Pines (25 page)

A searing flash of pain, and then the creature’s forward momentum jerked Ethan off his feet, slamming him to the rocks with enough force to drive the air out of his lungs.

Ethan gasped for oxygen as it attacked.

Pit-bull ferocity.

Lightning-fast.

Brutal strength.

Slashing wildly as Ethan held up his arms in an effort to protect his face from the five-taloned claws that were as sharp as a bird of prey’s, tearing easily through his clothing, through his skin.

It had managed, in a matter of seconds, to straddle Ethan, the claws at the ends of its legs digging into his calves like nails pinning him to the ground.

In all the fury, Ethan glimpsed its face.

Large, craterous nostrils.

Small, opaque eyes.

Skull hairless and the skin stretched so tight and thin over its cranium he could see where the skull plates fit together like puzzle pieces.

Gums lined with double rows of tiny, razor cuspids.

It seemed like he’d been fighting this thing for hours—time slowed into sluggish, terrifying increments—though in reality, only seconds had elapsed, Ethan’s combat training struggling to kick-start, his mind beginning to rise above the fear and the confusion, struggling to quash the mad
panic that had engulfed him. The more dangerous and chaotic the situation, the more clearly you needed to think to evaluate how you were going to survive, and so far, he’d failed. Allowed this encounter to sap most of his strength, and if he didn’t get control of his fear and his energy output, in another sixty seconds, he wouldn’t have the ability—mental or physical—to even try to fight back.

The creature landed its deepest strike yet—an excruciating score across Ethan’s stomach, slicing through fabric, skin, the shallow layer of fat on top of Ethan’s well-defined abs, and finally skimming across the surface of raw muscle.

As it burrowed its head into Ethan’s stomach, he could feel its teeth tearing through the hoodie, Ethan coming to the horrific realization of what this monster was actually trying to do—gut him with its built-in knives and have a feast right here in the canyon while Ethan watched and bled out.

Ethan smashed his fist into the side of its head—an awkward blow but a hard one.

The thing looked up from Ethan’s stomach and produced an angry, roaring screech.

Then raised its right claw and swung at Ethan’s neck.

He blocked the oncoming strike with his left arm as he reached across the ground with his right, fingers desperately searching for a weapon.

The luster of pure rage in the creature’s eyes was unmistakable.

It pushed off Ethan’s stomach, its hideous face driving toward his neck, teeth bared.

It’s going to tear my throat out.

Ethan’s hand seized on a rock, fingers struggling for a decent grip.

He swung as hard as he’d ever swung at anything in his life, the stone heavy, the size of a paperweight, and when its blunt end crunched into the side of the monster’s head, the thing faltered, coal-black pupils dilating in those milky eyes, its jaw gone slack with a kind of stunned amazement.

Ethan didn’t hesitate.

Shot straight up and drove the rock through that mouthful of jagged brown canines, teeth breaking as the thing tumbled back, Ethan following with another strike, this one a catastrophic blow to its gaping nose.

It crashed to the ground, deep red blood pouring out of its nose and mouth as it screamed in livid disbelief, throwing weak talon-slashes that didn’t have the force or velocity behind them to even break skin.

Ethan straddled the thing, one hand crushing its windpipe, the other clutching the rock.

Seven skull-fracturing strikes, and it finally quit moving.

Ethan tossed the blood-smeared rock away and fell back onto his side, drawing long, deep breaths, his face spattered with blood and the occasional bone splinter.

He forced himself to sit up and lift his shirt.

Jesus.

Looked like he’d been in a knife fight, bleeding from numerous places across his torso—long, ugly cuts from those talons. The one across his stomach had done the most damage—a six-inch canyon carved through his abdomen. An inch deeper, and this slash would have opened him wide.

He glanced down at what was left of whatever the hell this thing was.

Didn’t even know how to begin to process it.

He couldn’t make his hands stop shaking, still so much adrenaline chugging through his system.

He stood.

The canyon still again.

