The Dying of the Light (Book 3): Beginning (28 page)

“All by yourself? Why? What possible reason?”

“I’m hunting monsters like you!”

Sariva’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t jump up again or raise her voice. “Who are
you
to hunt
us
? You are a scared little girl out in the world for probably the first time ever, taking on the ‘monsters.’ Why?”

“I’m not—”

Sariva shook her head. “You are barely old enough to hold a weapon. A good Hunter, I will give you that, but you could be a good Hunter and still live with the rest of your people. No, there is something else going on with you. Some ridiculous teen angst or something. Why are you really running away?” Sariva paused, and her voice changed, dropping to a slow, rhythmic pitch and tone. “Who are you to take on the world by yourself? Who are you?”

“I’m…” Eden didn’t know how to answer the question. “You…”

“You know nothing about anything. Yet you ran away. You put yourself in harm’s way, telling yourself you could hunt us and that would make everything okay.”

Eden tried to look away from those green eyes, but something in them held her gaze. Why
was
she out here? Why not let the Hunters do their job?”

“You have been killing us for weeks now,” Sariva said, her voice steady and calm. “You are running from something. Running, always running.”

The creature stood and began pacing back and forth like the tigers Eden had seen in the zoo films she’d watched back in school. Sariva’s eyes never left Eden’s, though.

“You think because you are out here, you are on some mystical journey, some heroic quest,” Sariva said. “You are not a hero, you are not a savior. Who are you?”

The creature’s eyes were mesmerizing. Eden felt herself drawn into those emerald pools, knowing she should resist but at the same time wanting to just let go. It would be so easy. No one back home would ever know. Hell, they probably already thought she was dead.

She was alone. So alone.

“The world is a big place outside your bunker,” Sariva said, who paced a little farther around the fire toward Eden. “For weeks, everyone is thinking you are already dead. What would be the point in going back? You cannot save them.”

Sariva was right. She’d left because all she could do was hurt them. She’d done terrible things, and people were dead because of her. They were better off without her.

Those eyes, those green eyes.

“Who are
you
to be their savior? What makes you think you have that right? Why would anyone ever believe or trust you again?” Another pace closer, then another.

Eden couldn’t look away, but it didn’t matter. The creature was right. She could never go back.

“You are alone, the way it should be. You will always be alone.” Sariva came another step closer, and another. “Who are you?
What
are you?”

Eden stared into those eyes and felt her own begin to well up. She didn’t want to be alo—

The snap of a branch nearby reached down into Eden’s psyche, into that part of her that had truly internalized all her Hunter training, and she glanced in its direction by reflex. Eden felt as if a haze had been lifted from her mind, and she saw the outline of someone else at the edge of the light. Another Driebach?

“
Gamóto, sas eípa na meíneis píso
—” Sariva said, her voice raised and her neutral tone gone.

Out of the corner of her eye, Eden could see Sariva—no, the Driebach, goddamit—was much closer, and she let herself smile a little. Eden didn’t know what had just happened, but she was thankful that the new Driebach couldn’t sneak up on a corpse.

In a flash, Eden was on her feet and had thrown her knife at the second monster with her right hand and had her pistol up and pressed against Sariva’s forehead with her left. Like something out of one of those old movies her dad liked to watch. Her throw was well aimed, and the knife sank to the hilt in the monster’s eye. The Driebach dropped to the ground twitching.

Sariva stood still, not so much as blinking, as Eden turned back her way.

“I guess you were lying, then,” Eden said.

“Kill me and you will be alo—”

The suppressor on the gun only minimized the sound of the shot that killed Sariva Christoforou. It didn’t muffle it completely, so it was still loud enough to alert the others Eden knew had to be out there, ready to come in and take her. Because of course that had always been the plan: capture Eden Blake, turn her, and use her against her own people.

“You can’t turn me,” Eden said to the creatures she knew were listening in the darkness. “I’m immune. And I’m going to hunt every one of you bastards down.”

