Hunter's Moon

by Dana Stabenow

Senta laughed at Eberhard when he let her go. They both looked at Kate, identical predatory smiles on their faces. “Perhaps we could share her,” Senta suggested.

  Eberhard liked this idea. “Perhaps we could. We have all night, liebchen, before the plane returns. And I think this one will do anything we ask of her, just to stay alive. Look at her, she hasn’t even looked at her man, for fear it will make us think she cares for him, that she might want revenge for him. How much farther will she go? It could be—” he bent his head and ran his teeth along Kate’s jaw “—amusing to find out.”

  He bit Kate, hard, where jaw and throat met.

  She stood motionless in his grasp, enduring it because she had to, because for the moment there was nothing else to do. Now was not the time to fight.

  Soon, but not now, not yet.

  His hand cupped her breast and squeezed, not gently. Ruthlessly Kate restrained her instinctive shrinking, her cry of protest. Not now, not yet. She chanted the words over and over again in her mind, like a mantra, reaching for strength. She should have been encouraging his advances if she wanted to gain any herself, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do more. She looked past his shoulder instead of up into his face.

  Her heart gave a great leap.

  Jack’s body was lying two feet closer to the trestle table than it had been the last time she had looked.

  There were knives on the table.

  The sight galvanized her, spurred her to action, the only kind of action available to her. She let her knees loosen and swayed on her feet, leaning against Eberhard for support. It was only partly an act. “Could I sit down?”

  “Certainly, pet,” Eberhard crooned.

  He walked her to one of the deck chairs sitting near the fire pit, herding her like a wolf would a sheep. Someone had kindled a Sterno log, on top of which half a dozen chunks of wood had been inexpertly piled. The wind helped, whipping the flames up the sides of the logs.

  She sat down. She forced herself to look up with a smile and say, “Thank you.”

  He chucked her beneath the chin. “You can thank me later, pet. In many, many ways. I’ll make sure of it.”

  She looked past him at Senta, standing straight and proud, triumph glittering in her eyes. Most criminals shared the universal urge to brag about how clever they were. Kate said humbly, “May I ask where the others are?”

  Kate had used the right approach, just the right touch of cringing servility, slave to mistress, peasant to patrician. Senta preened at this tacit acknowledgment of her authority. “Certainly you may ask, Kate.”

  “Later.” Eberhard’s voice was guttural. He was staring at Senta with narrowed eyes.

  She met his eyes. Kate saw the instant of realization, actually saw her nipples erect beneath his gaze. Senta looked at Eberhard and ran a deliberately provocative tongue around parted red lips. One hand began to unbutton her shirt, the other slid over a hip and between her legs, part offer, part incitement.

  It worked. Eberhard crossed the distance between them in three steps.

  Kate tried not to watch what happened next, tried not to listen, but it was impossible. Senta and Eberhard wanted an audience. They took every care not to roll out of view. Kate focused on the trees at the edge of the clearing and tried not to show her disgust.

  She didn’t run because she couldn’t, because her hands and feet were immobilized, with duct tape she saw now, that force that bound the universe and her hands and feet together. She could have hopped, she might even have made the trees before they caught her, but Jack was taking advantage of their captors’ distraction by inching forward again, and his hands and feet were free. If he could just get to one of the knives in time.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t take long to scratch Senta and Eberhard’s itch. When they were done Jack was a foot closer to the trestle table, well within arm’s reach if he were ordinarily mobile. How hurt was he? Was he able to wield a knife? Kate thought of the Swiss army knife in her pocket, pulled her bound hands first from one side and then to the other. Useless; she could not reach.

  Senta, naked, hair loose around her shoulders, got to her feet and stalked to the fire. The logs were enveloped now in leaping flames two and three feet high. She nudged one closer to the flame with a bare toe.

  In the fading light the flames gilded her hair, above and below, threw the lines and curves of her body into bold relief, flickered over her skin like sunlight on water. The wind rippled through the clearing and raised her hair from her face.

