Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (37 page)

We wait.

The alpha male sat and his ears came up.
The other hunters did the same, while the female wolves remained on the outer
edge of the camp. The pack formed a circle around the base of the tree.

Samuel felt a rumble in his stomach and
a pain gripped his side. He could not remember the last time he ate. He rubbed
the blooming bruises on his neck, a painful reminder of his time inside the
noose. Samuel looked out from the trees, convinced he had found temporary
refuge from the pack. A sliver of moon appeared above the canopy of pines,
blossoming like spilt milk into the night sky.

Are wolves nocturnal?
They’ll go back to the den once the sun comes up
,
Samuel thought.

Samuel watched as a new light crested off
the horizon. He did not see the blazing orb of his sun. He did not feel the
warmth of the day. Hours passed, and yet the light failed to chase back the
darkness, seeping upward until a dull grey blanket of mist descended on the
forest. A quick pulse of memory shot through his head, a late-afternoon
thunderstorm at the shore. The feeling lingered, but the specifics of the
memory did not. He looked down at the pack. The females and cubs slept in
bundles of fur, and the hunters rested their heads in their paws, all except
one. The alpha male remained sitting, his eyes focused on Samuel.

***

As the light faded yet again, Samuel felt
the first cramps clutching his muscles, threatening to eject him from his safe
perch. His stomach threatened to turn in on itself. He closed his eyes, unsure
whether the hunger pangs could keep his mind off the muscle cramps or whether
it was better to focus on the cramps to take his mind off of his hunger.
Samuel’s tongue felt as though it were wrapped in cotton. Mucous dripped from
his nose, while his feet felt cold and dead.

It weakens.

The wolves pushed up onto all fours and
began circling the base of the trunk. The alpha male reared back and howled.
The cubs awakened with new fervor, hunger and bloodlust. Two hunters
leapt onto the base of the tree as if threatening to climb it. They
jumped back and forth, growling and snapping at each other’s tails.

Samuel closed his eyes and the
world swam beneath him. He lost his sense of direction and fell from the
branch, lunging out and grasping another to stop his plummet. The branch slid
beneath his fingers as he looked at the ground below, feeling dizzy. He
expected the ground to rush up and snatch him from the precipice. Samuel
reminded himself not to look down, wondering why that seemed to be the best
advice for his fear of heights. The hunters saw the movement and the
other wolves sensed it. The entire pack ran around the base, barking and
growling in a frenzy. Samuel hung by one arm, his left foot five feet from the
ground. He felt the sting as a pine branch opened a gash in his side, and blood
dripped into the open maw of the alpha male.

Not this way,
he thought, wincing.

He drew a deep breath and forced the pain
from his mind. He considered giving up until the thought of the pack’s teeth
tearing at his flesh cleared his head. His mind raced through questions,
reasons for the wolves’ unending pursuit. But in that moment, he realized it
did not matter. He would have to survive before he could have the luxury of
reflection.

Samuel shook his head, fighting the haze
and scrambling to reach a higher position. The alpha male lunged, clamping his
jaws on the heel of Samuel’s sneaker, shaking it left to right, rear paws
digging into the dirt with every backpedal. Samuel kicked with his opposite
foot but lacked power behind the motion. His toe bounced off the skull of the
alpha male, agitating him more.

The other wolves crowded the alpha male,
snapping at Samuel’s foot in support of the leader. Samuel felt his grip
loosening and his pants being tugged downward by another wolf that had a hold.
He looked up at the branch, the tree about to fulfill his destiny of death in a
way the noose could not. As his right hand released and another wolf climbed to
his knee, a crack echoed through the valley. Samuel crashed to the ground as
the wolves froze. They spun to face the sound as another shot whistled through
the air and a slug lodged in the pine tree mere inches from Samuel’s head.

We will come back.

The alpha male turned to snarl at Samuel
before bounding over the remains of the fire and through the trunks of the pine
trees. The hunters, the females and the cubs followed with their tails
tucked.

Samuel looked over the fire with blurry
vision. His breathing slowed and he sensed motion. A dark swath moved over the
reemerging fire. It stopped and hesitated. The flames jumped back to life, and
Samuel squinted in the light. Again the fire burned with a paltry, green hue,
but compared to the blackness preceding it, Samuel shielded his eyes from the
glare.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Close your eyes. We’ll talk when your
body has recovered.”

Samuel rolled onto his back and laughed.
Floating ash danced overhead against the black velvet sky. Bare tree branches
reached for it like bony fingers.

“The wolves, they’re coming back,” he
said.

“They will. They always do,” the stranger
said.

Samuel smiled again and closed his eyes.
He would sleep, or he would die. Either would rest his weary mind.

Chapter 3

“I hope Major finds him before the wolves
tear him apart,” Mara said.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about Major,
newbies or the wolves,” Kole said.

Mara tucked a strand of hair behind her
ear and shook her head. “Of course you do, Kole. You know Major can’t get out
of this one by himself.”

Major’s fate, his redemption, hinged on
his ability to save them all from the reversion. Kole and Mara didn’t have the
knowledge or the ability to escape on their own. Each new visitor
had the potential to manipulate this place without knowing it, but Major
had seen it a number of times. It was up to him to mold the raw talent Deva
sent his way. He bounced from one universe to another, but he was unable to do
so in this one. Major needed Samuel alive long enough to figure out why.

“He’s only out to save his own ass. I
don’t trust Major and neither should you.”

Mara shrugged. “You have to trust
somebody. As long as you know Major will sell you out to get what he wants,
what’s the big deal?”

