He grunted, leaning into me. We made it across the street, slipping into the shadows of another building.
My senses were on high alert, every nerve screaming that we were being watched, hunted. And then I heard the faint crunch of boots on pavement. Close. Too close.
I spun around, shoving Asher behind me just as a figure stepped into view at the far end of the street.
The dull glint of a weapon caught the weak morning light.
Hunter. He saw us. His eyes narrowed, his hand moving to raise his gun. I didn’t think. I just moved.
Faster than any human could register, I closed the distance between us, grabbing the barrel of the gun and twisting it aside.
The shot went off, a sharp crack that split the air.
I closed my hand around his neck, broke it. He crumpled to the ground. But there were more footsteps, more shouts.
The shot had given us away.
I turned back to Asher, who was staring at me, his eyes wide with pain and frustration.
“We need to keep going,” I told him.
He nodded, gritting his teeth. “Then let’s go.”
We stumbled forward, desperation fueling us.
The town blurred around us. A maze of buildings and alleys, of too-bright light and too-thin shadows.
The hunters were closing in. They were like wolves on a scent, relentless and deadly.
We couldn’t keep this up. Asher couldn’t.
His breaths were coming in shallow, labored gasps, and each step seemed harder for him than the last.
His limp was worsening, his weight leaning more heavily on me with every passing second.
If we didn’t stop soon, they wouldn’t need to fight us. He’d collapse on his own.
My eyes darted frantically, searching for any way out of the open streets, any sliver of safety.
Then I saw it: the weathered door of an old, boarded-up shop to our left.
The wood was warped, the paint faded, but it might as well have been a sanctuary in that moment.
“This way,” I said, not waiting for a response.
Without hesitation, I shifted Asher’s weight off me just enough to free my leg and kicked at the door.
The wood nearly splintered under the force, the sound sharp and violent against the quiet of the pre-dawn streets.
The door didn’t give on the first attempt, but I gritted my teeth and kicked again, harder this time.
The frame buckled, and the door flew open, revealing only darkness within.
“Come on,” I urged, gripping Asher by the arm and pulling him inside.
He stumbled over the threshold, nearly taking me down with him, but I kept us moving, dragging him deeper into the shadowed interior.
The air inside was stale, thick with the scent of mildew and disuse. Dust hung in the air, disturbed by our hurried entrance.
