The Hunted

by Anna Leonard

  She wasn’t finished with him, but allowed herself to be coaxed away from the moisture-slick heft so that he could kiss her again, feeling his hands reach down and cup her ass, fitting her against him even as he rolled them both onto their sides. All four legs scissored, he slid inside her, moving gently, her hands curling up to his shoulders, his on her hips. It was gentle and smooth, like, she thought a little hazily, rocking back and forth in the waves, as the tide rolled in, and that thought made her smile even as the first stirrings of her orgasm made her toes curl and her neck arch, and Dylan shuddered, deep within her.

  The sex had been for reassurance, not passion, but was no less satisfying for that, and they both fell asleep, still wrapped around each other, well before the ten-o’clock news came on.

  It was too quiet. There was always noise in the morning; the clatter of wheels on the cobblestone, voices rising over the squawk of the gulls overhead, the creak and groan of ropes and planks from the ships coming into the dock or casting away. This silence was…uncanny.

  They walked up from the beach, water dripping from their legs, looking for the scores of children racing down to meet them, the cats walking stiff-legged and sniffing for treats, the old men mending nets…

  Nothing. No sounds. No motion, save the gentle swaying of the boats where they were tied up, waiting for use.

  They walked on the cool sand, onto the wide path that led into the village, and saw no one. The single sound drew them forward, and they knew what they would see before they came to it. A pile, covered by gray-and-white winged bodies picking and pecking at the flesh. Gulls did not distinguish between fish or human flesh; it was all food to them.

  “Gods be merciful,” one of them said, trying to see the pile as the gulls did, and not the formless flesh of those he had once known, embraced, shared meals and laughter with.

  They did what they had come to do; once the scavengers were driven away, oil was poured over the obscenity, driftwood gathered and set to it and the makeshift pyre set alight.

  They did not stay to watch their kin burn. Their lives snuffed out, their souls long-fled, there was nothing left in that colony. None of the seal-kin would return, not for two generations or more. Not until the memory of the village-that-had-been was faded from the Hunters’ memory, and the stink of death was gone….

  Dylan opened his eyes to the darkness. He did not move, caught up still in the memory. He had not been there, on that terrible day. He knew no one who had; it had occurred five generations before, when the Hunters came in boats with sails, not motors. It was the last wholesale slaughter, the last time they were caught entirely unawares.

  “Waves speed you home,” he whispered into the darkness, feeling Elizabeth snuggle into his side, as though sensing his unhappy memories and seeking to comfort him even in her sleep.

  Today they would set their plan in motion, using the Hunters’ own assumptions to lure them, and their weaknesses to trap them. He hoped.

  She turned in her sleep, one hand coming to rest on his bare shoulder, and he covered it with his own hand. The plan was a good one. It could work. It might work. But she did not know, could not truly understand what they faced. He could show her, the same way he had been shown—the shared memories of his kind. Their kind. But there was no reason for it. He already knew what her response would be. Not fear, not disgust, but anger, and even more determination to follow through with her plan.

  It was their only chance, not only to survive, but also to be able to live, without fear or constant flight. He approved.

  But still, the image lingered in his memory, brought forward the same way he had known how to act in purely human society: the bloodline ensuring that memories were shared, pooled and passed down to ensure that nothing was ever forgotten, to ensure their survival. Hunters were danger. Hunters were death.

  He had never seen the skinned remains of a Hunt. But he knew intimately what they looked like. What their tortured bodies smelled like, in the funeral pyre. The taste of bitterness and regret in the throats of those who found them.

  “Oh my god.”

  She sat up, woken not calmly, as he had been, but abruptly, painfully, kicked from her pleasant dreams by his own pained thoughts.

  Dylan didn’t react fast enough to catch her as she flailed, one arm thwapping him across the face. He hadn’t expected her to sense anything. The connection had obviously gone deeper, faster than he had expected. Even as he took her in his arms, he found a quiet joy in that: she was bound to him now, soul as well as body. She would soon forget about her old life, and join him willingly, joyfully.