He glanced up at the nearest wall, that mysterious metal object still shining in the sun. Impossible to be sure, but from his perspective, it looked like an eighty- or ninety-foot climb, and though he couldn’t quite get a fix on the reason, he felt a strong urge to get off the canyon floor as soon as possible.

Ethan wiped the gore off his face with the sleeves of his sweatshirt and scrambled back from the wall so he could get a better look at it. Took a moment to study all possible routes up the cliff face, finally deciding on one that would take him up a series of dwindling ledges to the base of a wide crack that ran all the way up to the object of his curiosity.

He walked to the wall.

In the afterglow of the fight, his body felt absolutely electric.

Be a good thing to plug this energy into a climb.

Reaching up to the first wide ledge, Ethan found a decent lip on the rock and pulled himself up.

The flexion of his stomach muscles was agonizing, compounded by the fact that they were integral to nearly every movement.

But he pushed through the pain.

Twenty feet up the wall, Ethan found a spot on a ledge where he could easily stand, and leaned back into the rock.

It had been years since he’d done any climbing, and his inefficiency was evident in the sheer physical toll just the first twenty feet had taken. He was climbing with his arms instead of relying on the power of his legs, and already he was drenched in sweat, the saltwater running down into every nick, every slice, every cut.

He carefully shuffled back around and placed his hands on the rock. The ledge was shadowed from the sun and the stone as cold as ice. From the ground, this next section had seemed fairly straightforward—a wealth of good footholds
and the kind of knobby rock that lent itself to climbing. But now, standing twenty feet above the canyon floor and staring up a near-vertical pitch, the handholds didn’t look quite so inviting, and the distance to the next ledge—where he might grab a much-needed minute of rest—was at least thirty feet.

Ethan shut his eyes and took two deep breaths in an effort to bring his pulse back down to baseline.

You can do this. You
have
to do this.

A foot above his head, he gripped his smallest handhold yet, and then stepped up onto a gently sloping surface that contained just enough grit to give the soles of his boots several seconds of purchase.

The fear kicked up several notches as Ethan worked his way above the second ledge, trying to ignore that quiet voice lodged in the back of his mind like a splinter, whispering that he was passing out of broken-leg-and-back territory into the caliber of height where a mistake meant death.

He made increasingly risky grabs on progressively smaller hand- and footholds.

Starting out, he’d hesitated between every move, testing and retesting each hold, but no more. Already, his legs had begun to sporadically tighten—a precursor to cramps. If he was hit with one up here on the wall that might very well be the end.

And so he climbed as fast as he could, taking every decent hold he encountered, trying to find comfort in the growing distance between himself and the floor of the canyon, assuring himself that should he fall, it would be far better to just die right off, because a broken leg or back out in this barren wilderness would only mean a slow and agonizing death.

And yet the higher he climbed, the terror gripped him tighter, Ethan fighting the urge to look down, but he couldn’t
resist the morbid fascination with how far he was taking himself above the ground.

His right hand finally reached the third ledge.

He strained to haul himself up, digging his left knee into the edge.

By the time he realized there was nothing obvious for his left hand to grasp, he was already committed.

There was an endless second where Ethan hung in midair, one knee perched on the ledge as his center of gravity slowly dragged him back from the wall toward that terrible emptiness beneath him.

He lunged out in total desperation, both hands clawing at the rock, his left just managing to find a crimp at chest level.

For a moment, he didn’t know if he had a sufficient grip to reverse gravity’s undertow and pull himself back onto the ledge, the surface of his fingertips scraping away, his knuckles blanching from the strain.

His backward momentum stopped, and he tugged himself forward by the tips of his fingers until his forehead grazed the wall.

Took everything in his power to swing his right leg up and make himself stand.

This ledge was half the width of the last one and his feet hung off the edge.

Would’ve been impossible to sit down or to remain here for any extended length of time.

The crack in the wall that climbed the remaining distance to that piece of metal opened up just above him. Looked wide enough for Ethan to squeeze into if he could get there, but he didn’t have the strength to try to pull himself up just yet.

