Lightning Game (GhostWalkers 17)

The juvenile buck raised its head abruptly, water streaming from its velvety muzzle. Instinctively, Rubin turned his body slightly to shield Jonquille’s with his much larger one. “Slide back into deeper bush.” He mouthed the command against her ear.

Jonquille slipped out from under his shoulder and off the rock noiselessly, her hand sliding inside her jacket to retrieve a weapon. Eyes on the deer, Rubin reached with all of his animal senses to scan the entire area for threats. A few minutes earlier the surrounding woods had been devoid of all enemies. He couldn’t detect a human presence, but there was definitely the whisper of danger.

The presence of the bobcat had only been recent, just the last season. There had been no indication of any larger cats, but to Rubin the threat felt feline. Not the bobcat, although certainly a bobcat was capable of bringing down a deer. This felt much more ominous. Cougars were beautiful animals and ones he respected, but they were also pure killing machines. One didn’t see them until it was too late.

He kept his gaze fixed on the nervous buck. The animal took a long time to settle before it went back to drinking water. The wind ruffled the leaves on the trees, and a silver beam scattered across the forest floor. On that breeze came a subtle scent of feral. It came and went as fast as the shifting of the clouds overhead, an ominous portent of what might be hidden in the bushes, waiting to strike at the unwary.

Rubin looked with the eyes of a bird into the bushes along the ground beside the trail leading to the water. It took a long time, long enough for the young buck to settle down and decide he was safe, before Rubin spotted the long body of the cat lying motionless beneath the sweeping branches of the red spruce fanning out on the ground right on the game trail leading to the water. The cat was completely covered by the maze of broken limbs and in the shadows, waiting for her unsuspecting prey. Clearly, she had stalked the young buck down to the clearing and was now awaiting his return.

Rubin felt the little shiver go through Jonquille’s body as the deer turned from the stream and began his careful prancing back to the game trail to enter the cooler shadow of the trees, where he felt safer. Being in the open clearly made him nervous. He would stop and look around him, his head up alertly, looking in every direction. He never looked at the one spot he should have. He passed the cougar without so much as glancing her way.

The cat remained absolutely still. Rubin and Diego, as young children growing up on the mountain and providing for their family, had often sat high in the branches of the trees, observing wildlife and the way they hunted. Learning those same skills. The female cat was on the thinner side. Rubin guessed that, like the little bobcat, she had kittens stashed somewhere, and she needed food to sustain herself. The cycle of life for animals could be brutal, just as it was for soldiers.

The cougar burst from beneath her shelter of branches when the young buck was about seventeen feet down the trail from her. She sprinted fast, covering the ground, muscles bunching beneath her fur, driving with her back legs as she leapt into the air. She caught at the back haunches of the buck as he ran, digging her claws in tight on either side, using her weight against him, dragging him to an abrupt halt. Sinking her teeth into his spine, she pulled at him as he fought back, bucking and swinging around in a desperate attempt to get her off.

The cat used her sharp claws to move up his body toward his neck, using her weight and muscle in order to get him down. The buck swung his head in an attempt to use his horns, turning his body in circles, rearing up to try to dislodge her, but careful to keep his feet. Instinctively, he seemed to know she would have the advantage if he was on the ground.

The mountain lion held on, patient as always. She was a new mother and desperate in her own way. She had to provide for herself and her young. Her next move brought her to the buck’s neck, where she sank her teeth deep and then flung her body to the side to drag his head around, in an effort to snap his neck. The buck tried to save himself, moving with her, but she was able to take him down.

He fought her ferociously, slashing at her with his hooves, kicking out with dangerous power, but she refused to back down, holding on to his neck, determined to suffocate him. The buck grew weaker, his attempts to fight feebler. As his thrashing and kicking grew less aggressive, her hold tightened on him until it was clear she had managed to secure her food for the next few days.