You Are Mine Little Sister (by Syra Tucker) novel Chapter 161

The night took our side, drawing the blinds across the sky, and as if the world had taken our side, we came across an isolated abandoned church.

We stopped running, everyone panting like we'd run the year out of the calendar.

"I don't know about y'all, but I think I'm hiding in there. Can't run no more," one girl wheezed, bent double.

No one disagreed. We made our way into the building through one of the broken windows and hoped the guards would run past it.

The inside was dark. One of the girls suggested we check around for anything that could be of help, maybe an abandoned cellphone or something. That was hard to do, considering the darkness, but we managed. In the end, nothing.

"We should spread out and hide. Give it some time. When we sure the guards must've passed through, we'll keep—"

Gunfire cut her words in half. Windows shattered, glass raining down in furious applause. We dropped to the floor while covering our ears as the holy place choked on bullets.

They found us. Even the church couldn't save us.

When the shots paused, silence screamed. Then chaos ripped loose as we scattered all over. The church was larger than I'd guessed with multiple rooms on nearly every corner.

Josephine and I separated. I didn't even know which way she ran, and there was no time or safety to find out.

Somehow, I ended up with another girl—the same one who had gutted Nina in the van. We stumbled into a side room, its broken projector and tangled wires telling me it used to be a media room.

"H—How sure are we we won't be found here?" Panic ratcheted my voice down to low.

"We can't be sure, angel. Can only hope."

She lurched forward, dragging a broken table across the floor. While she strained against it, my eyes snagged on something odd—a tile near the corner that didn't sit flush with the rest.

"Claudia," I called her name.

"What?"

Stooping low, I tried picking the tile and my suspicion was confirmed. There was a hole, carved into the bones of the building.

"Holy fuck," Claudia breathed. Her eyes lit up like dying stars. "We can hide here. Quick, get in!"

I didn't think twice. I dropped through the gap, not caring what was in there. It couldn't be worse than Blayne's prison.

"Well, my guts told me it wasn't her. Follow my gut feeling, dude."

I squeezed my eyes shut so hard stars buzzed at the edges. The men's boots circled. Glass crunched somewhere as gunshots barked in the distance.

"The bitch. She used to be a good fuck. Quite sad to see that pussy wasted."

"Quit lusting after a corpse and keep looking. We can't go back without Blade's girl."

Their steps moved across the floor. For a breath I thought they might find me, thought they might lift the tile and look straight through into the dark.

More gunshots came from a distance. I bit the inside of my cheeks until it hurt. I'd never fought a scream so hard before.

"Well, she ain't here. Let's keep moving," one of the men in my room said, and next came their receding footsteps.

When their noises finally dwindled, the breath escaped me in a rush I didn't know I'd been keeping. I lowered myself fully to the floor, not feeling the cold or the grit, and clamped my hand over my mouth to hold the sobs back. I tried not to, but I couldn't stop thinking of the fact that there was a dead lady above me. She'd been a face I saw every day. A voice that had once joked about stupid things.

'She's no different from the one you left in your room, Rali. You two are no different.'