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When the second body was empty, my throat felt better There was a lot of blood in my systeo was stil waiting, whistling quietly through his teeth When I let the body fal to the ground with a thud, he turned back to me and smiled

"Um, thanks," I said

He nodded "You looked like you needed it "

"Does it get easier?"

He shrugged "In some ways"

We looked at each other for a second

"Why don’t we durabbed the dead blonde, and slung her liet the other one, but Diego was there before ot it," he said

I fol owed hiirders under the freeway The lights froht how stupid people were, how oblivious, and I was glad I wasn’t one of the clueless

Hidden in the darkness, we o didn’t hesitate at the end of the concrete, he just jue with his bulky burden and disappeared into the water I slid in after hi deeper and farther out into the black sound He stopped suddenly when he found what he was looking for - a huge, slie clinging to its sides We had to be more than a hundred feet deep - to a huo of his bodies They swayed slowly in the current beside him while he shoved his hand into the mucky sand at the base of the rock After a second he found a hold and ripped the boulder up froht of it drove him waist-deep into the dark seafloor

He looked up and nodded tohis bodies with one hand on my way I shoved the blonde into the black hole under the rock, then pushed the second girl and the pihtly to o let the boulder falIt wobbled a little, adjusting to the newly uneven foundation He kicked his way out of the muck, swa the obstructions flat underneath

He swam back a few yards to view his work

Perfect, I mouthed These three bodies would never resurface Riley would never hear a story about therinned and held up his hand

It took h five Hesitantly, I swa soot a weird expression on his face, and then he shot to the surface like a bul et

I darted up after hih to the air, he was alhter

"What?"

He couldn’t answer h five ever"

I sniffed, irritated "Couldn’t be sure you weren’t just going to rip o snorted "I wouldn’t do that"

"Anyone else would," I countered

"True, that," he agreed, suddenly not as a?"

"Do you have to ask?"

We caht into two hos on top of a shared mattress of old newspapers Neither one of them woke up Their blood was soured by alcohol, but stil better than nothing We buried theood for a feeeks," Diego said ere out of the water again, dripping on the end of another euess that’s the easier part, right? I’l be burning again in a couple of days And then Riley wil probably send ain"

"I can come with you, if you want Riley pretty ht about the offer, suspicious for a second But Diego real y didn’t seem like any of the others I felt different with him Like I didn’t need to watch my back so much

"I’d like that," I ad

But Diego just said "cool" and s leash?" I asked, wondering about the relationship there The o, the less I could picture hi like Riley But

"Riley knows he can trustof which, do youto be entertained by this strange boy Curious about him I wanted to see what he would do

"Sure," I said

He bounded across the dock toward the road that ran along the waterfront I fol owed after I caught the scent of a few humans, but I kneas too dark and ere too fast for theain After a few ju our earlier path And then ere back to that first al ey, where Kevin and the other guy had gotten stupid with the car