The Sylph Hunter

by L. J. McDonald

  You need to sleep, she told him. You’re worn out.

  “I know,” he mumbled, yawning again. “But there’s so much to get ready.”

  It can wait. None of the humans know about this. The queen said nothing was to happen until morning. You can sleep, and then you’ll be able to do useful things.

  “I guess you’re right,” he said, lying back on the cushions with only a little reluctance, his body already turning back to sleep.

  And you’ll be able to see Zalia again! Airi added happily. Immediately, Devon’s eyes shot open and his weariness burned away on a surge of adrenaline.

  Oops, she said, berating herself as she realized how far away sleep was from her master now.

  Zalia and Eapha didn’t say much. Neither of them knew each other very well and both were tired. Instead, they sat together, nibbling at the food until the trays were empty, ignoring any future need to ration in a moment of camaraderie. For Zalia, it had been the best food she’d ever had in her life, though she never remembered how it tasted afterward.

  Eventually, she’d gone back to the room where One-Eleven left her, and fell across her bed. She was asleep immediately.

  She didn’t know how long she stayed that way, but she woke up to warmth and the feel of a bare shoulder under her cheek. Dazed and comfortable, she felt the smooth skin under her face while a hand tenderly stroked her hair, softly enough that it might not have been what woke her.

  Her hand was across his stomach, just lax, and her toes brushed against his leg. She was warm and content and sleepy, but she knew this wasn’t Devon. Zalia sighed, not sure how to deal with this. She didn’t want to break anyone’s heart tonight. All she really wanted to do was get some sleep, in this wonderful bed with a full stomach for one of the first times in her life. Tomorrow would be overwhelming with the work to get the men and women back together and she wasn’t going to be exempt from it. Eapha hadn’t said she was needed, but Zalia had the feeling the queen wanted another woman around who was on her side.

  One-Eleven’s hand slowed, cupping the back of her head as he leaned over to press his lips against her forehead. Zalia kept her eyes mostly closed, barely able to see the curve of his chest in the darkness as she lay there. What had he done? she wondered. Would he honestly have come back and tried to act as though nothing was wrong if he’d killed Devon?

  “I didn’t know when you’d be back,” she said at last, not able to keep silent. “You didn’t…hurt anyone did you?”

  His hand resumed stroking her hair. “No.” Did his voice sound bitter?

  Zalia opened her eyes and twisted her head around so that she could see his face. It was vaguely luminescent in the light of the moon coming through the window. “You said you had to think.”

  “Yeah.” He breathed out, the motion of his chest dropping her down in the mattress and unintentionally closer to him. She didn’t feel shy about it; how could she, given what they’d done together? But she didn’t feel desire either. He was doing nothing to affect her feelings this time, and, she thought with amusement, having more success with her than he would have otherwise. He looked vulnerable for once, and real. “I really messed up getting you to love me.”

  Zalia thought about that for a moment and sighed, rolling away from him and onto her back. He let her, his arm straightening out so that it was under her neck. She adjusted a bit and rested her head on it, staring up at the indistinct shadows of the ceiling. “You can’t make someone love you.”

  “Yes, I understand that. I mean, Tooie told me, but I didn’t listen. Not until now.”

  He looked at her and his expression was so hopeful her heart nearly broke. He was so beautiful, and so sincere, and so utterly, amorally dangerous.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked quietly.

  “Everything,” he whispered. “Just everything.”

  She sat up and slid her legs over the side of the bed, sitting with her back to him and staring at her hands. “I can’t give you everything. I don’t know that I can give you anything.”

  Zalia heard him sit up behind her, imagined him reaching out toward her, perhaps hesitantly. On some level, she might have felt powerful to have such control over him, if only she hadn’t been so miserable. She loved Devon, but when she was here with One-Eleven…she saw such potential between them, yet didn’t, and was afraid of all of it. If only she hadn’t met one of them—only she couldn’t believe that and didn’t want to. Both of them had changed her life so much. Devon’s gentleness, One-Eleven’s passion, Devon’s sweet lovemaking, One-Eleven’s control. She closed her eyes and his hand rested on her shoulder from behind.

  “You don’t have to,” he promised her. “I was thinking…I’ll prove myself to you. I’ll be there for you. No matter what, I’ll be there. You’re first to me, before anything. I swear it. Nothing else matters, not even you loving me back.”

  Zalia turned her head to look at him, her mouth opening for all the words she couldn’t say. She couldn’t think what to say, not at all. Language deserted her. One-Eleven just looked back at her, with his perfect, beautiful eyes she could lose herself in so easily and his flawless body that spoke to the woman inside her, the one that had so recently discovered such a desperate need to be touched. She could go to him now and the ecstasy would be more than any human man would ever be able to provide. He’d always be young and he’d always love her, and she would always be in control of him. She’d lose none of her freedom, not to a creature who had to obey her every whim. She’d always be wanted, no matter how she aged or who she became, and she’d always be safe, because he would kill to defend her.

  She just wasn’t sure that was what she wanted.

