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Holy Christ.
Clearing his mind, he held his position. He made his body a part of the tree, part of the low-hanging branches, the roots at its base, the leaves, even the wind that moved through it. It had picked up, become chilly. As he’d explained to Danny back in the caves, it was a technique that had worked very well for the aborigines, making it damn hard to find them when they didn’t want to be found.
He didn’t know how it would fare against supernatural beings, but he was going to give it a go and see how things panned out.
Another spear was on the ground next to the neighboring tree, half covered in dirt and leaves so it appeared just another fallen branch.
They’d found the rabbit. He heard the chilling growls and snarls, a yelp and howls. Sharp shouts, the cracking of whips as whoever Ruskin was using as his handlers tried to get them off the scent. He froze as the ground rustled beneath him, and he realized two of the children had split off and were wandering around the vicinity of the tree next to him. One scratched at the base, peering up through the leaves. It was a girl, hissing with a sinister yet oddly musing type of noise, considering. Apparently the other was encouraging her to go check out the hunch. Bloody hell. He saw a mop of snarled black hair, a flashing eye with traces of red, which he noted showed up well in darkness.
When the child started scrambling up the adjacent tree, as agile as a monkey, even faster, Dev made his decision. Grasping the spear, he saw the flick of the child’s eyes as she registered his movement. He’d expected her to take several seconds to assess.
He’d forgotten he was dealing with animals made rabid by hunger. Instead, she launched herself out into the air, twenty feet across, straight for him.
He threw hard, sheer reaction, and discovered the privilege of his new strength at the same moment. His skill and that strength made up for his delay in reaction. Just. While he knew the spear tip wouldn’t kill her, the wooden haft did. The spear went through her chest when she was less than several yards from him. It launched her backward with an unearthly, echoing shriek.
Dev was already dropping out of the tree, landing on top of the other one, his knife clutched in his hand.
Because it was his hunting knife, it was sharp enough to cut through most living things, though he’d never tried human bone and sinew. He blocked out everything but what needed to be done. The impromptu wrestling match made it easier, for the creature that looked like an unkempt nine-year-old had the strength of a bloody bear. Dev knew if he rounded on him, he was good as gone.
The child’s head whipped right, the fangs sinking into his arm, one hand grabbing his wrist and elbow and shoving outward, wrenching his shoulder out of its socket as easily as he might have pulled an onion bulb from the ground.
Dev plunged the knife into the wild-eyed vampire’s nape, twisting. There was a gurgling howl, but he pulled free and then slashed across, deep, severing neck tendons. As the boy tried to get away, Dev held him, pinned him with his knees, skewered his heart next. A geyser of blood struck his face, but he went back to the neck hacking, until he’d taken the boy’s head half off. He finished the job with his bare hands. A bloody mess. Literally. As he’d intended.
A tool for demons . . . Damn it, keep the mind blank. He snarled it at himself as he plunged his hands into the warm liquid. He painted another symbol on his chest, a protection against his enemies, then sopped up more blood in his shirt. Retrieving the hidden spear, he padded at a silent run through the woods, slapping the rag here and there, leaving the blood trail everywhere before dropping it and cutting across a creek, moving swiftly upstream.
Slipping away, he heard the pack closing in. A few minutes later, their voices were raised in hair-raising screams of fury. No silence now. They wanted him to hear. Wanted him to know that, if they found him, it wouldn’t be quick. Unlike hounds, these were conscious of the concept of vengeance. Odd, since the handler had indicated they were willing enough to turn on one another. But Dev understood it. In a way, the children were there still, somewhere beneath the savagery. And they were a pack.
Dev ignored the nauseating pain of his dislocated shoulder as he kept working his way upward, thanking God again they’d been blessed with recent rain. He cut out of the creek through an area scattered with wildflowers, most furled for the night. A dingo howled, reminding him that less than twelve hours ago he’d held Danny in his arms, the dingoes crying outside. He’d smiled at her, wondered at her.
He went in circles, double-backed over himself, moving so fast that even with his fascinating new speed, his lungs were laboring.
Bloody hell, the shoulder hurt, but he didn’t dare take the time. Plus, he didn’t know if it was pure adrenaline or this third mark, but it wasn’t inhibiting him the way he’d have expected. Slowing down only when he knew he was near the gorge he’d scoped during daylight, he located the markers he’d left for himself at the edge. He’d worked out a shallow gully here, which he hoped wouldn’t become his grave. Now he lay down in it, rearranging the clumps of matted leaves, debris and dirt over himself, positioning a grass straw for air. He’d finished the arrangement, had no more than a half hour or so to settle and listen, before he heard the approach of the handlers and the vampires. Bloody oath, they were fast.
