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  © Copyright 2016 by Gabi Moore - All rights reserved.

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  BLOOD AND GUTS

  - Left for Dead

  A Romantic Suspense Novel

  By: Gabi Moore

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 - Aden

  Chapter 2 - Aden

  Chapter 3 - Aden

  Chapter 4 - Lorin

  Chapter 5 - Lorin

  Chapter 6 - Lorin

  Chapter 7 - Aden

  Chapter 8 - Aden

  Chapter 9 - Aden

  Chapter 10 - Lorin

  Chapter 11 - Aden

  Chapter 12 - Aden

  Chapter 13 - Lorin

  Chapter 14 - Lorin

  Chapter 15 - Aden

  Chapter 16 - Lorin

  Chapter 17 - Lorin

  Chapter 18 - Lorin

  Chapter 19 - Lorin

  Chapter 20 - Aden

  Chapter 21 - Lorin

  Chapter 22 - Aden

  Chapter 23 - Lorin

  Chapter 24 - Aden

  Chapter 25 - Aden

  Epilogue - Lorin

  FANTASY/SCI-FI:

  Manipulator Of Elements – A Young Adult Urban Fantasy

  Wicked Legacy – An Urban Fantasy

  Chosen – A Sci-Fi

  Faerie Rift – An Adult Urban Fantasy

  A New Dawn – A Young Adult Urban Fantasy

  STEAMY CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE:

  HEART OF DARKNESS

  RESISTING THE BAD BOY

  MANHANDLED

  BARE HANDS

  ABSOLUTION

  BREAK

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  BLOOD AND GUTS

  - Left for Dead

  By Gabi Moore

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  Chapter 1 - Aden

  In the dead of winter, the air is so frigid and sterile you can smell blood in the air if there’s a fresh kill nearby.

  I believe the wolves I’ve seen in these forests have a sense of smell so sharp they can nearly taste the kill before it happens. The instinctual drive is enough to make them salivate. Look carefully, and you can see their jaws twitch in anticipation, see their eyes flick with wanting the kill. Nothing less than total, unflinching bloodthirst will rip out the throat of their victims’ throats. Wolves can smell anything. Especially the paths leading to death.

  Something feral operates on a genetic level within all predators. They know how to take a life without being taught. An animal that is a predator may fine-tune that skill over a lifetime, but they never need to learn how to execute the kill. They do not need to understand why they must kill, and they do not need to come to terms with the fact that they have killed. All of the necessary tools are like gifts, coming de facto to their experience.

  Wolves, like other carnivores, are born with the ability to take down enemies or prey. When the scent of blood is in the air, even the most well trained dogs struggle holding off from the chase. Wild wolves don’t give into such domestic pretensions.

  If only humans were as honest as wolves.

  It was a hazy, crisp day in the forest and I had successfully managed to run the shaft of an arrow straight through the lungs of a fresh buck. Mind you, I said lungs.

  I peered over to watch as the buck was running through its final visions of this world. The great barrel chest was heaving, gasping for breath as the oxygen in the blood thinned. The parting picture of life left in the deer’s eye would be this white, forest landscape.

  Fallen snow covered the ground. Memories of last year’s fire still dotted the blanket of white in the form of charred trees.

  I saw what the deer saw. Forest, blurred with fading adrenaline. I could almost feel what it felt. Its body, shaking from exhaustion, was about to collapse. The edges of the animal’s awareness would be fading now. The keen senses that had kept it alive in this wilderness were seeping away. The feeling of a heartbeat, wild and irregular, would be overwhelming its body. I knew that when it had run out of air, or blood, it would collapse on the ground, staring up into space.

  And I would be there, with a pistol, ready to put it out of its misery. All because I missed the heart by a fraction of an inch.

  I hated that final feeling of hopelessness in the eyes of an animal half-killed.

  Again I was faced with that crucial plea for mercy, proof of my lack of skill. My own want of ability to execute the needed strike was to blame. I had caused more suffering than I cared to. And now I was responsible for the final fleeting nightmare of the deer.

  If I had been a wolf, the deer could have had the dignity of the chase. The adrenaline would still be there, the heartbeat would still be wild. As a matter of fact, the final death scene of the deer’s life would have been similar. The one difference would be mercy. The complete absence of hope.

  In nature, there is always a balance of competition. There’s always the chance that a well-fed buck could break away from a predator. The chance that the buck would be fast enough to wriggle out from underneath a descending wolf pack.

  The only way that scenario held out was against hunters who had no experience. Even then, the consequences were more like cruel failures than honest competition.

  Even someone as talented as myself still fucked things up while hunting. And so now, we both had to deal with the consequences of my shot being a fraction of an inch off target. It was unbelievable how much pain and suffering could come from my own inadequacies. I wished that I had been born a killer; then neither of us would have needed to go through this painful dance.

