Page 93 of Hunted By Fae

Darkness has its home in this hallway. No electricity to power the fluorescent white lights that should be blinding me from above. Instead, all I have is the band of three nightlights wound around my wrist.

I flick them on with trembling fingers, boots swift over the concrete floor, then rush for the main stairwell.

But I falter at the door.

Hand hovering over the cold, metal handle, a sudden stillness ripples through me and my breath pins to my throat.

I’ll be heading right into the very stairwell I climbed to the top floor.

The dark fae will take this very stairwell, and follow the traces of my scent all the way to me, here, now.

Slowly, I turn my chin to the side and eye up the second door down the corridor. Beyond it are the stairs Ididn’tclimb to reach this high in the apartment tower; the onenotlaced with my scent.

That’s all I need to realise before I’m racing for the emergency door.

My gloved hands smack down on the push-bar, and I throw my entire weight into it. My shoulder smacks, hard, against the door before it groans open—then snags.

I shove into the door again.

Doesn’t budge.

Doesn’t open any further than a foot or so, and I’m left staring at the darkness beyond the narrow gap.

Before the blackout, there’s no way I would have fit through this gap. But hunger and a never-ending trek has narrowed my hips and eaten through the shape of my body.

I turn to the side, then reach my boot into the dark. I slide through the tight wedge—but snag at the meat of my backside. “Fucking fuck shit.”

My murmur is a huffed breath through grated teeth as I grab onto the edge of the door, lean my weight into the stairwell, thenpullllllmyself out—until I stumble out of the gap.

My staggered bootsteps catch on something.

I look down, and see in the faint rinse of nightlights what was blocking the door.

Bodies.

Three of them, stacked, but not intentionally.

Looks like they were running, fleeing, and were shot down.

Their limbs are tangled, or what’s left of them. Dead for a while.

I step over them.

With the glow of the nightlights strapped to my wrist, the darkness in the stairwell flitters all around me. I’m in a bulb of dusky red light that stretches out about one and a half metres ahead of me.

I aim my arm out in front of me, my other hand touching down on the railing, and I descend the stairs.

Each step has my stomach in a flurry. It’ll be all too easy to miss the next one and go tumbling down to the landing. That kind of fall on these concrete steps means a broken arm, a sprained ankle, a snapped neck, a cracked skull. It means being maimed enough that the dark ones will catch up to me if I’m unlucky enough to survive the fall.

But what else can I do, take my time?

If this dark fae catches me…

A shudder runs up my spine at the thought.

Those sickly sensations lash in my stomach like vipers striking at their prey.

I am the prey.