  What about having children? She’d never really let herself think about them, but it was there. Devon had told her when he described his life that he’d been used by a battler to father a child for the creature’s lover, and then told to leave. She could have a child the same way with One-Eleven, but did she want that? Did she want her children to have a battle sylph as a father? Did she even want to think about such things right now? She knew she didn’t, not with everything that was to happen in the morning. Already it was horribly late and she was too tired for philosophical thought or even the desires of her own heart.

  “I need to sleep,” she said at last and lay again on the bed, her back to him. One-Eleven didn’t leave; she suspected he wouldn’t unless she directly ordered him to, and there was no compunction yet between them for him to obey. He might not. She didn’t really care anyway. She just closed her eyes and was asleep in seconds, even though she’d thought she’d be awake a long time yet.

  One-Eleven lay beside her, not needing to sleep though he was weaker than he liked, the masters he’d thrown aside for her not available for him to feed on anymore. He’d be all right until she changed her mind, as long as he didn’t stress himself too much. He hoped she changed her mind. She had to, or else he’d go mad.

  The battle sylph stroked her hair gently with his hand, careful not to wake her. Awake, she was filled with doubts and conflicting desires that tried to pull her away from him. Asleep, he could pretend she was his the way he wanted her to be, and take whatever comfort from that he could. It wasn’t much, but it had to be enough. He was what he was. He loved her and would always love her, and nothing would change that. Instinct was too strong and always would be.

  One-Eleven sighed and settled down to share her rest, if not her dreams, while invisible wisps as thin as a woman’s hair drifted up across the closed windows all around them.

  Despite Airi’s efforts to get him to sleep, Devon stayed awake long past when he should have, thinking.

  They were going to survive this, they really were. Between the hive and this place, as well as all the food stored here, they’d have enough to outlast the Hunter. Not that they’d even have to anymore. With the human ability to see the monster, the battle sylp
hs would be able to destroy it. It wouldn’t be easy to approach them, but Devon wasn’t so much of a coward that he wouldn’t say anything, and if he had to, he’d prove it to them. The Hunter would be dead by the day’s end and everyone would be able to reunite with their families. The stupidity of the last few days wouldn’t be repeated.

  It amazed him how much difference a single woman could make, though he supposed it shouldn’t, given how he’d seen Solie take on her responsibilities and how she ran the Valley. Eapha wasn’t Solie though, and Meridal was a very different kind of world. He’d have to help her, he thought with an exhalation of breath. This was what Leon had sent him for, and if he had to ask Airi to carry him back up to that floating palace and force his way into her throne room through a hundred battle sylphs, he would. He’d probably piss himself a few times, but he’d do it. He’d grown too, he supposed. There were hundreds of men safe now because he’d stopped letting himself get crippled by his own doubts. He was trained for this. He’d do it and stop letting himself think he couldn’t. He’d just do it and let the doubts bother him later, after it was done. He knew it wouldn’t be that easy, but if he pretended it was, maybe in the long run it would be.

  Devon sighed, lying there in the darkness of his little alcove on top of a pile of cushions that had been used by concubines and battlers for purposes he did not want to think about, and listened to the sounds of the men and boys all around him. It was mostly quiet, nearly everyone asleep, but the sounds were still there. The muttering, the snoring, and sometimes the weeping. He tried not to listen to it. If it had been him, he wouldn’t have wanted anyone paying attention to his grief.

  In the morning, he’d be able to tell them all that they’d be reunited with their women again, that there would be a passageway linking them, and that the Hunter would soon be dead. He’d probably have a hundred volunteers to lead the battlers after the thing.

  Most of all, he’d see Zalia again. Despite everything else, he kept coming back to that fact. She’d done so much more than he’d dreamed he’d ever be able to, and he was so proud of her. More, he missed her. He hadn’t yet told her father that they were betrothed. He was waiting for Zalia to be with him in order to do that, and to make sure that she hadn’t chosen a battle sylph instead.

  Devon closed his eyes, forcing himself to think positively, to imagine the best happening and ignore his doubts. Tomorrow. Everything would wait until tomorrow.

  Eventually, he slept.

  The sylphs were talking, planning the process of joining the two hives into one, and the Hunter listened.

  It didn’t matter to it what they did, not really. It would be in the main hive soon anyway. If they’d had the passageway they talked about made already, some of the food would flee down it and it could only reach so far after them, but they didn’t have it dug yet. They’d start come the morning, but that would be too late.

  With a final, massive effort, it heaved up a tentacle high enough to latch on to the side of the palace and heard the air sylphs who held it complain in confusion about the sudden extra weight. They weren’t inventive thinkers, so it didn’t worry about them guessing what was going on, but there wasn’t much time to waste. It didn’t have the strength to hold its tentacles over its head for long and it needed to get this done before it used up too much of its food stores.

