Driving Needs, Part Eight

"Which direction?" asked Antoinette. 

Right, said the voice of dark flames and screaming silence.

Damn it, Chris thought back, let me do this. But he said, "Right."

"Then we'll take left," Elyssa replied, and turned with Antoinette to follow the scent. 

Chris followed the other trail. The scent was fresher to the left, he thought, wondering if it was worth focusing some of his stored Grey into the word for Connection in order to get clearer answers, or whether that would just wake the dark heart further and make it even more difficult to manage.

It was, the voice replied, rich with weight of its own cold fire and divine certainty. The murderer went to the left after it departed the killing-room, and your friends will kill it. We have other prey.

Chris swallowed. He'd known when he absorbed the dark heart that it was too much, too powerful. Even if he could have absorbed it forcibly, it would would have overwhelmed him. He would have become part of it, rather than the other way around -- if any part of him had remained at all. It was only because it gave itself up willingly that he was able to take it in, but that meant now that it retained an individuality, a will of its own, that none of his other captured essences possessed. You'd leave vengeance to others?

To kill the killer is a small vengeance. It is the ones who summoned it here who must face my wrath. If you would prove yourself worthy, then you must find them and destroy them.

The scent-trail was still clear, but Chris slowed for a moment to sort it from everything else hanging in the half-stale air of the hotel hallway. No blood, no terror, just that rancid, half-rotten scent. Either the hall had been empty when the skin-stealer passed through, or nobody had recognized it as inhuman. 

All right, he replied. Watch me hunt.