The unmistakable sound of heavy footsteps crashing through the woods behind me was now too close for me to outrun. My only option was to hide and hope whoever it was ran past me. Then, I could backtrack and find Nathan.
I scampered behind a fallen tree a few yards away and peeked over it to watch for my pursuer. Only then did I realize I no longer heard gunshots. Either I had run out of range, or the battle was over.
Who had taken the last shot?
Nathan. Of course it was Nathan. It had to be Nathan. It would be really awesome if it were him running through the woods after me. I wasn’t optimistic.
There was a separation in the tree canopy that allowed just enough moonlight through for me to watch as a man I immediately knew was not Nathan drew closer. He slowed as he approached, like he knew I was near.
He was tall and fit like Nathan, but that was where the similarities ended. He was even scarier looking than the others, with unnaturally pale skin enhanced by the moonlight and dark empty voids for eyes that meticulously scanned the area. When he turned in my direction, I lowered behind the tree. I hated not keeping my eyes on him, but I couldn’t risk letting him see me. I stayed down long enough for his gaze to shift away from me before I lifted my head.
He was gone. My eyes darted around, desperately trying to locate him. I strained to hear one footstep, one snapping twig, one heavy breath. I heard nothing.
“Boo.”
I jumped away from the voice inches from my ear, and a scream rose up in my throat as I spun around, coming face to face with him. His eyes were no longer empty voids, but burning golden nuggets. They could have been tiny flames, and I was staring into the very pits of hell.
With a humorless laugh, he lunged for me. His grip was tight as it clamped around my waist, and he hoisted me up in one arm like I was a ragdoll. His free hand covered my mouth, smothering my screams as he lugged me back toward the road.
I dug my heels into the ground, trying to slow our progress, but my feet ineffectively dragged behind me. I drove my fingernails into his arms, trying to inflict enough pain for him to loosen his hold. When that didn’t work, I went for his face. He shifted and tightened his grip so that I couldn’t even do that. Struggling to breathe with his viselike clutch around my chest only intensified my desperation. I kicked my feet at his, and he stumbled slightly.
I did it again and again, struggling in his grasp, my breaths coming in shallow gasps as his grip tightened. Finally, my persistence paid off. One of my feet got under his, and he toppled face first, losing his hold on me as he went down. I landed on my knees and got up before he did. I ran, and hoped it was in the right direction.
Toward Nathan. More than anything, I hoped he was alive.
I heard the man-beast-thing behind me, closing the distance. I pumped my legs faster and harder to keep ahead of him. My chest burned for air, my vision blurred, and my ankle throbbed. I ignored it all. I had to outrun him. If he caught me, I was dead.
His fingers grazed my back, and then caught the heel of my foot. I stumbled and fell forward, smashing my face into the ground. The impact pushed the air from my lungs. I recovered quickly and crawled to my knees, but it wasn’t fast enough.
He was on me before I could get up. He flipped me over onto my back and lowered his face to mine. His lips twisted into a sinister grimace. The golden flames in his eyes surged. His breath smelled like death, and made me gag.
I struggled to squirm out from under him. He pressed a knee into my chest and threw his other leg over the both of mine, pinning me to the ground with his weight. He held both my hands above my head in one of his and, with his free hand, gripped my chin, forcing me to look up at him. From the look on his face, I knew that he planned to kill me right then and there.
Despite the knee pressing into my lungs, I got a big enough gulp of air to scream for Nathan. I only managed part of his name before I was backhanded in the mouth. It hurt enough to bring me up short. Temporarily.
I writhed beneath him and yelled again. This time, I got the whole name out before I received another smack to the face. Tears sprung up in my eyes, partly from the pain. Mostly out of frustration. Where was Nathan? I didn’t want to consider the possibility that he was already dead. If he were, I would be next. He was my only hope.
“Nathan! Nathan!”
It was pure fear that pushed his name out of my lungs as the beast on top of me clobbered me over and over. Finally, he clamped his hand over my mouth, shoving my cries back down my throat. When his hand shifted to pinch my nose shut, I bucked under him and shook my head from side to side. He was too strong for me. Nothing worked. The hand stayed.
The freak was going to smother me!
I didn’t want to die this way—alone, on the cold forest floor, at the hands of a monster. Adrenaline surged, kicking me into warrior-mode. Working my mouth open, I got a chunk of his palm between my teeth, and clamped down—with everything I had.
“Argh!” He pulled his hand back.
I sprung out from under him and kicked him in the stomach while he was still reeling from the bite. The kick barely fazed him, but it didn’t matter. Someone else whizzed by me and slammed into him, driving him off of me, and allowing me to wriggle free. I watched the two shadowy figures wrestle on the ground in front of me. It was too dark, and they were moving too fast, to tell who was who. One of them had to be Nathan. I hoped one of them was Nathan.
One finally gained the upper hand, flipped the other onto his back, and drove a knife down. A wet gurgling cry pierced the night as the one on top plunged the knife deeper. Then deeper still until the nightmarish noises stopped. I held my breath as the body disintegrated.
