The door to the room was down at the far end, but she knew it was locked, knew he had locked it when he left. The wind tried to get through the boards, whipping the snow at the window and moaning around the corners, and she sat huddled against the wall, as far away from the shadows as she could get. The floor was icecold, and she shivered. Her feet were numb too. It was all just like her dreams.

But she didn’t need the dreams to scare her anymore. This was real.

Jonathan Newman was a walking, grinning skeleton, a horribly disfigured demon. He was bleeding heavily through the nose, and it weakened him to the point of collapse. If he hadn’t become completely and hopelessly insane, he would have been finished long ago. But the mind is capable of curious things, and Jonathan’s mind was screaming.

He worked silently, beating a confusing mixture of footprints into the fresh snow, ignoring the cold that deadened his fingers and slowed his feet. The footprints would be vague depressions in a few minutes with the wind and snow, which was good; he wanted to confuse the Dark Eyes when they came. Jonathan had been through worse than this, much worse, and they weren’t going to bring him down this way, not if he could help it. He had their scout creature locked up back at camp and their woman hidden right under their noses. He felt a great contempt and hatred towards the woman. Later, he would return and take care of them. Right now, the important thing was to conceal his prints and confuse the enemy.

Then he could hunt them down.

He felt the blood coursing down his upper lip and tasted the saltiness of it in his mouth. He was getting weaker, but he couldn’t stop the blood flow. The Dark Eyes were behind it, he knew that, just as they had been behind everything that had happened to him since the day he was born.

Is it not enough that you own the world and everything in it, the sea the skies the jungle, why do you send these birds of prey to kill me hunt me down like an animal just want to be left alone LEFT ALONE…

He was catapulted back into the war. He was under friendly fire. Hueys chattered overhead, searching for him through the clouds. He hunched and ran for cover.

He needed a gun, any gun. All he had was the knife, and soon they would be stripping the jungle and blowing up anything in their path, anything that dared challenge them. His knife was small, puny compared to that.

Still, he raised it high in the air and shook it in defiance of them, screaming until blood sprayed from his mouth like spittle.