Page 82 of Red Marked

“Hey.” He narrows his eyes on me. “I told you to stop being so damned cocky.”

“I can’t be cocky.”

“How’s that?” He lifts a brow.

“I don’t have a cock.”

He throws out a laugh, keeping it under his breath.

He rolls his eyes and gives a shake of his head. “See you later.”

We head in opposite directions.

The rock gives way to scrub, and then the scrub to trees. Within a minute, the facility is gone behind me.

I run with my weight forward on the balls of my feet, careful of roots and patches of wet leaves. I keep to the black under the canopy and away from anything that looks like a path.

Every hundred paces, I stop and listen for anything out of place. I run like this for easily an hour.

It’s on one of these stops that I hear the crack of a branch. I stop and crouch at the base of a tree whose roots stand higher than my head, pressed into the gap between two of them, my nose an inch from the bark. It’s a feral. Sounds like he’s upwind and closer than I’d like. Branches complain as he shoves through them.

I stay very still.

He’s in scale. I know it from the heaviness of his tread and the drag of his tail through the leaf litter. He’s big. And he’s coming straight at me, which means he already has my scent. Hiding is no longer an option.

Crap!

I think it through while he closes in on me. I can’t outrun him in the open. I can’t take him head-on in scale. He’ll outweigh me twice over.

He comes through the last of the trees, and I get my first look at him. He’s huge and mean-looking.

Double crap!

His nostrils flare as he turns in my direction.

Yep, he knows where I am, all right.

I break cover before he’s finished turning and head straight past him, close enough that his tail whips leaves against my back. He roars. It shakes the birds out of the trees. Then he comes after me.

He’s faster than me in the open areas, so I look for the tighter parts of the jungle. Places he struggles to get through with so much mass on him. I gain distance on him but am sure not to let it get wide. I need him right behind me and coming in for the capture or kill. Who knows what he’s thinking?

This has to stay on my terms. Only, he can’t know that.

The bank opens ahead, a dark line where the trees stop. It’s hard to see the drop from here. In fact, with the light in your eyes, it doesn’t look like a drop at all. Not if you aren’t paying attention, or if you’re chasing your prey blindly.

I go straight at it. It’s more open here, and he comes for me, closing the distance fast.

Perfect!

I put on the last of my speed, plant my foot on the lip of the drop, and throw myself sideways at the last second.

He can’t follow me. Not at that speed, not with all that weight behind him. His foreclaws dig for the edge and take a bite of it, and then the earth gives. His wings snap open and hit against the large trees on either side. There’s a crunching, snapping noise as one wing catches in the branches, and the other smacks a wide trunk, and he goes over in a slide of rock and roots. There is a loud thud as he hits the hard ground below, a large branch falling onto him.

I’m at the edge before the dust clears.

He’s on his side at the foot of the gully with torn vines wrapped around him. One wing is folded under him at a terrible angle. Blood runs from his jaw. His chest rises and falls, but he’s out cold. When he wakes up, I’ll be long gone. Chances are he won’t be able to give chase, bashed up like that. I decide to leave him be. He looks like one of the ferals who have lost touch with their human side. I’m not into killing animals unless absolutely necessary, so I turn and start running.

I need to get the hell out of here.