Page 80 of Hunt Me

‘Do not make me ask again.’

‘You thought she wouldn’t want revenge, did you?’He tuts like a madman.‘You took her love,’wheezing he shifts position,‘The devil took a few out of us, so we take a few of them. It’s only fairSkull.’

‘What’s he on about?’Luna whispers next to me.

Realisation dawns on me what he is saying, and I feel my body go cold with fear. I feel the change come over me all at once, the way my body stiffens as if it is becoming unbreakable, how I unsheathe my other axe so that I hold one on either side of me now.

‘How did you find us?’

His wheezing turns to short cackles,‘She never lost her.’

I bring my axe down on his neck, cutting straight through it, and turn, sprinting for the corridor.

Chapter Thirty-one

??

Fauna

It’s too dark to see, or maybe my eyes aren’t open.

My head pounds, pain so blinding I can’t focus.

I try my hardest to think of something, anything, but nothing comes up. It is like my brain is mush, and all its focus is on trying not to be drawn back into the complete darkness, where I don’t even see my thoughts.

I’m not strong enough.

No matter how hard I try to stay awake, I feel myself drifting off.

The darkness swallows me.

??

I’m being dragged; I can feel it on my back. How rough the ground is beneath me.

It burns.

I can see some things now. Different shades of grey are shining against the sky. I see the stars above watching and laughing at me, at how entertaining my life must be to them.

I close my eyes, not able to look at them anymore.

??

The smell is back, one I wish I didn’t recognise. I could never forget the stench of rotten flesh.

Stale water and dead carcasses.

It’s hard to believe that a place can smell so bad.

In the first few years of the outbreak, cities smelt similar to this; all the dead bodies rotting away in the thousands created a smog of death. But even those did not smell this bad, not from what I can remember anyway.

I know I’m in the sewers, the familiar damp concrete floor. The same as the one Ruaridh’s big ass boot kicked me down.

I chuckle as the memory rises in me, but I am assaulted by a searing pain at the front of my head.

I groan in pain.

‘Bitch is awake, Mag.’