WARNING: The rating on this chapter is upped to R, for some fairly explicit description (no character death or sexual situations) pretty early on. If you're squeamish or can't handle dissections, I suggest you skim. While not utterly graphic, it's pretty detailed. Also, there is a derogatory racist remark near the end. This has been included solely as a means of character expansion, and does not in any way reflect the opinions of the author. All in all, this is a pretty nasty chapter, but at least we've gotten to the "action/adventure" part . . .
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Gabriel made his way down the path towards the town. Ben and Ned had gone on ahead, and he was walking alone, contemplating the morning's conversation. He shrugged his shoulders, resettling the heavy jacket and shivering at the slight chill that hit his neck.
Boxborough was a strange place. Its people, unlike those of Anna's home of Vaseria, were not openly hostile. Yet there was something in their attitude towards the three newcomers which stretched beyond xenophobia . . . and whatever that something was, it was smothering the small town.
The hunter's head snapped up. Heightened senses, strained to the limit, tingled. Gabriel's eyes narrowed. Whatever it was that had caught his attention had not been there the night before. Up until this point, the only warning he'd had was the prickling on the back of his neck, the uneasy feeling in his gut. Now, though . . . . Senses attuned to evil, continually scanning for the slightest hint of something amiss, were shouting at him. To his right, beyond the path. In the forest to the north.
One hand dipped deeply into a pocket, and emerged with a black string. Before he headed into the woods, the hunter tied the string onto a bush at the point where he stepped from the track. Carl would know what it meant, and hopefully so would Lamar. It was a trail-marking method Gabriel had mentioned, during one of the interminable nights afloat across the Atlantic.
The snow would make his trail much easier for them – or anyone else, his instinct whispered – to follow. Gabriel grimaced, but there was little he could do about it except give care to where he stepped. A sense of urgency was beating at him.
Collecting his wits and paying sharp attention to his surroundings, the hunter stepped lightly from the path and lost himself in the brush. Where he could, he stepped on exposed rock faces, but he left several clear prints behind, to his chagrin. Snow crackled underfoot, having frozen quite stiff in the cold, and he placed his feet as lightly as he could.
The strange sense of something amiss twanged through his body, and he noted that his course was on a direct path, following true north. For fifteen minutes he was led by the discordant feeling, before he stepped around a snow-laden pine and was stopped in his tracks.
The scene before his eyes brought him back to a time before the written word, before speech and thought, almost. He took a deep breath through his mouth, but there was no nausea to quell. Horrible as this was, he had seen much worse.
An animal was displayed before him. Gabriel walked carefully toward the gruesome tableau, leery about getting too close.
The carcass of what had once been a deer had been impaled through anus, with the pole spearing through the entire body and jutting from the jaws of the buck. The animal's head was forced back, the nose lifted to the sky. The hunter's thoughts whirled, and he crouched momentarily. The stick, firmly set in the ground, ensured that the animal remained in a revolting parody of an upright position, legs splayed and antlers reared back, pointing north. The pole was black with frozen blood, which stained the surrounding snow a vivid, violent crimson.
That was not all.
The animal had been meticulously skinned, and its hooves had been cut off, leaving jagged stumps and broken bone. But on closer inspection, Gabriel could not see the mercy strike across the animal's throat – and then he knew that the deer had been skinned while still alive. The carcass had frozen, perfectly preserving the exposed, pale pink musculature.
The killing strike had come later, judging from the frozen blood spattered around the gaping hole in the animal's chest cavity. Frowning at the blood marks, Gabriel drew closer in morbid fascination. What he saw made him rear back in disgust.
The animal's rib cage had been surgically hacked apart, exposing jagged rib bone as the sternum was completely cut away. The heart had been pulled out, and the hunter knew enough of proper butchering to judge that it had probably still been beating when removed. There was a copious amount of frozen blood still pooled in the wound, but bloody handprints decorated the pink muscle of the animal's body, standing out ghoulishly. They were of several sizes, and of both right and left hands. At least five different people were involved, by what he could tell from the prints, though there were probably more.
Fighting back memories evoked by the impalement, Gabriel studied the buck. The hunter's absorption in the macabre spectacle did not, however, mean that he was unaware of his surroundings.
