The NightShade Forensic Files: Under Dark Skies (Book 1)

by A. J. Scudiere

  Mostly she sat and watched the bugs hit the boundary of her cloud of bug repellent. But almost every hour, something would startle her, sending her on a slow grapevine walk around the perimeter of her tiny space. She kept her screen as dim as possible, stayed relatively still, and made no real noise of her own—except maybe biting into the apple. At one point, she took out her night vision glasses and scared the shit out of herself. She was trained for human predators not the herd of deer passing ridiculously close behind her back, not the large cat stalking in the distance, or the thousands of dark-haired “swamp rabbits” that ran wild around here, eating vegetation and giving themselves heart attacks when anything moved. Eleri was starting to feel like a rabbit as she sat there. She reminded herself to find some Zen. She had a job to do, an important one.

  She cleaned the apple juice from her skin and stuffed the wipe and the wrapper down into the plastic bag she’d brought for trash. Then she stood for a ritual reapplication of bug spray, which she was already practically inhaling off her own skin. Unlike Donovan, she was not naturally repellent—just the opposite in fact. When she finished and sat down again, Eleri was stunned.

  They had worked out a simple signal system. There were too many variables for most communication options. Obviously if the tracker went into the boundaries of the City of God, Eleri would mobilize. But other than that, he wouldn’t necessarily be able to, say, sit still for an extended period, or move in an X shape. And there was every possibility that he would need odd patterns as they came up. But they had managed one sign, and now the blue line on her very dim screen showed a track, circled three times around a small space.

  It was the signal that he had found the body.

  Holy shit. Donovan had found Ruth.

  For a moment, she turned sad. They had discussed the possibility that Ruth had made it out alive, that the kids were mistaken. Then they had discussed the probability that scenario was dead wrong.

  Donovan trotted off, gridding the area pretty damn well. His lines weren’t perfectly straight; there were aberrations, probably trees, maybe rocks, anything in his way, but he’d done it. Aside from a few fast motions—his speed was noted on the screen by dashes in the line—he did exactly what he planned. And he hadn’t gotten caught.

  As she watched, he worked the grid, but then the line turned sharply before circling tightly again.

  Another body?

  The third time he made the loop there was no denying that he’d given the signal again. There were two bodies out there. Eleri gave up being good and reached for the donut holes she packed along with the apple. She munched until she honestly had no idea how many she’d eaten, then decided that she’d been so focused it was time to run a search on the perimeter of her area. Using the night vision glasses and keeping her Glock at the ready just for good measure, Eleri walked her own ground.

  The deer had moved on. So had the large cat. Down low she saw mice and up high, owls and other birds of prey. All over she spotted the rabbits that had somehow managed to multiply in the last hour. But all was clear. When she returned to her spot, Eleri cleaned her hands with sanitizer despite the fact that she’d really touched nothing during the slow search, and waved them around to dry off. If someone were watching, they would conclude she was doing an odd dance in the middle of the woods and likely think she was insane. If they somehow knew her history, they would be certain of it.

  Once her hands were dry, she popped another donut hole, sat back down and promptly choked on cinnamon sugar dust. Donovan had made another circle—already traced three times—and it looked like he was starting a fourth.

  Eleri’s mind was reeling.

  There was a whole graveyard there. How would she and Donovan get in to dig them up? Without disturbing the City of God members? It was far enough away from the compound to make her think they should try it. It was also close enough to likely get them killed.

  Checking the clock in the lower corner of her screen, Eleri was startled that it was already well after three a.m. Donovan had a dawn deadline. At the latest, he was supposed to start heading her way when he saw the first hint of the sun. Since she would see he was coming toward her, it would be fine if he wasn’t exactly on time. But she didn’t want to be sitting here, or even packing up and schlepping away in full daylight. She didn’t want Donovan changing when someone was more likely to see him.

  She ate another donut hole and started praying things went well.

  Her fingers hit the bottom of the plastic clamshell and she cursed herself for eating the whole thing. As she stuffed the empty container down into her trash bag, she looked up to see that he had stopped circling bodies and was making a wide arc away from the compound. Unwilling to let her breath out until she knew more, Eleri watched, this time clasping her hands together to keep from snacking on anything, and was gratified to see the line slowly turn back her way. As he was now on the far side of the compound, he still had some miles to cover, but her clock showed his timing was good. He’d get back while it was still dark, and they would be gone from here long before the sun came up.

  She couldn’t dismantle the system until he arrived. Plus, Donovan would need some time once he got back. He had to change, which didn’t seem to take too long, but he would want to get his bag, go away somewhere, and come back. Once she laid eyes on him she could start powering down, but until then, she had to keep it up. Even though she could see her partner was on a straight track back to her now.

  Eleri was just considering a last sweep with the night vision goggles when Donovan made an abrupt ninety-degree turn. Having no clue what this meant, Eleri simply clutched her gun and her NVGs and watched to see what happened. He didn’t go far before he turned a full one-eighty, tracing his steps almost perfectly, given the way the blue trail doubled back. As she watched, he passed his original point, the T where he’d turned, but he kept walking straight ahead, still perpendicular to his route toward her.

