Page 4 of Secret Origins
The hunters finally looked at each other, some unspoken conversation happening according to their emotionless faces, not that you could see much of it with the covering hiding everything but their eyes. I waited, not allowing myself to even twitch a muscle. The hunters might be brainless, but even they could pick up on a predator who was about to pounce. No, I needed them unaware if I wanted to get my ass out of this mess. The one on the left nodded mutely and they both stepped aside, allowing me to enter, even holding the door for me.
Aww, they were gentleman. How sweet.
I decided then and there I’d kill those two last.
My heels echoed, the clicking of the metal on the sterile white tiles bouncing off the equally sterile white walls as I was striding down the long hallway. I never understood the abominations’ obsession with white. As if having themselves surrounded by it would wash off the evil that was festering in their veins, which was the complete opposite of me and my love for black. It was better to mask my presence, better to hide so they didn’t see me until I slit their throat. I’d never thought too hard on what that said about me, and I had no intention of starting anytime soon either. When I heard the door close, I slowed my stride and glanced over my shoulder to see the two hunters stupidly left me on my own. My eyes darted up and followed the corners of the ceiling to search for cameras.
There were none.
I frowned, turning in a circle. If I didn’t decide at the last minute to check this place out I would’ve thought it was some sort of a ploy. They couldn’t have expected me here when I didn’t know myself that I’d be standing inside this building tonight. Taking it as a stroke of unexpected luck, I went lurking through every open door I could find. All of them were empty, and the silence through the building was unnerving.
Until the muffled cries reached my ears.
The noise was coming from beneath me, something I would’ve missed if I didn’t stop to examine the hunter’s uniform folded neatly on top of a metal hospital grade bed. I knew it was a very bad idea, but I still hurriedly swapped my clothing for the white uniform, rushing out of the room while tugging the face covering over my mouth and nose. At least I left my own garments neatly folded just behind the door. I loved those leather pants and would skin whoever laid a finger on them.
The search through the never-ending hallways led me to a door with an “employees only” sign that was different than all the rest. If the sign didn’t say “hello, come here because this was where we hid important shit,’ the metal it was made of would’ve. I leaned on it and pressed my ear to the cool surface, but it was impossible to hear anything. With an internal curse that should’ve melted my ears, I grabbed the handle and held it until it melted between my fingers—a neat trick I discovered I could do a while back when I escaped from the Academy.
“Every time there are ominous looking stairs leading down,” I told the empty space as I darted down the bottomless stairway.
The cries were getting louder the further I went, until I stopped in my tracks a few steps away from the bottom. Half a dozen hunters turned to face me as one, their soulless gazes locking on my left hand. I glanced down too, then groaned internally. Subconsciously I’d called out my sword. As long as my arm, the light metal blade was glinting happily at me, reflecting the harsh lights. Well shit!
The hunters all moved into their fighting stances, their attention on me.
My foot pivoted to spin me around and take me up the stairs. I knew I was faster than the abominations, and I could be out of there before any of them reached the door to the higher level. That was when something bright yellow caught my attention, dashing out from one of the open doors. My whole body froze when I saw a little girl, around five or six years of age, run straight at the hunters, her little fists pounding on the closest one’s thighs. Her blue eyes were too wide on her tear-smudged face, her wavy blonde hair sticking up in all directions, but the little human bared her teeth like she would tear them apart as she kept pounding on the object of her anger. Her bright yellow dress was covered in blood at the front, and it stuck to her little body.
Not your problem,I told myself as I stood frozen like a statue.You are here for information only.
The little human kept punching and kicking, but no one paid her attention. Until she opened her little mouth and bit the hunter for all she was worth with her blunt little teeth. I was in awe and quite impressed with her, at least until the abomination swung his arm, catching the little girl on the side of her face and sending her crashing into the wall. Her tiny body crumpled on the floor like a broken doll, but she managed to lift her head and those blue eyes, which were too old to be on that tiny face, locked on me.
“Help my mommy, please.”
Goosebumps burst all over my body. I was dressed just like the rest of the hunters and there was no way she could tell the difference. Even the sword couldn’t tell a child I wasn’t one of the creatures hurting her and her mother. But she kept those eyes on me unblinking, her stare extracting all the air from my lungs.
I couldn’t breathe.
The cries started again, so much louder they shredded my insides, yet I stood a few steps away from the bottom locked in the child’s stare.Not my problem,I tried to convince myself, my body vibrating from my effort to stay put.
“Help her … please.” She hiccuped and her eyes rolled to the back of her head as her little body slumped on the tiles.
“Ah, fuck if it’s not my problem now.” I snarled, tugging on the leather bracelet around my wrist to release the second biggest pain in my butt.
It felt like there was a tether connecting the bracelet to the center of my chest and I was tugging my soul loose from my body. It wasn’t painful per se, but uncomfortable enough to freak me out each and every time. Black smoke swirled next to me, pulsing and expanding while a thick metal chain formed around my wrist, curling at my feet with a tinkling sound. A black hound the size of a pony materialized to my left, his body vibrating with excitement when the red glowing eyes found the hunters. He hunched down, lowering his head and pinning his ears to the back of his skull, his sharp canines bared at the abominations.
“Have at it Fen.” The hound glared at the name I gave him just because he hated it, but he forgot all about it when the hunters moved. I grinned under the face covering, my hunger for violence coming to the surface.
“You fuckers will beg for a death that will never come.” With a laugh, I jumped down the few stairs separating me from the hunters and joined my hound.
3
Searing pain made my eyes water when the silver star sliced through my upper arm. When me and Fen jumped to join the hunters in the not-so-wide hallway, they spread out to give each other enough room to hurl those damn shuriken they loved so much at us. Short of decapitating me, they couldn’t actually kill me, but it was always enough to piss me off. Each hit they scored was like a papercut I didn’t know I had until I used hand sanitizer, then it was instant regret as it burned like a bitch for longer than it should.
“Protect the girl.” Huffing under my breath at the hound, I ducked under the swinging arm of the hunter to my right.
Blocking the dagger coming from my left with my sword, I spun around slicing a wide circle around me to keep all of them away. Fen’s snarl raised the hairs on the back of my neck, then he was sailing through the air over the hunters to land in front of the unconscious girl. The thick chain connecting him to my wrist smacked the closest hunter on the side of his head, making him stagger to the side. No one had ever accused me of not being an opportunist. Using the hunter’s dazed state, I skewered him with my sword like a shish kebab, twisting the blade just for the sake of it. The louder he screamed, the more energized I felt.
Another star flew so close to my head I flinched.
The woman cried out with such terror it broke something inside me.
