The Moon's Fangs | 1

Time slowed.

My vision edged with black and my body tingled into cold numbness as if my soul prepared to flee the moment I made contact with the ground. Every one of my senses began to detach themselves with every lost inch.

I heard the guard’s head audibly smack the edge before losing visual of the rooftop.

Both of my hands were outstretched for something - anything to grab onto. Empty air rushed through my fingers.

The distance between me and the rooftop grew further apart.

~Not good, not good!~ Nox hissed as a strange, dull pain burned the sides of my neck, stemming down my shoulders like a slow fire. I opened my mouth to scream, but I couldn’t breathe. ~Taking action for the highest chance of survival—~

Nox was cut off when my body suddenly jerked from a jarring halt. My jaw clamped together so hard, bright bursts of stars blinded my sight. Blood instantly rushed to the very top of my head, and my arms whipped upwards from the forced halt in movement.

I gasped on what felt like choked air, and the strange fire of pain Nox sent down my neck and shoulder dwindled down into nothing.

“Fates… it’s like she has a death wish.” Reks said breathlessly.

It took a second for the disorientation and stars to recede. When I could see again, the dark alley was upside down. No. I dangled upside down.

My fingers were mere inches away from touching the ground. My heart plopped into my throat. The ends of my hair grazed the amber-lit stone.

Reks hung out of a balcony with a white-knuckled grip around a tendril protruding from his own wrist. The end of it wrapped tightly around one of my ankles like a living lasso. The tip of it worked on another loop around my leg.

Shock rolled through me as I picked out the discrete shape of a snake’s head, and black-slitted eyes focused on its loops around my ankle.

It was the same thing that restrained me in the lab. The same thing that stopped Nolan from shooting Reks. The living snake-whip had somehow totaled the gun. It had crushed it. And now it coiled around my leg.

“What the hell is that?” the question shook past my lips, barely over a whisper.

He exhaled a slow, controlled breath. “I’m going to lower you to the ground. Hold still.” The veins in his forearm protruded, muscles swelling as he gave slack to the tendril.

My hands reached the ground first. When my legs finally touched, the lump in my throat shrunk. I closed my eyes and breathed. My heart pounded so hard, I couldn’t think straight.

~For the record… I planned to do something equally cool and heroic. I merely allowed Reks Arlen to slide into the spotlight.~

Above Reks, a slight tinge of red stained the edge of the rooftop where the emerald guard must have hit his head. Some of his curls hung over the edge, but that was all I could see of him.

~He is alive.~ Nox addressed my rising concern before I had the chance to process it myself. ~Unconscious with a head injury. But will be fine, all the same. He’ll be knocked out for about twenty minutes, give or take.~

Reks jumped down from the balcony and landed next to me. He was so light on his feet, his boots barely made a sound when hitting the slab of smoothed rock.

I should have thanked him, but the second his strange tendril loosened from my ankle, I scrambled back, away from it and him. Just like in the pod, it retracted back into his body. This time I noticed the bulge in his veins rescind as whatever it was settled back into his tightly compact muscles.

Still backing away, I clambered to my feet but fell short when my back hit the alley wall.

Reks took a step toward me, and my hand shot up. “Stop. You’re going to tell me what that was right now.”

Faint footsteps of civilians walked past the alley, but we were deep enough within to not be noticed. Cloaked in shadows.

His mask covered the bottom half of his face, but his eyes blackened with indignation. “It’s the reason you’re still breathing. Is that a good enough explanation for you?” he tore his eyes from me before too much hatred could fill them. “Come on. We need to move before our advantage is lost.”

The friction between us turned impulsively unpredictable. Hot with the feels one moment, then cold-shoulder the next.

“Are you kidding? No, that absolutely is not a good explanation.” I barked out. “And if you think I’m going back to that lab of yours, you’re out of your goddamned mind.”

This time, he didn’t heed my warning hand and stop. Like a shadow slipping through darkness, he pushed my hand out of the way and suddenly stood directly in front of me, only inches away from my face.

My breath hitched, back flushed against the cold wall. The fire of retaliation quickly extinguished from my gut, leaving only liquid heat to pool in my lower stomach.

