Page 22 of Hunted
I spun around again, trying to find someone. Trying to find help. This time, in the blink of an eye, all of the lights in the store went out. In an instant, the whole place had plunged into darkness. The machines were turned off, now, as were all the spotlights, neon signs, and even the escalators.
The only light came from a window on the other side of the store that overlooked the street, and it was darkening. But there was something else, too… a figure walking toward the window as the light above and around it faded.
At first, I hadn’t been able to recognize it.
It only took a moment, a shift of the light, for me to catch the mess of broken antlers, the long limbs, and that skull head. It was the visage of the monster that stalked and haunted the darkest recesses of my mind.
The image of the creature that had hunted Valerian and I halfway across Arcadia.
“Valerian!” I screamed.
CHAPTEREIGHT
Valerian came rushing out of the changing rooms, eyes wide with worry, wearing only the pair of briefs he had been able to slip on in a hurry. “What is it?!” he yelled.
I pointed toward the window where the creature still stood. It was advancing, getting closer and closer to the window with every step, the darkness around it growing thicker, and more complete. There was no mistaking it. From its height to its impossibly long limbs, its gait, to the massive broken antlers above its head and the impression of its wolf skull face.
It was here.
It couldn’t have been anything else.
“Please tell me youdon’tsee it, and that I’m imagining things,” I said.
The look in Valerian’s eyes, though, was clear. He had seen it too, and that meant this wasn’t some crazy daydream or a hallucination. The creature that had hunted us halfway across Arcadia had somehow crossed the boundaries between worlds and found us again.
“Where’s your grandmother?” Valerian asked.
“I don’t know. Everyone’s gone—this doesn’t make sense!”
“We have to get out of here. Head for the exit!”
“But you’re not wearing clothes!”
“Worry about that later, run!”
Valerian rushed over to where I was, grabbed my hand, and started running. It wasn’t long before we lost sight of the creature, but the store was still empty, and the outside world continued to darken.
“We need to find the way out,” Valerian said.
“Not without Evie!”
“We don’t know where she is, or where anyone is. We have to assume this creature is here for us, and only us.”
“The last time we tried to get away from it, it took every ounce of magic I had left in me. I don’t have any more magic to throw at it, Valerian!”
“I know, which is why we have to do this the old-fashioned way.”
“How are we supposed to outrun Fate on foot?”
“Let’s save the questions for after.”
I couldn’t believe I was running again. Running fromit; the monster we thought we had left on the other side of an Arcadian portal. Valerian was following the signs that pointed us toward the exit, only the more we ran, and the more turns we made, the more I started to wonder where in the world this exit actually was.
The department store was like a maze of mannequins, aisles filled with clothes, and entire sections that seemed to turn in on themselves. I hadn’t been able to make sense of the place when we were just browsing, but now that Valerian and I were running for our lives, it made even less sense.
“There it is!” Valerian called out, pointing ahead to an Exit sign with an arrow pointing to the right.
We picked up the pace, slowing down to turn the corner without smacking into a mannequin or spilling straight into a solid wall. As soon as we took the corner, though, we stopped running. Panting, a little out of breath, I stared into a long, dark corridor, with lights that flickered ominously.