A soft rustling in the bushes at his back had him spinning, raising a blade, but unable to prevent what happened next.
A familiar figure stumbled out of the underbrush with a grumble, and glanced up. "Oh my God," Carl gagged, steadying himself against the trunk of a frozen oak.
"Carl," Van Helsing hastened to his friend's side, trying to block the view of the mutilated animal from his sight. The friar's grey eyes were locked on the despoiled remains. "Carl!" He shook the other slightly.
Carl blinked, breathing hard. He closed his eyes and clamped a hand over his mouth.
Van Helsing gave his friend space as he vomited behind the tree at his back, scuffing snow over the mess and using more of the white stuff to clean his mouth. Carl kept his face resolutely turned away from the revolting sight, and Gabriel quietly asked him to watch for Lamar while he continued to examine the beast.
Moving around to the back of the creature, something caught on the antlers of the dead deer snagged his attention, and the hunter squinted up at it. The deer was suspended at least five feet off the ground, and so reaching the antlers would be impossible from this angle, especially if Gabriel wanted to keep their disturbance of the area minimal.
He finally determined that it was a strip of black cloth, short and tied into a loop – and then the answer hit him. A blindfold. It was a superstitious belief the spun off the maxim of "see no evil"; if the victim was unable to see the perpetrators, then the crime was never committed. Moving to the side, the wild look in the animal's brown eyes was unmistakable through the frost clouding the dulled, frozen orbs. The tattered covering must have come off when the animal was impaled – or it had been left there by whoever had slaughtered the deer.
That, more than anything else, disconcerted the hunter – whoever had done this, had committed this act with the sure knowledge of what they were doing. But the blindfold was a symbol which was more usually applied to human victims – it didn't fit.
Gabriel circled the deer once more, suddenly thankful for the cold as it meant there was no rotting stench from putrid flesh. Making sure he had seen all of it, he moved to collect Carl. The friar jumped at the light touch on his shoulder.
"Start heading back, slowly," the hunter instructed. "I'm going to wipe out our tracks."
Carl gulped, wide eyes trained suspiciously on the surrounding woods, and nodded.
The hunter made his way to the snow-laden pine tree which marked the southern end of the clearing. He edged his way under the branches and pulled out a knife, sawing off a branch as long as his arm. Out in the clearing once more, he swept the branch over the snow, obscuring the tracks he had left. Gabriel grimaced at the end result. It was obvious that someone had disturbed the clearing, but no one would be able to tell who, or how many people, had done so.
Gabriel carefully backtracked his trail, sweeping over the most obvious tracks and scuffing the rest. He paused to pull a few unraveled brown threads from a bush – a sure sign that Carl had passed through.
After a few minutes, he caught up to the friar, who had paused to wait.
"What the hell was that?" Carl swallowed, his voice high and strained.
"A sacrifice." Gabriel scowled. A particularly vengeful swipe of the branch snuffed out a deep track where his foot had broken through the snow's crust.
"Why? To what?" Carl demanded, reigning in his agitation and pushing back his hood.
"I don't know," the hunter was forced to admit. He continued wiping out their tracks, urging Carl on before him. "Don't mention this in the town."
"Whoever put it there will know someone found it," Carl pointed out. He was nervously scanning the woods as if he expected someone or something to leap out at him.
"The evidence already points to us, but I'd rather not confirm anyone's suspicions."
Carl could wait only a moment before the question burst from him. "Now what?"
"I need you to talk to people in the town. Find out about Warren Gray. Take Lamar with you, and don't go anywhere alone," Gabriel answered grimly.
"Why? What are you going to do?"
"I need you to divert the attention from me. I'm going to search through the forest around the town." Gabriel was concentrated completely on the trail and their surroundings, his response somewhat distracted.
"You think there might be more? More of those things?" Carl gaped in horror.
"Stands to reason," the hunter grunted.
Carl made his way past the last of the bushes, stepping out onto the path with a relieved sigh. Following him, Gabriel wiped out the last of the tracks and then hurled the branch as far as he could into the woods on the opposite side of the path. If it was found, it would tell the seeker no more than he or she already knew, if they were aware enough to search for it. He turned back to the friar, and his brows lifted in silent query.
Carl was craning his neck, looking all around with a concerned expression.