  Assuming they survived long enough.

  “What… They had been skinned.” Her body was still shuddering. “They skinned them alive.”

  She had seen what was in his memory. Had felt the same things he felt; the same things those original men had felt. Had absorbed the bloodline’s memory.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he apologized to her, holding her as she cried.

  “They did nothing, nothing!” she cried, outraged.

  “They had what the Hunters wanted. That was enough.”

  “Not them.” She shook her head, angry at him now, that he didn’t understand. “The men who found them. They burned the bodies and just left. Why didn’t they do something?”

  He should have known. This, Dylan thought, was why he was sent to find Beth Havelock; why of all the women, all the possible women in the world, she was his mate. Tough but loving, fair and fierce, and she thought like a human—and therefore like their human predators. She might be the saving of them all, in the end. And shorter term…he thought with pleasure that their pups would be a handful, but he was smart enough not to say that to her just yet. He already knew—and his smarting face could attest—that she had a cruel backswing.

  “What would you have had them do, Elizabeth? Chase after armed men, men who are violent by nature and by choice?” He had agreed to her plan because it was the only way they could safely go home. But she had to understand what had been before, if she had any hope of understanding her heritage. “We are not warriors, my love. Poets and artists, yes. Protectors of our homes and families, yes. But not warriors. Not fighters-by-choice. The Hunters come and go, and those who survive…they don’t have the taste for vengeance.”

  “Yeah? Well, I do.” She pulled away from him, and her eyes were flat and hard. “These bastards come and think they can treat you like…like cattle. Like something to be harvested. A cash crop. War is bad enough, but to kill for money, someone who never hurt you, never did anything to you… I’d hunt them by choice. I’d pick up a gun or a club and give back as good as they tried to give me.”

  “You’re a throwback,” he said, smiling, threading his fingers through her hair, fluffing it out of pillow-head, back to its normal gloss. “Like our sailor ancestors who fought to survive. Fierce. Determined.”

  He thought he was saying something good, so when she looked like he had slapped her, Dylan was lost.

  “Elizabeth?” His words had triggered something, something bad.

  “I wasn’t fierce. I was a coward.” She curled up in the bed, her arms wrapped around her knees, her head bent forward so that he could no longer see her face.

  He started to reach out to her, and then hesitated, not knowing the right thing to do.

  “How have you ever been a coward?” He had only known her a week, but nothing in his experience suggested that she could ever be anything less than forward and brave. Hadn’t she trusted him, and swum, and survived?

  “I didn’t want to deal. I hid. I’ve always hid.” She took a huge gulp of air, making her shoulders heave with the effort. “I’ve spent the last decade hiding.”

  “Tell me,” he said, not pushing. He had triggered this; he needed to help her through it. He owed that to her, to take on her pain, as she had shared his.

  There was silence, and he thought that she had gone too far into herself, that she would not share this with him. Then she
began to speak.

  “My family…we always argued. My dad and me, my cousin Tal—he’d lived with us since we were kids. We were still kids. And he and my dad were going at it that day. My mom rolled with it—she was used to it. But I couldn’t stand listening to them. We were going out. The four of us, into Boston for dinner. Nothing special, no occasion just…something we did, occasionally. But they were still fighting and my head hurt and I was tired of dealing with it all. So I told them I had too much work to do.

  “I didn’t. I was always on top of my schoolwork. My folks knew that. But they let me stay home. Tal…Tal was pissed at me. He wanted me there to distract my dad, or something, I don’t know. But I didn’t do it.”

  He already knew that she was an orphan, so there wasn’t so much foreboding as a deep sense of sorrow for what she must have faced—and faced alone.

  “They never came home. A truck hit them, the cops said. Slammed into the car and kept going. The car flipped over the embankment, something sparked. By the time anyone got there…the car was already in flames. Nobody got out. They never caught the guy, no idea who he was, without witnesses. Nobody was ever charged. Far as I know, they never even had a suspect.”

