Dark crept its fingers out over the campus, coming faster now as autumn edged closer to winter. Luke walked with his shoulders hunched against the cold, his mind still replaying the events of the day. Along with Gabi and Kenny, the day after their latest sighting they had taken it upon themselves to call up Sheriff Nalen.

Rather than take any evidence over the phone, all of them were summarily collected from campus and driven down to Nalen's office, where they raised their concerns. Nalen listened. Even wrote a few things down.

But when they left Luke had no idea if what they'd done had been of any use at all. The sheriff remained infuriatingly opaque about the details of the investigation, and barely reacted at all to the news of DeVergne's snooping around the campus. Objectively that was probably a good thing, Luke supposed, but as someone in the thick of the mess he wished he could get more pieces of the puzzle. He didn't know for sure if DeVergne was involved in anything, but he couldn't shake the feeling of suspicion. Too many coincidences; too many unexplained appearances.

Oaklynn's accommodation rose welcomingly in front of him, banishing some of those dark thoughts, and he felt a tingle of warmth return to his bones. In some ways dating someone who made such a concerted effort to be hard to contact was a little odd, but it had its advantages. Their time was always in person. No phone calls, not texts, no emails that might be misinterpreted. It was all very raw; very real.

Tonight they would finally get their Predator double bill. They'd missed the chance to see it at the theatre, but that was nothing a quick online purchase couldn't solve. His rucksack rustled with snacks and a fresh spring lent lightness to his steps. For the next few hours they could forget about all the craziness that had infected Lasquette Bay and just have some fun.

He peered up at the building as he drew closer, trying to pick out her window on the west-facing wall. Some of them were dark, residents out for the night. Others emanated golden light against the encroaching night. On the third floor, he spotted one with a dark silhouette framed like a painting. As he walked the shape took on a definite form and he smiled. Even distantly he could make out the shape of her, the contours of her flowing hair and slender shoulders. She waved, the gesture toy-like from so far away.

Before he could wave back something slammed into him from the side.

Luke hit the ground with a gasp of surprise, landing painfully on his arm and his head clunked off the concrete. Stars exploded in his vision. Stunned by the impact he was dimly aware of strong hands grabbing him and wrenching him back to his feet, but he fell again, knees buckling. He blinked, trying to assemble a thought.

What was happening?

A hood was jammed down over his head, reducing his world to pitch blackness. He gathered the breath to cry out, but before he could call for help a fist smashed into his stomach with shocking force. Instantly winded, he spluttered and coughed, doubled over and only held upright by the strong arms of whoever held him from behind. Something tight bit into his wrists and he realised it was a zip-tie, pinning his hands together.

"Let's go," a gruff, female voice said. Then he found himself yanked along at a ruthless pace, his feet slithering on the ground, knees buckling as he tried to breathe. Another punch to the gut kept him quiet long enough for his assailants to toss him unceremoniously forward. There was a terrifying moment of weightlessness before he landed on something solid.

Luke heard the dull thud of a van door shutting. Then an engine revved and the vehicle started moving.

*

When they whipped the bag off his head Luke had to bite down the impulse to scream that went boiling through his lungs. He contented himself with a choked, high-pitched squeak, his whole body going rigid against the chair he'd been tied to. His breathing came rapidly, fearful adrenaline pumping through his system as he summoned the wits to look around.

What he saw didn't exactly calm his nerves. The cabin could have been stolen from the set of any budget slasher flick, with walls fashioned from old logs of damp-looking wood. A gnarled table squatted petulantly against the wall to his right, littered with knives and other tools he didn't fully recognise. Small, glassless windows let the night time air swirl inside, making his hair stand up on end. In front of him a single, dark door with a rusty brass handle looked like the only way in or out.

He quickly realised he was not alone.

By the door stood a woman with pearl-white skin and a short crop of blonde hair. She wore woodland camouflage gear, a jacket and trousers that looked like they'd been liberated from an army-surplus store. She also had a gun very clearly in evidence, strapped to her hip in a bulky holster. Another man paced calmly by the wall to his left, lanky and sporting a ponytail of dust-grey hair. Similarly clad, he too had a pistol in a thigh holster.

