The old man’s eyes never blinked. His pupils appeared huge in the gloom, and what Jacob saw welling in their black depths drowned his last hope for salvation. Behind his impervious expression of detachment, Jacob saw a glimmer of revelry in the old man’s dark gaze, a sinister obedience to customs that had been forged in another age and carried out over the centuries with an unbending devotion.
“The woman first,” the old man ordered.
And with those words, Jacob realized what had been nagging him ever since the hunters arrived: no steamy exhalations issued from the man’s lips when he spoke. His chest remained as still as the frozen valley floor.
Because he’s already dead, Jacob thought. All of them are.
—This is a place of uneasy spirits—
Jacob’s mouth dropped open even as the sound of bowstrings thrummed the air. Arrows hissed past on both sides.
Half a dozen impacts issued from behind, like fists hitting a pillow.
Moving with the tarry slowness of a nightmare, Jacob swung around to see his wife falling backwards, wooden shafts jutting from her torso and legs. She collapsed with her eyelids peeled back in shock, teeth bared in a display of animalistic horror. Sadie tumbled from her grasp, landing facedown in the snow.
“No!” Jacob bellowed.
Something punched him in the back.
He glanced down to see an obsidian arrowhead poking through his coat, just over the right breast pocket. Thin wisps of steam trailed from the blood smeared across its surface.
Jacob glanced up, immobilized by shock.
He saw Sadie, still stuck in the snow, unable to move. Kate rolled toward her, reaching out, striving to help the girl in spite of her wounds.
Then his eyes caught a flash of movement from the hunters beyond his wife and child, and suddenly five arrows stabbed into his legs.
The cold stone missiles punched through his aching muscles with brutal force, ravaging his flesh. Their sharp points chipped against bone.
Jacob howled in agony but lunged toward Kate as he fell, now hearing the terrible chorus of multiple knife blades as they were drawn from their sheaths.
The natives charged forward, casting up a blizzard of snow with their footsteps.
Someone dropped down on Jacob’s back, pinning him in place.
He struggled to free himself, but each twist caused him to sink farther into the icy carpet covering the valley, pressing the arrowheads deeper into his legs.
His breaths came out as a thunder of pain and rage.
The weight on his back shifted and someone snared his right arm, yanking it back. The steel edge of a blade found the joint of one finger and sliced it from his hand.
Jacob screamed.
Then again. And again.
The cold valley air struck the exposed nerves like liquid nitrogen poured into his veins. Teeth bit down on the open flesh and sucked his blood from the wounds.
“Yessss,” an ancient voice hissed with inhuman pleasure.
Jacob growled through the pain when the attacker released his arm, watching helplessly from ground level as one of the hunters seized Sadie by the leg and dragged her away, a stone tomahawk clutched in his free hand.
Kate grabbed at the man, snatching a leather strap from his boot before another native dropped to his knees behind her. He tore off her hat and clutched a fistful of her hair. With his other hand, he brought a gleaming knife to her scalp and—
The top of the man’s head exploded.
Even in his current condition of unparalleled terror, Jacob flinched at the sight. The shattered fragments of the hunter’s skull sailed through the air like confetti, soon joined by the distant report of a gunshot.
Jacob craned his head to one side and saw four muzzle flashes blink on the horizon.
The headless attacker kneeling beside Kate pushed to his feet, standing even as the bullets punched holes through his torso and exploded out his back in great plumes of dust.
The man didn’t stagger. Didn’t fall.
He disintegrated.
One moment he appeared as a solid figure standing tall; a heartbeat later he’d become a man-shaped accumulation of twigs, dirt, and leaves that blew apart in the wind.
The other natives had ceased in mid-action, and now all turned toward the wood line even as a fresh round of gunshots flashed from the shadows.
The tribesman looming over Sadie fell backward, his chest torn open to expose a hollow space filled with dried weeds and animal fur.
Another man’s shoulder erupted into a cloud of brown pine needles and feathers.
The weight on Jacob’s back suddenly lifted, and he looked up to see the old man standing over him, his eyes empty black pits, his mouth opened impossibly wide, filled with a hundred mismatched animal fangs. An inhuman shriek erupted from the cavern of his throat; then a rifle blast ripped it from his body sending his severed head rolling through the air, trailing streams of black ash.
It crashed to the snow and disintegrated into a dusty heap of crushed bones and black hair.
Several more gunshots boomed, now closer, but when Jacob glanced up again all he could see was Kate’s slumped form laying just out of reach. The heart wrenching sound of Sadie’s weeping emanated from somewhere nearby.
“Hang on, baby,” Jacob called, trying to raise himself high enough to find her. “Daddy’s coming, baby, just hang on.”
The butchered remains of his damaged hand reddened the snow when he attempted to push himself upright, and he screamed in agony when both arms sunk up to his elbows. Ice crystals stabbed at his wounds.
“Kate?” he howled. “Oh, God, Kate, answer me.”
“Jacob.”
The roar of a snowmobile engine overpowered his sob of relief at the sound of Kate’s voice, and within moments he heard the soft crunch of footfalls growing near.
He faced the sound to see another group of American Indians rush forward.
One of them lifted Sadie from the snow, gently wiping her face. Another rushed to Kate with a multi-tool, using its pliers to trim the arrow shafts. A third knelt beside her with a first aid kit.
Three others stood watch with rifles in hand, scanning the landscape with impatient glances.
Suddenly, a pair of hands settled on Jacob’s shoulders and rolled him onto his back. A broad-faced Indian stared into his eyes.
Jacob tensed, kicking his feet, pushing away.
“Try to relax,” the tribesman said. “We’ll get you to a hospital but we must hurry.”
It took a moment for the words to sink in, but then Jacob detected the tones of warmth and compassion. Unlike the elder, this man’s breath puffed in the cold.
Jacob tried to speak, failed, then tried again.
“My daughter. My wife.”
“Are being cared for,” the man said. He unfolded a cutting tool and quickly snipped the wood shafts jutting from Jacob’s body, setting off a dozen explosions of pain. Agony raked its claws along his nerves where the arrowheads nestled in his flesh.
“I’m sorry,” the man said. He pulled Jacob to a stand, hauling him forward. “We don’t have a choice. Time is running out. The blood makes them stronger.”
Jacob eyed him across his shoulder. “They were dead.”
The Indian nodded. “This is cursed ground, the burial place of a thousand rogue shamans who tried to stop the settlers from passing into the West. They were the drinkers of blood, and the eaters of children. They defied the Great Spirit to gain their power, and now they are trapped here, immortal but imprisoned.”
He deposited Jacob on the back of a snowmobile. Every muscle in his body seemed to disconnect from his bones, and he sagged into the seat. Several feet away Kate and Sadie were helped onto another sled.
“They’re coming,” one of the men shouted.