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safarigirlsp · 2 years

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The Case of the Colorado Cannibal

The Case of the Colorado Cannibal

Flip Zimmerman x Lawyer Reader

Word Count: 18.4k

Warnings: NSFW. Smut. Horror. Action. Violence. Gore. Graphic Violence. Lots of everything aforementioned. Very Horror and Action Oriented.

AO3 Link

To kickstart Halloween, please enjoy this horror story for Monster Monday inspired by The Descent! 🍂🍁🍂

Edits by the wonderful @kyloremus

Detective Flip Zimmerman leaned against the back wall of the courtroom. Although he was in a perfectly fine mood, a fine mood for a Monday morning anyway, he donned his best scowl as he looked out over the defendants seated in the courtroom. Some of the bastards would be getting out today or have their charges dismissed, so Flip liked to make their courtroom experience as terrifying as possible in the chance it might deter future criminal enterprises. It usually didn’t, but Flip enjoyed himself nonetheless when some nervous defendant glanced back over his shoulder, saw Flip, and immediately faced about front and sat up straighter.

From a distance, Flip cut a dark and imposing figure in his standard court attire of slim black pants and fitted charcoal shirt. He added the badge he usually pocketed to his belt for the occasion. A closer look would reveal that his pants were actually jeans in denim so dark they were nearly but not quite black, and his charcoal shirt was a flannel with military style breast pockets and epaulets at the shoulders. He and the Chief disagreed that dry cleaning bills should be an on-the-job expense when Flip had to attend court, so as his own form of protest, he refused to wear suit clothes unless he was testifying in a jury trial.

The judge took the bench and opened court with a sentencing hearing and Flip watched as several women walked down the aisle, herding some sniffling kids along with them, to take a seat closer to the podium before they were called to speak. It was a widow and her remaining children and, presumably, some of the woman’s friends along for moral support, who would speak as to why the defendant should be given the maximum sentence. The defendant was a drunk who had plowed his truck into her husband’s car when the unlucky husband was driving their older sons home from football practice a few months ago. It was Ron’s case and Flip had heard all about it. There was about to be a lot of crying. Flip didn’t care to watch women and kids cry, so he slipped back out through the double doors of the courtroom.

Other than days with jury trial settings, Mondays were the busiest court days of the week. They were the docket days when the judges had a veritable cattle call of cases ranging from pretrial conferences and status updates to pleas to conditions of release hearings to sentencings. On an average Monday, around one hundred defendants would come and go for their day in court along with the witnesses and victims associated with their case.

Of course, all the lawyers and law enforcement involved in all those cases were present, too. For them, those faction of people who came to court as a matter of routine for work, it was just another Monday. It was normal protocol for cops and lawyers. Hurry up and wait. Punctual arrival to court was mandated even when one wouldn’t be getting down to their own business for hours. It rendered the hallways ripe for cops and lawyers to shoot the breeze together and gossip, their relationships mostly friendly until it was showtime in the courtroom.

Colorado Springs was a sleepy little town, criminally speaking, that is. Big crime and hard criminals were rare. Denver saw most of the heavy action. Most local cases were DWI’s, bar fights, domestic violence, thefts, and drugs. But today, there was a big fish in the small pond of petty criminals, and he was the word on every mouth in the courthouse. Flip even saw some reporters trying to weasel out information from rookie officers and junior public defenders. Reporters were even fuckin’ worse than lawyers. The reporters had labeled the man “The Colorado Cannibal” for the gruesome way he had begun eating his victim while the poor young man was still alive. Not that Flip needed to be informed of that detail by the papers, he was the lead detective on the case.

Hikers went missing in the mountains. It wasn’t uncommon. Nine times out of ten, they were just lost in the woods and turned up a few days later a little worse for wear. Sometimes they got themselves good and lost and their bodies were found in the spring. On rare occasions, there was a bear or a lion attack. This was the first case of Flip’s career where the missing hiker turned up the victim of murder.

The body had been found down an abandoned mine shaft by a couple high school kids who had driven out there under the guise of hiking to find a place to hook up without getting caught. The boy didn’t mind the smell of carrion that wafted out of the mine and into the cracked windows of his jeep, but it ruined the mood for the girl so much that the boy was forced to investigate. Flip doubted the high school kids would be using that particular spot again for romantic purposes, but he suspected that now the mine would gain even more popularity as a spot for the juvenile idiots to have bonfires and do all the other stupid shit kids do, especially with Halloween coming up. It made his temples throb just thinking about it.

Flip had caught the murderer himself, red handed. So red handed that he was coated up to his elbows in the victim’s blood. But even Flip had to admit that the loony old hermit who was pushing seventy-five and weighed the same as an average woman sure didn’t look like a match for the big fit lacrosse-playing college kid he had murdered. Flip had handled more murders than he cared to count, but he had never seen anything like the brutality of this murder before. The victim had been beaten so severely that his knees were both broken in backwards so they were buckled the wrong way like the hind legs of a deer. Marks on the body indicated the poor kid had tried to drag himself on his crippled legs over rocks and through mud as he tried to escape his murderer. Flip thought it looked like the kid had fallen down the mineshaft, or even off a cliff, and hit bottom, but the medical examiner said otherwise and it was his opinion that mattered. The murderer had begun eating on the kid while he was still alive, taking chunks out of him the way a wolf does to its prey while the prey stands crippled and dying. The body had been found completely naked and so mutilated and disfigured by bites, lacerations, and broken bones that he was only identifiable through dental records.

Speak of the Devil and She appears.

As though he had summoned her by thinking of the case, Flip heard the laughter of the cannibal’s defense lawyer from down the hallway. Flip frowned when he spotted her, less from the sight of her than from the way his treacherous body responded, his pulse jumping a beat faster and an unmistakable stirring further down south. She was a beautiful woman, the most striking he had ever seen in person. She was an easy nine on any man’s scale, but Flip reasoned that being a lawyer dropped her a solid five notches. That’s what he tried to tell himself when he felt his palms moisten when she spoke to him. He had never been so disarmed by a woman since he had been as much of a fumbling idiot as those high school punks who had found the body. Since he couldn’t bring himself as a self-respecting Detective to make a move on a defense lawyer, he took it upon himself to rile her and throw her off her game. He was pretty damn good at it.

She was standing near one of the witness rooms talking to one of the newest prosecutors, Sheldon something or other, a four-eyed blonde goober who looked like he had a Ralph Lauren Polo in every color of the rainbow for when he wanted to impress the ladies at the country club, but who hadn’t seen the inside of a gym since he graduated his last PE class in high school. Flip watched as the defense lawyer flashed her dazzling smile and touched Sheldon’s arm in a gesture that looked innocent and impulsive. Flip knew it was a calculated attack, a jab right through the prosecutor’s guard. Sheldon giggle-snorted and blushed.

What a fuckin’ idiot. Flip shook his head and went to the goober’s rescue. The lawyer’s unnervingly beautiful eyes locked onto Flip as soon as he began walking toward her, and he couldn’t tell if he was the predator or the prey.

“Well, I guess I can give your client a break,” Sheldon cooed, leaning toward the lawyer, thinking he had just won a great victory on his way to getting into her pants. “I’ll dismiss his charges, but just this once.”

“Oh, thank you, Sheldon,” you said in your most honeyed tone, batting your eyes at the nerdy little troll who wouldn’t have a chance with you if his last name was Gates. “That’s really so sweet of you. I owe you one.” You reached out and touched his arm again, this time you looked over his shoulder to the Detective who had stopped to glare at you with disapproval. “You don’t mind filling out the dismissal, do you, Sheldon? I really can’t thank you enough.”

“Sure, I uh,” Sheldon stammered when he noticed Flip behind him. Sheldon cleared his throat and tried to appear businesslike. “I’ll go file that dismissal right now. Maybe we can get some coffee after?”

“Detective Zimmerman won’t let me, I’m afraid.” You cocked your eyebrow at Flip and saw the way he stiffened and swallowed thickly at your statement. He shook his head more at himself than at you when you added, “He’s the Detective on my big cannibal case. I’m sure we’ll be stuck here all morning.”

Sheldon sneered at Flip as though Flip was the reason the poor idiot had been denied a coffee date with the woman of his dreams. He stomped petulantly away to file the agreed dismissal, leaving Flip standing face to face with you.

“Smooth, Counselor,” Flip addressed you. “Was that Valdez you just flirted off the hook? He’s one of my cases too. I have him dead to rights for selling meth to highschoolers.”

“Had.” You grinned up at Flip. “You had him dead to rights. That’s why I had to get creative.” You smirked at him before adding, “But you screwed up, Detective. Valdez didn’t understand your Miranda warning before he confessed. No habla ingles. Granted, I think the jury would believe your testimony over his, which is why I batted my eyelashes instead of filing a motion to suppress, but you were sloppy.”

“I’m gonna be arrestin’ that punk again before the end of the month,” Flip grumbled, crossing his arms over his impossibly broad chest.

“Please do,” you exulted with sarcastic pleasantness. “I’ll get hired again on his next case. Job security.”

Flip huffed, fighting back a nasty retort, and jerked his chin in the direction of the Senior Prosecutor down the hall. “You think your silky smooth touch will work on Fat Freddy? Your hand might get greasy if you’re rubbin’ up on him like a cat in heat.”

Fat Freddy was one of the three senior prosecutors in the DA Office who handled all the big cases, the rapes and murders. Fred Mathews was as many feet around as he was tall and balding to boot. He had a notoriously miserable marriage and he made up for his impotence in all other ways by winning cases. At that, he was formidable. He was the prosecutor assigned to the Colorado Cannibal case.

“I don’t think I could flirt with Fat Freddy even for a murder dismissal,” you laughed quietly. “Do you think he’d settle for a tub of KFC? When I tell clients that Fat Freddy eats defendants for breakfast, I wonder how close to the truth I really am.”

Flip would love to get you in some hot water by ratting on you for calling the prosecutor Fat Freddy, but Flip was hamstrung. He had coined the nickname himself. He didn’t answer you, but he followed your gaze over to the fat disheveled man who was now yelling at Sheldon as he snatched the court-stamped dismissal on Valdez from his hand and shook it back in his face. Someone was in trouble.

“Do you think Fat Freddy got laid this weekend?” you asked Flip in a conspiratorial tone. That was always the joke every Monday. If Fat Freddy got some action over the weekend, he was in a slightly less hostile mood the following week.

“Nope.” Now it was Flip’s turn to grin.

“It’s a sad state of affairs when you’re the most temperate man I can deal with on a case,” you teased Flip in a sultry tone, enjoying the way he shifted on his feet at the change in your demeanor.

