Elite: A Hunter novel

by Mercedes Lackey

  Not that I could claim things didn’t go wrong for my own people when it came to romance.

  So yeah, I shouldn’t judge.

  Even though I was probably going to, anyway.

  All the while I was thinking these things, though, I was also really happy for Mark and not just because I was pretty certain that while Kent was going to make him work for it, he’d pass the Trials. And I was happy for the rest of us on the Elite team too. He actually was Elite material. He’d have to work real hard to get up to speed with the rest of us, but I already knew he’d do that. It wasn’t in him to slack off. I was coming to understand that Elite was more of a state of mind than it was the level of power.

  And also that becoming Elite and being thrown into things you thought you couldn’t handle tended to make you rise to the occasion, fast. Kent never, ever hung someone out to dry and never left someone to cope with something when they really couldn’t.

  But he pushes, and pushes, I realized. Since there’re no fans to please, he keeps raising the bar for me, and I bet he does that for everyone, until he finally does find your real limits. If I’d known he was going to do that, I would have been scared, I think. Since I was just now figuring it out, I was more comfortable with it.

  “It’s about time, layabout,” I said when it was my turn to congratulate him, and I punched him in the arm and we both grinned. “Go get some sleep. And hydrate. And don’t forget the prep I did, and do the same. You are going to need every bit of energy you have, plus ten percent more to get through the whole show tomorrow.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and saluted me. I punched him in the arm again.

  It was extremely surreal to be on the other side of the arena the next morning. Needless to say, although nobody really thought that there would be an assassin lurking in the stands waiting to take down White Knight, nevertheless, under the mercilessly bright stadium lights at dawn, the entire Elite team and all our Hounds scoured those stands for anything bigger than a cockroach, and now that Knight was about to make his Trials, we had Apex PD snipers posted all around the top of the stadium, making sure no one else was going to sneak in once the Trials were started.

  I was standing next to Retro; he was all done up in his skin-tight green and silver and gray “leather” outfit as usual—I don’t think it was real leather because leather doesn’t stretch that tight. He looked over at me and grinned.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey yourself,” I replied cleverly. I’d found out he was the youngest of the Elite except for me, and if I hadn’t been dating Josh, well…he had an interesting face, with a long jaw, and he smiled a lot. I already knew he could startle a laugh out of me. As if he were reading my mind, he grinned at me.

  “So,” he said casually, “when are you gonna drop that Psimon and date me?”

  Then he grinned, and I thought about what I should say. “Got a good reason why I should?” I responded.

  “I’m unpredictable, I’m hilarious, I’m outrageously good-looking, I have a fantastic ass, and you’ll never have to worry about me reading your mind.” He grinned even wider.

  “The answers to those assertions will be: I know, I wouldn’t be too sure about that, no, yes you do, and that’s true,” I said back, not blushing one bit. “Which so far doesn’t give me any reason to dump my boyfriend and date you. Every Hunter has a fantastic ass. It’s not like we sit around eating pizza and playing vid-games all day.”

  He clutched his chest. “Crushed! You have ripped open my chest and crushed my heart! I’ll never love again!”

  “That’s enough, Retro,” said Kent with amusement. “The cams are running.”

  He mock-pouted, then blew me a kiss and got serious. Or as serious as he ever was, outside of a fight.

  Mark wasn’t a ranker, so there was no one waiting to interview him beforehand as there had been for me. When we’d finished checking out the stands, the Elite all assembled at the direction of the armorer, down at the Magic Trial area. Mark was still in the dressing room, I supposed. It was now early morning, and the sun was still below the level of the top of the stands, sending rays of light up into the cloudless sky like a special effect. It was pretty chilly, but once the sun got above those ranks of seats, it would warm up quickly enough.

  And I still didn’t know how Kent managed to get the four Trial areas set up so quickly.

  “All right,” Kent said when we’d all gathered around in the center of the zone. “I decided we’d get the toughest part for White Knight over with quickly, so the Magic Trial is first. Hammer, Steel, Joy, and myself were exempt from being the challenger, and I was going to draw straws, but Archer stepped up and volunteered before I could.”

