“Let us get this straight. We are not looking for anything. That’s my job. Yours is to keep quiet and follow me at all times. And don’t switch on any lights without permission.”
Shadow made a grunt that got Gray wondering if taking him had been a good idea after all, but the creeper nodded, standing so close they almost touched.
And he smelled so bad. Gray really should have considered letting him shower, because at this rate, the odor of the unwashed hair and old sweat would alarm the whole train.
“Not that close.”
Shadow moved half a step away at best, but at least he wasn’t putting his hands where they didn’t belong. Gray only hoped that whoever had been bringing him extra food wasn’t fucking him too, because that would have been gross.
Gray switched on the light in his watch and exhaled when he realized they had about twenty minutes of awkward silence left. On the motorbike at least they couldn’t really chat, but being forced into the vicinity of someone whose company he didn’t enjoy was way beyond Gray’s comfort zone. But he would endure. For the success of this job.
And for the arm.
He slid the fingers of his real hand across the black palm, still awestruck by how real, how warm it felt to the touch. Would the arm stay once Shadow was gone, or would Gray be back to being disabled?
He didn’t want to think about it just yet. Not when life felt so close to bearable again
“Do you like how it feels?” Shadow asked, apparently unable to keep his mouth shut unless threatened with a gun.
Without the headlights of the motorcycle, it had been easy to believe Gray was here on his own, as if Shadow had somehow become one with the darkness.
“What?”
“Touch it again. I saw you touch it.”
Gray blinked and turned to face the voice coming from above his head. “You see in the dark?”
Red eyes glowed, reminding Gray of the ghoulish presence that melded with the night. “You don’t?”
“No.” Something choked Gray’s throat from the inside, a sense of vulnerability that came from being around a predator. What if Shadow were able to use Gray’s new arm against him?
Shadow pondered that for a while, which was a first, because so far he seemed to always say whatever came to his mind. “I do. And I saw you touch the arm. You should touch it again, see how it feels.”
Gray frowned, absent-mindedly rubbing his own fingertips between the digits of the borrowed hand. It was such a strange sensation to feel the touch while knowing the limb shouldn’t be there. The limb looked odd too—as if he’d tattooed all of it with the blackest ink on earth, and yet he no longer felt an itch in the stump, nor pain. He simply had the arm back, even if it had a different appearance.
Shadow’s breath hitched, and he wouldn’t take his eyes off Gray, staring at him like a dog would at a bone. His voice, low and oddly pleasant, came out with a rasp. “Does it feel good to touch it?”
“It feels nice to have it back. Why do you ask?”
Shadow shifted, making some noise with his feet. He loomed over Gray, close enough for Gray to smell him, yet kept just enough distance. “It’s just that… You said I can’t touch you. But I feel the arm, so I get to touch you and not touch you all at once when you do that. Since we have time, why don’t you touch something else? It doesn’t have to be me.”
It was as if the black arm suddenly became an alien presence, a parasite sucking blood out of Gray’s body. Nausea settled in his chest, and he stepped away from Shadow, on the verge of panic when he realized he was taking a part of the creature with him anyway.
“What. The. Fuck.”
“I’m a part of you,” Shadow said as if that was something to be celebrated, yet he didn’t move, watching Gray with the intrusive red stare.
Gray swallowed hard, feeling like a butterfly pinned to a board yet still alive and hoping it could escape its captor. “This is the creepiest shit I’ve ever heard.”
The glow of the fiery irises briefly dimmed. “I’m trying to be better.”
“No. No, you’re not! I just found out you feel me touching this phantom hand after you asked me to fucking stroke it. Do you even know how it feels to be strapped like this to someone who attacked you?” Gray asked, stepping farther away, only to stumble over a stray rock. Fucking hell.
At least Shadow stayed put. And silent.
Gray appreciated it at first, but the longer Shadow remained mute, simply ogling him with eyes from hell, the more unnerved Gray was. He didn’t even have the vaguest idea what the creature could be thinking, and since Shadow didn’t have the mind of a human, it could be anything from biting off Gray’s head to mental emptiness.