DARK CREATIONS: THE HUNTED Published by Jennifer and Christopher Martucci Copyright © 2012 Jennifer and Christopher Martucci All rights reserved.
First edition: July 2012 There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter. – Ernest Hemingway Chapter 1 The turbulent rise of heat radiating from the pavement caused the air just above it to quiver and shimmer on the blistering mid-July afternoon. Shannon Leary groaned aloud at the thought of stepping back out into the unbearable heat, of leaving the comfortably cool temperature of the supermarket and traipsing across the parking lot to her car. But she needed to get home. Her company would be arriving shortly, and most of the groceries in her cart needed to be prepared before her guest’s arrival. She paid the cashier and paused briefly, enjoying the crisp, indoor air a moment longer before continuing toward the exit. Her presence before a set of motion activated doors caused them to swing open. As her foot stepped down on the sidewalk beyond the doorway, she was met with a wall of stifling air. The humidity was so high, the air so thick, she found it difficult to breathe. She felt as though she were walking through a dense, viscous substance, invisible but resistant; it was an effort to push through it. A bead of sweat trickled down between her shoulder blades as she struggled against the atmosphere across the parking lot toward her minivan. An ice-cream cake sat perched precariously in the basket of her shopping cart as the sun scorched from overhead. She looked down at the cake and doubted it would fare well with the sun, the heat and the humidity conspiring against it. She wasn’t faring well, couldn’t expect something as fragile as a decorated lump of ice cream to survive the recent heat wave. She stopped suddenly, and forgot about the fate of the ice-cream cake for a moment as a distinct pain spread across her midsection. Her abdomen contracted involuntarily. She hunched over instinctively and clutched it. An elderly man passing stopped, looked at her belly and asked her if she needed help.
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