“Your Mata Hari tactics won’t work on me, Counselor.” Flip composed himself at once. “I’m not cuttin’ you any breaks on your pet murderer.”

“Alleged murderer,” you corrected, using that lawyer word Flip hated so much. Alleged. You looked at him squarely, narrowing your eyes at him in a challenge. “Come on, Zimmerman. I’ve seen a lot of murders and murderers, and you’ve seen a lot more than I have. This guy isn’t the Colorado Cannibal, and you know it.”

“Now you’re a mind reader?” Flip enjoyed poking you even if you were even prettier when you were angry. “Do your clients have to pay extra for that?”

“My client says he didn’t do it.” You ignored Flip’s snarky questions and pressed on. “I’m not in the habit of believing my clients, any more than I’m in the habit of believing victims, witnesses, or cops. Everyone lies. But I believe this guy. He’s not a murderer.”

“Yeah?” Flip raised his eyebrows as though this was a great revelation. “Who’s he say killed the hiker?”

“Demons.” You shrugged with a self-deprecating smile, knowing how absurd your client’s story was. “But that’s beside the point. It’s not my job to say who killed him. That’s your job, Detective.” You patted Flip on the arm. “It’s only my job to prove that my client didn’t. My client may be crazy, but he’s not a murderer. Being a crazy hermit isn’t a crime the last time I checked.” You smiled slyly at Flip. “You should be sympathetic to that lifestyle, Detective. Given how well you get along with people, I can see you going that route in a couple decades.”

“Funny.” Flip chewed his lip to keep from grinning despite himself. “I only tracked him down and made the arrest. It’s not my job to say he’s guilty, as you would say. That’s the jury’s job. The medical examiner thinks he’s our guy, though.”

“The medical examiner,” you said with unveiled distaste, waving your hand dismissively. “A nerdy shut-in who’s probably younger than Sheldon and only leaves his mom’s basement to trundle off to the morgue every day. He’s never seen a crime scene. He’s never talked to a witness, or a real murderer, for that matter.” You fixed Flip with your most penetrating gaze. “You and I have both done those things plenty of times. You know as well as I do that you can’t get a feel for the real facts of a case from inside a sterile lab.”

“This wasn’t much of a crime scene,” Flip told you. “Not much to see at the bottom of a mine shaft that saw its last visitor a century ago.”

Flip’s remark gave you an idea. Shuffling thick file folders in your hand awkwardly, you placed the cannibal’s file on top of your stack, opened it, and thumbed through the pages of the police report that Flip had typed. Unlike most officers, he actually typed his reports fresh each time instead of copying and pasting almost every word from older reports, a technique that often gave lawyers ammunition to pick them apart. Tracing the typed lines, your finger came to rest under the location where the body was found. “Sawyer Mine. I’ve never heard of it?”

“Neither had I,” Flip replied, his eyes drawn down to where you pointed. “That was the man who recorded the claim in 1895. I tracked it down in case I needed to inform some yuppy millionaire that a body had been found out on his vacation property, but it’s National Forest now.”

“Thorough, Detective, but you should have included a map,” you teased with genuine appreciation. “What’s the closest access point?”

“The Vista Bonita trailhead is the closest you can find on any map.” Flip paused, recalling his trip out to the mine. “From there, you have to take an old mining road up and around the mountain. I almost got my truck stuck three times even in four-wheel drive.”

“That’s actually helpful, Flip.” You saw the effect using his name for the first time had on him and you couldn’t resist teasing him more, “I’ve come not to expect that from you.”

“Wait.” Flip shook his head as if coming out of a daze. “Hold on just a damn minute. You’re not thinkin’ about goin’ up there to that mine, are you?”

“I’m thinking exactly that.” You smiled triumphantly. “I need to see the crime scene for myself if I’m going to have a good defense. And I intend to win this case.”

“Of all the stupid ass things I’ve heard come out of a lawyer’s mouth, that has to be the blue-ribbon winner!” Flip scoffed at you openly. “That crime scene is three-hundred yards down a mine shaft! Besides that, you can’t go up there alone, especially not this time of year. It’s October, for Christ sakes! You could get caught in a thunderstorm or a blizzard out there and the next body I get to quiz the medical examiner about is gonna be yours!”

“Look, I enjoy the whole big tough alpha male chest-pounding thing as much as the next girl, but if you think I’m going to be bossed around by a big flannel barbarian, you have another thing coming.” You snapped your file closed and stuck out your chin defiantly.

“And what if you’re right, huh? Which I’m not conceding.” Flip took a step closer to you until you could feel the heat radiating off his massive body. “But if you are right, then there’s a violent killer out there, a real psycho.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he’ll still be camped up on the mountainside waiting for another victim to walk into his grasp,” you laughed. After a moment, you caught yourself and raised an appraising eyebrow at Flip. “Why do you care what happens to me, anyway?” You smiled wickedly and prodded him cruelly, “I’m flattered to know you care, Flip.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, girlie,” Flip growled angrily, but he couldn’t stop himself from watching after you as you walked away from him and out of the courthouse, denying him further argument.

*******************************************************************************************

Saturday morning was perfectly pristine without a cloud in the sky, which was the unique shade aptly called Colorado Blue. An unseasonably cold October chill greeted you when you walked outside from the front door of your house to your SUV and tossed your light backpack onto your passenger seat. Living in Colorado, you naturally had all the gear necessary for a day in the mountains, even if you hadn’t indulged in a day spent outdoors in some time. You didn’t notice the truck that had been parked under a bushy pine tree on your road. You didn’t even notice when the same truck pulled out behind you and followed you down your road and on out of town at an innocuous distance.

By the time you stopped for gas at the last station on your way into the mountains, you were very well aware of the truck that was following you. You and the big truck were the only vehicles on the lonely winding stretch of highway this time of morning on a weekend. By that time, you also knew full well who the driver was.

“Are you stalking me?” you accused Flip hotly as soon as he pulled in behind you at the pumps and stepped out of his truck, clad in his favorite red and black flannel shirt and jeans.

“Stalkin?’” he asked, all too pleased with himself, as he inserted the gas nozzle into his tank. “It’s called a stakeout. You’re not the first unscrupulous character I’ve had to stakeout to catch in the act.”

“Catch in the act?” You stomped toward him, angered even more by the way his chest swelled and his smirk bloomed at your approach. “You’re about to catch me in the act of battering a bastard police officer!”

“I knew you’d go out to have a look at that damn mine this weekend. I know how criminals think.” He smirked even broader at the way you bristled. “If I can’t stop you from doin’ stupid things, at least I can babysit you and make sure you don’t hurt yourself.”

“Is it too urbane for you to simply ask to join me?” you asked sarcastically, trying not to see the way the wind rustled his thick black hair. You hadn’t even noticed the wind had picked up.

“If I’d asked you, you would have given me a little laugh and a little remark to rile me up.” Flip ran his hand through his hair to smooth it back into place as if deliberately making things more difficult for you. “Then, just to bust my balls, you would have told me no. Am I right, Counselor?”

“And just what would you tell another man who decided to stake out a woman’s house and chase her down, all because she told him no?” you leaned forward until your chest was close to his, making him shift on his feet.

“I’m not just another man.” He deepened his voice and met your challenge, leaning down closer to you.

Your breath caught at his closeness. You could smell the masculine scent of him on the wind. Before you could retort, he stepped by you and walked to your SUV. Without asking for permission, he went to the passenger side, retrieved your pack, opened it, and began rummaging through its contents.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” you snapped at him, fighting the urge to shove him when you came to stand beside him.

“This is the last outpost before we get up in the mountains,” Flip answered without looking at you as he went through your pack. “If you need any supplies, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

“I’m not going on a great adventure,” you huffed indignantly. “I’ll only be gone a few hours.”

“Famous last words. I used to work search n’ rescue. I did that for a few years as a college job after I was discharged from the military and before I joined the force.” Flip pulled out a jacket from your pack, frowning as he evaluated it. “I can’t tell you the number of bodies I had to drag out of the mountains of folks who were just gonna be gone a few hours.”

“All I want to do is hike down to the crime scene, look around a little, do my due diligence, and head back out,” you explained, trying to keep your voice even. “Easy.”

“Uh huh.” Flip flicked on the flashlight you had in your pack, shaking his head as he examined the strength of its beam. He lifted the small box of tampons from your backpack and just to anger you he asked, “Is it shark week?”

“A girl should be prepared.” You gritted your teeth but didn’t let him get to you more than he already had.

“Yeah, a girl should be.” He tossed a handful of items he didn’t approve of into your back seat and stuffed all of your remaining things back into your pack. “And your pack is about thirty pounds short of everything you need to be prepared.” He sighed in frustration and looked at the small gas station and general store. “We’ll get what we can here, but they won’t have everything you need. We should go back, get your supplies in order, and then try this again tomorrow.”

“I will do no such thing.” You deliberately used the singular pronoun instead of the plural Flip had adopted. “You can do whatever you like. Maybe you’ll find another woman to stalk by tomorrow.”

“Stalkin’ women is new for me.” He grinned at you. “I have a pretty good selection of girls chasin’ after me at any given time.”

“Poor things,” you quipped.

Flip smirked at you and walked into the paltry store while you quickly and annoyedly inventoried the items he had thrown into your backseat. Your cosmetics, your wallet, a large tube of hand lotion, and a paperback book you had left over from a camping trip were all among the items he deemed unworthy of taking up space in your pack. When he emerged from the store, he carried three full bags of supplies. He all but pushed you aside and began shoving items into your pack. Three new flashlights, two packs of batteries, a handful of cheap Bic lighters, a keychain compass, a handful of meal bars, a pair of workman’s Carhart gloves, a huge bottle of water, and a knit cap in garish hunter orange. The last item he packed was a newspaper, explaining how in a damp mine kindling was scarce if you needed to start a fire.

“My pack weighs fifty pounds now!” you exaggerated, glaring at him.

“Best I could do at a gas station.” He smirked, enjoying your irritation.

“My knight in shining armor,” you replied in your most sarcastic tone.

“Is this the heaviest jacket you have?” He held up the offending garment that he had pulled out of your bag.

“I’m not climbing Mount Everest.” You snatched it out of his hands and shoved it back inside your nearly full pack.

“No, but you need a guide just as badly as if you were,” he assured you.

“So, you want to be Tenzing Norgay to my Edmund Hillary, do you?” you asked with a cocked eyebrow.

“I’ve never been much into roleplayin,’ but I’m not one to turn down a pretty girl like you.” He winked at you and smirked at the slight fluster he gave you.

