Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
Five hundred pounds of apex predator sprang at Raven.
The world stopped spinning. Rain droplets froze in midair. The chaos of screaming and shouting went dim. It was as if Raven were trapped underwater. Everything went distant and blurry, everything except the tiger.
Vlad bounded toward her. A streak of orange and black terror with claws. She had a single second. She did the only thing she could. She whistled. One long note. Two short ones.
Ten feet away, his powerful hind legs crouched for a final spring, the tiger hesitated. His ears rotated toward her.
Did he recognize her whistle? Deep in his diseased predator’s brain, did some part of him recall an affinity for a certain familiar human?
Whatever the reason, he paused.
“You know me!” She took a slow step backward, still facing him. Then another step. “You know me.”
His head tilted. He snarled at her, baring his bloodied, foaming fangs.
“I’m so sorry, Vlad.” She took another step. Twenty yards from the edge of the clearing. “This isn’t your fault. I’m sorry.”
Vlad made a low hissing, spitting sound. His ears twitched, and he swung his head away from her. As if searching for new prey.
He had spared her. Even sick, he remembered—
Then Vaughn shot him.
The round struck Vlad’s right hindquarter. With a pained roar, the tiger spun and sprang at Vaughn with outstretched claws.
Raven didn’t waste a second.
She had to move. Move right now.
Grieve later. Mourn later. Think later.
Now, she had to live. Had to protect Shadow.
Time to run.
“Shadow!” she screamed. “Go!”
Shadow had remained at Luna’s side. Alternatively whining and snarling. Howling his grief.
Raven ran to him. Dared a glance at Luna’s bedraggled form, dragged her gaze away. The dizziness was fading, the pain a dull throbbing.
Behind her, the tiger roared. Another gun went off.
They didn’t have much time.
She dared to put her hands on Shadow. She grabbed the thick ruff of guard hairs at the back of his neck and tugged. Her feet slipped in the slick ferns. She pulled at him. “Run! We have to run!”
Shadow flicked his ears toward her. He shook his huge head, as if coming out of a mournful fugue. He bolted across the clearing.
The wolf dodged between the boulders at the edge of the clearing and disappeared between the trees. Rain obscured his dark shape among darker shadows.
Raven sprinted after him. Her pulse thundered in her ears. She fixed her gaze on the rifle lying in the ferns. The rifle she’d left behind what felt like years ago.
Dimly, she heard the shouts of the Headhunters, Vlad’s roar, the blasts of guns. Her ribs on fire, her back throbbing. Still, she ran. Her back felt like an exposed target.
She reached the hickory trees, squatted and grasped her rifle, slick with rain, rose and kept running, deeper into the shelter of the trees. Smears of mud crusted her soaked clothes. Cold rain pelted her face.
Behind her echoed the roars and screams and gunshots. Eventually, they’d realize she’d escaped and come hunting for her.
In her panic, she tripped over a rock she hadn’t seen in the rain and went down hard, barely getting her arms up to protect her face. The rifle went flying. Her body struck mud.
Spasms of pain ripped through her ribs. Her skull pulsed with red and white stars. Her vision went blurry.
Rapid footsteps sounded behind her.
Someone seized her arm.
Terror spiked through her veins. She reared back, about to head-butt her assailant, rip out a chunk of his cheek with her teeth, whatever she had to do—
“Hey!” Damien’s voice pierced through her fear. “It’s me! It’s me!”
Raven staggered to her feet, chest heaving. She spun, searching for a weapon.
Damien’s face was ashen, his eyes wide and stricken. “Let me help you. I’m here to help.”
She nodded, too terrified to argue. “The gun. I need the gun.”
He bent, grasped the rifle, straightened and slipped the rifle strap over her shoulder and across her chest. He took her elbow and helped her shuffle haltingly to the edge of the clearing.
They were still just inside the tree line, sheltered beneath the broad trunks of the hickories. Damien paused. He shot a nervous look across the clearing. Numbly, she followed his gaze.
She could just make out a blur of movement and color in the clearing. So much red. The tiger had brought down another Headhunter. The body lay bloodied and unmoving.
A fourth man screamed and crawled through the ferns, his shredded leg dragging behind him.
Vlad had disappeared into the forest on the other side of the clearing. Headhunters screamed and shouted, their panicked voices flat and thin in the rain.
She knew what would happen next. The tiger would hunt them down one by one in silence, then attack from behind when they least expected it. They’d never see him coming.
A terrible pride filled her chest. “I hope he kills them all.”
Damien shrugged her pack from his shoulders and held it out to her by the straps.
“I brought it for you, just in case. It has your LifeStraws, filtration tabs, the wire for snares, a compass, binoculars, filled water bottles, and some food. I added granola bars and nuts I found in the lodge. I couldn’t get your map back, though. I’m sorry.”
She touched the hoverboard sticking out of the top zipper with trembling fingers. Her whole body was shaking so hard, he had to help her shoulder the straps of the pack.
“Here.” Damien pulled something out of his pocket. Two small bottles, one filled with antibiotics, the second, prescription-strength painkillers. “It’s not much.”
He handed her the bottles. She took two of each, swallowing them dry, and shoved the bottles into the backpack and zipped it. “It will help. Thank you.”
“Your throat. It’s bleeding.”
