Hinterland Book 3: The Wolf's Hunt (Hinterland Series)

by K. T. Harding

  At that moment, another scorching fork of white rocket fire shot out of another ship. It struck right in front of Dax. The concussion thumped him in the chest. He kept his balance, but Angela tumbled out of his arms. Another shot touched the ground behind him. The heat burned Raleigh’s skin. She threw her hands in front of her face and screamed in pain and terror.

  Dax stumbled this way and that, but he couldn’t escape all these forces arrayed against him. When he ran right, the ship’s fire drove him left. When he dodged left, another bolt of lightning pushed him toward the sucking tube trying to draw him up into the ship.

  He darted every which way so fast he collided with Raleigh. He tried to check his flight, but he only wound up pushing her over and stepping on her. She cried out one more time and bowled over and over on the ground.

  One final blast hit next to the prostrate Angela. She bounced once, and she grunted when she hit the ground. Her limbs flopped, and her head lolled.

  That was the last straw for Dax. He stopped in his tracks and hauled back his arms to bellow to the skies. He balled his hands into fists and roared at those ships threatening him. He threw back his head, and a noise out of the depths of hell issued from his throat.

  Raleigh hid under her arms, but she couldn’t help staring at him in shocked horror. The louder he roared, the bigger he got. He didn’t even notice what he was doing. His mouth stretched wider and wider. His thunderous bellow grew and grew until it lifted him off the ground.

  He ascended into the sky still roaring like a freight train coming faster and faster until no one could stand against that noise. His chest arched outward. His arms flew back, and his whole skin peeled back. A monstrous black-green apparition exploded out of his ribs. His arms kept flying backward. His hands raked the sky to become talons. His head whipped back on his stretching neck, and Dax McDermott ceased to be.

  The ships turned their attention on him and left the ground around Raleigh still and peaceful, but she couldn’t stop staring at Dax. His body twisted in a grotesque curving green river of color, and an enormous dragon spread its wings across the sky where Dax used to be.

  The dragon bent forward, and four clawed feet flexed to snatch those ships out of the air. The sun glistened off his scales, and his long tail cracked among the clouds when he lashed it right and left.

  The ships raced toward him with every gun blazing, but he showed no sign of concern. He stooped and plummeted out of the skies burning toward them as fast as he could fly. He opened his fanged mouth, and a splatter of lightning more powerful than any weapon cracked from his throat. He hit the lead ship in the nose. The front end caved off, and one wing dangled by a thread.

  The other ships moved in to pepper him with their fire, but he only roared to quake Hinterland to its roots. He glanced his lightning over another three ships, and they burst into flame before they tumbled out of the heavens. They disappeared in the forest canopy in a smoking inferno.

  The dragon didn’t hesitate to check the effect of his attack. He rounded on the other ships closing in on him from all sides. He stroked his wings against the air and streaked between them to leave them in the dust. He pocked their sides with shots here and there until he raced out of range in the upper clouds.

  Raleigh stared at the scene from the ground. What was he capable of? She could live her whole life and never comprehend him, but the Guild of Husbandry made their own bed when they created a fighting machine like him. He wasn’t even using his Auhlulhu powers right now. He was Xaehm. He could transform himself into anything he wished. He could become any creature his imagination could concoct, and they couldn’t do a thing to stop him.

  When he turned around to set his sights on them, narrowed his eyes in calculated hatred. Some part of him knew the Guild of Husbandry was responsible for this, and he would pay them back in spades for everything they’d done. He became an avenging angel for every pathetic creature the Guild ever harmed.

  So many disabled ships finally got the message through to the survivors they couldn’t race back for more of the same. They hesitated in mid-air and regrouped before they launched another assault on him, but he didn’t wait around.

  He tilted his head low and tucked his wings close to his body. His tail extended behind him, and the wind whistled over his scales screaming out of the sky. He blasted through the group of ships and threw his wings out on both sides. His wings cut through the ships and tore their hulls open.