  Using the one heavy tentacle as a brace, it reached up with more tentacles, anchoring them on to the palace and using them to hold itself as it wormed its way inside, digging deep in search of its target. It would like to suck the entire palace clean and get the queen, causing complete chaos in the hive, but it would settle for its most immediate target—the air sylphs who kept the hundreds of tons of rock from plunging down on the egg-like hive below.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  There were three air sylphs holding up the palace. In actuality, there were twelve who took turns teaming up to support it, but at the moment there were only three, nestled in chambers created for them at different points underneath the palace. Not able to see each other, they still chattered endlessly, holding the palace in place with experienced ease while they talked about the day to come, inadvertently telling the Hunter outside exactly what was happening among the hives. Old and powerful, they were happy where they were, even as they talked about finishing their shifts and returning to their masters, as well as what the hives would be like with the passageway connecting them.

  Since they weren’t aware of it, none of them talked about how humans would help the battle sylphs destroy the Hunter.

  The Hunter carefully reached in, stretching with tendrils only a few inches wide and worming them along the vents that pockmarked the underside of the palace. It reached the air sylph on the westernmost side of the palace first, dangling down out of a crack in the stone above her as she talked about her master’s various ambitions. The tentacle hesitated a moment, shrugging itself to get a bit more length into the crack, and dropped down right into the center of her.

  She died instantly, the energy that formed her pattern immediately breaking down and sucking up into the tentacle, racing along its length to feed the main body. Her hive mates didn’t even feel her death, though they did feel the absence of her power and screamed as the entire palace suddenly lurched to one side. They scrambled to right it and hold it up as the Hunter grabbed a better hold and forced more of itself in, now that the edge was closer to it. Invigorated by the taste of the sylph, it went hunting for her sisters.

  Eapha pitched off the bed and onto the floor when the palace lurched. Startled out of a sound sleep, she screeched in surprise, followed by a yelp of pain that turned into a wail of terror as she slid across the suddenly angled floor toward the wall, the bed and everything else in the room scraping uncontrollably after her.

  Tooie rolled off the bed after her, putting himself between her and the sliding bed and bracing his feet against it as it continued to slide forward. Raking his fingers against the floor for leverage, he kicked outward and the bed flew backward up the slope, smashing into the cabinet and vanity that were trying to come after it. An instant later, the entire collection exploded as he destroyed it and put up a shield around both of them. Bits of wood scattered against it and flew past.

  The floor abruptly righted itself, throwing Eapha back against Tooie as it settled, not quite as level as before, but much better than the sudden slope it had become.

  Thanks to Tooie’s proximity, Eapha could feel the emotions of everyone close by in the palace. Terror, horror, rage, and the roaring of the battlers as they rose to defend against a threat she couldn’t immediately identify.

  “What’s going on?” she shouted, so he could hear her over the thunderous noise.

  Tooie hadn’t joined them, his head cocked to one side while he listened. “One of the air sylphs is gone,” he told her.

  “Gone?” she shrilled, suddenly terrified. Where? How? None of them would ever abandon a duty. It was too ingrained in them, even without orders.

  The floor dropped out from under them, Eapha suddenly too breathless to scream as it dropped no less than five feet before it stopped again, the palace trembling as if it were a live thing as frightened as her.

  “Another air sylph is gone!” Tooie shouted. His own terror was tempered by his growing rage as he grabbed her arm, somehow getting to his feet and pulling her up as well. Eapha clung to him, afraid of the floor dropping away again, or of the entire palace falling. How many sylphs were supposed to be holding it up right now? She couldn’t remember. Where did they go?

  They weren’t gone, they were dead. The epiphany hit her with perfect clarity, bringing with it a calmness she was pretty sure would turn back into uncontrollable terror in a heartbeat if she let it. Tooie stared at her, picking up on her emotions but not understanding them. Of course he wouldn’t, she thought. He wasn’t an intuitive thinker. The whole reason she had to be the queen was because the sylphs weren’t shr
ewd, only she’d been so stupid and convinced of her own inadequacy that she hadn’t let herself be the queen until it was too late, and it definitely was too late.

  “Get me out of here,” she told her battler, her voice clear even over the screaming of the women in the palace and that endless, growing roar of almost seven hundred battle sylphs all rising at once. “No matter what, get me out of here.”

  So she could salvage this, if there was anything left to salvage once it was over. She knew what was happening, even if Tooie didn’t, and she knew he didn’t. The confusion in him was obvious to her, along with the absolute trust he had in her to understand what was happening and figure out how to deal with it. Eapha hoped he was right in his faith, but like Devon only a few hours before, though in far more desperate circumstances, she put her doubts aside for the needs of the moment, the first of which was her own survival.

  Tooie grabbed her up in his arms, holding her against his chest for a moment before he shifted to his cloud form and darted outside, Eapha cushioned on blackness that surrounded her as she felt him arch up, heading into the sky above the palace.

  “I need to see!” she told him.

  He shifted a bit, the part of his belly closest to her eyes turning translucent. Eapha stared down, feeling vertigo swamp over her as she looked down through the darkness at the palace, lurching and trembling in place. Below it, the hive was a rounded shape covered even more than the rest of the night-darkened city by the palace’s shadow, and from the main gate and every suddenly opened vent, battle sylphs rose, lifting in a cloud of black rage she couldn’t see save where it was sparked with lightning, rising to defend against the impossible.

  The Hunter? Tooie asked her.