Two members pin him to the ground.
The leader kneels. Slowly. I hold my breath waiting for him to strike.
Then he drives the blade into his chest. Once. Twice. Three times. The screams don’t last long. But the silence after? That’s what sticks.
The leader rises, wiping his hands on the man’s shirt. “Obedience,” he says, scanning the room, “is survival.”
My stomach churns. And something inside me—Something human—starts to die.
Chapter 4
Three months later
Ryven
Joey shakes with nervousness beside me as we stand in a line outside. It is early, around five in the morning. The moon is still high in the sky, and the temperature is below freezing. But the leaders have us all standing in formation in only our shorts and shoes. My breath fogs in front of my face, and my toes feel so numb that they mayfall off.
“As you can see here,” our leader motions to the five naked people with hoods on, standing in front of us. They’re barefoot, skin blue from the cold. Their ribs are sharp beneath their stretched flesh. One of them sways on their feet. Another’s legs tremble like they may give out at any second. “These will be our sacrifices today. Each squad will be required to catch their sacrifice and have them displayed, ready to be given over to our king by the end of the day.” He looks at every single one of us as we study our targets. Not targets…
Prey…
The word sits wrong in my chest. Sacrifice… not criminal. Not murderer or child molester, just… fucking sacrifice. Like they were never people to begin with. Like we weren’t supposed to see them that way anymore. They are just a vessel for the Dark One now.
But we don’t have the luxury of knowing their crimes at our level. They could be the worst type of humans. That’s the lie I keep telling myself so I don’t succumb to the mindless killing like some of the rest of our members.
“Run!” the leader yells at the five people, and they all take off in a sprint. Their feet slap against the frozen earth.
Can they even see through their hoods? Or are they just running blind into the forest and hoping for the best?
“Go!” our section leader roars, and we take off into the woodline after them.
Thick branches whip my arms and face as we bolt through the trees. Our sacrifice is almost out of sight by this point, so Ipush myself harder to catch up to him. I can see the rest of my team ducking and dodging tree limbs as we all push in a line after the guy.
Westley is the first to reach the naked man and lunges for his waist, knocking him to the ground.
The man gives it his all, attempting to escape. He scratches and kicks furiously with the hood still tied around his head. He tries his best to get free but it is no use. The rest of our team is on him before he has a chance, and we all pin him to the hard forest floor. His screams are raw and animalistic.
We were instructed to hunt our prey, tie them up and bring them back to the compound for the ritual. I grab the rope from one of our members and begin tying the man's feet while he continues to flail around.
“Someone fucking hold his legs still!” I growl.
These idiots don’t know what they’re doing.Half of this team is new to the faction and half just don’t give a shit about any of this anymore. But that doesn’t mean we have the option to fail at anything. If we fail, we die.I have to make it back to Rory…I promised
By the time we get back to the edge of the compound, my legs feel like they’re about to give out beneath me. Every fucking step through the woods was a fight.
Branches tore at my skin, snapping back against my arms and face as we dragged the guy between us. The ground was so uneven and slick with mud that more than once, I nearly went down with him.
He didn’t stop fighting the entire way. I have to give him that. Even with the hood over his head, he kept clawing, kicking and screaming. Even after his voice turned raw.
The worst part is, we lost control of him more than once. One second we had him pinned and the next he was slipping through our hands and scrambling across the forest floor like he still had a chance to escape.
It took us all piling on him again to get him back under control. But that only lasted a few minutes before he started thrashing again. So I did the only thing I could think of doing to make this easier for everyone else. I grabbed a rock and cracked him over the head with it so he would shut the hell up.
I sling the man’s body onto the open area just past the trees and sink to my knees beside it. I’m so exhausted.
Joey comes to stand beside me after a moment. He’s too quiet. That’s the first thing I notice. His shoulders are tight, his arms hanging stiff at his sides like he doesn’t know what to do with them. And his eyes are locked on the altar ahead of us.
My stomach turns. I’ve never seen him look like that before. His eyes look… vacant. Like something inside him is trying to catch up to what we just did and what we’re about to do.
