The Sylph Hunter

by L. J. McDonald

  He flew up to the palace, flanking a few air sylphs who could carry their own future masters and some battlers carrying the other elementals who couldn’t, along with the women chosen to replace the men who used to own them. None of them looked as happy as One-Eleven felt, but he guessed the elemental sylphs didn’t much care what gender their masters were. They were asexual after all.

  One-Eleven darted around them, flitting up and onto the balcony that was being used as a landing zone for the newcomers. Yahe stood there, looking a bit put out while he watched them arrive and guarding against danger. He’d probably hoped to still be with Kiala, One-Eleven supposed, but didn’t care. Sylphs needed new masters to feed from, now that the men were gone, and someone had to guard the queen, even if no one here was an actual threat to her. The Hunter certainly wasn’t. Not even the elementals believed the Hunter could reach her this high in the air.

  Shifting as he came in, One-Eleven landed in human form and caught Zalia before her momentum could tumble her to the floor. She crashed against him, staring up into his face with her eyes wide, her lips open and pursed, her hair tangling around her face. She looked so beautiful that he wanted to take her away and make love to her now. Five minutes, he promised himself with a grin.

  “Come on,” he told her, taking her hand in his own and running down the hall with her trailing behind him, fighting to keep her feet and match his pace. Her emotions were a riot of a thousand different feelings, all jammed up so much that they were hard for him to sort out. He was more interested in what she’d be feeling in a few minutes anyway, once she was his master.

  The hall was half full of women newly bonded to elemental sylphs, all of them looking a bit dazed, their sylphs disconcerted. They moved out of the way of One-Eleven and Zalia and he ran with her into the presence of the queen.

  Zalia didn’t have time to catch her breath as One-Eleven rushed her down a hallway. He didn’t even give her a chance to say anything, though she doubted that was because he was afraid she’d tell him no. She doubted he even realized what he’d done to her, or what he was doing now. He was just reacting in a way he thought right, and even now she could feel his lust flowing through her again. If he wanted, he could have her again, and she despaired inside a bit as she realized it. The way he made her feel turned her inside out and left her gasping, incomplete without him, even though she’d only minutes ago been with a man who’d said he loved her and whom she loved back. Still, when One-Eleven looked back over his shoulder at her, grinning so happily, her heart clenched, her wrist aching where he held it too tightly.

  He towed her into a room made opulent with rich woods and silk cushions, tall windows filling the far wall and letting in the light, even as they showed a lethal drop down to the hive below. She was back in the floating palace, she realized in surprise. This was where Devon needed to be, negotiating with the queen to save them all.

  The realization of that shocked away the lust building in her. There were more people in the room this time; women and sylphs both, since she doubted the men she saw were actually human. Zalia looked at the battler standing beside Eapha. He had his hand on her shoulder and was massaging her muscles.

  Sylphs of every variety were bringing human women before the queen. Eapha didn’t do anything and Zalia didn’t see anything happening, but the battler beside her looked very focused, his hand never leaving his lover’s shoulder, and after a moment the women would start or cry out, suddenly turning to the sylphs beside them with shock or amazement. None of them looked as if they really understood what was going on.

  Zalia understood it. The women were being bound to the sylphs, without their understanding and therefore without their consent. They’d just been brought here and the queen wasn’t even asking them if this was what they wanted. She only stood there, her eyes troubled, while her friends gathered behind her making jokes at the newcomers’ expense.

  One-Eleven looked over his shoulder at Zalia, his face flawlessly perfect and so handsome that even now her heart surged to have his attention on her. “Are you all right?” he asked. “It won’t take more than a moment, promise. And it doesn’t hurt at all.”

  Zalia’s mouth went dry. She couldn’t talk to him. He turned her so inside out it was all she could manage to have pushed him away the first few times they met. Now that he’d made love to her, her body ached for him, screaming with need. He smiled and that made the feeling a hundred times worse. Her body wanted him, wanting him on her and in her, moving against her with a slow languishment that would take her to heights mere humans could never reach. He would honor her and love her, and all she had to do was let it happen, as she’d let him making love to her happen. Just hang on and ride.

  The woman and sylph before her stepped away, the queen’s friends laughing at the girl’s astonishment on suddenly being bound to a floating ball of fire. Zalia found herself staring right at Eapha, who didn’t even bother to meet her eyes, looking disconnected from everything before her as she listened to her friends. Just hang on and ride.

  That was exactly what this woman was doing and it was killing them all.

  Before she could think about what she was doing, Zalia stepped forward and slapped Eapha right across the face.

  If she’d been a man, she would have been dead in a heartbeat. Zalia realized that an instant after she struck, and almost panicked, which would have also gotten her killed. She was a woman though, she realized, and the battlers were working solely on instinct. They didn’t know how to protect their queen from a woman.

  Her friends did.

  “Hey!” one woman behind Eapha shouted. Zalia hadn’t been able to focus on the queen’s friends much in her last visit, but she did recognize her as one who seemed to think that everything was a joke. That only infuriated Zalia further.

