The God Hunters

by Gordon D Lanyon

  Kailex saw my look and laughed. “After what you did to me at the warehouse you were a fool to come after me here,” he informed me casually. “Katal-Tik should have warned you. This is the world inside and therefore not governed by physical law. Wounds that look fatal can be instantly healed if one has the energy and the power. Thanks to you I have both. It‘s ironic you‘ll die by her hand as much as mine. Still, your plan almost worked. It was quite painful trying to store so much energy. I barely survived. I still have a headache that would bring you to your knees. When was the last time you fed by the way? What kind of damage can you survive if I were to hit you? I‘m sure I’ll find out momentarily.”

  Then he stopped and moved to the side, finally acknowledging Kat. He even waited while she edged around him to stand next to me. We were both panting from our efforts. An ugly bruise ran down her left arm which hung limply at her side. Kailex however, seemed as fresh as when we'd started, his breathing normal with only a slight sheen of sweat covering his body. Not good, I thought to myself.

  “He's right,” whispered Kat beside me. “We can’t win this fight. The energy he uses against us is my own. To save you I put everything I had into the weapon. It should have killed him. We must leave while we can. Our injuries here are still minor.”

  I shook my head. “We’re not leaving.” I was somewhat breathless. “We’re not giving in to this monster!” Down below I noticed a dark cloud forming over the city. It looked like the beginnings of a massive hurricane. Swirls of darkness interwove with a blood red mist that was slowly coalescing at its center.

  “I need to get past him with my head intact,” I muttered quietly to Kat.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” she shot back. “We can't win. Even Kailex waits for us to run. If we stay we‘ll be destroyed with your friend!”

  I shook my head. “I don't think so. Why has he stopped attacking us? Not from the goodness of his heart that’s for sure? I think he's more tired than he wants us to know. Also, I think she's waking up. I can feel it. He feels it as well. Walker was willing to hide when it was just her own skin on the line, but she's noticed us. Maybe when he plunged your sword into her gate. She knows we’re out here and like you said. This is her world. Maybe he's not so all powerful after all?”

  Kat cast an appraising eye into the valley and after several moments nodded. “Very well, we keep fighting.” She looked unconvinced however. “Everyone dies sometime.” With that happy thought she raised her sword to me in salute.

  I moved to return to the fight and found her massive hand holding me back. Her lips brushed my cheek as she said, “I should have picked you from the start. You have a Hunter's heart.” Then she pushed me to the side and ran three huge steps forward before leaping at Kailex who seemed completely surprised by her actions. His eyes widened in shock as she landed full on his chest, blade cutting deeply into his throat. With a roar he dropped his club and grabbed her with both hands. The two tumbled down the long slope in a flurry of sand and angry shouts!

  Kat was giving me the time I needed. And she’d done it without asking why. I ran past the struggling pair until I reached the gates. Taking my sword I began pounding on them with the hilt. Each hit produced a resounding thrum that seemed to quiver from the gate inward and along the wall as if it recognized me somehow and was calling to its owner.

  “Walker!” I shouted. “Get out here! We're getting our asses kicked. If you don't help us, we're going to die! Kat‘s here Walker. Even she came to save your scrawny ass!”

  I repeated this message over and over, punctuating each word with heavy hits. I kept at this until my arms grew tired. Suddenly Kat flew over me, hitting the gate hard before falling to land on her feet. She wobbled there a moment then crumpled to her knees. Her golden sword was no more, reduced to a blackened stump that she still held. Her eyes were dull and her body black with blood from multiple wounds. She was my size once again, all the power drained from her.

  She looked at me briefly, puzzled; then her eyes widened in recognition, “I‘ve done all that I can. Now I think, we die.”

  Then she slumped forward, unconscious. Slowly I turned. In front of me was Kailex but he was no longer smiling, no longer the confident villain. His body was a mess with several wounds that weren't healing anymore. He was no longer a giant. She‘d hurt him badly. What little control he had left was disappearing. His Beast was on its way out. His eyes shone with a dark light that swirled mistily as if they were leaking power. Lost inside a dark rage he stalked towards me. I moved to stand between him and Kat.