Eden knew they were faster than her, but she knew this terrain better. She’d studied it, lived it, and she could escape… but she needed a head start. She grinned, slipped her hand into her pocket, and pulled out one of the three new slim-line grenades she’d taken from the armory just in case. She pressed and held the button on the side for four seconds—pulling a pin was so 1940s—and tossed it into the remains of the fire.

At the same moment, Eden spun and ran down the rocky slope. She knew they’d be coming after her, but they hadn’t been visible from the fire, which meant they were a little ways back. And if she’d timed it right…

The explosion shook the ground under her feet and she stumbled but recovered fast and poured on the speed. The Hunter had one chance to get away, and she wasn’t about to waste it.

It was only later, when she’d made her way back to her camp and was packing it up to move again, that Eden realized Sariva had been right after all.

She was alone and would be for a long, long time.

In the month and a half after her encounter by the fire, Eden had often thought of Sariva Christoforou and found the Driebach’s question kept coming back to her.

“Who are you?” What seemed such a simple question was anything but. Eden had lain awake at night, listening to the forest around her, wondering who she was. Who she had been, who she would be. Humans weren’t meant to be alone, and yet she’d chosen to be. Was that the right choice?

She’d killed seventeen Driebachs now but still hadn’t found Alpha. He was stealthier than the rest, rarely showing himself and always seeming to find new humans to recruit to their cause. The Free Zone would never be safe until he was gone.

She’d managed to kill all but a few, and she was sure the word had gotten back to ExForce, since she’d left some of the bodies for them to find. She might not be much on a team, but she could still protect them.

Now, she refocused on cleaning a fish she’d caught that morning.

It wasn’t more than a minute or two later that she heard the first shot. Her head snapped up and southwest, and she listened for a second crack of a rifle. A heartbeat, two, a third, and then the shot.

A mile, maybe two. Southwest. If she guessed right, it was an AR-15, which meant AEGIS. Had they sent Hunters looking for her after all? Probably not. Probably more Driebach hunts going on.

It didn’t matter. They were too close. She needed to know what was going on. She threw the fish onto one of her cooking rocks and stowed the rest of her gear under a rocky overhang. It had sheltered her from the wind, rain, and cold and would do the same for the gear. Eden pulled on her hood and facemask, then snatched up her rifle and headed toward the gunshots.

It didn’t take Eden long to find the source of the shots. She perched high on a rock formation, screened from easy view by some convenient trees and bushes, but with a good view herself. From below, they’d have a hard time spotting her, but from up here, she could see them just fine.

Like much of life, she’d found, it was all about your perspective.

The Hunters were good and crept through the woods with little noise. They had gathered around a couple of walkers, the target of the shots she’d heard. Eden recognized Marquez at the head of the group, as usual, flanked by Foretti and Fontana on either side. Giuliani brought up the rear. She raised a hand to her cheek as she felt a phantom slap and wondered why she’d bothered to look for her old team.

They didn’t want her. They’d said so in no uncertain terms. Hell, Giuliani had threatened to kill her if she ever came near him again, and she believed every word.

She shook her head. No, this was silly. There was no point in watching the team. They would never take her back, and she wasn’t sure she would go even if they offered. There had been too much done and said between them now. She pulled up her facemask and secured it beneath her hood. They were better off without her, and it was time to leave.

The wind picked up and blew the trees around, and Eden shivered. It was going to get cold tonight, and she—what the fuck was that? She picked up her rifle and tracked the sight’s crosshairs across the slope below her to find the movement she’d spotted. Where was it? Where
was
it? There!

She felt the blood rush to her head as she gazed down the slope at the Driebach that crouched behind a low wall of rock. The rock would’ve blocked the Hunter team’s view of the creature. It was only pure luck that the tree had been blowing that allowed her to see the movement of the thing when she did. It was obviously following the team and smart enough to hide downwind from them. If she didn’t do something, they’d be in serious danger.

