your heart's blood, may you never kill again for your van~ty.'

    Weeping with fear, shaking and weak at the knees, Bill scrambled out of his sleeping bag. 'I can't do this,' he gasped. But the woman's eyes gave him no quarter. More frightened of her than of losing his last hold on sanity, he rummaged underneath his jacket, found the knife he'd stripped off the night before. Half blind with tears of remorse, he reached up and cut his daughter down. Sobbing deep in his throat, he wrapped her slack body in his sleeping bag, then clumsily smoothed her blonde hair.

    His hand brushed fur, cold gray fur, then the unyielding tines of an antler. In his arms, cradled against his bare chest, lay the blood-rank carcass of a buck.

    Bill looked up, too shocked to be angry, but the woman who had threatened him was gone. Unsettled by feelings that every move he made was being watched, he spilled the wretched carcass upon the ground, packed up his gear, and fled without a backward thought for his forsaken companions.

Left alone at the campsite, Rafe roused to a spill of winter sunlight and the rustle of foraging birds. No apartment, no office, no report due, he understood in a flood of rising spirits. He thrust his arms from his sleeping bag to stretch ... and froze, half crippled by chills.

    His hands were running with red blood. He started up in panic, then all but retched as he blundered across the stiff, feathered corpse of an owl that someone had left dumped on his chest.

His scream tore apart the forest silence.

    The small woman who watched him went unnoticed until he ran out of breath. She stood over him, uncanny and bitterly accusing. 'You will go,' she said clearly. 'Kill no more for your ego, and the death of the owl will be forgiven.'

    'Who are you?' gasped Rafe. But he didn't want an answer, not really. He just needed out of here, as fast as he could throw on clothes and jacket.

    Afraid for his sanity and survival, he abandoned his expensive gear and fancy rifle where they lay. Without pause to look for Bill or Alan, he raced headlong to his car. Sweaty, panting, and shaky,

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