AN: Still not mine. Here is the first part of the rest of the story. Let me know what you think, it will make my muse goblins happy--and I hate it when they're upset...

Thorned branches ripped at her bare face and arm as she tried frantically to make way for her cargo in tow. She felt more than heard his short, desperate gasps, his pale fluttering heart beat locked between their hands. She just prayed he wouldn't fall. Prayed neither would she. Pulling him closer, she used her body as a shield to plow through a thick insidious patch of bushes. She registered the slick heat of blood on her side, the rasping of her own breath, the trembling of her body only for a moment before the echoing crashing of foliage only a short distance behind drowned all else.

They were catching up. She could not hear them before, now they were right behind. They were catching up, and she was slowing down, her body trembling with exertion. The child stumbled briefly but managed to stay upright and running.

"Hold on, Stay with me baby." She heard herself say. He answered by tightening his grip between their sweat slicked hands. Pride and love swelled hot in her throat, he was being so brave, she would save him, had to save him. She promised.

They veered a sharp right, hoping to stumble on a road, a house, any civilization. Though what good that would do she did not know. Her pursuers had no qualms with innocent bloodshed. Her vision spiked and shimmered as the tableau of her father's shocked face just before he fell to the ground pounded in her mind.

Throwing up her bloody hand she tried to rip the tears from her eyes. She could not do this now, would not do this now, but the vision would not stop playing.

Her father had stood bravely between his family and the intruders, even as the other guests scrambled for safety, some perhaps finding it. Others, she knew from the screams, had not. After the first sprayof blood all sounds melted together, after he fell and the screams began she did not stop for anything, did not look for her friends or her step-mother, just grabbed her little brother and ran out the back door. And they had followed.

She ran out of the house so fast they must have been right behind. Had they killed everyone else already? No, there was not time. There must have been twelve people in that room, and now they were so close she could hear them breathing, grunting, cursing--could hear someone hiss,

"She's right ahead."

Her gut froze instantly. Me, she thought, they're after me. That was why they followed so quickly. They had been after her the whole time.

Without warning she turned and stumbled, half rolling down a dry river embankment, her brother locked in her arms. He cried out as they hit the bottom, and she heard a soft crack and knew it was her ankle. She grabbed his face in her hands,

"Toby, you have to run."

She felt him try to shake his head, tears welling up in his twelve year old eyes.

"Listen to me, run back the way we came, don't stop for anything, don't stop until you're safe. Do you understand?"

"But what about you?" he croaked, "who will save you?" She could hear them only seconds away but ran a batted hand over his fine gold hair and pulled him into a tight embrace.

"I'll be fine, The best thing you could do for me is get help. Don't look back, I love you, Toby, baby. Now run."

He was crying, but he ran as though he was not completely exhausted, and he did not look back.

She stumbled ahead in the opposite direction of her brother, gasping against the pain in her ankle. She knew it was useless. She did not cry out when a dead weight slammed into her back, shoving her roughly to the dirt. She could feel the man's scarred unshaven face as he whispered vile promises in her ear, his companions laughing and kicking her sides.

She could not possibly fight them off, her side was still bleeding heavily, soaking her pants crimson all the way down to her shoes, to her broken ankle. She could not escape this, but she would be damned if she just closed her eyes and let it all happen.

The one on top of her looked almost innocently surprised as the rock thudded thickly against his skull. She grabbed the hunting knife from his belt, jamming it in his belly once before the others were upon her. Swinging and kicking with the last dregs of her strength she felt a macabre pleasure inside every time the blade struck flesh.

She did not scream when the knife was wrenched from fingers and plunged to the hilt into her own body over and over. She did not scream as the eyes of her killer flared an acid green beneath his heavy lids, and sharp realization hit. Even as a numb blackness crept over her, Sarah did not use her last breath to scream. A cold, rough hand locked over her mouth at the last moment, and the one word she somehow knew she must speak lay unbidden behind her silent lips.