  “Mine!” he spat at me.

  I could see his Beast was almost fully out. He looked hungry and seemed to have lost his ability to think. Kat had fought well. To defeat her, he’d expended far too much energy. Maybe it was his over confidence but now he was hungry. His Beast was used to being fed. That's how he controlled it. Now it was coming out to look for food on its own. He looked past me at Kat helpless on the ground. A long tongue slithered out of his mouth testing the air.

  “Forget it,” I said, stepping forward.

  Thinking my best chance lay with surprise I sprang at him, swinging my sword in quick decisive strokes. This time he didn't ignore me but blocked each strike with a swiftness matching my own. I pushed him back but he soon recovered. Now it was his turn to press me and it was all I could do to parry his efforts. I began losing precious ground until I found myself back where I'd started in front of Kat.

  Kailex looked tired but my position was weak and he knew it. He began pressing me harder with swift hard blows that finally found an opening. I cried out as the tip of his blade ran down my left shoulder all the way to my hip. He’d opened up my side; it wasn’t deep but it was extremely painful. The cut drove me to my knees. For a moment everything stopped. We just looked at one another: me with one knee on the ground and my sword wobbling shakily in the air in front of me; him with his sword partially raised for another stroke. Then he pulled his sword high and brought it down on my sword with such force that my arm went numb and I fell back, dropping my weapon. He kicked it away. A wolfish smile opened across his face.

  “Time to die,” he said, his voice changing to a strangled gargle as he began to change. Up until that moment I'd thought the Beast a personification of some inner demon but now I saw that it was real and truly lived inside us because his had decided to come fully out. Talons replaced fingers while his arms lengthened bizarrely becoming ropy lengths of lean muscle. Teeth grew outward and inward from a mouth that could no longer close and was rounded and protruding with a short, thick snout. For a moment I thought my eyes deceived me as I saw the teeth waving inside that round mouth, then I realized they weren't human teeth; not hard like ours but flexible and seemingly alive in their own right. At the end of each was a sucker and this I realized would do the actual biting. His arms wrapped around me, pulling me closer. His eyes reversed just before he bit, showing only their whites. Suckers streamed from his mouth and attached themselves to my body. I felt a tremendous shock as the connection between us was made and my core opened to him. There was no way to fight him. I was powerless to do anything but die. Then parts of me begin to break away inside and churn up through the connection towards him. I was being ripped apart from the inside! I screamed, feeling even larger chunks breaking free and struggled to hold them to me. I was lost and knew it. Even a quick ending was too much to hope for. Then the world shook and just like that all the lights went out.

  Dimly, I realized I was on my back staring at the stars, two in particular that were large and bright. A light rain was puddling on my cheeks then running down them in hot streaks. “Wasn't that just perfect,” I thought. “I was going to die in the rain. Why couldn't I have died in the sun?” It took me some time to realize the stars I looked at weren't stars at all. They were eyes, brilliant green and quite beautiful really. A face formed around them. They were Walker's eyes. She cradled my head in her arms. The rain was her tears.

  Chapter Fourteen

&n
bsp; “Don't die,” she muttered over and over to me. “Don't die.”

  The words came at me from far away, barely recognizable, more like distant thunder than coherent language. Her face wavered above mine in and out of focus. She seemed both near and yet far away. I reached out and managed to grasp her shoulder with an arm that seemed warped and freakishly long. The energy it took to do this small thing seemed almost beyond me. I grasped her shoulder and immediately released it as frustration filled me. The soft leather of her jacket felt dead and repulsed me. I wanted something different. It was there but so far away. Skin, I needed to touch her skin. Her face shimmered above me with a pale radiance that beckoned. I tried again, grunting with the effort and this time my right hand brushed lightly against her cheek. An electric shock ran through me and I sat up. Both hands grabbed her face and pulled it closer so that my eyes could lock onto hers. She groaned once then her eyes rolled and blackened until she was staring into mine. I dropped into them. I was weak enough she could have brushed me away but instead she opened up. I found myself in the middle of a storm. Electricity crashed and snapped all around me. My Beast woke like it was emerging from a particularly bad dream. It began to speak to me of power and need. I opened my arms and called to the energy. Moments passed that took forever, then one bolt struck me and was absorbed. Others followed, more and more until I drifted in the middle of a sea of white lightning. The more I drank, the more I wanted, the more I was able to draw into me. I started to laugh. It felt so good to finally be me, to be out! To be what I was! Far in the back of my mind came an echoing shout. A single word repeated over and over, getting louder and louder.