Luke's blood chilled when he recognised the last person on the room. He recognised the long dark coat and the curved nose, the sharp cheekbones and the searing green eyes. The man stepped forward into the light, hands in his pockets, calm as a monk.

"DeVergne?"

"Please, call me Simon." A devilish smile of perfect, alabaster teeth shone in the dim light of the cabin.

"What the hell is this?" Luke blurted shrilly. "What do you want?!"

"Easy now," DeVergne chided. "I don't intend to hurt you, though you remaining unharmed is fairly contingent on how our conversation goes."

It took every scrap of willpower he had to fight for some level of composure. He tugged lightly at the bonds that fixed his wrists against the chair legs on either side. They barely moved. Taking a sharp breath in through his nose, he tried to calm himself, though he could feel his heart battering against his ribcage in rising panic.

"What exactly did I do to earn the invitation?" Luke asked looking around.

"I'm afraid you forced my hand, Luke," DeVergne said, almost apologetically. "You decided to involve the sheriff in this, which means I had to step up my timetable. As much as I'd love to take my time and go about my business quietly, that's going to a little difficult with law enforcement breathing down my neck."

"Sorry?" Luke ventured, gulping down the lump in his throat.

"Apology accepted." He resumed pacing, his sharp features pinched as though deep in thought. "But that doesn't change our present problem. I'm here to perform a very specific task, for a very large amount of money. You've jeopardised that."

Luke didn't need to be a detective to put two and two together. He'd suspected DeVergne ever since Oaklynn had told him the reality of what was happening out in these woods. "So you're the poachers?" he asked, before clarifying, "The Karkadda poachers?"

"Ah, good." DeVergne grinned, a sight that rose goosebumps on Luke's skin. "I wasn't sure if you knew." He waited a moment, lips shifting in an amused half-smile. "So the girl, you know what she is, and you still...?"

"Yes I 'still', not that its any of your business."

"Interesting." He looked intrigued, but waved a dismissive hand, as though batting that curiosity away for another day. "Luke, I brought you here to explain some things to you."

"I think I know enough."

"Actually, I'm not so sure that you do."

"I know you kill them and cut out their horns." Despite his current situation a kernel of anger began glowing in the pit of Luke's stomach and he pressed on. "Like the two people you murdered already. I know you sell the horns for money because you're a sick bastard."

"It's not so simple, you see," DeVergne told him, ignoring the insult and keeping his tone amicable, like a man debating with an old friend. He drifted back and forth on lazy steps, hands clasped behind his back. "I'm not some superstitious witchdoctor carving up animals to sell cartilage to gullible idiots. It's a lot more tangible than that."

"Oh, it's tangible alright," Luke blurted, fighting to keep the shrillness out of his voice. "I got a real freakin' good look! Is that what you call working 'quietly'? You butchered those people."

His captor frowned. "I suppose we did."

"You suppose?!"

DeVergne abruptly stopped pacing, turning his disapproving stare on Luke. "What I do is not pleasant, I have no illusions about it, but we are not monsters, Luke. I don't torture the Karkadda, but I do kill them. The rewards are simply worth any suffering I may have to inflict."

"There's just no way that's true."

"I used to think that." He sighed, the sigh of a man who was growing tired of explaining himself. "What separates me from other 'poachers', Luke is what I have seen with my own eyes. I'm not trading in rhino horns or tiger gall bladders. Or whatever it is those scum deal in these days." A surprising amount of disgust hung in those last words, something Luke found difficult to reconcile with the killer standing in front of him.

"You think they are scum?" he risked, his face twisting with confusion. "They do what you do."

"No they do not!" DeVergne's voice leapt frighteningly in volume and he stepped closer, drawing wrathfully up to his full height. "Trophy hunters and scam artists! If I had the time I'd hunt down and kill every single one of them myself."

With an effort he composed himself again; painted a smile back onto his face. "The Karkadda are different Luke, and what we extract from them is different. A few grams of pure, unfiltered Karkadda horn can be used to cure the most vicious cancers. It can reverse Alzheimer's, eliminate degenerative diseases, erase infections in the blink of an eye. The list goes on."

