Read Online The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) by Quil Carter - Free Book Online

trees might be bare here, but it’s still a pain with them being so close together,” I commented.
    Elish was quiet; his sharp eyes were continuing to sweep the area.
    “Do you think –” I shut my mouth when Elish raised a hand. I started to listen but I couldn’t hear anything.
    “Nose. Smell... don’t use your ears,” Elish instructed. “There are ravers near here.”
    For a brief moment I stared at Elish in shock, before, not missing a beat I started to walk around the area. Trying to pick out tracks, blood, any sign that something had happened to the boys.
    Though as I looked and picked apart every tipped over median, every old highway sign, Elish’s eyes were fixed on a sloping ridge a few yards from the highway. I followed him as he glided towards it, my hands starting to itch from wanting to grab my gun.
    But there was nothing but the faint aroma on the air and even that smelled stale. I jumped up onto one of the medians as Elish walked along the ridge.
    “If it’s ravers... they’re gone,” I spoke my thoughts out loud. “It hasn’t been snowing enough over the past two days for it to cover fresh tracks...”
    Elish turned from the ridge, his face showing me no window into his emotions but a tightness in his lips. “Yes... let us continue.”
    Then, despite all of my self-control, I felt a strong surge of anxiety shoot through me as I spotted something.
    “Elish...” He immediately turned at the tone of my voice.
    I jogged over to the winding road and kneeled down. I brushed my hand over a spot of red.
    My heart dropped as I dug under the fresh layer of snow... there was blood.
    I brushed more snow aside... more blood. I rose to my feet and scanned the winding road.
    Elish bent down and picked up a mound of the bloody snow. He put it to his lips and tasted it.
    “It’s not chimera...”
    I tried to hide the relief on my face. Elish looked behind me and started to walk down the road. I got out my gun and so did he, the tension inside of my body now reaching a boiling point. I wish I could hide the heart hammering in my chest, or at least calm it down like Elish seemed to be able to do.
    The road had trees on either side of it, large, twisted trunks with raised roots that contorted into each other. It carried on as we walked down the incline, twisting through many turns but continuously leading us downhill.
    Then more signs, footsteps mixed in with the smears and sprinkles of blood. The bare feet of ravers, dozens of them. All of them moving around each other like they were in a frenzy. I knew ravers and this wasn’t typical behavior for them. They didn’t hunt like this, they perused their pray in a straight line. Never wavering until they either died or they couldn’t find you anymore. Not this sporadic, miss-matched pattern, and why only one direction? There were no prints pointing back up to the highway.
    “What came down... never came back up,” Elish spoke my own realization out loud as we examined the prints. “All of them... are going downhill...”
    “To where?” I almost didn’t want to ask. Alarm bells were ringing in my mind, flooding me with the urge to run down the hill to see what I would find at the bottom. What were the ravers running towards? It couldn’t be the caravan, why would they veer off the road?
    “There was a sign a half kilometer back. A resort. They were heading towards the resort, where this road will lead us,” Elish replied placidly.
    “Why?”
    Elish continued to stare down at the road, analysing the tracks. “I think perhaps the caravan got caught in the first snowfall. They may have sought the resort for shelter.”
    Elish looked up from the tracks and down the road; an odd expression crossed his face. “It is time we run the rest of the way.”
    Elish started to jog down the hill, I followed behind. “But... Jade can’t be down there... your tracker hasn’t gone off.”
    I kept pace with him, our boots landing heavy on the ground. We weren’t