“Who gets to be first, then?”
The men argued for a while, and as they drew lots, Alina tightened her muscles and used all her strength to pull her hands apart. She must catch the first one by surprise.
Not a moment too soon, she slipped her hands one by one from the rope as the first smelly man trampled through the bushes toward her. He wasted no time but put his face an inch from hers and reached for her waist.
“Hello, you pretty—”
Her hands clamped around his throat. He shoved her away, and with her ankles tied, she fell, bringing him with her. She tightened her grip as he clawed, kicked, then seized her hair, attempting to rip the strands out. When his panicked hands tried to pry hers from his neck, she leaned forward and sank her teeth hard into his fingers. His scream was lost in his closed throat.
When he went limp, Alina hastened to untie the knots at her ankles. The rope didn’t budge.
The men at camp cheered and whistled at the rustling in the bushes. “You only got ten more minutes, Hank, y’hear?” Gerard called out.
Ten minutes! Alina hunted through Hank’s pockets until she found a small pocketknife. She cut the rope and fled into the forest. As she picked up speed, she began to laugh. Ten minutes at this pace, and they’d never catch her.
Alina had paid careful attention as they traveled throughout the day, but the thickness of the trees and the night disoriented her. She ran in the direction she believed to be east, knowing that for now, building distance between her and Gerard’s men was the safest path to take. They expected her to travel to Millflower, so she must find Rex, Jade, and Baylor before Gerard found them again. She thought of the nightstalks hunting them and quickened her pace.
Immortality felt strange—still fresh and new to her. As a child in Pria, she possessed instincts others did not. She knew falling off her bike or slamming her fingers in the door would hurt. She avoided trying new things but rarely had to since Jade didn’t encourage her. She never went near a swimming pool, and after the incident with Pierce never climbed a tree again. But immortals didn’t have this apprehension. They mastered everything on their first try. They didn’t crash their bikes or slip from the trees they climbed—they jumped!
And now she was the one who succeeded without effort, whose eyes could see clearly in the darkness. She soared through the woods, dodging branches and leaping over fallen logs. The invincibility was intoxicating.
After a few hours of running, the fear hit.
Recognizing the feeling at once, she climbed a tree with heavy limbs and hid in the leaves. If the fear paralyzed her, at least she couldn’t be seen.
Her body stiffened like the branches around her as she glimpsed a nightstalk creeping through the wide trunks, its beady red eyes scanning the trees, aware of her presence.
They sense fear, she reminded herself. She closed her eyes and thought of Jade, Rex, Baylor, and the people back in Stormport. She began to relax. As courage warmed her limbs, the nightstalk’s eyes blinked, puzzled. It whirled around and scanned the trees, as if its prey had just escaped from under its nose.
This encouraged Alina, and as her eyes stalked the creature, she remembered how defenseless she was. Gerard had confiscated all her weapons when he took her. She had Hank’s pocketknife, which didn’t seem sufficient. But facing the nightstalk without weapons didn’t worry her; it just required more thought.
She stood up on the branch and watched the confused creature for a moment, then hurled herself into the air. She twisted and flipped until she landed firmly on the soil, thirty feet from where it stood.
They stared at each other. She almost faltered at the nightstalk’s eerie red eyes but held its glare. The moonlight shone on its sickly complexion, making it almost transparent. Purple veins throbbed under its gray skin. She did not flinch until something in its face stopped her with a gasp.
The creature bore a resemblance to the immortals of Pria: graceful, swift, and symmetrical but as hideous as they were beautiful. Its skin looked decayed and putrid, the whites around its red pupils sunken—as if everything good had been sucked out.
The nightstalk intrigued her more than it frightened her, and as she examined it with both repulsion and fascination, it lifted its head and released a bone-chilling howl. She darted behind a tree, her fear returning like ice in her veins.
In the distance several howls answered. Others were coming to its aid to destroy the enemy that killed one of their own. She panicked, until she realized they were moving away from Rex, and Jade, and Baylor, to her.
Alina set her jaw as she stepped out from the tree. They’re frightening to my eyes, but they can’t hurt me. She repeated this in her mind as the sight grew more terrifying.
Over a dozen nightstalks walked into the moonlight from the dark trees, their skin glowing with their pupils. Alina could sense the fear thick and heavy around her, but with focus, she stayed above it.
I can’t die. I can’t die. I can’t die.
She walked forward to meet them, and they surrounded her. How quickly she could take them out with a dart gun. She pulled out Hank’s pocketknife and released the short blade. Each of them raised their hands, their long fingernails shining in the moonlight, and pointed them right at her heart.
She examined each one as they approached, trying to decide which was easiest to overcome. She crouched and glared at the one drawing nearest, until it gave a blank smile and pointed to something over her shoulder.
She spun around to find a nightstalk right behind her, flooded in moonlight, creating a mirror out of its transparent body. Alina screamed at her reflection, which instead of a flawless, immortal figure showed a plain, awkward girl from Pria—with plump