  Her brain whirled with possibilities.

  He’d run into someone and changed direction so as not to lead back to her.

  Maybe he encountered some kind of barrier—though what that might be, she couldn’t tell. Could there be a fence, a wall? Eleri didn’t think a tree would stop him. That had to happen all the time; he’d be a crap wolf if he couldn’t handle a fallen log, even a big one.

  His path started to curve toward her again, and the relief that hit her was a bit of a shock. So was the surprise when it was quickly yanked away. He turned sharply and headed back the other direction, tracing close to his original path, but not quite. Watching the screen, she could see that he was making the third line of what was shaping up to be a curved zig zag. Slowly, he was moving toward her, but taking great pains to not come exactly her direction.

  He was just under a mile away now. While he could have covered that distance in just a few minutes with relative ease had he been aimed at her, he was now aimed every way except at her. She could see the amount of ground he covered and the time it took him—his speed had dropped a large percent when he took that first ninety off his path.

  Grabbing the night vision goggles, she held them up to her face, scanning the area rapidly, looking for a sign of anything. When that yielded nothing, she scanned again, this time forcing herself to go more slowly.

  Eleri pushed her breathing into conscious thought, taking over the almost-hyperventilation her body wanted. She tightened her chest muscles and forced her intake to shallow out, knowing that this would help slow her heart rate and keep her from doing something rash. Something was likely wrong. She needed to make calm, informed decisions now—and she needed to do it even though she was neither calm nor informed.

  Unfortunately, the second pass with the glasses also gave her nothing. The forest was too dense to see that far. Peeling the glasses away, she blinked to help adjust her eyes to the screen. Donovan was still repeating the pattern, but curving the ends of his arc a little more. He was tracing a partial circle one way, then back the other, t
ightening the radius a little each time and moving just a little closer to her.

  It took her another minute and another rapid change of orientation, before she caught on.

  Donovan was herding something.

  Or more likely, someone.

  35

  Eleri pulled out her night vision goggles again, though she wasn’t sure they would do her any more good now than they did the last time. What she had learned was that she had to keep looking, so she scanned the entire area.

  Nothing.

  Only the silent streamers of bright moonlight filtered through the dense canopy of the trees.

  In her search, she crept away from the set-up, away from where she could track Donovan. She didn’t want to bring the tablet with her—though it would allow her to walk straight to him, it would also spotlight her face, making her a target to anyone who was in range. Out here, “in range” was deadly.

  She was the one trespassing on someone else’s private property. She was doing this on land she knew full well was home to a militia-like organization. She understood Texas laws favored the property owner in disputes, which in turn gave those owners more impetus to shoot first and ask for ID later. While they might find her badge and know they killed a federal officer, in the end, she would still be very dead. Eleri tread as cautiously as she could.

  Donovan was out there and he had encountered something.

  The problem was, there was no telling what else was out there.

  Slowly, she tracked back to her setup and examined the screen again. Donovan was still moving toward her, still making those sweeping arcs. If he was corralling someone, then Eleri could almost pinpoint the location of the person just by watching Donovan’s path. If he was doing that on purpose, she couldn’t tell.

  In that moment, Eleri made her decision. Maybe Donovan wanted her out there to help bring in whomever he had found. If he wasn’t signaling her, then she could just get out of the way when she got there. Turning the tablet face down to block its light, Eleri patted herself, checking for the weapons she had on hand—Glock, at her side; KaBar knife, strapped to her ankle; backup pistol—an adorable little thing that was perfectly deadly—nestled at the small of her back.

  Stepping carefully, she periodically held the NVGs up to her face, but didn’t keep them there. While they afforded a wealth of information, even these newer models still blocked some of her peripheral vision. Unwilling to sacrifice it, she instead wound up letting hers eyes adjust back and forth.

  As it was more important that she not alert anyone to her presence, her movement was incredibly slow. Pressing cautiously forward, Eleri considered what she might encounter.

  At first she assumed Donovan had caught himself a guard, but after a brief thought, she threw that idea out the window. A guard would be armed. Donovan would not. If the wolf faced down one of these guys, they would simply shoot him, at the very least they would shoot at him. Thus, the person, or maybe thing, Donovan had was not armed.

  She considered that it might be another escapee. And then she had to consider that luck. While she inched through the brush, occasionally lifting her glasses and still coming up blank, Eleri did the math. The City of God was hemorrhaging people lately—specifically women and children. Given the numbers they had seen, her belief that Collier knew of at least one more, and extrapolating for the ones they hadn’t found, well, Eleri came up with a one-in-four chance of someone making a run for it. That was huge.

  She and Donovan had been out here all night, between the compound and Route 162. They chose to come in that way because it was the best traveled nearby road, and thus it made this the right direction to run if you were fleeing Joseph Hayden Baxter and his odd-knuckled fist. By her numbers, she had a twenty to forty percent chance that someone was on the run tonight and she liked those odds.

  Getting excited now, and nearly convinced Donovan had another one, Eleri tried to pick up speed. It worked for about fifteen steps but then backfired when she cracked a branch, the noise reverberating through the air around her, laying a target right on her location.

