Moving with the confidence of long practice, they tightened the surrounding noose. This wasn't a one time thing. They'd hunted before, running their prey down and butchering it under the full moon. Some stayed with the dogs, washing out their faces and nostrils, crooning low sounds of comfort. But the rest moved in a wave of inescapable, predatory purpose.
He had a head start, but they were hunters in the prime of their lives coming in from angles that let them close the gap quicker than he could open it up. The forest burst into his senses; relief hitting him hard as he found its edge empty.
The night held the world, if the girls had been human he would have made it to the forest without them ever catching sight of him, but they weren't. Arrows pierced the heavens, thudding with grim finality into the earth. They were long shots, but they still dotted the ground around Cesare. Beth swarmed over his skin, penetrating organs and fortifying bones. It was at the edge of their range, with him running full tilt in the dark, and arrows still sliced around him, forcing him to dodge the ones that hit just ahead of him.
Sighting in on him, the arrows moved from scary to deadly dangerous. Glancing off his body, razors cut his sweater with only a fraction of the force they could produce. Beth shielded and protected, the broadheads blunted against the mother's power, a ferocious anger burning through the letter at the audacity of the attackers.
Coming down out of the sky, the arrow tore through his jeans and embedded itself into his thigh, even with Beth's protection, it went deep, barbs tangling in flesh. An undulating howl went up from the swiftly converging Scythians as he stumbled. With a wrench, Cesare snapped the arrow off just below the head. Setting off in a desperate sprint, he made the safety of the forest just before a hail of arrows peppered the trees and ground.
Dark as the heart of the betrayed, the wood blocked out the light. Cesare slipped cat footed through the trees and underbrush. Midnights ocean held no secrets from a thing birthed before the stars. Aleph poured its power through him; light and dark merely children that had come long after it had torn its way to life
Sure that the Scythians would come in after him, Cesare moved deeper into the forest. They'd taken this too far to back out. This was an all or nothing game, everything placed on a single roll of the dice. A part of him admired the balls it took to make a play like this. That wouldn't stop him from salting the ground with their blood and feeding their quivering flesh to their dogs. They had to finish him tonight or he'd kill them tomorrow.
The Scythians separated into two groups. The larger one formed an expanding crescent of archers, allowing them to control the forests edge. The second group formed a strike team, twisting into living nightmares.
Shedding the mendacium, they shredded the draperies of illusion that cloaked the world from their horror. Scaled, furred, lumpy and sleek, no two were the same, the diseased imaginings of mad gods. But they had one thing in common, they moved into the forest with the sure-footed steps of hunters born to kill in darkness.
Confidently moving through the forest, the girls slunk along the ground, prowled through the bushes or stomped a trail with murderous intent. The squad was only a fraction of the Scythians numbers, but each was armed and ready to kill his ass.
Crouching down, Cesare rested a hand on the ground as he thought it out. He could run them into the ground, the fact was, he could see them, but they couldn't see him. It wouldn't be hard to make his way out of the forest and back to the Serpens Lacum. They'd come into this blind, caught in the lie of his helplessness, to proud to admit he was dangerous. While they were birthed to hunt in darkness, it was his realm. Nothing could match him in the midnights land.
That was the right thing to do, but it wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to destroy them, carve his name into the meat of their faces. Turn the game back on the hunters and make them the prey. The rabbit was the safe bet, fighting had shit odds.
Part of him, the thing that still thought of itself as human, yelled that living was victory. The other wasn't a voice, but a feeling, a wolf wasn't hunted, it was the hunter. It might run for a time, but only until it had the upper hand, then it turned with a vengeance.
Over a dozen girls had entered the forest, spreading out away from the forests edge and each other. His head turned to one girl, angrily trampling everything in her path, machetes tearing into unresisting wood. Atalanta had come with them, shadowing her through the forest, he kept her on the edge of his range. With a wolfs patience, he waited for his prey to distance itself from the herd.
After an hour of slow movement, Atalanta was as alone as she would get with only two girls close enough to come to her aid. They weren't in sight and barely in hearing distance. Cesare didn't want to lock with Atalanta only to find another fighter at his back.
