Page 3 of Darkness Rising
On silent steps, I journey into the heart of the fight that’s about to ensue.
I hate my job. I hate the Wild Hunt. But these dark and terrible moments are the only time I’m allowed around living, breathing people.
And I won’t waste it by sitting around and waiting for death to fall.
“Don’t touch them, Vi,” Nollix warns, his deep and mocking voice echoing up the tall buildings.
“She knows. She’s quiet, not an idiot.” I both love and loathe when Link stands up for me.
“If by quiet, you mean completely mute, then yeah, she’s a little quiet.” Nollix’s tone holds the annoyance he always seems to have for me. The first day we met, he tried to speak to me. It didn’t help our friendship. He tried and failed. It only took that one time to piss him off enough to never really try again.
Their banter slips away from my thoughts the closer and closer I come to the beautiful, daring man about to lose his life.
Carefully, I slip between the gang of five who are crowding around the victim. The man’s features are set in an assured look of self-confidence that has me edging nearer to him. I’m an unseen audience in what is sure to be his bloody death.
Right now, it’s just him and me, though. His eyes are a honey color, alive with adrenaline that I can practically feel kicking through my own veins. He’s tall, a foot taller than me, with no weapons to aid him. Tonight’s chase will end quickly, it seems. Quietly, I stalk around his lithe body, measuring him up.
If this were a different world, and I were a simple princess, who would he be in my life? A welder? My gaze sweeps over his tightly held fists. He doesn’t appear to have welder hands. His skin and clothes are clean, unblemished.
My fingertips ghost over the tension held in his shoulder blades.
“No touching, Violence,” Nollix warns once more.
I shoot him a look from beneath my lashes and he holds my gaze for so long my heartbeat begins to pound in my ears.
“Something’s here,” one of the attackers says in a terrified whisper.
Hmm. I oddly like when they can sense me. The Wild Hunt lives an invisible life between the living and dead. I am alive. My heart typically pounds a quiet and forgotten beat. But we do not live among the living. We may as well be dead. Some people, like this one—those more in tune with nature—they can sense me.
I turn to him, the one with the wide eyes, searching sightlessly about for the huntress right before him. Without lifting a finger, I release a breeze of wafting magic around him, caressing the hem of his dark shirt and lifting his hair in a heavy gust of wind.
“Did your mother never tell you not to play with your food?” Jeriko asks with a manic smile.
The three of them stand several yards away, watching and waiting and hoping and praying the night will bring them what they want. That it’ll end soon enough.
While I want it to go on forever.
I feel alive next to them. It’s probably because I know their soul will give me a burst of exhilaration once it’s consumed.
“Seriously, this shit’s giving me the creeps,” the nervous man says, taking a step back from the group.
“Then let’s get it over with. Teach Cameron here not to steal from the crown ever again.”
The crown?
I turn to the victim, Cameron. His eyes lower, and for an instant, I wonder what he took from my father.
But there isn’t time to dwell on those facts. Not when death will come quickly.
A burst of light fills my vision and I sidestep the assaulting magic with ease. Cameron isn’t so lucky. The attack hits him squarely in the abdomen. A brilliant, blazing fire of green drills into him.
He sinks low, his knees hitting the grimy stone hard.
Damn, that did end quickly.I lower myself, kneeling next to him, waiting for his life to leave his body.
I’m like a wide-eyed child, waiting to open a gift. Unfortunately, for Cameron, that gift is his fucking soul.
To my surprise, Cameron lifts his head to the men. A cruel smile pulls at the corner of his mouth.