  “And you think you should have been there? You should have died?”

  She almost laughed, a watery-sounding hiccup. “I don’t have a death wish, no. And I don’t think there was anything I could have done…but I wasn’t brave, or fierce. I hid from a stupid, silly argument between two people who loved each other, because I didn’t like hearing them yell. And you call me fierce?” The loathing in her voice now was thick, sticky, and directed entirely at herself.

  “Very, very fierce, yes. Fierce and sad and scared and angry at them for leaving you like that, and guilty for being angry, yes? How old were you?” he asked softly, reaching finally for her hand, relieved when she let him pry it off one knee and hold it in his own. Her fingers were cold.

  “Fourteen. Tal was fifteen. We were exactly a year and a week apart. He was more my brother than a cousin. After his parents died… You look like him, a little.”

  “He was seal-kin, too. Like your father. A Havelock.” Amazing, after so many generations, that the blood seemed to run true.

  “Yeah. I guess. His mom was my dad’s baby sister. She died when Tal was a baby—breast cancer. I don’t remember her at all. Bob and Glory, they took care of me, were my legal guardians until I went to college, and…”

  Dylan tugged at her hand, relieved when she only resisted a moment before letting him pull her into a gentle embrace, her head leaning on his shoulder. She was crying, quiet wet tears that fell onto his skin like rain on water, but her breath was slow and even. Unlike her fierce anger, her grief was contained, private. The difference fascinated him.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured, knowing it wasn’t enough, but hoping it helped. She felt warm and delicate in his arms, a totally different sensation from the previous night. The endless facets to her, to his reactions to her, fascinated him. It would take forever to learn them all, these sharp edges and gentle curves. He suspected that he wasn’t anywhere near as complicated, and hoped she wouldn’t become bored.

  She hiccuped again and pulled away, wiping her eyes with the back of one hand.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Me, too. I don’t… I must look like hell.”

  Her face was splotchy and her eyes were bloodshot, and her hair was matted from sleep and sweat. “Nothing a hot shower won’t fix.”

  She almost smiled. “That was always my dad’s cure, too. Your people have hot showers?”

  It was a distraction, but they both needed it, so he grabbed it with both hands. “Indoor plumbing, and television, even! Although we haven’t brought in cable yet. And we haven’t quite figured out how to wire the village for Internet yet. We have to go to the next island over, which has Wi-Fi.”

  She stared at him as though she thought he was kidding.

  “We don’t live out on rocks with the seals,” he chided her, and watched that adorable blush rise up the side of her neck again.

  “I’m sorry, I guess I thought…”

  He settled her more comfortably in his arms and started to spin her a picture of his home.

  “Our village is, oh, twenty or twenty-five cottages. They’re all cedar-sided and thatched, mostly two stories. We’re not much for bright colors, mainly because they fade so fast, anyway. My mother’s house is a pale blue, set up on the hill, and you can sit on the porch and watch the kin sun themselves while you drink your coffee in the morning—my mother loves her coffee.”

  “The seals don’t come to visit?”

  He laughed at the thought. “No. They have a rookery out in the harbor… When storms are really bad they sometimes come in to the shelter of the docks, but they’re not house pets. You would not want them in your living room, trust me.”

  He thought of the feel of a kin-cousin swimming next to him, the brush of their whiskers, the stink of their breath…

  “No, you definitely don’t want them at the dinner table.”

  “Are they fierce?”

  “Yes. They can be.” She was more seal than many seal-kin. Was the connection somehow purer in her, for the isolation? “They’re predators, for all their big brown eyes and sweet manners. The old bull who taught me how to swim, he had taken on a great white shark when he was younger, had the scars to show for it.”

  “Did he win?”

  “You go fin to fin with a shark and live to tell about it, you won.”

  “Good point.”

  Her body was relaxed again, and the tightness had left her voice. He hated to do or say anything that would ruin it, but…

  “We need a weapon. Something more than that knife.”

  But she beat him to it. As usual.

