Flock

Chapter 15

My blood was rushing through my veins, and pounding out a distracting drum in my ears. I pressed my back against the side of the tunnel and slowed my breathing. In. Out. In. Out.

I shuffled deeper into the tunnel, the silence surrounding me was like a physical being pressing in on me from all sides. The walls were slick and the moisture was seeping into my clothes. A soft whimpering echoed around me, and the closer I got the softer they became. My eyes adjusted enough to the light to see a small mass lying on the ground. It shook slightly, and I approached slowly. 

"Hello?" I whispered. The mass froze, not a sound escaping it. I crept closer, careful to keep my distance and appear as non-threatening as I could. 

"Are you alright?" I asked. Slowly, the form raised what I assumed to be its head. Glittering yellow eyes blinked at me from the darkness and I sucked in a lungful of air. 

"Ollie?" 

"Alijiah, what are you doing here?" I rushed toward her, putting a hand to her shoulder. "Are you hurt?" 

"Something was in here with me," she whispered. Her teenage bravado was gone and instead her voice wavered like the child she was. "I couldn't see it," she sobbed. 

I pulled on her arm, hoping to get her on her feet but she stumbled and fell with an agonized cry. "My leg," she wheezed. I moved my hands down her body, my fingers coming into contact with a warm, stickiness that could only mean injury. 

I touched the Kryifem in my pocket gently and felt the hum of power at my fingertips. I touched it again before I pulled it out of my pocket. 

"Alijiah, do you know what Kryifem is?" I asked, unsure what Clark had been feeding these children. Alijiah scoffed at me. 

"Of course I do." 

"Can you touch it?" Alijiah didn't answer right away, and I feared that she had lost consciousness. But when her cracking voice broke the silence, it was filled with uncertainty. 

"I'm not sure. We've never been given Kryifem—I've never even seen a piece of it." I weighed my options. It had only taken me a few minutes to get to Alijiah, but it would take me longer to get back to the town for help. I couldn't lift her and she was unable to move herself so I couldn't leave her alone in the dark to fend off what had attacked her. What if it came back?

"Alijiah, I'm going to tell you a secret. You can't tell anyone—" 

"I won't," she laughed. It sounded wet, and my heart squeezed. 

"I have a piece with me," I whispered. "The last time I held it and touched a Kryjia he burst into shards of frozen flesh—I don't know what will happen if I touch you with it. Or what will happen if you touch it."

"I'm dying," she said softly. "The risk doesn't matter." I found her face and cupped her cheek, feeling the trickle of blood dripping out of her mouth. 

"I'm going to help you," I said. I surprised myself with the fierceness—my need to help her. My hand slipped back into my pocket, and my fingers curled over the stone. Kiliyan had said it worked like a beacon, so as I tentatively reached my other hand out to Alijiah, still unsure if I should touch her, I hoped he would answer that call. 

"Do it," she gurgled. I nodded once, setting my jaw in anticipation and grasped her upper arm. It was as if thousands of tiny teeth had punctured my skin. A pulse of energy careened through my veins. The pressure inside myself was incredible and I closed my eyes against the pain, my teeth grinding together. I tried to keep my focus, my hand a vice on Alijiah's arm. I pulled her arm around my shoulders and shoved my own shoulder underneath her arm pit. It tilted her at an odd angle and she whimpered at the movement. Her eyes were wide as she stared at me as if I were a mad woman. 

 I took my first step, pulling Alijiah with me. She felt weightless beside me so I steeled myself and took a few more steps. When my legs didn't crumple beneath me, and Alijiah didn't burst into shards of pulpy meat I hefted her a bit higher on my shoulder and walked. 

Sweat broke out on my brow, dripping down my face and soaking the already damp shirt I was wearing. Breathless, I clutched Alijiah's, the light from the opening only a few feet away. 

"We're—almost—there," Alijiah panted. I stole a glance at her pale face, the light providing me with enough to see her more clearly. She was scratched all over, a dripping gash in her abdomen, one down her collarbone, and a chunk of flesh seemed to be missing from her thigh. She was still breathing though, I hadn't killed her with my Kriyfem and neither had whatever attacked her. Yet. 

My hand ached with the effort to keep my fist closed over the stone and when we finally crested the opening, and the light touched my skin - tears started flowing. I dragged Alijiah as far from the edge as I dared before I dropped her. I kneeled next to her as she took in great heaving gasps. I tore my shirt off, ripping it in half and wound the fabric around her torso. 

It wasn't long enough for a secure knot; but I needed the other half to tie off the bleeding in her leg. "Stay with me," I ordered her. She was staring up at the sky now, her gasping coming more frequently. 

"I'm. I'm, try—I'm trying." 

"Talk to me, Alijiah, tell me about your life here," I pleaded. I tied off the piece of fabric around her leg, the pressure from my knot was sufficient to slow her bleeding and I returned to the gash in her stomach. It was still leaking blood, even with my attempt to apply the pressure, so I tore her shirt off too and wadded it up. I pressed the shirt into the wound, and watched as her breathing slowed. 

"Alijiah," I said, trying to rouse her. "Lee, please, stay awake. I need you to stay awake." I hoped her nickname would spark something. "Please, Lee." 

She mumbled something incoherently, her eyes no longer focused. I stared around myself wildly. Something primal gripped me, and a scream tore through my throat. Someone had to have heard me, had to have felt whatever beacon Kiliyan said I had. 

I swatted at Alijiah's cheeks, and stared toward the town. The sun was shining and the world was silent except for a dying halfling, and a half-crazed freak screaming her throat raw. 

And then he crested the slight hill and my whole body quivered with relief. 

Kiliyan sprinted toward me, a half-dozen or so students following in his wake. 

"Ollie! What happened?" He scrambled to his knees and shoved me aside, analyzing Alijiah, as she lay there bleeding to death. 

"I was out walking, I heard her screaming in the tunnels." 

"You went in there alone?" he demanded, as the students helped lift Alijiah and hurry her back to town. 

"Take her to Talia," Kiliyan shouted. He didn't follow them immediately, instead he turned to me still crumpled in a heap on the ground sobbing. 

"Ollie," he kneeled down in front of me. 

"She's going to die," I sobbed. "I took too long in there, I didn't know if she could touch it. I tried, Kil, she's going to die." 

"Stop it," he said, his voice firm. He grabbed my face in his hands and stared at me hard. "You did everything you could, and if Talia and those students have any say in what happens than Alijiah will live. It is not your fault." 

"Do you hear me?" he demanded when I didn't answer. I nodded once, tears and snot running down my face. 

"Good." He swiped my tears aside with his thumbs and helped me to my feet. "We need to get back, we don't know what did that to her." 

He took a few steps away from me, and I turned back to the tunnels. I had never been this afraid of them before. The thing in the dark when I was a child had never harmed me. It had scared me, and I hated the dark but nothing had ever attacked me during those years. 

The wound on Alijiah's leg had looked like a bite mark. But it wasn't one I was familiar with. "Kiliyan, what was in the tunnel with us that night?" 

He didn't answer right away, and as I turned to look at him I saw his eyes go wide. He was reaching for me, his mouth a perfect O but no sound came out. 

"Kiliyan?" I managed to get his name past my lips before something wrapped around my shoulders and yanked me back toward the tunnels.