“Landon is a strange individual. Trying to understand him is like trying to understand a black hole.”
“Okay…” I waited a few minutes for his return. I was starting to lose my patience. “Maybe we should go after him. He could be in trouble.”
“Landon can handle himself.” Roman was collecting firewood and gathering it into a pile. “Frankly, I am more concerned with dinner and so should you be. That baby needs to eat.”
“You make it sound like I’m starving the little guy.”
“Well, you haven’t eaten much besides takeout Chinese food.”
“They’re called cravings and I cannot help it if the baby enjoys eating a copious amount of orange chicken.”
“So, let me take a wild guess here and say that you’d like me to order some?”
“Yes please and some chow mien too. Tell them to go light on the sauce. I think it messed me up last time.”
“And you want to eat it again?”
“It didn’t kill me.”
“The logic there is impeccable.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Anyway, do you think that three orders of the orange chicken will be enough?”
“Two should be fine.”
“That’s what you said last time and then you ended up eating most of our food. I’m not going to bed hungry tonight.” Roman was making such a fuss over something so insignificant. Yes, I was pregnant and yes, I was eating for two but I wasn’t some monster that just devoured everything in sight.
“Um, yes, you are,” quipped Roman.
“Get out of my head!”
“I can’t,” he said. “Mind link, remember?”
I grabbed the nearest rock I could find and threw it in his direction. When that didn’t work, I thought about going in for the tackle approach but before I could move a single muscle, Landon reappeared. His fur was covered in a thick matting of blood.
“Oh my God! What happened?” I rushed to his side, examining him for any sort of injury but as far as I could tell, he was completely unharmed. The blood on his fur was not his own. “Landon…” I stepped back, waiting for an explanation.
His tongue rolled out the side of his mouth in a sort of lopsided grin. A second later, he retreated into the thicket and retrieved a deer.
“Is that a buck?” Roman had his jaw agape. “I haven’t seen one that big in a long time. We’re going to eat like kings tonight!”
“Wait… we’re going to eat this thing? I can’t do that!”
“Why not?” Landon had shifted back to his human form. “Just think of it as the chicken you like so much.”
“I can’t!” I protested. “This is like eating Bambi!”
“Bambi?” Landon knitted his brows together. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“It’s a human cartoon,” explained Roman. “Many humans are very fond of the little animation.”
Landon retrieved a knife from his back pocket. It was the same knife he had used during our combat training so I knew, first hand, how sharp that thing could be. With a flick of his wrist, he sliced through the neck. Blood came rushing forward, dripping onto the ground and pooling around his feet.
My stomach churned. Unable to watch, I turned away, hand covering my mouth to try to prevent myself from throwing up. It didn’t work.
I retched into a nearby bush. Everything I had eaten throughout the day come out in one form or another.