Page 3 of Tharn's Hunt
I don’t look back. Can’t. My lungs burn, my legs scream, but I push harder, ignoring the dizziness threatening to consume my vision.
Ahead looms a darker mass against the night sky—a small rock formation. Higher ground. A chance.
I scramble toward it, tripping, falling, and scrambling to my feet again. Behind me, the clicking gets louder, closer. A hungry crescendo.
When my hands finally connect with solid stone, the impact almost sends me backward. I grip it like a lifeline, swallowing down nausea as I haul myself up.
“Come on. Come on!”
Pain explodes in my calf. Something sharp rakes across my leg, tearing into skin. I scream, nearly losing my grip.
No.
My leg is on fire, hot blood quickly soaking into my boot. But I can’t stop. If I stop, I’m dead.
I climb blindly, hands scrambling for purchase on the jagged stone. Below, the creatures circle like sharks, their glowing eyes and clicking sounds sending chills down my spine.
I press myself against the rock face, willing my heart to quiet, praying they can’t climb.
Universe: Bitch, do I look like I give out favors?
Claws scrape against stone as the first one begins its ascent.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” I sob, scrambling higher.
The creature gains on me, its breathing a wet, hungry rasp. I scramble higher, blindly reaching out when my hand closes around a rock, loose in its position in the striated stone. Without thinking, I wrench it free and hurl it down.
A satisfying thunk followed by an outraged shriek tells me I’ve hit my mark. The creature tumbles back to the ground, buying me precious seconds.
That’s when my hand finally slaps against a wide, flat surface. A ledge.I haul my screaming body onto it, pressing my back against the cliff face, chest heaving. Pain sears up my leg as I kick out at another ascending creature, sending a shower of pebbles down. It retreats, but I know it’s only temporary.
“Back off, youfuckers,” I growl, searching along the ledge for another loose rock. “I’m 90% gristle, anyway.”
Fuck.
Dawn feels like a century away.
I spend the night in a hellish game of King of the Mountain, keeping the creatures at bay with some choice words and desperate kicks. By the time the first hint of light touches the horizon, my arms are leaden, my throat raw, and my leg a throbbing mess of pain.
But I’m alive. Somehow.
Then, something strange happens.
The sand below shifts. Not from the creatures, but a deeper vibration, a swell beneath the surface as if something massive is stirring. As one, the shadow creatures scatter, melting back into the darkness as if fleeing something far worse than them.
I don’t wait to find out what. When the sun is high enough to see, I look down. My leg is a bloody, throbbing disaster. And as Iturn my head, my heart sinks. I'm completely disoriented. I have no idea which way Justine's arrow was pointing. I am utterly and completely lost.
The thought doesn’t feel dramatic anymore. It feels like a fact.
I’m going to die out here.
And Justine…Poor Justine…
I wipe my eyes, but the tears keep coming down. Numb, I push myself up and start walking. When I lift my water sachet to my lips and just a single drop falls on my tongue, despair almost consumes me whole.
The cave appears like a cruel joke at first. Just a dark smudge halfway up a crumbling rock face. I stare at it for a long moment. Can I even reach?
But hope is a hell of a drug.
