Chapter 11
I would not kill.
That is the difference between being Soulless and not being Soulless; the ability to take life.
Only Soulless had the proper infection of wickedness to steal a precious life from another. It was why we needed them to kill each other so as not to blemish our goodness.
I absolutely refused to blemish mine.
Though I had been branded Soulless, I refused it.
I was a good person. I was a good person.
Everyone ran into the circle.
A sundry of death sprung out from their patient hands as bladed weapons flew and chopped and trounced. Blood confettied the air. Screams and shouts sung a reprise of ire and pain.
While they ran into each other on the ring of the alarm, Dig Graves stayed standing and grinning, looking at me across the land of warfare.
I looked back at him.
He opened his mouth. “Princess.”
“Excuse me.” I waved to a man who had just finished hacking at the chest of another. “I believe he is dead.” I splayed open my arms. “I am now available to be killed. Thank you.”
The man looked up at me, the machete in his hand dripping with blood pointed in my direction.
Dig Graves lost his stupid grin and watched another predator about to steal his prey. “Fuck!”
Before the man managed to enter my radius Dig Graves lunged and grabbed him by the arm.
I did not waste a moment to watch their skirmish and ran into the city.
The vacant streets sprouted weeds through the tarmac cracks and scatterings of broken glass. Occasional blemishes of blood like a butcher’s floor from years of Battles were fading on brick walls. I zig-zagged through buildings, around dumpsters and crates and past rusted cars.
I was careful not to leave footprints, walking only on tarmac or when dirt met my path, I slipped off my shoes and trod on objects.
Dig Graves may be a maniac and a serial killer, but he could not track where there were not footprints.
Good luck bastard.
Hours waned.
Satisfactorily, he was nowhere to be seen or heard.
Neither was anyone else. Three prisons in total.
I guessed close to six hundred inmates were in this year’s Execution.
The morning of the Battle was usually the largest culling and from then people would be starting to spread out and make temporary accommodations elsewhere while they decided upon their next action.
Food and water. It was left in certain places and needed to be found.
Neither of which I would be doing just yet.
All I really needed was water.
A hiding place and water for ten days was the greatest survival method in the Execution Battle.
Unfortunately, I now had Tommy to think about.
Finding him would take priority over hiding which now meant I needed more than just water.
I needed food too. Food gave me energy to run, food gave me energy to look for him.
I also needed cigarettes.
I scouted around the side of a building and used a shard of mirror I had plied from a car to check there was no one around the other side of the corner.
Nothing.
It was quiet.
I walked out and hopped over to the next building finding a woman with a dagger in her hand. Both of us looked at each other in the space of the peace. Blood freckled over her chest; her hands shook from an uncontrolled fear.
“Good day to you.” I continued on my way.
She ran in the other direction.
Everyone would be looking for everyone.
I was looking for Tommy. Dig Graves was looking for me.
Every person in the city would be searching desperately and very, very carefully for their comrades.
Humans felt safer in their tribes. Alone like this, they would be exhausted and afraid and unaided in the world. Everyone would be needing their friends and not wanting to initiate conflict until they found them.
As the sun dipped behind the structures and evening painted the world steel, I decided on a building to make my base.
Careful of the dusty floor I walked barefoot on any object that was scattered on the ground, making it inside until I reached a stair well. Up or down?
Down of course.
Always, always go down.
The people who go up in a building do so to set up headquarters and have a look out using the windows. Which means an entire group of people go up and revolve around a watch. I could not fight an entire group of people.
The people who go down into the basement are the people who want to hide. The people who want to hide do not want to kill me.
Rows of lockers spread out on the lowest floor. No food. No running water. I selected a locker at the back. They were noisy things to open.
If someone came down here scouting for an easy kill, they would open up the other lockers first, causing a ruckus with their metal hinges, alerting me that someone was down here so that I could flee.
Perfect.
The locker was extremely uncomfortable. Not perfect.
Night drifted. I remained awake. It was far too difficult to sleep with my limbs shoved in awkward angles, also I wanted to keep my ears pricked for footsteps.
There was none.
Not a single noise, not a single sound of—
The door to my locker was torn open.
Jolted into pure shock, I looked up to find Dig Graves consuming my world. Dusk came swirling its darkness and so had he. A nightmare. Blood sprayed across his lips. He smelled of metal and death.
My heart flew into instant chaos. “How did you—ah!” I screamed.
