Elite: A Hunter novel

by Mercedes Lackey

  And when he finally lay still, Kent said in my ear, “All right, Joy. Ready to bring us another?”

  MORNING CAME, AND WITH it the real fighting, with close-air support and artillery, both from the walls of Zion and the field. At that point, it was clear we’d win this time.

  A pack of three Hounds caught the last fleeing Minotaur and brought it down.

  A small group of us took down the last Drakken.

  And it was over.

  I sat down right where I was, in the churned-up dirt and blood and bits of Drakken. I was on the far side of the carcass, alone, since I’d been blinding it with magical fireworks. All I could do was stare stupidly at the gigantic head in front of me. The head looked to be about half the size of a locomotive, though I could have been wrong about that. I could not believe we’d taken down, not just one, but four of these things.

  All I could think about at that moment was…nothing. I was literally too tired to think. I should have been starving, but I was at the point where I was even too tired to be hungry.

  And that is when I heard a strange, high-pitched keening sound above and behind me that made every hair on my body stand straight up with terror.

  I turned, ever so slowly, looking over my shoulder…and at first, saw nothing except what I took to be a pole or the trunk of a dead tree. Then I looked up…and up…

  If it hadn’t been towering twenty feet over me, I would have said it was a cellar spider—the kind people call “daddy longlegs.” I gaped up at it, a hideous blob-shaped thing with eight shiny eyes looking down at me, slowly clicking its mandibles at me. The blob balanced high in the air on eight legs that would have been spindly—except they were as thick as my arm.

  And only all those years of defensive martial arts and good instincts saved me when it struck at me with one of the front legs. I shoulder-rolled out of the way, but that brought me farther underneath it, and to my horror, I saw a spear of white coming right for me. It could spit webbing!

  Bya hit me and knocked us both out of the way, and the webbing splatted down into the earth where I had just been. If I’d still been there, it would have enveloped me completely. Bya put up his Shield, and belatedly I put up mine, and the next glob of webbing splatted against the combined Shields, leaving us untouched.

  Then the rest of my Hounds appeared. Hold, Strike, Myrrdhin, Gwalchmai, Dusana, Chenresig, Shinje, and Hevajra each swarmed a leg, grabbed it in their jaws, and pulled. Bya and I backed up between Dusana and Chenresig as the Hounds immobilized the giant spider and slowly began to pull it down to ground level, splaying it out so it couldn’t move. That was when I began pumping bullets into the body, while Bya, Kalachakra, and Begtse hosed it down with fire.

  The sound of gunfire brought the other Elite running, or as close to running as they could manage, but by the time they got there, we’d managed to get through the spider’s weak Shield and burn it to a crisp.

  My Hounds let go, and the legs reflexively curled up toward the body, leaving us gazing at a blackened blob in the middle of a forest of twenty-foot sticks.

  And we all stared at the thing.

  “What…is…that?” someone managed as a couple of cams zoomed in from the other side of the dead Drakken and began circling what was left of it, taking pictures.

  “A spider?” I said feebly. “I mean, I guess it’s a spider.”

  “Another new Othersider,” Kent said in disgust. “First snake-men from hell, and now this.” He looked over at Hammer and Steel. “Anything like that in what your ma’s studied?”

  They shook their heads. I couldn’t see their expressions under the masks of caked-on dust and blood and sweat they wore. Disbelief, maybe. Maybe just exhaustion.

  “Where the hell did it come from?” someone asked hoarsely. “It wasn’t anywhere on this field before, was it?”

  They all looked at me. “I dunno,” I said. “I was just sitting here, and then I heard this weird sound, and when I turned around, it was rising up behind me.”

  Kent limped toward the thing, then past it, muttering to himself. Or maybe to his Perscom. He paced about a hundred yards away from us, zigzagging back and forth, looking and muttering. He got to a spot where there were some scraggly trees, looked around some more, and finally came back to us.

  “There’s a hollow place back there. It must have been lying in ambush,” he said. “Body fitted into the hollow, legs folded up.”

