was enough. For now. The others would not have her nor the women who wished her for sport. This one was special and she belonged to the Huntress and none dared violate that taboo. The Huntress had other reasons for wanting the girl. She was somehow connected to the man and the Huntress desired to have the man.
But he was sly.
He was cunning.
She would use the girl as bait.
Even now, the Huntress could hear his strange, mystical words:
Come over here, Michelle. I’m your husband. I love you. I won’t let them hurt you.
The Huntress did not understand what he said exactly, but she knew there was a special meaning to those words. The pain and depth of emotion in the man had been all too apparent. And his voice, what he said and how he said it…it had touched something in her, made her feel warm, weak, and soft. And so she had set the clan upon him before they smelled her uncertainty.
The girl cried out in pain.
The clanswomen had thrown a rope over the naked beams above and, tying the girl’s wrists, were hoisting her up by them. The girl was crying out. Her wrists were raw from the other ropes she had been tied with, the skin scraped red. A trickle of blood ran down her left forearm.
“ Let it begin,” the Huntress told them.
This was the ritual. The Huntress remembered it from another time and that time seemed to be long ago. When she tried to recall it, everything was dim and misty and what faces she could see were not faces she recognized, yet she was certain that she knew them. And well. No matter. The ritual was ancient and correct. It was a test for a true warrior maiden. If the girl did not cry and whimper like an infant, if she withstood the ordeal, then she would hunt with them.
If not, there were the men.
Then the women and their skinning knives.
It started with sticks from the fire. Once the ends were blazing hot, the women withdrew them and, chanting archaic words under their tongues, they spun the girl so that she twisted on the rope and as she rotated, they jabbed her with the hot sticks. The blazing ends hissed as they sank into her pale white skin. She would forever be marked and forever remembered for this. None that looked upon her would doubt her courage or importance.
The Huntress knew that some died during the ritual.
It was unfortunate, but necessary. If this one died, her ghost would be released from the shell of her body and would be angry. It would seek vengeance as ghosts often did. Young ghosts were always angry.
The girl did not beg for mercy or even whimper during the burning. She just twisted on her rope from bloody wrists, her eyes glazed over and staring. The women were angered by their inability to break her. They took up branches and whipped her mercilessly, drawing blood, tearing open the burned pink flesh until red creeks ran down the girl’s belly and legs.
The Huntress raised her hand and she was cut free.
The women now knotted her hair and tied it tight with the rope. Again, the girl was hoisted above. The man had sticks in their hands. As they passed, they swatted her with them. And when they were finished, they urinated on her.
She was left to hang like that.
Maybe for hours…
75
The tribe moved through the shadows, the dappled moonlight from intertwined tree branches overhead enhancing the red and green serpentine stripes covering their naked bodies.
Angie, with Kathleen at her side, two hunters cast ahead, led them.
Dawn was hours away yet, but until then they would hunt. For the tribe lived, breathed, and was of the hunt. Without it they were nothing. It was their blood and soul and purpose. Without it they would be no better than any other pack of animals rooting in the dirt for grubs and worms. The hunt gave them focus, it gave them reason, it was the blood in their veins. Angie knew instinctively that her kind rose above the beast of the field because of the hunt.
When dawn came, they would slink back to their lair and sleep away the daylight hours like the rest, waiting for darkness.
But for now, they hunted. Being that they were more than predators, but creatures of opportunity, scavengers even, they were following another hunting clique. The one led by the old man in the animal skins. He had an army of children following him. They were raiding from neighborhood to neighborhood, killing and slaughtering and laying waste. The tribe followed along because the pickings were so good and out of sheer curiosity.
There was another reason, of course.
And that reason was Angie’s and hers alone.
The old man. He was an excellent hunter, a great leader, savage, bloodthirsty, and exceptionally cunning. Angie learned many things just watching how the old man led his raids. His hunters were very well disciplined.
She respected and feared him.
She emulated him.
She wanted to kill him.
Yes, that’s what she really wanted because that’s how it was done. When you killed another, drank their blood and feasted on their meat, you absorbed what they were. Their strength, their wisdom, their spirit became part of you. Angie knew as her ancestors had known that the center of it all, the nucleus of the being, was the heart itself.
She would kill the old man with one well placed arrow. Then she would bathe in his blood. And lastly, while the others fought over the tidbits, bones, and sweet meats, she would carve out the old man’s heart and eat it raw, filling herself with his spirit and vitality. For the heart was the center of the all, the hub of deeper mystery, the pulsing artery to the beyond. And when she had eaten it and filled her veins with his cruel potency and thrumming life force, then she would skin him and wear his flesh as a garment…
76
While the dam saw to the gut sack that smoked over the fire, jabbing it from time to time with a stick, and seeing to what roasted in the coals, Kylie played with the man.
He did not like to be played with.
After binding him with clothesline, they dragged him back to their lair and deposited him in the corner. He had slept for some time-or pretended to-but now he was awake. His eyes were open, wide and bright.
Still covered in ghostly white ash, Kylie grinned at him.
He did not smile back.
Kylie crept over to him on all fours. He tensed. His muscles were good. She straddled him, her long flaxen hair hanging in his face. She studied his eyes, his scent, his facial expression…all the things that would tell her what she wanted to know.
She pressed her crotch down on his own, rubbed it again the coarse material of his jeans. The texture, the pressure excited her. She could feel him getting excited, too, only from what she saw in his eyes he did not like that.
She brought her mouth to his own.
He trembled.
She pressed her lips to his own.
He did not move. She pushed her smallish breasts into his face, daring him to suckle them or nip at them. He
