A Fresh Start (Book 6 Arrow/SPN Series)

Following In Their Footsteps

I'm not a bad tracker but I apparently wasn't seeing half of what Cougar was. He kept his eyes glued to the ground, would kneel down from time to time to look at some leaf or branch then move on. Coyote never once questioned his judgement, I got the impression that they'd been doing this a lot recently. They moved together without hesitation, just like Sam and I do. I felt the hairs go up on the back of my neck just as Roy pulled off a move that I never thought I would see in real life.

I'd been trailing along in the back again, Roy ahead of me and slightly behind Sam then Cougar and Coyote. Out of nowhere Roy lunged forward, jumped, shoved his right foot into Sam's back, pivoted left using Sam's back as a platform as Sam face planted into the dirt and an arrow landed in the ground about three inches from Sam's head. "Trees!" He shouted and we all scattered, I heard arrows flying by me but these guys were nowhere near as good as Oliver or Roy.

Roy'd been walking with an arrow already locked and loaded and when he pivoted off of Sam's back he'd brought the bow up towards the trees and fired. Someone screamed and crashed down to the ground. Sam rolled, got up and ducked behind a tree. I raised my gun up, spotted another one and fired, he dropped, then someone landed on my back knocking me down.

"Dean!" Sam snarled and I heard his gun go off but he must have missed for some reason because the guy on top of me didn't go limp. I'd landed on my side and saw a hand with a knife come flying towards me. I couldn't shoot since I'd landed on that arm so I drove a pretty badly aimed fist at the guy's arm. I got lucky because my fist collided with his wrist and he dropped the knife, then drove his other hand toward my head. I blocked his hand with my forearm, then Roy's boot came out of somewhere and kicked the guy in the head. The guy went flying back, Roy moved on to someone else and the guy's eyes rolled back in his head. He'd be out for awhile.

I took a quick look to see who needed help. Roy was more than holding his own doing some weird flipping, kicking moves that kept him moving in all directions at once. The guys attacking us had no idea how to handle what he was doing. He'd taken Oliver's style and turned it into something a lot more intricate for some reason. Roy's smaller build probably made Oliver's usual hits a lot less devastating so he'd fallen back on his legs and staying out of range of larger people. I didn't watch him for more than ten seconds but in that time he knocked out two more guys and drove a blade into a third. He didn't need help.

Sam must have lost his gun or chose, like I had, not to use it in close quarters like this. Too many chances someone moves at the wrong time and you end up hitting a friend. He'd gotten cornered by two guys, his back was against a tree but he had range, as usual, on the guys he was up against. His fists connected and they dropped. Cougar had already dropped one guy and was just finishing throwing a blade into the back of one that was coming towards me. Coyote was the one that was hardest pressed, she, like Sam had backed up against a tree to keep anyone from getting behind her. She had three guys on her and they looked like the best fighters in the group. Roy was out of my line of fire, Cougar saw her just as I did and Sam had just knocked the last of his people out. I took a chance and fired at the back of one of them. He screamed and fell, Coyote took advantage of his buddies reacting to that and gutted the one directly in front of her. The last one swiped at her just as she brought her blade back around, he missed, she didn't. He was down but not out. She kicked his blade away as soon as he hit the ground, and got out of range of the one she'd just put down. None of them were dead from what I could see.

There was blood spattered all across her white shirt, she probably should have picked a better color to wear. She drove her boot into the chest of the last guy she'd sliced, he screamed but that didn't seem to bother her all that much. "How many more are left?"

"Enough to kill you."

"How many!" She put her weight on his knife wound again, he squirmed but kept his mouth shut. She pressed harder and he started talking in a different language, judging by her reaction she recognized what it was since she barely let him get four words out before driving her knife deep into his chest.