  “But…” Scarlet started to object, then shook her head. “Natural camouflage, maybe a little bit of illusion, and its Shield. And luck, that none of the shells hit it.”

  “That wasn’t luck. That was good shooting on the part of the Zion gunners; they only fired when they knew they could hit something,” Retro pointed out, running a filthy hand through his sweaty blond hair. It struck me then, weirdly, out of nowhere, that he looked like a lankier, punkier version of Josh. When you’re bone tired, strange thoughts crop up in your head. “About time we had some luck! For an ambush bug, it was pretty ineffective.”

  “It wouldn’t have been, if Joy didn’t have such a big pack,” said Knight. “That’s all that saved her. Well, that and good reflexes.”

  Retro looked at me and grinned. “You need to keep those reflexes sharp. That’s a good reason to dump the creepy Psimon and start dating me!” he whispered at me. I rolled my eyes.

  Then I sat down again, hard, shaking once reaction set in. I didn’t say anything. Scarlet sat down next to me and buried her head in her hands. She looked like a wreck. We all looked like wrecks. In the time I had been an Elite, I had never seen the team looking this bad after a fight.

  Have you ever heard of anything like that spider thing? I asked Bya.

  Never. He flopped down next to me and morphed into greyhound. This is a new thing. I do not like this.

  Was this what that Folk Mage meant? I asked him reluctantly. Is this why we should be wary? Why nothing is what it seems? Because now they are going to unleash new things on us?

  I don’t know that either, he replied unhappily. I do not like not knowing.

  I bet you’d like to go home, I said with sympathy, and opened the Way.

  That is, I tried to open the Way. It kind of spluttered and died. I was literally out of every possible sort of energy—magical, physical, and otherwise. I looked up at Kent, as the rest of my Hounds gathered around me. “Uh…sir?” I said hesitantly. “I’m…gonna need a chopper all to myself. I can’t send my Hounds back yet.”

  He snorted tiredly. “You aren’t the only one, kid. Do you mind waiting to be picked up last? You’re the best defended of all of us right now.”

  Because of my pack…I nodded. “That’s fine, sir. I can wait.”

  “All right. Let me go organize our rides,” he replied, and limped off.

  I glanced over at Retro, who was sort of slumped over his knees, his eyes glazing over. “You still okay?” I asked.

  He looked at me, and I could tell he had really smacked the wall. “Uh…I guess. Why?”

  “You’re not hitting on me,” I replied.

  He thought about that for a minute. “Then I guess I must be dead, huh?” And from somewhere, all four of us managed a weak sputter of a laugh.

  By the time the choppers came for Retro, Archer, Scarlet, and their Hounds, we were all getting a little bit of a second wind back, but doing anything with magic was right out of the question.

  They left me alone then, until the last chopper could come for me and the pack. I did try to open the Way again, but I just couldn’t manage it. I managed to stagger away from the carcass of that last Drakken and over to the relatively clear area where the choppers were landing. Then I sat down again, with my back against what remained of a shattered tree. For some reason, no one was coming out of the city to scavenge off the Drakken carcasses.

  They have more sense than to bring Drakken pieces into their walls, where they are likely to attract more Othersiders, Bya said dryly. Unlike those fools in Apex.

  He had flopped
down next to me, while the others prowled around me, alert for trouble. I closed my eyes for a moment. I thought I could hear the chopper in the distance. I couldn’t wait for it to get here.

  That was two big city fights with huge Othersiders within a week of each other. And the second one was bigger than the first. The first had clearly been to snag Ace, but why the second? The only reason we’d been able to handle this “Incident” was because we’d had artillery in the field and on the walls, and close-air support. This had been a much bigger force than Bensonville. So…why?

  And was worse to come?

  We’d all staggered into showers, thrown on whatever was at hand, and now were either sleeping in our quarters or trying to muster the energy to eat something. Hounds were flopped down around the lounge, trotted curiously in the hallways, or joined their Hunters in their quarters. None of us could dig up what we needed to send them back, and since the Hounds themselves were replete with manna, they were content to remain.

