Town at the Edge of Darkness (The Excoms Book 2)

by Brett Battles

  “Any second now.”

  Eduardo heard the woman gaining ground. He tried to increase his speed, but he had nothing more to give. Keeping his head down, he pressed on, knowing he was unlikely to live through the next few minutes.

  Ananke was so close now, she could hear the man’s panicked breaths. She looked past him for any sign of hunters, but all she could see were trees and more trees.

  They had to be there somewhere, which meant there was no more time. She closed the gap and launched herself forward.

  “One hundred and sixty-five yards,” the observer said. “One hundred and sixty…one hundred and fifty-five.”

  Mr. Huston saw movement at the far edge of his vision, man-shaped. Before the observer could update the distance, Mr. Huston pulled the trigger, letting the bolt fly.

  Eduardo had a moment of confusion when the sound of the woman’s steps suddenly stopped. He started to look over his shoulder to see what had happened when—

  Ananke slammed into the man’s back, knocking both of them to the ground, her on top. Before the guy could react, she heard something whiz over their heads, thwacking into a tree. She looked back and saw a crossbow bolt protruding from a trunk.

  The man struggled under her.

  “Stay down,” she whispered.

  “Let me up.”

  “Do you want to die that much? Because there’s a guy out there with a crossbow who is more than willing to help you with that. And if you don’t believe me, look.”

  She twisted his head a little so he could see the tree that had been hit.

  “That whitish thing sticking out of the trunk? That’s called a bolt. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have just one. Do you believe me now?”

  He looked confused. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the woman who’s going to save your life.”

  “I got him!” Mr. Huston declared. “Did you see that? I got him!”

  “The target is down,” the observer said.

  “I know. I got him!” Mr. Huston looked through his scope at the shadowy hump on the ground. It moved a little, but showed no signs of getting up again. “I think he’s still alive.”

  “May I see?”

  Mr. Huston handed the bow to the observer. The young man sighted downfield.

  “You’re right. Would you like to finish it off, or let it bleed out?”

  “I’m here to hunt, not sit around.”

  The observer handed him back the crossbow. “Then let’s go do it.”

  Ananke saw two silhouettes emerge from the woods and head in their direction.

  “You’re not going to like this, but I need you to do something,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  She told him.

  “No way. Let me up. I’d rather run.”

  “Your way will get you killed. My way won’t.”

  “Are you crazy? Of course it will.”

  “That’s fine. You don’t need to believe me.” She checked the two hunters. “But you’re smart enough to know if you try to run now, they’ll kill you before you reach safety.”

  The man looked toward the silhouettes and cursed.

  “So, do you want my help, or should I leave you to deal with them yourself?” she asked.

  He took another peek at the approaching hunters and whispered, “Help me.”

  “Good. Stay right here and don’t move or make a sound.”

  She slipped off him and belly crawled into the bushes a few feet away.

  The dark lump of the downed prey seemed to be writhing on the ground as Mr. Huston and his observer began their hike across the field.

  They were nearing the midpoint when the trophy appeared to roll onto its back and lose half its height. Mr. Huston paused, waiting to see if the prey was preparing to attempt an escape, but the shadow stopped moving.

  He grinned. Perhaps his initial shot had been enough and the trophy was dead. One shot, one kill. That sounded pretty damn good. Mr. Huston bet few of his fellow hunters were that skilled.

  They were about thirty feet away when Mr. Huston began to see details in the shadow. It was one of the male targets. Maybe Mr. Huston had just won himself the golden Mossberg! But then he realized the man on the ground was too small to be the guy ranked most difficult. Probably the Hispanic guy, who’d been number two. That was nothing to sneeze at.

  Mr. Huston crept forward, his crossbow raised in case the prey was playing possum.

  Movement.

  The prey’s chest. Up and down. Up and down.

  Mr. Huston frowned. So much for a one-shot kill. It would have to be two.

