It comforted Tabitha somehow, warmed her better than her own bed, her own husband. She gave him no further thought as a blanket wrapped around her and the sound of a mother’s beating heart lulled her into a place long-forgotten.
Tabitha basked in the moonlight and recalled a childhood friend who had disappeared, as children do from time-to-time. She relived a dream or a memory of finding this friend sitting in the dark of a cave, pale and frightened, crouched with her hands drawn to her chest, shivering and hungry and despondent. Tabitha beckoned to the child, but received no response. She did so again and again and again and the child only stared deeper into the cave, studying something in the empty blackness. Tabitha grew frustrated, as children do from time-to-time. And she left. She walked out of the cave and into the light of the blood moon. She walked in the red-tinged world, stained in red herself – she went home even though she did not know the way. When she awoke in her bed, Tabitha told no one of what she’d found.
The rain pulled her out of her rifle, her vision. She was already soaked.
“Nice shot,” Alfred said nearly out of breath from the climb up from the docks. “Thank you.”
Tabitha lowered her rifle and raised her goggles, a confused expression on her face “I didn’t…”
“We should get out of this storm,” Chela said, still soaked in beast blood, ocean spray, and adrenaline. Thunder echoed over the waves and lightning rolled behind the clouds, cascading lights over the city, leading their gazes inward, tugging their curiosity through the dense, tight alleyways. The world seemed a little darker after it passed overhead. The rain was coming down hard, smacking the cobblestone street that fragmented into the many paths leading through the city. The din sounded to Tabitha like hundreds of cackling bonfires. She thought she could smell smoke.