She touched it gingerly. Her fingers came away red. “A flesh wound.”
Behind them, a gunshot exploded. Then another. Vlad roared. Someone screamed in fear and pain. The agonized sound cut off abruptly.
Damien flinched.
Raven met his gaze. Rain plastered his hair to his forehead and dripped down his face. It softened his features. He was still sharply handsome, all hard angles, but he looked younger, more vulnerable.
She felt a pull, deep inside her. He had tried to do the right thing despite his circumstances. He could’ve done nothing. He should have left her to the Headhunters, but he hadn’t.
She was still alive because of him. The words slipped out before she could stop them. “Come with us.”
The briefest smile creased his mouth. It brightened his face for a moment. Then resignation darkened his expression. “I want to. I wish I could. But I can’t.”
“You aren’t like them. You don’t belong with them.”
He shook his head. His mouth pressed into a grim line. His gaze darted toward the clearing again. “I owe Vaughn my life. I can’t just—”
“Yes, you can.”
“He’s family. He protected me.”
“You don’t owe him your life. You don’t owe him your soul.”
Damien shook his head. “It’s not that simple.”
“It is that simple. You know who they are. What they are.”
“Dekker and Rex are dead now. They were the worst.”
“They’re all bad.” She stared at him, at his anguished features. “You’re just afraid.”
He blinked, wiped the rain from his face. He sighed heavily. His shoulders slumped. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am afraid. Maybe I’m terrified every second of every day. Maybe I know deep down I’d never make it on my own.”
“You can—”
He shook his head again, resolute. “No. I know myself, I’m not like you.”
“Damien.” With every beat of her heart, she wanted him to come with her, to make the right choice, the right sacrifice.
She couldn’t force him. She couldn’t decide for him.
He dropped his gaze, ashamed. “I know what you think. You think I’m a coward for choosing to stay with people who keep me safe by killing other people.”
“That’s up to you.”
Another roar echoed from behind them. More gunshots in the distance. Raven scanned the woods over Damien’s shoulder, searching for danger, but there was nothing. The trees, the sodden bushes, the muddy ground. The rain blurred everything.
The violence had moved away from them, for the moment.
Damien took a step toward her. He stood less than a foot away. He looked at her intently, as if begging her to understand with his eyes, pleading for her absolution.
“They’ll come after you,” he said urgently. “Whoever survives this massacre. If Vaughn lives through this, he will hunt you. You’ll be caught unless I stay.”
She started to protest. “Come anyway. We’ll figure something out—”
He cut her off. “There’s no time. You know it’s true. I can cover some of your tracks after you go. I can tell them I followed you in a different direction. With all the rain obscuring your footprints, it’ll work. It’ll give you the head start you need.”
Her heart sank into her stomach. She was shaking all over from adrenaline. Her belly churned, sick with fear and panic. The image of Luna’s dead body flashed through her brain. She didn’t want to be alone. She wanted to curl into a ball and weep forever.
Finally, she nodded mutely. She resented him for it, but he wasn’t wrong. By staying, he doomed himself. But it would help her and Shadow escape. “Fine.”
His eyes darkened with emotions she couldn’t quite read—doubt, regret, longing. “I’ll do everything I can to help you. I swear it.”
Another gunshot sounded in the distance.
Deeper in the woods, Shadow whined impatiently.
It wouldn’t be long before Vaughn turned his attention toward Raven, seeking revenge for the death of his men. He was a man of his word. She didn’t doubt he would hunt her down.
She had to make sure he didn’t find her. Or Shadow. Not ever.
“Vlad—the tiger—he’ll kill other people, after the Headhunters. He’s sick. He has the virus. He’s a danger now to every creature he comes across, human or otherwise.”
Grief threatened to strangle her. Her love for the tiger swelled in her chest, squeezed her bruised and tattered heart. All those years she’d hung out on the tiger house roof, chatting to Vlad, pretending he was listening, that he understood her like no one else in her life did.
“Will you make sure that—” She swallowed the lump in her throat and gazed at him imploringly. “Make sure he doesn’t suffer. Don’t let those monsters torture him. Please.”
His eyes widened. “How?”
“Deer jerky. He loves it. He can smell the venison a mile away. I have a couple of packages hidden in my room, in the bottom drawer of my dresser. Leave a trail and he’ll follow it. Just—make it fast.”
“I will,” Damien promised.
She believed him. “You should leave them. The Headhunters. When you’re strong enough, brave enough.”
The muscle in his cheek jumped. “Someday, I will.”
Raven wasn’t sure if he was lying to her or himself, or if perhaps someday, he would gather the courage to leave everything and everyone he knew for the faint promise of something better.
She thrust her hand into her pants pocket and withdrew one of her carved wood ravens. She thrust it into his palm and closed her hand over his. “To remember me by.”
His palm was warm and rough against her own despite the chill of the rain. His fingers tightened over hers. “As if I could ever forget you.”
“My name… my name is Raven.”
He smiled at her. “Until we meet again, Raven.”
Their gazes locked. For a moment, for an instant, they were connected by something larger than themselves. Two humans at the end of the world. Two survivors. Two friends.
She longed to hold on, to never let go.
He’d made his choice. And she’d made hers.
She pulled away. He clutched the small carving in his fist.
Shouldering her pack, Raven ran for her life.