Hunter. Sydney Robinson
empty, and the moonlight filled the room. The waning moonlight shone through the window almost as bright as last night. Angel cautiously sat up and slid herself off the bed. Crouching by the side of her bed, Angel pulled her boots from under her bed as well. Slipping them on, she pulled her black hooded sweatshirt on and was about to leave the room when she thought it would be a good idea to not go empty-handed, especially along a strange town at night, and returned to her bed. She reached into the bottom drawer of her shelves and pulled her knife from its hiding space. Slipping it between the waistband of her pants and underneath her sweatshirt at the small of her back, Angel stood. Angel glanced around the room one more time to make sure that no one else was awake before making her way quietly to the door.
The common way of getting to the outside world was through the main doors located at the front of the mansion at the foot of the grand staircase. But there were two other entrances to the building. One was on the first floor in the back by the kitchens. The second was underneath the dorms in the west wing (where Angel was housed). A disused staircase was located behind a bookshelf down the hall to the right of the door. The bookshelf was located against the outer wall, which most would suspect was the edge of the building, but the staircase had probably been used by the help in the past when this mansion had belonged to a rich family and not a school. It was a passage she had discovered by accident when she had first arrived at the school.
Angel pushed the shelf off the wall a bit and slid between it and the wall, into the open space. Grabbing the back of the shelf, she pulled it back into place and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Angel knew that there were seven steps that were completely together enough to hold her weight, and from there too, much of the stairs had broken away. There was a length of four steps to the landing, which was, for the most part, still together and would hold her weight if she jumped. Placing her right hand on the wall to make sure she didn’t fall off (as the railing from the third step on was among the rubble on the ground at the bottom), she began to descend the stairs. Counting to herself, she stopped when she hit seven and jumped from her step to the landing. Her boots connected to the hybrid of concrete and rebar and caused a dull thud to echo through the closed-off shaft she was in. The flutter of an owl’s wings (or more likely bats) caused Angel to look up.
The moon was just beginning to hover over the opening in the roof above her head, which meant that she only had about four hours until the morning bell went off, and she needed to be in the great hall for PT. She was going to have to make this a quick trip to the center of town and back in order to make it on time. Taking three steps forward, Angel crouched at the edge of the landing and grabbed the side. She stepped off, letting her body swing over the edge, and grabbed the piece of rebar that was protruding from the cement with her right hand. Releasing her grip on the edge of the landing, she held herself suspended by her right hand. She looked to the ground beneath her, hoping to not drop onto uneven ground.
Seeing, in the faint light, that the ground beneath her feet was clear, she released her grip and dropped. Landing with another dull thud, Angel brushed her hands off from the cement dust and grit and made her way to the wall under the landing. The doors to the interior of the building had all been sealed off (in the minds of the Council anyways), so the fact that the exterior wall shared with the landing was crumbling away did not bother anyone. This allowed for Angel to slip out of the building. Angel knew by this point that Ashlee and Kelly were probably halfway to Benedict Street. Checking the height of the moon one last time, Angel ran across the stretch of lawn to the tree line.
Bridgewell, which was the town located down the hill from the school, was located in the center of a bowl-shaped valley encircled by trees. A major road ran through the center of the valley in the north/south direction. Forest road ran a circuit around the town, connecting to every main street. It cut through the forest and provided a marker for Angel as she ran through the trees. Pausing to check that no car was coming, she darted across and continued her downhill descent. Angel ran along the trail in the woods that ran parallel to Ember Street, staying in the tree line that connected the backyards of one of the dead-end neighborhood streets that broke off like spokes from the wagon wheel hub of the town center.
A dog barked in the distance, and as she ran past the underbrush of that yard, she froze when a man came out to yell at the dog and bring it inside. He stood on his back porch and waited as the dog ignored him and began toward the back of the yard.
“Rex! Come here!” the man yelled, coming down the steps. The dog stopped and turned to look at its owner and slowly took a few more steps to the trees. Angel stood frozen, praying the dog would not see her and bark, because if he did, the fury of the owner would be the least of her problems. She frantically began to envision ways to get out of this situation. She could lie and say she was a neighborhood kid, or she could run for it. But if she went for the latter, there was a good chance the owner would think she was a thief and call the cops.
“Rex!” the man called, his tone drawn out and filled with warning. The dog knew this was not the time to test his master’s patience, so it turned and slowly lumbered back to the house. The man opened the door and waited for the dog to go in first. It turned and looked back at where Angel was standing one final time and went inside. She could faintly make out the sound of the man muttering “Pain in my ass” to himself as he followed shortly after. Angel ran down the trail, praying that no more of the families had dogs out at this time of night as she made her way to Elm Street.
Elm was one of the main streets that ran perpendicular to Ember, and it was the street that marked the end of the forests encroachment on the town. From there, Angel would have to make her way without the cover of the trees, and she would have to do it at a brisk walk, unseen by the locals. Leaning against the last tree before the sidewalk, Angel took several rapid short breaths in hope of calming her nerves and working up the ability to step out into the moonlit street. In one quick motion, she leaped from her cover and waited.
Nothing happened; the street was just as silent as it was a moment before. The sound of another dog barking in the distance was the only thing to disturb the silence. Angel opened her eyes slowly and looked around. Nothing was waiting to ambush her. No one was about, really. Why was she worrying? Aside from the fact that this was her first time out of the facility since she could remember, she was not out of the ordinary. Just a regular girl out for a stroll at night. That’s all she was, plain and simple. Only she had a crunch time.
Shaking her head to get her bearings about her, Angel made her way down the street at a brisk walk. She knew that Benedict Street was three blocks away. For once, she was thankful that Jaroslav had made them memorize the map of the town last year. Glancing at the moon to track its procession across the sky, she was amazed to find that her trek there had taken shorter than she had anticipated. Hopeful that she might either beat Kelly and Ashlee to the location or that she would not miss them, Angel turned down the street that would take her to her destination.
Chapter Four
Read-eez, it turned out, was an old two-story bookshop. Crunched in between a Laundromat and a hardware store, the building was falling apart. A light was on. Angel could see it faintly in the front window, which meant it was in the back of the shop. She casually walked up to the door and tried the lever. Even though the sign read Closed, it swung open. Angel slid through the door and grabbed the little bell above the door that she had noticed glinting off the streetlight. Easing the door shut, she flipped the lock to make sure this meeting wasn’t interrupted by anyone.
The room before her was filled with shelves of books. It was a tiny shop on the outside, and the cluttered merchandise made it feel even smaller, almost to the level of claustrophobia. Angel made her way through the maze of bookshelves to the front counter located at the back of the shop as a separator of the work space from what must have been Scott’s living space.
Pressing her hands to the cold wood, Angel vaulted her body over the counter and landed with a soft thud on the other side. She dropped to a crouch and made her way toward the open doorway where the light was coming from. With her back placed to the wood of the frame, Angel stood up slowly and took in the room as she had been trained to do. As she did this, she also reached her right hand behind her back and freed the knife from where its sheath was tucked into her waistband and brought it forward.
The