Revenence (Novella): Dead Red by M.E. Betts

moment, distracted by the form and feel of the wood in her hands.  Her eyes traveled to the well-pointed tip, the pioneering extremity that would wedge its way into her  victim's skull. 
         She launched the stick, watching intently while it spiraled toward Heather, appearing to move in slow motion from her unique, drug-induced perspective.  She could almost see the sound of the slightly spiraling path cut through the air by the projectile, which found its mark in Heather's left eye.  There was no further movement from the young sadist.  Her right eye was open wide, and her mouth hung agape.  Daphne lowered herself from the branch, hanging by her fingertips and dropping another six inches to the ground without making a sound. 
         Besides the woman shouting into the walkie-talkie, Daphne had seen and heard roughly a dozen more, fifty feet upstream.  She reached again into her bag, her fingertips brushing over the sticks piled at the bottom.  They were generally uniform in length and width, filling the bag slightly less than halfway.  They numbered in the dozens, between two and three, though Daphne's mind didn't directly formulate numbers.  She knew by the sensation and the fullness of the bag that there were more than enough for the sadists at hand.
         She stalked toward Cynthia, waiting until the woman's back was facing her, and aimed the stick at  her lower skull, where the spinal cord joined the brain.  As the weapon spun through the air, its movement produced a light whistle which only Daphne could hear.  The sound spoke to her, and she replied with a faint smile as Cynthia was struck at the base of the skull.  The lifeless sadist tumbled forward into the stream, her face and torso preceding the long ponytail trailing behind her.  The light splash produced didn't seem to get the attention of anyone else upstream, so Daphne continued to the north. 
         As she passed Cynthia's corpse, she saw that the walkie-talkie was submerged, cutting off Red's contact with the group.  She also saw the glint of Cynthia's blade, slid through a makeshift sheath at her hip.  She crept over to the side of the stream, plucking the woman's knife from her holster and using it to slice her right ear away from her skull.  She slid the ear onto the length of cord with the others.  Regarding the knife, she saw that it was apparently well-used, a stainless steel implement of mediocre quality.  Given the circumstances, however, it would have to do.
         With the newly acquired weapon, she stalked back to Heather's corpse, adding the young woman's right ear to the rest as she looked down at the corpse, her face twisted with vengeance.  Up and across the stream,  someone from Cynthia's group approached the waterway, looking southward in Daphne's direction.  Wanting to avoid being seen, Daphne retreated into the treeline, watching as the person whom she now saw to be a male sadist found Cynthia's body, followed by the radio just barely submerged by the shallow, flowing water.  
         He started toward Daphne's side of the treeline, and she reacted by plunging her hand again into her bag.  As the shadowy figure approached, she dispatched a stick, its point driving into the unknown sadist's chest cavity.  Daphne started toward the moaning, twitching mass lying about twenty-five feet away, flattening a patch of tall grass matching his shape.
         As Daphne reached the man, she drew Cynthia's knife.  He lay face-down with his knees drawn up beneath him.  Daphne pounced, mounting his back, and drew the blade across the back of his neck at a hard angle, severing his spinal cord.  The sadist's body went limp, and Daphne confiscated his steel gut hook blade and his ear before continuing to the north.  She kept within the treeline until she reached the rest of the group, none of whom seemed to be aware that two of their comrades were missing.
         She leaped onto a tree branch roughly