  He sighted down his weapon.

  Ananke watched the hunters approach. There appeared to be only two—a balding, middle-aged guy holding a crossbow, and one of the young lookalikes.

  She let them come closer, in case others might reveal themselves. None did.

  She took a breath, let it halfway out, and held.

  Eduardo heard the crunch of pine needles under the approaching steps.

  His pursuers were close. Way too close.

  What was the woman doing? She’d said she would help him.

  She was never here to help you.

  The voice in his head sucked away the last of his hope. As he’d assumed at the start, she had only meant to make him an easier target.

  Another crunch, no more than ten feet away.

  He braced himself for the inevitable.

  Thup.

  Mr. Huston aimed at the trophy’s head and prepared to pull the trigger.

  Pain exploded from his left leg. He screamed and fell to the side, the bow dropping near his feet.

  The moment he hit the ground, he heard another scream and saw his observer go down.

  Mr. Huston felt along his leg. His pants were torn apart, and underneath was a gooey mess of tissue where his knee should have been.

  He tried to roll so that his knee wasn’t on the ground, but stopped when something hard smashed into his ribs.

  “How do you like that, asshole?!”

  The prey glared down at him, looking as if he hadn’t been struck by the bolt at all.

  The next kick caught Mr. Huston in the cheek, rocking his head to the side.

  “Does that feel good?” the prey said, clearly winding up for another strike.

  Before he could lash out again, a calm but commanding female voice said, “That’s enough.”

  “This pendejo was going to kill me,” the man Ananke had rescued said.

  “He was, but he’s not now.”

  “He wanted me dead. I want him dead.”

  “Understandable. But let’s let him suffer for a little while first, shall we?”

  The guy’s chest heaved up and down with rage, but eventually his breaths slowed and he took a step back without delivering another kick.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  A hesitation. “Eduardo.”

  Ananke pulled out several heavy-duty zip ties from her bag and held out a few to him. “Do you know how these work, Eduardo?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good. Take them.” She nodded at the younger guy she’d shot. “Secure his hands behind his back and tie his ankles together. Then use a couple to create a tourniquet on his thigh above the wound.”

  Eduardo gawked at her. “Why would you want them to live?”

  “Let me ask you a question. Do you know how far this operation spreads? Because if you do, then, please, by all means, stomp their heads into the ground. If not, wouldn’t it make more sense to keep them alive until we know who knows what?”

  Eduardo glanced away.

  “Damn,” Ananke said. “I guess that means you don’t know. Looks like you’re going to have to tie him up.”

  While Eduardo worked on the younger guy on the ground, Ananke knelt next to the older man—the hunter. “How’s that leg feeling?”

  He muttered something under his breath.

  “I’m going to tie off your leg so you don’t bleed
to death. That sound like a good idea to you?”

  He blinked. “Yes. Tie it. Don’t let me die.”

  She connected three ties together and created a loop around his thigh. He winced as she tightened it.

  “You should still have enough blood in you to keep you going,” she said, smiling. “Of course, the shock might kill you. Sorry.”

  With Eduardo’s help, she dragged both men to separate trees and used more zip ties to secure them to the trunks.

  “Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure,” she said. She started to turn away, but then stopped. “It’ll probably be a while before anyone gets out this way to collect you, which means, at best, you’re likely going to lose those legs. Something to think about and start adjusting to while you wait.” She looked at Eduardo. “You want to stay alive, follow me.”

  She headed into the woods.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Mr. Wise, Mr. Reed, and Mr. Welles moved through the woods with their observers, in a north-northeasterly direction. They had not planned on traveling together, but both Mr. Wise and Mr. Reed had marked the big Caucasian guy as their target. Mr. Welles, ever the opportunist, had watched the big guy stay with the two women when they ran for the woods, so he felt confident the two other hunters would lead him to at least one potential trophy. And who knew, maybe he’d get lucky and bag the number one prey himself.

