The Savage Moor

​Chapter 1

Hank Van Burne was a confident man. Confident in his physicality. Confident in his intelligence. Especially confident in his tracking ability and skill with a rifle. His passion for hunting had taken him around the world and, on this freezing night in the middle of January, to Exmoor in the west of England.

Born and bred in the Appalachians in Kentucky, Hank was every inch the mountain man. Big, broad, and bearded. The only son of a prosperous sawmill owner, he could have had it easy but never shied away from the harsh and often dangerous environment. He went to the same schools as everyone else. Then when he was grown, he worked with them, drank with them, and fought with them. They bred them one way in those parts, and as far as Hank was concerned, that was pretty goddamned tough.

His pop gave him size, his mom gave him smarts. By the time he was thirty-five, he had helped expand the family firm into forestry and mining. It was the perfect business setup. You logged the trees, and when the mountain was clear, you dynamited the top off to get to the rich coal seams underneath.

Perfect, that was until the tree huggers moved in. Those city folk thought that protecting varmints and flowers was more important than providing people with jobs. He could see the writing on the wall. If you had to tunnel to dig out the coal, rather than blowing the peak off with explosives, it wasn’t going to be anywhere near as profitable.

Hank had never married, and both parents had passed in the previous few years. There wasn’t a whole helluva lot to keep him on the mountain other than a big old house and a handful of bar buddies. He had a hankering to travel. He didn’t have any interest in seeing far-flung lands, but he was excited by the chance to hunt big game. He’d shot his share of deer, cougars, and grizzly bears, now he wanted a bigger challenge. Selling the company would give him the finances, and the freedom to follow that desire.

Once he discovered the parts of the web where like-minded individuals lurked it wasn’t difficult to get the information he needed. It also became clear that legality wasn’t an obstacle if you put cash in the hands of the right officials.

Over the last couple of years, he’d killed tiger in Burma, rhinoceros in Namibia, and snow leopard in Mongolia. He’d also gained something of a reputation in the extreme hunting community online and even been offered the chance to shoot giant pandas in China. The rarity and reclusive nature of those animals would have made it an interesting challenge, but he realized there was no way he could put the head on his trophy wall. It would look like he’d been hunting in a fucking toy store.

His pursuit of ever-rarer quarry had also sidetracked him from time to time, taking him into the realms of myth and superstition. He wasn’t a fool, but he did occasionally allow curiosity to overcome common sense. On the Canadian border, he had spent two weeks in a fruitless hunt for Sasquatch. Despite considerable patience and long hours in the snow, he came up empty. Well, not quite. On his last day in the region, his disappointment had been tempered by the taking of a fine seven-point Imperial bull elk.

Now he was in England, in pursuit of the legendary Exmoor Beast. Some said it was a phantom. Others, that it was a big cat, escaped from a private collection. Its existence was supported by the occasional discovery of the torn and bloody carcasses of sheep or deer. There were no wolves or bears on the moor to make those kinds of kills. Although foxes would feed off carrion or wounded animals, they didn’t have anywhere near the power to bring down a full-grown ram or stag.

There were also regular sightings and photos, though the latter were invariably indistinct. The Beast was usually seen at dawn or dusk when it was often misty on Exmoor, so that went some way to explaining the poor picture quality. Hank was surprised that professionals had never managed to photograph the creature, but in his mind the balance of probability suggested that the potential reward would be worth the expense.

A week after arriving in the west of England, he had become convinced that the Exmoor Beast was indeed real. He had spent long days walking the fields and forests, and while he hadn’t made any sightings, there was a single tell-tale sign. Scat. As always, his research had been thorough, and what he found didn’t match any of the moor’s native animals. So the Beast was out there. The challenge now was to track it and kill it.

He discounted pursuing it across open moorland. The Beast might hunt there, but concealment was limited. Woodland was also out. It wasn’t likely to be where a predator of any size would track down its prey, and getting a clean shot would be difficult. The ideal spot would be somewhere on the gently undulating farmland or fenced areas where both he and his target would find cover along the field margins.