  “Shut up!” Zalia shouted, pointing at the angry woman. She turned back to Eapha. “Do you know what’s happening in this city because of you? Do you?”

  The other woman stormed toward her, not willing to back off. Eapha was just staring, one hand to her cheek while the battler beside her stood with his hand still on her shoulder, watching Zalia and the other woman with a very calculating expression. The other battlers were frozen in shock, including One-Eleven.

  “Don’t you make anything her fault!” the woman yelled. “She shouldn’t have to worry about some stinking city!”

  “Then she shouldn’t have given up being a slave!”

  In the sudden silence, Eapha rubbed her cheek. “Kiala,” she started to say.

  “No!” Kiala snapped. “This bitch doesn’t belong here! She has no right to accuse you!”

  Zalia was livid. “I have every right,” she breathed. “I was there when Leon brought her out of slavery. I was there when she gave her word she’d change things. I was there when she was made a queen and left the rest of us behind!”

  Eapha turned white while Kiala sneered. “You have no right to talk to us at all. You don’t know what we went through.”

  Actually, Zalia suspected she’d learned exactly what they went through with One-Eleven the other night. She didn’t want to say so, not to this angry woman, not when she was so angry herself. One-Eleven stared at her, his eyes huge and his mouth hanging open, more like a startled little boy than the battle sylph he actually was. For once, he wasn’t affecting what she felt, too shocked to do so. He continued to hold her arm, probably without thinking.

  She turned back to Eapha, who still had a hand to her cheek. The battler with her continued to watch, his gaze on Eapha, and Zalia suddenly realized that, much as Kiala wanted her to shut up and leave them responsible for nothing, that battler wanted Zalia to say the things he apparently couldn’t.

  “We warned you about the creature that’s hunting everyone in the city,” Zalia said directly to Eapha, trying without success to shake One-Eleven’s grip off her arm. He kept holding her, staring at the battler behind
the queen in confusion. That one glanced back at One-Eleven once, only briefly, and his grip tightened to a burst of pain before he let go and stepped back. Zalia didn’t really notice, though she had pause to consider it later, when she thought about the madwoman she’d become and its consequences.

  “We warned you about it,” she continued, “and you let them throw us out. Me? Fine, I don’t care. But you threw out the ambassador sent by the man who saved you.” Eapha flinched. “He came here to help and you ignored him.”

  “So?” Kiala started, but Eapha raised a hand, her face white. Kiala looked angry at that, but the battle sylph with Eapha glared at her and she quickly shut her mouth, the other friends of the queen surrounding her and urging her away. She only backed up a few feet and the room still felt crowded with so many people and sylphs in it.

  “Since then,” Zalia continued, inexorable, “the sylphs have made a hive, but not everyone’s invited. The battle sylphs have kidnapped every single woman in the entire city and brought them to the hive without their husbands and sons, and they’ve thrown every single man out, even the ones who are masters.” She gestured furiously at the women who were huddled behind her, all of them watching in fear. One-Eleven looked back at them as well, suddenly seeming guilty.

  “Did you stop to wonder why so many people were coming to you?” she thundered. “Did you care? Did you wonder how many of them were actually asked if they wanted to be masters? I know I wasn’t!”

  One-Eleven gasped.

  “I…” Eapha managed. “I…”

  “Half this city has been left to die!” Zalia shouted, tears running down her cheeks as she realized that half included her father. “And just in case they manage to avoid the Hunter, the battlers guaranteed it by taking all the food! They left us nothing!”

  “I didn’t…”

  “You should have!” Zalia screamed. “You’re the queen! Stop being such a coward!” She pointed at the woman’s friends. “Stop listening to them tell you you’re useless! You can’t afford to be! A bad queen will keep more people alive than these things!”

  Everyone stared at her, standing there gasping now with tears running down her face, not knowing what to say anymore. The fury that had driven her was running out, leaving her drained and scared, wanting nothing more than to be with her father or Devon; just for someone to hold her. It was One-Eleven who sensed it and put his arms around her, warm and perfect. He didn’t fill her with his lust this time and she was grateful for that. Zalia stared at Eapha, knowing she was going to feel so ashamed of herself once the anger fully wore off, part of her already wishing she could take it all back and just have stayed silent while the queen stared back at her, face pale, eyes wide. Her friends moved toward her, cooing that Zalia was wrong, that she was just bitter and she didn’t understand them. All of them gave a dozen reasonable excuses for her to continue to do nothing, since then it meant that they would have to do nothing.

  Eapha shrugged them off, her battler stepping between her and them once she raised her hand. She was trembling, her lips thin and tight, but she didn’t meet Zalia’s gaze with any less fear than Zalia was feeling herself.

  “All right,” she whispered.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  By the time Devon reached the square in front of the hive, his fury had faded, replaced again by his more common-sense comprehension of how this got Zalia back into the hive just the way he’d wanted, as well as exactly what a battle sylph could do if he dared to confront him. He still kept going, his heart pounding as he prayed despite everything that he’d find Zalia outside waiting for him.

  Not surprisingly, that didn’t happen. There were a great deal of men there, even more so than before. Devon had thought that more of them would be headed underground, since there wasn’t any way for them to get into the hive itself. It became obvious to him pretty quickly that none of these men had been here when he passed by the day before.

