Page 4 of Hunt Me (The Skulls #1)

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Ruaridh

W e are sprinting down the tunnel, shit splashing up my calves with every heavy booted step.

This is the life .

There is nothing better than the adrenaline rush. The feel of my blood pumping fast and my mind sharp. This feeling is what most of us chase, what the world has turned us into. However, I’d prefer to have done it without running through sewage water.

The soft fist held in my own feels out of place like daffodils stuck in amongst a thorn bush.

Thorns that will never let it go.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ My little deer asks. Her voice is like silk slipping from her lips.

‘What does it look like?’ I glimpse a look at her. Her face is soft and round, with big hazel eyes and full lips. Despite the noticeable dark bags beneath her eyes and the rather sore looking cracks on her lips she has a beauty like a siren — clearly what sucked me in earlier like a love sick bam.

I laugh again as she tries to pull her fist free.

‘Now, now mischief I caught you fair and square.’ I tut as we continue to run through the sewers.

‘You did not!’ She shouts back.

I grin remembering that same tone on her lips when she was calling me a little bitch.

‘Your eyes look psychopathic when you do whatever it is you’re doing under there.’ She nods to my masked face, not an ounce of fear in her tone.

Ahead of us are figures running our way.

The fist in my hand pulls away and I allow it to, replacing the soft touch with the cold metal handle of each of my axes. My grip tightens when my fingers grasp them, pulling them from where they are secured at my back.

I push my little deer behind me. She huffs but doesn’t try to move in front.

There are three of them charging through the water right towards us. Their bellows echoing around the tunnels.

I look around, seeing mostly slime-covered walls. But something catches my eye a few feet ahead, where the wall darkens to the left.

‘Come on.’ I nod my head towards the shadowed wall.

We run towards it. Towards the foul beings ahead of us with their metal pipes and rods raised as they charge.

‘They are pretty close,’ she says. What sounds like fear slipping into her tone, but her pace by my side does not slow.

We approach the shadowed wall and the small alcove that branches off from this tunnel. The others are seconds away so I do the only thing I can to keep her safe. I shift my weight onto my right leg, lifting a shit stained boot and I kick out so that it connects with my little mischief’s back.

She goes flying into the tunnel away from the chaos as I roar my challenge at these worthless rats, hoping she’s not one to hold a grudge.

Within seconds my axe is blocking a strike, causing their pipe to clatter to the floor behind them. Next is what little brain he possesses as I chop through his thick skull with my second swing.

A female gasp sounds as a feral looking person comes into view behind the now slumping dead body and I use my right boot to kick his body into her quickly.

She screams, hurling herself at me just as the third member of the group slams his rod into my back. A faint ringing of pain slices in its place and their rancid breath chokes my airways, as it seeps through my mask. The woman slaps at me, her pipe long forgotten on the ground.

I twist out of both of their reach, crisscrossing my axes and swinging them to cut into both of their stomachs.

They let out a collective ‘omph’ as my blades make impact.

I step over the third figure, not worth a second glance as his wide-eyed look is frozen in death, making my way to the woman who is hunched over desperately holding her stomach together. But before I can move to provide a fatal blow, a piercing scream reaches my ears.

A scream that came from the tunnel I kicked my little deer through.

Fury blinds me and a new round of adrenaline burns through my veins as I tighten my grip on my axes and turn to run after the scream.