I adjusted my weight on my feet uneasily, certain if any dwellers roamed nearby, they could hear her. None of her companions hushed her. Indeed, they all seemed as senseless as she was.
“Why would I want to take yours?” Fowler’s voice was calm, but there was a thread of pain from the abuse he’d endured. “There are more than enough to hunt.”
“Liar! Kill him! Kill the nasty thief!” My heart pounded faster, harder. She meant it. “They’re our kills. We hunted them. We shall have them, not you.”
They ate the bats? One was never supposed to eat bat. Even before they became so monstrous in size, one did not eat bat. Even I knew that.
A beat of silence stretched before a man announced, “Kill him before he tries to steal our bats for himself.”
One person in the group was scratching incessantly at something. Listening, I determined it was the sound of his nails scoring flesh. I inhaled. The scent of blood and rotting meat turned my stomach. I wasn’t certain if the odor emanated from the bat corpses or the mad bat-eaters themselves.
“On your knees!”
There was a sound of struggle before the heavy thud of Fowler hitting dirt.
“Now stay down.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Fowler said, his voice still astonishingly calm.
I was shaking now, my breath coming in quick pants.
One of the others grunted. “Kill him, Cauly. Take the nasty thief’s head!”
I shifted anxiously, stopping myself short of lunging forward. I couldn’t take on the entire group by myself. There were seven of them at least.
The thought streaked across my mind that a pack of dwellers wouldn’t be so bad right now. The distraction could give Fowler a chance to break away. Even this crazed, motley group wouldn’t be so concerned with killing Fowler if they were fighting off dwellers.
The solution was that simple, I realized. Fowler had only one chance. And as his fate was tied up in mine, it was the only chance I had, too.
Opening my mouth, I did the one thing I had never done before. The one thing no one would ever dare do.
I filled my lungs to capacity—until they burned—and screamed.
SIXTEEN
Fowler
FEAR SLICKED THROUGH me as I stared at the filth-encrusted blade high above my head and tried to cling to some final thought that would give meaning to my life in these last moments.
Everything slowed to a crawl. The man wielding the battle-ax grinned down at me with a rotten-toothed grin. They’d made short work of confiscating my weapons and shoving me to my knees in the middle of the group. The two women snatched hold of the two bat carcasses and eyed me with wild stares, shielding their kill as though I still posed a threat and might steal them.
I didn’t want regrets in my final moments, but they slithered their way in nonetheless. Only it was not for Bethan or my father or the countless other failures littering my life. It was regret for Luna. For abandoning her.
At first I thought the scream splitting my skull was the half-naked giant’s battle-ax cleaving open my head and ending it all. But it was an actual scream, full-bodied and shrill. It stretched and kept going and going. Even when the cries of dwellers went up in response, it was still there, an endless echo that I felt in my bones.
Everyone froze for a moment before full-blown panic set in. I took advantage of the chaos and lunged, barreling into the man holding the battle-ax above my head.
He fell with a grunt, the ax flying. I jumped to my feet and grabbed it. That terrible scream ended, but the eerie cries of dwellers had taken its place. They were coming.
I went for the man who’d confiscated my weapons, grabbing my bow from his hand and wrestling the quiver from his shoulder. He started struggling once he realized what I was doing. I struck him in the face with the flat of the ax, cracking his nose open. Bone flashed and he went down, blood spurting.
Everyone else scattered, fleeing in panic—except the two women, who played tug-of-war with their precious bats.
Over the cacophony of dwellers’ cries, I crouched and retrieved my sword and knives from the man I felled. Tucking them into their sheaths, I stood and jogged into the undergrowth. I didn’t make it a few feet before a slight sound at my back had me whirling, bow ready and nocked. I very nearly released my arrow into Luna.
Cursing, I lowered my arm. “What are you doing here? I told you to stay put.” I didn’t give her time to answer. Grabbing her hand, I pulled her after me. Leaves rustled. The dragging steps of dwellers were all around us.
“You’re welcome,” she snapped.
I stopped for half a breath to look at her.
Her dark gaze fixed on me in that uncanny way of hers.
“That was you?” Snorting, I pushed on.
I pulled her through the woods, jerking to a stop occasionally, listening and dodging oncoming dwellers. She followed in her usual wraithlike silence, not even flinching when the first scream from one of the bat mad rang out over the air.