Under The Moonlight

Chapter Three: The Riveting Dagger

"What are you doing?" Katalina asked, briefly looking at Ryker.

Ryker had stopped to sniff the air like some wild dog. "Don't you smell that?"

Katalina looked at him weirdly. "The only thing I smell is an old, moldy house."

She stopped walking to assess the atmosphere with a few sniffs. Then she retracted, repulsed. "Ugh, it smells even worse now that I'm actually trying to figure out how it smells."

"No. That's not it..." He glanced around with his eyebrows knitted. "It smells like something's dying. Or i-it's scared." He shoved his face in front of one of the two walls in the narrow passage way.

Katalina looked at him skeptically. "And you can tell all that just by smelling the air?" There was a sarcastic bite to her tone.

"What drug did you take?"

"What are you talking about?" Ryker queried.

Katalina rolled her eyes and cocked a hip to the side. "Did you sniff some pills earlier or did you stuff a cigarette down your throat?"

Either Ryker was trying too hard to act like he didn't understand her, or her really didn't know what she was selling. That's when Katalina spat the harsh words.

"Gosh, are you high?!"

Ryker looked offended by her question. "No! Why would you even ask me that?"

She walked a few steps towards him then put her hand on his forehead. She widened his eyes with her fingers and twisted his head from side to side. Inspecting him.

"What are you doing?!" Ryker flung her hands from off his face and put more distance between them. Defensive.

"Isn't it obvious?" She spoke in a 'duh' tone. "I'm checking your temperature to see if you're high off your ass. And I'm checking for red eyes. You'll know when someone is using drugs when their eyes are red or if they are very irritable."

"Seriously?" He looked genuinely offended. "I'm not high," he said. "And even if I was, I would have done a good job at hiding it."

Katalina breathed out annoyedly. "Fine. Whatever." She glanced around once more. "Let's keep moving before some sock monster jumps out of nowhere and attacks us with sparkly Laser Beams or something."

Ryker pulled the gun from his pocket and glanced around one last time. He held it in his palms, taking careful, calculative steps behind Katalina's moving figure.

He felt uneasy.

It was like something was at arm's reach.

Just hovering.

Anticipating.

Plotting.

And calculating before it finally strikes.

Noticing his slow pace, Katalina looked behind her and motioned for him to walk faster. "Hurry up! We don't have all day."

With his fingers now clutched tightly around the trigger of the lethal weapon, Ryker looked around once more. His heart thumped wildly as if something ruinous was about to go down.

But instead of standing his ground, he just shook the thoughts from his head. Maybe being in this place for so long had caused him to lose half of his brain cells, making him paranoid.

He loosened his grip on the gun and set it back into his pocket before walking.

"Yeah, I'm right behind you."

Maybe Ryker was psychic. Or maybe he just had a nagging feeling. But whatever it was, his hunch was right.

Because as soon as they turned the corner, something big and fatally dangerous manifested from within the wall he had sniffed.