  I wasn’t the only one to look surprised. Archer just shrugged. “Going to try to redeem myself from the face-plant Hammer put me into in his Trial,” he said.

  Kent shook his head pityingly. “Just remember, buddy, you were the one who asked for this. All right, people, form up. We’ll put up the Group Shield after Knight enters the combat zone. Joy, you start off, since you’re new at this.”

  I nodded, feeling a bit relieved. It would be a lot easier to be the first one up and just have to set up and maintain my Shield from outside it than try to build on what the others did. After all, I’d only ever done Group Shields with my Hounds regularly before this, plus when training Mark.

  Archer took his place at the far end of the combat zone, opposite the entrance to the tunnel under the stands. The rest of us spaced ourselves at roughly equal intervals around the circle and waited.

  I heard the footsteps before I saw him; his Hounds came in ahead of him, flying up and to either side of the zone to land with the rest of ours. He stepped out into the light, and the announcer (whose name I still didn’t know) said over the speakers: “Since Hunter White Knight assisted Elite Joyeaux in preparing for her Trial, he already knows the rules. White Knight, are you ready for the Trial of Combat by Magic?”

  “I am,” Mark said steadily. He was in his usual Hunting gear, the white-and-gold body armor with a matching white pack on his back. He’s going to look a state when he gets done, I thought ruefully. He’ll probably have to burn that outfit; it’ll never get clean. He took the pack off now and set it aside, since weapons weren’t permitted in the Magic Combat Trial. It looked like he’d opted for his usual Hunting load-out—a rifle, a handgun, and a couple knives. Well, after watching me compete, he already knew that in the Shooting Gallery Trial, he’d be given exactly as many targets to take out as he had bullets, and if he missed any, he’d have to take them out by throwing his knives.

  The armorer raised his eyebrows at me, and I took that as the signal to put up my Shield. In short order, the other thirteen had layered their Shields on top of mine. I paid extremely close attention to what they were doing, and they, in their turn, brought their Shields up slowly so I could see exactly how they did it. Next time we had to make a Group Shield, I’d know what to do. When everything was up and good and solid, with no wavering or weaknesses or conflicts, the armorer nodded.

  “Trial One,” the announcer said. “Begin.”

  Archer immediately started moving and shooting, while Mark put up his Personal Shield and made for him. But not at a run; at a deliberate, if brisk, pace. Archer’s arrows kept hitting Knight’s Shield and exploding on it with a force that definitely would have killed him if he hadn’t been Shielded. Mark just kept his eyes fixed on Archer, quite as if there weren’t explosions going off within inches of him, and followed him like some inexorable, unstoppable pursuer in an old horror vid. Meanwhile we had a job on our hands keeping the concussive force of Archer’s arrows contained by our Shields.

  Archer started to sweat a little, although he didn’t stop moving, and his arrows weren’t getting any weaker. But I thought I could see Knight’s strategy now.

  He was going to keep moving, keep his Shield up, and keep Archer on the defensive even though he wasn’t doing anything offensive yet. He was just
going to let Archer wear himself out. Then he’d make his offensive move. He was playing the long game, unlike what I’d done at my Trial. Although I hadn’t had much choice. Ace Sturgis had intended to kill me, either with magic or the hand laser he’d palmed.

  Frankly, it was a bit like watching grass grow, once the initial shock of Archer’s barrage wore off. Bya was lying at my feet, with one of Knight’s Hounds beside him, looking bored. How’s Knight doing? I asked, knowing Bya would know which one of the two was starting to wear out long before I would.

  The Archer is beaten, was Bya’s opinion. He just hasn’t admitted it yet.

  What Mark was doing had a much lower drain on his endurance than Archer’s running and gunning. On the other hand, Archer was putting up a good fight and a good show, and there was always the chance one of his hits would crack Knight’s Shield.

  If he could get Knight to falter, that is, or somehow miss something he was doing.

  Because so far, even when he’d piggybacked a Shield-weakening spell on one of his arrows, Mark had detected it and rather than unraveling it, he had flexed his Shield and actually thrown it off. Disconnected from its job and with no way to anchor back to the Shield it was supposed to gnaw through, the spell curled on itself and died.

