by Nene Adams
“Is she dead?” she heard Ron ask nervously. “I mean, you told me to buy a tranquilizer gun to protect you on account of wild animals or whatever, but what does any of this craziness have to do with the experimental treatment you’re paying for?” He paused. His voice rose higher. “Shit fire, I just assaulted a police officer! I’m going to jail for sure. Daddy, I can’t do time. You know I can’t.”
“Never you mind, boy. Just do as you’re told. I’ll take care of you like I promised.” Cutshall stood over her, a silver-haired vulture hunched and waiting for his prey to succumb. His mouth curved in a wintry, close-lipped smile. “You should have minded your own business, but I suppose like father, like daughter,” he wheezed.
Annalee slid into oblivion without so much as a sigh.
When she awoke an unknown time later, the smells of earth and fetid decay were in her nostrils. She groaned, summoning the strength to roll over on her back. Her body ached, but it was a general sort of unspecified hurt that spoke of bruises and stiffness, not violations.
She scrabbled automatically at her holster, but it was empty; her gun gone. Peeling her sticky eyelids apart, she glanced around to see various species of trees, brush, a slice of late afternoon sunlight in a sky the color of a robin’s egg. She was in a forest, which meant Malingering Deep. Judging by the sun’s position, it seemed she had lost nearly a day.
From a short distance, she heard men’s voices raised, catcalling and screeching, as well as the crackling thunder of guns being fired.
“Gonna get you, Sheriff!”
“Better run, bitch, less’n you can outrun a bullet!”
The Gunns.
A surge of panicked energy put her on her feet where she swayed in place, trying not to throw up from the lingering effects of the tranquilizer Ron Cutshall had shot her with, that rat bastard. Her head felt like a balloon, loosely tethered and floating at least a foot above her neck. It was difficult to think through the fog. Nevertheless, self-preservation sent her stumbling forward like prey in flight from the hunters.
Her duty belt had been stripped, Annalee discovered as she went along, her head slowly clearing, but she still had a folding knife in her pocket. However, with no compass, no GPS and no idea of her exact location, she could literally wander for years without making it out of the forest. On the other hand, standing still and waiting for the Gunns to murder her was not an option either. Her only hope was to elude the hunters as long as possible, giving Noah time to realize she was missing and put together a search party. Lunella would find her, she was certain. She just had to stay alive long enough for that to happen.
A gunshot sounded close, too close.
Annalee increased her speed, urging her body to move despite her stiffness and the queasiness in her stomach.
Branches slapped at her face and neck, snagging her clothing when she broke into a shambling run. Her hair had come loose from its pins. The strands became entangled in thin, whippy branches, only to be yanked free when she continued to flee from her pursuers, who, from the sound of things, were gaining on her.
Titus Gunn and his boys weren’t bothering to stalk quietly through the woods. They wanted her to know they were there, gleefully sporting until they brought her down.
It wasn’t long before hot knives stabbed under her ribs. Each breath was a laboring torment, and her sweaty shirt stuck to her skin. On the next step, she skidded uncontrollably on a patch of slimy, dead leaves and managed to catch herself on a fallen log, part of a lightning-shattered hickory trunk a good four feet in diameter. When she pushed herself upright, a piece of loose bark luminescent with mold sloughed off, making her lose her balance. She fell, landing badly and getting the wind knocked out of her. Sparks whirled in her vision. She wondered if this was how her father had died.
She heard something moving through the nearby brush and thought it was likely a hunter, one of the Gunns. She needed to hide. There was no time to think, only to act.
Scooting into a shallow hollow beneath the log, she prayed her uniform’s tan color would help her blend in with the forest floor, which was covered with the rotting remnants of last autumn’s fallen leaves. The sun was going down fast, twilight bleeding into the sky. The lack of light would help conceal her too. She tried to curl up, to make herself a smaller target.
Once, when she was little, her father had let her hold a baby rabbit. She recalled the frantic pace of its heartbeat, the vibration drumming against her fingertips. She felt like that baby rabbit now, terrified into paralysis and waiting for something awful to happen.