  Kate had nicknamed her “Ice Queen” in her mind; the ice had melted now, to reveal the harpy within. All Senta lacked was the hooked beak, the claws and the stench, but as Kate very well knew, many if not most monsters looked as everyday as the girl next door. The Ice Queen had only been an image, carefully cultivated, to hide the putrefaction beneath.

  Seeing her in those terms steadied Kate, concentrated her attention on her options. Her focus had narrowed. It didn’t matter what had happened on the ridge that day, or on the creek the day before, or on the hunt the day before that. It didn’t matter why DRG was being investigated, or by whom, or if that investigation had led to murder, and what looked like mass murder at that.

  Today, here, now, Senta had ceased to be human, ceased to be worthy of human regard, ceased, in Kate’s eyes, to have any human rights whatever. With Jack, wounded, perhaps dying not six feet away from her, with Mutt missing, with Old Sam and Demetri and the rest of the hunting party unaccounted for, and Klemens, she remembered suddenly, where was Klemens?

  She forced the thought from her mind.

  No, she had no problem assuming the role of judge, jury and executioner.

  It was time to make a move, to bring attention back to herself.

  She stretched her legs, groaning, she hoped not too theatrically.

  Eberhard turned his head. He, too, looked magnificent in the firelight and deepening dusk, powerful shoulders, well-muscled arms and legs, a strong neck. Kate had always liked a strong neck. “What’s the matter, pet? Cramping up a little? We can’t have that.” He rolled over and looked up at Senta. “Shall we play with our new toy?”

  Senta looked down at Kate. The feral smile and the purr were back. “Why not?”

  Eberhard took that as a yes and rose effortlessly to his feet, padding toward Kate on bare feet. His penis, flaccid now, bobbed between his legs, a misleading statement of manhood. It looked silly, as flaccid penises do, and she had to repress the bubble of laughter that rose to the back of her throat. He’d kill her if she laughed. He was going to kill her anyway, but if she laughed at the family jewels he’d kill her sooner rather than later. She couldn’t laugh.

  Eberhard knelt at her feet and began ripping at the duct tape around her ankles. “First let’s get this off you,” he said, his voice sounding too much like Senta’s purr for Kate to find any comfort in it. He grinned at her. “Might be a little inconvenient later on, hmmm?”

  Senta came to stand behind him, avid, amoral, ruthless. “Don’t hurt our plaything,” she said to Eberhard, looking into Kate’s eyes and smiling.

  Kate didn’t flinch, either from the rapacious expression on Senta’s face or from the way Eberhard twisted the duct tape to dig into her ankles even as he removed it. She wanted them to think she was beaten, without hope, that she had given up every thought but survival, that she would do anything she was told for that end and that end alone.

  It seemed to work. “How well she is tamed,” Eberhard said, sitting back on his haunches. “I don’t think I like it.”

  Senta laughed, a wild, excited, animal sound. “I trust you, liebchen. You’ll wake her up.”

  Eberhard’s penis stirred and began to grow again. “Of course you are right, as always.” He leaned forward to shove Kate’s legs apart. Her feet slid back, too, parallel to and outside the legs of the chair, directly beneath her body weight and center of gravity.

  In that moment Jack heaved his torso up from the ground and snatched not a knife but a box of tw
enty-two shells from the tabletop and tossed them into the middle of the fire. It landed with a sound like a log popping. Jack collapsed back onto the ground and lay without moving.

  Neither sound registered with Eberhard or Senta, intent on opening up their new toy and playing with it until it broke. Kate took a deep, steadying breath as Eberhard’s hands went to her belt.

  The flames licked up around the box and the cardboard divider melted like wax.

  Eberhard worked the buckle free and his hands went to the snap.

  Suddenly the clearing was filled with the clamor of primer igniting and cartridge cases rupturing. Even to Kate, who had witnessed Jack’s action and who knew that in spite of the noise the bullets weren’t going anywhere, it sounded like a full-scale assault by an entire infantry division.

  Eberhard leapt to his feet and ran not for his clothes but for the weapon leaning against the log. There was something wrong with that rifle but for the moment Kate couldn’t think what it was, and she didn’t have time to figure it out because it was at that moment that Mutt exploded out of the brush and over the log in one graceful, deadly leap, teeth bared, going straight for Eberhard’s throat.