  I was so proud of Knight for doing that, I wanted to cheer. Because it meant that even though he was still only using Shields and Walls, he had figured out something else he could do with them. If he could learn how to do that, who knows what else he could learn?

  Definitely Elite material.

  Finally, Knight made his move.

  He picked up the pace of his pursuit, forcing Archer to run a little faster. I’m not sure if I was the only one of the Elite holding the Group Shield who saw Mark put up a little ankle-high Wall just behind Archer, but I know for a fact that Archer was backpedaling too fast to spot it himself.

  He hit it, tripped, flailed his arms wildly, lost his bow. Mark put up a second little Wall behind him, and he tripped over that as well….

  And down he went. Flat on the turf on his back. Before he could scramble to his feet again, Knight pounced, pinning him to the ground with what I can only think of as a “slow” version of his Shield Bash. Within a minute, Archer was being held to the ground, only his own Shield protecting him enough that he was able to breathe. He sure couldn’t get his arms up to fire off his arrows.

  Kent gave it about a minute more, just to make sure that Archer couldn’t somehow throw Knight off. But after that minute was up, it was pretty clear that Archer wasn’t going anywhere, couldn’t defend himself from what Knight was doing, and couldn’t counterattack.

  “Elite Hunter Archer is immobilized,” Kent boomed. “The Trial is over.”

  “Elite Hunter Archer is immobilized,” the announcer echoed. “Trial one: Hunter White Knight passes.”

  Mark immediately let up, backed up, and took down his Shield. Archer dropped his own and lay panting on the turf, his expression the very epitome of chagrin. We dropped Shields, and Mark offered his hand to poor Archer to help him up. Archer took it and got to his feet.

  “Freaking hubris,” he said, but not with any tone of rancor. “I could have let someone else try and take you—but no. I volunteered for that. I brought that one on myself.”

  The group parted to let Mark proceed to the next Trial. He took his time, picking up his pack and settling it carefully on his back, making sure he’d be able to reach everything easily. I happened to know it was the “Shooting Gallery,” and his Shields and his own marksmanship were going to let him get through that one absolutely unscathed. He’d probably have the hardest time with the obstacle course, mostly because that was the fourth Trial and at that point he was going to be exhausted and maybe getting clumsy, but I had absolutely no doubt that he was going to pass.

  I moved to the area for the third Trial, which was going to be the hand-to-hand segment. I honestly did not know how he’d do in this.

  As I expected, he got through the Shooting Gallery in what must have been a record time. There was absolutely nothing in the rules saying that he couldn’t use magic to help him shoot, and he must have; I bet every one of his bullets hit the mark square. The Elite that Kent had picked as Knight’s hand-to-hand opponent was a guy about equal in size and musculature to Knight, although he was older and presumably more experienced. His name—or call sign, I didn’t know him well enough to know which—was Bull. He was the living embodiment of the saying “There are old Hunters, and there are bold Hunters, but there are no old, bold Hunters.” Everything he did was planned and executed with deliberation, and with every bit of all that experience behind it. He never got into arguments with anyone. The two of them sized each other up, and the moment the announcer said, “Trial three: Begin,” they charged each other like a pair of riled-up mountain goats.

  The next ten minutes were shockingly brutal. And I found out what Knight’s hand-to-hand “style” was.

  Nonexistent.

  If there was a polar opposite to the sort of elegant, flowing combat many of my Masters used, it was surely this.

  One thing was for sure, nobody was going to fast-forward through this segment, at least for those who could stomach watching this sort of savagery.

  In the end, I think it was White Knight’s youth and motivation to win that won the fight. Bull was tough and experienced, but Mark recovered faster, and he was pretty desperate to get his girl here. Eventually, he got Bull pinned so that Bull couldn’t move and couldn’t dislodge him and tapped out. When Knight got to his feet, his pretty white-and-gold outfit was smeared liberally with blood, and he had a bloody nose, a split lip, a black eye, and a lot of bruises. But so did Bull. They shook hands, and Mark passed on to the last Trial.

