Chapter 42 - 41

As I search for him, my so hard to get prey, a disturbance spreads downwards among the soldiers and ghouls, and as I start to see some order in this chaotic environment I manage to tell that there are still humans alive and well enough to push against the horde, surrounded but fighting back.

They won't last long like this, I think as I watch they struggle, acid spitters breaking their formation slowly but surely, only seconds before everything changes to an odd outcome.

" 'Bring him to me, the Mark Bearer.' " I frown at the strange sound that reaches my ears, a whispering carried by the wind, orders passed without the use of human words, and yet transmitted by the sound somehow.

It is strange enough to the point that I understand what it wants without even knowing what it is saying.

Odd enough, as the non-word order passes by with the wind, I can see the tension appear on the ghouls that the wind touches, in a reaction that I've never seen before as, together, they respond to it, the difference millimeter as the wind reached them, making them all turn their heads towards a point.

And that point in question brings a smile to my lips.

My fancy prey…it has been so long hasn't it? Hope you didn't miss me…much.

Unconsciously I start moving in his direction, the human form forgotten as I crawl on four with my fangs in display and my red eyes focusing their three pupils on my prey.

Only to realize that he is the new focus of the troop of ghouls, and that they are far, far closer to my prey that I'm and, worse of all, are trying to take what is mine once more!

I growl at the thought of losing my fancy meal once more, especially when the cold-eyed man turns around and flees towards the forest where the wind carried the troublesome mess of not only many other ghouls, but the stench of dangerous and unknown things that even I'm not knowledgeable at.

This reeks of danger, and my prey is walking straight towards it, oi! Who has allowed you to die at other's creature's hands?! Get back here!

I dash forward, one among the darkness as the shadows move with the many ghouls who simply gave up on the humans down below and went for the single motorcycle one, and that makes me sure that they are somehow being commanded by for they would have never left such close up available meal for a single feeble fleeing human.

Passing by then at higher speed, using my tail to push the meddling ghouls aside, I can easily follow the cold-eyed man's track, not only because of the loud motorcycle engine, nor the flashing bright light among the cover of the night, but because at some point he gets hurt and the smell of his sweet blood drifts in the wind towards my nostrils, flaring me up even more as I focus all my efforts in getting to him as soon as possible.

Just like the first time we meet… only that the ending would be far different from that one I'm sure… I can't wait, I think as I clean my chin from the drool midrun.

I'm so excited that my face starts getting hurt from the branches crisscrossing my face, but I could not care less about it with my prey is in sight like this, so close that I can already taste him…

That's when, while he is attacked and taken out of the vehicle, something really strange happens and is not the strange, out of nowhere attack, nor the creature that speaks, nor the other that, at its commands, has hidden to the side, ready to pounce, no…

Is the fact that, as I stop to look down at the rolling prey, as I watch him stand and look up with a freezing gleam on his icy blue eyes, I notice something, actually understand something that has been bothering me for a while but I haven't been able to understand the full picture.

Until now, that is.

Until I'm staring down at his leg, bleeding from the fall, and look over my own leg with a wound at the same place, impossible to have been done by myself since I have been standing still there without moving as I watched his fall.

I feel the blood flow leaving my face as I stare at him, conjectures, possibilities, excuses to avoid the obvious truth in front of me.

That this… whatever the hell this is, had linked us somehow, and far beyond what I have expected, or rather, far… deeper and dangerously than I had anticipated.

For his wounds have somehow being transferred to me, even the small ones I can tell by licking my face clean with my long tongue.

I bet he hasn't even realized that yet, that his wounds have closed in, only smeared with blood on the surface… And at the same time it downs on me that I, once more, may not be able to have this fancy meal, the double attack happens too soon, and out of reflex I react.

If this is true then I don't want to even think about what may happen to me if he dies!

I grab the squishy goopy tentacle that shoots out o the bushes, and with an annoyed glance back at the cold-eyed man I cut it out with brute force, making the creature howl in pain until it manages to escape my grasp, a limb missing.

I feel a vein popping on my face from annoyance, a pressure growing at the front part of my skull from all this shit that has been going wrong thus far.

As the creature up above seems to have a breakdown, I take a good sniff at the place, asserting how may of these ghouls are around only to conclude that we are fucked, we are doomed, oh joy of being trapped with so many ghouls around and that thing up above with a death wishing human on the mix, how am I supposed to protect this man when he heads face-first into danger?!

How the hell did I get myself stuck with this guy of all things?!

At least it can't get worse than this… right?