Nightfall

by Elizabeth Hartwell

  This isn’t good.

  “Circle up. Lance, we could use your abilities,” I call out, and before I can say anything else, the first sabertooth leaps. I swing, pirouetting to allow the body to tumble by me into the dirt, and the fight’s on.

  If there’s any weakness to the sabertooth, it’s that while they work in packs, they won’t back off until the alpha male tells them to.

  Solace has records of entire hunting packs being slaughtered by armored vehicles simply because once the pack alpha declares an attack, every member of the hunting pack will obey to the death.

  It’s one of the reasons that a lot of people try to not kill the alpha, because the rest of the pack won’t stop at that point. Still, their unwavering obedience and blood lust are probably the only reasons sabertooths haven’t completely taken over the mountains. they’re damn near suicidal once they’ve lost their alpha. They’ll stay locked in on the last commands of their alpha until either the battle’s over or they’re all dead.

  But I’m up for the challenge. The pack faces four trained warriors, and after three weeks of frustration running, living off the land, and not knowing what’s out there for us, I’m eager to let a little of it out on something that clearly wants to kill me anyway.

  No more hide and seek. No more sneaking through the trees, wondering if the sound that we just heard is wind, an animal, or a Hunter team coming for us. No more abandoning a rest spot because that little voice in the back of my head says that things just don’t feel right.

  Now it’s time to fight.

  Despite all our fussing and arguments over the past few weeks, once the battle starts, we somehow morph into a cohesive team. We work together, not back to back like I trained with the Hunters, but as four interweaving whirlwinds of death in our own right. Tym’s hammers crash left and right as he caves in a sabertooth skull before casually taking the two-hundred-pound carcass and throwing it aside, sewing panic among our enemies and keeping the battlefield clear.

  Brandon’s spear is as fast as a sewing needle, stabbing back and forth in a powerful underhanded thrust, skewering a cat in its back legs and sending it tumbling to the dirt hard. Before the sabertooth can recover, he’s already pierced it three more times, the final blow ending the threat fully before he wheels and uses his spear shaft like a fighting staff to deflect another sabertooth off to the side.

  Lance . . . I can’t even see Lance. He’s flashing in and out so fast that I barely get eyes on him before he’s disappeared again, trying to inflict damage with his limited stamina before the sabertooths can amass more of their numbers in the small clearing where we’re fighting. It’s a daring risk, half heroism and half suicide, but that’s not stopping him.

  Me? I’ve got my hands full. I might carry Sulis’s blood, but I’m seven generations removed from being a demigod, and even the smallest of the sabertooths outweighs me by eighty pounds or more. So I spin, stabbing and swinging my swords as fast as I can, wishing I could get my footing just enough to be able to drive each thrust just a little bit more. I’m inflicting a lot of painful wounds that can wear a sabertooth down, but I’m not being efficient. Sabertooth bodies are incredibly dense and well-armored for a cat that can climb fifty feet up a tree and leap half that distance. Their pelts are thicker than Hunter leathers, and their skeletons are hard to get through to deliver that fatal blow.

  Out of nowhere, a sharp pain tears through my right arm, and I cry out, but before I can even stumble, Tym and Brandon are next to me, Brandon’s spear piercing the chest of the sabertooth alpha male and lifting him into the air while Tym’s hammer comes up in a short, powerful arc, catching the pack leader under the chin and almost tearing its head off it hits so hard. It does rip the sabertooth off Brandon’s spear, flipping it backward a full rotation before it drops to the ground, dead.

  A sudden silence descends over the forest. The only sound I can hear is the pounding of my heart in my ears. The fight took less than two minutes, but I’m dripping with sweat, and around us are scattered the corpses of fifteen sabertooths, more than I thought there were.

  “Wow,” Lance says, stumbling with exhaustion as the constant use of his special ability catches up with him, leaving him weakened and dizzy. “So . . . think we can turn these into some sabertooth skin clothes? I mean, if fuckin’ Hercules can do it, why not us?”

  “Because we’re not Hercules, dickhead,” Brandon replies, but I can hear it in his voice. He’s laughing, and as he and I exchange looks, I know he’s feeling better.