  Whatever force kept those ships aloft, he destroyed them in one blow. He burned past them and left them reeling and out of control. He swooped back up to the clouds, but when he turned to check, not one ship followed to gun him down.

  The ships teetered. One of them exploded and knocked another sideways. Another tried to sail away, but its wing ripped off, and the ship spiraled into the treetops, where it vanished in a puff of steam.

  Three ships remained. One of them turned its guns on Dax—or what Dax became. It fired once and missed before the gun jammed. The ship tried to fly forward, but a greenish cloud billowed from its tail end. It stalled in the air and settled down somewhere out of sight.

  The other two ships didn’t move. They just sat there. Maybe the Guildsmen inside were thinking or discussing what to do next. They certainly couldn’t attack. After a long pause, they turned around and flew away toward Hallbreck.

  The dragon hovered high in the clouds and watched them out of sight. His breath rumbled through his nostrils. His wings rose and fell against the wind.

  The ships dwindled to two specks on the horizon and disappeared. The dragon hung still. When the last trace of the battle vanished from sight, he looked around. In the blink of an eye, he changed. His body collapsed in on itself. His skin lightened and turned pink. His neck and tail withdrew into his body. In seconds, he became a young man dangling hundreds of yards above the ground.

  Before he could think what was happening, gravity caught him. He gave a startled scream and fell, out of the clouds, through the canopy, and crashed into the forest floor far below.

  Chapter 14

  Raleigh sat in the doorway of a rough shelter of sticks and leaves set up under a fallen log. She kept the fire going and watched storm clouds gathering in the west. She turned a rabbit on a spit and checked it for doneness.

  The first spatters of rain and a few rumblings of thunder sounded outside as the sky turned a darker shade of grey. She hugged her arms closer against the cold when a groan made her turn around. Dax rubbed his head. “Where are we?”

  “We’re in the forest. We’re still where we were before. We haven’t gone anywhere.”

  He looked around and spotted Angela lying across the hut with her eyes closed. “Is she…is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. She woke up a few hours ago. She just went back to sleep a little while ago. She had a concussion. Nothing serious.”

  He tried to sit up and fell back on the ground. His hand flew to his head. “What happened? My head is killing me.”

  Raleigh smiled at him. “You fell. Don’t you remember? You changed into a dragon to fight the Guild, but you changed back before you realized what you were doing. You changed high above the ground, and you fell. You got hurt a lot worse than Angela, but you’re okay now.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “You shattered your leg, and you smashed your face to pieces, but you healed in the few hours you’ve been lying here. I never saw anything like it. Your leg just magically fixed itself. One minute, you were unrecognizable with your whole nose and cheeks and eyebrows caved in. Your face was a bloody pulp. I didn’t know what to do, so I started making up the fire. The next minute, I turned around, and you were as good as new. Not one drop of blood in sight.”

  He shook his head. “That’s impossible.”

  She sighed and checked the rabbit. “From what we’ve heard, nothing is impossible for Auhlulhu. Anyway, you’re all right now. You and Angela just need to rest here for the night bef
ore we get going.”

  “Go where?”

  “Solaris, of course. We sure can’t stay here. The Guild will be coming after you, and now I understand why. They must have invested a lot to create you in the first place. Bishop hid you from them all these years. They won’t stop until they get you back.”

  He closed his eyes. “I don’t want to be this.”

  “You might not want to be, but you are. Now it’s your job to make good on what you are. You can use your power to help people, to get Bishop free and maybe even help others like these hybrids.”

  He looked around. “Are they here? This doesn’t look like one of their huts.”

  “It isn’t. They all ran away during the battle, and I don’t want you around them anyway. You’re a danger to them, so I decided to stay here instead of catching up with them.”

  He sighed. “I should destroy myself. That would be the best thing for everybody.”

  She cocked her head to one side. “Do you really think so? Do you want to leave me all alone to rescue Bishop so you can feel sorry for yourself?”

