AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He placed a quick kiss on my lips, patting my ass before he retrieved his blade from some secret place. “Take this. I’ll find you soon.”
“What? No. Then what will you have? They’ve got guns!”
“Baby, I can kill a man with my bare hands just as well as I can with a weapon.” He pulled away, and, like a shadow, vanished into the trees, Cam, Ice, and six acolytes following them.
Gunshots were still going off every few minutes, but now screams of pain and distress had joined them.
“Ready?” Bella asked me, nearly jumping up and down.
“It hasn’t been two minutes, let alone twenty,” I pointed out, adjusting my hold on Luce’s heavy knife. The curved blade looked lethal and sharp.
“Screw that! He never lets me in on the fun. Let’s go!” She called over her shoulder to the remaining acolytes.
“Bella!”
She ignored me, taking off into the trees, going the same way Luce had. I gritted my teeth and broke into a jog, hating the dress I had on that much more.
It was growing darker by the minute, but finding my way through the woods wasn’t too hard. I followed the smell of smoke and rising volume of screams.
There were still two acolytes with me. I knew this was Luce’s doing, as I wasn’t officially a Savage yet.
The rest had gone with Bella.
I stepped from the trees into total pandemonium. It’d escalated at a groundbreaking speed. The pods were where the smoke was coming from—they’d all been set aflame. Bodies littered the lawn, some still twitching, others moaning in agony. The stench of blood and fear was ripe in the air.
A guerrilla ran right past me, one side of his head covered in blood. Stags chased him down, pouncing on him like wild animals and using their bare hands to start tearing the man apart. Acolytes were quickly disarming the men with guns, emptying the clips into anyone they snatched one from.
Knowing I couldn’t linger out in the open like this, I hurriedly scanned the grounds for Bella, spotting a flash of her blonde hair just as she entered the asylum.
I began to run towards it, glancing back only once to make sure the acolytes were okay and keeping up. Seeing them both, I refocused on making it safely through the yard. Screams carried from all directions. Off in the far distance, glass shattered as the church was desecrated.
Girls were running scared—a few were snatched right before my eyes. Stags and Lazarus lifted them up and disappeared long before I could reach them to do anything about it. I had to get Bella first.
I told as many girls as I could to head for the woods and hide out until morning. A dozen or more listened, some from fear and others because they recognized me.
Entering the building I never wanted to see again, I promptly slid through a mess of blood.
One of the acolytes was quick enough to catch me, releasing me the instant I was stable and steady on my feet.
The body of a girl I didn’t know was right inside the entrance, the side of her face completely split open. This was a Stag or Lazarus kill. I guess Amo didn’t have a preference for which girls were taken.
“Thank you.”
The reply came in the language I didn’t understand.
Careful with where I placed my feet now that my boots were sticky with blood, I listened carefully for any sounds that could be Bella. The asylum was huge. She could be on any floor or in any room.
Yelling for her was out of the question. That would attract all the people I didn’t want to find me.
I glanced back at the acolytes, wondering if they would listen to me. I didn’t want to treat them like attack dogs, but I needed their help. If something happened to her…
“Can you go search for Bella?”
They immediately set off in separate directions without so much as an acknowledgement. One went for the stairs while the other took left.
On my own for the time being, I went right, walking down the hall and peering in each room as I went. Something clattered to the floor a little way up ahead.
The mess hall was only a foot further from where I was standing.
