Page 55 of Hunted By Fae
I swerve my glare to Ramona just as she drops her balanced bike by the handles—and it clatters,so fucking loud, to the ground.
My muscles jolt under my skin.
I cringe against the rattle, a hiss between my clenched teeth.
“Holy fuck!” Ramona’s grunted words come with a sudden stagger.
The heels of her boots catch on the tumbled bike, and she topples backwards.
She’s fast out of sight.
Her torchlight has vanished. Broken in her fall, a dead battery, or she switched it off, I don’t know.
I can’t see shit, not without turning my own light in her direction.
I inch around to find Emily, her light, but her torchlight has disappeared behind the pulse of red, and I can only guess she’s flattened her hand over it.
Cold dread spills through my insides.
Rapid, raspy moans come from the darkness.
“What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck…” Ramona’s words get gravellier as they go on.
Beneath it, there’s the bass of a moan—that I guess is coming from Emily.
Everything in me, every scrap of instinct, is urging me to dump everything and hide, to roll under the van and shield myself. But I can’t do that.
I force myself to turn my shotgun, and with the torchlight, illuminate the fresh pocket of darkness at the sidewalk.
Ramona is right where I last saw her fall.
Sprawled there, on her toppled bike, she hugs her weapon to her chest, mouthing the same words over and over. Her dark complexion has washed out into something ashy.
Terror.
That’s what I read on her.
Sheer, raw terror.
It startles me, and that pause darkens into something ugly, coiling in my belly, when I spot Emily.
She’s tucked into backseat of the car, eyes so wide they might just pop out of her head, and her is hand firmly pressed against the glare of her flashlight.
The door is ripped off, gone, and the interior left exposed to this new, dead world of ours. The seats will be soaked and mouldy.
But that hasn’t stopped Emily from hiding in there.
And she is hiding.
But from what…?
ELEVEN
TESNI
A cold dread is dripping through me.
Beside me, Bee gives a sudden sharp breath, and I hear the faint flex of her grip on her rifle.