Finally satisfied that your pack was adequate for a few hours exploring a mine, Flip allowed you to leave the gas station. He followed you until the pavement ended and on down a dirt road that took you both to the Vista Bonita trailhead. This was as far as any map could lead you.

Deep in the mountains, the scenery was even more beautiful. This was the most picturesque season when the forest and mountainsides were colored as though on fire; a canvas painted in reds, oranges, and yellows. More than half of the ground on the mountainside was covered with snow. It was knee deep in the shadowy places but only patches remained in the areas that saw sunlight. Higher in elevation it was much colder, and the snow could deepen to thirty feet on the peaks by autumn. The alpine air bit into your exposed skin when you exited your SUV. You were parked in a mountain bowl with snowcapped peaks surrounding you on three sides like great kings holding court to judge your sins. The sky was blue no longer. Grey and carbon clouds swirled above you like monochrome ice cream. The clouds were drawn to the peaks of the mountains, congregating there densely and whirling around them. Any attempt to summit a peak would have to be canceled today, but you were going inside the mountain, not to the top of it.

Now, Flip could actually prove useful and save you the time of having to blunder around until you found the mining road. You took his offer of driving you up from there, happy to leave your SUV parked at the trailhead and save it from the rough road and getting scraped by brush. Seated in Flip’s truck, you bumped along the old mining road that looked less navigable than two scant parallel game trails. Classic rock boomed through the truck’s speakers and Flip tapped his hand on the steering wheel to the tune of Bad Moon Risin.’ Your pack rested on the floor between your feet and Flip’s took up the middle front seat. You took the same liberty with his pack that he had taken with yours, opening it without his permission, and rummaging through its contents.

Flip’s pack was enormous and nearly every cubic inch was filled to the brim. You tested the weight of it. His pack exceeded one hundred pounds if it was an ounce. Inside you saw a cornucopia of supplies ranging from food and water to extreme cold weather gear to mountain climbing gear such as rope, carabiners, and pitons. He had packed two pairs of the largest sized gloves you had ever seen, extra socks in heavy wool, a hat with deer-hunter-style ear flaps, and a thick gray wool sweater.

“You sure like wool,” you teased. “It’s sad to think of all the sheep out there who are now running around naked because of you.”

“Wool is the only material that will still keep you warm after it gets wet,” he explained.

It was slow going up the mountain on the narrow track and it took the better part of two hours to reach the abandoned mine. Flip offered you surprisingly good conversation, and you had to admit it was easy to see the ladies’ man peek out from his sideways grin. Above the mine’s entrance damp tendrils of brush hung down over the old wooden frame of the opening giving it the appearance of the ominous black mouth of a gargoyle, eager for the chance to swallow you whole. The entrance was barely larger than a doorway, only slightly taller than Flip and just wide enough for the two of you to walk abreast.

“I’ll tell you what.” Flip drummed his knuckles on the steering wheel as he looked through his windshield at the forbiddingly dark hole in the mountainside. “How about if I tell Fat Freddy that I think we should let your cannibal out of jail on heavy conditions of release? Can we call it a day and head back to town?”

“And waste the chance to use all my lovely new gas station wilderness survival gear?” You laughed and got out of Flip’s truck.

Hefting your too-heavy pack onto your back, you started out toward the mine. Flip took a few jogging steps to catch up to you, his footfalls heavy from the extra hundred-plus pounds he carried. From behind you, he unzipped your pack and shoved another last-minute addition inside, a spare wool sweater he scavenged from his back seat. He now had a climber’s ice axe tucked into his belt and his armed shoulder holsters on under his pack. When you reached the mine, you felt an icy drop land on your cheek and melt instantly. Flip looked up at the sky along with you, watching a light haze of snowflakes slowly drift down from the clouds.

“The weather is only gonna get worse today.” He glared up at the sky as if he could intimidate the snow out of falling. “We should get out while that poor excuse for a road is still passable.” He looked at you with his most wolfish grin. “Unless you like the idea of bein’ snowed in with me and havin’ to get nice n’ close to stay warm.”

“I hear freezing isn’t the worst death.” You rolled your eyes at him. “If there is a big snow, this could be my last chance of the season to see that crime scene and anything I might learn from it before it gets buried until spring. By that time, the trial will be over and done.” You looked at him squarely. “I’m going. But I understand if you’re scared…” you let your voice trail away, leaving the challenge hanging in the thin alpine air.

“Sugar,” he lowered his voice and leaned closer to you. “There ain’t a damn thing in these mountains that scares me.”

“Happy to hear it because that makes two of us!” you said brightly and walked to the mine entrance.

Although the surrounding mountainside was beautiful and serene, the light snowfall giving it a dreamlike quality, the mine menaced at you portentously. You pulled your flashlight out and flicked on its beam, then you took a deep breath and stepped into the darkness with Flip at your side.

*******************************************************************************************

The mineshaft dropped steeply downward. You could keep your footing and walk down its descent, but you kept a hand on the wet wall of rock beside you to help keep your balance. The inside of the mine was damp, your boots slipped and slogged in ankle deep mud and frigid drops of water dripped down on your head every few steps with the frequency of a leaky faucet. You felt even colder inside from the elevated humidity. It only took you a few seconds to leave all light behind, your path ahead illuminated only by the twin yellow beams of yours and Flip’s flashlights while the lighted exit back to the mountainside dwindled behind you until it was nothing more than a tiny square of light like a star in an otherwise black night sky. Above you, the ceiling of the mine was reinforced by ancient wooden tresses, soggy and dripping with mud and water. Beside you, the walls of the shaft were a mix of stretches of rock that gave way to firmly packed mud, also reinforced with wooden beams where needed. Some Colorado mines had been revamped in order to make them safer and preserve them, but the last improvements this mine had seen were made by its owner sometime before the old miner met his lonely death deep inside back in 1927.

“Now I know how Dante felt,” you joked more to fill the deep silence of the mineshaft.

“If we’re roleplayin,’ I need to know if I’m Virgil or Tenzing Norgay.” Flip grinned, his teeth gleaming white in his darkened face. “Get your story straight, Counselor.”

The mineshaft took a ninety degree turn and you were plunged into the total consummate darkness that can only be found in deep caves and sealed sepulchers. The darkness surrounded you like a funerary veil, claustrophobic in its completeness. Without the small beams of your flashlights, you wouldn’t have been able to see Flip or even his silhouette right beside you. Distracted by the thought, your foot slipped out from under you but Flip’s arm shot out to catch you around the waist, as strong as iron and as comforting as a warm embrace. When you regained your footing Flip released his hold on you, but he remained close enough that his arm brushed yours as you walked on. The feel of his large body next to yours was reassuring, and welcome in the cold darkness.

“We’re comin’ up on the crime scene.” Flip pointed ahead with the beam of his flashlight to illuminate an antique wooden mining cart. “The body was found crammed inside.”

Two of the cart’s wheels had long ago broken off, leaving it canted on one side and leaning against the wall of the shaft. The wood shone glossy wet black, pieces of its side were broken away giving it the look of a wrecked ghost ship at the bottom of the ocean. Death seemed to hang in the musty air around the cart, as if the lonely hiker’s spirit watched you morosely from the underworld. The beam of your light shook as you walked forward to study the cart.

“I told you there wasn’t much to see.” Flip’s voice sounded unnaturally loud in the cloistered mineshaft.

“It was too wet to get prints or blood spatter?” you asked, knowing the answer.

“Yep.” Flip nodded, frowning as he stepped up to the cart beside you. He mumbled distractedly, “But the kid was killed somewhere else and moved here, shoved into that cart.”

“And you think my feeble old client was strong enough to do that?” you asked as you looked at the ground for any drag marks. There were none.

Flip didn’t answer you. He was studying the wall ahead of the cart, his flashlight focused on a patch of wall eight feet away. His voice was a low growl when he said, “Well, that’s fuckin’ new.”

Following his gaze, you saw in his light a mark on the mud wall. It was a pattern that had been crudely scratched into the mud with a pointed implement, a sharp stick maybe. It looked like a glyph from an ancient language or a mandala from an Eastern religion, a whorl with points and patterns.

“That wasn’t here when you examined the crime scene?” You should have been excited by new evidence, but your skin crawled when you looked at the unnatural design.

“No, it sure as hell wasn’t.” Flip chewed his lip as he shone his light around the tunnel. “Ron and I came back down here again after I arrested your guy to take a second look. This wasn’t here.”

“So, we agree my client couldn’t have done this?” You grabbed his arm with nervous excitement, for a moment forgetting the pervasive feeling of unease.

“Yeah, we agree. But your client isn’t what we should be thinkin’ about right now.” Flip stepped cautiously ahead, drawn in by the prospect of what more he might find deeper inside the mine, the same as the long-dead miner hunting for gold. He unconsciously pushed you behind him, keeping his body between you and what might lie ahead in the darkness beyond the beams of your lights.

“We can head back now. I’ve seen what I need to see,” you said quietly to Flip’s broad back as you walked behind him.

“Give me a few minutes, I wanna see what else might be down here.” Flip drew his revolver and rested his right hand over his left wrist, pointing both his barrel and his flashlight down the mine, focused intently ahead along its sights.

“You don’t actually think the murderer is hiding down here?” you asked incredulously. “He couldn’t be.”

“No, I don’t think so,” he gruffed without looking back at you. “But I’m damn sure gonna be ready if he is.”

Several long minutes walking ahead into the darkness yielded nothing but a sense of dread that increased with every step. You grabbed Flip’s shoulder firmly, digging your nails into him and imbuing your voice with as much authority as you could. “You can have your manhunt later. Get me the hell out of here, Flip.”

You felt Flip’s body stiffen from your touch and your words, then he sighed heavily and he relaxed as he lowered his gun and turned to face you. You saw the grin on his lips as he prepared a sarcastic retort, but he never spoke it.

Around you, the mineshaft shuddered violently like the throat of a coughing giant. Mud slid down the walls in watery rivulets and dropped down from the ceiling in globs that splattered on your shoulders and splashed in the soupy ground at your feet. A boom resounded from somewhere far above you, reverberating through the mineshaft like heavy bass through the thin walls of a nightclub. Flip hunched his shoulders like he had taken a punch and looked up at the trembling ceiling of the mine so close above his head. He shoved his gun back into its holster, grabbed your hand, and ran back toward the mine entrance.

