She caught a movement in her periphery as she refocused on finding a path. A man was running parallel with her through the trees. She nocked an arrow and aimed, and his eyes bulged in fear at the threat.
It was Austin, a teenage kid who had just moved to the men’s levels. Ryder remembered teaching him to read and singing songs with him. He wasn’t running toward Ryder.
He held up his hands, backing away from her. “Don’t shoot! I’m sorry… I’ll go back, okay? Just don’t kill me, Ryder, please!” He was escaping? Ryder cocked her head in the direction Austin had been headed. “Go, now. I’m not going to kill you.”
His face collapsed into relief as he bolted in the opposite direction, but he was making too much noise. Austin wasn’t a hunter yet. He hadn’t spent years stalking his prey silently like Ryder had. Ryder was a pro at hunting. She could walk up to an animal and stroke its back before it knew she was there.
She camouflaged herself behind a tree, but the hunters weren’t after her. They were on Austin’s trail. She decided she’d give him a head start like Terrier had done for her.
One of the hunters crashed through the undergrowth, barreling past the tree where Ryder had concealed herself. She could hear more men running, but they were farther behind, too far away to see her.
Ryder lifted her bow with the arrow still nocked and leaned out from behind the tree. She sighted along the shaft and released it with her outward breath, sending her arrow into the back of the hunter’s neck, a quick death. She had to drop him before he could call out to the others.
Two more hunters passed by her. They didn’t see their fallen comrade so Ryder was able to take them out quickly and cleanly. The bodies were piling up, though. The rest of the hunting party would know someone was hunting them now and which direction the arrows had come from.
Ryder needed to find a different hiding spot if she wanted to make sure Austin got away safely.
Up the tree, she thought. She slung her bow over her shoulder and shimmied up into the branches. The trees in these woods were sturdy as long as you didn’t climb to the tops. The pines tapered dramatically up there, and Ryder knew of at least one overconfident hunter who had fallen to their death when the top bough of a tree gave way under his weight. She shuddered at the memory of the hunter’s body lying like a tangled marionette as she caught the next bough and hauled herself up onto it. She reached a tangled cluster of branches which would hold her with ease and got into a comfortable position—well, as comfortable as she could get in a tree—and prepared to pick off the rest of the hunters one by one.
The thickness of the branches made it hard to see new arrivals, so she looked for gaps in the foliage showing movement on the forest floor. When she caught sight of a hunter, Ryder shot her arrows through the gaps, and she was rewarded with the sounds of bodies falling to the ground and panic from the remaining hunters as they tried to figure out where the arrows were coming from.
Ryder heard a rustle below her. Fuuuck. She froze, pressing herself into the sharp boughs and held her breath as she waited for the hunter to leave, hoping against hope that he hadn’t seen her. She’d come too close to freedom to be captured now.
She scanned the horizon, there was no more movement in the distance, so she assumed Austin was safe. Now she just had to worry about herself. After a few long, tense minutes of strained listening with no sound from below, she left her perch and down the tree.
A blade brushed past her face and buried itself into the tree trunk before her feet hit solid ground. The hunter was smarter than she’d give him credit for.
Double fuck!
She ducked and slid to the side before bolting away. She swerved around the trees as she ran, hearing the hunter’s heavy boots crashing through the forest behind her.
Ryder considered trying to lose him, but she quickly discarded the idea. Hunters didn’t stop hunting until they made their kill. She needed to finish him before he got to her first. She pivoted to the right, taking the opposite direction to Austin. She didn’t want to lead the hunter straight to the kid.
Ryder sprinted away, leaping over fallen trees, ducking under low-slung branches. She was moving too quickly to be quiet, which wasn't good—not good at all. The man pursuing her was fast, but after a few moments, his breathing got heavier, and he slowed. She wondered who it was but figured she’d find out soon enough.
Ryder stopped in her tracks and readied an arrow. The hunter appeared from behind a tree. It was Brad, from Shane’s gang. Brad was a jerk like Shane. The idiot was grinning because Ryder had stopped, but his grin quickly faded as he spotted her aiming at him.
She released the arrow and dived out of the way just as Brad threw another knife. Brad had dived as well, but the difference was, Ryder had known he would, and she’d aimed accordingly. It sank into his chest mid-dive.
Brad was dead when he hit the ground, tumbling like a rag doll.
Good riddance.
Ryder continued her flight from the bunker. She hoped Austin would find the freedom he deserved, too.
Chapter Three
Siberia, Town of Pinewood
Massimo sang with the music that filled the air as he made his way up the stairs from the vault under his home.
“Dancing bean. Had a pee… on the trampoline.”
Although Massimo looked like he was in his sixties, he was actually two hundred and fifty-seven. As far as he knew, he was the last vampire on Earth, and he liked it that
