My gut twisted. God, sometimes having a conscience sucked.
I squinted into the darkness, looking for movement in the trees beyond, and then the shadows exploded in fur and claw. Emily’s scream scraped at my mind. Derek reacted with a well-aimed shot, catching the Feral’s haunches, and the Claw buckled. Its pale green eyes rolled in pain as it stumbled.
“Run!” I was already in motion, the word abandoned to the wind at my back.
The next few seconds were full-focus weaving, jumping to avoid roots, and pounding pulses. Tobias was right beside me, no need to look to know he was there. We’d made this kind of run enough to do it in tandem. Just had to hope the others were right behind us. I leapt over a fallen branch.
A scream ripped through the air.
No. Don’t stop. Don’t fucking stop. I skidded to a halt—damn you, conscience. I swerved and ran back toward the fallen branch and scooped it up into my right hand. They were right there, within view—Emily pressed against a tree, screaming, just screaming. And Derek lying in a tangle of limbs while Jerry got his guts ripped out.
It’s too late for them. Just go. Just leave them. Dad’s voice was a whisper. Dammit, Eva, you have to survive!
He was right. I needed to jet. But then the Claw lifted its head and zeroed in on Emily. I was in motion before I could change my mind. The branch was a comforting weight in my hand as I barreled closer. Close enough for the Claw to turn on me, close enough for me to swing back and let loose with a sturdy thud that knocked its huge head to the side.
“Emily, run!”
I brought the branch up again, ready to swing, but it was too fast, throwing its whole weight onto me. My back hit the ground.
“Eva!” Tobias’s desperate yell echoed through the trees.
“Fucking run, Tobias!” I still held the branch and brought it up to connect with the Claw’s head once again, but the angle was all wrong, not enough power in the swing. I was so doomed.
The Claw straddled me, leaning in close, drool dripping from its bared fangs onto my shirt, its huge, flared nostrils pulsing as it took in my scent. What the fuck was it waiting for? All you can eat buffet here, buddy. Just get it over with.
Tears of frustration pricked my eyes. Damn you, conscience, damn the hell out of you!
A boom exploded above me and crimson spattered my face, stealing my vision, and then the monster toppled to the side, half its weight still pinned to me.
“Shit, Eva, shit!” The Feral was pushed off me, and Tobias yanked me to my feet. He pulled me into his arms and squeezed. “Oh, God. Oh, God.”
I held him tight, fingers digging into his shoulders, mouth pressed to his shirt, eyes burning with the need to scream. So close. So fucking close.
Soft sobs caught my attention. Emily. She’d just lost her family. Sucking in a deep breath, I pulled away from Tobias, clenching my fists to hide the shakes. We needed to keep moving. I jerked my head in Emily’s direction.
He frowned at me, his eyes asking me if I was sure, if I was okay. I clenched my jaw, and with a sigh, he backed away and strode over to the young girl. She needed the comfort; I just needed a moment to pull my shit together.
He took her hand. “Emily, we need to go. Now. Can you do that? Can you keep up?”
She tore her gaze from the dead bodies of her father and friend and nodded. “Yes. Yes, I can.”
Thank fuck. “Follow me.” I fell into a jog.
Chapter Eight
We broke out of the forest and onto flatland by a main road. Tobias pulled Emily to a halt while I scanned the horizon. Another hour and we’d be there. So close. We would have arrived sooner if Emily hadn’t needed to sleep. We’d holed up in what looked like a man-made den in the forest when the sun had come up. She’d cried herself to sleep, and despite my determination to wake her in a couple of hours and finish our journey, I’d fallen asleep too. We’d woken to a low sun and panic, and I’d driven them hard for the past couple of hours, desperate to get to our destination before sundown.
Emily slid to the ground. “I can’t. My legs.”
Oh, shit, not again. I locked gazes with Tobias. His lips tightened because he knew what I was thinking. If she couldn’t make it, we’d have to leave her behind. My stomach roiled with nausea at the thought, but then something caught my eye. White and glinting in the sun.