He’d nearly died, and his body, head to toe, was still shaking.

The scream ripped him out of his own fear.

He stared fifty feet down to the canyon floor, baffled.

He’d crushed that thing’s skull into pieces.

How the hell—

Wait.

It wasn’t moving, and it no longer had a mouth to even produce such a noise.

As the next scream—this one a shade lower in pitch—resounded through the canyon, bouncing back and forth between the walls, Ethan looked back toward the electrified fence.

Oh God.

There were five of them moving up-canyon in a pattern that almost resembled a squadron formation, ascending that field of large boulders in fast, elegant leaps.

Ethan pressed his back against the wall, trying to establish as steady a perch as he could find.

The pack leader came sprinting out of the boulder field at full speed, as fast as a dog, and when it reached what Ethan had killed, it skidded to a stop and lowered its head to the ground, sniffing the smashed skull of its compatriot.

As the others closed in, it raised its face to the sky and cut loose a long, brokenhearted moan that resembled the howl of a wolf.

The other four arrived and within ten seconds they were all howling like a choir in mourning, Ethan growing cold as he stood motionless on the ledge listening, his sweat cooling on his skin and the remnants of blood from that thing drying on his face like tiny scabs.

He tried to comprehend what he was seeing and hearing, but there was no explanation.

It was all utterly beyond his experience, and possibly his imagination.

When the howling ended, the group turned to one another and conversed in the strangest language Ethan had ever heard.

Like dreadful birds—an eerie chirping quality to their fast, sharp squawks.

Ethan tightened his grip on the rock, fighting against a wave of dizziness, the world tilting beneath him.

All five of them were sniffing the ground now in the vicinity of the dead one—haunches high, faces jammed down between the rocks.

Ethan tried not to panic as it hit him, but he realized something standing there above the monsters—after they left, there was no way he could climb back down. Not even off this ledge. The only way off this wall, where he’d so thoroughly bitten off more than he could chew, was up.

One of the creatures suddenly barked a high, piercing shriek.

The others rushed over, gathering around and chirping frantically, and then the largest of the bunch—easily twice the size of the one that had attacked Ethan—broke out ahead of the others, its nose still to the ground.

Only as it reached the base of the cliff did Ethan finally understand.

My trail.

The creature pressed its nose into the rock and then came up on its legs.

It backed slowly away...

...and looked up, straight at Ethan.

They’re following my trail.

The canyon fell silent.

Five sets of milky eyes studying Ethan up on the ledge.

He could hear his heart raging in his chest like someone trying to beat a way out of a padded room.

A single thought scrolling through his mind on an endless loop...

Can they climb?

As if in answer, the large one who’d first picked up his trail reared back on its hind legs and sprang off the ground in a five-foot jump from a stationary position.

Stuck to the wall as if covered in Velcro, the points of its talons digging into tiny crevices in the rock that Ethan could never have used.

It gazed up the cliff face at Ethan as the others began leaping onto the wall.

Ethan looked up at the crack above his head, searching until he spotted a workable handhold just out of reach.

He jumped, palming a cluster of sharp, dark crystals as he heard the click of talons on rock ascending toward him.

He scrambled up the wall, got his other hand on a level surface inside the crack, and pulled himself the rest of the way into the opening of the chute.

It was tight, less than three feet across, but he forced his boots into the walls and created just enough opposing pressure to keep himself suspended.

He stared down.

The big one had already reached the second ledge, climbing fast, fearless, with no sign of fatigue.

The others close behind.

Ethan turned his attention to what lay above—a chute enclosed on three sides. Not much in the way of handholds, but he figured he could chimney up.

He began to climb, the enclosure of the rock giving a welcome, if false, sense of security.

Every few feet, he glanced down between his legs, his view now obscured by the rock surrounding him, but he could still see that thing out in front, moving effortlessly
between the second and third ledges up a section of the wall where Ethan had struggled.