  Senta, startled and gaping, had no time to get out of the way before Kate’s right shoulder caught her solidly in the belly and hurled her backward onto the fire.

  She screamed, a piercing shriek louder than the exploding shells, louder than Eberhard’s yell as he fought off a set of sharp, snapping teeth. She rolled frantically out of the fire and kept rolling until she hit the side of the lodge, to lie there curled into a fetal position, moaning and sobbing.

  Kate didn’t hesitate; she jumped straight for Jack, who was on his feet. Together they headed for the trees, giant steps awkwardly taken because of his wound and her bound hands.

  The rifle boomed and there was a protesting howl from Mutt.

  Kate screamed. She couldn’t stop herself.

  “Don’t stop!” Jack roared. He gave her a shove. “Keep going, we can’t help her now!”

  The rifle boomed again, clipping the branch off the birch tree. It fell, missing Jack’s head only to bounce painfully off Kate’s shoulder.

  Klemens rose up before them like a specter, blood streaking down one side of his face. He raised his rifle and for a split second Kate thought he was going to shoot her. “Klemens, no!”

  The rifle cracked and the bullet sang past her shoulder. “Run, Katerina!” he said through clenched teeth, and fired again.

  There was an oath from Eberhard, followed by another boom of the big rifle, and half of Klemens’s face disappeared.

  She plunged into the brush, crashing through the alder and the spruce, hearing Jack battling through behind her, knowing they had little time to gain a lead, that Eberhard at least would be after them as soon as he pulled on his pants.

  In the meantime, she ran, lungs burning, heart pounding as hard as her feet, skin scratched and torn from the brush from which she had no hands to shield herself, her only thought to put as much distance between herself and the two killers as possible, to get Jack to safety, to see to his wound, to find a weapon and to return and exact vengeance for what had been done to her and hers. She ran.

  Fourteen

  Light bright shining.

  SHE BURST OUT OF THE BRUSH and brambles onto the banks of the Nakochna. She paused for a fraction of a second.

  “Keep going,” Jack growled.

  His breathing was labored and she saw him clutching his belly. “Jack—”

  “Keep going!”

  By some sense of direction either accidental or deliberate they had emerged at the scene of Hendrik’s death. Without pause she ran straight out across the log, jumping the stump of the branch that had been the instrument of his death and landing by some miracle safely on the other side. The trunk shuddered beneath her weight but she didn’t stop until she had leapt to the opposite bank, where a patch of devil’s club, broad leaves whose undersides were dense with tiny thorns, clawed at her exposed skin, leaving tiny red scratch marks behind that stung like fire.

  “Oh fuck,” Jack groaned.

  “Never mind how high it is,” Kate hissed, “get your ass over here!”

  “Bitch,” he said.

  “Son of a bitch!” she said. “Get your ass over here now!”

  With an uncharacteristic clumsiness that had her heart in her throat, he edged across. When he stepped off on the other side the pain brought him to his knees.

  “Jack!” She dropped down in front of him. “Jack, we have to keep going! We aren’t even a mile from camp! They’ll be following! We have to keep going! Please, get up!” She nuzzled her face against his, nearly weeping. “Please get up, Jack!”

  “Go,” he said, his voice a thread of sound. “Just go, Kate. Get to Old Sam. Get to Demetri. Get their rifles. Go.”

  She was overcome by a sudden wave of overwhelming rage. “No! I will not leave you!” She butted him with her head. “On your feet, Morgan!” She stood and kicked him, hard. “Get up, goddamn you, get up!”

  It terrified her that he obeyed. She nudged him up the creek. “That way,” she said, crowding him forward.

  “Wait,” he said, his voice stronger. “Let me get your hands loose.”

  She was ready to yell at him again, but he was right. She turned her back on him.

  He fumbled with the tape with feeble hands, cursing them and it in an exhausted monotone. Finally he went down on his knees again and bit at it with his teeth. Kate strained her wrists apart, and with a sudden jerk she was free, free, free, free to move, free to touch, free to feel.

  Free to fight.

