She heard them, with winter's dying breath as it carried their lustful screams through the trees. It hadn't taken much effort to track Ives to their shelter. Martha declined to accept the invitation to dine with them, and instead set to work tying strips of muslin and old fabrics to the trees surrounding the place. While night consumed the light, and visions of her dead brother danced in her eyes, Martha worked.

When she could no longer see past her nose, she used her hands to find the trees, dirt-painted cuticles scraping over the bark as her feet painted a memory of the path through the woods. She would not forget this place. Neither would the rodents scurrying over her feet, rushing away from the scent of danger. No animal rested well near the home of a Wendigo.

Boyd woke without pain. While there were certain aches he could ignore, the agony of his bullet injury had all but disappeared. He shouldn't be surprised. He'd recovered from being stabbed, from having his leg broken, even from nearly having his spine snapped in half. There truly was nothing, it seemed, that he couldn't survive. Even his own self-disgust. Even Ives.

Speaking of Ives, he hadn't gotten up to prepare breakfast, nor had he stoked the coals or tossed more wood onto the fire. Instead, the embers had died into the night, and their cabin was chilled, save for the dubious comfort of the fur-covered bed Boyd sat in beside the sleeping demon. For all intents and purposes, though, he looked anything but.

In fact, Ives looked quite peaceful in sleep. Almost human. For a moment, Boyd wondered whether Ives would notice if he slipped away, put as much distance between them as possible. Would he fare better, be more apt at tamping down the monster in his own body?

While it was nice to pretend, Boyd knew he was fooling himself. Ives or not, the hunger would never leave him. It had been his own hand that drove him to murder Lindus. His own stubborn choice to live moved him to carve into Reich. His own choice to…

Boyd's hand unconsciously touched his own lips, where he'd let Ives bite. Kiss. Devour. Just the thought of the word ignited his appetite, and by then Boyd honestly had no idea just how long he'd been staring down at the man beside him, or how long Ives had been staring back. Wide awake. That familiar little smile of smug satisfaction.

"Sleep well, Boyd? No nightmares?"

"There was one," he replied, not inclined to smile back. "I don't think it's over yet."

Ives sat up, tilting his head back to stretch his neck with a soft groan. No smart little response or threat. No taunts. "How about breakfast?"

It was not an enjoyable affair, dressing himself with Ives following his every move, and his shirt had been far too crusted with blood to salvage. He crumpled the fabric in his hands, perching at the edge of the bed and contemplating what he should do. Perhaps he could get by with just the coat. There wasn't quite as much blood on it.

"You might try asking me for help. If you need it." Ives remarked, walking past him towards the fireplace, completely shameless of his own naked state. "There should be a few things here and there. I kept some supplies beneath the floorboards by the door, Boyd." He knelt down, snatching up a log to toss it over the dead coals, "unless you'd rather stay inside today and wait for me. I promise I'll come back."

"Wait for you?" Boyd jerked to attention, glaring over at Ives and tossing his shirt to the ground, "where are you going?" He wished that pesky little note of panic hadn't crept into his voice, but at this point Boyd honestly had no idea what he was going to do. He didn't want to be alone right now, even if his only company was a half-mad cannibal.

"We had a visitor last night. I think you may have been a little distracted," Ives replied, his eyes roving slowly over Boyd. It didn't take a genius to figure out what he'd meant.

"You weren't?" Boyd snapped right back at him.

"Oh, I most definitely was," Ives voice dipped into a purr, "but I could still smell her."

"Her-" Boyd's eyes widened when it clicked almost immediately after he'd started to speak.

Martha.

Boyd surged to his feet, "what do you intend to do?"

"Me?" Ives looked back at him with a look of almost convincing false innocence, which Boyd easily saw for the lie it was.

"Let her go. I don't know why she was here last night, but let her go."

Ives advanced towards him with surprising speed, one hand lashing out to grip Boyd's chin and force the man to face him, "how long do you think the rest of that old man will last us, John? Three days? Five, if we're lucky? Play the pious victim all you want when you've emptied your plate, but do not try to think for even a moment that I'll do the same. We're in this together now, and Martha knows too much about us. If we don't do something now, we'll be somewhere far worse than a bear trap," he leaned closer, lips brushing up against Boyd's ear, "and it won't be nearly as pleasant. Eat or die, John. You've already made the choice."