Reks pulled the mask down to reveal the serious expression painting his unhelpfully handsome face. His lips curled, half snarl, half challenge. “Do you really want to have this conversation right now? Because I’ll do it. But it’ll cost us our head start on the guards hunting us down as we speak. Is that what you want? To be taken back to the guy who nearly brainwashed you?”

“No.” I stiffened, forcing my gaze to not hover over his bowlike lips. I dragged my eyes up to meet his.

He pulled his mask back over his mouth and nose, glancing back down the alley. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk when we get back. Starting with how you managed to get past my security.”

Gods. The hook. He didn’t outright say it, but he probably thought I ran away.

“Well, I didn’t run away if that’s what you’re thinking.” I firmly crossed my arms.

A shadow from the opening of the alley caught our attention. A silhouette of a girl made her way toward us. She didn’t have a box in her hands anymore, but I recognized the messy pink hair and oil stains. It was the same girl I passed by right after waking up from sleepwalking.

She stuffed her dirty hands in her large pockets, not slowing her pace as she made her way toward us. “By the looks of it, you two must be the reason the high n’ mighty orleizen guard’re running circles around the district. Haven’t seen ’em quite this worked up over someone in a while.” her mousy voice matched her tiny form.

My stomach flipped at her strikingly on-point accusation. How had she known that?

Reks took a daunting step forward.

The girl waved him off. “Relax, will ya? There’s a high-rank blackguard manning the bridge, and… let’s just say, I really don’t want to get caught up in that mess.” she stuffed her hand back in her pockets and walked past us without a second glance.

“You’re taking a detour,” I stated more than asked. “You know a way around the roadblock?”

She didn’t slow down. “You can follow, but you’ll have to owe me.” she said in a singsong way.

If this girl planned to avoid the guards too, then she had her own reasons for doing so. And by the sound of it, this wasn’t her first time sneaking around the authorities.

I grimaced, then whispered to Reks. “What do you think? Our odds are probably better following her, right? I overheard Nolan say he was going to try cutting us off before the next district, I think.”

His mouth curved into a slow smirk behind his mask. “I have other means of travel. But it doesn’t hurt to see where she leads us before that.” His hand slid down my back, heating my bare spine. “Stay close to me. We don’t know her, or her intentions.”

I wanted to make the argument that I barely knew him and his true intentions, but I held my tongue. He did just get me out of a bad situation and saved me from falling to my death, so he earned himself the benefit of the doubt… for the time being. His fingers pressed into the skin around my spine, sinfully melting my core. I bit down on my lip, forcing a poker face.

We turned the corner after the pink-haired girl, staying a good distance behind her. But even with us keeping our distance, she didn’t bother to slow down or check to see if we fell behind. She weaved through different connecting alleyways like a deliberate winding maze until reaching a tall, fortified fence made of stone that stood to protect the citizens from falling into the scary pit of doom.

She shoved a stack of crates out of the way, revealing a hole behind the mess. A crack large enough to fit through. “This’ll take us all the way down to District Seven.” she slid through the hole, then dropped down on a rickety rope ladder.

Reks gave the getaway ladder an ambivalent look.

He didn’t share whatever suspicions he had with her as he crossed his arms, watching the girl climb down a few feet before speaking to me in a lowered voice. “A simple, pathetically hidden step ladder. Wonder how long they’ve been using this as a means of escape.”

I peered down. My stomach dropped from the sheer length of it. “Do you, uh, want to go down first?”

“Why?” his body suddenly turned on me, eyes narrowing in sharp challenge. “Don’t tell me you’re already planning your next escape from me.” The sultry tone dared me to try, to see what would happen if I did.

Blood rushed to my cheeks. “N-no. That’s not what I… ugh, you know what? Forget it. I’ll go first.” I shot him a glare before sitting down and swinging my legs over the cold ledge. Paranoid dumb-dumb.

“Good girl.” He purred. “Nice and easy.”

If I wasn’t focusing on where my hands and feet made contact with each step, I’d be more inclined to smack the assassin across his oh-so-amused face. He enjoyed taunting me.

Once I made it down a few steps, he followed suit, sliding the crates back in place to hide the escape.

