The Altered.

Chapter XLIV

Miles swung his knife and very narrowly avoided impaling a girl his age.

The purple-haired teen let out a burst of inaptly timed laughter right after the blade skimmed just by her.

"Who the hell are you?" Miles snarled, heartrate still up in the air.

Before she'd answered the question, two boys emerged from the shadows. It wasn't very dramatic or frightening, but it was still disturbing to try and imagine how long the three of them had been there.

"Miles?" called Lia from the other side of the shop, worry lacing her tone.

"I'm fine," he replied, still staring furiously at the girl and her companions as he awaited a response.

"I scared you!" gasped the girl through her fit of stupidly hysterical laughter.

Miles wasn't laughing. "I almost killed you!"

"Naw," she said, trying to pull herself together. "You couldn't if you tried!"

Miles doubted that, considering the girl had only just managed to make it out of the way to avoid meeting an untimely end at the tip of Miles' blade.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. His voice had an edge to it that was sharper than usual, but it also suggested he was a little nervous.

"Same thing as you," said the girl. She opened her mouth to continue, but Lia appeared all of a sudden, face a muddle of confusion and concern.

"Do you know these people?" she asked suspiciously, shopping basket hanging on one arm as she stood beside Miles.

He shook his head.

"I'm Angelina, and this is Bates and Spike." She indicated to the two boys behind her as she said their names, and they did little but grunt in confirmation. Miles fought the urge to wrinkle his nose at their names. In comparison to the boys, Angelina had a peculiarly elegant name, but her cropped purple hair and icy eyes together took the shape of a constant warning. She looked threatening; even more so when she crossed her arms over her chest. "Where've you two been staying since this started?" For the first time, Angelina's gaze flitted to Lia.

Lia said, "Here and there," at the same time Miles said, "None of your business."

There was something disquieting about this encounter with Angelina's small group and he couldn't pinpoint why.

"Oh," said Angelina brightly. "Well, we've been in the city the whole time. It's real dangerous here, you know."

Lia seemed to pick up on something in Angelina's tone, because she defensively straightened up. "We can handle it, thanks."

Angelina hummed a single soft note of thoughtfulness.

Before any more words could be shared, Miles dumped the clothes he'd found for himself into Lia's basket, which was nearly full already. "We're going," he said, leaving no room for argument.

Angelina's face fell. "What, that's it? You're going?"

"Is there a reason you'd like us to stay?" Miles examined the unmoving expressions on Bates' and Spike's faces and looked away again immediately, intimidated both by their scowls and their height.

"We've hardly found anybody alive in this," Angelina said. "Doesn't it make sense to talk to people you meet?"

Miles ground his teeth, considering that she actually had a point. Despite it, he didn't want to keep the others in the library waiting too long and he was reluctant to get involved with Angelina's group for reasons he couldn't even find. "No, really. We're going."