I jogged off, leaving Tobias to haul Emily up and follow at a slower pace, but if my gut was right, then … A line of motors came into view. It was a long shot, but maybe. I began yanking open doors, checking fuel, and looking for keys. The first three were dead, the fourth was burnt out, but the fifth was in pristine condition—no bumps or scrapes and half a tank of gas. Heart pounding, I flipped the glove compartment and then the driver’s mirror, looking for keys. Nothing.
Fuck! I ducked out and slammed my hand on the hood. One break, please. Just one. And there it was, thrown casually onto the back seat. Pulse hammering, I ducked back into the car motor and grabbed the keys.
“Eva?” Tobias joined me, Emily close behind.
I held up the keys and grinned. “We have a ride.” Now to see if the thing still worked.
* * *
“An actual working motor,” Tobias said for the fifth time, shaking his head.
Emily was curled up in the back, her eyes on the window, lips tightly pressed together. She was holding it together. Good girl. There’d be time to grieve once we were safe.
I kept my gaze on the landscape, hands on the wheel. Was I excited about being in a real working motor vehicle? ’Course I was, but I needed to keep my wits about me. A glance at the sun confirmed we were headed in the right direction—the directions Dad had given me. Tobias called me the human compass, and he was right. I’d always been able to get where we needed to be.
Tobias nudged me in the ribs. “You okay?”
I nodded, my gaze flitting to the rearview mirror for a brief moment and settling on Emily. Her tear-streaked face was still and devoid of any emotion. She’d just lost the two people closest to her, so asking her if she was okay was pointless—it was obvious she wasn’t.
When Dad had died, I’d been a wreck of fear and tears and snot, but all Tobias had seen was the determination to survive, to get to the coordinates that Dad had given me. My grief had remained hidden, because falling apart wasn’t an option. Grieving was a luxury I didn’t have until now, because if my gut instinct was correct, then we had found what we were looking for and soon there would be nothing to drive me, nothing to hold back the lake of tears that was trapped in my chest. When I did grieve, I’d do it alone, because that’s who I was, but who was Emily? Did she need a shoulder to cry on? I was so not a people person. That was all Tobias. I’d speak to him, ask him to watch out for Emily.
“Eva …” Tobias’s jaw was tense. “If there aren’t enough females at this place …”
I grit my teeth, knowing what he was inferring. “We’ll deal with that issue if it arises.”
“What if we don’t get a choice. We have no idea how they run their compound.”
No, we didn’t. They may have gotten lucky and have an equal male to female ratio, or they may be male-dominated, which would mean that women would be a desired commodity, and not just for breeding.
“We’ll tell them we’re married,” Tobias said.
My heart leapt into my throat, and I glanced sharply at him before fixing my eyes back on the road. “They won’t believe that. We’re too young. And what about her?” I jerked my head back to indicate Emily.
“Then we leave.”
I nodded. “If things get weird, we leave.”
He sat back, lips pressed together, and we drove in silence for another few minutes until a wall of dense shrubbery blocked our path. No, wait, that was wrong. It wasn’t blocking, it had been torn aside, and beyond rose a twenty-foot gray stone wall, sturdy and smooth, no nooks or crannies for climbing, but there was no need for any of that because the entrance was wide open, and the glimpse of the world beyond ma
de my heart clench in panic.
“Eva, what the fuck?” Tobias leaned forward in his seat.
Emily made a small sound of protest.
My heart sank further as we drew closer to the entrance, because the heavy metal doors were open and there was no security. No one running out to meet us, to stop us, to protect this place. No one, because whoever had been here was gone.
Chapter Nine
We drove down an actual street bordered by trees with low, sturdy buildings sitting farther back. Up ahead was another wall. Lower than the first and topped with barbed wire. Towers jutted up from behind it, and then with an apologetic sputter, the engine died.
“Back on foot, people.” I climbed out, eyes on the sky, on the mid-afternoon sun. There were only a couple of hours till sunset. Only a couple of hours until the monsters came out to play.