Running hard, Flip’s light bounced wildly ahead down the shaft as he pumped his arms. Your feet barely touched the ground as he dragged you along with him in his powerful long-legged stride. You slipped sideways in the slick mud as Flip pulled you back around the ninety-degree turn in the mine, but he again kept you from falling and charged ahead fast and hard. The mineshaft now shook with near earthquake force, debris fell all around you both and struck your bodies as you ran. The light of the exit grew larger with every sprinted pace, but it was no longer blue and welcoming. Outside the mine, the air was churning white and gray and the wind howled like a freight train.

Flip slid to a stop fifteen feet before the exit, pulling you roughly to a stop beside him. His voice was hoarse from exertion and fear when he voiced what you already knew, “It’s a fuckin’ avalanche. The snow from the peak is gonna bury us in.” He looked at you and added something that was lost in the roar of the avalanche as a wall of snow belched inside the mine, stinging your faces.

Before the body of debris sluicing into the mine reached you, Flip shoved you harshly down into the mud and dove on top of you, covering you with his body. He tucked his face into the crook of your neck and wrapped his arms over both your heads. You felt him flinch and heard him grunt in time with the dull slaps of rubble that struck his body as the avalanche passed by outside the mine entrance and flooded its wreckage inside and down upon you both.

Icy cold enveloped you like the breath of the Grim Reaper, then everything was dark and deathly silent.

*******************************************************************************************

Gruff cursing that sounded very far away reached your ears accompanied by the feeling of your body being jostled and roughly tugged. You were trapped in that restless disconcerting place between oblivion and consciousness, but as incapable of opening your eyes as if a sleep paralysis demon was perched heavily on your chest. Cold surrounded you and your limbs couldn��t have felt less lifeless and heavy if they had been packed with sand. The profane voice grew louder and you felt light but insistent slapping against your cheeks. The irritation it roused in you was enough to pull you fully into full alertness and even sent your hand striking out at your attacker in a retaliatory smack of your own.

Flip flinched from the sting of your slap against his cheek and blinked several times in surprise before grinning at you. The large hand that had been patting your cheek to rouse you now caressed your skin gently.

“I guess that means you’ll live,” he told you softly. “But humor me and follow my light.” Kneeling beside you, he shone his flashlight into your eyes and slowly moved the beam from side to side. You squinted your eyes against the bright light but followed it easily. “Well, I’m not a doctor but at least I wouldn’t be able to arrest you for DWI.”

Only after your eyes re-adjusted to the darkness after Flip’s light did you notice that Flip’s face was covered in mud and blood. A deep cut sliced across his cheekbone and blood dripped down from his hairline. Looking around, you saw that muddy snow had been blown into the mine and that you sat on the ground at the head of a trail the size of your body, realizing Flip had dragged you out of the snow drift that had filled the mine. Flip had stopped with you fifteen feet before the entrance when the avalanche hit and now you were another ten feet deeper down the shaft. The avalanche had buried you both with at least twenty-five feet of snow between you and exit, with no telling how much deeper the snow was piled outside the mine.

“Are you alright?” You reached to his hairline, feeling the hot blood that oozed from a cut on his scalp.

“I’m just peachy.” Flip smiled sardonically. “Other than bein’ buried in a mineshaft.” He took your hand from his face and held it tightly. “Does anyone know you’re out here?”

“Not unless I have some other stalkers I don’t know about.” You shook your head.

“I didn’t tell anyone either. I knew I’d get a helluva lot of shit for comin’ back out here with a lawyer, even one as pretty as you.” He looked at his watch perfunctorily. “When I don’t show up for work Monday mornin,’ Ron will know somethin’ happened to me. I haven’t been a no-show since he joined the force. Not without tellin’ him anyway. Even on the days I called in sick or wanted to sleep in late with a hot date, I gave him a head’s up. When your car is found at the trailhead, he’ll be smart enough to put two and two together and figure that we came out to this mine.”

“That’s two days from now!” The direness of your situation was beginning to dawn on you. “Not to mention how long it will take to find the entrance to the mine under the snow and then dig us out. How long will that take?”

“Do you want the truth?” Flip glared at the wall of snow.

“Nevermind, I don’t want more bad news.” You sat up straighter and set your jaw. “Just tell me what we need to do.”

“That’s my girl.” Flip smiled and squeezed your hand. He pushed himself up to his feet and pulled you up with him. He kept his hold on your hand. “In a situation like this, the general rule of thumb is to stay put, but we don’t have the supplies to wait it out for long enough. No sleepin’ bag, not much food, and only one heavy coat between us. We’re not equipped for a long stakeout.” He lifted his hands to your shoulders, giving you a reassuring squeeze. “Our best chance is to see if we can find another way out. A lot of old mines tie into cave systems, and cave systems have outlets. We have some time to kill before anyone can get to us, to say the least, and movin’ around will keep us warm.”

You nodded your agreement as a rush of shivers raked your body, the first of many. You had gotten wet from snow and mud, which had quickly chilled you through to your bones. Flip retrieved his own wool sweater from your pack and then lifted your pack off your shoulders so you could put his sweater on. It hung down past your hips, but you were instantly warmer by the time he had your pack back in place. He pulled the climbing axe from his belt and handed it to you, telling you, “Just in case.”

Walking side by side you both retraced your steps back down the mineshaft. The only light was from Flip’s flashlight; you conserved yours, rationing light like food for what could be a long dark wait. When you passed the crime scene a second time, the strange markings in the mud wall now seemed like an ominous warning, a signal that you were trespassing into hostile territory. Flip felt it too and made a point of keeping his beam off the glyphs so as not to fuel the fear growing inside you. On ahead in the edges of the light, he caught glimpses of other markings on the walls; glyphs, crude etchings, and places with scratch marks that had the same appearance of a tree trunk sheared to rags by a bear marking his territory with his claws. Flip didn’t let his light illuminate them, nor did he allow himself to react to the sinister markings. There was no reason to worry you.

For over two hours you followed the twists and turns of the mineshaft until you came to where the tunnel had collapsed decades ago. The shaft was nearly blocked by a pile of muddy rocky rubble. There was just enough space between the top of the debris and the ceiling of the shaft for a large person to squeeze through. Flip told you to wait while he scrambled up and over the pile of debris. It only took a minute for his shaggy head to pop back through the opening and call to you to join him.

On the other side of the collapse was a natural formation in the rock, a crevasse that had been revealed when the mine had collapsed and taken part of the mountain with it. The walls of the crevasse glinted with gold, so much gold that veins of it spiderwebbed across the rock walls. The gold was so plentiful that a pure gold nugget sat on the ground dead center at the entrance to the crevasse. You picked it up, it was the size of a walnut and deceptively heavy.

“This is a nice souvenir.” You slipped the nugget into your pocket.

“That poor old bastard miner missed the mother lode by feet.” Flip shook his head and held his lighter up to the crevasse opening. The flame flickered on a breeze too light for you to feel. Flip smiled, broad and toothy, for the first time since you both had entered the mine. “Airflow means an outlet.”

The crevasse was narrow, forcing you to walk single file. Flip had to carry his backpack because he was too broad to walk straight and had to twist his shoulders sideways to squeeze through. He bent to retrieve another gold nugget from the ground, just as large as yours and pocketed it as you had done. Another twenty steps brought him to another nugget, then another and another, like golden breadcrumbs laid out by Hansel and Gretel. Flip glared at the next nugget he saw, stooping almost reluctantly to pluck it from the ground. He stared at it a long time before adding it to his pocket. His features were darker than they had been at any other point that day as he pressed on.

Abruptly, the crevasse emptied into a natural cavern as large as an amphitheater. The ceiling of the chamber was high and domed, a stone cathedral formed eons ago in the cave system. Shining his flashlight upward, its yellow beam barely illuminated the ceiling. Spears of stalactites hung down from the roof of the dome like a forest of viper fangs. At the far reach of Flip’s light, another piece of gold lay on the ground, beckoning you forward.

“Something’s not right, Flip.” You grabbed his arm and stood beside him. “This feels like a trap.”

“It is.” He didn’t look at you. Keeping his voice low and his eyes focused ahead, he strained to see anything at all in the darkness that surrounded you. “That gold was a bait trail.”

“A bait trail?!” you whisper-yelled. “Why the hell didn’t you turn around?”

“It was too late once we were inside that crevasse. It’s a squeeze shoot like you use to herd cattle into the butcher box.” His jaw clenched. “We’re bein’ hunted.”

“Hunted?” You looked around the cavern, seeing nothing but rock formations and darkness. “By whom? Or what?”

“That’s the million-dollar question.” He stepped forward into the chamber.

Flip inhaled deeply through his nose, testing the air. You smelled something now too. As soon as Flip had mentioned a butcher, you thought you could detect the distinct scent of the inside of a slaughterhouse or a meat freezer. Flip smelled it too.

A few steps more and Flip’s light illuminated an unexpected swatch of color. Across the cavern floor it looked like brightly colored bags were littered haphazardly. Curiosity pulled you both closer.

“Don’t look,” Flip warned you when he realized what lay scattered across the ground, but of course you looked anyway.

The brightly colored bags were dead bodies, six of them. Slain hikers in their cheerfully bright mountaineering parkas lay butchered in a way that would put Jack the Ripper to shame. You saw that two bodies were women, which was only apparent because their clothing had been ripped open to expose their bodies in the process of disembowelment. One of the men was missing both legs, having been tore away at the hip joint like the drumsticks on a Thanksgiving turkey. Another man lay on his stomach with his broken ribs protruding backwards through the flesh of his back like gruesome butterfly wings. The faces of every person had been clawed away the same as a scorned woman would do to faces of her ex in photographs. Their features were gone, left to grimace in slashes of hamburgered meat. Each corpse had the unmistakable marks of cannibalism, patches of flesh ripped away by human shaped mouths and ragged bite marks in bloody U-shaped signatures.

“I guess that kid wasn’t alone,” Flip observed, speaking about the victim in the Colorado Cannibal case to distract you.

Morbid curiosity drew you closer, the same compulsion that makes people slow down when they drive by car crashes. You had seen crime scenes and murders before, but nothing like this. Neither had Flip, not in all his years overseas in the military or the decade-plus since he’d joined the force.

Flip made a quick circle of the bodies without looking at them at all. He looked as deep into the darkness as he could with his feeble light, making sure there was nothing and no one watching over their kill. Satisfied there were no hostiles in the immediate vicinity, Flip turned his attention to the bodies. The detective part of him wanted to look for clues, for similarities between the modus operandi of the killings, for the calling card of the lone serial killer or the ritual behind a cult killing. He ignored that impulse for now. Now, all that mattered was keeping you safe and getting you both the hell out. Live to fight another day.

