The Huntress [2018 Archived]

Chapter 1

ALEXIS

The day Anna died, she came to me.

I remember that she had been shaking with fear, on the verge of being sick on my front doorstep.

She grabbed the front of my shirt, her hands shaking. The acrid smell of alcohol filled my nostrils. She had been drinking, probably for hours on end.

"Alexis!" she uttered a low, pained cry as she scrabbled for the railing. "You have to help me!"

Her filmy white blouse was stained with mud as she looked at me, her whole being shaking. I still remember her piercing blue eyes, a little wild and a little erratic. I remembered everything about that day, the drizzling rain, the whirl of ongoing traffic, the screaming bundle she held too tightly in her arms.

I'd known Anna because I volunteered at the after-school-center. She was a girl who was homeless and living on the streets, always resisting my help. I guess it was some sort of pride deal. She had done her best to live . . . even while caring for her newborn, the whole reason she was out on the streets in the first place.

She'd come to the center, keeping me company as I worked. She was three years younger, but far more gutsier. I mean I couldn't have survived homeless in Winshest. As it turns out, I can't be anywhere that doesn't have: a) plumbing, and b) central heating. I can't even camp.

She kept spending more and more time at the center. She'd hand over her little girl, Tara, named for Gone With the Wind. That's another thing that surprised me. She might have been called 'white trash', but she was the smartest person I knew. Anna would light up a cigarette, survey the center, and crack open some huge book, daring anyone to challenge her. No one did.

That's why it surprised me when she arrived at my front door, Tara in tow, screaming and babbling.

"Alexis!" she cried again. "You have to help me. Please!"

Her thick eye makeup was mixing with her salty tears. She looked awful as she pushed past me and ran into the house.

I initially thought that she had had a fight with her boyfriend. The one who ought to be in jail for abuse. I told her to sit down and to have a cup of hot chocolate. She wouldn't listen.

"They're after me," she wailed in synchrony with Tara. She started screaming about monsters and arrows.

And one bone-chilling word.

Hunters.

I was suddenly seized with paralyzing images. The bite of a cold night, a taut bowstring, the whoosh of wind as an arrow rocketed through the air, the thwack! of weapon meeting target. I shook myself, unsure of what the word meant.

And I could feel the whisper of a voice caressing my skin. . .

Alexis. . .

She's just had a bad trip, I thought to myself as I tried to get her to calm down. I pushed the disturbing thoughts from my mind.

Anna might have been some sort of she-Einstein, but she was hooked on anything. LSD had been her. . .specialty.

"Anna, what did you take?" I asked her through her shrieks. "Anna? Anna, do you hear me?" But she wouldn't calm down. I was determined not to show her my disappointment-she got enough of that from her turncoat parents-but she had stayed clean throughout pregnancy, and I had hoped.

"Alexis," she whispered once she finally stopping shaking. She looked up at me with huge eyes. "Y-You gotta stop them. You're the only one who can. S-stop them b-before they kill me. They're going to kill me!"