  Mr. Wise and Mr. Reed seemed to have silently declared a temporary détente and were working together to find the prey. Since they were superior trackers, Mr. Welles let them lead but stayed right behind them.

  Mr. Reed let out a low double hiss before waving everyone in his direction. At his feet, a spotty line of disturbed ground cover ran to the north.

  “Is it fresh?” Mr. Welles asked.

  Mr. Wise and Mr. Reed looked at him as if he was an idiot, and then started along the trail without saying a word.

  Apparently it was fresh.

  Assholes.

  The tracks went nearly two hundred yards before they disappeared. The men searched around, trying to pick them up again, but the ground in the immediate vicinity revealed nothing.

  “We should split up and look farther out,” Mr. Reed suggested. “We can meet back here in ten minutes.”

  “Right,” Mr. Wise said. “Then you find something and keep going while we wait here for you to return.”

  “I give you my word.”

  Mr. Wise snorted.

  “Maybe we should search together,” Mr. Welles said.

  “That’ll waste too much time,” Mr. Reed said.

  “More time than standing here arguing about how we should do it?”

  Mr. Reed didn’t look happy, but said, “Fine.”

  Ricky, Rosario, and Tasha’s immediate goal was to put as much distance between themselves and the meadow as fast as they could. Unfortunately, they weren’t far into the woods when it became clear Tasha wouldn’t be able to keep up for much longer. Easing back a bit, Ricky slung an arm around Tasha’s back to help her, while Rosario took over at point.

  Knowing they were leaving a clear trail but unable to do much about it, they continued into the woods for nearly ten minutes before Rosario stopped and pointed to their right. “Look.”

  A rocky ridge poked above the treetops about fifty yards away. High ground.

  Ricky said, “I like it.”

  Instead of immediately heading toward it, Rosario studied the surrounding area before saying to Tasha, “Watch me carefully. Light steps, along the same path I take.”

  Tasha nodded, looking too tired to say anything.

  Rosario picked her way around the spots where the pine needles were densest, and avoided all dead branches and anything else that might leave a sign of their passing. By the time they reached the top of the ridge, she was confident they’d left little to no tracks.

  They climbed through the rocks and stopped just on the other side.

  “You can rest here,” Rosario told Tasha.

  Tasha leaned against one of the boulders.

  “They’re still going to be able to find us,” Ricky said and tapped his shoulder where it met his neck.

  Rosario looked at him, confused.

  “Trackers,” he said. “We’ve all got them.”

  She touched her own neck. The skin was tender, something she would have noticed sooner if she hadn’t had other things to worry about. Underneath, she could feel the tracking bug.

  Her anger, already high, flared. To Ricky, she said, “See if anyone is following us.”

  While he snuck up between two of the rocks, she searched the ground, picking up stones and setting them down again when she found something better. Her final selection had a corner that came to a point, and a somewhat tapered edge. It wasn’t perfect but it should do the job.

  She sat on a rock, and moved her finger over the spot where the bug had been implanted. The device was the size of a small ball bearing, and about a quarter inch below the surface.

  Using the rock, she dug into her skin, creating a slit half an inch long. Since the bug had been put in only that afternoon, the path it had carved through her tissue hadn’t had time to heal, and she was able to quickly work the ball out the slit.

  As she dropped it into her palm, she felt Tasha’s eyes on her.

  “That’s in me, too?” Tasha asked.

  “Apparently.”

  Tasha searched her own neck until she found the bug. She hurried over to Rosario, her head cocked to the side. “Get it out! Please, get it out.”

  “It’s going to hurt.”

  “I don’t care. Get it out!”

  Ricky crawled back down the rocks as Rosario finished up operating on Tasha.

  “They’re down there around where we stopped running,” he whispered before he noticed what Rosario was doing. “Uh, is that thing sterile?”

  “Sit down and shut up,” Rosario said. “You are next.”

