If he had a secret--

They're holed up somewhere no-one's ever needed to label and if Riley had a secret, he doesn't, really, but if he did, he thinks it would taste the way these things do when they come apart against his teeth, acid flare on the tip of his tongue, bitter slick at the back, copper throughout; it would taste like adrenaline, mostly like blood and heat because, even if she was saving his life, Sam shot a little too close for comfort. If he had a secret, it would linger like disgust at the back of his throat the way this does, even after he gargles, first with water, later with bourbon.

Riley doesn't have a secret.

They track the bugs' source by sound. The things you'd need an extra tongue to name are attracted to water, whether in rivers or plants or people, worse than flies to a picnic, and when they feed, they're not quiet about it: the opening crunch; that odd, straw-in-an-almost-empty-bottle gurgle; a long, drawn out, wet, burbling, sucking sound. If he had a secret, he thinks it might sound a little like that, like fluid draining, wet swallows, little moans.

Riley doesn't have a secret.

They bomb Mamma Beastie with mystic C4, then chop up the babies and toss them on the flames. Riley thinks that, maybe, if he had a secret, and wouldn't he know if he did? But if he did, it would smell like this, like dry, hungry, dead things, like ashes, like peat fires, like musty coats lost deep in the back of old, never-to-be-opened closets, and just maybe a little like the living, weeping green of the forest around them.

Riley doesn't have a secret.

It's too late to pull out, so they camp. The fire makes shadows of trees, matches a sky turned bloody by the sun sliding away. Riley thinks his secret might look a little like that, like deep red in the long shadows, if he had one and, you know, that's normal, that's human, everyone keeps secrets, don't they, even from their wives, their family, from themselves, but, honestly, he doesn't.

Riley doesn't have a secret.

If he had a secret, and even if he does it wouldn't be this one, because Riley's so over that, he knows he shouldn't have done it in the first place and he really, really doesn't have no reason to do it anymore, he loves Sam and she really loves him and anyway he hasn't even seen a vampire in months, let alone come close to one, but if he did have a secret, he knows it would feel like sitting on cheap furniture in a dirty room with sleazy lips on skin, feel like a sharp pinprick of teeth, like a slow downwards spiral into a warm, enveloping darkness.

Riley doesn't have a secret.

In the jungle, in the camp, in the sleeping bag, in Sam's arms, in the darkness, he scratches at crescent shaped scars.