The figure—a small man or a large boy, it was hard to tell—got to his feet and watched the fire. Shoulder-length black hair hung down in mats. Haggard and ropy, almost Neanderthal in the slope of his shoulders, he paced alongside his catch, stopping now and then to lift his chin, to listen. To what, us?
We stood motionless, watching. A tortured energy came from him, something bottled and ferocious. Dark rags—the memory of a shirt—hung off his wasted frame; a whip of a belt cinched what might once have been pants but were now shreds of fabric turned leathery with filth. His face always in shadow, he reached over and turned the stick that held the trussed game, releasing more juices that smoked and rose to the stars, then grabbed the body of one of the things cooking over the fire with a bare hand—somehow impervious to its heat—and ripped off a scrawny leg with the other. He devoured it in seconds, throwing the small, clawlike bones into the fire.
Seemingly sated for the moment, he picked up a long, straight stick and something shining—a piece of metal?—a knife?—I couldn’t make it out—and began to whittle at the stick, shaving one end to a point.
Our eyes flashed at each other across the gloom. Sandra had been taking a giant step across the stream when Pia halted us and she balanced there still, straddling it awkwardly. Pia put her finger against her lips for silence. We obeyed. My breath roared in my ears. We had no plan. Still the creature huddled over his stick, slicing away at it, stopping only to stroke its smoothness with sensual appreciation, as if he were petting a cat.
I saw it all too late: Sandra beginning to teeter before reaching back for me with a wild look in her eye, but I couldn’t grab her in time. Her balance gone, she toppled over sideways, crashing down into the stream, and with a cry of pain landed on her shoulder and knee, up to her waist in rushing water. We threw ourselves over her and pulled her to her feet before staggering back into the clutter of trees and branches.
But we were too late. Like an agile shadow, the man leapt up and came at us, the stick in his hand a weapon held high.
27
I smelled him—sweat, rotted cloth, putrid breath—before I saw him. He seized my upper arm, then whipped me around to face him. Brown eyes, bloodshot and fierce, bored into mine. We stared at each other like two wildly different animals that had crossed paths in the forest and simply couldn’t comprehend the other, whether to fight or fuck or flee, deadlocked in some bizarre pas de deux. Finally I tore my eyes from his face—blackened and lined with filth, knotted hair hanging down—to his other hand, which gripped the sharp stick.
His eyes followed mine. He opened his hand; the stick fell to the ground. We locked eyes again. I realized the others had turned to run but had stopped and were staring back at us. With my entire being, I yearned to turn and face them, but I could sense that was a bad idea. He grasped my arm with inhumanly strong fingers but gazed at us one by one with a wild joy in his eyes before turning back to me.
Pia’s voice came from the shadows. “Let her go.”
“Don’t hurt her,” Sandra said.
His grip tightened. A scream bloomed in my throat; I suppressed it. The woods hummed with night song as we five stood in thrall.
“Dean? Where are you? Dean!” A female voice from near the fire, low and growling.
No one moved. The voice rose to a frantic pitch, cutting the night. “Get back here, young man!”
He let me go as if my flesh singed his fingers. His face contorted; his mouth moving as if he were trying to force something out.
Finally, he let out a “Gah!” The effort seemed to drain him. He turned me around and shoved me roughly into the woods. I staggered a few yards, looked back. He made a motion as if to wave us away. “Gah!” he blurted once more.
The voice came again, closer, a strong French accent curling the words. “Now you be a good boy, Dean, do you hear me?” A fleshy hand slashed across the dense greenery and a woman appeared. Thickets of brown hair sprouted from under an orange ski cap pulled down to eyes that glittered with feral intelligence. Bits of bone and feathers swung from tangled mats that hung down to her waist. Something like a skirt was tied around her thick middle with a leather strap, while a dung-colored knit top, impossibly stretched out, drooped down past her knees. On her grimy feet, the essence of shoes, strapped on with strips of rubber. Toenails curled like claws over their sooty edges. She was as tall as a man, broad in the shoulders and hips.
“Don’t be afraid.” She smiled at us with a movie-star set of gleaming white teeth. “My son gets a bit excited when he sees new people. Don’t you, Dean?”
Dean looked down and away, shaking his head with a whimpering sound.
“We were rafting, and there was an accident, and—” Pia choked out. “We’re lost and we need help. We saw the fire—”
“So,” the woman said, with an almost coquettish turn of her head, “you’ve come to the right place.”