The Soul Collector

Ch. Thirty-Nine

"The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be."

- Socrates

                                                                                 ***

Galloway woke up to fingers prodding gently at her side. Opening her eyes with a frown, she looked up to find Caleb sitting next to her, peering under the makeshift bandages she'd wrapped around her side.

Scooting away from him, she demanded, "What are you doing?"

"Wondering why you don't have a couple bloody, gaping holes in you," he answered, standing up.

He didn't look any worse for wear considering his swim in the lake last night. His hair was damp with a recent shower and he was bare-foot, which seemed kind of weird yet somehow endearing to Galloway.

Her words stiff, she said, "Don't touch me. And that's what I get for being a little immortal."

Caleb looked away from her and got off her bed to sit on his own. He gnawed at the corner of his thumbnail. "How is someone a little immortal?" he finally asked.

She sat up and looked under the bandages herself to see that the claw marks from the wendigo had mostly closed and were scabbed over, the scabs thick and unappealing. 

Getting out of bed and pulling on the jeans Caleb had scrounged up for her, she said, "I can die, because I still have my Soul. Just not of old age. But it takes a lot of effort on the part of whatever"—she shot a glare at him—"or whoever wants to try and kill me." Then, she frowned, something occurring to her. "But you already knew that. Didn't you say you already knew how to kill a Collector?"

He smiled angelically. "I lied. I didn't even know they were actually, really real until I met you. Mostly Hunters just know about Hellhounds, but there's some lore to be scrounged up on your kind if you look hard enough."

She blinked, then rubbed at her eyes, wondering why he'd bothered looking. Caleb rolled his neck, the bones popping loudly enough that she could hear them.

"So, unless something's changed, can I go home now?" Galloway raised an eyebrow. Caleb frowned, obviously not pleased by the idea and she said, "If you want to know about what the demons are doing, you'll want to talk to Rhys. And if I'm not home relatively soon Theron will send someone looking for me and that won't be pretty. He expects me to be where I tell him I'll be."

"Obedient little Collector girl, aren't you?" Caleb mocked and she resisted the urge to throw a nearby coffee cup at his head. 

Instead, she hissed, "Well if you'd like to take my place on the rack, be my guest. Otherwise shut your mouth. Don't talk about things you don't understand, little boy."

Caleb bristled, but she continued, "We need to go anyway, unless you have some kind of hustle that works during the daylight hours. We could only afford the one room for the one night, right?"

Quietly, he asked, "Why'd you drop the lighter?"

She froze, her heart shuddering. Swallowing hard, she crossed her arms over her chest. "My fingers got cold. And then that thing startled me."

"You dropped it before the wendigo came," he said and she cursed silently, wondering how he could have possibly remembered that.

"My fingers were cold," she repeated blankly. She wasn't budging on this. He didn't really need to know that her accidentally thinking about Sirius had almost gotten him killed.

To her relief, Caleb nodded slowly. To her greater relief, he started putting on his boots and said, "So, who is this Rhys person and why does he know so damn much about the Hell gate or whatever this is all about?"