  Stepping sharply to the right, Eleri tucked herself into some bushes, the best she could do at the moment. If she ran, she’d leave a sound trail much like an arrow pointing right to her. Tightening her chest muscles again, taking conscious control of her breathing, she worked to put herself back into a calmer state.

  Eleri tried to calculate how far away Donovan was now. Tried to see if she could figure out when she would run into him or his prey. Should she try to circle around or come up behind it? Him? Her?

  Circling was too iffy.

  This time when she checked the glasses the green of the night scope revealed an odd pattern. Two oval-ish shapes glared bright at the ground, moving in a slow motion bounce. Mesmerized, Eleri tried to keep her ears open for someone trying to do the same thing to her. A slash of bright came through the goggles just above the moving ovals and disappeared as quickly as it came. It wasn’t until the second time it happened that Eleri comprehended what she was seeing.

  The ovals were feet, bound in white, probably fabric. As she scooted closer she could see a lumpy knot tied on the top of each foot. The slash she’d seen was the hem of a gown, probably in glaring, virginal white.

  Sneaking closer, it became obvious why she hadn’t been able to make out a person before this.

  It was a girl or woman—her long dark hair was tied back in a braid, and Eleri couldn’t see the front of her head. As best Eleri could tell, the movements were timid and non-confrontational, which would suggest a younger woman. She had a blanket draped around her. In this heat the mysterious “she” had to be sweltering. Eleri pondered that decision for a while before concluding the girl understood that her white gown would be a beacon in the dark night. Whether she realized that changing her shape was also a help—Eleri had looked right at her several times before recognizing what she was seeing—remained to be seen.

  It all added up to another fleeing City of God resident. At least they didn’t sleep in their jeans and T-shirts.

  In the distance she could see a set of red eyes a few feet above the ground. They were demon eyes, staring the girl down and probably scaring her shitless.

  Donovan. He was so focused, Eleri couldn’t be certain he had seen her there. So—feeling stupid—she raised her left hand, the one not holding the Glock, and waved at him.

  A small upward bump of his head movement was the only thing that acknowledged her presence.

  Eleri had time while she snuck up to think about how to do this, so when she reached a space behind the girl, she was ready and made a hand motion to Donovan, who offered another slight head movement in response.

  Breathing heavily and moving with a jerky motion, the girl was clearly afraid she was going to die. Close in behind her now, Eleri was still undetected, but she could make out what the girl was muttering to herself.

  “Please, God, don’t let it eat me. I’m sorry, I’ll go home. I shouldn’t be here. I’ve learned my lesson. Please don’t let it eat me . . .” She started through the whole round again. Standing still now, her eyes locked on the black wolf with the eyes glowing red in the night. It stalked a circle around her, trying to push her ever deeper into the forest.

  Eleri stepped into the girl’s line of sight, her finger already at her lips.

  The girl still started to scream but managed to stifle it—hopefully before alerting the entire nearby town. Her mouth worked like a fish upon seeing Eleri, and Eleri cataloged a variety of things.

  Here in the moonlight it was clear the girl was flushed and sweating under the blanket. Even though it wasn’t heavy, the night was nearly eighty degrees. It had been cooler earlier in the week, and Eleri had to wonder what had pushed her out beyond the boundaries with this escape plan on such a bad night for it. Her hair was plastered to her face and her breathing was labored.

  “Ma’am.” She managed to push out on faltering breath, “There’s a wolf behind you.” Her hand came out as t
hough showing her palm would ward off the creature she feared. She was nearly in tears as she pled, “Please be careful.”

  “I’ve got this.” Eleri’s voice was as low as she could keep it as she turned to Donovan.

  It was strange seeing him like this. Logically, she knew it was him, but her brain was simply reciting that fact—she didn’t yet recognize him or have that chemical reaction a body felt when encountering someone it knew. “Go away wolf!”

  She made the sound harsh, glared in his direction, unsure what to do, but knowing that if she said “It’s all good, this is Donovan!” the girl would pass out and become dead weight. Since Eleri didn’t have anyone with hands to help her carry the girl she didn’t want that to happen.

  Donovan must be thinking along the same lines as he stepped sideways at her command but not away. Eleri said it again, and finally took a few rapid steps in his direction, almost forcing him to back up.

  “Shoot it.”

  The words were soft, a prayer not a command, but it pointed out to Eleri the danger of what they were doing. She did not raise the gun at Donovan, but he did turn and trot off, presumably making a circle and heading back to their camp. A thought raced through Eleri’s head on an odd laugh, “No worries, wolf, I’ve got it from here.”

  The girl’s eyes went wide, as though she was shocked by this turn of events. Eleri thought it made perfect sense. You were a pussy and the wolf tracked you, I stood up to it and it went away. But the large eyes staring back at her demanded more.

  Keeping her voice low, she said, “I’m wearing a ton of bug spray. It probably didn’t like the smell of me.” And she offered the sweetest smile she could muster in the middle of the night, after eating a whole pack of donut holes and finding out that there was an entire graveyard just beyond the City of God.

  Staying silent now, she motioned to the girl to follow her, and it took a few tries to gain any kind of trust and get the girl to come. She tried a whispered introduction. “My name is Eleri.”