details that weren’t too fuzzy to see. Except for his eyes. There was no missing his eyes. He drew a deep drag off a cigarette, its bright orange cherry searing the dark surrounding his featureless face. “Oh. I see.”
Then, with a wave of his hand the trees descended upon Stacy, their branches like talons and teeth, anxious to sink into her waiting flesh. Stacy recoiled, but the forest was far quicker.
The branches first tore the clothes from her body then the skin from her naked flesh; they continued to swing with an angry rage, rending chunk after bloody chunk, tossing each aside while hungrily clawing at the prize beneath. They reached in together in a gnarled wooden unison, dug deep into what remained of Stacy’s body and in one terrible motion tore it apart in an explosion of muck, bile, and bone. Where a woman once stood, now only Nibbling Nils remained. “Fuck . . . you,” he said.
“I’d say we’re even, old man,” said Bill the Shadow. “Let’s not make this a bigger deal than it has to be.” He narrowed his eyes.
Nils backed down. He didn’t want Bill’s wrath any more than Bill really wanted his. “Yeah. Whatever. Fuck it.”
Bill smiled. “Kind of fun though, wasn’t it?”
Nils curled the corner of his lips into a slobbering sneer—the closest thing he could manage to a smile. “Yeah. It really was.”
“Come on, let’s go watch the Aufhocker.”
CARLY JERKED AWAKE, surprised by something that wasn’t there. She hadn’t heard anything, couldn’t see anything, and apparently Dallas and Stacy had slunk off for another tryst. She thought for a moment of the two off in the dark, passionately wrestling, clawing at each other, and she sighed deeply, left with no other option but the loser. But even he wasn’t around. Carly Ginero was a crestfallen second place, her role that of booby prize to an unworthy, unwanted suitor. She really hated Stacy sometimes.
SNAP! A twig cracked outside the tent. She didn’t think, didn’t stop for a moment to wonder if it was an animal or an intruder; she got up, storming out of the tent, angry that she had been left alone. Calling out into the night, she barked: “Now just where the hell have you been?” She trailed off, her eyes losing focus gazing out into the eerie silence. No one. No one at all. She looked around, uneasy, wondering who or what might be lurking in the woods just outside the dwindling firelight.
She saw the rustle of movement, heard another twig crack. Her head whipped around and there, just beyond the bushes, stood the creepiest, most emaciated little boy she’d ever seen. He stared back at her through the dark, his eyes hollow, empty. Her heart sank into her stomach and she froze in place. Then, with the flutter of eyelashes and the slight twitch of eyebrows, the little boy turned and ran into the woods, daring her to chase him.
That’s when the thing leapt from the dark, grappling her from behind. “Run,” breathed a husky voice into her ear with air so hot it singed her hair. Carly sprinted, immediately hitting her full stride. Her bare feet tore over broken ground, rocks digging in, scraping the skin from her heels. She ran harder than she’d ever run in her life. There was nothing but fear now, a terrible anxiety that this was how she would meet her end—alone and screaming in the dark underbrush.
Eberhard rode astride her back—all three goblinoid feet of him—a snaggletoothed smile resting beneath his crooked hook nose that showed no malice at all. Only amusement. He hooted and hollered, his grip firm, his stance that of a prize-winning jockey. “Run, my little pretty, run!” he cackled. “Run until your feet fall off.”
The forest thundered with the steady, drumlike pounding of her heart. BA-DUM! BA-DUM! BA-DUM! BA-DUM! So great was the pounding that they couldn’t hear the rustling leaves, snapping twigs, or even the crackling branches below them as Carly’s delicate feet were nibbled apart piece by piece by a ravenous forest. Nor did they hear the distant rumble of thunder, or see the stars engulfed by dark black clouds backlit by distant fires. And by the time the rumble had become an unbridled roar, it was too late.
Eberhard and Carly looked up to see a dark rider atop a shadowy mound of matted fur emerging from the wood in front of them. In its hand it carried a monstrous ax—the blade alone half the size