  Mr. Wise, Mr. Reed, and Mr. Welles completed an arc of approximately one hundred and eighty degrees without finding any signs of the prey.

  “We do it again,” Mr. Reed said. “Wider.”

  “Wait a second,” Mr. Welles said. “How do we know we’re not wasting time? Maybe they went the other way.”

  “This is a hunt,” Mr. Wise said. “This is how you do it.”

  “Maybe that’s how you do it,” Mr. Welles said. He hadn’t made his fortune by always sticking to the rules. He walked over to the observers. “You guys know where they are, don’t you?”

  After the young men exchanged looks, the one assigned to Mr. Welles said, “Of course.”

  “Then which way do we need to go?”

  “We can’t tell you that.”

  “Okay, can you at least tell us if we’re spinning our wheels here? I mean, none of us want to waste time looking for things that aren’t there, right?”

  The observers huddled for a moment of hushed conversation. Then Mr. Welles’s observer said, “You are not spinning your wheels.”

  “Good. Thanks for that. No hints on direction, though?”

  “No.”

  Mr. Welles grinned. “I’m a good tipper.”

  While his observer replied, “I’m sorry, Mr. Welles, but as you know, those are the rules,” his colleague at the back—Mr. Reed’s observer—locked eyes with Mr. Welles and purposefully moved his gaze to the right and turned his head a little. And then he did it again.

  Another smile from Mr. Welles. “No problem. I understand.”

  As he headed back to his fellow hunters, he glanced in the direction Mr. Reed’s observer had indicated and spotted a ridge of rocks through the trees.

  “Gentlemen. If you’ll follow me.”

  “This looks like a good spot,” Ricky said.

  They’d hiked about seventy-five feet farther north, along the ridge.

  Rosario scanned the area. “I agree.”

  She tossed the trackers into a bush.

  Mr. Welles led his reluctant colleagues up the slope to the top
of the ridge, pausing right before the crest.

  He glanced back at the others, pretending to check their positions when in reality he was looking for Mr. Reed’s observer. The man checked his tracking tablet then nodded to the left and held his thumb and forefinger close together.

  Mr. Welles acted like he was listening for a few seconds. “Did you hear that?”

  Mr. Wise and Mr. Reed looked unsure.

  “Yeah, footsteps,” Mr. Welles said, his head cocked. “Up the other side a ways, I think.”

  He took them over the apex and followed the ridge to the north. Additional check-ins with his observer-in-crime homed him in on the spot where the prey should be.

  As Mr. Welles raised his Mossberg and prepared to creep forward, Mr. Reed grabbed his shoulder and shoved past him. Mr. Wise tried to do the same, but Mr. Welles stuck out a well-timed elbow and held on to second position.

  The men stepped around the rock with their weapons up, ready to claim their prizes.

  No one was there.

  Though Mr. Wise and Mr. Reed were disappointed, they didn’t share Mr. Welles’s surprise since they hadn’t possessed the information indicating this was the spot. Mr. Reed continued north along the rocks. As they rounded a big boulder, Mr. Wise attempted to pass Mr. Welles again. This time, Mr. Welles didn’t put up a fight. He was more interested in finding out why the observer had led him astray.

  He paused, as if to catch his breath.

  Mr. Wise’s observer came around the big rock next, and Mr. Welles’s man followed. Mr. Reed’s, however, did not appear.

  “Where’s your friend?” Mr. Welles said to his observer.

  The guy looked around. “He was right behind me.” They waited for a few moments, but when the third man still didn’t show up, Mr. Welles’s observer said, “I’ll go check on him.”

  He headed back the way they’d come.

  Mr. Welles grimaced. He knew what had happened. The missing observer had been feeding him bad info and was now trying to avoid a confrontation.

  No tip for you, asshole.

  Mr. Welles waited a moment longer, but when neither observer returned, he decided it was time to catch up with the others. He didn’t want to miss his opportunity for the kill.