Chasing Shadows (The Striped Ones: Book 2)

Six years earlier

Blood. Too much. It coated Mujur’s hands and ran through the cracks of his palms.

A thick drop fell, splattered on the woman’s bruised cheek, and fanned into the semblance of a crimson spider.

Mujur wiped his hands along the forest floor, trying to rid himself of the glutinous fluid, but only succeeded in making a grimy mess as flakes of decayed leaves and dirt stuck to his palms.

No. He rubbed his hands together frantically and tried to convince himself something other than blood rolled between his fingers, but his eyes locked onto the dead woman and refused him even that illusion.

Scratches deep enough to flay the skin covered her body, but none mortal, except one—a large gash along her side which exposed broken ribs and oozed dark red blood that seeped into the ground. Her glazed, fish-like eyes fixated beyond him while an expression of terror etched her face for all eternity.

“She was over here last I saw her,” a voice said in the distance.

Mujur jumped to his feet, his heart pounding. The conversation drew nearer. He took one last glance at the mutilated body partially hidden in the brush then ran.

A few strides later a large male stepped out from behind a tree. Driven by momentum, Mujur barreled into him, ricocheted, and fell to the ground.

The male, a fellow wehr-tiger named Gemuk, towered. One corner of his mouth lifted in a sneer to reveal dingy teeth stained dark red from betel nuts. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Mujur scrambled backward.

Gemuk lumbered forward. Corpulent body swaying, he closed the distance in two heavy strides, pulled back a foot, and let it fly.

Mujur reeled from the sharp pain in his gut as the air whooshed from his lungs with a grunt. He had no chance to recover before a multitude of kicks followed. Curled into a ball like a pangolin, he tried to protect his vulnerable organs and head.

“You find anything?” someone asked.

The blows stopped. Mujur took the opportunity to crawl even as the intense throbbing in his left hip, elbow, and shoulder threatened to pull him into oblivion. A dull thud accompanied by an explosion of pain behind his eyes halted his progress, and he sank to the ground.

“Over this way,” Gemuk said, his voice barely audible as the haze surrounding Mujur faded to black.

Consciousness filtered into the void, creating a muddled awareness, and with it… pain. Excruciating pain—a throbbing ache in Mujur’s skull which pulsated with every heart beat. He fought the grogginess, even as the pounding in his head persisted.

“Wake him.”

The gruff voice seeped through Mujur’s clouded mind. Cold liquid doused his face and yanked him out of his fogged existence, choking him as it filled his nose and mouth. Through gasps, he lifted his leaden hand to wipe away the moisture. His arm jerked to a stop, captured by the bindings cutting into his wrist. With heavy lids, he struggled to blink the fluid out of his eyes and make sense of the shadows.

“Wake up.”

The sting of a slap across his face brought him fully alert. The world around him slowly solidified in his right eye, though the vision in his left remained a blur, the swollen lid only allowing him to squint. Strapped to a cold slab of rock, he took in his surroundings. Outside the familiar wehr-tiger village, a multitude of faces looked upon him, each twisted in an expression of disgust, hatred, or fear.