Deciding to take the one on the left first, Cesare calculated her trajectory and moved into her path. He'd never be able to creep up on something as wild as the Umbrae Lunae but like human hunters had done for millennia, he could lie in wait for her to come to him.
Burying himself in the underbrush, he stilled his body. Using Alephs senses, Cesare studied the Scythian he was hunting. A magnificent compound bow sat comfortably in her hands with an arrow at the ready. A hand ax swung at her side; a small crescent backed by a long spike.
Sheathed in dark green scales, she possessed the boneless grace of a snake. Bald as an egg with two long slits marking where her nose should have been. A darting pink tongue flickered out from her lipless mouth, tasting the air.
The girl's head tracked from side to side, feet ghosting over the ground, black eyes scanning the forest. Cesare forced himself to stay relaxed, the moment shielding him from the madness of adrenaline. The plan drifted around him, a rough outline of possibilities, combat was fluid, those who couldn't shift with the tide were drowned in the waters.
Over twenty feet away she turned, coiling down, arrow pulled back, broad head tracking him even with the underbrush between them. Darting from the bow, the arrow hit him hard in the chest, throwing him onto his back. Snapping the arrow shaft, he was up and moving, leaping aside from her follow up shot as it creased his side.
Steadily tracking him, she followed his weaving form through the trees, arrows tearing through branches. He closed on her, the girl sighting on him, turning to the side. Cesare's body dropped horizontal, hips higher than head, the arrow sliced through the air where his chest had been. Snapping vertical, his kick cut through the air, smashing into her knee, hammered out of socket, it collapsed under her.
Falling forward, her head met his thrusting knee. Cartilage and bone snapped under the spear of bone, jaw breaking, cheek bones shattering, nose smearing across her face. Dropping the bow, she frantically drew her ax, sweeping the piercing point through the air, desperate to keep Cesare back.
Walking into the strike, he stopped the swing dead with the enhanced power of his Root Chakra. Thrusting forward, the palm strike hit her locked elbow, breaking bone with a wet crunch. Stretching her mouth in a silent scream, her black maw was ringed with a hard ridge of cartilage, pink serpents tongue flickering against the dark.
Stepping back, Cesare picked up the dropped bow in one fluid movement. Splayed on the ground, the serpents head flopped from side to side in soundless agony. Gripped by a sudden stillness, the thing tracked the bow with single minded focus, even in the depths of its pain, it couldn't take its eyes off it.
Bone, wood, and sinew, woven into a sacred blessed by the goddess of war herself. A monument to Artemis in her eternal hunts, deadlier than any sword, more powerful than any gun. Long legged horses with wild woman in leather coursed across the wood and bone limbs, carved hundreds of years go and as sharply beautiful as if fresh. Seeming to ride across the bow, the warriors faces reflected the wild ecstasy of the hunt. It was the work of a master, years of careful preparation, carving, delicate binding, and alchemical knowledge.
The snake watched him run his hands over a treasure worth more than her life. Revulsion curdled her eyes at his handling of her most intimate of treasures. The bow had come from her mother, handed down from generation to generation. It was more than a killing machine, it was pride, family, honor, and tradition. A soul shard passed down through the ages, more precious than any single life. Breaking it across his knee would shatter the girl like glass.
He savored the rush of power as her eyes filled with terror. Bending down, he met flat, alien eyes. "You love this bow." Cesare's words caressed the air with jagged, bloody fingers. Entranced, she nodded reluctantly. "It means more than your life, honor, faithfulness, family. It's your soul symbolized in an irreplaceable work of art." The sing song words violated the air with naked menace.
Horror and fear built in her eyes. She knew he'd destroy it, waiting only for when it would hurt the most. Standing, Cesare laid the bow on the ground, his words sliding over her soul like the cold edge of a flat razor. "You hunted me, stalked my flesh and blood. By all rights, I should break this bow and cripple you, turn you into the useless meat you think I am, do unto you what you hungered to do to me."
The darkness enfolded him as he walked away, only his words coming to her. "Oppose me, and I'll bury you in the wreckage of your hopes and dreams."