Page 10 of Resist

There was no time for gratitude. No sooner was I on my feet when another hound rounded the corner of a building, caught sight of us, and yipped as it ran straight toward us.

“Shit!” I went to fire my gun, only to realize it had been knocked out of my hand when I was attacked.

BANG!

Wes’s Glock kicked in his hand, and the bullet struck true. Headshot. The beast dropped to the floor. “Go!” he screamed before turning on his heels. I looked around, spotting my 9mm only a few feet away from us. I ran toward it. “Leave it, Mara!” I stopped in my tracks, glancing at Wes and then back at my gun. “Leave it!” he growled again.

With a huff, I turned back to face him and took off running. Adrenaline was kicking in now, the sweet burn warming my chest, hitting my heart, and then spreading through my body, lighting my veins on fire. It felt good. It felt powerful. And it gave me the extra umph I needed to push myself. Another cacophony of yips and yaps sounded behind us.

“We’re almost there!” Wes shouted.

It was in that moment that I heard it—the light thrumming calling to us in the distance. I looked up at the sky. The dark night was clear, the heavens littered with stars and a moon so full, you’d think she was ready to burst like a firework, raining down stardust on us all. But I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I couldn’t find our salvation. Amazing how the world could be filled with both light and dark, good and evil. While the skies offered me beauty, the earth only offered death.

But the sound grew louder, closer. And before I knew it, it was overcoming the howls of the dogs behind us, each thrumming sound vibrating in my chest. My eyes shot to the sky once again, looking straight above as the emergency helicopter flew low, right over my head, creating a powerful wind that whipped my hair around and threatened to throw me off balance.

“Go, go, go, go!” Wes called as he pointed straight ahead to a large clearing set in the middle of Central Park.

Oh, thank god!

The site of the artificial turf and tracking towers disguised as pine trees was a sight for sore eyes. The last time I had been here felt like a lifetime ago, but it had been less than six months prior.And at that time, I was still naïve, lost, and living under Belinda’s cruel punishments of isolation, starvation, and wicked lashings. At that time, I had Chase. And then he died, my father burning him alive in a grand arena for all to watch because, as it turned out, Chase was a Dissenter…a rebel.

I shook my head again, trying to regain control of my mind as I ran for my life. This wasn’t the time to take a trip down memory lane. I had to get my shit together andkeepit together. My life—ourlives—depended on it.

I watched as the Blackhawk turned overhead to the left and then hovered in the night sky. Why wasn’t he landing?

I looked around, casting a glance at Wes, whose strained face and ever reddening uniform spoke a thousand words. And then I heard a growl so deep and so loud, it pulled my attention to the left and right of us.

And then it all clicked into place.

The pack of hellhounds had finally caught up, triangulating us like the wickedly smart apex predators they were rumored to be. They boxed us in, cutting us off from our escape.

We were totally screwed.

7: Duck

Fear gripped me, a stabbing pain in my chest so fierce, I thought my heart was going to give out. The Blackhawk hovered, our emergency escape suspended in the air, causing the wind to blow about and push us back from the safety we so desperately craved.

Wes came to a screeching halt, arm outstretched with his gun pointing toward the mass of hounds that had slowed their pace and stood in our way. And for the first time, I was able to get a good look at them, and they were disgusting.

They were covered in matted black or brown fur, patchy, as though spots of their body had been shaved to expose sickly gray skin. And they werehuge—as in,massive!Their paws appeared to be the size of saucers, with black claws that clicked on the asphalt of the street as they paced impatiently before us. Their eyes glowed yellow, orange, and red, as though the flames of hell raged within them, peeking through the windows of their eyes. And as they snarled, their lips peeled back to revealrows of sharp, yellowed canines glistening with the drool that dripped from their mouths. They weren’t pretty beasts, and they absolutely terrified me. But what could you expect from the most horrible science experiment ever conducted in Telvia?

Let’s just say that Dr. Frankenstein had nothing on Raúl.

“We’ve got to get to the Blackhawk,” Wes said to me with the deep timbre of his voice.

I swallowed, casting a glance over my shoulder to see another mass of hounds behind us.

“Yeah, I got that part. My question is, how the hell do you propose we do that?” I turned my body around to keep a better eye on the pack that was stalking toward us. I reached for the stunner holstered on my left hip. It may not be my gun, but it was way better than nothing.

Wes stayed quiet for a moment as his eyes focused on the beasts in front of him until a slew of obscenities came out from under his breath. That wasn’t a good sign. Wes cussing up a storm was no surprise. The man practically lived for cursing. But in this particular situation, Wes’s typical communication style wasn’t welcomed. It meant he had no plan, no idea of how we were going to get out of this mess.

It meant we were royally screwed.

My eyes darted about, searching for an escape route, anything we could use to get the hell out of this, but I came up short. All I saw was the pack of hounds—at least two dozen of them—circling us, closing in.

This was it. It was going to all come down to this.

Bzzz! Bzzz!

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