  The bullet went through the eye.

  An echo blasted through the landscape. The sound reverberated through my chest. And right before the eye blacked out for good, it condemned me and asked unspoken questions. I didn’t need to be an empath to understand what the animal was asking. We both knew what had happened.

  I doubt he was upset about the fact that I would use his body to get through the winter. What he really wanted, or at least what I imagined he wanted, was someone who was proficient. What he needed, as a prey, was a wolf. He needed someone who didn’t hesitate when they had to go in for the kill. If I had been given the instincts of the wolf pack, this deer would have been dead miles ago.

  Generally speaking, people tend to have some confusion about death. They can't quite understand the interdependent nature of mercy and violence. The difficult thing about being a violent species is knowing the proper application of violence. True mercy is knowing when to take a life, and when to leave it alone.

  The difference is in the emotional attachment to the action itself. The righteous kill is one where there is no emotional fixation. Without emotional fixation, there is no room for hesitation. No second-guessing action. Any violence which occurs outside of that only creates more pain.

  I dragged the deer twelve miles through the snow with a makeshift sled. My trajectory had been way off the usual trails. The divergence from game trails was a final ‘fuck you’ from my freeloading passenger. I bit my lip and pushed my head down toward the ground. It was better not to curse th
e dead, if you could help it — particularly if you were going to eat them later that night.

  “Well played, buddy,” I grunted under my breath.

  Keeping up the pace, I pushed through the outer hills and valleys that surrounded my forest.

  Technically, it wasn’t my forest.

  It belonged to the public.

  The land was the northern corridor of the Appalachian Mountains. Turns out when you look at a map of Maine, there’s a lot of green. I lived in an area laced with endless snow and trees located somewhere between Canada and the coast. While everyone in the state was busy enjoying chowder and cappuccinos, I was left to my own devices. To be honest, I preferred it that way. There were no visitors, which meant that nobody had a problem when me calling it ‘my forest’.

  The wolves were the only ones I could ever see myself paying homage to. If they wanted my territory, I had no right to keep it from them. Regardless of my respect, they gave my bow a healthy distance. In return I would continue to offer them respect when they passed through the night. The wolf packs are some of the best neighbors I could hope to find.

  This buck, on the other hand, had me chase him on a wild goose chase into the middle of nowhere.

  We wound through a series of trails and passes that I didn’t frequent at all. They were closer toward the highway. I didn’t like being reminded that there were other people in the world other than me. Straying closer to the highway never failed to remind me of why I left. It also reminded me that my isolationist fantasy was nothing more than willful ignorance. Each interruption took weeks to overcome. I was forced to work through memories that came flooding back at the mere sight of civilization. Everything begged for my attention. Everything took me away from the present moment.

  This time, that interruption was a woman.

  If I had been more exhausted, I might have passed her by without noticing. When I found her, she was unconscious and barely breathing. The landscape was barren, the sky empty-looking. The trees in that area were all pitch black, and the contrast between her body, the black of the trees and the white of the snow caught me off guard.

  I'd be lying if I said it didn’t hurt to see her like that; no man is that hardened.

  She was naked, and her hands and ankles were bound by thick black cords.

  I looked around and saw a trail that led away from her. It was old, and the snow was fast erasing the evidence of whoever had tied her up in the first place.

  I dropped the sled, and walked over to her body. Her skin was blue, and she looked nearly dead. The tips of my fingers reached out beneath her neck to feel out a pulse.

  She was alive, but barely.

  I cursed.

  The tracks led back to the direction of the highway. Just further proof that humanity could never redeem itself.

  In a flash, my knife was out and I sawed through the cords that held her bound to the tree. A pity, because it was a waste of good rope, but if she didn’t get down and covered soon, the consequences could be dire.

  I peeled her off from the tree, and her body fell down heavy onto my shoulder. Moving through the snow, I got to the sled and threw her down next to the deer. Using my knife, I slit open the carcass of the deer, then roughly pulled the entrails out. The guts steamed red and wet in a pile next to the sled.

  The scavengers would eat well tonight.

  She needed the protection of the deer's body. Without the warmth of the kill, there was a real chance that frostbite would claim her body. She might never walk again, and I'm not sure I would be doing her any favors by saving her then.

  After clearing out as much of the deer as I could, I pushed her arms and legs into a fetal position. I swiftly tucked her arms and legs into the empty pouch of the deer, then covered the two of them with my gear.

  The cabin was still a few miles away.

  I’d wager that she easily added another hundred and forty pounds to the load. The snow wasn't compact, which meant I was in for a slog.

  For a moment, I wished that I hadn’t been alone.

  If there had been another person, I could have counted on them to take her to the cabin. Then, I might have been able to track whoever had tied her up to the tree. I would have shot them on sight — straight through the heart with a bow. Or perhaps a quarter inch to the left, just to watch their eyes stare into mine while the snow took their last breath.

