Page 5 of Hunted By Fae

The birds, the bats, the flies…

They are fleeing.

Before I can even ask myselffrom what, the table smacks into my skull.

The strike knocks me to the ground.

I fling a dazed look up at the table, at the middle-aged woman who just crashed into it.

The woman spares me no apology, no glance at all, before she’s barrelling around the side of the popup van—and heading for the bulk of the parked cars up on the dusty hill.

“Yeah, fuck you, too!” My shout is useless.

The wings of the birds and bats, it’s a flapping blanket cracking down on us all, and no shouts are getting through that noise.

I stagger to my feet and look over the sea of bobbing heads.

Tesni is kneeling on the hood now, arms waving above her head, eyes locked onto me, as though she already knew where I was before the sky darkened under the siege of birds, and she was just waiting for me to reemerge.

Her mouth moves with shouts.

With the distance between us, I don’t hear a word she’s shouting at me, but I see the shift of her arms, suddenly flapping in an urgent summons.

More people are gathered around the truck now.

A dozen, at least.

I waste no time before I’m shoving into the crowd.

Still, there are too many dancers at a standstill.

No music blasts from the band on the stage, no sun is scorching down on us. The clouds of the birds above, more and more of them just spilling into the sky, stealing the light, it has frozen too many people, hooked too much attention.

And now there’s a solid, motionless crowd in my way.

I use the moment of stagnancy to squeeze and shoulder around them.

Some shove me back, others lean aside or throw me a scathing look, there’s a murmured apology somewhere, until a man backs into me and his hard boot comes down on the toe of mine.

My cry is strangled.

He staggers around me, unaware of my crushed toes, the fucker, and he’s gone from sight in a blink.

Grumbling curses after the man, I duck under a woman’s extended hand, a pointed finger—and not a heartbeat after, a scream fractures my damn eardrums.

Tesni’s shout comes strangled, “Bee, run!”

Startled, I hesitate—and trace Tesni’s wild stare, the same direction as the stranger’s pointed finger, the reason for all that damned screaming.

I look all the way across the dirt field to the shrubs beyond the hills, where some Joshua trees are peppered through the shadowy landscape.

I hear it first. A rumbling, thudding sound rolling through the constant flapping of wings above.

I blink—and just like that, I see them, a hoard of animals running out of the horizon, charging towards us.

Wild sheep, coyotes, rabbits,fucking bobcats…

I suck in a sharp breath, then jolt into a sprint straight for the truck.