  It was the first time I had seen Hounds in the halls, but evidently it wasn’t anything new to the other Hunters, because no one paid that much attention to them. So it finally dawned on me that although that fight had seemed like the end of the world, here at Apex, maybe it was just the Elite doing what the Elite did.

  With a pack the size of mine, there just wasn’t enough room in my suite for them all, so although I would have loved to just drink about half a dozen meal-drinks and lie flat on my bed, we were all in the lounge and I was sprawled over a chair. Since they were stuck here until I could muster enough juice to send them home, I wanted to be with them.

  Word had gotten around that the Elite had saved Zion but hit the wall doing so, and the other Hunters were keeping out of our way. I think that was the way pretty much every one of us wanted it.

  My brain would have ordinarily been buzzing with unanswered questions, but I was so tired it felt like my thoughts were forcing their way through tar.

  The only person I felt like talking to was Mark, but Mark was somewhere else. Phooey.

  I wasn’t alone in the lounge, though. Archer was nursing a beer after inhaling more food than I thought any one person could eat, his Hounds all flopped down around him. Scarlet was pensively eating sliced fruit and petting her pack leader; like the rest of her Hounds, he was a mastiff-size bat-winged dog. She had that expression on her face that told me she and he were “talking,” and then she looked up at me and smiled.

  “Djinni says he will work with your pack any time we like,” she said as her Hound looked over at us and nodded. “He is very pleased with how the coordination went.” Bya raised his head and dog-grinned at them both.

  “I can’t believe we all pulled that off,” I admitted. “If I’d had any idea what we’d be doing, I think I might have thrown up.”

  Scarlet laughed, a deep, throaty sound that made Archer look over at her and smile with appreciation. “That’s a silly thing to say. Elite don’t throw up until after the fight is over.”

  I put my head back against the back of the chair and stared up at the ceiling. “What just happened out there?” I asked nobody in particular.

  “It could be the start of what we call a ‘surge,’” Archer said finally. “There was one the year I first went Elite. The Othersiders pick out hard targets and throw so much at them that we’re forced to upgrade defenses all around.” He sighed. “A few bigger cities that don’t have Barriers will have to get them, cities like Zion with walls and 30 mm cannon will have to upgrade to Hellfire missiles, and so on….” He shook his head. “This’ll cost a lot of money, which means less money for other things. That puts stress on the entire system, and a lot of it. That’s one of the drawbacks to making sure the Cits feel safe; they don’t feel any urgency to upgrade defenses, not even for themselves. There’s going to be complaints, and people here in Apex, and New Detroit, and the other cities with Barriers will be saying that the smaller places ought to pay for their own defenses. It sets the Cits in the big cities against the ones in the smaller ones, and the smallest towns against everyone. Then people in villages and small towns demand to be let into the big cities, even though there isn’t room for them.”

  I said out loud the thing Master Jeffries had suggested. “But what if the Barriers have stopped working?”

  “That, my young friend, is something we do not need to worry about,” Archer replied. “That’s for the techs and squints. What we Elite will have to worry about is the callouts until defenses get upgraded. What the rank and file of the Hunters will have to worry about is facing what we are not around to handle. If this is a real surge, that is. It might just be one of those random times when the Othersiders throw a massive attack at us for no reason we can tell.”

  But I could tell from Archer’s expression that he was pretty certain this was one of those “surges.” Probably because of all the things that had been getting past the Barriers here in Apex and the fact that we’d just seen two brand-new sorts of Othersiders in less than a month.

  What do you think? I asked Bya.

  I do not know. And I do not like that I do not know. I am glad we have a big pack; we can keep you safe. He raised his head, and Myrrdhin, who was lying on the sofa across from us, looked back at him and nodded.

