Page 47 of How to Entice a Fiend

I begin moving away from the waterfall, planning to circle around when I’m no longer in his sight, before I hear something whizzing right at me. I barely miss the tree branch that was sent with such force that it’s embedded itself in the trunk of another tree.

Just as I turn, that lying asshole rushes me. There’s this little part in the back of my mind going, “Remember how you weren’t going to mess with him because you are in shit health? Remember how you are atrocious at fighting, so you choose to use your brain andavoidfights?” and another part that’s like, “But I already plowed him to the ground with such finesse; I was so badass! I was so confident that I robbed him with expertise!” and then there’s thebiggestpart that’s like, “If you’d just killed him like Ender would have, he wouldn’t currently be slamming you to the ground.”

So down I go, brawling this asshole who is almost as naked as I am. The clothes and gun go flying from my hands because I can’t even manage to hold on to any of that as I face-plant. He knows I’m weak and tries going for my eyes, but I very muchlikemy eyes and would honestly prefer them to stayrightwhere they are.

“I thought you werenice,” I cry. “We had a moment where you were all, ‘I won’t stab you in the back,’ and I was all, ‘I’ll let you live because of it.’”

“Nah, you were just extremely naïve,” he says with a chuckle as he slams my head into the dirt. This is really quite embarrassing.

“Because I try to see the best in people?” I ask before clawing at his side, my bound wrists hampering me. I really need to take some fighting classes and stop relying on my charm to get me out of things alive. Being a vampire doesn’t really miraculously make you a phenomenal fighter like people seem to think it does. All I’m doing over here is flailing, kicking, and going for the balls since that sounds like a decent idea.

None of which he seems to overly enjoy, but he’s trying to go for my eyes while claiming that I “don’t need eyeballs to tell Abel what he wants to hear.”

“Well you don’t need your fucking nuts either,” I snap as I try my hardest to knee them up into his body. He groans but it’s not enough and I end up with a slice in my side. I would very much rather not bleed out again when Ijustmanaged to get some bloodbackinto my body, but he’s weirdly unconcerned.

“You are being very mean!”

“Does it look like I care?” he asks.

At this point it’s evident he plans to maim me enough to drag me back to the others where they’ll try beating out of me where Ender is and then stab me some more until I tell them everything I know.

I flip to the side, hoping to get to my feet and try my hand at running. If Ender were feeling a bit better, I’d run to him in a “Hey buddy, I brought you a snack!” way but at this point, I’m not even quite sure he’s alive enough to help me with his snack! We might end upbeingthe snack!

“I fucked up, I fucked up,” I cry as he grabs my leg before I can get to my feet and jerks it back so I slam down onto my face. The nice thing about this is I hitextremely closeto a rather sharp rock. I grab it and just as he’s trying to crush my throat, I twist, having this grand plan of slamming the rock into his head in this badass fight. What happens instead is that he runsintothe rock. It’s really a joint effort. The sound it makes is quite icky and I quickly scuttle away as he hits the ground, rock embedded in his head.

Obviously, he’s not quite dead. But to kill him, I would have to remove his head, bleed him dry, or go for the heart, none of which sounds easy to do when I’m still over here pleased that I’ve got two eyes.

“I am alive!” I realize. “Ha! Did you see that badass move? I am a proper badass, thank you very much!”

Hurriedly, I retrieve the clothes and gun that I’d dropped. Since he had a gun, why didn’t he go for it earlier? Unless the ammunition would kill someone like me and he very much knew Abel wouldn’t approve of it.

I hear a noise that is still quite far away, but has someone heard what’s happening?

Shit, shit, shit.

I tuck the clothes under my arm and run as quietly as I can in the opposite direction of the waterfall. I’ll make my way back when I feel like it’s safe. Sadly, besides replenishing a bit of blood, I’ve accomplished a whole lot of nothing.

Thankfully, Ender is still asleep when I get back and I don’t have to recount that embarrassing experience.

I see that he’s shaking, though, so I take the new clothes and drape them over him, hoping that warms him up. Then I close my eyes and think about how the fuck we’re getting out of here.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ENDER

The moment I’d said something to Mads about lying next to me, he’d pulled away. The cold had immediately eaten at me as he huddled in the corner, and I questioned why I couldn’t ever keep my mouth shut. It wasn’t all that awful having him pressed against me, but still, I did my best to drive him away. I knew he was too sympathetic of a person and that would be the only way to get him to respond, and it worked perfectly.

But that just led to me feeling guilty. It’s such an irritating feeling.

Before I could say or do anything more, I fell back into the darkness.

Abel haunts my sleep, but I’m too exhausted to pull out of it. When I wake, I feel worse, making me wonder if there are other shards or pellets or whatever they are still inside of me, pumping the toxins into me. Resting is obviously not doing anything, so we need to keep moving… if I can find the energy to do so.

As I stir, I realize I’m covered in dry clothes and am quite confused about how that happened. Mads, who is still on watch,is currently playing with a disassembled gun. Where the fuck did he get a gun?

“Why are you still naked but I have my clothesandsomeone else’s clothes on me?” I ask.

“You were shivering.”

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