Read Marcii (The Dreadhunt Trilogy Book 1) for Free Online Page B

puddles.
    When she withdrew her arm and inspected her fingertips her heart nearly stopped. The colour mixed upon them like paint on a palette and the water swirled them together as a natural catalyst.
    It combined the brown from the mud, and the grey from the clay, and the red…
    The red…
    The red from the blood…
    Gasping under her breath, Marcii shot to her feet and stumbled back. The only thing that stopped her from falling was her hard collision with the wall behind her, for the street was not wide and she met it very quickly.
    It took her a minute to regain her composure as she struggled through the short, sharp breaths that wracked her body.
    The water trickled by her along the edge of the street and she glanced up to her left.
    The street ran on an incline. It was only very slight, but it told her where the blood was coming from.
    With new determination, and evermore dread in her heart, she followed the trail, seeking its source.
    The trickling water grew heavier and tumbled through and around and over the stones set so firmly into the street, staining them a deep, lustrous red. As the water grew thicker and ran more heavily with blood, Marcii’s stomach churned.
    Soon though, looking up at last, for her eyes had been glued to the ground, she found the source, and her body went cold.
    There were bodies everywhere.
    Littered across the street, strewn all over carelessly, they were just abandoned in an enormous pool of red.
    There were others there too. Others who had found what remained of the massacred carcasses in probably the same way Marcii had.
    But she wasn’t paying attention to them.
    Instead, her eyes were upon the torn up bodies of the mutilated men and women that lay discarded across the stones before her eyes. Something had ripped the flesh from their very bones, and it had done so most brutally.
    The blood was everywhere, she suddenly realised when she eventually looked up and all around. It caked the walls and was smeared thickly across the row of houses to her left, along with other things that looked decidedly more solid, which she tried her utmost to ignore.
    It was too much.
    But then, as she glanced fearfully around, out of nowhere, Vixen appeared. She stood over on the other side of the bodies to Marcii.
    She felt her body twitch, instinctively wanting to run over and shield the young girl’s eyes. But Vixen’s expression, when Marcii saw it, didn’t allow her to move.
    The young orphan’s eyes darted over to the other side of the street, and Marcii followed her brief gaze, only to find that she was indicating to a door to a shed at the end of the row of houses to her left. The wooden shack was covered in red just the same as everything else, though also with some revolting solids mixed among the blood that caked the small building.
    She looked back to Vixen, but the girl was nowhere to be seen, and Marcii took a deep, nervous breath.
    Almost even unconsciously she paced the half a dozen feet or so to the door, stepping over the torso of a man that she fortunately didn’t recognise.
    Stopping at the face of the door, she examined it quickly with her eyes, wondering why Vixen had drawn her to it so.
    It was nothing special. It was not even somebody’s home. It was just a shed at the end of a row of houses, probably used to store spades and axes and the like.
    Still, as she reached out for the stiff looking iron door handle, Marcii paused fretfully, her heart racing.
    She felt the eyes of other townsfolk on her cautiously, watching her movements suspiciously, for it seemed to them as if she knew something that they did not.
    Gritting her teeth firmly, Marcii turned the handle forcefully and yanked her arm back. The door to the shed flung wide open and she stepped back fearfully even as it did so, for she had no idea what she would find beyond.
    Blood.
    Lots of blood.
    The awful, metallic stench invaded her senses and she recoiled instinctively from it.
    Limbs.
    Solids.
    Semi-solids.
    Yet