The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

knife at my side.
    Then with a jerk of my head I managed to get a good look at it.
    A large cat, the size of a mountain lion stared at me as it snapped my arm forward. A cat which I knew had six legs, long, gut-ripping claws, and a thick scaled tail. It was a carracat, a mutated animal from Skyfall.
    The creature bit down harder and tried with jerking thrusts to tear my arm from its socket. I gritted my teeth and struggled to raise myself but four of its legs were pinning me down.
    Thick fur pressed against me as it pulled me under it, warm and strong from ropey muscles that I could feel flex against my body. It smelled like sour and dander from its fur-covered skin.
    “DEEK!” I tried to scream. I choked as two of its paws climbed higher up my chest, digging its serrated claws into my neck in its struggle to snap my arm. I pulled my free hand down and with a shaky but focused thought I managed to grab the combat knife.
    I dove the blade inbetween its protruding ribs and in a flash it released my arm.
    I struggled to get to my feet but as I rose it pounced on my back, taking the hood of my jacket into its teeth. I felt a hot snort as it pulled, its weight throwing me off balance and bringing me to my knees.
    I dropped the knife but with a burst of adrenaline I jumped back to my feet, the creature still on top of me tearing apart my hood.
    My mind suddenly flashed, to a time long ago when I had jumped on someone’s back. They had run backwards until I was slammed against a wall. Well, I might not have a wall, but I had the ground.
    I flung myself backwards and, with a hope and a wish, I landed on top of the creature hard, snapping its jaws from my clothing and temporarily leaving it stunned.
    I rolled off of it and ran towards the door trying to climb the steps, smelling rain and blood in my nose now. I reached my arm out to the handle but my legs were shaking my entire body. My hand grazed the door knob and I fell forward; half in the safety of the house, half in the rain, the darkness, and the awaiting predator.
    My chest rose and fell, my mind seemed to race in all directions but at the same time it stood frozen and still. Unable to command my body to rise, I took to crawling through the door frame.
    An overwhelming weight slammed my body down; the wind got knocked out of me. I gasped and waited for the jaws to wrap around my throat.
    Then with nothing but a breeze against my neck and body, the weight was gone, only to be replaced by the intense and bone-chilling sound of a vicious fight. A violent and emotionally-jarring racket of two beasts tearing each other apart.
    I crawled into the door frame and collapsed onto the wooden floor, my chest frozen and clenched in a terrorized stupor. I couldn’t breath and with every desperate gasp my body only turned to thicker ice; the snarling and snapping of a fight to the death happening only feet away from me.
    I collapsed beside the stove and grabbed a combat knife with a shaking hand. I leaned up against warm stove and held the knife.
    Then the next blow to my mind, I heard a rattling behind me. I turned and saw a medium-sized carracat with my salvaged meat in its jaws. We looked at each other in shock for a split second before it shot past me and ran out the door into the darkness.
    I wanted to crawl into the kitchen to see if there were any others, but my brain forced me to stay stationary with the knife.
    “Deek!” I cried, knowing the deacdog would never hear me in his frenzied mind. The once silent mountain pass was filled with such deafening noise I thought the fabric of reality had burst around me. My ears hurt, my senses hurt, and my mind felt like it was edging inch by inch to a breakdown I had only been holding off from sheer will.
    Without telling them to, my hands cupped my ears and I stared at the shadowed silhouettes of my boots. The sounds of the fighting awakening every primal instinct in me. I put my hands to my ears and pressed, not because I was a coward,