Dream Lover

TWELVE

He had a crossbow in his hand and some kind of short sword on his hip. Elle went back to Melissa/Melanie and hatched a plan, "I'm going to hide over there, when I give you the signal, I need you to scream as loud as you can. Can you do that?" she nodded, and Elle took her position behind a tree growing just a little ahead of the one where she had stashed Melissa/Melanie.

She risked one last long peak to gauge the man's progress and counted slowly to ten. It got harder to concentrate when she could hear his footsteps closing in on her but she kept to the plan. At ten, he was right on top of them she signaled, Melissa/Melanie shrieked, the man began to move a little faster in her direction just as she planned. He didn't see Elle at all.

"Hey" she shouted at him. He spun toward her and she swung for the fences.

The world slowed down right then. Elle caught the man hard just below the temple and sent his head slamming into the tree behind him. He didn't make a sound he just began to slide down toward the ground. As he fell, Elle searched, found, and stripped him of all his weapons. She was thorough. Once he hit the ground, she shoved at him until he rolled and finished her pat down. She didn't hesitate. She didn't think.

She passed the short sword to Melissa/Melanie took the dagger she found and the twelve extra bows for the crossbow he carried. She shoved the dagger in her pants and shouldered the bag of arrows.

Running on an intoxicating mix of horror and adrenaline, she checked the scene at the riverbed again. The old woman who'd first befriended her lay bloody in the middle of the field. She hadn't made it to the trees. The majority of the men were stepping into the tree line.

The woman who'd been captured was still screaming while the two men brutalized her. Elle prayed for aim, speed, and accuracy and let the first arrow fly. She missed her first target once, then again, and again. Took a long steadying breath and willed her hands to stop shaking. On her fourth shot, she nailed the man holding the woman's arms. She struggled a little with the reload but quickly found her second target held her breath and nailed him too. The woman was up and moving and Elle was reloading focused on staying alive and getting revenge for the hurt and dead women she didn't really know. 

"Someone is coming!" Melissa/Melanie whispered from her hiding place.

Elle swung the crossbow over her shoulder and in a move that would impress her later when she looked back on it, bound up the thick root hiding Melissa/Melanie, and hoisted herself onto a thick branch maybe ten feet over the ground.

 Another man, also armed with a crossbow, was sweeping the woods trying to move so he didn't make any sound. Elle aimed, breathed in, re-aimed, held her breathe and fired. She grazed his leg. He didn't even go down. He cursed and spun toward Elle aiming his own crossbow. He was aiming too low searching for where the shot had come from, Elle managed to reload then fire. This time she hit him. Her second arrow embedded itself deep in his right side.

He went down that time and howled with pain. Elle was out of the tree and on him in an instant she plunged the dagger she'd found into his chest then took his crossbow and extra arrows. 

Her instincts hadn't been wrong yet, so she let them guide her. She was yanking the dagger from the man’s chest just as quickly as she’d shoved it in. She was moving away from the scene he made there on the ground before her brain could fully process the facts of it. A moment later, she was diving behind a massive shell of a tree that looked like it might have fallen a century ago. Another girl had been hiding behind it and she shrieked when she saw Elle. Startled, Elle just missed stabbing the girl out of pure reflex. She recovered quickly though and covered her mouth instead. The girl was young no older than thirteen. She was filthy and terrified her eyes bulged like something out of a cartoon over Elle’s hand. It was the first time she noticed there was blood on her hands, but she’d blocked it out just as quickly as she noticed it.  

She handed the girl with her the second crossbow. "Load this for me." The girl took the crossbow and arrows and stared into Elle’s face. She focused on the task she was given with an intensity Elle understood intimately in the fraction of a moment their eyes held. While she went to it, Elle hazarded a peak over the log.

She stifled a gasp as her heart skipped a beat; there were two of them running in their direction one coming from either direction. One of them would see where they were hidden in a matter of seconds.

She took aim at one that made the biggest target first and fired. She missed him. Her arrow flew past him, missing by inches. He didn't seem to notice she took the freshly loaded crossbow, re-aimed, and stopped breathing. This time, her aim was straight on. The arrow struck him in the middle of his abdomen. It stopped him, put him on his ass but she knew it wasn’t a kill shot. He wasn't dead, but he was down.

Missing the first man had cost her precious seconds with the second. He'd spotted them and was charging straight for her sword in hand. Another freshly loaded crossbow was suddenly in her hand and she leveled it and fired. He took the arrow in his left side and kept coming.

"Run!" She shouted to the girl behind her while she focused completely on him. He wasn't unaffected by the arrow. It had slowed him down, and his breathing was fast becoming a struggle for him, but his sword was still up, and he was still yelling as he charged.

Elle retrieved her dagger hoping to faint left and kill him quickly before he managed to kill her. The girl didn't run. She reloaded, and with seconds to spare, shot the crossbow herself. Her arrow sliced through his neck. He stopped charging, stopped yelling, he seemed dazed as he dropped his sword Elle risked taking her eyes off him. She hadn't kept count, she didn't know how many more were out there, and things had gone quiet.