Page 109 of Hunting Pretty

The hands were torn off me and I collapsed, my eyes rolling back as I fell.

The impact of the cold, hard ground was like a bucket of icy water.

With my cheek resting against the pavement, my vision cleared enough to see a large man with beefy shoulders being shoved against the nearby wall. His head snapped back with a sickening crack and he stumbled, reaching behind him for something to catch him.

I lay paralyzed as Scáth lunged for him.

With complete detachment, I watched him drive a knife into the larger man’s gut.

He pulled it back drenched in blood which splattered hot across my face.

Scáth stabbed the man again and again, his arms moving with such steely precision.

I heard cries of pain, and then my attacker collapsed, his face slamming down to the pavement in front of me.

His vacant eyes stared past me and his mouth hung open in a final silent scream, his skin already growing pale with death, a sticky pool of red spreading around him.

As the edges of my vision closed in, another memory slammed into me.

“Where are you?” I sang out. “Ready or not, here I come!”

My words echoed off the walls, light and carefree, as I skipped into the room, a playful smile tugging at my lips.

But the second I stepped inside, the world dropped out from under me.

I froze, a gasp loosening from my lips.

A younger Scáth stood there, towering over the body of a man, his broad shoulders tense but his breaths steady, controlled.

My gaze lowered to the unmoving figure at his feet, my voice dying in my throat. The face was turned away, and I couldn’t make out who it was.

I’d never seen a human skin so pale. It wasn’t just bloodless. It was translucent.

My footsteps as I tiptoed closer were muffled by the oriental rug.

“Is he…?” I dared to ask, my voice barely a whisper.

My heart hammered in my chest, but it wasn’t fear that gripped me. Not horror.

I looked up at Scáth, and he met my eyes with that same cold, unrepentant stare.

“He won’teverhurt you again.”

There wasn’t a shred of guilt in his voice, no apology. He didn’t even flinch.

I swallowed hard, trying to make sense of the storm of emotions swirling inside me.

And to my surprise, the sharp knot of tension in my chest loosened. A strange sense of calm washed over me, like something heavy had been lifted off my chest.

I was safe.

Lying on the ground, staring at my dead attacker, my blinking grew slower and slower as I was pulled under.

Scáth approached me, his icy eyes cold and intense; his chiseled face covered with his skeleton half-mask was speckled with a spray of red.

But for some reason, I wasn’t afraid.

His bloody hands reached for me as the blackness swallowed me whole.

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