“We need to find out what happened here,” Tobias said.
“I think it’s pretty clear what happened.” I kicked the dirt, where a dark stain and spatters sullied the earth. “Their defenses were breached, and the Feral got them. They scattered. Some probably got picked off by the Feral and maybe others got away.”
“You don’t know that for sure.” Emily’s voice was small yet defiant.
Good, she wasn’t falling apart at least. “The only sure thing in this world is that come nighttime, we’re the hunted.” I set off toward the nearest building, a three-story supermarket. “We scope the place out, stock up, and hole up for the night.”
“You sound angry,” Emily pointed out.
I ground to a halt in the doorway of the building. Fuck, yes. I was fuming, because we should have been here hours ago. Hours ago we would have had time to scope out the place and properly fortify a hideout to get us through the night. Now, we were fucked because the sun was about to set, and there was no way we could outrun the Feral tonight with Emily in tow.
Tobias slipped his hand into mine, his warm fingers tightening around mine. “It’s going to be okay.”
Damn him and his optimism. I glanced up at his profile—the sharp jaw, the perfect slope of his nose and his thick, dark lashes. He was no longer the boy I’d known. He was a man. I forgot that sometimes, treating him like the kid I’d grown up with, the one I’d played pranks on and bossed around, but he wasn’t that boy anymore, and sometimes I wondered if he allowed me to take the lead because he sensed how much I needed to be in control.
Something shifted inside me, a twisted longing that had no place in my heart. Hearts got you killed.
Haven had been the plan. This fucking place had been our goal and now it was gone. Think, dammit, think. What would Dad do? The people had to have gone somewhere. Maybe another settlement we didn’t know of? There had to be some clue somewhere in this haven.
“We gather information. Figure out if there are other places like this. We lie low here until we have a destination.”
“Good plan. They attacked here once, they’re unlikely to come back,” Emily said.
I stifled a snort, because she had no clue how the Feral worked. They didn’t function on logic, they functioned on instinct and bloodlust, and if they caught our scent, they would come, and after our several-hour run, Tobias and I reeked of sweat and tears and humanity. But Emily, heck, she smelled like strawberries, all shiny-haired and rosy-cheeked. My thoughts didn’t make it to my lips, though. No point in freaking her out.
Tobias shot me a grateful look.
I knew when to keep my mouth shut. “We split up, so we can cover more ground. You guys check the buildings across the street. We need to find a secure place to crash and whatever passes for a command center here.”
Tobias nodded and loped off across the street, his long legs eating up ground, Emily in tow, running to keep up.
“Eyes up, Tobe.”
It was our code. He nodded without turning around, because there could be Feral still here. Hiding in the shadows, sleeping and waiting for the moon to rise. But Emily didn’t need to know that. Not until she did.
* * *
The supermarket space was smaller than it looked from the outside. Gloomy and lit only by the sunlight streaming in from the windows, leaving the farther recesses of the building in shadows. Packets and tins littered the ground. Mainly dried non-perishables. Where had they gotten all this stuff? Probably scavenged from the nearby towns. I picked up a packet. Not plastic, but some kind of woven material. It looked homemade, and inside, there was flour. This place had been self-sufficient. There had probably been a farm, cattle, maybe even a herb garden. My stomach bubbled with excitement before plummeting. The people were gone, this place was dead. But we could use this food. Maybe we could find a corner of it to secure as a base?
We’d lost our backpack, but there were some in an aisle over. Time to stock up: noodles, energy bars, tinned beans, soup, and stuff that wouldn’t require too much effort. A can opener, some water purification tablets. Shit, a pharmacy. It was at the back of the store and fully stocked. Painkillers and antibiotics, bandages and antiseptic all went into the bag. There was no way this place operated solo, there had to be others. Excitement bubbled in my veins.