"I'm pretty sure the poachers you hate so much say the same kind of stuff," Luke replied.

"And they are liars." DeVergne sank down into a crouch in front of him, speaking earnestly. "I've seen what this can do, Luke. It can change the world."

"Sure you have."

"Oh, I have. Right now, a few hundred miles from where you're sitting, a young woman is waking up in a hospital." He nodded and a dreamy smile filled his face. "She's supposed to be dead, you see – cancer – but instead she's going to wake up, and she's going to look her father in the eye and say, 'Dad, I'm okay'." The poacher let out a sigh, as though playing out the moment in his mind as he told the story. "I did that, Luke. I gave her that, another shot at a life the rest of the world had written off."

"Just out of the goodness of your heart, huh? Somehow, you don't seem like the 'giving' type."

"There's a nominal fee for my work," DeVergne admitted with a shrug. "But such is the way of the world. If I can't make a living, I can't help these people. Think about it, Luke. Think about no-one in the world ever having to hear the phrase 'there's nothing we can do'. Never having to say their goodbyes as the world steals a loved one away. No more poor souls having their existences dragged painfully out in the hope of a miracle. I have the miracle, Luke. Can you imagine it?"

"I can imagine a lot." Luke felt his jaw clenching, a tremor of unease filling him at the utter conviction in DeVergne's words. If nothing else it certainly sounded like he believed what he was saying. It was a hell of a sales pitch, he had to admit, but there was one thing that his captor had left out of the rose tinted vision.

Eventually, Luke shook his head. "Look, even if I believed what you're saying, you're still killing people to do it. That's not right."

"One Karkadda horn can save hundreds of lives," the man continued unperturbed. "Do you think I would do this if it were just simply killing one person to save another?"

"You might."

"Be as glib as you want. Numbers don't lie."

"Yeah, well I study anthropology, not math."

DeVergne stiffened at that and Luke realised he might've gotten a little too comfortable smart-mouthing while still strapped to a piece of furniture. He took a deep breath, reminding himself of exactly the situation he was currently in.

Luke closed his eyes for a moment, pressing his lips together tightly, trying to process this fresh slice of madness that had been dropped into his life. Could any of it be true? He'd seen first hand the effects the Karkadda could have on nature, but this was a whole different level. On a coldly rational level he could almost buy DeVergne's 'needs of the many' argument, but the human part of him squirmed with revulsion. He thought back to the girl they'd found in the woods; remembered the horror that had gripped him when he thought it might have been Oaklynn.

He knew then and there that if someone had given him a knife and told him to kill her he could never do it, not even if it saved a thousand people. Numbers games were easy to play from on high, but very different if you knew the people, face to face, soul to soul. Human beings had no business being the arbiters of life and death in such a brutal, murderous way. With a weary shake of the head, he looked DeVergne in the eye.

"I'm sorry, but I don't think any of that justifies what you're doing here."

"I believe it does."

Luke bristled. "Why are you telling me this? Why did you bring me here?"

"I brought you here because I hoped, once you understood the realities, you might be able to assist me."

He blinked in shock. "You're joking."

DeVergne sighed turning away, shoulders sagging. "I am very serious, Luke. I bel-,"

"You send a couple of thugs to kidnap me, beat me up, cart me off to god-knows-where in the back of a van, then tell me you're the one who's been running around murdering people. And you want me to help you do it? You want me to help you track down and kill a bunch of innocent people, including one of my best friends so you can sell them for parts?" Bottling up his fear, Luke glared at the poacher's back. "I don't give a shit what you believe. Simon, you can kiss. My. Ass."

"You've got a spine hidden in there somewhere, Luke," DeVergne said with a regretful nod. "I respect that. Unfortunately, I still have a job to do, respect or no."

"Well you can do your damned job without me!" Luke yelled with all the grit he could muster. "Go to hell."

"Oh, don't worry. I'm pretty sure I have lifetime guarantee by now."

There was a rasp of metal on leather and Luke's eyes went wide when DeVergne turned back to face him, holding the biggest knife he had ever seen.

"I'm afraid that if you won't help willingly," he said. "Then you'll just have to be bait."