  “Do you know how to use one?”

  “Oh. No.” She paused. “I swing a mean softball bat, though. You?”

  “I know how to use a knife. That’s why I bought that one. But I’ve…never used it on anything other than fish.”

  “The late, lamented barracuda?”

  “Nobody missed it a bit, trust me.” If needed, could he use that curved knife on a human? On something that walked and spoke and laughed and had family?

  He thought of his lovely, soft-skinned Elizabeth, scraped raw and tossed aside to bleed to death, and he knew that yes, he could use that knife, and anything else that came to hand, to defend her. Seal-kin weren’t seals, but the old bull had taught him more than just swimming.

  “By now they’ll have torn through the Boston station and figured out I wasn’t on the bus. They’ll be backtracking, looking for a pair, figuring out what bus we were on, where we got off. We have to be ready when they get here.”

  “We will.”

  Together—his knowledge and hers, his skills and her determination combining to outsmart the Hunters—they might actually be able to stop them, once and for all. This group, anyway. And…maybe more. Maybe all of them, forever.

  With that thought, he kissed her on the forehead, and reluctantly untangled himself in order to get out of the lumpy, too-soft bed. He already knew she would need coffee before she was ready to do anything, much less face down a pack of soulless killers. And he was craving a bacon-and-cheese sandwich.

  They were going to have to start raising pigs in the village, that was all there was to it. He said that out loud, and Beth laughed. “No fast food nearby?”

  “Not for an hour’s swim,” he admitted. “There was rumor of a Starbucks coming in, but that was just wishful thinking. We eat pretty healthy, out of necessity, although there’s a pretty strong demand for processed sugar and chocolate from anyone who goes to the larger islands on a regular basis.”

  She watched him finish getting dressed and mentally started listing the things they would need in order to set the trap. It was simple—she was a firm believer in K.I.S.S.—but it wouldn’t do to skimp on anything.

  “I hope that bitch is with them,” she said out l
oud, interrupting her own thoughts. “I really want her to go down for the count, hard.”

  “Fierce,” he said, and this time she heard it as he meant it, as an endearment.

  “Maybe. Usually in our human, American society, it’s the males who are all gung ho and bloody-minded.” Beth started to laugh. “I never saw myself as the Sarah Connor type.” He looked confused, and she reminded herself again not to take any cultural references for granted. “Never mind. I’ll introduce you to the wonders of movies later.”

  Cable TV. She wouldn’t really miss fast food—she didn’t eat it much, either—but he expected her to live without cable?

  Survive first. She echoed Ben’s imagined words of advice. Squabble over who has the higher standard of living, later.

  She got out of bed wrapping the sheet around her, and marched over to the plywood desk that was all the furniture the room offered, beyond the bed and a rickety wooden chair. “Paper. I need paper, and a pen, and a knife. Dylan, give me your knife.”

  It was getting easier to ignore the fact that he walked around without a stitch of clothing. All right, she admitted, not easier as such. But knowing that she could reach out and touch, run her hand down his flank, and know that the shudder that trembled through his muscle was arousal and anticipation…that knowledge took the edge off the distraction, let her file it under “later.”

  Beth placed the paper on the table and took up the pen. Her hand was too steady, and she scowled at it. That wasn’t going to work.

  “Kiss me.”

  Dylan’s expression was priceless, caught somewhere between little-boy-astonished and grown-man-hopeful.

  “Oh, just kiss me. My hands are too steady and I need them to shake.”

  Her explanation sounded lame the moment it came out of her mouth, but she didn’t have time to regret it before Dylan was across the room, his lithe form moving almost as fast in the air as he did in the water. He was only a few inches taller than she was, which made it easy for her to simply raise her face to receive the kiss. But he surprised her—rather than swooping down on her mouth as expected, his fingers came up to stroke the side of her face from cheekbone to chin, resting lightly there as he studied her face. His eyes were shadowed, his mouth set in a tense line, and for a moment she thought that he was going to refuse her request.