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HUNTED:

  JAKE THE RIPPER

  By Artie Margrave

  Hunted: Jake The Ripper

  By Artie Margrave

  Copyright ? 2012 Artie Margrave

  Front Cover designed by Artie Margrave. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. Any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this eBook may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the express written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form in any form of cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  HUNTED: JAKE THE RIPPER

  ~Title Page~

  ~Hunted?~

  ~?Through The Forest?~

  ~?Into The Light?~

  ~?At The Chapel?~

  ~?Unseen?~

  ~?Upon The Crucifix~

  ~An Excerpt From The Curse In The Chest~

  ~About The Book~

  ~About The Author~

  HUNTED?

  Jack grabbed the broken piece of the spear and pulled it out of his blood-caked arm. It didn't give him the sort of pain he expected it to. It gave him very little pain, as much as a pinprick, and lasted seconds. It drew blood with torn muscles and dark-grey, decayed flesh, leaving a bleeding hole the circumference of the handle of a mop and which passed through the length of his bicep, opening at the other end. He looked at the mess of his right arm but didn't panic. It was going to take a short time to heal and he had other problems to take care of.

  An owl hooted nearby. He saw its deep, gloomy, yellow eyes noticing him, studying him, bearing down on him. He dismissed it. It wasn't important, barely worth worrying about. It dismissed him too and turned its attention to the forest floor. His panting slowed. He swiped at the sweat formed on his forehead and took it clean and listened. There were no noises, save the grave swish-swish issued by the night breeze on flexible tree branches and dislodged leaves. He could hear, albeit not too clearly but acceptable enough, from a little over two kilometers. It was one of the highly developed abilities he'd first noticed and understood. And he understood it because it made it easy for him to find food. Food, his basic need! His survival not only depended on it, without it, and so much of it, the paled skin that held his flexible bones together would've fallen into dried pieces long, long ago. He'd seen one of his own die that way.

  He sat and relaxed on the branch. He gazed at the moon - full in its splendor. It glimmered through the almost starless sky, sending a dim light down the farthest end of the forest. He preferred the darkness here. It felt safer, even if momentarily. He was one with the dark. He wasn't scared of it. His eyesight was infinitely better than the mountain cat's. Another one in his armory of incredible abilities. He could actually see a drop of black ink fall in the dark. He looked at the owl again. Its focus had shifted from him to the forest floor, searching silently. Now those were eyes, those spectacularly large and round, yellow eyeballs. Eyes that was better than his. Eyes keener.

  A sound! It came so sudden. He panicked. Flung himself off the branch, up on his feet. He was on the branch in a second, bending. He searched the forest floor. The sound again. It squeaked like rotten, dried-up leaves being disturbed. He searched again, hands gripped to the branch between his legs.

  There!

  A large rat, its snout silently sniffing the air, revealed itself from behind a tree. Searching for late night snacks. A swoosh beside him, so fast, so silent, it sounded like a whisper made him whimper. He turned. The owl had disappeared. He returned his view to the rat. It had disappeared. His search was drawn to a shadow that floated at the corner of his eyes, up towards the moon. The owl had its struggling prey caught in its talons, its own late night snack. He was instantly enamored by its magnificence. How incredibly fast. How silent. How wondrous. The stuff of magic. It was little wonder the science people marveled at the technology of the owl's aviation, why they struggled endlessly to recreate that art. Because that was what it was. Art! If he had those wings, why he would be invincible. Another sound. He turned back to the ground. Another rat surfaced as well, in ignorance of its already preyed upon partner.

  Then he heard another noise! Distinct, different. A crunch sound of twigs snapping drew his attention to it. He tuned his hearing, filtered out the whistling of the leaves of the forest and then he heard it. Pumps. Soft pumps. In twos. They sounded different, apart but more ordered. And there were different sounds of those twos. Difference in intensities. Hearts pumping. He understood what it meant. They had breached his comfort zone. He started to turn around, to see how many they were that'd found him. He turned to see something black floating towards him so fast. Straight towards his face. An arrow! He drew his arm up to block it. It sunk into his arm, pierced his flesh, bore through it and came out the other side, stopping only inches from his eyes. The pain was a tremor that coursed his entire body. It stung him ferociously, made him convulse and almost sent him to swoon. The pain lasted awhile. If he could feel the sting of a cobra's venom, this was definitely more than it. He looked at the tip of the arrow. The smell, that powerfully irritating smell, was designed all around the tip of the arrow. Designed in blood. Dead man's blood! His poison. The hunters had learned. They had learned more. He felt power boil out of him, felt it vaporize into the thick, blank atmosphere.

  Out of that thick atmosphere, a raspy voice called, from below. "You got it!"

  He recognized that voice.

  "Call to the others," another voice ordered; this one gruff and a straight to the point kind of way. "We can't let it escape this time."

  They still referred to him as 'it', something he considered highly offensive. It didn't matter that he wasn't one of them anymore, that his kind were no longer their kind. Demons, zombies, even ghouls and spirits, they still referred to their masculinity or feminism, and those ones weren't even in the same class he, and his brothers, were in. He deserved respect, given what he'd accomplished among his brothers. Yet he and his kind had been hunted. Down to the last one. Him!