  “How’s that feel?” Tym asks as he adjusts the bandage over my cut. It isn’t deep, more of a long, nasty scratch than anything else, but Tym’s nurturing side came out in full as soon as he saw blood on me, and he’s appointed himself my medic while Brandon decides which, if any, of the sabertooths we’re going to butcher for meat.

  It’s not a tough choice to me. Sabertooths are predators, so their muscles are tough, knotty slabs of meat that don’t cook very well. If it were me, I’d ignore the muscles and harvest just the livers, which are full of good nutrients even if they taste . . . well, like liver.

  But I’m not going to argue with whatever he brings back. Compared to everything we ate prior to Lance’s boar, sabertooth is still fine dining.

  Thinking of Lance, I look over to the far side of the cave where he lies with his head on a rolled-up coat, already asleep. It’s the biggest cost of his power. A single use of his flash speed uses a tremendous amount of physical energy, but with the amount of strain on his system from using his ability again and again like he did in our fight against the sabertooth pack, it’ll put him in a deep sleep for at least twelve hours.

  A small price to pay for the safety he gives us.

  “Feels fine,” I assure Tym, looking down at the white wrapping on my arm. “I just hope I can patch up my shirt as easily.”

  Tym pick up my discarded shirt, looking at the six-inch slice through the fabric and tutting. “This would be the time that it would have been nice to be able to raid that stash of items in the fire station. I’m terrible at sewing. You?”

  “I can stitch wounds, but it’s pretty ugly,” I admit, showing off another scar on my other arm. I picked it up nearly five years ago, a backward C-shape that puckers the inside of my bicep. The flesh is strong but nowhere near as smooth as an autodoc’s work, a noticeable ridge that sticks out from the flesh even when I’m relaxed. “This was from my first tangle with werewolves.”

  Tym reaches out with a huge, powerful finger and traces the twisted line, his eyes burning with intensity as his touch electrifies my body. I’m wearing a support band over my chest, but I’m reminded of the bra that I wore on my last mission and how my breasts would chafe wonderfully when Tym would look at me this way. It’s like a flush of heat and cool water at the same time, and I can feel my nipples tightening inside as he strokes the puckered skin. “Tym.”

  With reluctance, he pulls back as we hear Brandon approach. He’s grunting, obviously carrying a load, and I release a shuddering breath, knowing what Tym’s going to say even before he says it.

  “I don’t think he’d like it if he comes back sweaty and covered in blood while we’re . . .” Tym murmurs, confirming my guess as he glances over his shoulder before pointing his chin at Lance. “And he needs his beauty sleep.”

  I chuckle softly, nodding. “True. And your sense of humor’s starting to loosen up. I like it.”

  Tym finds me a fresh shirt in my bag, and I just have it pulled on when Brandon finishes his approach, dragging the Alpha sabertooth behind him. It’s probably the best of the cats to use. Alphas take the literal lion’s share of a pack’s hunt without working as hard as the female stalkers.

  Still, as Brandon approaches with the three-hundred-pound carcass, I worry. He may not know it, but he’s getting stronger over the past three weeks, and I don’t think it has anything to do with fresh air and exercise. It’s his new nature coming out, I’m sure of it.

  I’ve done a lot of thinki
ng during the quiet moments and when I’ve been on night watch, and I’m sure it’s one of the signs of his rebirth. It’s like he’s going through puberty again, just this time in his mid-twenties, and dealing with a lot stranger side effects than pimples and bad taste in music.

  “If Lance asks about pelts, remind him of two things,” Brandon says as he lays the carcass by the entrance to the cave. “One, that we don’t have the materials to tan all these pelts. Two, that—”

  He stops, his eyes widening as he drops his spear and turns, scanning the forest below us. “Brandon?” I ask, getting to my feet. “What’s wrong?”

  “Wake up, Lance,” Brandon says, turning back around. “We need to go. Now.”

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, all doubt erasing as he runs in and grabs his pack, pulling it over his shoulders. “Brandon?”

