A doe and a dragon

The Hounds

Her body was producing so much heat she almost didn't feel the cold air around her pinching at her skin. The adrenalin was not letting her think about simple things like that right now anyway.

She ran towards one of the bigger streets, hopefull that she would run into no one on her way to finding a place to rest and gather some energy.

She really could not catch a brake tonight. She only got a couple of hours of sleep and it only made her feel more tired than she was before.

Suddenly she was shaken by a sense of presence.

She didn't know how far away from the hotel she managed to run but it couldn't be him?

He couldn't have already chought up to her.

She took a hard left and a right after that and realised she has never been in this part of town before. The lay out of the streets was not fumiliar.

The alley she ran into was a dead end.

Because why wouldn't it be considering her luck in the past few days.

She turned back to take a different turn down the other alley but was suddenly stopped in her tracks by a sight of a siluette on the other end of the alley she was walking down.

It was not the hotel guy.

Thats good.

Right?

She tried to reason with herself but something felt off.

She didn't have any weapons on her.

She lost her gun on the way to the hotel, preoccupied with trying to save her own ass from the monsters in human form that were trying to end her life.

Her knife was on the floor of her hotel room.

Well, "her" room that wasn't exactly hers as it seemed.

The siluete started to move towards her which once again made her very aware of the fact that she had nothing to defend herself with but her hands.

If it came down to it she would make sure she came out of this alive, even with her hands as her only weapons.

She had to.

To much depended on her.

The man was getting closer and closer with a steady pace and she prayed it was just a passer by, going to pick up whatever from whomever was roaming these dark cornes in the middle od the night on a wednesday.

Just a couple of more feet and she would pass him.

And they were one the longest couple of steps of her life.

Finally she passed him and nothing seemed to happen.

He didn't even seem to notice her while passing by.

She picked up her pace and almost started jogging towards the end of the alley when she was violently struck on the side of the head.

She fell to the ground and tried to not pay attention to the sensation of a second concusion she most deffinitly now had before giving her best shot at getting on her feet. She could hear footsteps and quiet laughter.

It sent chills down her spine.

There was more than one.

More footsteps. More laughter.

She managed to get to her feet after a couple of tries but as soon as she was standing she was slammed against a wall again, big hand holding her by the throat.

"Great. This is turning into such a great evening. I haven't been slamed against the wall twice in one night in ages. I almost missed it." She thought sarcastically to herself. She was so f*****g tired she didn't even have enough strenght to feel fear at that moment.

"Gotcha." Dickhead number 1 mocked.

"Finally. Do you have any idea how long we were looking for you?" Dickhead number 2 continued with a slick smile on his face.

At that moment she relised that these men were Hounds.

And fear returned to her body just like that.

"Theres quite a revard for bringing you back to the agency you know that sweet thing?" Dickhead spat at her with a shiteating grin on his face.

He looked down her right arm. There he found her cherry branch tattoo.

It started on her back, just over the place where her heart was and climbed its way over her right shoulder. From there it went down her arm, the main branch spreading smaller ones on the way down to her hand where it ended in a point just above the fingernail of her pointing finger.

It was beutifully made and splashed with just a few pink sakura flowers in bloom.

It was elegant and feminine.

Almost nothing like her personality.

Maybe thats why she was knees deep in this s**t right here.

Right then all she could feel was pain in her head and the cold brick wall behind her. The alley smelled like garbage cans and dead rats. Looked like a garbage can as well.

The other asshole slowly came close to the both of them, grabed her by the hair and pulled on in strongly.

She wailed from the pain this move caused to her already injured skull and tried to focus her eyes on the threat in front of her but between the pain, the concusion and being complety exhausted from running away from one s**t situation to the next for days she couldn't focus her eyes. She was tired.

She was tired from all of it. Emotionaly, physically, mentaly...

All of it was taking its toll.

They always found her in the end.

Even here.

She heard Georgia was neutral. A safehaven for people like her.

Obviously that was a big fat lie.

The Hounds were called that for a reason. They could sniff anyone out. And fast.

She couldnt shake them off for more than 72h at a time tops until she moved to Georgia.

And now they were operating here as well.

She was running out of ideas how to evade them as time went on as there were less and less places to hide.

People to help you hide...the fuckers burned down everything on their path.

Killed anyone they thought might have any information they might find of interest to them.

And they spared no one. Not women. Not children. Not the pets. If you helped someone they viewed as a target you were as good as dead. And if they fancied you you would soon wish you were dead. They liked to play. Torture. r**e. Maim. Humiliate. She felt it on her own skin once. Its why she moved to Georgia in the first place.

She would have been dead as well if he was smart enough to not come alone after her. But he wasn't. "Lucky" her.

She stabbed him in the eye with his own knife while he was too busy r****g her for the second time. She barely survived that night. He cut her left cheek with a piece of broken glass he found on the floor of the barn he took her too and left what seemed like a thousand small cuts all over her body.

Ripped out her lip piercing and earrings.

Pulled 3 of her nails out and eletricuted her. He held her captive for only 3 hours and made them seem like they lasted for days. She bled for days after that.