"What is it?" Gabriel felt compelled to ask. A sudden thought assailed him, and he turned, searching for the marker he had left to designate the point where he had left the path.
"It's well after ten, and Lamar isn't here," Carl answered. "We didn't meet up with him in the woods, either."
"He might have gone on to the Widow's to look for us," Gabriel suggested, but the feeling of foreboding that had been creeping up his spine all morning didn't go away.
The look Carl shot him was skeptical, but he unhappily concurred that it was possible. In full agreement the two men started immediately towards the Widow's home, a short walk away. They had barely arrived, however, before Mathilde rushed from the house.
"You must go to the village!" she cried, wringing her hands in distress. "Your friend – Robert Ancell has taken issue with him."
Ancell. Gabriel turned and started back to the village without second thought, Carl less than a step behind him. Lamar's comments of the previous night snuck to the forefront of Gabriel's mind, and he hastened his stride. As they drew closer, noise reached them – the noise of a crowd. A few dozen voices, raised in raucous jeering, filtered through the screen of trees. Gabriel broke into a run, long legs devouring the distance as he sprinted toward the clamor.
The crowd had gathered at the far west end of town, in an open field not far from a small windmill that had seen better days. The hunter raced through the empty town, the friar right behind him slipping and swearing on the slick, packed snow. He didn't stop on reaching the edges of the crowd, instead pushing his way through to the center.
Lamar and Ancell had been brought to fisticuffs. At a glance it was clear that the Jerusalemite was no match for the blacksmith's greater bulk and power, and was instead using his slighter size and quickness to his advantage. Lamar dodged and ducked, veering away from the larger man and preventing him from landing a solid hit. Ancell, however, was more cunning than he had been given credit for, planning his moves with the precision of a chess player.
Gabriel and Carl, seeing the intensity of the fight, paused lest they inadvertently distract the fighters and turn the tide in favor of one opponent. The friar remained concentrated on the conflict, but Gabriel's eyes took in the strange actions of the townspeople. Now that the fight had actually started, they were slowly falling silent, scrutinizing each move without comment. The eerie silence spread, and Van Helsing knew without a doubt that they expected Ancell to win.
Someone tugged on the hunter's sleeve. He glanced down to see Ben, eyes wide, glancing from him to the fight. "What are you -"
Before the boy could finish, the noise of flesh smacking into flesh caught the hunter's attention. Ancell landed a solid punch on Lamar, throwing the other back several feet. The small, dark man shook his head from his prone position, pushing himself to his elbows. Ancell made no move to approach him, however.
Gabriel's eyes narrowed, taking in the lay of the land, and then he was struck with a horrible realization.
A sickening crack echoed through the silence as Lamar moved to get to his feet. The small man froze.
At that moment, the ice beneath him gave way. The frozen millpond had been covered in the last snowfall, the snow insulating the ice, weakening it. Lamar tumbled into the freezing water with a shout. Gabriel ran forward, roughly shouldering Ancell out of his way.
"I'll go!" came a high, young voice from behind them.
Gabriel turned, and for a moment tried to deny what his eyes were telling him. It was fruitless, however, and the only choice. Ben was the lightest person near – the ice would never support someone of the hunter's weight, and if Lamar had gone through, Carl would be in serious peril if he tried.
Losing no time, the hunter nodded. "Carl!"
The friar understood immediately.
Moving to the ice, Ben lay on his belly and slithered quickly out to the hole through which Lamar had disappeared. He started as Lamar burst from the depths, floundering and choking before being dragged down once more. Carl grabbed the boy's ankles, lying on his own stomach, being similarly anchored by the hunter.
Ben carefully edged closer to the hole, and Lamar exploded from the surface of the water once more, sputtering and gasping desperately for air. Reaching out, Ben tried to grab his sleeve and missed. "Lamar!" he called, getting the panic-stricken man's attention. Lamar flailed at the water, reaching for the boy.
"Got him!" Ben's strained voice called.
Immediately Gabriel and Carl dragged the two off the ice and back to the safety of the bank. They didn't stop pulling until they had reached solid ground, and in that moment Gabriel realized that none of the villagers had stepped forward at all to render assistance. Fury welled up inside him, but he clamped down on the emotion.