A quick pat-down of the bodies yielded a pocketknife, a few more granola bars, a pair of relatively clean gloves that would fit you, and a handful of glowsticks, but the group had burned through all their lighters and flashlight batteries before they met their horrific fate. He slipped the pocketknife into the front pocket of his jeans and packed the rest away. One of the women was close to your size and she wore the least offensively colored parka in the group, a shade of royal purple. Kneeling beside the butchered woman, Flip struggled to peel the parka off her body, fighting against her rigid limbs that were stiffened from rigor mortis and stuck out at ninety-degree angles like a scarecrow.

“Oh, Flip, I really couldn’t.” A wave of squeamishness hit you when you realized he was solving the problem of you lacking a heavy coat.

“Oh, you can, sweetheart.” With a final yank so rough that Flip fell back onto his ass and the dead woman’s stiff limbs crackled like dry twigs, he freed the coat from the body of its former owner. “You can and you will if I see you shiver again. You’re not gettin’ hypothermia on my watch.”

Flip sneakily avoided shining his light on the parka when he stuffed it into your pack, but you saw the copious bloodstains on the purple Gortex. The blood had dried almost black, giving it the appearance of an urban camouflage pattern. You fought back a shudder, but you knew Flip was right. You hugged his voluminous wool sweater around you tighter, willing more warmth out of it to stave off having to wear your new second-hand coat.

“Stay behind me,” Flip commanded in a low growl. He pulled the knife from his pocket and opened the blade with his thumb.

You had been so distracted thinking about the coat that you hadn’t noticed the small noise that sounded like slowly tearing a paper towel apart. Flip had heard it at once and was instantly alert. He stepped ahead, keeping his bootsteps as silent as a panther. There was only darkness before you, all around you. Then, at the edge of Flip’s light, something shot across the beam on the cavern floor.

Training on it with the eyes of a sniper, Flip followed the small scurrying animal with his flashlight. The creature was a hominid the size of a large racoon, squatting on the floor and covering its eyes with its clawed hands. It was hairless with albinoid white skin that was almost translucent. It held a chunk of hiker meat, a hand by the looks of it, and it kept chewing, making more sounds like tearing paper, while it covered its eyes from the binding light.

“What the fuck…” Flip muttered, his voice trailing away.

“Whatever it is, it looks like a juvenile,” you observed, noting the short pudgy arms and legs, the fat belly, the bulbous head, and the way it sat on the ground like a toddler with a bottle.

“Yeah. Keep your light on it.” Flip shone his light around. “They say the most dangerous bear you can find out in the woods is a cub, because it means his mama is out there watchin’ you.” He spun to look behind you. “And she ain’t happy.”

On your right, something rushed at you with unnatural speed. You didn’t see it, so much as you felt its attack spring from the shadows. Flip reacted with predatory speed, spinning to meet the attack. In the same motion, he slashed the pocketknife out in a backhanded swing. The knife met the animal before the light, slicing clean through the white skin of its throat. Blood splattered against your face, hot and viscous, but it barely registered.

As the first creature dropped, a second charged from the darkness behind it. Flip swung his light to meet it. When he caught the creature in his beam it stopped, frozen for an instant like a deer in the headlights, then the animal shrieked, an unnatural sound from the depths of Hell and ran away as if its skin had been scalded by the light. That one was much much larger, the mate of the female Flip had just killed. It looked like a large male, heavily muscled and nearly as big as Flip himself. It had enormous black eyes and devilishly pointed ears. Those features stood out stark in your mind from the brief glimpse, but engraved deeper yet upon your memory were its teeth, rows of razed fangs like the gaping mouth of a piranha.

From the darkness beyond the reach of the flashlight, the creature howled. You and Flip knew at once what it was doing, but it was Flip who voiced it, “He’s callin’ for reinforcements. That’s our cue to get the hell outta here.”

“Get your gun!” you shouted as he dragged you through the cavern at a sprint, the two beams of your flashlights bouncing crazily ahead of you.

“I only have the six shots that are in it. I better make ‘em count,” he huffed as he ran hard. “Besides that, a gunshot in here is gonna be just like ringin’ the dinner bell. We’ll have every one of whatever the hell these things are on us once they hear me shootin.’”

The end of the cavern was honeycombed with tunnels snaking away into deeper darkness. There was no time to assess or reason which was best, not that either of you had any information to reason with. Flip pulled you into the left-most tunnel and pressed you flat against the wall. He crowded against you, putting himself between the tunnel entrance and you. He retrieved one of the hikers’ glowsticks, cracked it open, and threw it as far as he could down a neighboring tunnel.

Switching off your flashlights, you both waited, statue still, utterly silent, and blind save for the faint green glow of the glowstick some thirty yards away. The sounds of the creatures pursuing you echoed through the cavern. Nails scraping on stone, sniffing breaths to catch your scent, guttural snarls that had the lilt of rudimentary language. You thought that surely every living creature in the cave system must be able to hear your heart for as loud as it thundered in your ears. You clung to Flip like a life raft in a stormy sea, trying to draw strength from him.

The creatures passed you, three of them now. They hunted the light of the glowstick, prowling low on the ground in leopard-crawls. They had the vague shape of humans, but they didn’t move like humans. Their movements were almost reptilian, jerky and shuffling. At the tops of their naked asses they had vestigial tails that twitched like spaniels and two of them had small spinal ridges like crocodiles. One of them sniffed at the glowstick then warily prodded it with a clawed hand. With a triumphant howl, the ghastly animals charged ahead down the glowstick tunnel and away from you.

Slowly and with infinite caution, you and Flip crept down the tunnel he had chosen. He didn’t risk a light again until he had put several bends in the tunnel between you and the cavern, and he was sure the light wouldn’t reach back to the creatures that hunted you. You were shaking slightly from cold and nerves, mostly the latter. You took a deep breath to compose yourself. Flip could feel you shivering beside him. Grabbing your shoulder, he turned you to face him.

“You’re gonna be just fine.” His voice was strong and sure, and he looked into your eyes with fierce resolve shining in his own. “I’m gonna get you outta here. I promise.”

“Well, if you promise.” You tried to smile, tried to make light, but your voice trembled.

“Are you religious?” he asked, taking you aback by his non sequitur.

“No, and I don’t think we’re descending into Hell if that’s your next question.” You tightened your grip on the ice axe. It helped your nerves.

“It wasn’t. I’m not religious either, but I’ll tell you my favorite passage.” He gripped your shoulder tight and his voice rumbled into you as he grinned wickedly. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, because I am the baddest motherfucker in the valley.”

“You damn well better be.” When you smiled back at him now, it was genuine.

The tunnel you were in was only wide enough for the two of you to walk single file. You walked back to back with you walking forward and Flip backing his way down the tunnel in case the creatures caught on to his ruse and came after you. Although you both moved as silently as you could, every scrape of your boots on stone and brush of your pack against rock sounded as grating as nails on a chalkboard. Even the quiet drips of water that ran down the cave walls around you sounded like gongs. With your nerves on edge, your senses were heightened. Every scent filled your nose, every sound rang in your ears, every sight that met your eyes was sharpened and clear.

You felt it before you heard it, heard it before you saw it. The feel of a body rushing toward you through the narrow tunnel. The creature erupted out of the darkness ahead of you, already in mid-air as it lunged at you with its claws slicing and razored mouth open wide and aimed for your throat. Before your conscious mind could assimilate the attack, you were swinging the ice axe like a baseball bat. The tip of the axe caught the creature just below its temple at the hinge of its wide-open jaw with enough force to knock it to the ground. It howled with pain and anger, thrashing at your feet like a white fish out of water. Flip couldn’t move ahead of you in the tight space, unable to help you. Fear turned to rage. You stomped your boot down on the creature’s head and yanked as hard as you could on the axe handle, pulling it free with a spurt of blood. Raising it high, you bludgeoned the creature again and again and again, its blood spurting up into your face and chest with each strike, until the squeal it made died along with it and only the wet smack of your axe into meat filled the tunnel.

“Good girl,” Flip rumbled near your ear. “Now keep movin,’ and move faster. We’re gonna have company after that ruckus.”

With renewed vigor you walked ahead more quickly, holding your bloody ice axe at the ready. Killing the creature gave you more confidence. They could be killed. You could kill them. If you hadn’t been prepared and your bloodstream flooded with adrenaline, you never would have been fast enough, but you had been and you knew you could do it again.

After several more gradual turns, the tunnel abruptly straightened and widened. You felt a whisper of air caress your cheek, so faint you would have missed it if you were not in a state of heightened awareness. It was wide enough for Flip to come beside you. He slowed to a creep as he came to the edge of a crevasse that the tunnel emptied into. The end of the tunnel was a sheer drop into bottomless darkness. His flashlight glinted off veins of gold lacing the rock for hundreds of feet down the crevasse until darkness devoured the beam of light. It was twenty feet across the crevasse, far too far to jump, and there were no ledges around it. Your tunnel had dead-ended, and you were very likely being hunted from its entrance.

Across the gorge, you could faintly see the shadowed entrance of the continuation of the tunnel just peeking around the rock wall on the other side. The ceiling of rock hung just a few feet over your heads, but the drop down might as well be infinite because if you fell into you, all you would find is oblivion.

“We have to go back.” Your heart sank at the realization.

“Somethin’ tells me that’s not a great idea.” Flip frowned as he eyed the crevasse and the continuation of the tunnel across it. He then looked up at the ceiling and ran his hand up the rock wall, feeling its ridges. The ceiling hung a foot above his hand when he stretched to his full height and reached as high as he could. “We’ll cross here.”

“Are you insane?” The black gorge looked utterly impassible.

“Jury’s out.” He grinned at you as he shrugged out of his pack and quickly rummaged through its contents.

Flip pulled out a coiled length of rope and slung it over his shoulder like a cowboy with a lariat. Next, he retrieved a handful of metal items you recognized as climbing gear and stuffed them into the pockets of his jeans. When he straightened, he put his hands on your shoulders.

“I’ll run a line across.” He rubbed your arms like he was rubbing heat into you, but his touch was more affectionate than that alone. “But you’ll have to man the fort here while I’m out over the drop. If any of those sonsabitches come through that tunnel, you give ‘em hell.”

“I’d love to.” You hefted your axe and smiled at him. You were both aware of the extreme danger for each of you. There was no reason to voice it or let emotions run rampant when keeping your mind clear and focused was the best weapon you had.

Before Flip could move away from you, you grabbed his lapels and pulled him down into a hard hungry kiss. His hands flew to your waist and he pulled you tight against him, kissing you ravenously. It was only a few quick seconds, you couldn’t waste more, but you were breathless when he drew back.

