saw a figure a hundred yards ahead, dressed in black with a bone white mask over their face. From here, it was impossible to tell if they were male or female, but their frame looked fairly slight. Fear cascaded through me as they stood statue still, just staring at me. There was something long and curved in their hands, but I couldn’t tell what it was. I fumbled my phone out of my pocket, panic racing through me as I brought up Monroe's number and hit dial. He was the only one likely to have his phone on him during practise. I looked up as I held it to my ear and found the path was now vacant. Shit.
The rings sounded again and again in my ear and I started walking along the path once more, but slower this time, fearing how close I was coming to the place where that weirdo had just been. If they were trying to scare me, it was working. But why? And who was it? They looked too small to be Toby. So what did that mean? Did I have some other enemy to fear? The freaking Justice Ninja??
My heart thrashed in my chest as I reached the spot where they'd been standing and I turned, looking into the trees, spotting fresh boot prints there in the mud.
I wanted to run and run until I was safe deep inside The Temple. But more than that, I wanted to expose this asshole and stand my ground. I'd faced real demons, looked my death in the eye, lost my only family. I wouldn't run from this creep.
"Who are you?!" I shouted, my voice lost a little to the storm, but if they were close, watching, then they'd hear me. "Come out here and face me!"
The phone suddenly answered and I jumped as Monroe spoke in my ear. "Tatum?" he asked anxiously.
"Hey," I breathed, a shiver gripping my spine. "There's some asshole out here trying to scare me."
"Where are you?" he growled fiercely.
"On the east shore. About a hundred yards from the turning to Beech House."
"Go there, back to your old room. We're coming," Monroe said firmly and I agreed before hanging up.
I started hurrying along the path, my neck prickling with the feeling of being watched. Hunted…
"Taaatuuum," an eerie voice called, the sound distorted like it was played back through some sort of voice changer. My pulse skipped at the horrid, raspy crackle of it coming from behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder and my stomach clenched into a tight knot as I saw the figure standing there again fifty yards away, this time with a bow and arrow raised in their hands, the tip of the arrow alight with flames.
I screamed in fright as they loosed the arrow, diving off the path and a blaze of fire in my periphery told me that it had barely missed me. I raced into the trees, my shoes sinking into the mud as I climbed the hill that led deeper into the forest, desperate to get away. Oh fuck fuck fuck!
"Taaatuuum," that awful voice sounded again, the cracking of twigs behind me telling me I was being followed. And for a second it sounded like there was more than one set of footsteps.
A whoosh of another arrow made me scream again and this one slammed into a tree to my left, the flames hissing as it sank into the wet bark. Holy fuck.
Terror gripped me as I pushed myself harder, climbing the hill and finally making it to the top before hurrying down the other side. I stumbled down the steep ground in the dark, unable to see where I was going and my foot suddenly caught in a root. I gasped as I tumbled, falling forward and crashing down the hill, getting caked in mud.
I sank into the wet bog at the bottom of it with a groan, shoving myself up onto my knees as I prepared to keep running. A fiery arrow slammed into the ground just beside my hand and I jerked backwards, staring up the hill where the figure stood, another arrow aimed down at me and their bone white mask covering their whole face, the light flickering over it.
"What do you want?!" I snarled, forcing power into my voice so I didn't sound like a scared little mouse as they pointed that arrow at me.
My muscles were coiled. I was ready to leap out of the way the moment they loosed it, but