the ranch for the night. I'll take care of it, he said. I'll take care of everything.

Matt felt like crying when he said it. Sobbing with fear, with relief, with guilt—but he wouldn't. Not with Bailey in the seat beside him.

By the time they pulled into the ranch, the sentinels had already arrived. Their beady eyes sheened from across the fields, and Matt prayed his father wouldn't wake to their prowling and mistake them for coyotes. He was probably too drunk by now to see much more than the vertigo of the world swirling around him.

They pulled into the guest house driveway and the moment the Jeep came to a stop, Bailey threw open the door and fought off his seatbelt. His feet hit the ground with a crunch and he rounded the hood before the engine had time to die. Matt hurried after and followed his hasty footsteps into the guest house, through the living room and to the cramped, c robin-egg blue bathroom.

Matt slouched against the door frame and watched as Bailey tossed open drawers and cabinets until he located a pair of sheers. He fisted his hair between his bandaged fingers and took the scissors to the locks, but they were old and rusted, and his hands didn't seem to work just right. The sheers clattered into the sink, and he tried again. Rusty blades sawing at the thick, gel-slick locks. His hands shook, the scissors failed—and that was when Matt caught the frustrated glint in Bailey's eyes.

He stepped inside and took the scissors gently from Bailey's fingers. "How much do you want off?"

Bailey stared down at the single black lock he'd severed into the sink. His voice sounded so raw when he said, "All of it."

So Matt fetched a stool from the kitchen island and set it down in front of the mirror, and Bailey slumped into the seat. With the scissors too rusted for use, he unpacked his electric trimming set out on the bathroom counter. Blade buzzing, Matt ran his fingers through the locks—the hair downy and soft beneath the gel coat. And as he touched, he watched in the reflection of the mirror—Bailey's head bowed, his eyes closed. This was the first time he'd allowed Matt to touch his hair. To feel it properly beneath and between and around his fingers.

Cutting it off was like taking a knife to the heart.

Matt didn't ask why he wanted it gone. He didn't ask how short. He worked the trimmers from his hairline to his nape and watched every silken lock fall to the dingy floor like feathers. His shoulder ached, but he shaved at Bailey's hair until it was even. Until it was short, but still long enough that he could run his fingers through it. And for a long time, that was all he did—he ran his fingers through every strand, until it fell away between his fingers. And when he was nearly finished, Matt glanced to the reflection of the mirror. Something shattered in the cavity of his chest.

He was the boy in the photos. The same battered boy, staring at his own skewed identity with tears on the edges of his eyes. One fell, silent and unprovoked. Then not long after, so did the other.

Matt stepped between his knees and the bathroom counter, pretending not to see the tears on Bailey's cheek. "Let's get this blood off you." When he started to unbutton his stained dress shirt, Bailey grabbed his hand. Matt instinctively let the buttons fall. "Sorry..."

But he didn't shove Matt's hand away like he usually did. Bailey brought it back up to his hair, fingers resting in his short locks. Matt looked him over for a hesitant moment, and when still his hands weren't torn away, Matt began to move them—to raked his fingers up through the cropped haircut, threads bristling against his fingers.

Touching Bailey was power to a building long abandoned. Medicine to a rotting man. The rusted gears in him started to turn, broken pieces and all. He felt the strange, static warmth, the thrill of his own heart echo up his wrists. His shoulders, his neck. The moths danced alive in him.

This was what it felt like, he realized, to love someone.

Bailey shut his eyes, relaxing to the touch, maybe. Maybe just enduring it. His bandaged fingers rested on Matt's shirt, curling into the fabric. And as they existed there, so close to one another, so quiet, Bailey whispered, "I'm hungry."

And for the first time in days, Matt smiled. Ran his fingers through his short, soft hair and smiled.

"Want some Billy?"