Boyd pried the man's fingers from his chin, shoving his hand away with a soft growl, "she doesn't deserve this. None of them did."

"Deserve?" Ives scoffed, "that's a pretty word, isn't it? Deserve? Oh, I've got another one for you," he stepped back, snatching up one of the furs on the bed beside them to wrap it about his shoulders. "How about 'justice'? Or 'honor'? Love? Innocence? Piety? They're just words, Boyd. Words that have no meaning to a predator. Empty, stupid, human words. I don't care what she or anyone else deserves. If they can't survive, then they are nothing but food. They're beneath me. Beneath you. The sooner you learn that, the sooner you'll learn to enjoy yourself."

He'd finally struck a nerve with Ives. There was no smile, nor any sign of the patience the man had seemed to possess in abundance before Boyd had given into his hunger and murdered Lindus. He had begun to pace the cabin now, dragging the fur behind him like a feral cape to match his nature, "deserve," Ives repeated again under his breath, struggling with the very idea.

For a moment, or perhaps less, Boyd was tempted to say something to calm him down. Appease him. Then he realized with self-disgust that appeasing the bastard should be the last thing on his mind right now. What he should be focusing on again was destroying him. A good night's rest had completely revived the pair. There was no reason he shouldn't attack Ives right now, except…

Well, he didn't really want to anymore. Maybe Ives' insanity was catching. Or it already had.

"I'll make a fire, perhaps something to eat before we leave," Ives informed him curtly, letting the fur fall to the ground as he approached the chair at the table where he'd neatly folded his clothes at some point during the night, which meant he hadn't likely slept through the hours quite as well as Boyd had.

"Did you leave last night?" It suddenly struck Boyd how tired Ives looked. Not quite as well-rested as he'd thought.

"Perhaps," the man replied, keeping his eyes stubbornly averted from Boyd as he dressed, "I went for a walk." There was something in his tone. A hint of-

"You're scared," it suddenly struck him. "You're afraid of her."

"No," Ives replied testily as he fastened the buttons of his shirt, "I'm not. I'm cautious. I'm smart. She knows what we are, and for all I know she might know about some sort of weakness we have that I don't."

Boyd lifted his chin, all too happy to whisper the word, "coward."

"Pardon?"

"I said you're a coward," Boyd snapped back, looking him dead in the eye as he imitated the same tone Ives had used with him when he'd thrown the same insult in his face.

"John," Ives replied, his voice suddenly far calmer, more like the usual cheerful tone he generally applied to every conversation in which he had the upper hand, "I know you're new at this. I mean, it isn't easy," he stressed the last word with an odd twitch of his eyebrows and turn of his head, "well, not for someone like you, who've spent most of your time moping and hiding from what we are, but…"

In an instant, there was a knife at Boyd's throat, sharp, cold. Pressed against his skin and dragging a very soft trail downwards. Where had Ives even been hiding it?

"I'm sure you remember how very difficult it is to die, if not impossible," Ives whispered, pressing the blade a little more forcefully, enough to puncture, focusing on the blood that welled up there. Boyd held his breath, refusing to move, just in case it earned him an even worse injury. Given their history, it seemed an inevitability.

"Trust me, I know how to make you scream in ways you might not like as much as others," Ives leaned closer, removing the blade and licking at the trail of blood. Boyd didn't know whether he was shivering from disgust or, well, that.

"Grab a shirt from under the floorboards," Ives licked the blood from his knife and tucked it into his belt, "I'll make breakfast, and then we'll get ourselves re-acquainted with our friend out there."

He knew if he didn't go with Ives, Martha had little chance of surviving the day.

"So, are we going to have a nice meal together, or am I going to have to pretend to force feed you?" Ives inquired, kneeling in front of the fireplace and grabbing a few extra logs beside his tinder box he'd placed nearby.

Boyd sat down on the bed, not quite defeated, and not quite in denial anymore.

"I'll eat," he ground out, "if I have to."

Ives grinned back at him over his shoulder, "I insist."