  “Of course not! That’s not what I meant.”

  Raleigh’s shoulders shuddered. “I know it isn’t, but don’t let me hear any more about you destroying yourself. This is the third time you’ve used your power, and you did it for good, just like the other times. You’re a force for good. Just remember that. Whatever you turn into, it will be good.”

  He studied her in the deepening gloom. “That’s what Ybak said.”

  Raleigh stared at him. “He did?”

  Dax nodded. “I didn’t think of it until just now. It’s weird, you know. I don’t remember much about seeing him. It’s all mixed up like a dream, but yeah, he said it. Just for a second, I understood everything was going to be okay, that everything happening was good and right and the way it should be. I even saw how to get Bishop out. Then I woke up and it all sort of evaporated.”

  Raleigh opened her mouth and closed it again. “You know how to get Bishop out?” She hung her head. “I shouldn’t ask.”

  “He showed me, but I can’t remember it now. Maybe I’ll remember it later.”

  “What else did he show you?”

  “He showed me a whole population of these things—I can’t describe them. They’re like throbbing clouds of pure beauty. I can’t describe them any other way. They all lived together in the sky somewhere. Maybe that’s how they lived before the Guild got hold of them, or maybe that’s where Ybak lived before he came to Hinterland. I can’t be sure.”

  “Did he show you if he really is your father?”

  Dax smiled, and that smile came out of some place Raleigh would never be able to touch. “It’s not like that. The Auhlulhu don’t mate like that.” He laughed. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

  “I want to know,” she told him. “How do they mate?”

  “It’s all energy. They commune on the energy level. They merge.”

  “Does Ybak have any idea how the Guild hybridized you from a Xaehm?”

  He shook his head. “They created some sort of energy barrier. The Auhlulhu don’t understand it. The Guild set up this barrier around the field adjacent to the Xaehm area. They took samples of the Auhlulhu’s energy bodies. It’s all very confused. They somehow combined this energy with the Xaehm’s food. They tried for years, with thousands of Xaehm, to create a hybrid. Cassandra was the first Xaehm to carry a hybrid baby to term.”

  Raleigh whistled. “No wonder they want to get you back. I wonder how Bishop found out about it.”

  “He made friends with the Xaehm on a previous job. He went back to their river to visit his friends and found them gone. He tracked them to the Guild. I’m sure it wasn’t difficult for him to figure out what was going on. He would have found out about the Auhlulhu being held in the next field, and he would have put two and two together.”

  Raleigh nodded. “It seems amazing that you could have been living right down the road from his house all these years.”

  Dax looked away. “I never knew. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I had known.”

  She took his hand. “I’m glad. I’m glad I got the chance to know you and care about you. I wouldn’t trade anything for that.”

  “It won’t last. It can’t.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  He turned his face to the wall. “Just a feeling I have. I won’t be able to keep this form for much longer. I realize that now. The energy inside me keeps growing. It will take over soon, and I won’t be able to stop it.”

  “You shouldn’t try to stop it.”

  “I want to stop it,” he cried. “I don’t want to….I don’t want to leave you. I want to stay with you. I want to keep being human so I can be with you.”

  She scooted across the floor to sit by his side. She stroked his cheeks. “I love you, but we could never be together—not like that. You must understand that. My heart belongs to Bishop. It belonged to him even when I thought he was dead.”

  “I don’t care,” he croaked. “I don’t care if we can never be like that to each other. I just want to be with you. I want to be the same thing as you. I don’t want to be like Ybak, visiting Cassandra in her dreams every few years or so. I couldn’t stand that.”

  “Is that what he’s doing? He must be your father.”

  Dax shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think they all are.”

  She gasped. “What? All of them? How?”

  He cast a beautiful smile on her. “The Guild took samples from all the Auhlulhu and combined them all. That’s what they fed Cassandra. She got pregnant from a combination of all of them, so I guess that’s what I am.”

