James Axler – Shadowfall

If it wasn’t a nightmare, then this night stalker had chilled nine of Magnus’s friends. Slit all of their throats so that the floor of the forest was sodden with rank, steaming puddles of fresh-spilled blood.

“No pain and no gain, Magnus,” Straub whispered. “What goes around, comes around.”

The pain from the stone that he was sitting on was almost unbearable. Magnus’s mind had simply gone blank, knowing that he was about to be brutally murdered and not being able to do anything about it.

“Know what?” he said, his voice like the faint croak of a distant frog.

“What is it?” Straub asked, concerned as a friendly priest at a parish children’s party.

“I always said I’d catch him up and get to be oldest. Now I’ve done it.”

“Indeed, you have.” Straub patted the young man on his dew-damp cheek. “Indeed, you have. Very well done.”

The cold steel, honed to slice a human hair down its length, touched Magnus’s skin and began the single, long, deep cut that would end his life.

Only then, woefully too late, did the teenager open his mouth and fill his lungs, giving a terrible, piercing scream.

Chapter Thirty

“We’re fucked.” Trader stopped dead in his tracks at the dreadful cry. “They got around us, and they’re chilling the sec men.”

Bill Rainey’s foxy face had gone slack and loose with the shock and horror. “Can’t have” he stammered. “Can’t takethem all out.”

“Can and has,” Ryan snapped. There was a temptation to remind his old leader that he’d warned him about just this possibility, but it was all too late for that.

“Dark night! Means they know that we’re coming.” J.B. had dropped to one knee, awkwardly readying the Uzi, trying to steady it one-handed.

“Could mean they know that Dean isn’t me,” Jamie gasped. “If they know that”

There was a movement in the woods around them, dark shapes flitting through the dense fog, muffled shouting.

Ryan made an instant decision.

“Only one way to save my son,” he said. “Going in alone. Now. Rest of you, back to the ville.”

The only people to argue were Trader and Krysty.

“No way, Ryan.”

“I’ll lose you both, lover.”

He looked around the circle. Shock and dismay was on every face at the realization that their plan was in ruins.

“No choice. I’m going now. Slide in and find Dean. Bring him out. See you back at the ville sometime tomorrow. Don’t try to come after me. Just fuck things up even more.” He turned on his heel, then paused as another thought struck him. “Brushwooders know we’re here. Get the horses if you can, but they’re probably already lost. So try and circle around and move fast. Let Rainey and the kid guide you. They know the area.”

“Take the greatest of care, my dear fellow,” Doc said, gripping him by the shoulder.

“Thanks, Doc. Here, take my rifle with you. It’ll only get in the way.”

There wasn’t anything else to be said.

Ryan gave Krysty a kiss on the cheek, then turned away. In passing he couldn’t help noticing how Trader seemed to have aged by ten years in the past five minutes, at the realization that his fight plan had gone so appallingly wrong.

The fog wrapped itself around Ryan as he moved away.

RYAN MOVED LOW AND FAST, not worrying much about making noise. The mist and the surrounding trees would combine to muffle and distort any sounds, and there were brushwooders scurrying around him.

He had the SIG-Sauer still bolstered, relying on the panga drawn in his right hand. If there was to be any chilling, it would be well to try to make it silent.

The one thing that he had on his side was the knowledge that most of the fighting men from the camp seemed to be out and about in the forest. If he could get back under cover of night and fog, and find Dean quickly enough, there was a real hope that they could get away before dawn.

He pushed aside the insistent thought that Straub, Ditchdown and the brushwooders had somehow found out that Dean wasn’t the baron’s son.