Page 24 of We Hunt the Night

“Why? Because your mother said that you can have her like she’s some prize horse? I hate to tell you this, but Juniper is nothing to be owned by anyone. She’s her own person, and you are nothing to her. She regularly avoids you.” Maz laughs. “She goes the opposite way any time she knows you’re near. Even your sister helps her to avoid you. Doesn’t that say everything? You must have been really fucking poor in bed because you’ve got a pretty face, but still, you didn’t manage to keep her. You’repathetic, witch. Truth is, if she was in my bed, she wouldn’t be leaving. She’d want to come back, not run away.”

Lock grits his teeth and I growl low. His eyes drift to mine and finally, fear flashes there. He takes a few steps back as he senses the magic in the air as I begin to shift. My dragon crashes out of me, my wings slamming through the walls and smashing them. Every part of my senses strengthens as my dragon takes over, flooding to the front of my mind. I have basic control, enough to tell him where to go, but not when he is angry like this. Scorching fire burns in his throat as they run from us down to the door of the balcony, his friends pushing in front of Lock to get away. My dragon roars with a blue fire that chases Lock until he gets to the door and barely manages to slide inside before the flames crash into it. The balcony is still on fire as I jump off it and into the sky, hearing Maz shifting and jumping off after me.

I fly high like I can almost touch the moon, my wings spread out wide, knowing that I might be able to fly anywhere. But while Juniper is in this academy, I won’t leave her.

Chapter 15

No one wants to hear their mother screaming, but it’s what wakes me from a pleasant dream. The real world isn’t a dream, and it is horrible. Why is my mama screaming? I climb out of bed, throwing the sheets back, running as fast as I can to my wooden door. It rattles with the bells I have on the back of it, an art piece I did with Kane. My feet sink into something warm and sticky, and I look down to see its blood. A puddle of my mother’s blood because her body is a few feet away, and she isn’t moving. I’ve never seen anyone dead before…but I know people die if they lose too much blood. Her belly is cut open, and I can’t stop looking. “Mama?”

Latin words fill the air, fire lacing across the ceiling in plumes that grow and grow. My father comes running down the corridor, slowing when he sees me, only to freeze, to dig his feet into the floorboards. He isn’t alone. A shadow follows him from their bedroom at the end of the hall. I’ve never seen my brave dad scared. Not even when a bee stung him in the forest outside. But he is scared now. My dad screams at me. “Juni! Get out of the house and run!”

Behind him is a person, but it doesn’t look like it’s alive anymore, but it is moving. Will my mama do that? No, she isn’tone of them. The color of its skin is pure white, like all the blood has been drained away—it doesn’t have any eyes, just nothing. Its nails are long, black clawlike things that slash through the air, trying to get to my father, but his magic holds it back. He is using a shield, a glittering gray one, but it’s cracking every time the thing hits it with its nails. I drop to my knees and crawl to my mama, picking her head up into my lap. She feels warm and not cold. “Mama.”

She never ignores me, but she does now. I want her to wake up. I want her not to be dead. Mama’s eyes are wide open but empty, like the light that made her perfect has just gone.

“Leave!” my father screams at me one more time before putting his back to me. I can’t move. The creature roars, slamming into him as it breaks through the shield, pushing him to the ground. But I can’t move. I can’t do anything. Not as I watch it claw into my father. Until I know my father’s dead too. Mindless. That’s their name, and it makes sense, because this thing has nothing in it, like mama and daddy now. Just emptiness. It stands up and walks towards me, dragging its claws across the floorboards.

I will be Mindless soon.

I will be gone but with them. I want to be with mama and daddy.

It was my birthday yesterday, my eighth birthday. Is eight a good age to die? I don’t think it is. We ate cake; we smiled and laughed. All the boys were over, and it was nice. It was the best day I’ve had in a while. Maz bought me a new watch.

I put my mama down and crawl back to the wall as it comes closer, sniffing the air because it cannot see.Goddess, I want to live. Please don’t kill me yet. I will end the war and stop these things if you let me live.I don’t want to see mama and daddy yet. The Mindless takes another step towards me as my blood pounds in my ears until the creature’s standing right in front ofmy face. It lowers its head, sniffing once more before it walks away from me and down the stairs. It smells like rot. More screams echo in the air from outside.

I look at my parents’ bodies, and I turn around to run back into my room, slamming the door behind me and going straight to the window. The window creaks as I pull it open to sneak out. I’ve snuck out a million times, but I’m sobbing this time and it’s so dark outside. I glance at the stars and the moon in the middle of them. How dare the sky be so pretty on such a horrible night? I keep crying as I shakily lower myself out the window, the sobbing making it really hard to breathe. Where’s the air gone? Why does my chest hurt? My mama and daddy are gone. Those creatures are filling the fields outside the houses, and I pray for a second that the boys have gotten away. The shifters must sense them better than witches?

