Page 36 of Beautiful Prey

I push away from the trunk and cross to the hollow he wedged himself into last night. The earth is pressed flat beneath the roots, but the tracks leading away are fresh, heading northwest.

The wind catches the edge of my visor and I stop. The rain is gone. Grit skims across the forest floor, and when I lift my head, the northern sky has turned into a dark wall rolling over itself.

The sandstorm is coming.

I set off anyway.

The forest looks different in daylight. Last night’s panic is still lying where people left it. A torn pack hangs from a branch. A ration tin lies crushed in the undergrowth. Blood has dried almost black across a patch of moss, and fifty yards farther on I find the owner facedown beneath a pine, his tracker still blinking against his wrist.

Farther up the slope, one of the Hunt’s challenge posts is still flashing beside a narrow trench.

LAST ACROSS ELIMINATED.

Someone made it. Someone didn’t. The loser lies at the bottom with blood dried across his shirt while the winner’s marker keeps blinking green above him.

Nobody stops for the dead. The Hunt keeps moving.

I follow the freshest tracks. Small boots. He pushed hard at first, then slowed when the ground started climbing.

A voice carries through the trees, followed by another and a burst of laughter. I leave the tracks and follow the sound.

The clearing opens between the pines, and there he is. He’s slumped against a fallen trunk with three men closing on him.

Two of them I know. The shovel-jawed bastard who took his tablets, and the one who stood there while it happened. The third is new, a length of pipe swinging from his fist.

I stop against a trunk and listen.

“I didn’t mean to kill him.” His voice is already fraying. “He came at me. I was trying to get away.”

“Yeah, well, you did.” The shovel-jawed one steps closer. “You killed Teo. Nineteen years old, and I had to leave him lying in that streambed. His sister’s going to ask me where he is.”

“He came at me. I didn’t... it wasn’t...”

“Course it wasn’t, princess. Never is with you.” He keeps coming, the other two spreading out. “You run off like a little pussy and leave one of ours in the mud. So we’re going to make it even.”

“Yeah,” the one with the pipe says.

My prey gets his back to the trunk and his knife up.

The blade shakes in his grip. He holds it there anyway, green eyes huge in a face gone white, chin refusing to drop.

“Stay back.”

“Or what? You’ll trip me onto a rock?” The big one grins at the other two. “Come on, princess. Show me.”

Something pulls tight under my ribs, watching him square up three-to-one with a blade he can’t use.

Last night he refused everything I offered him. Now he’s cornered, terrified, and still refusing to bend for these three either.

A ridiculous little burst of pride hits me.

Maybe those dumb motherfuckers have a point after all.

The big one lunges. My little liar gives ground, step by step, until his back finds the trunk and there’s nowhere left to go.

Time’s up.

“Room for one more?”