He grabbed my arm and yanked me out, his laughter wild.
Usually, I screamed only for the purpose of alerting others, however this had been so totally unexpected I could not help but vocalise the sting of confusion and sudden surprise.
He had close to a dozen different blades on him. Strapped to his belt, in his pockets. All bloodied. Oh freckles, how many people had he already killed?
I worked quickly.
Kick to the knee.
Elbow to the throat.
He swung me around, forcing me to miss, and snatched both of my arms, pulling them behind my back, locking me in front of him. His hold on me was expert. I searched quickly through all the channels of my head for a manoeuvre from my defence training.
“Princess.” His lips pressed into my ear, marking me like a kiss. “You can’t hide from me.”
“How did you find me?” My chest swelled. I needed more time to think. “I didn’t leave a single footprint. You didn’t check any of the other lockers. How did you know I was in there?”
His laughter was incredibly annoying. “I’ll always find you—fuck!”
I used my heel on his shin. When his hold on me loosened I snatched a blade from his belt and gave him a swift stabbing in his upper arm. While he spent a moment pulling out the blade, I took out the wad of Cauliflower’s fur I had tucked into my hair and smashed it into Dig Graves face.
“What the fu—” He sneezed violently, dropping the blade.
I ran. Out of the basement. Upstairs.
Dig’s raging storm of sneezes echoed.
I heaved myself up to a new floor. His boots chomped nosily behind me. He cussed. Something about being stabbed. Something about cats. I wouldn’t know anything about it.
I flung my heels down the hall and ran in a new direction hiding in a room behind a filing cabinet and grabbed a fake bamboo plant to cover my other side. Once he walked past, I’d slip out behind him and go back into the stairwell locking the emergency exit door.
Quiet.
I slipped my hands over my mouth to stop my breath from leaking out of me uncontrolled.
“Princess…” His voice slipped out like the stench of rot. “Princess…”
Go away.
The sound of his boots slunk lazily along the carpet squares.
“Aw. How cute. You threw your heels away, making me think you went that way.”
Irritation pulled my brows down.
Moonlight highlighted the rust on the table. I searched the distance in the murky black, trying to find an outline of a figure. Nothing. He might as well be a ghost.
“I know where you are Princess.” He let his voice drift down the hall. “I always know where you are. There’s no point in hiding. I tell you what, if you come out by yourself without me dragging you out, I promise I’ll go easier on you.”
There were at least a dozen offices on the floor. He did not enter them out of his own safety, probably thinking I was hiding behind a door or on the ceiling with a blade ready to cut him down before he entered. He was lingering outside, trying to coax me out with lies of knowing where I was.
“You’re in there, behind the filing cabinet and fake bamboo tree.”
I stood up. “What the freckle?”
He hung in the doorway, arm along the frame, leaning casually. In his other hand he flipped a blade in the air, catching it by the handle. “Sup?”
There was no exit.
Moonlight swam across the carpet and waved against his dark jeans, showing off his silhouette of wide shoulders and hood pulled over his head. A glassy glint of the stupid sunglasses shone. His lips tugged up to the side.
“How did you know where I was?” I asked.
He tilted his head as if he were confused by the question. “Why wouldn’t I?”
It was clear he was not leaving the door frame. There was a window at my back. The joint to open it was well rusted. It would take huge efforts to open and jump out and I doubted he would allow me time to accomplish this. My throat bobbed. I was not trapped. I was not trapped. I was not—
“You’re trapped Princess.”
“What do you want?” I asked.
“You.”
“That’s not very specific.”
“Will you let me feel your chest?”
“No, thank you.”
“Just your heartbeat.”
“Next.”
He lunged for me.
I swerved around him.
He caught my arm.
I kicked the back of his knee.
He toppled forward.
I broke free.
He was quicker, grabbing me a second time, flinging a blade under my jugular. The metal, cold and sharp against my throat forced me into an instant halt.
One single swift slice, I was dead. “Damn it.”
“There we go.” He held me from behind and walked me forward, keeping the knife angled across my throat. “Hands on the desk.”
I planted both of my palms onto the surface of the desk, needing to slightly bend over to do it as he held me from behind.
A position he revelled in, judging by his chuckle.
He used his knee to knock my legs open. His finger slipped over the notches of my spine right down to the end of my tail bone and around to my inner thighs.
“Now, Princess.” He pulled up my dress. “What do you have under here?”