“No,” she says, snatching the dagger out of my hand. She snaps it securely into her belt.
“Sissy—”
And she stares at me with a fierce look that is somehow both anger and wonder. She holds my gaze a beat longer than necessary. “Don’t let Gene die,” she finally whispers, and just like that, she whisks past me, dives into the river with barely a splash.
David starts to cry. I pull him up, him and Jacob, and Ben, too, knowing all three will need each other. “Listen to me, boys,” I say with as much conviction as I can muster. “Sissy gave you a job to do. Get those damn hooks off our boat. Use your shirts, no skin contact. Do you understand?” Jacob nods, and I gently cup David’s face with two hands. His skin is too thin. He wasn’t meant for a world like this. I stare courage into his eyes. He nods.
“Go!” I say, and push them out to the deck. They scamper off, each to a hook.
And then I am leaping off the boat, diving into the river.
* * *
Cold, black liquidness. The current whips me downstream. I fight against it, resisting the swirling eddies that almost spin me around. Get spun down here, and you’ll be forever disoriented. I stroke hard, forsaking fine-tuned navigation, simply wanting to propel myself forward before my lungs give out.
The bank comes at me like a vicious slap. Sharp rocks cut into my hands, jamming my fingers. I pull myself out, wet clothes weighing me down. Force myself forward, on my feet. I see the boat. Farther than I’d have thought. The current carried me almost fifty meters downstream. A warm liquid spreads down my hand. Even before I see it, I know what it is. My blood pouring out from the gashes.
Howls break out, high-pitched enough to shatter the stars, shake the moon. They smell my blood.
The three grappling-hook lines suddenly go limp, and the listed side of the boat falls back into the water with a splash. The hunters have let go. They’re coming for me.
“Sissy! Where are you?”
“Over here. Come quickly.”
She’s standing by a pile of equipment dumped on the ground. More ropes, grappling hooks, a loaded harpoon gun. The hunters must have placed extra equipment here earlier for insurance. In case we were somehow able to break free from the first trap, they’d simply race down and set up another.
“They’re coming, Sissy.”
“I know.”
I pick up the harpoon gun. Try to, anyway. It weighs a ton. I won’t be able to carry it, much less use it. Not alone, anyway. “Sissy, help me with this gun. Together we can lift it.”
She doesn’t answer.
I look up. She’s gone.
More howls squeal toward me, disconcertingly close. I race up over the crest of the hill, and there, standing halfway down, looking diminished in the moonlight is Sissy. She’s gripping a dagger in one very white, clenched hand. Two hunters streak toward her. Hours of anaerobic exertion have burnished away their body fat. Their rib cages poke through their gaunt chests, and membranous skin flaps on their bony frames like bleached clothes hanging on a laundry line. The third hunter is nowhere to be seen.
Sissy doesn’t move. They’re twenty seconds away, and she’s biding her time, trying to find the best angle to fling daggers. But she doesn’t understand them the way I do. I know their tactics.
“Sissy,” I say, running to her. “Take them out now.”
“No,” she whispers. “Too far.”
“They’re going to split soon. One left, one right, they’ll come at us from opposite ends. To disorient you. To blindside you. You’ll be aiming for one while the other is leaping on your back. Now, Sissy!”
She believes me. In a blur, she flings out the dagger, east of the incoming hunters. As they continue sprinting, their heads turn to watch the rotating, blinking blade. They follow its slow, languorous arc over the river then back toward them.
And in the last moment, as it curls around at them, they leap over the flying dagger.
They turn back to face us again, a victorious yowl screeching out of them. They know. They’ve been told about Sissy’s daggers.
But there’s something they don’t know.
That’s not the only dagger in the air.
While their eyes had followed the first dagger’s trajectory, she’d flung out the second.
One of the hunters is viciously flung to the side, as by an invisible leash quickly pulled taut. The second dagger has impaled its neck: the hunter’s melted, cheesy skin offers little resistance, and the blade penetrates until almost the whole hilt is embedded. The hunter lies on its back, legs and arms scrabbling the air like an upside-down turtle. It struggles to get up, can’t. The blade has punctured its windpipe.
The other hunter screams into the air. Not with fear. Not with sorrow over its downed compatriot. But with glee. It will now have a larger share of the hepers. It comes at Sissy with a manic salivary giddiness.
Sissy reaches down to her belt. Only three daggers left. She flings the first to her right. All eyes—including the hunter’s—swivel to follow it. But she’s faked us out. The blade is still in her hand. And then it is not. She’s flung it in a boomerang arc, in the other direction of her fake throw.