  She could only stare at him. None of this made sense. What would it be like to be him, to wake up one morning with unlimited powers at your command?

  “Ybak says he’s going to take me home someday. He says he’ll take me to the Auhlulhu’s country when I become mature enough to travel there.” He sighed. “That will only happen when there’s nothing left of this body, when I become energy like he is.”

  Raleigh swallowed down a lump in her throat. She didn’t want to let go of his hand—not ever. She didn’t want him turning into energy and disappearing. She should be happy for him, but she could feel only sadness at the prospect of losing him.

  So this was what him developing his powers meant. He would leave her. He would become something so far beyond her they could never be together again. Her heart ached, but she couldn’t show him how much it hurt. She had to encourage him, to make him embrace his future.

  Her eyes stung, and she couldn’t hold back the tears welling up. He cocked his head to peer up at her. He raised his hand to touch her cheek, and the dam burst. He pulled her down on top of him, and she buried her face in his shoulder.

  He hugged her tight, and his big hand clamped behind her neck. She fought back tears, but her emotions wouldn’t go back down. She clenched her eyes shut.

  He whispered against her hair. “I love you. I love you forever. Don’t you ever forget that.”

  She kissed the side of his neck and up to his cheek all wet with tears. She couldn’t let this man go. She would grieve losing him as much as Bishop. How could she choose between them? How could she love one more than the other?

  He pushed her back and ran his sleeve across his eyes. “Come on. We’re together now. Let’s be satisfied with that.”

  She nodded and sniffed, but her mouth twisted the wrong way. She pressed her lips together to hold back her emotions. If he could look forward to the future, she could, too.

  “That rabbit smells good. Can I have some?”

  She busied herself giving him a share of the meat, and by the time their talking woke Angela, Dax and Raleigh got themselves together enough that Angela didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.

  “So,” Dax began, “how are we going to get to Solaris?”

  Raleigh cast a glance at Angela, but A
ngela made no comment, positive or negative. She stared into the fire and ate her meat in silence.

  Raleigh turned back to Dax. “One thing is certain. If you’re not sure you can get us there and back on purpose, we shouldn’t go there at all.”

  “We have to go there,” he exclaimed. “We have to get Bishop back.”

  “We’ll go there and we’ll get him back,” Raleigh replied. “We’ll just have to find another way to get there. We can’t count on you to do it—not yet, anyway.”

  He dropped his eyes to the floor, but he didn’t argue.

  Angela spoke up. “I’ve been thinking. I know a lot of people in the Guild of Martial Arts, and most of my friends never mentioned a word about Bishop being held prisoner. Granted, they probably didn’t want to upset me, knowing how I feel about him, but I should have at least heard where he was and what he was doing there.”

  Raleigh put her head on one side. “What are you saying?”

  “I know someone who might be able to help us. He could tell us what’s going on with Bishop, and maybe even tell us where in Solaris to find him. There’s only one problem.”

  “What?” Raleigh asked.

  “He’s in Kaldkirk,” Angela replied. “It’s a long journey.”

  “We’ve got no other leads,” Raleigh pointed out, “and we can’t stay here.”

  “What about….?” Angela shot a glance at Dax. “What about him?”

  Raleigh looked back and forth between her two friends. “What about him?”

  Angela waved her hand. “To get to Kaldkirk, we would have to take a zeppelin. That means going back to Hallbreck, and the Guild is after him. They’ll come after him again if we stroll into their city to get on a zeppelin.”

  “I see your point.” Raleigh rubbed her chin. “Well, we’ll just have to chance it. Dax defeated the Guild once. If it comes to a fight, he might be able to do it again, and I don’t feel like walking to Kaldkirk, do you?”

  “No,” Dax put in.

  “No,” Angela added.

  Raleigh leaned back on the rickety wall of the shelter she built. “There you go. That’s decided. It will take us days to get back to Hallbreck. By then we’ll know if the Guild plans to attack us every second of the day.”