AllFreeNovel
Share Us
West nodded. “Now you know how to sense them. Keep searching for them as we go. You might be stronger than I am now, so you should be able to find them first.”
I gave him a thin smile, not really knowing what to say. He turned away, holding up his guns, and slid them into his holster. “There’s a few, but not too many. You three hang back, Zayn and I will go ahead and take them out quietly.” He drew his and Jack’s knives, holding one in each hand like daggers. Zayn quickly unzipped his bag and stowed his gun inside. He lifted out a curved steel sword. I’d seen bronze versions before in museums. It was a khopesh, the swords used by the ancient Egyptians. The blade was curved a little like a scimitar, except the khopesh was sharp on the outside of the blade, not the inside. Zayn’s dark eyes met mine as he stood up, and a feeling of familiarity flowed through me. I knew him, I just couldn’t remember him. He smiled and winked as he turned away, and the two of them set off silently into the darkness of the tunnel that bent out of sight.
I felt sick as I heard the sounds of a scuffle. I hated not being able to see what was going on, and I was worried West and Zayn would get hurt. Something moved in the tunnel ahead, and a dark figure came towards me. At first I thought it was Zayn, smaller and more slender than West, lurching as though he might be injured. I ran forward to help then skidded to a stop. It wasn’t Zayn. It was one of the hatay.
I stared at the creature that lumbered towards me. It was humanoid in shape, which was what had thrown me. A lot of the shadows I’d seen in the darkness of the ruins hadn’t been anywhere near humanlike. This one walked on two legs, two arms hung by its sides, and its head was on its shoulders, but that was where the similarities ended. Its skin was dark in colour, though a large proportion looked as though it had rotted away, leaving sections of bones and grey muscle exposed. Black viscous fluid oozed out of the tears in its flesh, and its head was an elongated grey skull that might have once looked reptilian. Gold eyes glowed out of dark sockets, and its large, fanged teeth hung down on either side of a forked tongue that whipped out every few seconds. Black fabric hung off its body in shreds that seemed to float in the air as though stirred by a breeze I couldn’t feel. The icy coldness I’d felt before crept through my skin, and my stomach lurched with nausea.
It staggered forward, and I saw a fresh gaping wound on its leg, probably caused by Zayn’s khopesh. The thing towered above me, and I gazed up at it as fear froze me to the spot.
“Tory, move!” Jack shouted, running forward, but I couldn’t. Not in time. I turned, but it lifted one of its arms, and I saw the flash of talons before a blinding pain seared across my side. The force drove me into the wall and I lost my balance, crashing forwards. A pair of arms came around me, and Wesley dragged me back as Jack emptied his pistol into the thing’s chest. He must have hit its heart, because it crumpled to the ground, giving out a loud croaking noise. The glow in its eyes faded and it lay still. More of the thick, black fluid oozed out of its chest and onto the ground.
I leaned against Wesley, breathing hard as I stared at the thing on the ground, terrified it would get up again. It didn’t, but Jack took no chances. He walked over to it and shoved it over with his foot, shooting it twice more in the chest.
“Jack, Jack!” Wesley called, a note of panic in his voice. I twisted my head to look at him as Jack looked over at us. “She’s bleeding. She’s bleeding a lot!” Wesley shouted, his voice wavering.
I glanced down. Wesley was right, I was bleeding. The flash of pain I’d felt before that thing threw me into the wall had been its talon slicing my skin open. I couldn’t see the wound, and I was glad for that fact, but my shirt was drenched in blood and ripped to shreds. I hadn’t felt any pain since the initial blow, but now it hurt like hell and my knees gave out under me. Wesley’s grip tightened around my waist, and he held me up while Jack lifted the remains of my clothing and inspected the wound.
“Right, we need to—” West rounded the corner and stopped dead at the sight of the hatay on the ground. His gaze went straight from it to the wound on my side, and his face turned pale. When he spoke, though, his voice was as calm and controlled as ever.
“What happened?”
“One got past and went straight for Tory,” Jack told him, dropping my shirt back into place. He set his gun on the ground and pulled his long-sleeved shirt over his head. I eyed his toned stomach and abs for a brief moment until a throb of pain brought me back to the rather serious situation I was now in. Jack folded his shirt and pressed it against the wound underneath my shirt.
“Keep pressure on that,” he told Wesley, then he went to speak to West.
Wesley pulled my arms around his shoulders so he could support me better. It meant he was practically bending over to accommodate my diminutive height, but it didn’t seem to bother him.
“So, this has all happened before then?” I asked weakly.
“Well, not exactly this,” he replied, “but we do tend to end up in situations like this fairly often.”
I sighed. “At some point, do I stop fucking everything up and just, you know, exist?”
He smiled sadly and brushed his lips against my hair. “You have not fucked up at any point. West is just a control freak.”
I glanced over at West who threw a dirty look in Wesley’s direction.
“And he now has super hearing because of the blood sharing. I forgot.” Wesley released a dramatic sigh and leaned his forehead gently against mine. I smiled, though the pain was getting rather intense and I was struggling to breathe through it.
West came over and gently lifted my shirt, pulling Jack’s shirt away to see the wound below. He replaced it just as gently.
“Can you sense them? The hatay? I know there are more up ahead, but there are tunnels that start branching out, kind of like the veins in a leaf, and I need to know if there are more. I can’t sense that far. Will you try?”
I swallowed, taking a deep breath, and then regretted it because the pain intensified. I closed my eyes and let myself drift, feeling out the tunnels ahead. It was easier this time, my consciousness drifting away from my body like a feather. I floated through tunnels, recoiling when I felt the cold, draining energy of the hatay. After a few minutes, I opened my eyes. West was waiting, scanning my face.
“There are more, but they are not moving, just... waiting in some of the tunnels ahead, but not all of them.” I reached out and took his hand. He let me turn it over, and I closed my eyes. I traced my fingertip over his middle finger then jerked it right, then back to the line, and left, left again. “Here, here, and here,” I murmured, sketching a map on his skin. I opened my eyes and looked at him.
His icy blue gaze focused on his hand, then he looked up and nodded before turning to Zayn and Davenport.“It’s an ambush. They are waiting for us, and I think the tunnel to the well is blocked. Wesley, any other routes you can think of?”
“The tunnel up and two openings to the right. It leads to the old underground river. There’s a part of it open to the sky. I remember because two kids fell partway down a couple of years ago, and they needed ropes to rescue them. We might be able to climb out there.”
“Climb?” I asked weakly. Panic began to churn in my belly, and I felt light-headed, though that might well have been from blood loss.
West glanced at me, then back at the others. “So maybe we double back and go—”
“West?” I murmured, leaning heavily against Wesley. He looked over at me.
“There are more coming from the way we came. I can feel them. They are still a way off, but they are coming. We can’t go back that way.”
West stared at me as though he hadn’t heard me.
“West,” I repeated. “Did you understand me? We’re surrounded.”