The remaining shadow turned to me. I scurried backward, suddenly afraid that I had been wrong, and it wasn’t Nathan. It was too dark. I couldn’t see him clearly. And he wasn’t saying anything.
Why wasn’t he saying anything?
Whoever it was grabbed my arm and I screamed. My foot connected with something soft. There was a grunt, followed by Nathan’s strained voice, “Easy. It’s me. It’s okay.”
I froze in relief. He inched closer and I saw his face. His eyes.
I lunged forward, stunning both of us when I threw my arms around his neck. This time, I didn’t care if he saw or heard me cry. I was so happy he was alive and, because of him, so was I.
The biggest surprise of the evening—and trust me, there had already been some whoppers—was that Nathan didn’t immediately brush off my fragile emotional state. He let me cry on his shoulder until his shirt was sullied to the point of humility, and I was the one who eventually withdrew, cheeks flaming and eyes diverted from his.
“Are you alright?” he asked softly.
“No,” I whined with a sniffle I knew sounded every bit as pathetic as I felt.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him roll his head from side to side. I knew he was thinking he meant physically, not emotionally, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he helped me to my feet. And that was the end of the nurturing side of Nathan. “You have a cell phone on you?” he asked gruffly.
I dug into my jean’s pocket, withdrew my phone, and placed it into his outstretched hand. He pulled his arm back and chucked it into the woods behind me.
My mouth dropped open. “What the—” I gaped at him. “What did you do that for?”
“It can be traced.” There was that accusatory tone again. I wondered if that was how they had found us. Something about the rigidness of his jaw and the flare of his nostrils warned me not to ask.
I wanted to know who those guys were, and why they were trying to kill us, but I bit my tongue on those questions too. I knew I wouldn’t get an answer. Not while Nathan was in his man-on-a-mission mode.
The list of questions grew, and grew.
* * *
Four crimson pools stained the gravel. Bullets littered the ground at my feet. I kept my eyes up to avoid the signs of death around me, and watched as Nathan climbed into the back of the Jeep. H
e tossed out my book bag, the sleeping bags, tent, water bottles, a few boxes of ammunition, and jumped down, wearing his baseball cap again.
He left me in the middle of the road, with the contents of the Jeep, to check out the other vehicles. I assumed for keys, but he returned with a map, a flash light, and a large camouflage sac big enough to carry all our stuff, with room to spare.
He spread the map out on the hood of one of the trucks and studied it with the flashlight. I was about to offer to load our things, but I had one of those feelings again.
“Are we walking?” I asked hesitantly.
He kept his face buried in the map. “Yep.”
I hesitated. It was almost too obvious. “You realize there are two perfectly suitable vehicles here, including the one you’re currently using?”
The Jeep and the truck that had rammed it were beyond drivable. The other two, aside from a few bullet holes, were fine.
“We can’t use them.”
I hated that tone he used with me. It kicked my attitude into high gear. “Why not?”
He glared at me. “If we use one of their trucks, they can track us. We won’t get far.”
Oh. I hadn’t thought about that. Instead of admitting to that oversight, I folded my arms and made a face at his back when he turned away to study the map again.
Suddenly, he stepped back with his face tipped up to the sky and turned in a half circle. When he started looking between the map, the sky, and the woods around us, I realized he was using the stars as a guide. I’d heard it was possible, but had never actually witnessed it before. It was pretty cool—and a little funny—to watch. When he seemed to have it figured out, he glanced at me, and I didn’t hide the amusement on my face.
“Let’s go.” He stuffed the map and flashlight into the camouflage bag along with the rest of our gear, and flung it over his shoulder.
“Wait,” I said. “Did you just use the stars as a guide?”
“Uh-huh.” He sounded bored as he started for the edge of the woods, opposite the direction I had run earlier.
“You learn that in the boy scouts?” I was impressed, though he wouldn’t be able to tell through all the sarcasm.
“I wasn’t a boy scout.”
Yeah, no kidding. I was pretty sure they taught manners. “So, how did you learn to do that?”
He turned to me as I trotted across the road after him. His face carried a blend of reluctantly amused annoyance, but when his eyes flicked to mine briefly, and then snapped back a second later, all traces of humor were gone. I didn’t know what I had done to piss him off that fast, but the look on his face brought me up short, and I cowered as he closed the distance between us. He dropped the sac to the ground and tipped my face up to his, tilting it from side to side. I realized this was the first he was seeing whatever damage that man-beast had done. Standing in the road, under a gap in the tree canopy, the moonlight showed him what he had previously overlooked.
If the blue storm clouds I was looking into were any indication, I was sure he wished he could bring that guy back just so he could kill him again. After slowly peeling off every one of his toenails.
Or maybe that was what I wanted.
“Did this happen from the accident?” His voice was tight.
I shook my head.
“In the woods?”
I nodded, and his jaw twitched.
“Did you hear me yelling for you?” I saw the barely discernible nod of his head; saw that he wasn’t going to like hearing what was coming. “He smacked me around to shut me up.”
Nathan’s eyes narrowed, hardened. He definitely didn’t like hearing that. Wordlessly, he lifted the hem of his sweatshirt, moistened a section with his tongue, and dabbed at the corners of my mouth and chin.