Stealth would be required both to track the Beast and for his own safety. Although he’d flown his favorite Bergara rifle into the country perfectly legitimately, he’d learned that hunting on public land was illegal, and poachers were unpopular. There were few cops around, but shotgun-wielding gamekeepers could be a threat at almost any time of the day or night.

Each of those considerations had led him to where he now lay a few feet from an old oak that broke a line of thorny hedge. This end of the field was slightly elevated, giving him a clear view across scrubby grass and low gorse. In his mind he had created a thousand-yard kill zone. He was confident he could hit anything that crossed the target area. Though it would soon be full dark, his ATN night-vision scope overcame that problem. The image was monochrome, but the clarity was excellent. It also provided range to target and various other bits of information, although Hank preferred to trust his own abilities.

The night was still. Stars winked in a jet-black sky. A sliver of moon provided almost no illumination, and without his scope, Hank was almost blind. It was unimportant. Everything was in place. The only thing he could do now was wait. Despite the discomfort, he relished the discipline.

Movement to the left caught his attention. He forced himself to stay relaxed. Any tension could ruin the shot. Five hundred yards away, a badger ambled into view, easily identified by its distinctive rolling gait and the broad black and white stripes down its head. Sometime later, a blood-curdling scream ripped through the quiet. Hank ignored it. Just an owl.

A small group of roe deer meandered cautiously across the killing ground, stopping occasionally to graze. He watched them pass. For him, they were nothing more than a nuisance not worth the price of a bullet. Then the last of them, a small doe, stopped abruptly. Its ears pricked, and its delicate head turned swiftly. Something back there had made her nervous.

In an instant she went from stationary to running at full gallop. Her companions panicked and also took off. Hank tracked the rifle to his right. There, at the edge of his range, he saw movement. A dark shape covered the ground fast. It bounded forward with a stride that was catlike, and yet not exactly like anything he had seen before. It was hard to tell at this distance. It seemed bigger than the cougars he had hunted, although not as large as a tiger.

His scope gave the range at eleven hundred yards. It made the shot extremely challenging. Hank focused. He breathed out and gently squeezed the trigger. The low-recoil six millimeter bullet flew through the night at almost three thousand feet per second. A spout of dirt erupted just behind the creature’s fast-moving form. Hank racked the bolt action immediately, chambering another round from the five-shot mag. He compensated for the miss and fired again. The hint of a smile crossed his face. He knew this shot was on target.

But the Beast had altered its trajectory. Only slightly, but enough so that while it appeared to be following the same course as before, it had actually veered away. The deadly projectile fell inches short. The Beast disappeared into the darkness.

Hank took a deep breath and stood. He reached inside his coat for a cigar and lit it with the Zippo from his pocket. He stared into the distance. He was disappointed but didn’t dwell on it. He had proved the existence of the Exmoor Beast so in his mind, success was inevitable. It was just a question of finding it again, tracking it, and making the kill.

From another pocket he brought out a small, battery-powered lantern. It provided enough light to work with but was unlikely to be spotted at any distance. He bent to put his rifle in its case and roll up his groundsheet.

Something big hit him hard as he started to rise. Hank Van Buren had seldom been knocked down by anything or anybody, but on those rare occasions he had quickly been back on his feet, ready to defend himself. He rolled into a half crouch, instinctively raising his right arm to shield his face. Huge jaws flew at him out of the night, latching onto his forearm. Vicious, jagged teeth bit through clothing and into flesh. Hank roared in pain as his bones shattered under the force of the bite. The damage was devastating, the limb instantly useless. The creature twisted its broad muzzle, and another cry escaped the big man.

Suddenly the Beast released him and shrank back into the darkness. Hank took a ragged breath. Despite the agony, he managed to reach his rifle case with his left arm, and pull the gun free. He rose with a sharp hiss of breath, rested the end of the barrel on the frozen ground and