Howdidthey find us?

I climb to the end of the small balcony and down the plastic pipe before my feet touch the cold grass. I run straight into the forest, turning around just once to see the house going up in flames from my father’s spell. I don’t know any spells to stop a fire, and I’m too young for them to work. My teddy bears are in there. The watch I got from Maz and the dress my mama made me for my birthday. Daddy got me a bike, which will burn too. All of it will be gone. My father’s shirt moves around me, and I almost trip a few times as I grab the bottom and keep running. I run and run into the trees until I don’t know where I am. But I don’t stop. I can’t stop. Because maybe if I run fast enough, I can run back in time itself and stop this from ever happening. Maybe, just maybe.

I get right to the end of the forest when I turn around and see that I was followed. Ten of those Mindless monsters are there. They’re all different shapes and sizes. Some are people in rotting clothes and smell bad. Others are animals that I can’tclearly see in the darkness. A tiger steps into the moonlight. Its eyes are missing and there is a hole in its side, showing his ribs that sparkle in the moonlight, which filters through the trees. I place my back against the tree as it circles me, then roars once to the trees, to the sky. The sound is horrible, like a person screaming for help. They take off, leaving me alone, and I run in the opposite direction through the forest. They didn’t kill me, but they should have. I keep running, hearing nothing but my heartbeat for a long time.

“Juniper!” Black shouts. I stop, turning to see a man a few feet away. He has thick dark hair, and he looks confused as he stares. “Stop running.”

“You’re not here…I don’t see anyone here.” I watch him back. “Who are you?”

“Yours,” he breathes out.

I wake up screaming and kicking, realizing tight arms are wrapped around me, whispering words of comfort as reality hits. It was a memory, and one of my bonded has me. I’m not a little girl trapped in the forest and running from the Mindless that killed my family. That night, I lost everything and everyone I knew. Or did I? I’ve never remembered the boys before. That wasn’t true, they were not there. No other kids survived that night, and I remember reading the newspapers about the death list of my clan. They were not there. Black was in my memory too and he has never been there before. “You’re okay.” Black? I open my eyes, seeing I’m still in the bathroom, on the floor, in my makeshift bed. Wait, I’m in his arms. “You’re here, you’re with me. Wherever that nightmare was, it’s gone. You’re with me and I’m not letting you go. You’re safe. You always have been when you’re with us.”

“They’re dead, they’re dead, they’re dead,” I whisper over and over until my throat feels raw and I manage to push down the mind-stealing fear I felt back then. The fear I still feel. I knowI’m going to battle Mindless one day, that the promise I made to the goddess that night to save me is something I intend to keep, but the Mindless will always scare me to my bones. Black holds me to him, his lips pressed against my forehead as he rocks me back and forth.

“I know. I was there. I could see you. I don’t know how you did that, how we did that, but we shared that nightmare. I managed to wake up enough to crawl to you in here, and then I went back to the dream. You saw me that time…” He shakes his head.

“Black.” My heart stops. “You’re touching me and I’m not dead.”

His eyes widen, like he hasn’t realized it at all. Like he came in here half-asleep to rescue me from my nightmare. Black looks down to where his hand is clamped around my waist. My black cami top has risen slightly, and I can see his fingers are touching my bare skin. We both stare in silence, and I hope he can’t see how my body is reacting to him—liking him. My head rests on his shoulder, my full cheek pressed against his skin there, and I swear his lips were just on my forehead to press a soothing kiss. He came for me, and I was not cursed.

“How?” he breathes out. “I’ve killed anyone I’ve touched because I was cursed as a baby. How are you immune?”

“What happened?” Maz walks in, rubbing his face, and he looks completely shocked when he sees us. Join the club, buddy. “How?” He repeats what Black said. What I’m thinking too. “It’s nearly morning, but I thought I heard you scream in here, and then I noticed Black was missing, too. Kane and Vale had to do things in the camp, so they aren’t here.”

“A bad dream, and Black was in my dream somehow,” I admit to him. There is no point keeping this a secret. I couldn’t explain it if I tried. “That was a memory, my worst one. You shouldn’t have been there.”

“What was that nightmare?” Black demands. “When?”

I look at them both. I almost don’t want to tell them because it hurts to think about that night, or the nights after it. “You know that people say that Mindless don’t go after children? I know this because they attacked my house. I walked out to see my mother already dead and my father fighting for his life. They were powerful witches, and their bonds were near, but all of them died anyway. I was told over a hundred Mindless attacked the houses we lived in and killed not only my parents, but the entire community. My aunt, my grandmother, and all of the people I knew are gone. I was the sole survivor.”

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