By the time they’d gone a quarter of a mile, his eyes had adjusted. Then, another few hundred yards ahead, he saw what looked like flames. They vanished and appeared again, flickering like a will-o’-the-wisp, hidden and revealed by the trees as he wound his way through them. When he got a good look, he realized that he was seeing a bonfire in a clearing at the base of a rocky cliff. There were dark human shapes gathered around it, some crouching and some standing.

His sudden overwhelming sense was of being a captive, brought to a barbaric camp for torture and death at the hands of his enemies. Fear verging on panic clogged his throat. He stopped and turned to face Taxman, tensing to fight or run.

Taxman was gone.

Monks stood still, breathing deeply. He didn’t think the figures around the fire had spotted him yet. He could slip away into the woods, move stealthily until he was out of earshot, then take off in all-out flight.

But his rational mind started to regain the upper hand. He would almost certainly be caught within minutes. This might even be a test-Freeboot pushing to see how far he could be trusted-and if he failed it, he’d end up back in chains. There didn’t seem to be any reason that Freeboot would want him harmed.

Unless he had decided that Monks was no longer useful, or that Monks had offended his giant ego beyond forgiving. Then this might be Freeboot’s idea of a joke-having Monks walk freely to his own execution.

He forced himself to turn back toward the fire and continue.

The men in the clearing watched him as he came in, but no one spoke. They were all dressed as if for nighttime military operations, in black fatigues and combat boots, with paint-darkened faces and web belts bristling with equipment. All wore large-caliber semiautomatic pistols in holsters and carried assault rifles. Monks counted nine men, including the thick shape of Hammerhead near the fire, standing stiffly like a Marine on guard, and farther away, the handsome profile of Captain America. He didn’t think that he had seen any of the others before. Glenn wasn’t there, nor was Freeboot.

They waited in silence broken only by the crackling of the fire, the rustle of shifting bodies, and the wind, rising and falling like the breath of a sinister god. A minute passed, then another and another, each lasting sixty very long seconds.

Then came a sudden disturbance, a sense of movement rather than sound, from the cliff above. Monks just had time to look up and see a large object plummet down. It landed in the fire with a crash, scattering an explosion of embers and sparks. He stumbled backwards, aware of the other figures doing the same, some hitting the ground and rolling, others swinging their weapons around into play.

He hit the ground, too. As the sparks settled, he strained his vision to identify what had landed in the fire. It was an animal, a big one. An acrid burning smell was starting to rise, overpowering the pleasant piney scent of woodsmoke.

“You can dress ’ em up. But can you take ’em out?”

The voice was Freeboot’s, coming from outside the clearing. It had a chiding, sardonic tone. “You assholes let anybody else come up on you like that, you’re all going to need wigs before this night’s over.”

He walked into view with his barefoot, easy stride. The men lowered their weapons and shifted uneasily, like children being scolded. Monks got up off the ground. He saw that the animal was a young mule deer buck, three or four point, its antlered head twisted at a radical angle from its body courtesy of its gaping slashed throat. Freeboot’s hands and torso were streaked with blood, and the right leg of his jeans was soaked with it. Apparently he had carried the buck over that shoulder while its veins emptied out, then thrown it off the cliff.

“There’s just two ways you can live in this world,” Freeboot announced, his voice strident now. “You take control of it, or it takes control of you. Most of those people out there”-he swept his arm in a gesture that included the rest of the world-“are like this deer. But you few men here, you got the chance to be above all that.”

He crouched over the buck with a long survival knife, using its serrated edge to saw from the buck’s throat down through its sternum, then flipping the blade to slit the belly to the genitals. The entrails slithered out in a steaming slippery mass. His hands plunged in, forcing the rib cage open, then going in again with the knife.

“Out in the jungle, the tribes got secret societies that control everything,” he called out, hands working to cut something free. His voice was powerful and resonant, like a revival preacher’s. “They name themselves for hunters, the strongest and fastest. Cheetahs. Leopards. They understand that life is power, and that taking life gives them power.”

He stood, holding up the buck’s heart in one hand. It was about the size of a man’s fist, ruddy and glistening in the fire’s glow.

“Here we think we’re civilized. But it’s really just another jungle, made of freeways and shopping malls. When you go out into it, you got to have the heart of the hunter, and eat the heart of the deer.”

Freeboot sliced into the heart with his knife, cut off a three inch long strip, and put it in his mouth. He chewed slowly, taking his time, pointedly making eye contact with each of the men in turn. They stared back at him, mesmerized. He swallowed the raw flesh, raising his chin so that all could see his larynx move. Then he stepped to the man closest to him, Hammerhead, and offered him the bloody heart.

Hammerhead took it without hesitation, cut off another strip, and crammed it into his mouth. He passed the heart on to the next man. The smell of the buck’s charring hair and flesh was getting stronger, an evil, atavistic reek of carnage.

Monks had read about the secret societies that Freeboot touted. He had also read that children being initiated were sometimes forced to eat human flesh-even of their own murdered parents. It was a dark, mystical communion, intended to bond them to the group in a way that plunged into the most savage roots of mankind.

The heart circulated to more of the black-clad warriors, each man hacking off a chunk and chewing, until it came to one that Monks hadn’t seen before, a lanky young man with a big Adam’s apple. He took it hesitantly, his gaze darting around.

“You got a problem, Sidewinder?” Freeboot barked.

Monks recalled that he had heard the name Sidewinder before-the sentry who had taken over for Captain America. There was something viperish about him-his tongue flicked in and out constantly to wet his lips, and his sinuous body seemed to vibrate with vaguely menacing energy.

“Can this make you sick?” he blurted out. “Eating raw meat like this?”

Monks realized, with astonishment, that Sidewinder was talking to him.

“What?” It was Freeboot who answered, erupting in incredulous outrage.

“I heard this dude’s a doctor,” Sidewinder stammered. “I just thought-you know, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this, in case there’s diseases or something.”

“‘In case there’s diseases or something,’” Freeboot mimicked viciously. “Diseases are for the two-legged deer running around out there. Is that what you want to be, one of them? Get your ass over here.”

Sidewinder jumped to obey the command, tongue flicking nervously. Freeboot wrenched the heart out of his hand and tossed it to Hammerhead.

“Strip,” Freeboot commanded.

“Oh, man. Why?”

“You don’t fucking ask me why when I tell you to do something, shitheel. You do it.”

The gathered men watched tensely as Sidewinder sat on the ground, unlaced his boots and pulled them off, then got out of his fatigues. Naked, he looked thin and pathetic, his skin made paler by his darkened face.

Freeboot kicked the carcass. “You want to be a deer? Fine. Put that on. You got balls, you can stand up and walk around. Otherwise, crawl in and lay there.”