But she’s not pausing to watch her handiwork. She’s flinging the other dagger straight ahead right between the eyes of the hunter. Two daggers now, both slashing through the night air toward the hunter whose head is turned away, still trying to locate the arc of the dagger never thrown. It doesn’t have a clue. It’s going to be a double direct hit.
But this time, there’s something we don’t know.
The hunter knows. It’s always known the first throw was feigned.
In the last second, it drops its body to the ground, skidding on its side. The two blades clash together, right above its head. There’s an explosion of sparks. The hunter squeals from the flash of light. But that’s the only pain it feels. And even now it is standing up, eyes fixing on us. It brings up its wrist, rakes it with long, deep gashes. Its eyes dance with mirth and glee.
There’s only one dagger left.
The hunter charges at us. It is only seconds away.
Sissy thrusts her arm back, readying to throw the last dagger in hand. But she makes a rare mistake. A fatal mistake. As she pulls her arm back, the dagger slips out of her grasp. It flies behind us, soaring up into the sky.
The hunter screams with delight. It is the closest sound to laughter I’ve ever heard one of them make. It is an obscene, perverse sound.
Sissy turns around as the dagger sails into the sky. Her movement is deliberate, purposeful, as if every microsecond that has passed and that is about to pass is part of a coordinated plan. The dagger is easy to spot. It’s perfectly silhouetted within the circumference of the bright full moon.
I’m not the only one watching the dagger. The hunter is keenly tracking the dagger’s upward path, its head rising. The full glare of moonlight catches the hunter by surprise, hitting it flush in the face. The hunter squints, then clenches its eyes with a yelp. It’s momentarily blinded.
And now I understand.
The dagger reaches its apex then suddenly boomerangs diagonally back down toward us. Right at my face.
Sissy leaps in the air, snatches the blade out of the air. In the same movement, while still airborne, she flings the dagger at the hunter. The blade flashes past me, an inch from my head. The hunter’s eyes are still rammed shut; it never sees it coming.
The dagger bludgeons into the side of its head, right through the soft depression of the temple. The blade pierces true and deep, inflicting unseen but necessary damage within the skull and eye sockets. Eyeball juice squirts out from between the clenched eyelids. The hunter drops to the ground, wracked with spasms. It tries to dislodge the dagger but, in its pain-fueled panic, ends up only inflicting further damage. Its arms slash wildly, legs kicking at blades of grass.
Sissy is in a semicrouch after landing from her throw. I place my hands on her upper arms. They’re quivering with minute tremors along her slender but toned triceps. They feel like the most lonesome, bravest arms I’ve ever touched.
“Come, I’ll help you,” I say.
“There’s still one more out there.” She straightens her back, her body at first leaning against mine, then she starts running.
“Sissy! Where are you going?”
She runs fifty meters out, bends to pick up two daggers. She quickly sheathes them, and sprints back, glancing at the downed, groaning hunters. At the daggers protruding from them. She wants her daggers back. But she knows better than to tempt fate.
A single baleful howl sounds from a boulder to our left. The third hunter, crouching in the moonlight. It has been silently observing us this whole time, studying us, learning our tactics.
Sissy backpedals until she’s beside me. “This one’s different. More dangerous.”
It climbs down, sleek and feline, its paws padding around the rocky, dimpled surface. I recognize it. Her. It’s Crimson Lips. One of the lottery hunters. Her face is distorted now, as if viewed behind a glazed window, her usually rouged lips pulled back and melded into her cheeks. Yet even now with a body that has the constitution of porridge and melted plastic, her movement is graced with a fluidity that is savage and sexual.
“Get behind me,” Sissy whispers. “I’ll take it out with the daggers.”
“Daggers won’t work. Not with this one. She’s been observing and studying; she knows all your tricks now.”
Sissy grips and regrips the daggers.
“Keep walking backward,” I whisper. “I have a plan.”
Crimson Lips jumps off the boulder, starts moving toward us in a crouched-down, slow-motion crawl. Her legs and arms move in parallel tandem, left leg with left arm, right leg with right arm, the legs stepping on the very spot on the ground just vacated by the arms.
“What’s the plan?” Sissy asks.
“The harpoon.”
Sissy shakes her head. “It’s too heavy.”
“Not if we both lift it. Now!” I say, spinning and running for the pile of equipment I’d seen earlier. Sissy matches me stride for stride. We slide on each side of the pile, the dewy grass allowing us to skid easily. Crimson Lips bounds toward us.