“Neal…”

“I’m not leaving empty-handed. Not tonight.”

“Let’s be happy we have our hands at all. Trachtenbroit fed his birds cats, Neal. These aren’t robins looking down at us.”

“Harvey,” Neal said, removing his jacket, careful not to turn his back on the birds, “put this on.”

“What?”

“Put the jacket on. The owls, they’re fixated on it. Put it on, so I can get in there and get what’s mine.”

Harvey stood stiff. Whatever drinks and drugs he’d enjoyed at the party had long worn off.

“You know you got her, Neal. Isn’t that enough?”

But the way Nash looked at him, Harvey wasn’t sure who was more of a threat: the birds…or Neal?

Nash extended his arm, the jacket in hand.

Run, Harvey thought. Follow the rope. Run home. Leave Neal here. He’s lost his mind. He’s crossed the line. RUN.

He took the coat and put it on.

Always Harvey, always loyal.

Nash crouched slowly to his knees. He crawled toward the black body at the foot of the gnarled tree.

The Great Owls shifted above on the branches. One fluttered its dark wings.

Nash crawled closer.

Closer.

More movement above.

Nash grabbed the dead bird by its ankles and pulled it to his chest. He held it with both arms, protecting it, it seemed, even from Harvey.

One of the owls flew down and landed on Harvey’s shoulder.

SWOOOOOOOP!

“Neal!”

But Neal just stared at Harvey and the bird.

“Easy, Harvey. It’s the jacket. Like I said. Don’t let it know you’re scared.”

Neal stepped closer to his old friend and took the camera from him.

“It’s on me, Neal! What do I do?”

Nash looked his old friend in the eye.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Then he ran.

Back into the dark tunnel from which they came. His trophy in one hand and proof of it in the other. He ran like it was his twentieth birthday. Behind him, in the black, above the sound of his own boots cracking sticks, Neal heard a chorus of owls lifting off, taking violent flight.

SWOOOOOOOOOOOP!

Then Harvey screamed. But his scream did not last long before it became a gargled distant moan.

Neal did not turn back. He did not call out to his friend.

Nash ran.

22

Saul raced through the trails, gripping the rope, terrorized by silly thoughts of a witch.

How old are you? he asked himself. Many times. But it didn’t help. Didn’t squash the rising chorus of nerves within him. Like most Gobliners, Saul had never run through these woods as a child. He was sixty years old and he was afraid of this dark. He didn’t want to die like this…drunk and alone in a forest he should have known better than to enter.

He was worried about Nash and Harvey, too. Worried Nash’s reputation would be ruined:

BIG-GAME HUNTER CAUGHT DRUNK IN NORTH WOODS, GREAT OWL IN HAND