The cat shook its head, pawing at its ear where Ty had landed the blow, tail twitching as it sized him up again. Ty pushed up onto his knees and threw the rock at it, sending it scampering backward a few feet with a low growl. He gripped the gun and struggled to his feet unsteadily, surprised when he weaved a little, wielding the shotgun almost like a baseball bat with both hands until he could grip it correctly and aim it.

The cougar continued to watch him warily, obviously deciding that he might not be an easy kill after all. Ty could feel blood dripping down his fingers as he gripped the gun, and he didn’t know if it was his blood or the other man’s. The cougar made a grumbling, growling sound in its throat as it slinked toward the body lying in the brush. Ty realized belatedly that the big cat must have thought he was after its meal.

“Take him,” Ty told the cat breathlessly. “Eat him. He won’t care now,” he said as he began backing away.

The cat hissed one more time, bared its impressive teeth, and then took Earflaps by his ruined neck and began dragging him into the forest. It locked eyes with Ty, neither looking away until the cat dematerialized into the woods.

Ty listened intently, holding his breath as he waited for the telltale breaking of twigs that signified the cougar making a hasty retreat. He heard none, though. It was still out there. Watching him. He lowered the shotgun as his entire body began to tremble. He’d just been attacked by a f**king mountain lion.

And he was not handling it well.

“Ty!” It was Zane’s voice, somewhere close, coming out of the darkness. Ty could hear rustling approaching from behind him.

Ty held his breath a moment, weighing the benefit of calling out versus being eaten. “Garrett!” he called back after a few seconds. His voice was filled with panic and near-terror. He backed away another step. The shotgun shook in his trembling hands.

There was an immediate shift of direction in the movement behind him, and he could hear Zane running toward him, amazingly sure-footed in the darkness, he thought distantly. Time dragged as Ty tried to watch all around him, listening hard, but it couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds before Zane skidded to a stop not too far away and called his name again.

“Slowly, Garrett,” Ty managed to call back, though his voice was still shaking with fear and adrenaline.

Zane went still for a long moment before he started moving, one step at a time. Then he appeared out of the darkness at Ty’s side, his gun held ready. “What the hell?” Zane said under his breath, surprise and something darker in his voice. “I heard gunfire and screaming.”

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“It ate him,” Ty answered without moving. Somewhere in his mind, he knew it sounded astoundingly stupid. But it was the best he could articulate.

Zane, for some reason, didn’t act like it was odd at all. Maybe it was the stunned look on Ty’s face, or the fact that his entire body trembled, or that he was covered in blood.

“Can you get back to camp?” Zane asked, turning so his back was to Ty’s as he looked at the darkness around them.

Ty nodded jerkily, backing up until his back was pressed against Zane’s. “Count of three,” he said shakily. “We run.” He remembered the last time they’d counted to three, cornered by kids with paintball guns. Ty had used Zane as a distraction, as a human shield. Ty gritted his teeth as the shaking in his hands subsided suddenly. He’d take on that mountain lion with his bare hands before it touched Zane; he knew that much for certain.

“I’m facing twelve,” Zane said to him quietly. “We’re going to three o’clock.” Ty nodded in acknowledgment. “Count,” Zane said.

The brush shivered in the moonlight as Ty watched it. He swallowed hard and said a shaky, “One.”

Zane shifted his weight in preparation to move. “Two.”

Ty spared the dark woods one more careful look before he reached behind him and pushed at Zane’s hip. “Three!” he shouted, and they turned and ran as fast as they could through the darkness.

Zane led him back to the camp, where Ty knew the fire and the scent of more people would provide safety. Adrenaline still rushed through him, and he didn’t know how badly wounded he might be. Nothing hurt yet, at least. He just knew they needed to get to safety before the cat came back for more.

When Ty and Zane broke through trees and into the circle of light and warmth from the fire, Earl was waiting with a flashlight and a large hunting knife. As Ty stumbled, he grabbed the shotgun out of his hands; Deuce stood with his shotgun drawn, looking out into the woods, ready to fire at anything that came after them. Ty slid to the ground and grabbed at the end of one of the sticks in the fire, turning with the flaming branch in his hand and breathing hard as he waited. For whatever reason, he felt better with the branch than he had with the shotgun. Probably because he’d missed with the f**king shotgun the first time.

But the forest was quiet. Nothing came out of the woods after him. A bird chirped somewhere in the distance, and another happily answered the call. The fire crackled merrily, and the only sounds were Zane’s and Ty’s harsh breaths as they tried to pull air in.

Finally, Ty lowered the stick in his hand and looked down at it abashedly before tossing it back in the fire. The others lowered their weapons and turned to look at him doubtfully, like he might have finally had that mental breakdown they were all expecting.

“I’m okay,” Ty mumbled to them. “I think.”

“Where’s—”

“He’s gone,” Ty said flatly, cutting Deuce’s question off.

“Gone? What happened?” Deuce demanded.

The flashlight played over Ty, and Earl stopped it at his hands. “Jesus Christ, boy,” Earl grunted as he came closer. Zane appeared at Ty’s side, shoving his gun into his waistband, putting a steadying hand against Ty’s back.

Ty looked down to see that blood was dripping down his fingers, running freely and obscuring the sources so they couldn’t see how many punctures there were or how badly his hand was torn up. His entire front was covered in blood, in fact. Some his, spreading from the scratches on his shoulders, but most of it belonged to the dead man.

He held his hand up and peered closely at it in the wavering firelight. “Fuck, man, I just got that out of a cast,” he said in annoyance. “Bring that light,” he requested as Earl stopped in front of him and shined the light down on his hand. He could discern at least four separate punctures, one of which was so deep that Ty thought it might actually have hit the bone. His fingers were stiffening up quickly, and his hand was beginning to throb. The knuckle of his ring finger was swollen and turning blue. “Hell,” he cursed in defeat. He supposed he was lucky that he still had the hand at all, considering he could have yanked out the cat’s tonsils at one point.




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