We needed to locate their command center and get coordinates to the next haven. The labeled bottles were suddenly harder to read. My head whipped up, noting the elongating shadows. Hoisting the pack up onto my shoulders, I ran for the exit, toward the windows glowing with the tell-tale crimson of the setting sun. How? How could the sun be going down early? Or had I simply lost time?
I pushed out into the street just as Tobias and Emily appeared on the other side. A gust of wind whipped my hair into my face, catching my scent and flinging it east. Tobias shook his head, staring up at the sky, and then a howl ripped the air. Not a wolf, not this time—this was a specific sound. The summoning screech of the Fangs.
“This way!” Tobias broke into a jog up the street. “There’s a bank up here.”
Emily hesitated a moment and then followed. We ran full pelt as the sun dropped, as another shriek tore through the quickening night, closer this time. Tobias shoved the bank door open and urged us into the dark interior.
I slammed the door closed but there was no lock. Shit, it was probably an electronic affair. A quick scan showed that the building, although labeled bank, was anything but.
“Mother of God,” Emily exclaimed.
Yeah, mother of God, indeed.
“An armory …” Tobias stared at the array of weaponry pinned to the wall and hanging off racks.
Guns, plenty of them. But that was one thing Dad hadn’t taught us how to use. “Look for blades, crossbows, daggers. And we need to find the lock for that damn door.”
The glass was tinted, so they wouldn’t be able to see in, but they’d be able to smell us.
“What’s back here.” I strode farther into the building, past the selection of weapons I had no idea how to use. Metal glinted and then a neat array of blades came into view. Machetes and daggers that varied in size. A bloody handprint on the wall caught my attention, followed by dried brown blood on the ground.
“Tobias, any joy on that lock?” I slid a dagger from its sheath on the wall.
“On it,” Tobias called back.
I followed the blood trail down a narrow corridor and to a closed door decorated with another bloody handprint. Dagger at the ready, I twisted the handle and pushed open the door. A storage room greeted me: bucket, mop, and … Shit, a dead body. Male, large, short blond hair, slumped against the wall, chin tucked in. The floor around his hips was a pool of blood. But my gaze was drawn to the beauty clutched in his hand, a sword that I recognized as a tulwar. Its blade was dull with blood, but even from my position in the doorway it was obvious that it was a well-kept weapon.
Shucking off the pack, I crouched by the dead dude and felt for a pulse. His skin was icy to the touch. No pulse. He’d been dead a while. “Sorry, but I’m gonna need this.”
I dropped the dagger and reached across the body, fingers itching to wrap ar
ound the hilt of the beautiful blade.
“Eva!” Tobias’s panicked voice drifted down the corridor.
My fingers scraped steel and then the hand holding the tulwar twitched. I froze, breath trapped in my lungs. Dead, he was dead.
Not fucking dead.
I made to pull back, pulse fluttering like a trapped bird in my throat, but the man was too fast. His hands were on me, one over my mouth crushing my lips to his salty skin, the other wrapping like a band around me. His face was so pale it was almost white, and the spatters of blood clinging to his skin stood out in stark contrast. Obsidian pupils too large and irises so pale they were eerie bore into me, swept over my skin to fall to my throat.
No. Fucking hell. No.
His lips peeled back to reveal elongated incisors, and my body went into fight mode. But my bucks and twists were nothing to him. I was an eel trapped in steel, and then his mouth claimed my jugular. Pain blinded me, sudden and sharp, but hot on its heels came heat. Heat and euphoria and something else, an awakening blooming at the juncture of my thighs, aching and throbbing. No. No, this was bad, this was wrong.
Don’t die, Eva. Survive. You must survive at all costs.
My fingers were cool where they grazed the ground as the bloodsucker stole the life from me. The hilt of my dagger slid into the palm of my hand. Fighting the sea of serene, the endorphins my assailant was pumping into my system to keep me compliant, I brought the dagger up and plunged it into the monster’s side.
He released me immediately with a wet grunt. I was free. Grabbing the tulwar and tripping over my feet, neck throbbing, I barreled out of the room.
For the Blood: For the Blood Book 1 Page 5