Couldn't wear anything that was touching the skin cause she was sore and full of cuts she feared would stick to the fabric. Could not hold a pen for months until her fingernails grew out enough. Couldn't fight properly.

She swore she would never again be a toy to one of them even if it ment she would have to end her own life.

It was where she drew the line on what she could take and live with.

She would not be humiliated and traumatised like that ever again.

In that moment one of the assholes who captured her grabed her by the hip and spat next to her ear at his partner.

"She has to pay for Gabriels death. f**k their big reward. My reward will be crushing her to dust for days".

He spoke of her as she was an object. As like she wasn't standing right there in front of him.

"No Finn, you know what the Agent said. This is beyond that. They want her dead after they are done with her. And they need her strong and healthy. She will need to be alive for a while more and oh will she need her strenght." Small d**k Marcus said with a smile while he squeezed her neck harder.

She tried to pry his hands of her throat but he slamed her back in to the wall and this time she yelped in pain.

Loudly.

Her head felt like it would literally crack open if he did that again.

"Come on Marcus, let me have some fun with this one. The b***h killed Gabriel, I know exactly how he would want her to suffer. She will not die and I won't hurt her...a lot." He hissed poison in her direction, the promise behind his words making her panic and wish she could melt through the wall behind her just to get away.

She was not going back to L.A. and the Agency. The only reason she managed to escape that time was because they underestimated her. They would not do that again now that she killed one of the Hounds they sent to go get her back.

They would drain her dry for her blood.

Its how they made the Hounds, they found people like her and took their blood. People who were different and had powers that regular folks didn't.

What she saw at that compound in L.A. before she managed to rip the handcuffs they had her in and climb through the vents to freedom would follow her until the day she died.

People kept in cages like animals, cuffed to the walls and periodically drained until they became so weak their bodies shut down on their own and they died.

The ones that did not prove useful, whos blood didn't turn men into Hounds but killed them instead were simply killed off and disposed.

Her way out of the compound was blurry in her memories, probably due to extreme levels of adrenalin that were coursing through her body at the time.

She got out and at that moment she decided she was done with L.A. for good. She packed what she could fit in her travel backpack and decided to run. She almost made it to the state line when she got ambushed by the two Hounds they sent after her. Barely got out of that one with her life.

She heard more footsteps approaching from the distance and the sound froze her in place.

Oh no. Please Gods not any more of these fuckers.

Assholes didn't seem to notice or if they did they didn't seem to care.

Which told her they were not expecting anyone alse or they just didn't care if anyone showed up.

What was another dead human being to them anyway? It was less then killing a fly.

Another dead hobo or a junkie wouldn't even make a dent in their emotions.

They would have to have a concience for that to be possible.

Suddenly the footsteps stopped and dissapeared.

Nowhere to be found. All of a sudden she lost hope she didn't even realize was there in the first place. Maybe that person could have saved her by some miracle.

But now they were gone.

Whoever her potential saviour might have been he or she chose the smart option and decided to stay away.

The Hound thightened the pressure around her neck and she choked. Now completly unable to breathe she started kicking her feet at the Hound and scratching blindly at anything she could reach.

She felt herself losing conceusness and was about to faint when she heard it.

It took her brain a second to realise it was not just her imagination playing tricks.

"What the f**k are you two doing in my town?" A vaguely fumiliar voice sounded from somewhere above the spot they were standing at and the Hound holding her by the neck quickly looked up, caught by surprise by the unexpected intrusion.

The moment he saw what was looming above him the smile he had on his face dissapeared as he released the grip he had around her neck and jumped back in a fighting position. She slid down the wall, choughing and wheezing, trying to catch her breath.

Blood raced to her head and brain and it made her feel dizzy as hell. She heard a loud thud on her left and she looked up at whatever poor fool decided to try and interupt the Hounds.

It was him.

The hotel guy.

What the f**k?

And more importantly, why the f**k?

She stared at his back, now dressed in a leather jacket, straps and holsters peeking from underneath it, crossing over his chest and hips.

He looked absolutely lethal.

She almost had some hope for him. She knew this would be his last night alive though.

She cought herself feeling sad about it.

How and why exactly was he here in the first place? Who the hell was he?

She hoped she would live long enough to get the chance to ask him that.

A second later she looked at the Hounds and was completly shocked by the way they acted. They looked...alarmed. Cought red handed.

They seemed almost terrified off him.

Their eyes wild and wide, on the verge between fear and disbelif. They pulled out their weapons and took a step back, not sure how to procede.

The hotel T-rex, not impressed in the slightest took a slow step forward, just to see them take a couple of steps apart, seemingly preparing in case the worst were to happen.

"I sure hope you got a good explenation as to why the f**k you are here or I sware to whatever it is that you fuckers think is holy I will skin you alive and feed you your own testicles." he growled at them so deeply it seemed almost inhuman.

"Not only have you breached the Contract by showing up, you have tried to kill one of my own. A woman at that. Now that's not very gentleman-like. Didn't your mothers ever teach you not to hit someone weaker than you-"

"I'm NOT weaker then them!" She bellowed with every ounce of strenght she had left.

"I'm just tired..."

She said before her strenght finally gave out and she passed out. Darkness took over her mind as she fell deeper unconceous.