She could barely breathe. Her chest felt like it had a metal band around it, being drawn ever tighter. But the gun in her hand was steady.
Up on its side, the mattress formed a protective wall of springs and foam. She didn't dare lean to see past it, because then they might catch sight of her. Instead, pulse racing, she watched in the mirror as the first guy came through the door. He was layered in muscle, and he had the cold, flat look of someone who hunted often and well. His long hair was greased back from his face and he wore at least three heavy gold chains around his neck.
She didn't move, barely dared to breathe. She just watched him and waited. He took his time, pausing just inside the door to look around. He was followed by two others. Taller. Leaner. Younger. One of them hadn't been there earlier when she'd seen them downstairs. Which meant there were more than three.
Were they human? Or were they…like her?
She'd never been this close to those who hunted her. Except for that night that Kai had lured her to Coit Tower with roses and a note, she'd never come this close to being caught before. Her mother's warnings had sufficed to keep her on her toes and always ready to bolt.
Her earliest memories were of her mother holding her close and telling her terrible stories of the men who chased them.
"How will I know they're bad men, Mommy?"
"You will feel it here, in your heart, in your soul. When you see them, run. Think of nothing and no one else. Just run. Hide. Be safe."
Why hadn't she seen this coming and run when she first spotted them earlier?
Because everyone made mistakes. She could only hope this one didn't prove disastrous for her.
The music from downstairs amped up another notch. She felt the beat clear through to her bones.
The guy with the slicked-back hair shot a quick look at each of the other two, then he gestured toward the kitchen, and one of them headed in that direction. That meant he was out of her sight line. She didn't like that.
She eased forward, risking discovery, but widening the mirror's reflected view.
Extending two fingers toward the open bedroom door, the leader sent the third guy heading in her direction and she saw the glint of a knife in his hand. She didn't know why it surprised her. They were monsters, hunters who would do whatever it took to catch her. But while she could remember nets and batons and lariats from every previous near miss, she couldn't recall ever having seen them with knives or guns. Not even that night at Coit Tower.
The leader turned. His gaze met Amber's in the mirror, then flicked to her gun. For a millisecond, everything froze. Then he opened his mouth, and she knew he called out though the pounding music made his words indecipherable.
Fear writhed and twisted inside her, a beast on a short chain. She wasn't afraid of death. She was afraid of capture. Do anything to escape them. Anything. Her mother's warnings, uttered thousands of times over the years, coalesced into an icy ball in her gut.
Lunging for the door to the bedroom, the leader pulled a gun from the holster beneath his arm as he moved. The guy with the knife was a step ahead of him.
The weapons meant they were willing to kill her. Which meant that they could take what they wanted from her corpse. Or they knew that, for her, dead didn't mean dead.
Either way, she had no intention of offering an easy mark.
Amber surged to her feet and fired halfway through the exhale. A shot to the head. The first bullet went in just above the bridge of the younger guy's nose. The second took him high on the right cheek.
Time froze. Bile crawled up the back of her throat. She'd trained for years, but she'd never actually fired at a person before.
The hunter just stood there, staring at her. Then he dropped to the floor as though his bones had liquefied all at once.
Panting, she realized he had been the only thing standing between her and the leader's gun. Now there was nothing.
Not that she feared death. Having been through it three times already, she was a fair hand at it now. The first time, she had been run down by a wagon when she was five. She woke to find herself lying on a wooden table in a pool of blood. She'd opened her eyes and sat up and the women standing around her had screamed and crossed themselves. Her mother had burst in and bundled her up and they had run, leaving everything behind except the clothes on their backs.
That was the first time that Amber had understood that she was different and that the hunters her mother spoke of wanted her because of those differences. Her mother had sworn that if the hunters got her, what would follow would be more terrible than she could ever imagine. To this day, Amber had never doubted her, and it was the knowledge that they wanted something from her—some intangible, unnamed thing—that made panic curdle in her gut.