  Oh, Devon, Airi mourned. They’re the masters. They’ve been turned out.

  Devon stood and stared, belatedly recognizing several of the men he’d seen in the hive by the fountain, singing or playing music for their air sylphs to dance to. There were no air sylphs with them now, no sylphs with any of the men who stood there. Some were yelling along with the rest of the men to be let in, others looked betrayed, and many were the numb, broken things who’d wandered aimlessly or huddled in doorways.

  “Devon!”

  Devon turned, seeing Xehm hurrying toward him through the crowd, dragging Gel along with him. The old man looked relieved to see him.

  “I was afraid I wouldn’t see you again, boy,” Xehm said, smiling ruefully as he shook Devon’s hand. “They threw us out.”

  Gel looked around them in a daze, his eyes wide with fear. “Where’s Shasha?” he said. “Where is she?”

  Xehm ignored his question, studying Devon. “Where’s Zalia? She’s still inside, isn’t she?”

  Devon swallowed and nodded. “Yes. She’s safe.” She was, after all. Right now, there was no safer place in Meridal, and she had work to do there, no matter what he thought of her rescuer. Realizing it hurt.

  We could never get her out anyway, Airi mourned. She loves you though. She’ll remember that.

  Devon hoped that she could.

  “We should go,” he told the two men. “There’s a place for us, in the underground feeder pens.”

  Gel stared at him abruptly, his eyes wide. “What?” he whimpered. “There’s a monster down there. I saw it.”

  “I know,” Devon soothed, kicking himself for forgetting where they had found the man. “The monster’s not there anymore and it’s a place we can go to keep safe from it. We need to tell these men about it and go now.”

  “But Shasha,” Gel protested. “I can’t leave Shasha.”

  “It’s all right, son,” Xehm soothed, putting an arm around the younger man. “We need to go.”

  “Go where?” the former feeder asked. “Shasha is all I have. She misses me.”

  Devon and Xehm looked at each other. Devon was sympathetic toward the broken man, but the space between his shoulder blades was starting to itch again. They had to go, with as many men as would come with them. He’d wonder about how he was going to feed them all later.

  “Gel, Shasha isn’t coming. We have to go.”

  Gel just shook his head. “She’s coming. I know she’s coming. Look.” He turned toward the hive and pointed vaguely at it, his finger aimed nowhere near the darker stone of the gateway entrance.

  As if he’d somehow taken on the powers of an earth elemental and done it himself, the stone rippled and ripped wide, revealing a tunnel more than fifteen feet long.

  A half-dozen fire sylphs zipped out, all of them condensed into balls of floating flame, followed by water and earth elementals in a dozen different shapes. Devon didn’t see the air elementals, but he felt the wind of their passage when they swept past him, spreading out through the crowd.

  Shasha came last, stomping heavily out of the passageway despite her slight frame, her ruby eyes gleaming. Her entire stance exuded fury as she looked back at the opening she made and it closed in on itself, before any of the men could recover from their shock and try to get through. It sealed completely, with barely a mark showing from her efforts as she lumbered forward, grumbling under her breath.

  Gel pulled free of Xehm and dashed toward her, skidding on his knees for the last few feet and into her arms, sobbing in his relief. Devon walked over to join them, a silent Xehm at his side. Throughout the crowd, the other elemental sylphs were finding their own masters, to the men’s shouts of joy.

  Shasha looked up at Devon, his face reflected in her eyes.

  “I didn’t think you were coming,” he said to her.

  “I was told I could pick my master when we were freed. I haven’t changed my mind.”

  Devon looked toward the h
ive. “I still didn’t think you were coming.”

  Shasha snorted derisively. “There is no queen to stop me.”

  Oh, Airi mourned. This is a bad place, to have no queen.

  Somehow, Devon doubted Shasha meant the queen left. Eapha’s indifference was worse than that. “Why not let us into the hive?” he asked her. It still was the safest place, though with a half dozen of each type of elemental, they might just be able to guarantee their survival in the feeder pens.

  Shasha looked at him again. “The battlers would stop that.”

  Devon shuddered. “Right.” He looked at the hive again, breathing a silent promise, which Airi echoed, that he wouldn’t leave Zalia in there forever. When he could, he’d come for her. And he’d love her no matter what she did until he could.

  “We should go,” he said yet again, this time very softly.

  The men moved, Xehm standing close beside Gel as the broken man rose, though Shasha was closer still. Wiping his eyes, the former feeder stood, lifting his head though his shoulders were still hunched, and froze. Shasha shot him a sudden look, her hand gripping his arm. “Gel?” she asked.

  Gel was shaking, sweat pouring down his face, and his eyes wide. He started breathing in short, shallow gasps and Devon grabbed his shoulders, suddenly terrified himself. “Gel! What is it?” Gel was staring straight past him and Devon turned, looking behind himself and fully expecting in his growing terror to see people being devoured.

  All he saw were men milling about, watching the sylphs reunite with their masters and try as they had all day to decide what to do next.