“For luck,” you told him huskily.

“I’d rather be lucky than good.” He winked at you and stepped to the edge.

Flip secured one end of the rope the best he could on an outcrop on the ledge near where you stood. It wasn’t a great hold, but hopefully it would be good enough just to get you both across. He tied the other end of the rope around his waist and returned the remaining coil to his shoulder, then he pulled three cams from his pocket and put them between his teeth. Just as you wondered how in the hell Flip was going to run a line across the chasm, he bent at the knees and jumped as high as he could. With one hand he caught a horizontal fin of rock on the ceiling that was too small for you to see in the darkness, his feet dangling at the very edge of the ledge before it dropped away. With his free hand, he felt ahead on the ceiling, using touch instead of sight, until he found an adequate crack. Retrieving a cam from his lips, he jammed the device hard into the small crack and secured his rope to it. All this was done while he hung from one hand on his scant hold.

One down, twenty feet across the deadly chasm to go.

Grabbing hold of the cam, Flip searched ahead for another crack to wedge the next cam. He repeated this again and again, using the cams and cracks like they were monkey bars to cross the gorge and run the line for you. If the rock gave way or if his strong grip failed and he fell, there would be nothing to stop him until he hit bottom. By the time he was only halfway across, his hands and fingers felt as though they had been bludgeoned by sledgehammers and his forearms were twitching and spasming, the precursor to cramps that could freeze muscle into inoperable knots. He found himself swinging his lower body and using momentum to push himself forward rather than the steady strength in his hands and arms. That sort of sloppiness made a slip and a fall even more likely. Flip was out of condition for this kind of extreme free climbing, he hadn’t done anything of this caliber in nearly twenty years. He thought that over the years he had gotten smarter than to risk his neck in stupid ass ways like this, but here he was again.

Helpless, you watched Flip’s large body hanging precariously from one one-hand grip to the next as he ran the line. Despite his obvious attempts to keep his body controlled, he still twisted and canted dangerously with each swing forward. It seemed impossible that he had gotten so far, it defied your expectations of the capabilities of the human body. He was three-fourths of the way across when you heard chuffing breath behind you, like a dog scenting a trail.

Without taking the fraction of a second to look behind you first, you spun, swinging the ice axe sideways as hard as you could. It struck the palm of a creature, outstretching and clawing for your neck. The animal howled, trying to wrench its hand free. In the time it was distracted by pain, you yanked forward on your axe handle and stepped out of the creature’s path. You were so close to the edge, the yank forward sent the pale ghoul catapulting over the ledge to its death an untold distance below. Your axe popped free of its hand as it fell, leaving your weapon in hand.

Flip could hear everything, from your sharp frightened intake of breath to your axe striking flesh to the scramble of claws on rock as the monster went over the edge, but he couldn’t turn to look without losing his grip and plummeting to his own death. He could barely spare the breath to call out your name in a frantic entreat.

“I’m ok,” you assured him. “I can do this all day.”

“That makes one of us,” Flip grunted under his breath as a bead of salty stinging sweat ran into his eye. His left hand was cramping now, growing stubborn when he tried to clench it around a hold and slow to open his fingers when he needed to release. He drove another cam. He didn’t have a choice but to ignore it and keep going.

He was almost there. Almost.

Several feet from the opposite ledge, he tried to shimmy another cam into a tight crack. It slipped free when he put some weight on it, and Flip slipped on his hold, twisting dangerously. He rammed the cam into the crack with all his might and it held. He secured the rope and reached ahead, groaning with the pain it caused him. And his grip gave out.

Time seemed to stop as Flip’s fingers failed him and his hand slipped off the feeble hold he clung to. He felt the tug of gravity taking him, winning over his own strength. With the very last of his might, he swung his body as powerfully as he could toward the edge as his hand slipped free. His feet fell just short of the ledge, but his flailing arms caught it. Flip’s chest hit the lip of the ledge hard enough to knock the breath out of him and his numb fingers caught in fissures on the rock. His legs kicked free over nothingness as he hauled himself up, grunting and growling with effort. Crawling onto the ledge to safety on his hands and knees, he heaved for breath and let the blood flow back into his aching fingers.

Once he felt in command of his body again, Flip anchored the end of the rope. He didn’t have a climbing harness but he fashioned a crude but workable one from a section of rope, his belt, and some carabiners. Again, he had to jump up to grab the line and use all his strength to lift his entire body enough to hook the carabiners and harness to the line, but once he did it was comparatively easy for him to shimmy his way back across to you like a like a crude pulley.

“See, there’s nothin’ to it.” He flashed you a dashing smile when he rejoined you on the ledge.

He rigged a makeshift climbing harness for you with straps of rope running around your waist and under your thighs to come up between your legs, and he affixed the straps of the two backpacks with carabiners and hooked them on the line. He would go back again first, dragging the packs behind him and checking the hold of the cams as he did, then you would come last.

Flip made it look easy the second time, but you hardly needed his encouragement when you heard a faint snarl from the tunnel at your back. Doing as Flip had shown you, you clipped the carabiner on your harness to the rope and grabbed the line with both hands to pull yourself across the chasm to the other side. You tried not to think of the abyss below you or of the creatures that hunted you, and to focus solely on putting one hand in front of the other as you pulleyed yourself along. An excited squeal sounded behind you, the elated sound of the hunter spotting its prey. The line jerked in your hands, shaking your body wildly, as the creatures on the ledge tugged on the rope, as curious as cats with a string.

“Keep comin,’ gorgeous. Slow n’ easy,” Flip encouraged you, his voice steadying. “Don’t look back. Don’t look down. Keep lookin’ at me, sugar.”

More creatures shrieked from behind you, a whole troupe of them now gathered on the ledge, hooting like evil baboons as they tried to figure out how to prevent their meal from escaping. You pulled yourself faster along the line. As you closed in on the ledge, Flip reached out, grabbed your collar, and yanked you roughly to him. You wanted him to hold you, but he shoved you behind him further away from the edge.

Three of the white demons had figured out they too could use the rope to cross the chasm and continue their pursuit of you. They were better climbers than monkeys and crossed the line twice as fast as Flip had done. The lead creature was already halfway across.

Flip drew his gun and aimed. He steadied his breath as he focused on the small target in the dim light from his flashlight. Flip was a deadly shot and he didn’t miss when he squeezed the trigger. His bullet hit the rope dead center, one inch ahead of the leading creature’s clawed hand. The gunshot was deafening in the rock chamber, making your ears ring painfully. The rope sheared apart, whipping away into the abyss and taking the three squealing demons with it. Their terrified screams echoed off the rock for many long seconds until they ended abruptly far below.

It wasn’t from shock, but with relief that your legs gave way and you collapsed to the ground, finally able to catch your breath. You laughed in joy that bordered on the hysterical and Flip sank down to his knees beside you.

“Fuck, I haven’t done somethin’ like that since I was in my twenties.” He ran a hand through his damp hair and grinned like an idiot. “Back when I was young, dumb, and full of cum.”

“I’d say you did alright.” You smiled up at him from the ground.

“Well, I still have two outta three goin’ for me,” he replied, still grinning. “I’m not young anymore, but I’m still dumb and full of –”

“I get the idea.” You patted his arm as you sat up. “Maybe I’ll let you give me a demonstration of the latter sometime, but you have to take me someplace nicer than this.”

“With that as a reward, sugar…” He took your hand and you pulled up to your feet as he stood and then fully into his arms again. He kissed you desperately before reluctantly breaking away. You had to keep moving.

Flip pulled the remaining rope back, re-coiling it as he drew it in, and returned it to his pack. You both shouldered your packs again and Flip took the lead down the new stretch of tunnel. He was armed with his flashlight and knife, and you held your axe at the ready.

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It was impossible to tell distance in the cave system. With all the twists and turns, ups and downs, five mile’s worth of walking could only advance you one mile as the crow flies. However, both the chintzy keychain compass Flip had forced upon you and his own military grade tool indicated that you had maintained a steady heading as you cut through the mountain. Flip’s hope was to find an outlet on another face of the mountain that hadn’t sustained the avalanche. Bring on the other dangers of the forest, the bears, the lions, the elements, he would take them all on at once over this hell in which he found himself.

The tunnel bifurcated, two equally dark paths twisting deeper into the mountain. Flip again held his lighter up to the entrance to each, watching the flame dance in front of them both.

“They each have air flow.” He looked at you. “You got a coin to flip?”

“I like to take the left-hand path in life.” You pointed into the darkness of the tunnel.

“That doesn’t surprise me one bit.” Flip grinned and started down the left branch.

“Do you think we’ve lost them?” you whispered as a chill shuddered down your spine. You were cold and wet, but you shivered from something else entirely.

“Nope.” Flip shook his head. “I think we’re in their house now. Whatever they are.”

“I bet you won’t be so quick to scoff at the next defendant who tells you demons did it, Detective,” you teased quietly.

“I’m gonna arrest ‘em on sight.” He bumped you with his shoulder as he walked beside you. “Maybe he’ll hire a pretty lawyer for me to piss off.” He smirked at you. “But after seein’ how deadly you are with that axe, maybe I won’t try to piss you off too too much.”

“I might be able to think of a few ways you could make me happy instead.” You stopped suddenly, sobered instantly, when you felt Flip go rigid beside you, his arm flexing in anticipation.

Now quiet, you felt what Flip had sensed. That creeping sense of unease that warned you of the presence of something malevolent washed over you like ice water, pinpricks of dread crawling up your spine like horrible ants. Flip pushed you behind him as he walked ahead. With every step forward you looked back over your shoulder, your senses piqued for any sight, scent, or sound. You expected, as did Flip, an attack to come at you from down the tunnel, whether ahead or behind.

As if springing from the darkness itself, Flip was struck with a blow so heavy that it knocked him down to the ground. The creature had dropped down from the ceiling of the tunnel fifteen feet above you where it had crept unseen and unheard like a pale spider. Flip struggled on his back with the demon on his chest, slashing its claws against his raised arms and his chest, gnashing its teeth in his face. You raised your ice axe to strike, but Flip and the demon rolled together one over the other in a macabre parody of a lover’s embrace. Pinning the creature to the ground with a hand on its throat as it thrashed wildly, Flip pushed up on one knee as the beast sliced its clawed fingers at his throat, tearing his skin open from his neck down to his chest in four ragged bloody lines. Growling ferociously, Flip thrust his pocketknife into its open screeching mouth, driving it up through the roof and into its brain.

