Night Fae (Dark Fae Kings #3) - Meg Xuemei X. Page 0,49

of food and water in case I had to stay in the game longer than two days. The backpack I carried had only a couple of days’ supplies.

As I prowled forward through the forest, my shoulders stiff and my dagger tight in my grip, the landscape suddenly changed. Sweet perfume permeated the air. Vibrant blossoms dangled from plants. Colorful leaves drifted from high trees. It was dreamily beautiful. But I wasn’t fooled. Instinctively I knew this would be the killing field.

My sadistic sister would love to see my blood spray onto the blossoms and taint the blades of the parakeet grass.

Lucifer had counseled me to look into her nature. To defeat her, I needed to get into the mindset of pure evil. I’d do everything to survive the game. I wouldn’t let her win. I had so much to live for. Only when she was put down would all the people I cared about be safe, and none of them would need to look over their shoulders in fear again.

The sound of crackling leaves rose ahead, and footfalls crunched on twigs and pine seeds. From my years of hunting experience, I knew that whoever or whatever was stalking toward me wasn’t an animal.

It was hunters.

My blood raced and my pulse spiked.

I tamped down on my nerves and paused my advance, not making a sound as I reevaluated my tactics. I was about to go against a group. I’d take out the most dangerous hunters in the gang first.

Something whooshed by, flying in my direction, and instantly I recognized the noise of a rapid machine gun. Like a flash, I scampered amid a thick cluster of spruce trees and ducked behind a white tree trunk just as a succession of bullets whipped past me and bit into the nearby trees. If I’d acted a heartbeat later, those bullets would have buried themselves in my neck and chest instead of chipping off tree bark.

My heart thumped at the narrow escape, and anger rose within me. I moved further away from the shooting range, quiet as a ghost.

“Why did you shoot before we had the target in sight?” a human guy said, annoyed. Fae spoke in a different fashion and usually in a Fae tongue. “Now you’ve alerted our game!”

“I shoot whoever fucking moves,” another human male answered. “That’s the only way to kill a demoness before it gets to us.”

So Brigantia sent them and told them that I was a she-demon. I almost laughed drily. Well, now that I knew Lucifer was my sire, I guess that wasn’t far from the truth.

“Shush,” a young woman hushed them. “We must be sneaky, super quiet, and fast when dealing with a demoness. We don’t want to alert it and give it the chance to escape.”

“Escape?” a college-aged girl snorted. She had pixie-cut hair the color of maple sugar. For some reason, I kind of liked her. She looked tough. “We should count ourselves lucky if the she-demon doesn’t come for us. Didn’t you hear that bitch queen’s pitch before she dumped us here? We’d be facing a demon! A demon! Do you know how hard it is to kill a hell spawn?”

I bet she’d never seen a demon before.

Who was this sorry bunch?

“The she-demon now knows our every move since you’ve generously spelled it all out,” another guy said gruffly. “It’s probably laughing at us right now.”

The first hunters were a group of humans. How had my evil sister even rounded them up? Why was she pitting these amateurs against me? But then, Brigantia was a twisted creature. She’d send human mobs to hunt me and see how I’d react, as I was raised in the human world and considered myself part human, regardless of my origin.

A thought clicked. These human hunters were disposable.

She wanted me to kill the contestants and have the humans’ blood on my hands before the next group of more lethal hunters came for me. I knew that as the trial went on, more and more deadly huntsmen would join the hunt.

I darted like a ghostly arrow in the human hunters’ direction as they plowed through the forest toward my former position, still arguing. Almost all of them were stompers, but then they probably had confidence due to their large number.

I reached their rear and counted over a dozen of them.

“So we slay the demoness, and then we’ll be allowed to go home?” a permed blonde whimpered.

“That’s the idea. You all heard what the fairy queen said,” said a dude