  I couldn’t tell whether she had done something to deserve her fate. Maybe she was actually some kind of malicious murderer. Who knows if I was actually interfering with some element of karmic justice. Maybe the fates had already sentenced her to her appointed time.

  “Shut up,” I told myself, gritting my teeth and leaning forward into the snow.

  The mind was so easily distracted by useless speculation. She was on the sled now, there was no use debating anything. The two of us were moving steadily toward the cabin.

  There was never a good reason to focus on more than one thing at any given point; nothing I had found anyway. There was just the purity of the present moment.

  Holding onto that thought, I focused on my breath. With steady rhythm, I gave my lungs the oxygen necessary to pull all three of our bodies through the snow. I would carry her as far as necessary so that the two of us could be safe.

  I never enjoyed the imposition of taking care of someone who couldn't take care of themselves. But sometimes, you don't get to do what you want. Sometimes, all you can do is sweat, breathe, and push through the snow.

  Chapter 2 - Aden

  When we made it back to the cabin, the snow was full on pouring down from the sky in swirling masses of cold. My skin burned on the periphery. I wasn't at the brink of exhaustion, but I was out of breath. I hadn't planned on going through that intensive of a workout just to drag home a buck.

  I left the two of them out in the cold for a moment, and went in to throw a log on the fire. Whether it was careless or not to leave a fire unattended in the cabin, I was glad to have it available. The fire was little more than embers. The fireplace was constructed well enough, and it would catch soon enough of its own accord.

  Wasting no time, I went back outside and dragged the woman in, setting her down in front of the fire.

  My floor was already stained with blood from the woman’s body. Any overt sense of cleanliness at that point would have been a useless gesture.

  Walking out to the deer, I grabbed a cleaver, and hacked off a couple of steaks. The scent of the blood was satisfying. I always love the clean smell of a fresh kill.

  Fresh blood reminds me that dinner is going to be excellent. I can feel the anticipation on a visceral level. My body literally grows more energetic at the thought of consuming meat. The vibrance of life within another creature has powers when consumed by the hunter. The act of taking a life in order to transfer that power into yourself is a sacred process. In my mind, it was impossible to remove the symbolism from the experience.

  The deer would become part of me.

  Walking in once more, I put the steaks on a set of skewers over the growing fire. I paused for a moment to determine my next plan. Then, I threw on the kettle for good measure. While the water was boiling, and the meat was cooking, I went outside to hang the deer in the shed.

  The whole process was cold, miserable, and completely necessary.

  The temperature outside of the cabin was below freezing, and the snow stuck. I could use the shed as a freezer for the next few months without any problems. The locks kept the critters out, and I was able to keep myself in meat throughout the course of the winter.

  Come spring, I had to disassemble the shed each year. I put a garden up there just to get around the fact that death hung so completely in a single spot. It was easy enough to let a corpse hang over the ice and treat yourself to a nice stew each night. A lot of things got put on hold when the temperature never rose above freezing. Once the world started to thaw out, things change. Spring brings with it the necessity to work with more dried meats, and smaller game.
r />   The alternative was finding out a way to ship a freezer into the woods. There just wasn't any way for me to ship a freezer to the cabin. The man I bought the cabin from didn't have a driveway. I didn't have a driveway. I didn't intend fuck up that level of simplicity for the sake of convenient food storage. Once you had a road that led directly to your door, you also had visitors. I’d rather eat rabbit and make venison jerky.

  I secured the lock on the shed.

  The cabin itself wasn’t built by my own hands. I’m either too lazy, or too practical for that sort of thing.

  I was fortunate enough to buy some land from someone with cash and a handshake. The deed to the land was still technically in that man’s name. I held the title, wrong name and all. Neither of us put much stock into living wills, or maintaining accurate paperwork.

  My kind of guy.

  The only people who had any clue who lived here were other ex-military types. I didn't worry about any of them fucking with me. All of those ex-field agents were tired. They had gone through the same shit as myself, and wanted nothing more than peace and quiet.

  Peace, quiet, and venison.

  The guy had managed to stock this place to the brim. He was preparing for the apocalypse, and then he got called back on duty. Some bullshit, blackwater mercenary organization gave him a deal he couldn't refuse. War was an occupational hazard for folks in my field of work.

  He died, while serving his country in a foreign country. If I recall correctly, his particular death story was about bombs. There was a car of people that was going through a checkpoint. He was in the same area on a different assignment as a matter of circumstance. The bomb went off, killing him, two other soldiers, and everybody inside of the vehicle.

  Small wonder he prided himself on building an anti-social bug out shelter like the cabin.

  As a last sort of ’fuck you’ to the man, he gave me a hell of a deal on this place.