  I ran around the perimeter and up to the stands, where I could see the whole of the obstacle course. And when Mark came out of the tunnel, the announcer greeted him with, “This is the last of the four Trials that will determine if Hunter White Knight attains Elite Hunter status. Are you ready, Hunter Knight?”

  Mark waved a tired hand, signifying that he was.

  “Begin,” said the announcer. And Mark…lumbered out.

  I could tell immediately that he was using all his energy just to keep his Shield up. His progress was absolute agony to watch, and I even wondered if he was going to lose to the timer. But he didn’t stop, and he didn’t call for an end to the Trial. He pushed himself to and past the limits of his endurance and ended the Trial sprawled facedown on the artificial turf of the “safe zone” at the end of the course with less than a minute to spare.

  “Fourth and final Trial is concluded. Hunter Knight passes. Hunter White Knight and pack, welcome as the sixteenth member of Apex Hunter Elite.”

  We didn’t let him lie there, of course. We all piled in on him, not literally of course, but surrounded him.

  I’m going to lick him, Bya said, and I kept Mark from getting to his feet.

  “Hold still,” I ordered, and just as he opened his mouth to ask why, Bya squirmed past the sea of legs around him and began plastering him with licks. The first one went into his mouth.

  “Gah!” he spluttered. “Dog tongue!”

  The rest of us laughed. “It’s cleaner than yours,” said Scarlet.

  “Just hold still, you big baby,” I scolded. “Bya has healing spit, better than anything the medics can do for you.”

  So he sat there until Bya decided he was satisfied. Then Kent helped him to his feet, while the rest of us stood around congratulating him for a little bit. Even Bull, who by this time had gotten himself bandaged up and had come back out for the end of the Trials.

  “You look like five miles of bad road,” Mark said when Bull came up to him and shook his hand.

  Bull snorted. “Go look in a mirror,” he retorted, and about that time, the guys took him off to the dressing room where I presume they stood him under a hot shower while feeding him protein and energy drinks, then took him off to the medics to get himself tended
.

  The rest of us went back to HQ, where a party had been set up in the lounge. It was a party I never got for myself, since Ace’s murder attempt had pretty much derailed any notion of celebrating for all of us.

  All the Elite and a good couple dozen of the other Hunters gathered there, which was a nice, comfortable crowd for a shindig. We all settled back with drinks, waiting for the man of the moment to arrive.

  When he did, we all stood up to cheer.

  He looked around at all of us with surprise; from the look on his face, which was sheer, blank astonishment, he never expected this many of us to show up to congratulate him.

  When the cheering died down and he was settled with a steak sandwich and tall mug of beer, someone started shouting for a speech. He held up his hand, the one with the sandwich in it.

  “Whoa, I am no good at speeches,” he protested. “And it would be a crime to let this fine piece of meat get cold.” He looked around then and smiled—something I don’t think many people but me had ever seen him do. “But I will say this. Thank you. I reckon that’s all that needs to be said.”

  And he looked straight at me when he said it. Which made me feel pretty darn good.

  I HAD NEVER BEEN to a Christer wedding. I’d been to plenty of ours, which are wildly varied but always end in parties. I guessed Christer ones were more solemn.

  All the lounge furniture had been pushed back, and Mark and Jessie were standing in front of the main vid-screen. Those of us who had come were standing behind them, all of us dressed much more formally than we usually were. Mind you, this was not the usual sort of wedding by Christer standards either. They both had been pretty insistent on being married by their own preacher man, and because there was no way Apex was going to let them leave to do that, Kent had arranged for a train to stop long enough to give their preacher the two-way vid link for the ceremony, seeing that nobody on or near the Mountain had the equipment for a two-way link that far.

  I hadn’t actually even seen Jessie before this, since she’d kept much to herself; she was real pretty, though nothing like anything I’d thought. I figured she would be delicate and tiny, but she was almost as tall as Mark and had those lean muscles like Kei had that told me she could probably chop wood and haul water with the best of them. I should have expected that, actually—Mark’s people had it pretty hard where they lived, and no one was likely to be delicate.