Enclave Read Online Free

in the darkness and the silence. Fine, I could handle myself. I wasn’t scared.
    I told myself that right up until we made a left turn and I heard noises in the distance. Wet, sucking sounds echoed, so I had no idea how close they really were. The ground roughened beneath my feet, broken metal and chunks of stone. Fade melted into the dark, going toward danger.
    Because it was my job, I followed.
    We came to a crossing, where four tunnels connected. Above, the ceiling had cracked and fallen, leaving debris everywhere. Sickly light trickled in from a great distance, speckling everything with a peculiar glow, and I spotted my first Freak.
    Because we moved as silently as twin knives, the monster hadn’t seen or heard us yet. It crouched over a dead thing, tearing raw flesh with its teeth. There would be more nearby. In my lore classes, they’d told us Freaks ran in packs.
    Fade made a silent gesture, telling me he would take this one. I should watch for the rest. A lift of my head confirmed my understanding of the plan. He went in, lean and deadly, and ended the creature with a lightning-fast spike of his blade. It shrieked, likely alerting the rest. The death call carried like a mournful song.
    Movement to the north drew my eye. We had two more incoming at a dead run. Instinct kicked in, leaving me no space for fear. My knives slipped into my hands—unlike most Hunters, I could fight with two at the same time.
    Silk didn’t lie. I am the best of my group.
    I told myself that as the first Freak slammed into me. But I greeted it with an upward slash and an outward thrust with my left hand. Hit the vitals. Go for the kill shot. I heard Silk’s voice in my head, telling me, Every moment you spend fighting this thing drains energy you won’t have later, when you need it most.
    My blade bit into rank, spongy flesh and slammed through bone. I shook my head mentally. Too high. I didn’t want the rib cage. It howled in pain and raked its filthy claws toward my shoulder. This wasn’t like training; this thing didn’t use moves I knew.
    Grimly, I countered with my right hand. I wished I had the leisure to watch Fade, assess his style, but this was my first real fight, and I didn’t want to come out of it looking worse than an untrained brat. It mattered that I earned my partner’s respect.
    My leg lashed out, and I combined the kick with an angled knife thrust. Both connected, and the Freak went down, gushing foul blood. It didn’t look like ours, darker, thick and fetid. I popped it in the heart with my left hand and danced back to avoid getting clawed while it was in its death throes.
    Fade finished faster than me. To be expected, I supposed, given his greater experience. I cleaned my knives on the rags the Freak wore and slid them back into their sheathes. Now I understood on a visceral level why the Hunters spent so much time caring for their weapons. I felt like I might never get the stain off the metal.
    “Not bad,” he said at last.
    “Thanks.”
    I’d done it. I was officially blooded. As much as the new scars on my arms, that marked me as a Huntress. My shoulders squared.
    We left the three corpses. Horrible as it sounded, other Freaks would eat them. They had no care for their dead. They did not attack each other, but otherwise, anything in the tunnels—living or dead—offered fuel for their endless appetites.
    By comparison the rest of our patrol passed with relative ease. Half the traps yielded meat. A number of animals lived down here with us; four-legged furry creatures we called food. I killed a wounded one, where the snare hadn’t broken its neck clean, and that bothered me more than killing the Freak. I held its warm body in my hands and bowed my head over it. Wordless, Fade took it from me and dropped it in the sack with the others. We had brats to feed.
    I didn’t know how he marked the time, but eventually he said, “We should head back.”
    On the return, I tried to memorize our route. Though no