Prologue

 

As he emerged from the underbrush, the first thing the young man saw was blood streaming down his arm. His oozing wound appeared almost blue in full moonlight illuminating the rural road. Puffy clouds were all that remained of an all day rain and mud caked his clothes. Too exhausted to care, he dropped to his knees and took a long drink from the muddy puddle. Like the searing ache in his left shoulder, his breath came in short bursts. The pain marked a gaping hole large enough to insert four fingers. Doubling over with growing nausea, he coughed up bile and muddy water onto damp earth, then closed his eyes and fought the urge to sink into the mire and give up. The baying of distant hounds caused his brain to reject that desperate message.

The dogs had his scent and he summoned his remaining strength to scratch his way back into the undergrowth. He didn't get far. Creeping vines, briars and thorns wrapped him in their grip and tore at his skin, tangling him inextricably. His struggles only locked him tighter. Finally, he lay still. The baying of the hounds had startled him but another sound caused his hair to bristle. It was the rumbling rattle of an old pickup moving slowly down the dirt road. Unable to free himself, he closed his eyes and listened as the truck's throaty rumble grew louder. Soon the packs of dogs were on him, growling, and nipping at his ankles. There was little that he could do as he listened to the engine of the approaching vehicle. Within minutes, it reached him.

A powerful beam attached to the truck flooded the ditch beside the road, spotlighting the young man trapped in the patch of briars. The truck's slamming doors brought with it the acrid odor of unwashed bodies and the crazed laughter the young man recognized.

“Get them dogs out of the way,” a raspy voice said.

The dogs yelped as someone kicked the lead animal then grabbed its collar and yanked it away from the ditch. Pushing his way through the pack, a large man in dirty overalls prodded the young man with the barrel of a shotgun. Tobacco juice dribbled down his cheek and a vacant socket gaped in the center of a jagged scar. He gazed at his victim with his one good eye.

“Found you, didn't we?”

Not waiting for an answer, he struck the young man with the butt of the gun. Something in the victim's hand caught his attention and he stepped on his wrist. A glittering object tumbled from the opened hand. Radiating colors revealed a hypnotic ice-blue aura that momentarily transfixed the man with the gun. Snatching it from the ground, he held it toward the light of the moon.

“I told you he'd have it,” said the second man, glancing with an idiot's grin at the fallen victim.

“Shut up and give me that bottle.” The man with the gun tipped the crockery jug over his shoulder, drinking until moonshine gushed from his twisted mouth. He did not bother spitting out his tobacco. “Cut him loose and throw him in back of the truck.”

The sound of snarling dogs was the last thing the young man heard as the shotgun barrel smashed into the back of his head. Lunatic laughter soon died away in the forest and usual night sounds returned as the pickup disappeared down the winding dirt road. When its rumbling ceased murky clouds swept over the sky, covering the moon. Then the rain returned, washing the young man's blood from the earth and leaving only a swath of tattered cloth as evidence the event had ever occurred.