Eden braced herself on some rocks without taking her scope off the creature. She adjusted the scope to account for distance and other factors, then lay her finger along the trigger guard. After taking a few deep breaths, she prepared to fire, but just as she was about to pull the trigger, she stopped.

If she shot the thing, they would know she was here. Chances are they were hunting the Driebach to begin with, and it outmaneuvered them. So they must be prepared for it and would probably be okay. They didn’t need her mucking up their hunt. Eden sighed and took her finger off the trigger. Still, maybe she could find a way to warn them.

Or maybe… Eden sat up and pulled her survival knife from her pack. This one was much different from the one she had carried before. It was longer and stronger with a serrated blade. She slung the rifle on her back and crawled to the rear to avoid giving herself away against the hilltop.

It was the work of a few minutes to creep down the rocks to within a few meters of the Driebach. She’d taken care to use its own trick against it and stay downwind so it couldn’t detect her. She was above the creature on the hillside and had managed to get into a spot where she could just about drop down it and take it out without anyone seeing. She set her rifle down, as it would only weigh on her and reduce her speed and agility.

For a moment, she thought about the wisdom of her plan. So many things could go wrong, but at the same time, she could take out the threat to her team without them ever knowing she was there. And then she could go back to her solitude.

“Fuck it,” she muttered, then judged the distance, bounced once on the balls of her feet, and jumped.

She was already falling when she noticed the second Driebach to the right side of the first, hidden by another outcropping of rock, and she recognized it immediately. The pack leader. Alpha.

The first creature didn’t even scream as she landed on top of it. The inertia of her fall drove the knife through the top of its head with gruesome force. It twitched once and lay still, but Eden didn’t care. She was already up and moving toward Alpha, who had turned toward her as she dropped onto his fellow.

“You! The Hunter! I’ve been waiting for this!”

She recognized that deep voice. The scream he let out at her chilled her to the bone and echoed off the hillside, but she couldn’t let it faze her. The two mortal enemies closed the distance in a flash, and she grappled with the stronger monster as it lunged at her. She felt its claws rake against her hood but not catch, and she spun around. She wrapped her legs around its chest from behind and grabbed its head between her hands. The Driebach shrieked again and slammed her backward into the rock face. The air whooshed out of her lungs, but she managed to cling to the creature’s neck as it leaned forward again.

“I’ll kill you, and we’ll feast!” the Driebach yelled. “No, even better, you’ll be my mate after I’ve turned you!”

This was not going at all like she’d planned.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Eden shouted as she pounded a fist into the creature’s neck again and again. “Weren’t you there? I’m immune, you asshole!”

There was a crack from somewhere below and the whine of a ricochet to her left. Not far to her left, either. She wrapped her arm around the monster’s neck, getting its throat in the crook of her elbow as she glanced downward.

Marquez and company were down there in the open, rifles raised and pointing at the two combatants. She wouldn’t put it past Giuliani to take the opportunity to get rid of her here and now, and she wouldn’t blame him if he did.

The Driebach cackled as it slammed her into the wall again, scrabbling with its claws to dislodge her. Her arm loosened around its throat with the force of the impact, and she cried out as the repeated blows aggravated her old rib injury. She felt herself pulled forward again as the Driebach staggered close to the edge.

“Take you with me,” Alpha coughed. “Vengeance for the others.” He lurched forward, leaning over the low rock wall. The drop to the forest floor was at least forty feet, if not more, and a bouncing-down-the-rocks forty feet at that.

Eden shook her head in a last-ditch attempt to clear it and let go of the monster with her arm and legs. She shoved hard against its back and cried out again as she landed on her side on the small rock shelf.

The Driebach wasn’t so lucky and fell down the hillside. She heard the small avalanche it started and worried about her team but couldn’t seem to get her breath back. There was another scream from the monster below followed by a fusillade of rifle shots, then nothing.

She stayed still and lay there trying to get her breath back and forget about the pain in her ribs. “What a fucking mess,” she muttered. A moment later, there was a double-tap from below. Finishing off the Driebach, she knew. Making sure was SOP.