  “Mine! Mine! Mine!”

  Suddenly I saw her, Kat, caught up in the same storm surrounded by forked white lightning. She was awesome to behold as she hung in the sky, the vortex for thousands of fiery bolts, black hair streaming around her head and shoulders, framing her face that glowed like a harvest moon. And her eyes, they were large in her face, black but shiny, emitting their own darker light, pulsing with each snap of power she drew into herself. She was like a God, a God I wanted to destroy because no sooner had she drawn near than all the lightening that had been feeding me began arcing towards her until I was left with almost nothing. I felt myself weakening once again. My anger flamed into being.

  “Mine!” I yelled back and, without conscious thought, threw myself at her. We met in a cacophony of sparks as if we were two mismatched circuits that had suddenly and dangerously come into contact. The unexpected collision threw us both into darkness.

  I lay on the floor gasping for breath, desperate to get my bearings. I'd lost my sense of the physical world. Where was I? Was I back or still trapped in the world inside? And the power, the more I'd drunk the stronger I'd become but also, the weaker. I'd been losing myself even as I'd strengthened my body. Only my Beast had gotten stronger. I'd opened a channel into Walker's mind without asking, without even conscious thought and taken what I needed. And she'd allowed it. Walker? Was she ok?

  Groaning, I rolled forward and pulled myself up. Two hands steadied me but I pushed through them for a better look at her. She lay on the floor, twisting in pain. I watched her eyes flutter then open in shock. She stared at me while I stood there wavering, wanting to go to her but knowing I shouldn't. Deep inside something was pushing hard for me to help her, to touch her, to make contact with those delicious green eyes. No, I thought, contact was the one thing I couldn't make! I'd already hurt her. But how badly? I waited for her to speak, certain she would tell me to leave. A surge of hunger racked my body and I shuddered against its power. I took a shaky step back from her.

  “You're alive?” were her first words.

  She groaned, then struggled to a sitting position, putting a hand to her head. “I saw you fighting Kailex. Trying to protect me. Then he hurt you, started draining you. I couldn't let that happen. I thought he’d kill me too but I couldn't stay there and watch you die. So I came out. Turns out that was the hard part. Finding the courage to face him. All that time I spent trapped inside my fear and all I had to do was swat him like you'd smack a fly. As soon as I hit him the connection between us broke. I was here and you were on the ground unconscious. I was afraid you were dying so I opened myself. Let you in. Then that bitch of yours snuck in and started draining me!” Grimacing she pulled herself angrily to her feet. “Now I have the mother of all headaches. Thanks, by the way, for the rescue. Between the two of you I was caught. If you hadn't kicked her ass, she would have killed me“. Walker gave a small chuckle that had little lightness in it. “She just about dies trying to save me, then tries to kill me a few minutes later. How screwed up is that?” She pursed her lips in thought, then just looked sad. “It's the Beast in us. Friend or foe, if it can, it‘ll take what it needs. When we get weak, it gets strong.”

  I should have corrected her, told her right then I hadn’t fought to save her but to have her for myself! Instead I ducked my head and turned away. Saving her had been a happy accident. Like Kat I'd been trying to save myself. To survive I’d let my Beast out. It would have killed her. I would have killed her if I’d had the time. Meeta watched me, her deep set eyes full of concern and sadness. She knew but chose to say nothing. Then I remembered Kailex was hunting us and my pulse raced once again. Kat said Hunters couldn’t feed on one another without physical contact, but somehow he had. What he could or couldn’t do now was unknown. So far he’d kicked our asses each time we met. That didn’t speak well for our chances of stopping him.

