He laughs at her answer, and the sound is grating—harsh against his lips. “You kill rabbits?” he is almost incredulous at it, delirious with exhaustion, but he does not give her any space, continues to press against her. “Why?” She is fascinating—a diversion—and he finds he wants to, needs to know more. He needs to know what drives her to rip life from a small, helpless creature; why she needs to gorge on its life.
Makai noses at her neck again, nothing if not persistent. “Shaytan.” Her name feels right in his mouth, heavy as gunmetal. There was nothing feminine or soft about her, and he does not expect that from her. She is harsh lines and crudely drawn, and he finds that he appreciates that about her in this moment. There is not a single thing about her that reminds him of Oksana. There is nothing here to draw forth his ghosts.
“Because it’s the only thing left to do,” he says and his voice is raspy. “My name is Makai.” What he wants to say is that he is death, that he is dead. He wants to tell her that he is coughing blood now, and he wants to say that he kills everything that he loves—that he has a habit of tearing apart everything that he had once held dear. His own brother had killed him; he had deserved to die. So now he runs until he can no longer breath in the hopes that he won’t. If only he could run until the life bled from his body.
MAKAI
I'm a dead man walking here
but that's the least of all my fears