Marcus' Prey

Chapter Four

      Ohhhh man! I'm back at it!

Let me tell you, it has been a ROUGH couple of weeks. I had an oral presentation, an essay, and four midterms all due...in a two day period! FML.

But I only have one more (6 page, gross) essay due before the break, so ya girl is getting in some quality writing time in the next two weeks. Oh, also I'm adopting a dog. EEEEEEEEK! His name is Kyote and I love his face. (Pic above)

But that's not important. What's important is that I'll be updating more over the next two weeks. This is only the beginning...MUAHAHAHA!

I hope y'all enjoy this one...it's a bit...more than LG was in some ways. Hope y'all don't hate it...tbh I'm not sure how you'll react. 

I'm yammering, my bad. Enjoy the chapter!

E <3

~

     As soon as my tail, Meg, left, I knew I had to leave again. Ahead of schedule. Unfortunately, leaving now would be more consistent than I'd like. I'd stayed in the past three towns before this for two-day periods, and I'd been in this one for two days. The key to running was inconsistency, but that smug mage had just taken that option away from me. I'd have to be the biggest idiot on Earth to stay another night here.

Call me what you will, I was no idiot.

I turned back to my motel, walking briskly, but not so hurried that I garnered unnecessary attention.

The thin line I was always walking, it seemed.

It would've been smarter to ditch my motel room and everything inside it. I needed to get the hell out of dodge, and I needed to do it now. But I was too damn sentimental. My father had always referred to it as my "human weakness". I wasn't all angel. Regardless, there were some things I couldn't afford to leave behind.

When I finally made it back to the run-down, seedy motel I was staying in, I was in a state of full-blown paranoia. Every movement had me palming my many hidden daggers and weapons, simply for reassurance. As far as I was concerned, everyone was the enemy.

Honestly, it wasn't that foreign a concept to me. That was how I'd lived the last few years of my life, after all. The happy, ignorant years with my mother were nothing more than a distant dream.

I unlocked the door to my room, slamming the flimsy wooden barrier shut and locking it as quickly as I could. Then, for good measure, I threw the bolt into place and secured the chain. Overkill? Definitely. But anything or anyone coming through that door would make enough of a commotion to alert me. So, overkill or not, it was necessary for my peace of mind.

Packing my meager belongings took very little time, though every passing moment felt like an eternity. I had few material things close to my heart; the photos of my mother, when she was shining and beautiful and healthy, an ancient tome of creatures my father had given me to research my immortal targets, and finally, my most prized possession; the jackal stuffed animal my mother had gotten me on our last visit to the zoo. She'd been so sick and skinny then, and I'd been so enraptured by the jackal exhibit. Mom had compared her prominent ribs to theirs, and we'd laughed. She'd kept her sense of humor until the very end.

Keeping it was childish. Honestly, it was downright idiotic. In a survival situation, stuffed toys should've been the last thing on my mind. And yet I'd sooner leave a limb behind than abandon him.