  “Hunters,” Brandon says. “I can . . . sense them.”

  I glance at Tym, who nods. Whatever the reason, whether it be his new powers, the heebie-jeebies, or just really good hearing, this isn’t the sort of warning that can be ignored. “I’ll carry Lance.”

  “Okay. Brandon, grab Lance’s pack as well. I’ll carry his pistols and provide security,” I reply, pulling on my makeshift cloak. “Let’s move.”

  Chapter 4

  Tym

  The chill night air bites at my ears and nose as I silently make my way through the woods to the bluff overlooking the valley we just escaped from. While this task would normally be handled by Lance, whose ability to escape from nearly anything that doesn’t catch him by surprise gives him an advantage, he’s still unconscious. Even if he were awake, he’d be so weak that he’d be next to useless in a task like this.

  Doesn’t matter. I’m an experienced tracker and outdoorsman in the Scorched Earth, even more so than Lance. While Lance spent his entire youth learning scams, dodges, tricks, and the ins and outs of the Bane underworld, I was slightly more cultured.

  Sure, I spent plenty of time growing up in Bane. But I also traveled the Scorched Earth as well, working the myriad of professions that I sampled before meeting Cerena. One of the ones I was best at, however, was tracking and hunting. Not in the way Cerena is, or was, a Hunter, but a much simpler type. Merchant caravans would hire me to safeguard their trips between cities, and I often had to fight off predators. If it wasn’t that, it was farmers hiring me to take care of threats to their farms. I got very good at stalking because of it.

  As such, while Lance is the undisputed master of hitting by surprise and getting away, I’m better at approaching and observing undetected. I can tell the signs, anticipate the paths, and generally be in a better position to catch sight of our pursuers than anyone else.

  Except for maybe Brandon. The way he dropped his spear and announced the threat, his knowledge so sure even though he hadn’t seen anything, disturbs me deeply. It’s the third time in as many weeks that he’s had this feeling of just knowing something, something that’s impossible for him to know. The last two times were small potatoes, a handhold that wasn’t as solid as it seemed and a surprise rainstorm that soaked Lance and me while he and Cerena remained relatively dry under their cloaks.

  Both of the other times, I dismissed it. After all, everyone gets lucky from time to time. And I’ve found that a lot of people’s ‘gut feelings’ are explainable by the mind and the senses making connections that you don’t quite get on the surface.

  There’s no way that Brandon could have known this, however. But I still don’t doubt him. Ever since his rebirth, he’s shown signs of a growing power inside him that worries me as much as it comforts me.

  Because it’s a lot of potential power. He’s showing signs of telekinesis, increased strength, healing, and now, extrasensory perception. All great things to have on our side . . . but also a lot of powers that tend to be reserved for so-called ‘dark’ creatures. Especially telekinesis and ESP. Of all the paranormal creatures I know, only the most powerful vampire Elders show any sense of telekinesis, and ESP is reserved for twisted horrors that I’ve only heard rumors of and never actually seen.

  I’ve kept my silence about my worries. Cerena has enough to deal with just keeping the peace between Brandon and Lance, who isn’t taking this new Brandon very smoothly. Besides, I’m sure she knows as much about the powers and abilities of the various Scorched Earth paranormals as I do, if not more. She’s spent her entire life studying their strengths, weaknesses, and how to fight them.

  But this is beyond even her abilities, I’m sure. And Brandon’s change is tough on her, too. I’ve tried talking to Lance. We don’t need this friction when we’re being pursued by Hunter teams, but he can’t help himself. It’s his nature.

  There’s no time to worry about that right now. Finding the spot that gives me the best view of the valley, I look out, checking for signs. For ten long minutes I search, the night not hiding much from my sharp eyes as I take in the valley below. I look for any signs, unnatural movements that might be humans, but more than just my eyes, I listen, I smell . . . I sense. It’s not ESP, but it is something, and it’s something I’ve come to trust just as much as my hammers.

