Hunter - Book 2 of the Hunted Series

Chapter 3 - Being the hunter

I woke to find someone on top of me. The teenager, loose, his eyes glazed with something, blood encrusted. The funny thing was, here we were, in a crashed truck, and he wanted to rape me? Now? His fingers, trembling with the cold, were fumbling with his clothing. Maybe he knew this was the only chance he'd get. His scent was all over me from our bodies bumping in crash.

My arms were loose now though. When I felt him try and slide down his pants, I wrapped the chain around his neck, using the bits of it attached to my arms, movement so sudden that he yelped. Froze.

Without being able to speak and with it too dark to see his face properly, I couldn't threaten him, but I didn't need to. The chain tightening around his neck was more than enough to tell him what exactly I thought of this idea. The chain closed down tighter around the soft tissue, his gasp, choking, hands clawing at my arms, but could I do this? I wasn't even sure if I could.

The door was flung open, yanked so hard that it broke and gave way, flash lights pointing at us and blinding us both. Heavy feet, two of them, rushing across the metal side of the truck, and yanking the kid off me. I was just about ready to kill whoever it was too, going to hit them with hand and chain and all when a hand closed around my wrist to pull me up, but a familiar scent filled my nostrils and I relaxed.

Nick peeled the tape off my face, carefully, face white with rage. He turned onto the kid, where Clayton had pinned him against what had originally been the floor, the kid's pants falling down.

"Where's Elena?" Nick asked, softly, glancing around.

"Different truck."

Nick swore, turning to see Clayton freeze, before he lifted the teenager higher, hand tightening on his jacket.

The boy, obviously a teenager, was already crying in big gulps, his entire body shaking, tears and snot and red splotchy face. Clayton hadn't laid a hand on him, he was terrified without that, flinching every time someone came close.

"Where is Elena?" There was the flash of something silver. I thought they might have done it, might have hurt him, but there was no blood. Just the sudden stench of urine as the threat made the kid piss himself.

"I don't know!"

"You like hurting someone tied up and helpless? Pain turn you on?" Clayton was moving closer, a low growl in his throat, his hand clenched hard around the knife.

"No... I ... I thought when my dad was bored..." He struggled to talk, the crying making it broken and he seemed to have trouble breathing as well, inhaling and exhaling so hard that I thought he'd pass out.

"You'd rape her, is that it?" Nick had let go of me when he said that and was standing beside Clayton. He was almost scarier than Clayton at that moment, which was saying something, the two of them towering over the kid. "Rape a woman who was tied up? You think that's something a real man would do?"

"I wasn't... I mean I was... but I thought... I thought maybe she'd ...maybe she'd get used to it. Let me... and I'd take care of her ...and... Maybe like me after a while." In other words, I realised, he had a delusion that I'd fall in love with him. I wondered if he'd ever heard of Stockholm syndrome.

"Nick, take Anne and wait in the car." Clayton was rolling up his sleeves, one by one, his neck pulsing with blood, face frightening even me. I suddenly felt really really bad for the kid, even after what he'd wanted to do.

Nick backed off and tore at the chains, yanking them clear off the wall, using his own knife to try and unhook me from them. When my wrists were freed he went to wrap me up in the blanket, so angry that he was shaking, yanking me off my feet and jumping out of the overturned truck. I glanced back to see it. The truck had skidded, turned over, hit a tree and fallen into a small valley. There was one body in the snow near the road, another lower down, where they must have been flung from the cabin. Neither moved.