The Tales of Flesh and Blood

Broken Promises And Sweet Oblivion

Somehow, my not-so-grand entrance had managed to catch unwanted attention. I turned towards the trees to see a figure wearing a chipped bunny's mask watching me, its head tilted in morbid curiosity with a gun raised in my direction. I felt my body tense, knowing that the figure was too far away for me to intercept and that there was nowhere to duck for cover. All that work just to get shot-

One of the men in pink tackled the figure before a shot could fire. I didn't bother to look behind me to see if Odnay or Ven was close to making it out of there before running to the cover of the trees, remembering Odnay's instructions. I could feel my heartbeat in my teeth, and my grip constantly slipped trying to hold on to Liam's small body. My legs kept stumbling beneath me - holy fuck, it was so hard to keep running-

Somehow, I made it to the trees, and I was just about to yell out in relief when another body slammed into me.

I felt Liam topple off my back as the breath was knocked out of my lungs in the most brutal ways imaginable, already having been winded from that adrenaline-powered run. Gasping and trying not to puke, I flailed back my arms, trying desperately to shield myself when I felt someone pinning me down.

"You've got some friends, girl," a man sneered as I struggled to see through blurry vision.

Drama Dude. I was never going to be able to look at plays the same.

I was still gasping for breath when he struck the back of his hand across my face, and I was too shaky with exhaust and terror to do anything but absorb the sting.

"Look at you, covered in filth," he continued, and I didn't have to have perfect hearing to detect the obvious disgust he was feeling at the moment. "Fucking impure. Just look at what you've done!"

Another slap, and again, I was too helpless to really do anything. Drama Dude was panting, and I could do nothing but wait to see what he planned to do next. I clenched my jaw and squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to see anymore, hoping that this was something I wouldn't have to live with for the rest of my life - so as long as dying was quick. The terror ran heavily beneath my skin, and no matter what I did, I was going to die at some point today.

Drama Dude paused. He sniffed, his nose stuffed with snot.

"I suppose it's not really your fault, though, is it?" he said softly, a complete one-eighty from his previous tone. "You can't help it. But that's okay. It's why I'm here - to clean up the filth your kind brings here."

I felt him shift on top of me, and I cracked open my eyes enough to see him reaching for a wicked looking dagger he had inside his coat. Oh fuck.

I pressed my lips tight together, not wanting my last words to be a plea, but a sob broke through, anyway. A pair of dark eyes met mine through the mask.

"None of this is your fault," he tried to sooth as he raised the blade above my chest-

"Get off my sister!" an anguished, young voice bellowed, and Drama Dude paused only long enough for me to see a small, frail body launch itself at him. Caught off guard, Drama Dude stumbled off of me, and somehow, Liam managed to disentangle himself from the deadly man the moment he hit the ground.

Shocked, I tried to rise to my feet, but I ended up tripping over myself, instead.

For one thing, Liam didn't look like a normal human boy anymore - and by 'normal', I mean he no longer had normal human skin. Instead, his skin now obtained a smokey, wispy appearance to it, with traces of shadow flaring off of him in the cruel winter's wind. Where his eyes should have been bled a substance darker than the night itself, and his fingers had transformed into a set of claws that gleamed off of the dying sun's light.

This boy was a thing straight out of nightmares, and he was fighting Drama Dude with just as much ferociousness.

Liam swiped blindly at his aggressor, nailing Drama Dude straight across the thigh with those razor sharp claws. Drama Dude screamed out in pain, but before Liam could do anything more, the man kicked the boy squarely in the chest, sending him reeling. It didn't hold Liam down for long, though. With more speed than a boy should have had, Liam was back on his feet, snarling and growling things in a language I'd never heard before. He charged in the direction he thought Drama Dude was still in, and that was when the world slowed down further.

I tried to open my mouth. Really, I did. I felt my lips part, felt my throat tighten, felt my chest feel like it was being crushed from the inside out when I tried to speak. I wanted to scream at him, because all Drama Dude had to do was step aside, his footsteps quiet above the frozen dirt.

Liam made to run right past him, and Drama Dude simply looked up at me when he none-too-gently reached out to grab Liam by the wispy strands above his head that I guessed was hair. His momentum throwing him off balance, Liam roared and fell back, but he was helpless when Drama Dude hacked his blade right across the boy's throat.

I couldn't turn away fast enough. I saw the blood even when I managed to get my legs working again, sprinting through the trees as fast as my beaten body would allow. I was tripping over twigs and bare shrubs, blinded by tears and the lack of light. The roaring in my ears was too much to bear, and I could still hear Drama Dude stumbling after me, hunting, anticipating another kill. I cried as I tried to breathe, felt my lungs restrict as I tried to force air back into them.

All I could see was a boy who just gave his life for mine, who had done absolutely nothing wrong in his few short years but simply existed. And Odnay and Ven . . .

There was someone screaming out my name. I looked up to see a street through the thinning layer of trees, and alongside that street was a black van with the back doors swung right open. I was close enough to see Jaxon standing in between the van and the trees, holding an actual rifle in his arms with another man I didn't recognize standing right beside him. I saw the relief clear on his face at the sight of me, and he lowered his weapon, believing that we were in the clear.

I opened my mouth to warn him when I tripped. My foot caught on a loose patch of roots, sending me sprawling on my face. Lungs burning, I somehow managed to coax my body into standing back up, high on what was now seeming to be never-ending adrenaline.

The man next to Jaxon raised his rifle. For a moment, I thought he was going to shoot me, but when he fired, I heard another body drop feet behind me.

But not before I felt something strange hit me just below my rib cage.

I stumbled forward, my finicky brain not quite grasping the sharp, foreign pain piercing my side. Confused, I looked down to see the tip of a piece of sharp metal sticking out from my belly, and turned my head to see the hilt of the dagger Drama Dude had been wielding just moments before wedged against my back.

No, I found myself thinking, once the pain finally began to process. Numb, I turned around to face the guy with the mask, who was bleeding out in the dirt, but was still alive at the moment. He had his head raised, and he was watching me even when black dots began to swim across my vision. He laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed. My legs gave out beneath me. The cold was digging into my skin.

Still, he laughed.

His head jerked back when a bullet was sent through that terrible mask, cracking and spraying the white plastic with crimson blood.

Still, his laugh followed me deep into oblivion.