Page 84 of Hunt the Dusk
The cold one raised its wolven head, reptilian tail whipping back and forth behind it, a sign that it was in hunt mode. Somewhere above it, children screamed and cried. I had no idea how many more of these fuckers were in here, but I had to get past this sentry to find out.
I let out a bloodcurdling bellow and ran up the stairs at it. It pounced, and I grabbed the far banister and swung my body over its head and onto its back, where I buried my sword in the space between the base of its skull and the top of its spine.
We called it the kill spot.
He dropped like a stone, and I launched myself off him, doing a neat back flip to land on the hallway above.
Ezekiel stared at the dead cold one, his eyes bright and threaded with crimson, then up at me, and there was hunger in that gaze, hunger and awe, that my body reacted to with a surge of heat.
“Help!” children screamed.
Fuck. I ran down the corridor toward the chaos, skidding through a door into a dorm room lined with beds and filled with terrified children and the hulking frames of three huge cold ones. And in the center of it all were the triplets waving wooden bats at the cold ones to keep them at bay.
The beasts snapped but kept rearing back as if afraid of the bats. What the?—
I rushed to join them, sword swinging to take out the nearest sentinel.
“Orina!” the triplets cried in unison.
“Go! Get out.”
“We can help!” Aaron said, waving his bat at a beast. It shrank back. I rushed it and stabbed it in the throat.
The third one retreated through another door into the next room.
“Ezekiel, get the kids out of here!”
“We’re not leaving you,” Ava said, her face scrunched up in determination.
I gripped her shoulders. “This is my job, okay? If you want to help me, then go with Ezekiel and help him get the others to safety.” They hesitated. “Go!” I shoved them toward Ezekiel, who was herding children out of the room.
“There are more,” Ava said. “In the other room. Be careful.”
“How many?” Ezekiel asked.
“I don’t know.”
“All right,” Ezekiel said. “We’ll get the children out, then come back to finish them off.”
And let the others get away? “Is there another exit out of that room?
“No,” Aaron said. “The corridor leads to the last dorm on this floor.”
“Then I need to stay here to make sure they don’t escape.”
Ezekiel looked like he wanted to argue.
“I want my mummy,” a little girl who couldn’t have been more than six sobbed.
“Fuck!” Ezekiel scooped her up. “Come on. All of you, this way.” He paused at the door to look back. “Wait for me. Donotgo farther alone.”
“Okay.”
He vanished with the children, and I stood by the door to the next room, sword at the ready to block anything that came through. How long had it been since the Raven? Would I be able to clear the threat alone? With no clue how many were in the room beyond, I?—
“Help!” a child screamed. “Help me! No!”
There was a kid trapped in there!
