Chapter 2

Rhys and Liam approached the spring slowly, casting their senses into the darkness to try to determine if anything larger than small wild animals were near. They sensed nothing. Swinging out of the saddle, Liam drew a powerful flashlight from its loop on his gun belt and shone it into the trampled mud around the trough. The ground hinted at a scuffle, but the tracks were too mixed and mushy to unravel.

“Billy might make some sense of this. He’s a hell of a tracker, but damned if I can figure it out.” He shone the light a little farther afield, stiffening when the beam hit a lumpy shape, a shape seemingly out of place and wrong for a rock or a stump. “Wait, what’s that?”

Still mounted, Rhys urged his mount in that direction, pulling out his own flashlight as he moved. It was a body all right. Slashed and bloody, the corpse looked to have been a small man or a youth, dark-haired and dark-skinned from what they could see. That wasn’t much because the victim had been literally cut to ribbons. Flesh and skin hung in tattered strands off the frame, tangled and mixed with bloody cloth from shredded jeans and the remains of a shirt, probably a T-shirt. Jagged cuts or claw marks had almost obliterated the victim’s face. Claw marks? Knife wounds? In the limited light, they really couldn’t tell.

Liam made a gagging sound before he forced the words out. “Christ, this is the worst one yet. I doubt if we’ll have a signal down in this pocket, but we’d better try to call it in.” He pulled his mobile phone out, and hit a speed dial number. As he’d surmised, there was no signal. “Shit. Looks like one of us has to stay here and the other go back up on the ridge and call. I’m already dismounted, so you go.”

Rhys wanted to say no way. Better to leave the ragged corpse where it lay while they both went. The hapless man was far past more harm. Still, it was against policy to leave a crime scene unguarded until the responsible officers arrived, probably members of the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Department. He guessed they were on federal land, either U.S. Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management, but that didn’t mean the FBI would have jurisdiction. They only took over in national parks and monuments and on the rez.

“All right. Stay on your guard, bro. Who or whatever did that is one mean customer.”

Liam seemed calm. “Could be he was killed in a more or less normal way, maybe even not here, and predators got to him. Coyotes, vultures and stuff can do a lot of damage. We really don’t know, can’t tell. That’s for the CSI people to determine.”

To Rhys’ ears, Liam’s reasonable words still held a hint of whistling in the dark. Rhys knew his friend well enough to be sure he was as spooked as Rhys was. Dead bodies were one thing, but mutilated ones were more than a little bit worse. His skin crawled as goose bumps erupted all over his body. If he’d ever sensed pure and total evil, this was it.

“Stay on your guard,” Rhys repeated. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. No need to wait for the investigators to guide them in. Everybody who works the region knows this spring and how to get to it. As soon as I reach headquarters and relay the info, I’ll be back.”

* * * *

Rhys twisted, fighting to free himself from the tangled, sweat-soaked bedding, caught midway between asleep and awake, still mired in a dream too realistic to ignore.

In the dark, he fumbled for his crutch, pushed by the urgent note in the voice of the lad who had awakened him. “They’re coming. We’ve got to get to the woods, away from the village. Hurry, hurry!”

It was the coldest, darkest part of the night, those power-filled moments just before the first hint of dawn. He ducked out of the low doorway of his stone-and-wattle hut, straightened and cast his senses around, seeking how far away the danger was. Has the enemy reached the village? Which way do they come? Do I need to warn anyone else who is maybe still here?

He caught a vague scent of sweat and fear on the thin breeze drifting in from the coast, less than a league away. Perhaps they’d come by water then, this latest group of the invaders that had plagued his clan for two seasons. Leaning on the crutch to take some of the burden off his left hip, wounded in the first invasion six moons ago and slow to heal, he scuttled for the nearest arm of the forest. The shelter of trees seemed like a haven while the soft duff beneath them cushioned even awkward steps and muffled their sounds. If he got that far, he’d be safe. He was not ready to die at the hands of the strangers. His people needed him and his growing Druidic skills…He was their priest and healer, their connection to the gods and the future.