A man moved clear of the undergrowth, walking near her hiding place. She could only see his feet and legs as he walked—faded jeans and old leather boots worn supple—but she figured he was a Gunn. It wasn’t deer season, and the tourist hunters who came to the Deep were usually clad in new Gore-Tex boots and crisp camouflage gear with fragrant pine-and-moss scent wafers pinned here and there to mask their human odors.
Annalee risked a peek, trying not to make a sound when she shifted. The man had oily black hair, acne-scarred skin, mean eyes set close together. A silver scar on his upper lip and long sideburns coming to the angle of his jaw identified him as Jethro Gunn, Titus’ oldest grandson. She’d arrested him a few times for drunk and disorderly complaints.
Jethro paused, one boot slightly raised in a way that reminded her of the wolf in her backyard. Annalee closed her eyes. Lunella. A wave of longing made her tear ducts burn, but she was glad Lunella wasn’t there. The thought of her girlfriend—Jesus, her mate—being run down like an animal made her burn in another way. She was angry—no, she was furious. Furious at herself for getting caught, furious with that idiot Ron for shooting her, at the Gunns hunting her for sport and for Abner Cutshall’s money, and at the hypocritical Great Man for his greed, his sickness, his willingness to destroy any obstacle in his quest for life eternal in this world, screw the next. Cutshall was trading his heavenly reward for more secular gains.
She hoped they all burned in Hell.
The wild green odor of the woods gave way to the sharp scent of urine. Jethro was pissing against the log, a stream that splattered on her face, hot and reeking. She closed her mouth tightly, willing herself to stillness, although her first inclination was to jump up and pound the asshole into the ground like a tent peg.
Jethro grunted loudly, squirting out a few more short jets before the urine stream tapered off to droplets. He stepped away, quickly disappearing from her view.
Annalee forced herself to wait several minutes before clawing her way out from under the log. Her skin crawled with the need to cleanse Jethro’s stink from her skin. She scrubbed her cheeks with her shirtsleeve, needing to erase the smell and scorching feel of his urine, not caring she was smearing dirt all over herself. Dirt was clean in a way bodily secretions weren’t.
A loud crash sounded to her right, followed by a man cursing.
Annalee took off again in a scramble, picking a direction away from Jethro and the unknown male. The Gunn boys weren’t the best hunters in Daredevil County, thank God. They tended to use traps for their poaching and didn’t possess much in the way of trail skills, otherwise they would have tracked her progress through the forest more easily. She did try to be careful not to leave any too-obvious signs, like torn bits of clothing or footprints in soft earth, but the heavy undergrowth in places she couldn’t avoid made that difficult.
She heard a loud metallic click first. A split-second later came a shattering pain in her leg. Her choked scream was part surprise, part agony. She reached down, clenching her teeth against a whimper, and found she had been caught in a leg-hold trap. No pointed steel teeth to tear into her flesh, but the trap’s tight grip was excruciatingly painful, especially where it pressed against the bone in her shin.
Remembering what had happened when Bear was caught in a similar trap, she managed to kneel on her good leg, biting back another scream when a fresh wave of agony rose to engulf her. The world tilted and whirled. She had
to swallow back a flood of bile.
She fumbled around, found the spring levers on either side and compressed them, releasing her leg from the trap.
“Over here!” shouted a Gunn.
No time to spend even a single precious moment checking her leg for injuries. She was pretty certain the bone wasn’t broken, which would have to be good enough. She limped away as fast as she could to put as much distance as possible between herself and her pursuers. Each step was painful, but the leg bore her weight.
It was almost dark, the forest swathed in deepening gray shadows under the canopy. Soon, she would have to find a place to hide. The Gunns would probably remain in the Deep overnight. Would they make a camp or continue hunting her with flashlights? There were enough of them to make either option feasible.
After a while, Annalee paused behind a tree, pressing her back against the rough bark. The temperature had dropped, leaving the air cool enough to make her shiver. She felt as though she was covered in a layer of greasy sweat and filth. Her mouth was dry, her lips cracked and she would have sold her soul for a drink of water.
A current of jittery energy ran through her, making her more exhausted. Her leg really hurt, a throbbing ache emanating from the bone. She wiped the back of her hand over her chin and tried to summon the strength to go on.