  “We need to leave. Hide until we can get our strength back. Kailex has four new Hunters helping him, not to mention Fusto! If he finds us while we’re hurt, we’re done.” My head was pounding. I couldn't imagine doing anything more than a quick walk, let alone wading into another fight.

  “Be calm Nicholas. This lab is an extension of SHIP. We launched as soon as you and Walker were collected. We’re in pinched space and safe. In fact,” she hastily consulted a screen, “We‘re somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, some hundreds of miles from our last position. I've also dampened all energy signatures that might lead him to us. I‘m confident he can’t find us.”

  “Kailex is not from this world,” I reminded her dryly, “He's a mad scientist from yours. Who knows what tech he has? Hell, you told me he’s one of your best scientists. He may even have helped build SHIP. That means he’s capable of anything.”

  I felt a presence wake within and tensed, then just as quickly relaxed. Not my Beast, not Kailex, just Kat. "You're back!" I was happy to feel her presence again, glad I hadn’t hurt her.

  "I survive, barely. I’ll need to feed soon. What I took from Walker isn’t enough to allow me to heal. I wake to warn you. Kailex has fed on all of us now. What a Hunter has tasted he can always find. He needs no technology to do that. Pinched space is safe only because he can’t access it." She paused and I sensed her considering her next words. "What I took from the female will not sustain me for long." Her voice became a thin whisper in my mind that was nothing like the Hunter warrior I had come to know.

  “I'll find a way to get what you need," I whispered back, but she was already gone. I suddenly realized both Meeta and Walker were looking at me. Kat had been too weak to project to the group. “Kat,” I explained. “As if we don't have enough problems. She's hurt and needs a serious feeding.”

  Walker shook her head, red hair brushing against her cheek. “Don't look at me. I've given that bitch too much already.”

  “That ’bitch’ almost died for you,” I reminded her, some heat in my own voice. “But I agree. You and her together is a bad idea. So what do we do next? She needs to feed.”

  Meeta sighed, “Who to feed on? The eternal question when you serve a Hunter. Fortunately, there's an answer Kat discovered long ago.”

  Stepping out I looked back but SHIP was invisible to me. A cool wind blew against my cheek and I stuffed my hands into my pockets, hunching my shoulders against the chill. Vancouver was on the water and cold during this
time of the year. This is crazy, I thought but then, everything I'd experienced lately fell into that category. There was no ‘normal’ anymore. Not for me.

  I looked around searching for the entrance to the Expo Line which would take me downtown to the stadium. I was in a car sales lot with a big blue sign that read: "Docksteader's Suburu". The lot was empty of people and I glanced at my wrist before remembering I'd lost my watch some time ago, probably on that canyon walk where Kat and I had first met. The sky was just starting to darken so I decided it must be early, a little after seven perhaps. Plenty of time to get to BC Place. Ahead of me I saw an A&W sign that caused my stomach to lurch then growl in benevolent anticipation. When had I last eaten? I frowned, thinking again of what had happened earlier with Walker. Real food, I amended, when had I last eaten real food?

  The smell inside the restaurant brought an unexpected feeling of lightness and I swayed on my feet. I could understand being hungry but dizziness like this was something new and a bit worrisome. Maybe all the changes I'd gone through were catching up with me? I'd grown stronger and much heavier as my bones and muscles thickened. I was taller, broader now and felt light on my feet, almost buoyant. My body had made major changes to itself with almost no food to fuel them.

  I entered the restaurant feeling an increasing weakness. My Beast wanted to leave immediately. “Weakness was bad. Weakness got you killed,” it whispered. I ignored it. The restaurant was about half full with six tables in use. I walked up to the counter and stood in line behind an older couple. The man ahead of me was tall and thin, slightly stooped with grey hair. He looked to be in his seventies. His wife was a little younger and wore glasses. She was just finishing their order as I stepped in behind them.