Someone stopped to the right of him. He could make out the muffled conversation, since they were almost on top of him. “Fan out over this area. Barnes, come over here.”
By the shift in pressure near his calf, Dev determined one man had squatted. He’d rolled himself one, because he also detected the faint odor of smoke, heard the strike of the wax match. “This bloke’s canny. Jesus, he’s left trail markings in twenty different directions, and he’s splashing blood everywhere. The little monsters are going half mad.”
“Well, we better have some line on him, because Lord Charles is on his way. Night’s half over and he expects his kill before the end of it.”
A disgusted noise and then a thump. “Damn it. This would be a sight easier if we had an aboriginal tracker.”
“Watch that knife, Smith. Don’t want one of the kiddies getting hold of it. And ain’t no aborigine that’ll come within a hundred miles of this place, and you know it. I’m beginning to think they have the right of it. Come on. I’ll leave you a couple of the mob to scout this area, and the rest of us will keep going up this ridge.”
Dev let out the breath he’d sucked in, listening to the others move off a few minutes later. The Smith bloke who’d thrown his knife into the ground during their discussion was as fond of sharpening it as Dev was. And now, unless the shallow amount of earth had cleaned it off, his blade would smell like Dev’s fresh blood.
“This way, I say. Come on, you bloody buggers.” The snap of the whip, the sound of men muttering oaths and the animal-like noise of the children slowly receded. In the sudden quiet, Dev’s ears were tuned to Smith and the two vampire children.
“What is it you want? Get away with you now. Stay the hell away . . . What the hell . . . ?” He could imagine Smith holding the knife up to the light, seeing the telltale smear of blood on the blade attracting the two vamps.
His eyes already closed, Dev listened to the man’s approach, the vibration of his boots on the earth as he tried to determine where he’d been, see what clue he might have missed. Then the ground compressed to the right of Dev’s feet as Smith squatted.
Dev exploded out of the ground, spear in one hand, knife in the other. Smith shouted in surprise, helping Dev target him, since he couldn’t open his eyes, the sand tumbling from his face a distraction he couldn’t afford. He thrust the knife hard into the man’s gut beneath the heart. He swung him around by the knife handle, and got lucky, knocking him into one of the two vampire children, if the vicious squeal was accurate. He got his eyes open in time to see his momentum send them both over the gorge edge. It might not kill the vampire, but it would certainly take him out of range for the moment, for the gorge was deep. He’d managed to hang on to the knife haft, but it went spinning out of his hand as he was slammed to the ground by the other one, hard enough that the creature knocked his shoulder back into place with a sickening crunch.
However, a dislocated shoulder couldn’t make up for a torn throat, and the child was gouging, ripping at it with fangs and claws.
Dev got the spear between them, heaved and managed to throw the vampire off. He couldn’t see her move, but he whipped up the spear a scant second before she was back on him. She shrieked and spit blood in his face, wriggling on the shaft like a maddened shark.
This one was about twelve years old. Starting to develop a young woman’s face, a hint of breast. Dev held his position, knocked back onto one knee by her second attack, but grimly bracing himself with the open gorge directly behind him. As she looked down at him, drool flecked her chin from her hunger and the animal growls she made. She was jerking, fighting the death, and when the moon came out from behind the clouds, he saw the brown irises in the bloodred eyes. She had the delicate, thick lashes of a child.
The small mouth. Her hair, if cleaned and brushed, would have been brown, too.
The boy, the one he’d mutilated facedown, had been about the size of Rob. This girl might have been his daughter, if Tina had lived and they’d had the three children they’d planned.
Don’t. Block it out.
She was batting at the spear, weakening, and her hisses and growls had become whimpers. Swallowing, Dev shifted it so she was on her side, the spear all the way through her. He stayed at the far end of it, though he had to fight everything in him that told him to pull it out, lay a hand on her small skull. Her head thrashed, her eyes darting back and forth, sometimes briefly meeting his in bewilderment.
Was she still twelve? When had Ruskin turned her? Five years ago? Ten? Two? How much of her life had she been tortured like this, when she should have been somewhere like Perth, going to school in her pressed uniform, white socks and shined shoes?
Making shy eyes at a boy she liked?
She was dead, the body at last still and lifeless. A different stillness settled over him then, one far from what the Elder had taught him. The click of a pistol behind him was loud in that silence. “Glad I lagged behind the others. Could hear that bludger Smith’s scream a mile off. You stay right like that. The other blokes’ll be here in a—” With a howl of feral rage, Dev spun low, sweeping out his feet, taking the man off his. He rolled, but Dev was already on him, the pistol knocked away. He jerked the frightened man up by his hair and slit his throat before he could cry out.