  I was thinking of other things…like home, and making sure they were going to be all right. The Monastery will be safe, now I’ve warned them. If things get really bad, everyone can retreat up above the snowline to Safehaven. Even Knight’s people; I don’t think anyone is going to begrudge them shelter just because we haven’t had time to break things to them gently. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time the Mountain had taken in people who didn’t know the secret.

  It may be that this is something else, something new, Bya said, quite unexpectedly.

  Like what? I asked, startled.

  The Folk Mage said to beware, that things were not what they seemed. Bya looked up at me expectantly.

  So? I replied.

  What if he did not mean with us? Bya asked. What if he meant—with Them? What if he meant things are not what they seem with the Folk? What if…perhaps even the Folk have their sort of politics, and those politics affect us?

  I don’t know either, Bya. I shrugged. I guess all we can do is hang on for the ride.

  I finally had enough energy back to send the Hounds all home by this point, and it seemed a good time to do so. You ready to go back? I asked Bya and Myrrdhin. They nodded, and the others got up from where they were sprawled in various parts of the lounge. We moved out into the hall, and since it was momentarily empty, I went ahead and cast the runes there.

  As the last of my Hounds went through, I heard a gasp behind me. I turned, and there was Jessie, although it took me a minute to recognize her. She had her hair pulled back in a tail, and she was wearing the kind of uniform the staff wore.

  “Jessie Knight?” I said, bewildered. “What are you doing”—quick, think of a polite way to say it—“in a crew uniform?”

  She hesitated. “Mistuh Severns said it was all right.” She had a thicker accent than Knight did. “I didn’t bring much t’wear, an’ wearin’ it makes me stick out like a sore thumb.”

  And the stuff Cits wear makes you feel all wrong. I could get that. It made me feel very strange when I’d gotten all that Hunter gear, and I’m not normally one for turning down pretty new clothes. Given what I knew about the Christers from home, she probably found everything but the staff uniforms to be “immodest.”

  “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with wearing what makes you feel comfortable!” I said quickly. “I was just surprised to see you in the uniform is all. Uh, did I startle you? I’m sorry—”

  “I just ain’t never seen the Ang—I mean, Hounds put away before,” she told me. “Mark never does it in front of me.” She seemed a bit defensive to me, but maybe I was just reading something that wasn’t there.

  I shrugged. “Usually we send the Hounds home before we come back to the base, but we were all too tired t
o do that, so we brought them back with us. It was a rough fight—”

  I stopped because she had gone white. “Is Mark—”

  Well, that told me she had no idea what we’d been doing, which was probably just as well. “He’s fine; we’re just all tired. He and I were on the same subteam for the whole thing. Last I saw he was eating one potato stick at a time, with his Hounds around him,” I said. “In the little Elite kitchen.”

  I could tell she was vibrating between running to make sure he was all right, and staying here and being polite. And there was a flicker of something there too. Anger, maybe, that she hadn’t been told this was going on.

  “How d’you know that?” she blurted, and there was resentment in those words. Resentment that I had known where her husband was, and she didn’t. And something else flickered across her face for a moment. Doubt, absolutely, and with it, jealousy.

  Oh boy. I should have known. Christer girls that I knew all worried that Outsiders would somehow come and steal their men. They can’t seem to grasp the fact that a guy and a female can just be friends.

  It probably didn’t help that she’d only been married two days and Mark had run off without telling her where he was going, and that it was a callout. And here I was, telling her basically that I had just spent more time with her husband than she had today.

  But she still didn’t leave…still was held by the manners she’d had drilled into her.

  And now I was torn. What would Mark want? Would he want her falling all over him, fussing at him, when if he was as drained as the rest of us it was all he could do to put one potato stick after another into his mouth? Or would he think she didn’t love him anymore if she didn’t come running to fuss over him?

  “Go on, see for yourself he’s all right,” I said. “The Perscom will show you the way. Just remember he’s probably so stupid-tired he won’t even be able to remember his own name, much less yours. So don’t expect him to make any grand speeches about our magnificent triumph on the battlefield.”