91

At least a dozen Dwellers crawl from the shadowy depths of the cavern, sniffing the air with gurgling hisses and clicking sound, no doubt picking up the scent of blood. Jacques covers the area on his neck Dove had bitten in anxious realization. It had already healed, but his blood stains his skin in the shape of her lips, which is enough to attract the wretched creatures.

“Get the princess out of here,” Dresdan orders, his eyes zoned in on the danger before them. Shadows swirl around his feet, morphing into tendrils, each ending in a razor-sharp tip.

Jacques needn’t be told twice. With only Dove’s safety on his mind, he seizes her by the waist and spin them around to flee…only to find four more Dwellers blocking the exit. His heart drops when they advance towards them, their blacked-out eyes locked on the princess.

“Get back, get back!” He tells her, using force to usher her off him just as the first Dweller launches itself through the air.

Jacques’ arms shoot up just in time to catch it, one hand enclosing around the creature’s throat and the other bracing against its chest, holding it at bay. But Dwellers are strong, possessing three times the strength of an average vampire, and the healer is yet again reminded of that when it fights back.

It shoves him back, claws and fangs snapping and missing him by inches. Behind it, the other three seize their chance to surge forward, targeting Dove with her mortal blood.

A rush of adrenaline courses through the healer when he sees her being backed up against the wall. Something dark and primal takes hold of him, clouding his mind with only one instinct: to protect the princess with any means necessary.

Jacques becomes a dark force when he rips the Dweller off him and snapping its neck, rendering it paralyzed on the floor. Knowing it’ll heal in minutes; he plunges his hand through its chest and tears out its heart and crushes it in his fist.

He doesn’t linger but immediately crosses the distance to the three creatures advancing towards Dove. The way he attacked them, the way he ripped through them as though they were made of paper, left no room for debate that he ever was healer. His hands were doing the opposite, breaking though the creatures’ bodies, ripping out their hearts and spines, and slaughtering them with blind malice.

All for the sake of protecting Dove.

“Jacques, look out!” Her voice breaks through the ringing of his ears, urging him to spin around to see at least half a dozen more to pour into the cave.

That’s how he knew the sun had set, and the longer they remained here, the more of the wretched things will come.

Dove gasps in panic when they crowd them, cornering both her and Jacques against the wall. He had just taken four of them down by himself, but now they doubled in numbers, threatening to slip past the healer’s defences. He needed help, and seeing as Dresdan had his hands full with a dozen of them, she was it.

Reaching out, she grabs the healer’s shoulder, and, in a blink, they turn invisible. With only their scents giving them away, it at least gave them three seconds to wedge themselves out of the corner where they were outnumbered.

The moment she breaks contact with him, his form fades into view. They have but three seconds before the Dwellers turn around and attack, and Jacques seizes that to usher her towards the exit. “Dove, run. Don’t stop until you’ve reached the town. *Go*!”

She wants to argue that she won’t leave him, but their time was up. The Dwellers had turned around and resumed their attack, two of them lunging for Jacques simultaneously.

“*GO*!” He repeats, digging his feet in the ground to hold them off.

Accepting that she has no choice, Dove stifles a cry and backs up to the exit, willing her body to disappear as she finally turns around to run.

Tears pricking at her eyes and heart bleeding to go back, she bolts through the trees, following the path along the mountain which they took earlier. Snow crunches violently underneath her feet, the cold burning through her boots and clothes and numbing her limbs.

‘Don’t stop,’ she chants in her head. ‘Don’t stop until you’ve reached the town.’

Stumbling over snow-covered debris, Dove catches herself on the bark of a tree, using it as traction to push herself forward – only to scrape her palm against the splintered trunk. The pain, at that moment, wasn’t something to wince over. The scraps of blood, however…

The hair rising at the back of her neck is the first sign that something is wrong. Call it an instinct, but Dove dares a glance over her shoulder, searching the darkening forest for the source of that hunch. However, the moment she forgets to focus on the path ahead, her foot catches again, this time, plunging her into the snow.

She falls on all fours, hissing at the icy snow underneath her palms. Dove scrambles to get up, knowing for a fact something is behind her. But she keeps stepping on her skirts, panic rising in her chest the longer she struggles to stand.

“*Damn this dress*!” She seethes through her teeth, tears burning her eyes the longer she lies in the snow.

Then a gurgle sounds behind her, causing her to freeze with her skirt in hand.

Every muscle in her body had gone numb at the noise, a shiver dripping down her spine and rendering her paralyzed with fear. Heart spiking in cold dread, she turns slowly, afraid that any sudden moves would prompt it to attack.

Dove’s breath shudders when she looks up into the void eyes of a Dweller, its face so close to hers, she can smell the rot on its breath. It looks even more horrific up close with its grey skin, and mouth leaking a black, inky liquid that drips to the pure white ground.

It stares right at her with its inky eyes, and she realizes with a start that she had dropped the invisibility when she fell. That’s how it found her…

And as soon as that fact dawns on her, plunging her body into an icy pool of dread, the Dweller surges forward and buries its claws in her flesh, and sinks its rows of canines into her neck.

Her screams tear through the forest and carry off with the breeze.