Demonic // phan

Twenty Three

Phil

"Do we even have a fucking plan on how we're going to do this?" Phil asked in a whisper, following Zoe through the trees as carefully as possible. She had warned him to make as little noise as possible for fear of the hunters finding them. No doubt they had already discovered Phil was missing and were wasting no time in searching for him. But Zoe hadn't been exactly generous with her thought process, and Phil was kinda going into this blindly.

They'd been walking through the trees for a while now, and all he really knew was, so far, the hunters hadn't brought Dan back to their hideaway (they would have crossed paths if so), and he had no idea where he was. Nothing around him looked familiar in the slightest, and that scared him; if he got out is this alive, how would he get home? It was childish thought, but it was there and it wasn't going away anytime soon.

Zoe remained frustratingly silent, walking ahead of him with a determined stride, and Phil really had no choice but to keep following her.

He didn't know how he'd held up for this long at all. Any sane person would have long ago broken down, cracked under the stress and the imminent threat of death, and Phil was almost certain that made him crazy. But he shrugged it off and blamed it on some freaky adrenaline rush.

They stopped suddenly, Zoe throwing her arm out so Phil didn't walk past her. It didn't really seem like a significant place to stop, just a random cluster of trees, but he didn't question it.

"I don't..." Zoe muttered, and holy shit, she actually sounded emotional. Phil stared at her in awe for a second, taking in her shallow breathing and pained expression before shaking his head. "I don't know what to do, Phil."

And now he was speechless. This was the first time he could recall her actually saying his name without it sounding full of venom and disgust, let alone while she seemed to be in the middle of a crisis. She didn't know what to do? That really wasn't the right thing to say to him, who was also at a loss for any sort of plan of action. He didn't know how to handle this, he was human, did she really expect him to have some idea of what to do?

But he hated letting other people down, no matter the extent of their humanity.

"Well." He said vaguely, scratching his arm anxiously. "We should... probably find him first. Figure out where they're keeping him and such."

There was a moment of silence, and then she nodded, tossing her hair back and clearing her face. She was once again the epitome of confidence.

"Yeah, that's. That's what we should do."

They started walking again, Phil trailing behind and watching his female partner warily, wondering what else she might be hiding under her indifferent façade.

So neither of them had a plan, that was just fucking great, right? Phil had little hope for his life now.

After what felt like another half hour of walking with no seeming sense of purpose, they stopped again, and at first Phil thought Zoe was having another moment. Just as he was about to say something, he looked up and saw Dan.

Chained to a fucking tree. There were about ten or more hunters spaced out around him, and he saw Chris and PJ in the mix, although the latter seemed to not be so involved in whatever the rest of them were doing.

One of them, a tall guy with longish hair was directly in front of Dan, and Phil clenched his jaw when he saw a long knife in his hand, pressed against Dan's arm. He knew that Dan was basically indestructible, with very few things that could actually harm him, but as the blade sliced into his skin, Phil saw him grimace in pain.