Page 31 of Surviving Hallow Hill
They’re a mess together.
Mymess.
“What if there are labs under the Hallow? We’ve searched everywhere. We haven’t searched under...” Styx’s deep tone is so quiet, I barely hear him. He won’t repeat it again. He won’t risk the thought being overheard by whatever creatures might be spying on us.
I’m blinking at what he just said. My heart slams so hard it’s all I can hear. Images of those corpses, metal and jagged hands crawling over us as we crawl lower and lower and lower, is all I can see. The scratch of their nails dragging against our dirty flesh, the feel of their burned bodies brushing over mine, the stench of their death clinging to my lungs.
It’s too much.
And yet... I know he’s right.
“They aren’t really zombies. Not in the traditional sense. They wouldn’t have survived being buried in the ground. They had to come from somewhere.” Styx starts moving, and I can see his mind whirling as he begins to piece everything together.
He grabs his makeshift pen and begins scratching at the ground, drawing a layout of the Hallow, of this place we’re trapped in.
“I’ve been giving the layout to this place a thought. It’s like an arena. I think there’s a magical barrier around us. No one can get in or out except those things, but where would they come from?” He scratches a giant X against the Hallow where those creatures emerged from when we woke up here. “What if there are tunnels that lead to the outside? I doubt they’d drop the shields of this place to let them in and out. It would give us a window to escape. They’re coming from underground, and coming from the one place we don’t want to go because it’s heavily protected. I’m sure of it.” He looks up hopefully at me. “That’s where we have to go. That’s where freedom is.”
A heavy beat of silence passes, like they’re all waiting for my answer.
“We don’t have to go just yet, if you don’t want to,chère,” Rueren whispers just to me. It’s that cautious tone that reminds me maybe I haven’t been as careful hiding my pain as I’d hoped. Like they can all see how close to breaking I am on the inside, and I don’t even have a fucking explanation for the thing crawling beneath my skin.
“Why would we wait? It’s a way out.” Amrose blinks innocently at the two of us, and she’s right.
She just doesn’t seem to understand anxiety. Which was something I never gave much thought to before this hell-hole. Every-single-fucking-thing in the Hallow is like waiting to die.
Living.
Eating.
Simply sleeping is a chance with Lady Death.
And it’s clawing at my nerves little by little.
But I can’t give that anxious feeling time to grow. There are more important things at play and a promise I made to my Lady. Even if I didn’t say the words, even if she didn’t finish her sentence. There’s something I have to do. A soul I still have to reap.
My fingers skim across the handle of my sword, and it hums like it can taste the blood of Dr. Hyde already. The runes along the blade glow, and I remember the edge of the Scythe of legends.
There’s a reason our blades glow the same.
This just might be it.
“She’s right. We should go tonight,” I tell them.
Amrose’s elegant face lights up, even more beautiful than usual, as she smiles wide and alluring. All three men pass a wary look my way. Even Kira looks at me but stays uncharacteristically silent. None of them question it, though.
Even if I wish they would.
* * *
The moonlight is muted the farther from the golden wall you get. And where we’re at, it’s just encapsulated darkness that surrounds us.
Amrose, Kira, Styx, and Rue walk the uneven terrain without problem. Even though Rue carries a bloody bag over his shoulder filled with a half-alive thing and all of our tracking devices, it doesn’t weigh him down at all.
I don’t know exactly what the pretty skinwalker’s powers are, but I can just tell she’s creepy as fuck in whatever natural skin she chooses to shed. And apparently just like Styx and Rue, she’s an animal of the night.
Meanwhile, Sia and myself stumble here and there and try our best to follow the footsteps of the three of them just a few paces ahead of us. Seriously, it’s like we’re not deadly assassins but clumsy toddlers, unseeing of the building blocks littering the floor.
“It’s just a mile farther,” Rue tells us.
