Recap:
Part two ended with the Bounty Hunter being shot multiple times in a shootout with police. He was set up by a pretty young woman he did not know. During his gun battle, the Hunter sacrificed himself to save the life of a seven year old boy. His body now sits in the Coroner's Lab.
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The moon was full, that was good. The ground was a soggy mess, and that was bad, at least for the hounds. Water screwed with a dog’s sense of smell, it made them almost worthless as hunters. But if the dogs could see you, then it was game over. No two legs could ever outrun four.

Samuel froze in place; the sound of barking had gotten closer. He risked a look behind him, but only blackness greeted him. He still had a chance.

“I just need to make it to the river before them hounds,” he whispered to himself. He scanned the ground, found what he was looking for and took off into the underbrush.

The barking was getting nearer by the second. He knew his Master hadn’t fed the hounds in two days. They were motivated by more than orders, they were hungry. To the hounds a runaway slave meant only one thing, a free meal.  Like their owners, they didn’t view black people as human. Samuel knew they weren’t born that way, no one was.  They were bred that way and Samuel understood a little something about breeding. It was whispered amongst the folk, that he was not ‘natural’ born. Talk was that he was the product of a studding experiment, just like the Master’s prize Stallions.

But Samuel paid no mind to old womens' talk. He was a slave, pure and simple, and in the middle of the night running through a wet forest, with hungry hounds at his heels, there was no doubt as to what he was.

The unnatural eyes of the Hunter caught a flicker of movement in the bushes to his left. The Hunter reached into his britches and pulled out a long stone knife. Slowly he crept toward the bush, completely aware that more than men and dogs stalked the woods at night. Fierce as the Hunter was, even he had limits. 

Within five feet, the Hunter leapt into the thorns. Sharp teeth fueled by fear and rage tore into his flesh, but he fought on.  The Hunter sliced once, and then twice with his stone blade. Howls of pain rang out into the night. The fight was over. Covered in mud, blood and wounds, the Hunter dragged his foe from the shadows and into the Moonlight.

Attracted by the sounds of battle the hungry hounds and their pale skinned masters were right there to greet him.

Samuel looked up and stared straight into the barrel of a rifle pointed at his head.

“Drop the knife, Boy.” The order left no room for argument.  Samuel let his blade fall to the ground, and lowered his head in submission.

“What did I tell you, Clemons?”  Running up and taking the fallen blade, was a happy Michael Whitlow. “You, gentlemen, didn’t believe me, but my Samuel is the best hunter there is. He’s half bloodhound. Half grizzly bear and all mine.”

“Yeah, you told us.” Clemons slowly moved his rifle away from Samuel, and pointed it at the gasping and bleeding runaway slave. “Well, Bishop, you know the penalty for defying your Master.”

“P...Please… Masta, I…I’s sorry. I’ll never….never runs again, sir. Plea…”

The instant flash of from the rifle’s barrel temporally blinded Samuel, and for a moment all he knew were the stars before his eyes and the ringing of his ears.

“God damn, Clemons,” George Matthews, Whitlow’s foreman yelled, as he struggled to control the frightened hounds. “At least you could warn a soul before you do that. How’s we supposed to get him back now.”

The other men standing around the body all looked away. No one was willing to carry the smelly two hundred pound corpse, and no one had brought a shovel to bury him.

“Let the dogs eat him.” Clemons looked over to Whitlow. “Have your boy bring the dogs back when they’re done. You and I have some important business to discuss.”

The men began walking away, with Clemons and Whitlow in the lead. Matthews, still holding the three hounds, walked up to Samuel.

“I know it ain’t right, Samuel, but Clemons ain’t the kind of man to be trifled with.”  Samuels slowly stood up. He didn’t say a word, but the foreman, after many years, knew what was on the slave’s mind. “I ain’t telling you to watch.” The man turned his eyes from the silent slave. “Just bring the dogs back when it’s over. I’m… I’m sorry.”

The foreman let the reigns of the hounds slip from his hands.  Like the starving animals they were, the dogs descended on the dead slave, ripping into still warm flesh. The foreman walked away and vanished into the gloom, leaving Samuel standing over a scene that would haunt his mind whenever he was near deaths door.

As the dogs feasted, Samuel looked toward the moon and whispered a most unusual wish. He thought, except for the dogs, he was alone. He was mistaken. Standing in the shadows a being that had also witnessed the hunt, watched on and liked what he saw. He also liked what he heard. He liked that a great deal.
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Shortly after midnight, nearly two centuries after Samuel witnessed a horrible event that forever altered his life. A different life changing event was taking place.  A lone young woman carrying a strangely vibrating shoebox entered the Lake County Corner’s crime lab. She came looking for one body, and thanks to a vibrating shoebox; she easily found whom she was searching for.

Entering the lab, where a certain John Doe was lying on an examining table waiting for his turn to be dissected, a middle aged Lab technician jumped to his feet.

“Who are you?” he said, while blocking the woman’s path. “You are not authorized to be here.”

“Is that him?” she said, in a sweet, almost angelic voice. “Is that the man who sacrificed himself for the child?”

“Well… yes, and also killed six police officers.” The technician, shook his head, he was not quite sure why he answered the intruder. “Look, I’m going to have to ask you to leave, before I have to call security.”

For the first time since entering the room the woman looked directly at the tall balding man.

“It’s time for your break.”

“Wow, would you look at the time. I almost missed my break,” he said, looking at his watch, which showed a different time than the one he saw. In seconds he was out the door and on his way to the records office to see the lovely young night manager he was having an affair with.

The woman stood over Samuel’s cold and unmoving body. She had seen death many times, and had dispatched many souls to the gates of hell. So, she knew a soulless corpse when she saw one. Slowly she shook her head.

“No, you’re still in there. Aren’t you?” She placed the shoebox on his chest and removed the lid. Inside the silver Colt vibrated with a wild evil life of its own. A look of revulsion danced on the woman’s pretty face as she stared at the revolver. She closed one hand over the golden cross hanging from her slender neck.

“Are you sure?”  With closed eyes, her lips whispered, “Sacrifice.”

Donning heavy examining gloves the woman removed the hot revolver and laid it on Samuel’s chest. Almost as an afterthought she placed one of Samuel’s rapidly warming hands on the Colt, and then quickly left the room.

Thirty minutes later a happy lab technician entered the room. He was not happy for long. He would spend the rest of the night feeling decidedly worse by the hour as he struggled to explain the missing body to his superiors.  When the last report was filed, and he had received a month suspension, he was greeted with an empty clothes locker, a missing lunch box and stolen car keys.

“There is no God!” he shouted, as he phoned his soon to be ex-wife, and got only a busy signal.
 

 
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 4: NIGHT WITH AN ANGEL