"Carl, I want you to get Lamar back to the Widow's," Gabriel said quietly. The wet man was freezing, the water on him slowly solidifying to ice in the bitter cold. He needed to be warmed, immediately, but Gabriel no longer trusted the villagers and refused to split his team any more.
The friar nodded, working quickly to strip Lamar of his wet outer garments. Gabriel shrugged off his coat and the outer of the two sweaters he was wearing, silently insisting that all the wet garments be removed. He purposefully positioned himself between his shivering companion and the bulk of the crowd. Worry was building up – Lamar's lips and fingernails were a deep purple, almost black, and ice was forming in his hair, short as it was.
"Ben, take Ned and go with them, please," Gabriel whispered to the boy. Ned had bounded through the crowd upon hearing Ben's shout, and now stood possessively next to the towheaded youth. Ben nodded, eyes wide.
The three stood, Lamar hunched and shivering miserably, and Carl urged the other to walk as fast as he could. As they rounded the outside of the crowd, Gabriel turned on Ancell, radiating anger in every line of his being.
The blacksmith met the glare head-on with one of his own.
"What," the hunter demanded icily, "did you think you were doing?"
"Ridding myself of a problem," Ancell coolly enunciated each word.
Gabriel took a step forward, and Ancell drew himself up in preparation. Another fight seemed inevitable; at that moment, however, Derek Hastings appeared in the crowd. "What is going on here?"
The authoritative question rang through the field, and shockingly, Ancell backed down. Gabriel's face twisted into a frown. "Mayor Hastings," he said shortly.
"Derek," Ancell rumbled. "Van Helsing and I were having a small difference of opinion."
The mayor came forward, impeccable in appearance, his bearing oozing calm control and good-will. The townspeople gave way before him, beginning to drift off as he spoke softly to a few on his way towards Ancell and Van Helsing.
"Now," he smiled, flashing white teeth at the two men. "What seems to be the problem here?"
"Your blacksmith," the hunter grated, "for no reason he cares to explain, took issue with the presence of one of my friends on the path to Widow Austin's home. After dragging Lamar back here, he initiated a fight which ended with my friend going through the ice of the millpond, putting his life in serious danger."
Hastings had tensed throughout the grim recitation of events, but on hearing Lamar's name, he relaxed slightly. Gabriel's sharp eyes noted the motion, and he wondered at it.
"I see." Hastings appeared to think a moment. By this time, the three men were the only ones left outside. "Robert?"
"The little darkie -"
"I beg your pardon?" Gabriel snapped.
The mayor and blacksmith exchanged a look loaded with meaning. Without further ado, Ancell grunted at the two men before promptly turning his back and striding away.
Hastings moved toward the hunter as Gabriel glared at Ancell's retreating figure. Placing a companionable arm around his shoulder, the mayor was oblivious to the scorching look of disgust Van Helsing leveled on him.
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to forgive poor Robert," Hastings began smoothly, diplomatically nudging the hunter into stride next to him. Gabriel was not pleased. "He was born in Mississippi, and was nineteen at the start of the war between the states. He joined up for love of home, and survived to see Lee's surrender. He's held a resentment for the black man ever since, I'm afraid."
"I'm sure you can see that his discriminations don't quite apply in this situation, Mayor," Gabriel drawled, nearly turning the title into an insult.
To his relief, Hastings' arm fell away from his shoulders. The mayor faced him now with a sudden cool indifference. "I have no other explanation for his behavior, Mr. Van Helsing," he responded with a careless shrug. "The war has left deep marks, and deeper prejudices, on Robert Ancell. I'm sorry he felt the need to take those out on your friend. I can promise it won't happen again."
Gabriel refrained from giving voice to his dark thoughts, and managed to accept the Mayor's apology with a semblance of gratitude before the other man took his leave of the hunter. Finding himself the last person in the deserted town, Van Helsing glanced around the dead central square. A chill breeze blew past him, and for the first time he felt the lack of the outer gear which he had gladly given to Lamar. Suppressing a shudder, he turned his face east, his feet on the road to the Widow's secluded home – and his friends.
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(grins at reviewers) . . . (pops review in mouth) . . . . (chews thoughtfully) . . . (is struck by inspiration) . . . (starts typing) . . . Thank you for helping the creative process!
Note: Anna's hometown of Vaseria courtesy The Scary Kitty.