“I don’t see where this came from,” he murmured to himself as he worked. He lifted his eyes to mine. “Is this your blood?”
I shook my head. “He tried suffocating me.” Nathan’s hand stopped moving as he waited for me to continue. “So I bit him.”
He nodded and I thought maybe, just maybe, he nearly smiled.
“I drew blood.” I paused to consider something I hadn’t thought about until then. My voice rose in a panic. “Wait a minute. I got his blood in my mouth.”
Nathan eyed me curiously, like he wasn’t sure he wanted to know where I was going with that. Did I want to go there? Too late now. I had to go there.
My voice trembled. “Am I going to become whatever he was?”
Nathan dropped his hand, letting his sweatshirt fall back into place. He looked at me and, this time, I knew he was trying to keep from laughing. “Whatever he was?” he repeated slowly.
“He wasn’t normal. He wasn’t...” I shrugged. Did I really want to finish that thought?
“What?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like a vampire or zombie kind of thing, is it? Because I don’t believe in that stuff.”
“Then why did you just ask if you would turn into whatever he was?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Just answer the question.”
“No, you won’t turn into whatever he was. Not because you got his blood in your mouth. Not ever.”
I stared at Nathan warily. “So what was he anyway?”
Nathan looked over my head and took a deep breath. “We’ve got to get moving, get off the road.”
My voice rose again, this time in anger. “Are you ever going to tell me what’s going on?”
He glanced at his watch like he was planning to set up an appointment to talk to me. “We’ve got a few hours of walking ahead of us. They’re coming, now, as we’re standing here, wasting time. Once we put some distance between us and them, I’ll explain what I can.”
A few hours of walking? I made a face, which he ignored.
“Come on.” He nodded his head at the woods looming ahead of us.
“We’re walking through the woods? What’s wrong with the road?”
He looked at me like he really hoped I wasn’t that stupid. I wasn’t. I was in shock, and not thinking straight. Obviously, they would be looking for us on the road.
I cleared my throat and rallied up some attitude. “We’re going in there with nothing but a map and your star reading skills to guide us?” He walked off without an answer, and I called after him, “You never did say how it is that you know how to do that.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “All masochistic assholes can.”
I faltered briefly, and a reluctant smile spread across my face, but he wasn’t around to see it. He was way ahead of me, already trudging into the woods. I scurried after him, secretly impressed.
So, it seemed he had a soft side and a sense of humor. Throw in his killer good looks, and I was afraid to say I had a dangerous combination on my hands.
CHAPTER 8
The only thing worse than walking blindly through the woods at night was walking blindly through the woods at night, while trying to keep up with Nathan. The man was a machine. And me? Well, not so much. I hated the woods under normal circumstances. My throbbing ankle, the mind-numbing cold, and the fact that we were being hunted by guys trying to kill us only made it worse. I would be a wreck if not for Nathan. I would also be very lost.
From what I knew about him, the man had no limits. He could appear out of thin air and save my life like it was the sole purpose of his existence, take out a whole bunch of bad guys single-handedly, drive like a stunt driver, and tell direction by the stars. He made the impossible look easy. After all I have seen, and all that I knew, I couldn’t figure, for the life of me, what we were doing walking through the woods. It seemed like such a regression from what I knew he was capable of.
“Yo, Nathan, is it just me or does it seem like we’re walking up a lot?”
Shouldn’t we be walking down the mountain, toward the road, toward civilization?
“That’s because we are walking up.”
Of course. “And why is that?”
“We’re going out of t
he way for a little bit. Until things settle down.”
“We’re hiding out in the mountains?”
“Yes.” He was much more confident about the idea than I was, but who was I to question him? We walked west, or that was what he said when I asked. He wasn’t in a particularly talkative mood, so I didn’t press for details. West and up. That was the most information I’d gotten all night.
We walked for hours, with me struggling to keep up with him. Finally, he stopped, dropped the sac on the ground, and waited for me to catch up.
“You’re limping,” he observed.
“I twisted my ankle.” I shrugged like it was no big deal, even though it was killing me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t realize it would have mattered,” I returned heatedly.
Nathan shot me a stormy look that rivaled the one I was giving him. He sat on the ground against a tree and motioned for me to do the same. I sat across from him and he pulled my foot into his lap, exposing it to the chilly night air. By contrast, his fingers felt like fire on my skin as he poked and prodded my ankle. I jumped when he touched a sore spot.
He glanced up at me. “That hurt?”
I rolled my eyes. “A little.”
He pushed another spot. “How about here?”
“Not as bad.”
He tested the stability, or so he said. In my opinion, all he did was make it feel worse. When he was finished, he declared it a sprain, and didn’t seem to think anything was broken.
“We’ll rest here for a few minutes,” he said, leaning his head against the tree.
I scooted to the tree next to his and did the same. Only because I was that exhausted was I able to pretend the hard bark was a soft tower of feathers. I closed my eyes and, for a moment, thought I might even fall asleep. It must have been really late.
“Hey, can you tell the time from the stars, too?” I opened one eye and turned it to him when he didn’t answer. “You don’t like to talk much, do you?”
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