"They don't know you're awake yet. Stay down."
He had never played dead before.
He had been legitimately dead. Sometimes for hours. Dampening the earth with his own blood. His heart silent and still inside his chest.
He had never been one for the element of surprise, preferring instead of jump up as soon as the feeling seeped back into his fingertips and his consciousness danced back over the line between the living and the dead.
The shock and fear reflected back at him in the eyes of his enemy would never cease to satisfy him in ways no other mortal act could.
Her words were the first thing he heard as his senses were reactivated. Soft and familiar. The light of life leading him back from the shadows of non existence.
He would try it her way.
Play dead until one of the assholes crept closer to make certain that he was. When a cold hand reached up to grab the forearm of the man brave enough to check for a pulse, it would be a different kind of reaction. Another brand of fear. An alternative degree of shock.
Now all he had to do was to keep from smiling as he laid there…