Flip was bleeding more than the dead creature when he shoved himself up to his feet, wiping his sleeve across the sweat on his brow. You rushed to him, your hands flying to the wound on his neck and shoulder, to the tatters of his blood-soaked shirt. Blood trickled down his neck and chest in rivulets like the water that seeped down the cave walls, but thankfully it was only a flesh wound that didn’t penetrate deep enough sever veins or arteries.

“Don’t worry, sugar,” he told you with his best cocky grin, placing his hand over yours where you examined his wound. “I’ve had worse scratches from a night in bed with loose women.”

“Do you want me to knock you around even more than that creature did?” you asked, but before he could answer you kissed him tenderly, inadvertently smearing his own blood on his cheek when you caressed him.

“Let’s blow this popsicle stand.” Flip broke your kiss, groaning in pain as he straightened to his full height. “The sooner we get outta here, the sooner you can thank me properly.” He didn’t say that he knew if he stopped for long, his injuries would stiffen, making him slow and cumbersome. That would be a death sentence. He only hoped that he could find a way out before one or both of you succumbed to exhaustion and had to stop for rest.

The tunnel you followed twisted like the gnarled branches of a tree, forking off in some places and converging with another trail in others. The cave system was as honeycombed as an underground beehive, making it impossible to keep your path straight and directions were impossible to know. Whenever possible, Flip took the lefthand path in the hope that should he need to backtrack he wouldn’t be desperately lost. Minutes passed as slow as hours and hours like days as you trudged. Your flashlight was the first to die and Flip’s had begun to flicker ominously, giving the tunnel the dizzy effect of a strobe. Maybe it was your subconscious clinging to hope, but you thought you felt a slight upward slant to the tunnel you were in now.

It had to be because fatigue was setting in, dulling Flip’s senses. He should have heard the sound of chewing, of ripping flesh off bone. He should have smelled the sickly sweet tang of carrion. He should have sensed the presence of the creatures in such close proximity when the tunnel widened into another bulbous cavern.

Rounding a curve, Flip’s light landed on a mass of white bodies clustered over an elk carcass like writhing maggots, tearing its flesh apart and swallowing clumps of meat, tinged with the oil green shine of rancidity. When the light illuminated them, the monsters froze for just long enough for you to see blood drizzle from their jaws before they shrieked and exploded away from the kill like a flock of birds taking flight. Others scattered from the periphery, more creatures who had been waiting for their turn at the elk. There were a dozen or more, males, females, and juveniles, all of which now snarled and howled at you from just outside the beam of light.

“Well, fuck me,” Flip grumbled and roughly pulled you behind him. The pair of you had little chance of fighting off such a large group of the monsters. They had recovered from their initial fright and were now slashing their claws at you from the periphery of the light, thinking you a superior meal to rotting elk meat.

The largest creature lunged at Flip out of the darkness, light be damned, its jaws open to tear into Flip’s throat. Flip raised his arm into a block on reflex but instead of using his forearm to block, he shoved his open hand into the demon’s open mouth, clamping his hand down on its lower jaw and wrenching viciously across. Flip ripped the jagged jawbone right off its hinges with no more effort that tearing a drumstick off a chicken, leaving the demon staring in wide-eyed shock while blood gurgled down its throat and its tongue flailed errantly in the bloody cavern of its mouth. Flip followed with a violent elbow to the creature’s temple with the full force of his body behind it, caving its skull in sideways as easily as taking a sledgehammer to a jack-o-lantern. For an instant, the others watched as the large male collapsed in a broken heap, its body convulsing with the shivers of death.

Choosing the nearest fork in the tunnel, Flip grabbed your hand, yanked you down it with him, and ran like hell with all the strength he had left. Another creature bolted ahead of you, trying to block your path. Flip didn’t slow his pace. Lowering his head, he barreled headlong into it like football player, knocking it harshly into the side of the tunnel wall. The crack of its ribs when they snapped against Flip’s shoulder was loud in the tight space and you could hear its wheezing breath as you dodged around it to follow Flip.

Those creatures that remained of the dozen gave chase. Their eldritch cries echoed around as they called out to their comrades that they were on the hunt for fresh meat. The scrapes of their claws and the shuffling of many bodies in the small tunnel was even louder than yours and Flip’s running bootsteps. His light bounced wildly down the path ahead of you, but it hardly mattered. There was no turning back, your only hope was in pushing forward and staying ahead of the ravening pack of demons nipping at your heels.

Ahead, the tunnel bifurcated, two dark paths snaking away, equally bleak. Flip moved toward the lefthand branch as he had down at every turn, but something stopped him. “I felt a breeze!” he barked and hauled you down the right fork.

The delay was just enough for the nearest creature to hazard a slash at you. Its nails tore through your clothing like tissue paper and the flesh of your shoulder beneath like butter. You felt the burn of its four razored claws and the warm flood of blood down your arm, but knew it was only a flesh wound. Enraged at the bastard, you whirled to face it, swinging your axe in a backhand that would have made any ninja proud. The point of your axe sunk into one of its huge black eyes, rupturing it like a juicy fig. Following Flip’s example, you jerked the axe sideways, catching the tip in the eye socket and ripping the side of the creature’s head apart. The rest of its companions had to scramble over its body in their pursuit of you, some of them pausing to take a bite of fresh meat.

While the tunnel remained narrow, the creatures could only chase you but not surround you. That stroke of luck was short lived. The tunnel widened until its walls faded into darkness outside the flashlight’s beam. The demons filled the space around you, encircling you as they snapped and scratched at you, kept at bay only by the feeble flickering beam of light. Trying to fend off all the grasping fingers, Flip spun in a tight circle, keeping you shielded by his massive body. He had little chance of fighting them all off, but he’d damn sure go down swinging.

As Flip turned around, taking the beam of his flashlight with him, you realized that the cavern wasn’t pitch black anymore. You could see the rock walls ahead of you in deep shadow, but not complete darkness. The light came from around a corner, a faint glow in the darkness. You would never have seen it with the flashlight shining ahead, dimming your night vision. Without sparing a second, you grabbed Flip’s arm, your nails digging brutally into his flesh as you spun him forcibly back around to bring his attention to the light. He saw it at once and pushed you ahead of him as you both sprinted toward the beacon of hope.

Rounding the corner where the light shone, there was indeed a spire of bright sunlight that shone down into the cave from far above, but your heart sank when you saw it was a dead end. The light illuminated a small alcove in the cavern the size of a dining room, but there was no exit from it. You both stood, panting for breath inside the light, safe for the moment, but unable to run further.

You were surrounded. On all sides of you, the pale demons crowded just outside the single beam of light. A creature would swipe its claws at you both, trying to hook in your clothing or your backpacks to drag you back into the darkness, then another would bark and snarl, trying to make you jump away from it toward the clutches of another still. The two of you barely had space to cling to each other inside the safety of the light, and there were legions too many creatures to fight off now.

Looking over his shoulder, Flip studied the only feature in the vertical rockface at your backs. There was a single crack in the face the width of a football that ran from the cave floor up to the small opening far above. Through it, the sunlight shone down like an angel’s smile.

“Unless you have any bright ideas, we better get movin’ on up,” Flip told you with a crooked smirk. He was being cavalier for you, but the sentiment didn’t reach his eyes.

“We’re going to climb up the vertical face, are we?” your laugh was tinged with just a hint of hysteria.

“That or we’re gonna be somebody’s lunch.” Flip chewed his lip and pulled you with him when he turned to face the rock. He had your body pressed to the rock as he examined it, keeping you both pressed close and just outside the grasping reach of the creatures.

Flip flexed his hands a few times, priming them for some heavy work. Reaching his right hand over your shoulder, he put his open hand in the crevasse as far as he could. When he was elbow deep the rock was tight on his hand. He clenched a tight fist and leaned his weight back, testing the anchor he created. His knuckles scraped against stone, but his clenched fist was far too big to pull back out from the crevasse that could barely admit his open hand. His arm would have to be cut off for him to fall free from his improvised hold.

Nodding his approval, Flip relaxed his fist and withdrew his hand. He shrugged out of his hundred-pound pack and quickly pulled out the most essential items that he could stuff into his pockets. He turned to face out toward the monsters and hefted his pack in his hand. Like an Olympian swinging a discus, Flip drew back and swung his boulder of a pack at the nearest rank of the creatures, mowing through four of them and sending them flying and rolling like pins broken apart by a bowling ball. He released his hold on his pack when it was aimed at the head of a large creature, hurling it straight into its pointed teeth inside its leering snarl. The pack was heavy enough to crush its skull on impact, snapping its head backward and knocking its body to the ground like a shell from a Howitzer.

“That felt good.” He turned back to you with a grin, stripped you of your own pack and dropping it to the ground. He again wedged his right fist into the crevasse at the height of his shoulder then propped his knee against the rock and looked at you pointedly. “Start climbin.’”

“You can’t hold my weight and yours.” You looked at him incredulously and then up at the sunny opening eighty feet above you, your unattainable salvation.

“You watch me, sugar.” Flip winked at you. “I’ll bet you a good time on it. Now move your pretty little ass.”

At least falling to your deaths seemed less awful than being torn apart by the cave creatures. You stepped your boot onto Flip’s thigh and used a hold on his shoulder to pull yourself up. Your next step was onto his forearm and you wedged your opposite boot into the crevasse as far as you could for balance. Flip hoisted himself up using his fist anchor and a scant foothold until he could jam his left fist into the crevasse at the level of your hip. That was your cue to step onto that forearm and climb another few feet higher. The going was slow but steady as you both ascended with Flip using his fists to ladder you up and haul himself up the crevasse. Below you, the demons shrieked and squalled in ravenous anger as they watched their prey climb away from them in the narrow beam of sunlight where they could not follow.

One industrious demon scrambled its way up the rock just outside the light. It paralleled you, hissing and gnashing its jaws like a piranha at chum, taking a razored swipe at you or Flip whenever it could get close enough to your bodies. So far, the light kept it just out of reach. It climbed up the rock as easily as a spider, except that spiders don’t froth at the mouth and snarl, and their claws don’t rake across stone like broken fingernails through gravel.

The effort required for Flip to support both your weights while climbing vertically was monumental. Sweat and blood dripped down his face and ran stinging into his eyes, his brow was knotted and his jaw clenched as tight as his fists. His arms and powerful shoulders tremored with fatigue by the halfway point in the climb, but he didn’t slow his pace.

“You need to rest, Flip,” you said breathily as you stepped a rung higher on the ladder of his arm.

