Page 57 of Hunted By Fae

Not all of them look at us, tucked between the cars, as they pass by. Most don’t glance at all. And the ones that do just spare us the quickest, most disinterested look before turning their cheeks to us and marching onwards.

My flesh prickles all over.

How quiet they are, trooping in some sort of formation, sheathed in leather uniforms, boots silent on the road.

I wouldn’t have known they were there at all if it wasn’t for Ramona.

I understand her reaction.

I don’t blubber, I don’t groan the same words over and over. And unlike Emily, I don’t hide in the backseat of an abandoned car.

But I am frozen.

And I can only stare at this sea of leather; black, inky leather, wrapped like a second skin around rippling, slinking muscles.

Some leathers cover their bodies from the neck down, and it appears as though their forms are sculpted from black marble. Others wear vests and chain-link armours so thin, so fine, that I wonder, fleetingly, if they have been woven from spider-silk.

That thought is thrown from my mind when one of the warriors lets his stare linger—before he bares his teeth at me.

The grunt of a fright catches in my throat. Not even enough strength in me to scream.

I should scream. Run.

I know now, in this very moment, what it means to be frozen in fear.

I’m a runner.

I’m a fighter.

I’m a shit-talker.

But not in the face of these… these…others.

My legs buckle. I topple from my crouch, and the ground rushes up to meet me.

I hit the pavement.

The rattle of my bike comes before the handle is digging into my back.

A guttural cry is lured from my trembling lips.

But these others—they don’t attack us.

I expect them to.

I expect a swift death, or a brutal one.

I see it in them. Bloodlust.

Predators. Hunters.

Killers.

It’s etched all over them as they march down the road, their boots silent on the asphalt. So impossibly silent: the shifting of their swords and scabbards; the movement of their leathers coiled tight around slinking muscles.

Some glances drift over us, some linger, others hook. Running us over with inhuman stares, with eyes that are inky black or sheet white; with eyes stroked down the centre with black lines; with eyes of different colours; with eyes of different textures, some normal like mine, then others that look like coarse canvases under the assault of my torchlight.

Inhuman.