  The pain sent another wave of nausea through his gut. He jerked his hand up. The wound was below the first one. Almost half of the previous wound had been repaired with a flesh grayer than a month's old cadaver. As he studied the arrow, a loud whistle blew from one of the hunters below. A few seconds, about five apart and another whistle, just as loud but more distant, responded a few kilometers from them. Jake realized he was a few minutes to being cornered. He had to escape. The hunters had both night and day to make their move. He had only night and had to make every second of it count.

  He turned to jump off his branch to a higher one and suddenly his hand, the one with the arrow was forcefully yanked back. His entire body was rocked backwards. He lost balance, fell in the direction the arrow tugged. With a reflex faster than the recoil of a hand gun, he threw his left arm around the branch. It bent a little, creaking feverishly to the strength of pull from below. He looked at the arrow once more. Yes, they had learned just so much! A thin rope was firmly tied to the base of the arrow. He hadn't noticed it before. Plus the person tussling it out with him had the shrewdness of the one person he'd heard so much of and seen very little of.

  Two torches were lit. He could see them clearly now. They were four. A big, burly man sporting a ten-gallon hat and an oily, lightly bearded face headed the group. He held a crossbow pointed at him, the other end of the rope firmly attached to somewhere above its trigger. In the bright light of the torch
es, Jake could see the burnt section of the man's face, from his left cheek to his ear. He said a grin from chapped, half-burnt lips. He looked up at Jake through ferocious, hungry eyes. Eyes that Jake was scared enough of. Stan McCulley. The most feared hunter in all of Hangleton. Probably in all of the mid-west. This man had taken down half of his breed on his own. He'd never crossed McCulley before but he'd known just enough that he wasn't supposed to play around if the name sprung up. The tales Jake had heard mentioned about this man could've filled a library. He also endeared so many names to himself, none of them too friendly: The Mad Prophet, Saw, Hell Killer, Crazy Purger, Big Stan were just a few Jake had heard of. At least Big Stan was the most attractive.

  Paranoia squeezed his belly.

  "Going somewhere?" McCulley's unpleasant voice sang. A half-finished cigar whistled wisps of smoke from between his lips.

  The whistle rang again.

  The second man also wore a ten-gallon hat. Almost completely hidden beneath it was a much younger face, squarish, free of hairs save the bushy mustache beneath his nose, and a pointed chin. He had this air around him that commanded as much respect as the man Stan. He was taller too. Jake had seen this man a lot of times. He was Sturgis O'Reilly, Sheriff of the mid-west. He was drawn there by a need, a need to finish Jake off. The very last one.

  No time! Jake yanked his hands back carefully and with as much agony as he could bear, the arrow slowly pulled out of his hand. Blood rushed out of the wound. He pulled the arm up to the branch and slowly, arduously lifted himself onto it. He could hear the familiar sounds now in their multitudes. Hearts thumping! Hearts beating! Hearts pumping blood through those arteries. Many of them beat in fear, others in resolve, mostly in fear. He could tell. Many of them were beating faster than others. They were right to fear. They were wrong to fear him though. He was the one afraid. His kind had a long history of manslaughter. It was the reason he was down to the last one, the only surviving one and they wanted him dead at any cost.

  He heard Big Stan curse and reared his bow up at him again, trying to fix in a second roped arrow.

  SWOOP!! Too close! Another arrow whizzed past Jake's head and stuck into a large branch above him. That shot was inches close to his forehead. It would've taken him out definitely. Not kill him, no. He looked down again. Another crossbow was held by a young guy with features strangely very much like his own: he was tall, had good, if not fantastic, body balance, deep gimlet-eyes and a face atop a neck that found it easy to rotate in all directions. His expression however was as taut as Big Stan's but his complexion was sickly like he hadn't been fed regularly on the right nutrients. He had a black leather jacket that illuminated the lit torches. He looked up at Jake, seemingly satisfied with his shot. That was before Big Stan's bellow rang out.

  "Idiot boy," Big Stan bawled, strode over to the guy and slapped him at the back of his head so heavily he would've crumbled. "You don't miss targets these kinds of time!"

  The guy dropped his face slightly, disappointedly.

  "Sorry, papa," he muttered, "but I did not miss. Only it was going to be difficult staking him while he's staying up there so I was hoping you'd shoot earlier and I go up to stake him."

  Dad? So he was Joey. Jake had also heard tales, not too much of them, of Big Stan's son, save the occasional ghouls, werewolves and succubi hunting and from what he'd heard, the boy was quite good. Just probably not good enough for Big Stan himself.

  Big Stan mumbled a few gibberish to himself but then turned to his boy still looking dejected.

  "It's a 'it'," Big Stan corrected. "You ready?" he spat.

  Joey looked up, beamed and nodded. That was the cue Jake needed. He leapt off the tree and disappeared into the dark, cries of anger, of loss and curses following him.