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“Your scent hasn’t changed.” The voice came out as if from the deep recesses of an empty barrel. The vibration from the bass ran through my body like a living thing.
Oh God, it talks!
Was it only my imagination that made him out to be a beast?But he ran on all fours.
He sniffed me again and my fear amped up. How did he know me? How does he know my scent? It was my first time on this side of the world.
“H-how do you know me? It isn’t possible,” I squeaked out. I tried to keep my hands to the ground beneath my chest, in case I needed to push up from the ground for a quick escape once an opportunity arose.
He let his weight down some more, further trapping me beneath him and against the grass and twigs. A whimper slipped out of my lips and I chastised myself. I couldn’t show this much fear in front of a predator. What if it gets excited?
“The little beasties thought they could hide you from me with their trickery.” The more he spoke, the more his voice seeped into my skin. “But they were wrong.”
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I admitted. I Just needed to get him off me enough for me to run. The scattering of leaves beneath me might make me slip, but I think I could make it.
He leaned into my ear and my eyes widened with his next words. “They thought they could keep away what was mine, but I’ve waited too long, come too far,Fenella.”
I gasped at his mention of my name.Who was this beast?I yelped when his hands grabbed me and forced my body onto my back with his arms still caging me in on either side, giving me a full view of the hunter that caught me.
Two segmented horns protruded out of his head extending to the middle. It swept upward in deadly grace to pointed ends. His skin was as white as bones left out in the sun to be bleached. Beneath a heavy brow sat two eyes clouded over as if he were blind, but his actions indicated that he wasn't. Not from the way he was scanning my face the same way I was scanning his. A large but straight nose sat in the middle of his face—a face that had skin distorted and thinned around the jaw to the opening of what would have been a normal human mouth. His fangs and rows of sharp teeth were anything but human. Braids sat atop his head, swinging down to his shoulders and onto mine.
We both stared at each other in a few moments of silence. The spinal cord of some sort of creature wound around his shoulders, traveling down his torso, disappearing out of my sight from where I laid.
Without a word, he stood up and grabbed me. I screamed but he growled and snapped his jaws in my direction, successfully shutting me up. I squealed in fear when he lifted me bridal style and forced me to wind my arm around his neck, right beside his doubled strapped bladed weapon around his back. The hilt of the swords were also made of what looked like human bones making me shiver.
I didn’t know if I should kick him and make him drop me or what. He walked us both back in the direction of the trail of blood and I audibly gulped.This was where he was going to eat me, wasn’t it?I stepped into his trap like willing prey, with my arms wrapped around him like Death’s lover.
The fairies appeared out of nowhere, flying around us, tittering and laughing.
My captor growled and snapped his jaws in the air once more. The glowing lights screamed and disappeared.
I wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“What are you?” I wanted to at least know who held my death in their hands.
Past the pile of bones on the ground, the mouth of a small cave appeared that wasn’t there before. My body stiffened, unsure if I was willing to die this easily. I loosened my arms to let him go and tried to get out of his grasp but he only held onto me tighter.
“Do not,” he warned.
“Let me go! I do not want to die! I have people waiting for me!” I was getting hysterical at this point. I didn’t grieve the loss of my family just for me to die in my mother’s homeland. I kicked and fought, but he only blocked my blows and grabbed onto my wrists as my feet hit the ground, stopping my struggles with his superior strength.
“The fae folk will not be kind to you out there. Haven’t they tricked you enough, Fenella? They thought to bring you to your death only to find that they brought me exactly what I was waiting for,” he snarled.
I shook my head, not understanding a thing he was talking about. “I don’t know you. How could you be waiting for me when I’ve only just made the decision to go overseas? You’re talking nonsense!”
“Nonsense? Nonsense!” He shook me in anger and it felt like my brain rattled in my skull with the echo of his voice bouncing around against the cave walls. “Nonsense is when humans teach their children to give away their bones to faeries that do nothing but barter them for their own selfish greed.”
What?I stepped back at this turn of events.
He took a step forward and closed the distance between us. “Nonsense is when I must destroy any fae that dares covet what rightfully belongs tome. One by one, I hunted…one by one I battled them all to get what was mine.”
My eyes widened.What exactly was he saying? Hunted? The same way he hunted me?
“One by one they learned to stay away. But the remaining few who dared to cross mewillbe the last.”
Was this a threat? A warning? Why was he telling me all this?
“I-I don’t understand.” Fear gave way to curiosity. Was he fae? I thought they were only legends. But here I was standing in front of a creature that even my nightmares couldn’t fathom or create on its own.