  They were still without shelter, sustenance or weapon, but all joy is relative, and for a moment she wallowed in the sensation. She felt liberated, emancipated, as if she had just been granted the vote, unchained, like a dog trusted enough by its master to be let loose to roam.

  She wasn’t up to roaming at the moment, however, and neither was Jack. The best she could hope for was to find shelter for the both of them until morning. Shelter, she repeated to herself, willing her brain to function. There was a storm coming and Jack needed shelter, shelter and rest.

  But before shelter, before they could allow themselves to rest, they needed more distance between themselves and those murdering bastards back at camp. How could they kill us all? she thought. How? And how could they think they’d get away with it?

  She was unaware she’d said the words out loud.

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. He leaned his forehead against the small of her back, worn out from the task of freeing her hands. She could feel the warmth of his breath through the fabric of her jeans. “Christ. Kate, I—”

  “No,” she said, turning and catching his shoulders. “On your feet, Jack. We’ve got to head toward the ridge, to the spike camp. George keeps a first aid kit in all his spike camps. And we can find out what happened to the others and bring back help.”

  If Senta and Eberhard had felt free to kill the both of them, chances were there was no one left alive on Blueberry Ridge to tell the tale, and Kate and Jack both knew it. Still, he managed to raise a crooked grin, his teeth gleaming white in the darkness. “Slave driver.”

  Her breath caught on a sob. She helped him to his feet and shouldered most of his weight, trying to ignore the wet, warm spreading stain dampening his shirt.

  In another of those queer shifts of memory she heard her EMT instructor give the emergency medical technician students three rules of conduct upon their arrival at the scene of an injury. “First and foremost? Take care of yourself. Second, look out for your partner and third, your patient, but first take care of yourself. Remember, whoever shot your patient could still be hanging around, waiting to take a potshot at you, and I’m going to have to teach this course all over again to someone who’ll respond and do it right.”

  He’d been a short, intense man with dark eyes that bored right through the bullshit when he looked at you, who had failed more students than he�
�d passed, but she was grateful for the memory. He’d been right then, and he was right now. Kate wouldn’t be any good to Jack if she didn’t take care of herself first.

  All right. Her breathing was slowing, becoming more economical, more contained, quieter. The beat of her blood had subsided from her ears to the base of her throat. Her skin was clammy, and she realized she was shivering uncontrollably.

  She could have applied those symptoms to someone else but not to herself. She didn’t know it but she was in shock.

  Kate had run up against evil before, the contractor the previous spring in the Park, the pastor the summer before in Chistona, the deckhand on the Avilda, the suspects without number before them whose parental and undeniably lawful rights Kate had had to force herself to respect, as they had not respected the basic human right of a child, any child to be warm and fed and above all, safe.

  No, evil was not new to Kate. In her experience evil was not just a scarcity of good, it was a real, tangible quality that had to be fed, nurtured, coddled, encouraged, aided and abetted. In the course of her life she had met far too many foolish people who were blind to its presence in everyday life. “My husband?” a wife would say in surprise. “Oh no, my husband would never do such a thing.” “My wife is the most loving mother in the world,” the husband would say firmly. “I’m sorry, but what you are saying cannot possibly be true.”

  Ostriches, every one of them. Yes, Kate knew evil, but she had never in her life been bound before this night. What astounded her most was how ashamed she felt. Her sensibilities had been brutalized, her dignity affronted, her person assaulted, she had nearly been raped. It all combined in a general numbing of feelings of any kind, save a puzzled disbelief in how she, independent, autonomous, strong, smart Ekaterina Ivana Shugak, had arrived at such a state. There was also a pervasive and undermining sense of humiliation. She had been helpless, vulnerable, unable to raise a hand in her own defense.

  It didn’t matter that she had been knocked on the back of the head and woken trussed up like a Christmas turkey; she should not have allowed herself to be struck, she should not have permitted herself to be bound. She knew the value of her own strength, her own intelligence, her own quickness in action; how, then, had she been overpowered? How had Jack been wounded? Mutt? It was unthinkable, but it had happened, and Kate felt as if she had been translated into another dimension, where ability and experience had availed her nothing.