“I haven’t even begun to defile myself, sugar,” he grunted between pants, tasting salty sweat and coppery blood in his mouth. He knew that if he stopped now, starting up again would be exponentially more difficult, and his great strength was dwindling fast. Beside him, the demon slashed its slender crooked hand at his face. He felt the air and smelled the stink of carrion on its claws. There was nothing he could do about it, his arms were so fatigued that he probably couldn’t throw a punch even if he were able, so he settled for glaring at the little bastard. Instead of addressing any of these points with you, he lied, “I’ll stop in ten more feet. Count ‘em out for me.”

You counted aloud every time he lifted you both higher, fist over fist, as the light above you grew slowly brighter and more hopeful. “You passed ten feet. Time for a break.”

“Ten already?” Flip’s face was a rictus of strain now and he didn’t even try to smirk. Beneath your boot his arm shook with seizure force and his knuckles were torn and bloody from scraping against the rock. If he wasn’t so haggardly spent, it would have amused him that the creature beside you was now climbing off-balance and weak from exertion. Fifty feet below you the demons howled and clawed at the walls. “That was nothin.’ Count me out ten more.”

The light above you was almost blinding after the darkness of the caves as you neared the top. Only ten feet now separated you from the safety of the sunlight. It was a cruel circumstance that in those last ten feet the rockface bowed outward like the obscene beer gut on fat balding uncle Jack, who everyone shunned from holiday parties because of his proclivity to grope the women and leer at the girls. Also like uncle Jack’s beer gut, the convex rock glistened with a sheen of sweat, water that dripped down from the vegetation and mud of the opening. It was too small to be recognized as a cave from the outside, more like a sinkhole, but it would be enough for you both to crawl through if you could reach it.

Flip’s arms were now shaking tremulously and his fists were cramped and unresponsive. But he damned sure wasn’t giving up or quitting now. Growling with determination, he hoisted himself higher, pushing you up with him, using every last reserve of strength to keep his body close to the convex rockface when he felt gravity try to wrench him away. Another notch higher and you couldn’t keep your own grip without toppling over backward, Flip could lock his meaty fists inside the crack but your hands were too slight. Flip crawled over you, pinning your body to the crevasse with his own covering you. You had no choice but to lean back against his quivering chest as you both crawled higher. He was at the very end of his strength, and you knew it just as well as he did.

Beside you, the demon who had tried to climb the outward bulge of rock slipped. It scratched and scrambled for a hold, its black eyes blowing wide with fear when it found none. As if plucked away from the rock by marionette strings, it floated away from the wall seemingly in slow motion, and fell down to be swallowed in the pool of darkness below you. It screamed with human-like terror as it fell, cut off by the dull thud of its body hitting the rock ground and the surprised cacophony of the other creatures below.

Three feet from the top, Flip’s hold failed. His right hand slipped and he dropped dangerously, crushing you to the rock when he regained a hold. Bloody and cramped, his hand wouldn’t hold a grip again and he had no way to rest it.

“Brace against me and climb up,” he rasped painfully. “I can hold out that long if you hurry.”

There wasn’t time to argue or question. You crawled higher, grabbing at anything that could gain you an extra few inches in height. When your ass was at the level of Flip’s chest, he shifted his shoulder beneath you and with the last of his reserves, bumped you up just enough for you to hook your arm out into the cold fresh mountain air and onto the secure rocky lip of the opening. You felt Flip’s hold weaken at the same instant, knowing he had saved you.

“Hold on to me now!” you commanded as you struggled upward.

“I’m too heavy for you, sugar,” he groaned, his voice sounded weaker and further away.

“Do what I say, damnit!” you hissed at him. “I’m the one who gets paid to argue.”

It was like an immovable anchor when Flip locked his arms around your legs, but with the same burst of feral emergency strength that mothers have used to roll overturned cars off their trapped children, you pulled yourself and Flip up and out of the cave, belly-crawling out like a soldier through a minefield.

When you were completely out and Flip could manage the rest of the crawl himself, you flopped down on the ground and rolled onto your back. Nothing had ever felt as good as those frigid wet leaves under your back and the icy sleet that pelted your upturned face. Flip was recovering fast if his sense of humor was any indication. He continued crawling until he was positioned over your body, his arms still trembling as he acted like he was lowering himself in for a kiss. Instead, he plopped down on you, playfully crushing you beneath him and groaned theatrically like a man dying on stage.

“Sugar.” He let out a heavy breath, settling even more of his weight on you. “This little excursion better damn well count for several dates.”

“I’ll waive the Three Date Rule, if that’s what you’re asking.” You tried to laugh but found it difficult with well over two-hundred-thirty-pounds of man on you. “But you better not ever ask me to go hiking, climbing, or caving with you again after this.”

“Deal.” He did kiss you now, soft and grateful. “I only wanna hike as far as a hot shower and a soft bed.”

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There would be no speaking of the events in the mine, not outside your own private company. You and Flip got caught in an avalanche and had to hike out, and that was that. Being involved in the legal system, you both knew well that if you emerged after an avalanche and a collapsed mineshaft, raving about monsters and demons, without a shred of supporting evidence, the best case scenario was that you would both be sent away to a nice retreat in a padded room and be discredited as a detective and a lawyer. The worst case was if you were actually believed, only to be locked away in Area 51 or its equivalent along with all the other nasty dark secrets the government doesn’t want out in the open frightening the populace. No, you and Flip agreed that someone else would have to be unlucky enough to have the macabre honor of officially discovering the demonic cave creatures.

After escaping the infernal cave system, nothing sounded better than Flip’s offer of going home with him to his cabin for a hot shower, a soft bed, and good company. Not to mention that neither of you wanted to be apart from each other. His cabin didn’t disappoint, it was beautiful. It was hidden from view until the final curve in the dirt driveway. nestled in a small clearing in the forested mountains with a creek trickling idly through the horse pasture.

Showering together was an erotic admiration of each other’s bodies that washed away your exhaustion along with all the mud and blood that covered you both. By the end of it, you were hot and dripping from the feel of his enormous hands caressing you, and he was hard and eager when he backed you out of the shower with his lips on yours, guiding you backward to his bed.

His lips were so soft as he kissed you, plush and caressing, mis-paired with his insistent erection that pressed into your belly. His searing kiss burned hotter than the fire that roared in the hearth when your mouth parted, allowing his hot tongue to lick into you. Your hand flew up to grab the back of his neck, pulling him harder against you, clawing at his skin and twisting into his dense wet hair. Flip’s hand trailed down your side, following the curve of your waist and hip, then back upward as he pulled you harder against him. His coarse broad palm smoothed against the skin of your back, and he kissed you with all the passion he had. A groan rumbled low through his chest when you slid your hand down the ridged planes of his body to grip his massive cock, your fingers unable to meet around his incredible girth. Flip’s head dropped to kiss at your neck, licking and nipping at your skin.

Flip pushed you gently back onto the bed. You allowed yourself to fall backward, exaggerating the bounce of your tits as you bobbed on his mattress. He stood admiring you for a moment, taking in every detail of the beautiful sight of you laying before him. The mattress dipped with his weight when he placed his hands on either side of your hips, lowering his weight onto the bed. Instead of crawling over you, as you expected, he dropped his head to kiss at your belly. His mouth traveled lower until he kissed the top of your pussy.

“I’ve wanted a taste of you since the first day I ever saw you in court. You were wearin’ a pretty blue dress,” he growled, placing his next kiss to the lips of your pussy. “Too pretty for a fuckin’ lawyer.”

You writhed, moaning his name, when his prominent nose parted your folds, followed by his tongue licking through your pussy. He kissed you again once you were open for him, his lips working your pussy as passionately as he would your mouth.

“I knew you’d taste so fuckin’ sweet.” His deep voice vibrated into you, raising goosebumps along your spine.

You could already feel heat pooling in your core from his lips and eager tongue alone, but you wanted more.

“I want the first time I cum with you to be all over that big cock of yours, Flip,” you told him huskily.

“Demanding, aren’t you?” Flip grinned up at you from between your thighs. He trailed his lips up the center of your body as he crawled over you, leaving kisses in his wake.

Planting his left forearm outside your shoulder, his fingers reached to lightly stroke your cheek. Gripping his cock in his free hand, he ran his fat tip through your folds, collecting your arousal. His heavy breath blended with your sigh when he pushed into you, feeling you stretch around him. Returning his lips to yours, he kissed you deeply, almost soothingly, as he rocked his cock into you, sinking in inch by delicious inch.

“Your little pussy feels so fuckin’ good, sugar. So wet. So fuckin’ tight on my cock,” Flip groaned when his cock filled you completely, his hips flush against you.

Your nails digging into his back told him to start thrusting into you. You felt every thick vein and ridge of cock rubbing against you, as he slowly thrust into you. Raising your legs higher up his waist, allowing him to slide in even deeper, you met his thrusts with your own motions. Flip’s angle was perfect, each drag of his cock sending a current of pleasure coursing through you. Your hands moved to twist into his thick hair, tugging harshly, as your pleasure quickly built. Flip felt you tighten around him, wanting to suck him in further, and your thighs squeezing him harder, your hands gripping him desperately. Everything about your body wanted to consume as much of him as possible, and Flip felt it all.

You moaned his name as you came, pulses of ecstasy shooting through you in time with his rough thrusts. Flip groaned through gritted teeth, his eyebrows pinched together, straining to drag out your pleasure until he felt your body go limp beneath him. He allowed his rhythm to falter, pounding into you while his own orgasm crested and he emptied into you. You shivered at the delicious feeling of his warmth spreading through you and his weight relaxing down on top of you.

Still throbbing inside you, Flip returned his lips to yours. His kisses were less expert now, his lips pulled into a smile instead of kissing you properly. Wrapping your arms tight around his neck, you pulled him down harder against you, making your kiss even worse, as your smiles crashed together. Flip rolled onto his back, pulling you with him and trapping you inside his arms against his massive chest. Gazing down at him, you brushed his wild hair back from his forehead.

“I like the view from here,” you told him, tracing the aquiline line of his nose with your fingertip.

“Me too, sugar.” Adoration gleamed in his eyes as he looked up at you.

After kissing him again, you lowered yourself to lay against him, resting your cheek on his chest. Feeling his hands rub and caress you and his lips kiss your skin, you marveled at how such a rough and powerful man could be so loving and gentle with you.

“I never want to spend another night away from you, Flip,” you whispered against his skin. “I want to stay just like this.”

“Well, it’s a good thing that’s not somethin’ we need to argue about,” Flip purred, his chest rumbling beneath you. “Because those are my thoughts exactly.”

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