An immortal?
I quickened my steps, hand gripping my dagger as I drew closer, prepared for him to turn and strike. He grabbed trash cans as he ran, yanking them down to bar my path, and I leaped over them. Each obstacle slowed my advance, and I growled in frustration each time I managed to clear the debris. I rounded a corner and slid to a stop at the darkness that welcomed me, eyes scanning the hollow expanse before me.
Each step sent my heart into a frenzy, anticipation winding my organs tighter and tighter with the possibility of an attack from a nearby corner. The dark street opened to numerous paths, creating a number ofchances for him to take me by surprise. My grip on my dagger tightened as I cautiously stepped forward, searching.
His laughter echoed through the streets, somehow never from one location, and I whipped around to the street at my back before pacing in a circle, searching.
“Pretty light on your feet,” he said, his voice rough. “You think you can catch me, though?”
I continued forward, listening for even the slightest sound. “Show yourself.
“Where’s the fun in that?” he crooned. “The chase is the best part, but you’ve gotta be faster than that to catch me.”
Boots echoed off the lid of a metal trashcan, and I leaped into a run toward it, catching a glimpse of him disappearing onto a rooftop. I followed, launching myself onto the trashcan before climbing. I grunted as I pushed myself to my feet, the asphalt of the shingles scraping into the tips of my fingers, and I scanned the expanse of rooftops until I found him, leaping from roof to roof in a chaotic pattern toward downtown Johnstown.
I gulped air and took off after him, leaping from roof to roof, my boots slamming into the brick and asphalt, stumbling when my feet met soft spots that threatened to collapse beneath my weight.
“Too slow!” He dropped off the roof before me, back into the alleys.
I made it to the edge and dropped to the darkened street below, gaze sweeping back and forth before I found him sailing toward the light of downtown. With a muttered curse, I followed, the distance between us growing wider.
He burst from the mouth of the alley into a busy street near Central Park where humans gathered. I hesitated, unsure if I should risk stepping out of the shadows in my leathers, armed with my weapons.
“Fuck,” I muttered and shoved past the hesitation, leaping from the shadows. Humans stumbled out of our way, murmuring amongst themselves, someshouting as they fell onto the sidewalk.
The male tapped the shoulder of a passing human female then slapped the chest of a male and continued to lay his hand on another and another before me. Their eyes hazed over, and they stumbled to a stop before turning their attention to me. They paced drunkenly toward me, gathering, bodies colliding with one another to block my path as they grabbed ahold of my arms and legs.
“Please let me thro—” I froze at the drunken gazes latching onto me, their mouths moving in a blur as they muttered words of the old language, a language none of them should know even existed, and yet, they spoke it so fluently. A chorus of questions overlapped one another, too jumbled to discern, and I stumbled back.
A female human stood approached, and they parted ways for her, holding me in place as she stalked closer. Her hands rose to cut my face asshe gazed into my eyes. A whisper slipped from her lips, a near hiss painted with poison. “Do you know the blood that stains your master’s hands?”
I froze, chest heaving as I resisted every urge to throw them off me, to cut them down. They were humans; how could they?—
My gaze snapped to where the immortal had disappeared. ANoususer. They were bewitched, charmed, minds bent to his will.
The human female forced my gaze back to hers, her nails biting into my skin. “How many more of your kind will you send to slaughter?”
“What the hell happened?” Thalia asked as I stumbled back onto the street where I had left her, sweat coating my skin, my hands shaking. “Gods, your face. What did this to you?”
I couldn’t speak, didn’t know where to start. I had been left with no choice but to knock the humans out, leaving them unconscious on the sidewalk. There had been no time to wipe their memories for risk of more onlookers crossing our path, and I only prayed theNoususer’s influence had rendered them unaware.
“Micah,” Thalia pressed as she brushed her thumb along the cuts left by the human’s nails. My eyes fell to the unconscious human girl propped up against the brick wall at her feet
“It was an immortal,” I finally said, my gaze latched onto the girl. “A fucking powerful one. I’ve never seen one with the ability to bend the minds of so many people beyond Lucia.”
“ANoususer?” Thalia confirmed.
“Dragged the chase into the fucking open streets,” I said, my hands clenching into fists. “He bent the minds of several people to his will at once before making his escape northward.”
“Did you see his face?” she asked. “Anything to identify him?”
“No,” I said, drawing a deep breath. My gaze landed back on the girl, her chestnut lashes resting against her cheeks as she slept. Her chest rose and fell in a quiet, calm rhythm. “Only that he had blond hair and was probably just shy of six feet.”
Thalia ran her hand over her face. “I managed to get a bit more out of her before I knocked her out. She didn’t know much, just that she met the guy at the bar and he had followed her down the street, kept asking her weird questions. Then he got angry when she couldn’t answer them.” Thalia looked down at the girl. “She thought he was going to kill her.”
“He probably intended to,” I said.
My mind dredged up the words the humans had spoken to me in the old language, and I couldn’t shake the dread it had stirred.
