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DEMON HUNTER: THE CHOSEN ONE
by Cynthia Vespia
Available via AspenMountainPress.com

"Quiet!" I insisted in a dark whisper. "Something is coming."
We waited for what seemed like an eternity. Sweat pasted my leather jerkin to my chest and dampened my hair. My heart was pounding and filling my ear with the pulsing sound of my own blood. No sound pierced the sky; no monster fled the thick of the trees.
Finally Tuck withdrew his arm and rounded about. "Im turning back."
I shook my head in disappointment. If only there had been something more. I lingered on for a moment before reluctantly turning to join Tuck on the trail back to town.
"Maybe next time,"I said, my voice had deflated and no longer held a spark of expectancy.
"You get yourself too worked up about such things, Costa,"Tuck told me. "And what have we ever come across except some broken arrow heads?"
"No one is forcing you to come. Next time Ill journey alone and youll be sorry when I tell you what I found."
We scampered around a dense corner of forest and for the third time that day fear stood us in our tracks. A hulking shape loomed just paces ahead. From the short span of distance that separated us I could make out that it was a man of considerable stature.
He was adorned in the color of night from his tall leather boots to the dark hood fitting closely to his head. A heavy cloak about his shoulders was stained with a fresh, thick liquid undistinguishable in nature. But it was the manner in which he moved, striding with purpose and heavy feet that held no fear of capturing attention, that had me duck for cover in the thicket and pull Tuck down with me.
The stranger‘s body was alive with movement in every fiber of his being. Ears perked, eyes roaming, his senses were lifted to the extreme. Finally he took a position of defense just behind one of the larger Birchwood trees. His back lay flat against the trunk. He withdrew a small hunting knife from a leather belt looped double about his waist and waited. Tuck and I waited as well, watching with baited breath as the stranger marked something unknown in the distance.
A shuffle-scrape of leaves signified the presence of another. A man looking worn and bedraggled, wearing nothing but coarse patches of hair up along his back and legs, staggered out of the thicket just west of us. His face seemed contorted in a snarl of unbearable anguish.
I wondered if this poor fellow had been the one we had heard shouting before, perhaps calling for help before one of the forest animals scented him and tore him down. But the four-footed inhabitants of Muir would be the least of this man‘s worries.
As he stumbled, still trying to keep his balance on shaky legs, the stranger in black made his move. I marveled at his inhuman speed as he left his cover and confronted his hapless prey.
The drifter could not mount a defense. His best effort was an attempt to bite the man in black before the silver tipped blade plunged deep into his chest, severing his heart. Blue-black blood rushed out in torrential rivers signifying a gruesome end, but that didn‘t stop the stranger in black from delivering several more sloping stabs down into the man‘s throat, belly, and even his face. The shine of the blade was tarnished with blood as he fell to the forest floor, dead.
Using quick, hard strokes the man in black cut a swatch of fabric from the tattered jerkin. This he wadded in his left hand and began polishing the knife. It required much effort from the stranger and I could make out the sinew of muscle bulging from the man‘s forearm with each hard stroke. He ran the cloth over the fine blade several times managing to transfer the dark stain from the knife to the cloth with little leaving the blade itself.
Whether from discomfort or just blind and foolish curiosity, Tuck shifted forwards from his position in the bushes. The leaves and twigs crunching under his weight sounded out like an alarm. The noise seemed to reverberate against the hard bark of the trees and return magnified tenfold against the forest floor where the three of us occupied space.
The stranger immediately halted. His eyes scanned across the forest on either side of him. He had heard.