Page 75 of Solivagant

Maybe if we were careful, I could sneak him through the woods and into my home.

It weren’t like I often got visitors anyway. Apart from Tash, and occasionally Dad.

How would Tash respond to him? I knew already her instinct would be violence. But if I warned her in advance, she might not immediately try to kill him.

If Dad saw him, however, there were no way he wouldn’t go on about aliens or monsters or something like that. He weren’t much of a hunter himself, but most the men of Hollow Creek were, and there was no way Dad could be trusted to keep anything secret. He’d tell someone who’d tell someone and soon there’d be a mob of hunters at my door demanding the beast.

It was too risky. So where did that leave us?

What kind of future could we ever hope to have when we came from such different worlds?

Was that why things had ended so badly with whatever we had shared in another life?

That sharp pain returned in my head, causing me to stumble. Phantom pain across my throat. Down my sternum and belly.

Why?

A warning? A prophecy?

Were we destined to relive disaster if we chose each other again?

Would we do it anyway?

Now that I’d found him, I was pretty sure leaving him again weren’t an option. If it wasn’t him catching me and dragging me back every time I tried to leave, then I’d simply walk myself back here in my sleep.

I couldn’t find a solution.

I also couldn’t find the rifle.

We’d covered some distance in our chase through the woods, and recounting our steps was far easier in theory than practice.

Some of our movements were easier to track than others, with the low branches of trees snapped from us running through them.

Above me, the birds started to sing again, no longer silent witnesses to the chase of a predator and his prey.

My stomach growled in its impatience. The sun was already high in the sky, signaling early afternoon. Food was another reason I couldn’t stay here indefinitely. There were only so many unseasoned ducks and deer I could eat before I required something else. I also desperately missed coffee.

By the time I came across something familiar, my skin was itching with the need to bathe. I examined the absolute carnage Tusks had made of the body-copying bastard. Was that the one that had impersonated Jim nights ago and tried to get into that crumbling house?

At least I knew where I was now, and from there, it didn’t take much longer to find the part of the path where we’d started our “game.”

I took a deep breath, taking in the fresh forest air. I still wasn’t close to finding any answers, about the past or the present. But my mind felt a little clearer at least.

As soon as I found the rifle, I’d head back to camp. I was ready to see him again, even if I was still unsure exactly how I should be acting around him now after all that. I didn’t know if it would happen again anytime soon, or if it had just been an adrenaline-fueled impulse. We needed to talk about that. We needed to talk about a lot of things.

I stepped over broken branches, spotting the rifle in the dirt up ahead. I didn’t know if the damn thing still worked, or who it had even once belonged to, but it didn’t really matter, because I suspected Tusks was a far better hunter than any weapon would make me.

My fingertips had barely touched the cold surface when the gunshot rang out. Loud enough that it echoed through the woods and caused the birds in the trees to take flight.

My pulse quickened, my breathing stopped. Because that shot hadn’t come from this rifle. It had come from the direction of the camp.

38

JOSIAH

Branches pulled at my shirt and cut my face and arms as I ran through the woods toward camp. Toward him.

The forest was completely silent, the only sound the thumping of my boots through leaves and the pounding of my heart in my ears. I ran with everything I had in me, even faster than I’d run from Tusks in our chase. Fueled by adrenaline; fueled by fear.