Page 20 of Primal Hunger
A terrible roar tears through the air, echoing from somewhere in the distance and threatening to split me in half. I choke on air as my heart stutters, and I swivel my head to look behind me, although there’s nothing for me to see yet.
Fuck.
It seems the Grim has realized I’m gone, and now I have very limited time to hide. Surely he’ll be on my tail, hunting me down once again, but I doubt he’ll be so kind this go-around.
This time, he’ll be out for my blood.
He’s not going to let me off easily this time unless I somehow manage to get through the portal. A prayer echoes in the back of my mind that the portal is still open and will only close once I make it back through, sealing me on one side and the Grim on the other.
I run harder, screaming internally for my feet to move faster, reminding myself why I have to keep going every step of the way.
I have to get home and tell the world what I’ve found.
No one is going to believe me, but I’ll make them—somehow. I’ll make them all see the Grim for what he truly is, and maybe we can figure out a way to stop him from taking anyone ever again.
If I can save my own life, I’ll be saving countless others in the process, and for that reason alone, I have to fight past the pain and keep going.
But none of those things will happen if I fail now.
The trees eventually open into a small clearing of grass, almost perfectly circular in the middle of the woods. The shape is peculiar enough to catch my attention since I haven’t seen anything but gnarly tree trunks since I left the Grim’s house—hovel? Dwelling?—but I hardly slow down, my gaze laser-focused several yards ahead where the trees continue.
I glance up briefly at the sky overhead, noting that it’s lighter than I initially thought, a dark, murky gray flecked with emerald green. Does the brighter color mean the sun will rise soon? Or that the tree limbs blocked out most of the color before?
An alien world, a giant monster…it’s almost too fantastical to believe.
The green pinpricks could be stars, or they could be something else, but I can’t stop to analyze them. I keep running, bounding across the clearing. The ground is softer here, almost damp. The closer I get to the middle, the more noticeable the difference is, and my feet begin to sink into the vegetation.
A scream burns in my chest, but I don’t have the air to spare to birth it.
Every step becomes slower, my feet disappearing further into the ground, and my heart leaps into my throat. Oh god, no. Isthis quicksand? Did I really just free myself from one prison to be bound and restrained in a much worse fashion?
The terror is brighter this time and churns my stomach in a sickening wave.
I fight against the pull, using my hands to lift my thighs and drag my shoes out of the muck as I continue. I refuse to be taken out by grass. What a disappointing way to die. The thought is clinical and detached in the face of the surging adrenaline.
I’m ankle deep and almost across the clearing when another roar, this time much closer, cuts straight through me like a knife.
What would be a better death? Drowning in quicksand or being torn limb from limb by the Grim?
“Shit, shit, shit,” I whisper between haggard breaths, pulling harder at my feet to free them from the sinking ground.
When I reach the other side of the clearing, the ground grabs onto one of my ankles hard and I fall forward, slamming my face to the ground. I expect the ground to start swallowing me whole, but my torso seems to have landed on solid dirt. No sinking or dragging.
After a few seconds of exhausted fighting, unable to move without wincing from the pain, I’m able to free myself, and I scramble to my feet again. I curse over the precious seconds I’ve lost, knowing the fate that’s inevitably coming for me, and then I run.Hard.
The Grim’s going to find me.
He’s going to catch me again if I don’t do something quickly, pull an ace out of a sleeve or a rabbit out of a hat to save myself.
Would it be enough for me to hide in a tree? To scale to the top and refuse to come out until daytime? His sense of smell seems too keen for me to evade detection that way.
Is there even such a thing as daytime here? Or is this realm perpetually drenched in darkness?
When I stared through the portal it was dark like this, but that doesn’t mean anything. It could still be nighttime. There’s a chance I was only out for a couple of hours.
Or maybe there is no such thing as a sun in this realm?
My stomach shifts again, the realization that I’m in completely uncharted territory finally sinking in.
