BLUE VENOM

Three - Kain (Relief or pain?)

I ran towards the source before I really knew what I was doing. I only hesitated a second. My feet splashed through the ground as I dashed through the right side of the jungle. The second I was under the peculiar, seventeen feet high trees made of black gum, most of the daylight was immediately swallowed and I was sucked into mysterious, wet, dark green and black.

"Help!", the girl screamed. "Help!" Her screams were ear piercing and my heart burnt with every step.

"Masie" Ty was on my heel somewhere in the lush leaves behind me. I heard him swatting jungle greens away. "Sutton! Are you crazy? Stay here!"

But adrenaline drove me towards the screams.

I yelled as I nearly ran into a huge spanning of cobwebs. I slithered to the ground and under it. When I came up on the other side I rolled over the wet black mud and through dark leaves, down a steep drop of the jungle floor. As soon as gravity stopped pulling, I scrambled to my feet and looked around. Another scream.

I ran towards it and my comat boots soaked completely wet to my ankles in what seemed like a shallow pond. Here, I hesitated, but it didn't seem to get deeper.

Weird cricket like sounds where all around me. But they sounded different. Almost electric. Unknown birds screeched above me in the wild. I pressed my eyes close before I remembered that that was the worst idea possible.

A big hand grabbed me by my arm and my eyes snapped open. I screamed. The momentum of whoever grabbed me pulled us both to the ground, which in this case meant, that we both splashed into the muddy jungle water. I swallowed mud and quickly came back up. We rolled around for what seemed like a whole minute before a hand pressed to my mouth.

I lay, back first in the flat jungle pond and above me in the half dark shone narrow blue eyes that I knew way too well.

"Kain" I nearly spat it out like a curse but his mud soaked hand on my mouth muffled all sound. His weight pressed down on me heavy. He only uttered two hoarse words. "Stay.. down!"

•

We lay in the flat pond, elbow to elbow, side by side, his heat seeping into my length, with most of our bodies covered by the water while our upper bodies and heads peaked out into the flickering light of the jungle. Kain roughly grabbed my chin and turned it towards the diagonal right, inching his hand away from my jaw and pointing forward between the opening of a few big, green and red leaves. Light glimmered through.

A big shadow moved by.

I nearly let out a help but his hand was on my mouth again and then he pressed me down into the pond, following under as well, until I felt my vision going blurry and the oxygen running out, strange sounds screeching in my heavy head, my pressured ears.

He let me back up. I gasped for air, just when another big figure crashed into the pond.

Kain didn't hesitate. Although he was a good amount less bulky, be grabbed Ty's huge bearlike build by the shin and yanked him into the pond on his other side, hissing: "No sound or we're dead."

The three of us stayed down and I realized that it was hotter in this area of the jungle. A lot hotter. Sweat stood on my skin and the pond was like warm around me. A weird hum in the leaves. My heartbeat drummed against my ribcage. My sticky wet and mud clustered hair hung into my thorn scratched face. I had to suppress a loud cough to get all the slime out of my mouth.