  As soon as everything ‘clicks’ for me in my head, I detect them. They’re pretty good, and I have to confess to having a little bit of a flash of pride when I spot them. They’re practically ghosts in the valley below me, moving among the trees with barely a whisper. If anything, it’s the total lack of sound or sign that calls my attention to them. The Hunters are like a vacuum in the normal night environment of the mountain forest, an absence in the midst of so much else.

  There’s no way Lance could have seen them. He hasn’t had to work with the patience and the emotional centering that I do. To him, their negative presence would have been dismissed as just the gaps between bird calls or the pauses between the whispers of the wind.

  But eventually, I can see them. I watch carefully, letting them approach as I listen for the different coughs, bootsteps, or other telltale signs that will help me figure out just how many Hunters are after us. It’s hard. They make almost no sound at all, and my best guesses are only that . . . guesses.

  The moon comes out from behind the clouds, a nearly full light that gives me great visibility of the valley, and as the Hunter team traces our backtrail, I watch as they near the site where sabertooth corpses still litter the grass. Emerging into the moonlight, I count an even ten at first, all fully armed and equipped Hunters. Peering carefully through the monocular that we’ve got, I see five Gauss rifles, and the other five are all swordsmen of one kind or another.

  Armed to the teeth . . . wonder if there are any heavy weapons left inside Solace if the werewolves or vampires decide to attack.

  Suddenly, the trees rustle again and another two humans emerge. The first one’s a Huntress armed with dual Gauss pistols, her compact frame somehow reminding me of Cerena in the way she walks. She’s obviously a senior Hunter. The way she carries herself is with that air of relaxed control that tells me she’s comfortable with the mantle of leadership.

  But who emerges next to her shocks me.

  I’ve only ever met her once, a fifteen-minute discussion that, regardless of its brevity, changed my life forever. She looks so different now, her dress given up for the same type of field leathers that all Hunters wear, although her only armaments seem to be the leather-like power gloves that amplify the strength of their wearer.

  And from this distance, she doesn’t have the same aura of austere aristocracy she held in the plush meeting room of the embassy. But the height, the stiff-backed posture, the slender build that borders on willowy . . .

  Elizabeth . . . what the hell are you doing here?

  The last we knew, Solace’s current Elder was still in Bane, negotiating with the city’s government for a trade deal. It seems a lot can change in two months. Now she’s back, and not only back in Solace but out in the woods, tracking us down.

  What do the Elders do on a regular basis? I wonder. Shouldn’t the supreme ex
ecutive authority of a city have better things to do than track down four fugitives?

  It’s an interesting question, in my mind. I didn’t have a lot of experience inside Solace, of course, a few days while mending in the hospital and dealing with the Solace visa office. The Hunters and the attached bureaucracy do a good job of the day to day running of the city.

  Well, minus the corrupted asshole who conspired with Bane to facilitate his rebirth. Okay, let me rephrase it. The Solace bureaucracy does an efficient job of running the city.

  But the Elder isn’t a figurehead. That much was evident to me from the moment we sat down with Elizabeth in the embassy and talked with her.

  Perhaps the Elders are akin to a rotating triumvirate of generals or chieftains. Not in office long enough each time to fully destroy the system in case their ideas are off the rails, but also not in office so short a time as to make them ineffective.

  It’s a question to ponder another time, though. Right now, she’s hunting me, and that’s what I need to focus on.

  The Hunters talk so softly with Elizabeth that I can’t make out what they’re saying, but after a minute, the lead Hunter with her points, and they start out again, this time heading for the cave.

  Great . . . we’ve got maybe an hour lead tops on them. It was really two hours, but with me carrying Lance while Brandon dealt with a double-pack load, our progress has been slow.

  That can’t be anymore. Backing away from the ledge, I melt through the woods, far stealthier than the Hunter team, making my way back toward the clearing where I left Cerena and the others. We chose a tree that stands out even in the darkness as our guide point, the split trunk looking like a large V all the way down to the ground itself.

  Turning north, I walk another hundred yards before taking a knee and whistling softly, a trilling note that warbles through the night air. To anyone unfamiliar with these woods, it’ll sound like a night bird. And it is . . . just a type of night bird that doesn’t live in this area because it’s too cold.