My legs and arms trembled with each new step down. I’d done tons of different types of obstacle courses with Blaire and the firefighters back at home, but this was different. Higher. More dangerous.

With every step my hand freed, Reks advanced down, leaving not a single space between his boot and my hand. As if I could somehow poof away in a spot like this.

Though, making this rickety trek must be worth it. Surely if there was something fishy down there, it would be better than being hunted down by guards here on this level.

After passing by a couple of levels, it started to get noticeably dimmer. Fewer chunks of amber lit the way.

We were hidden amongst the darkness as we climbed down, but the levels were lit enough to get a partial side-aerial view of each one. The farther down we went, the less impressive each district turned. The highest level was clean, full of markets and profit. The second was full of nice homes, like an uptown suburban.

The third, fourth, and fifth were not as clean or taken care of and were packed to the brim with homes - to the point that the structures were pressed together without any space in between. They were more like stacked apartments packed in like sardines. They only had half of the higher district’s light, and the temperature noticeably dropped the farther we descended. Colder and colder.

The sixth district was so dark, it was hard to make out anything. I could only catch sparse shacks here and there. Goosebumps trailed down my arms from the increasing chill.

As I took another step down, the step suddenly snapped under my weight. I gasped out and grasped at the step in my hands in a panic, clutching it as my foot flung out into nothing but cold, empty air. Reks reacted so quickly, I barely registered his movements as he dropped down like a ladder-daredevil. His front pressed against my backside as one of his arms wrapped around my chest, firmly hugging me against his chest.

My heart somersaulted.

“Shh. I have you. I won’t let you fall.” Reks whispered against my ear. The heat of his breath brushed through my hair, touching his lips.

It caused my own breathing to ricochet in short, heady spurts. “Th-thank you…” I closed my eyes, focusing on the sway of the ladder calm under our weight.

The corner of his mouth curved up against my ear. “This is the third time I’ve had to save you in a single day. One may think I deserve a reward.”

Fire burned my cheeks. “I saved you first. So we’re even.”

“Really now? My three is equal to your one?”

“Um, yeah. If you knew how I risked my ass to even get down that greenhouse—”

Movement at the end of the ladder caught our attention. It swung as the strange girl hopped off – pink hair disappearing into the dark and eerie atmosphere of this district. The mere sight of her getting off the ladder made my cheeks burn even hotter. We were less than ten steps away from the end. Reks hadn’t saved me from a fall to my death. He saved me from bruising my ass.

“You know what? No. No, we are absolutely not even.” I huffed, peeling his arm off of me.

His laugh obtained a devilish edge. He ignored my attempt of removing his arm and pulled both of my hands away from the step I clung onto. My gasp froze in the center of my throat as he made us fall the rest of the way down to the ground. His shoes didn’t make a sound upon contact.

“Stay close to me.” Reks whispered so quietly; I heard it through our connected commlink. He set me down on my feet, and goosebumps raced up my legs from how cold the stone felt. Almost like ice. I pushed away from him, shooting him a glare. But he was preoccupied looking out ahead, searching for where our escort had run off to.

He subconsciously fixed the roll of his sleeves, just above his wrists. Both had thin lines of old scar, now healing after recently being reopened from those strange snake-like tendrils. Did it hurt for him to use that thing repeatedly? With scars lining his wrists like that, he must use it often.

“Where did she go? She wanted us to owe her a favor. Doesn’t make sense for her to help us then run off without a word.”

The girl was nowhere in sight. Either she disappeared into thin air, or she raced inside the nearby shack. Besides that, the only other nearby objects were a couple open crates of plants, similar to what the girl carried when I first laid eyes on her. The foliage looked fresh. But why would someone leave them here?

Reks picked up the broken step, loosely examining the jagged end. He turned to me, appearing unusually comfortable for what our situation called for. Even his smoky voice turned weightless, like steam. “Just stay behind me and I’ll take care of the rest.”

I looked from the splintered peg to him, then shook my head. “What do you mean-”

Multiple figures suddenly parted from the shadows in the forms of big, beefy thugs. Some had weapons while others balled their hands into eager fists. And all their sights were set on us.