Her head snapped up when she heard a howl, long and full throated—not human, but wolf, a sobbing, spiraling pack-song that split the night. She almost collapsed in relief. She didn’t recognize Lunella’s “voice,” but the howling wolf had to be one of the Skinners.
Deciding that shouting to catch the wolf’s attention was perhaps the worst idea ever, she absently rubbed her aching side while debating what to do. Backtrack, trying to avoid the Gunns? The Deep was too big. She would never be able to pinpoint the wolf’s location. Stay where she was and let the wolf come to her? This particular area was too exposed, and she doubted the Gunns would stop actively hunting her just because they heard a wolf howl.
The best thing, she concluded, was to stick to her original plan: find a place to hide and stay put. Lunella knew her scent. She reckoned so did Rachael, Ezra, Bear and perhaps other Skinners as well. If she could stay hidden and safe, she might live another day.
Her bad leg throbbing, Annalee chose a new direction and staggered onward, wishing for a beer, an aspirin and ten minutes parked on the sofa in front of the television.
Uncertain watery moonlight filtered through the treetops, not enough illumination to see properly, as evidenced when she wandered into a blackberry bush about five minutes later. Extricating herself from the grasping thorns was an exercise in patience and stinging pain. In spite of her care, her shirt was ripped in several places by the time she worked her way free. She scrubbed at a particularly cruel laceration on her arm and continued, pacing herself deliberately, straining her eyes to penetrate the shadows and find a secluded spot where she could lick her wounds in peace, so to speak, and wait for dawn.
A cold gun muzzle shoved against the side of her head made her gasp.
“What have we got here?” Titus Gunn’s dry-as-dust chuckle drew her upright, clinging to a tree trunk for support when her knees threatened to buckle.
She tried to calculate the odds of drawing her pocket knife before he pulled the trigger. Titus was older than God, but he also had a locked and loaded gun and therefore, very much the advantage. She blew out a shaky breath. So this was how it would end for her—a bang, not a whimper, same as her father.
Of course, she was close to shitting-her-pants afraid, but she would never show Titus that fear. Instead, she summoned her most defiant expression and stared at him, straight into his dead black eyes, letting him see nothing except a hillwoman’s defiance and the granite-hard resolution to die with her dignity intact.
“Looks like you lose, Sheriff,” Titus said. He spat out a wad of tobacco juice and chuckled again. “Just like your daddy.”
“Who paid you to do that, Titus?” Annalee asked quietly. “Cutshall?”
He looked like a malevolent ghost in the indigo-gray dusk. “It was Cutshall’s money what paid for it. Your daddy…well, I ain’t shamed to tell you he died like a man.”
She bared her teeth at him. “You can kill me, but you’re done. You hear me? You’re done, old man. I’ll be gone, but there’ll be others comin’ along behind me, comin’ after you and yours, and Hell will follow with them.”
“Got a new sheriff all lined up,” Titus gloated, pressing the gun muzzle harder against her head, as if he longed to punch it through her skull. Genuine hatred burned in his voice. “One of my grandsons, Josiah. Pretty smart boy, Josiah, and he’s got Cutshall behind him one hundred percent. Yes, ma’am, we’re gonna be shittin’ in high cotton from now on. Ain’t nobody gonna look down on the Gunns no more. We’re gonna own this county.”
Flashlight beams cut through the gloom, diffuse blue with a diamond-bright center. Behind the lights clipped to rifle and shotgun barrels, she recognized Titus’ sons and grandsons, two generations poisoned at the well. She had no doubt that if, by some miracle, she managed to escape Titus, his boys would kill her without mercy.
“Damned straight,” one of them called. The rest made sounds of approval. “We’re gonna be the kings of Daredevil County!”
Annalee didn’t respond to the taunts, but inwardly, she was terrified for Lunella and her kin. A corrupt sheriff would give Dempsey and Cutshall carte blanche to do whatever they wanted to the Skinners, including wholesale slaughter, mass experimentation and other horrors beyond imagining, a whole industry of suffering and death—her worst nightmare come true. There wasn’t a damned thing she could do to stop it.
Titus leaned forward, speaking hoarsely into her ear. The words rang like a death knell. “Got any last words, Sheriff Crow? Any prayers?”
“‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,’” Annalee quoted, “‘for Thou art with me.’”
She closed her eyes. She had accepted long ago that her life might end in violence when she opted to follow her father and become a police officer instead of pursuing another career. Resignation was an accustomed companion. I’m sorry, honey, she said silently to the absent Lunella. Her biggest regret—she couldn’t say good-bye in person. I’m so very sorry it has to be this way.
She bit her tongue against a flood of pleas, recriminations and curses and waited for the bang that would signal the end of her life.
Titus’ gurgling scream was a shock bursting white across her brain.
Annalee inhaled a breath and forced her eyes open, only to squeeze them shut again when Titus’ gun went off and the muzzle flash blinded her. In the momentary explosion of light, she saw his face contorted with fear, his mouth a round gaping hole. She also caught a glimpse of pale fur and huge gleaming teeth before the strobing light died so abruptly that it left her with a dazzling static of sparks in her vision. Wetness splashed across her mouth and jaw, warm and coppery smelling. Realizing it was blood, she carefully didn’t lick her lips.
The night erupted into a cacophony of yelling and the boom of gunfire. Flashlight beams crisscrossed in the chaos, jumping to focus on men who were falling, thrashing on the ground as wolves savaged them, pale hairy shapes curving and darting in for the kill with deadly grace. It wasn’t a battlefield but a slaughter.
While she watched in horrified fascination, Jethro Gunn shot a wolf pointblank, then staggered backwards, his face contorting, when the wounded wolf’s form shimmered into Ezra Skinner, his nude body streaked with blood and gunpowder residue. Jethro screamed when a smaller wolf with darker blonde fur leaped on him, bringing him down.
Titus reeled to his feet, scarlet runnels pouring down the side of his neck to soak the collar of his flannel coat. “Bitch!” he choked, spraying Annalee with spittle. “Gonna kill you!” He reminded her of a wounded wild boar, his little piggy eyes filled with malice, his stringy muscles rigid with fury, an enraged squeal piercing her eardrums.
Titus lunged, curling his big knuckled his hands around her throat before she could fend him off. He was old and stringy but astonishingly strong.
Annalee kicked his knee twice, driving the hard tip of her shoe into the vulnerable joint, but she was too close to inflict maximum damage and he was too far gone to feel it.
His exhalations stank like carrion. She tried to reach his eyes with her nails, but his arms were longer than hers and she couldn’t make contact.
His horny fingers dug into her flesh, clamping down tighter, compressing her windpipe. Her lungs cramped, her chest convulsed, her heart seized. Her entire torso felt filled with molten lead. She struggled in his grip, clawing and squirming, but he held her pinned to the tree trunk, his strength enhanced by rage.
Her eyes popped wide open to take in every detail of her killer’s face—his bristly unshaven chin, the rotten stumps of his teeth, the scattering of moles on his cheekbones. The last sight she would take with her to the grave.
Sorry, sorry, sorry…
Suddenly Titus’ grip loosened. His hands slid away and he disappeared from her view.
Annalee took in a whooping breath that burned like she’d inhaled liquid fire. She coughed, spluttered and puked helplessly, drowning in air, her vision blurred by tears.
A familiar female voice asked, “Hey, are you okay?”
She tried to focus through the involuntary tears. Lunella stood next to her, naked skin daubed with blood, leaf mold and earth.
“Are you okay?” Lunella repeated, taking hold of her upper arm in a grasp that was more of a caress.
Annalee tried a few more breaths, which came much easier than the first, and was surprised when a giggle erupted from her mouth. Nothing remotely funny about the situation—there were probably seven dead or at least injured men here, including Titus Gunn, who lay unmoving at her feet—but hysteria bubbled up irrepressibly within her and soon she was laughing, crying and sobbing, her face mashed against Lunella’s collarbone. Her professional façade was shattered, her vulnerability exposed. Tears and snot ran freely. She clung to Lunella’s strong, warm body, laughing and laughing until she choked and began to weep in earnest. Throughout the storm of conflicting emotions that battered at her, she remained aware of Lunella crooning at her, petting her, stroking her tangled hair.