Hide and Seek: The Mad Girl Sees All novel Chapter 39

Chapter 39

Buried under the dirt, the bald man heard her. He played dead and refused to so much as twitch.

“Playing deaf?”

Lyra flicked her wrist. The Wraithslayer’s edge swept down at the pit.

“AAARGH!”

When the blade pulled free, it dragged a string of thick blood droplets with it. After that, the pit went silent.

Lyra stood at the edge of the pit and flicked her wrist, sending the blood from the blade splattering against a thick trunk nearby.

She turned to the remaining seven. “Now, who else thinks this pit belongs to them?”

All seven stumbled back a full step. The ringleader’s jowls trembled.

He glanced at the bald man buried in the dirt, then at the massive scythe in Lyra’s hand.

He gritted his teeth and jerked his chin up. “This is murder!”

“We’re all players. The game just started-you should be helping us!”

“Hogging the pits is one thing, but actually killing us?”

His voice rose louder. “The whole world will condemn what you’ve done.”

Lyra tilted her head and looked at him like he was an idiot.

“Stealing my stuff.”

“Beating up my people.”

“And now you want to talk about helping each other out?”

She bared her teeth in a smile. There was no warmth behind her eyes.

“Do I look that easy to fool?”

Before the words finished, Lyra slammed her foot into the ground and shot forward like an arrow off the string.

The ringleader saw only a blur. The black shadow was already on him.

“You-“His mouth opened. The sound caught in his throat.

The Wraithslayer’s edge whistled across in a sweeping arc.

Shink!

A column of blood erupted skyward.

The ringleader’s head tumbled twice in midair before crashing into the bushes.

The headless torso swayed twice, then thudded onto the leaf pile. The cut was clean. Hot blood sprayed across the people

next to him.

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Chapter 39

The remaining six broke completely.

No screaming. No questions.

Under that kind of terror, the throat simply couldn’t make a sound.

They turned and scrambled, half-falling, deeper into the forest.

Lyra sheathed her blade without sparing the corpse a glance. She turned and walked over to Lina.

“You okay?”

Lina shook her head quickly. “I’m fine. Just scratches.”

Sergei pushed his head out of the pit, tossed the bald man aside, and wiped the blood off his face.

Lydia shook out her wrists and walked over.

Lyra pointed at the other three pits. “Get back down.”

“I just tested it. Unless I’m wrong, the ice trees track heat to find people.”

Sergei nodded and immediately turned back to patch up his cover.

Lydia hopped into her pit and started pulling branches over the top.

Lina kept working on her own pit, watching Lyra the whole time.

“Lyra, aren’t you coming down?”

Lyra spun the Wraithslayer once in her hand. It shrank into a dagger, and she tucked it into the hidden pocket at her hip.

“Nope.”

“Why not?” Lina’s voice tightened. “We’ve wasted so much time already. The trees could show up any second!”

Lyra pointed in the direction the six runners had fled.

“They messed up my turf and now they just get to walk away?”

“I’m the petty type. I never let a grudge sit overnight.”

Lina clung to the edge of the pit. “But those monsters are out there!”

“They don’t have pits. Even if we let it go, they’re not surviving this round,” Lina pressed. “Don’t dirty your own hands.”

Lyra wasn’t listening. She waved Lina off. “Bury yourself properly. Don’t go making trouble for me.”

With that, she turned and took off after the trail of messy footprints.

The tracks were a chaos of churned leaves and snapped twigs scattered everywhere.

From up ahead came a violent rustling. The dry scrape of enormous roots dragging across the forest floor.

Lyra froze, then darted left and pressed herself behind the thick trunk of a palm.

She bent down, scooped up a fistful of damp soil, and smeared it across her face and neck.

The combat suit had an insulation layer. Only her bare skin would give off real heat.

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Chapter 39

She held her breath and eased her head out. Sixty feet away, an ice tree was thrashing wildly

Its roots crisscrossed along the ground while two barbed branches whipped through the air in a wild frenzy

Wrapped in the middle of one branch was a person-the blond youth who had bolted earlier.

Wooden spikes pierced his thigh and shoulder. Blood streamed down the bark.

“Help!”

“Aaagh!”

The ice tree didn’t react to his screams. It only sensed the living heat.

The branches tightened.

CRACK.

The sound of bones snapping. The blond youth fell silent.

The tree thrashed a moment longer, then flung the cooling corpse aside and shifted its roots, dragging itself off in another direction.

Lyra leaned against the trunk and stared at the heap of pulped meat on the ground.

“Tough luck.”

She skirted the bloody patch and kept moving.

Soon Lyra stopped beside a pile of jumbled rocks. Three people were huddled behind the biggest one, balled up and shaking.

Lyra walked over. Her boot landed on the stone.

Tap.

All three heads jerked up.

They saw the mud-streaked face and the slowly expanding scythe.

“Stay back!”

One of the men shot to his feet, gripping a thick branch.

“You crazy bitch!” the man shouted.

Lyra didn’t say a word. Her wrist twisted, and the scythe blade carved a perfect half-moon through the air.

Shink.

Blood erupted from the man’s neck. His body collapsed limply to the ground.

The remaining man and woman shrieked in pure panic.

Both dropped to their knees, begging.

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