Dark Fangs: Forbidden Fugitives

Chapter Sixteen

She couldn't sleep.

     Why? Drake, Angel, and the Indoraptor.

     Drake had riled her and Angel had doubled that. Plus, she still couldn't find a name for that yellow-striped black hybrid animal....

     What's the point of sleeping? Why not just go see him? Maybe I'll be able to think of a name if I see him again. Jae thought miserably. 

     Her room crawled and danced with shadows as the sky battled with itself, flinging great flashes of light across its vast expanse. Jae kept seeing sudden images and figures in the darkened corners of her room, and all of them resembled a certain dark-scaled monster...

     Jae had taken her Book out again, and with a dull flashlight, read over several Psalms, trying to calm her mind that would not shut off. But she couldn't concentrate on one paragraph for long before her thoughts would shove a ferocious face into her mind. 

     She hated it. She wished she'd never seen the Indoraptor.

     This has gone too far. I can't keep having invasive thoughts poison my brain every day that I don't see that creature! thought Jae crossly. She slammed the Book shut and winced, apologizing to Him for the outburst.

     Slipping off her bed, Jae tensed her entire body and clenched her jaw. I'm just going to see him for one quick second. I have Midnight Moon's saddle anyway, so why not? 

     Just to get my obsessed mind off this topic. 

     It wasn't hard to sneak out of her room and down the hall and flight of stairs to the first floor, but it was a little more difficult to get the front doors open quietly, since her Grandparents were in the kitchen, talking. It was however, annoying to get her mare's saddle and bridle out the door from the family room. The rain hadn't let up at all since it started, and Jae quickly abandoned the idea of saddling a wet horse. She grabbed the saddle blanket, threw it on the blue roan's back, and bridled her.

     Pounding rain pelted Jae and Midnight Moon. The darkness and slippery road made the journey precarious, so very swiftly, Jae slowed the Thoroughbred's gait to a trot.

     Half way down the road, where Jae was nearly about to turn into the jungle, a sharp shriek made Midnight Moon spook and rear. "WHOA!" 

     It was Drake's voice.

     Jae clenched her jaws, clinging to the neck of her horse like her life depended on it. When the mare calmed, still shaking, Jae's eyes darted to the slope, where road met jungle, and descended slowly down to the beach. 

     Drake was lying there, curled in a ball as if he'd just fallen there. 

     And something else was crashing through the dark foliage. 

     Jae pushed herself back up on the mare's back and her green eyes flashed with anxiety. "Drake! Are you hurt!?"

     Drake looked up at her, pushing himself to his knees, and the fear that lit his eyes frightened Jae so greatly that she nearly fell from her equine's back.

     "Run." Drake croaked.

     Immediately, a black shadow came barreling from the undergrowth, piercing the raining sky with a deafening scream. 

     It was the Indoraptor.

     Jae screamed, grasping her mare's soaking white mane as she reared back, her whole body racked with tremors of terror. The black hybrid slammed its hand-like fore claws down, right above Drake, who hollered in horror. 

     But the creature paid him no attention.

     "I SAID RUN!" Drake bayed.

     Jae whipped Midnight Moon around with the intention of running the mare straight into the sky. She kicked at her flanks, screaming for the mare to accelerate scorchingly.

     "RUUUUUN!" Drake wailed after her.

     Jae couldn't look behind her, and nothing on the planet would have made her even glance back for a flash of a second, but suddenly she wasn't on a peaceful island anymore, and she wasn't the level-headed fifteen-year-old she once was.

     She was a hunted being with only one intention: Get away from that carnage-driven, homicidal animal.