Kole shrugged off Mara’s question. “I’m
not the one making a big deal about Major, am I?” He rubbed a hand across the
tattoo that sleeved his right arm, trying hard to remain focused on the
conversation he had with Mara dozens of times already. “Maybe you have a good
reason to get back to whatever life you had, but I don’t. I’m just as happy to
stay here and let the cloud eat me.”

Mara gave up, tired of the posturing Kole
used to end all of their conversations. “Major is looking for someone or
something. It’s his only hope, and I feel like it’s mine as well.”

Kole looked at her and wondered how they
were connected to the new visitor, and ultimately, to Major. He grew tired of
the disappointment in Mara’s eyes. Kole could feel a connection to the new
arrival and yet he could not understand why.

He knew more about Mara’s journey than
Mara. He was with Major when she came through the forest, mumbling and
disoriented like all of the troubled souls that fell from the noose. They took
care of her and nursed her back to health in hopes she could find whatever it
was they needed to flee the dying worlds. Major never said it, but Kole knew
she wasn’t the one, but she was the key to finding the one who would.
Major told him she would draw that power like a magnet and that was why Kole
pretended to tolerate her in Major’s presence.

Kole and Major committed heinous, immoral
acts in their lives and landed here. As far as Kole could tell, Mara had not
and so he felt sympathetic towards her. He knew his own suicide brought him
into the reversion, although he could not decide if he was alive or dead. Most
days Kole struggled to tell the difference. When Samuel arrived, he felt the
blood connection in his veins and knew this reversion would not end like the
countless others that tossed him out and back into the cursed forest.

Mara convinced Major and Kole she
couldn’t remember crossing over. She kept that secret hidden away, fearful they
would somehow use it against her. But she’d overheard Major and Kole
talking at night about their old lives and she knew why they were here. The men
were violent, greedy and selfish. But they helped her navigate the
forest and so she felt a thin and cautious connection to both. The collective
energy of Major, Kole and Mara could release them all from the cycle,
but only with Samuel’s help.

***

Samuel felt the nudge of the boot in his
ribs and rolled over onto his back. A grey, gauzy haze still hung in the
sky. He put a hand to his throbbing forehead and wondered how long it would
take to feel normal again, if ever. Samuel detected movement across the remains
of the night’s fire, and a pulse of fear raced through his chest. The tree, the
wolves and the howling—especially the howling—resurfaced in his head. He gulped
the air and recognized the movement of a fellow human. Samuel squinted as he
sat up on his elbows.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Does it matter?”

He shrugged. “I guess not.”

He watched the stranger from behind. The
man sat on a felled trunk, wearing a tattered, black overcoat mingled with
dried leaves. He wore a black cloth headband tied at the back of his head above
a ponytail streaked with shooting bursts of grey.

“Who are you?”

The stranger turned and faced Samuel. His
eyes sat deep in his skull, surrounded by dark blooms of age and fatigue. The
headband crouched low over his eyebrows, and the stranger’s nose sat crooked,
in between two red cheeks and lips melded together into a thin line. A bruise
ran from his left ear, down across his throat, and then up underneath his right
ear.

“Call me Major,” he said.

“Is that a name or a rank?”

Major smiled and shook his head. “You ask
too many questions.”

Major placed his knife and sharpening
stone on a rock, and the glint of the blade sparkled when it caught the dull
glare of the daylight.

“You saved my life,” Samuel said.

Major shrugged.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome . . . er?”

“Samuel.”

“You’re welcome, Samuel.”

Major stood and walked over to Samuel,
sitting on a rock facing him.

“What do you remember?” he asked.

“The noose.”

Major’s eyebrows pushed the headband up slightly.

“It didn’t work. I know it was tight on
my neck. I don’t remember that, I just know it. Then it was at my feet, and the
bruises on my neck turned red.”

“Before that?” Major asked.

Samuel shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Family, friends, work, women?”

Again, Samuel shook his head.

Major whistled and stood. “Haven’t seen
many that close who don’t end up with rigor mortis.”

“Close to what?” Samuel asked.

Major waved his hand in the air and bent
down to rummage through a rucksack a few feet from the fire pit. He pulled out
a plastic jewel case. The cover had four symbols on it, and the spine read
“Threefold Law—
Revenant
.” He tossed the CD to Samuel.

“Know what that is?”

Samuel smiled. “I’m not an idiot. It’s a
CD.”

Major snatched it from his hands and
tossed it back into the sack. “Personal, not cultural,” he said, more to
himself than Samuel.

Samuel stood and stretched his back. His
stomach moaned, and he stepped toward Major. “I can’t remember the last time I
ate anything.”

That shook Major from a momentary
daydream. He pulled the rucksack closed and reached into the blue, plastic
shopping bag behind it, grabbing cheese on wheat crackers wrapped in
cellophane. He tossed them to Samuel.

“One of the few of those I have left.
Might be one of the last ever.”

Samuel tore into the snack crackers. The
overpowering sting of salt flooded his mouth and his senses. And then, as
quickly as it came, the taste disappeared. He chewed what now tasted like dried
cardboard. Samuel finished the crackers and immediately recognized how thirsty
he had become.

Major walked to the nearest pine, lifted
a twelve gauge shotgun, and laid the barrel over his left shoulder. He loaded a
lead pumpkin ball into the chamber and clicked it shut. Major grabbed the
rucksack and swung it over his head.

“I’ve gotta go.”

Samuel stared at him.

“I left you a water.”

“Hold on. Where are you going?”

Major ignored the question and strode
past Samuel toward the enveloping darkness of the forest. The filtered light
retreated downward from the sky, leading Samuel to believe it was nearing dusk.