Wild Thing

by L. J. Kendall

  But the blazing argument that followed broke up the game in seconds, their friends carefully fading away to leave the two lovers to it. Finally, Skeet's girlfriend stalked off.

  He was still standing there, alone and scowling darkly across the park when a large stranger quietly approached.

  The boy ripped his attention from his ex-girlfriend's departing back. 'What the shunt you want, spamboy?' he blazed.

  The man just stood there. Not moving. Then his expression altered, in a series of jerky changes that left his mouth stretched into a shape that didn't actually work as a smile. Like a robot might do. Skeet's hot anger disappeared like water sucked into parched ground. The youth shuddered and took a step back.

  The man's head moved back and forth, as if scenting the air. Then the pale blue eyes focused back on Skeet, and the man opened his mouth to speak.

  Then he paused, very deliberately swallowing and moistening his lips. As if preparing long-disused equipment.

  Skeet watched, hypnotized, his own head shaking slowly from side to side, refusing to acknowledge an unconscious premonition of danger.

  'The girl was with you?' the man asked.

  Skeet took another step back, but with shocking suddenness the man was beside him, gripping his upper arm painfully. Face to face, Skeet's protests froze. Intuition screamed that some kind of human puppet now held him trapped with just one hand. His brain urged him to run, to get away, but his feet wouldn't move. Skeet felt cold, like he'd just jumped from summer to a chill mid-winter's day.

  'The girl has tainted you. The taint can easily be cleansed.'

  Skeet moaned.

  The fear irritated Disten. There was time: the girl had been in the area now for hours. One hand clasped around the boy's neck, silencing him.

  -

  'Skeet! Hey, Skeet! Where are you?'

  Two of his friends, worried, were quartering the area they'd last seen him.

  'I don't get it. Why wouldn't he answer his link?'

  'It's taking calls?'

  'Look, I'm not stupid. I can tell the difference between a null link an’ one that's just not being answered.'

  The two had now climbed the hill, scuffing through the occasional thin drift of leaves scattered between the tall trunks overlooking the ballpark. Somewhere nearby, the ethereal strains of The Zombie Waltz could be heard. The two exchanged a slow look.

  'That's Skeet's link.'

  'It's coming from those bushes over there.'

  'Skeet! Wake up, man, we've been looking for you!'

  There was no answer. Then at last the Waltz stopped. Suddenly it seemed very quiet. The boy who'd called looked down at his wristcomm, which had finally rejected the address as not answering.

  'It feel cold to you here?'

  The other ignored him, moving with reluctant steps toward the bushes, and his friend watched tensely.

  'Oh, Mother.'

  He stepped back a pace, then another, making futile shooing gestures behind him with one hand. He spun around, and his friend took a step back at the expression on the shocked white face. 'Call the cops, Berry. Skeet's dead!'

  'Are- are you sure? Maybe he's-'

  'His head's on smekken backwards, man.' His voice cracked. 'Just call the smekken cops!'

  Chapter 40

  Sara watched Harmon settle himself down onto the bench seat in the sun and close his eyes. 'I'm just going to catch my breath, Leeth. We'll hunt up some food shortly, so don't go wandering off.'

  'No, Uncle, I won't wander off.' She never just wandered. She wondered why he wanted to rest. He wasn't really tired, was he? She cocked her head to one side as she watched him, thinking.

  She was sure there was a reason he had decided they should spend a day “out”. A test, maybe?

  Just then, a jogger entered their clearing. Tall, healthy, tanned. His white teeth flashed in appreciation of her figure, and he whistled as he eyed her up and down. But there was a strange look in his eyes she didn't like. Like he was hungry. Like she was prey for him!

  A weird prickle, a strange heat, flushed through her, ending in a fine trembling in her hands. Her fingertips felt weird.

  The man powered past and up the low rise leading out, glancing back at her one last time like he wanted to eat her.

  One last time.

  She felt a surge of… heat? Turning, eyes tracking him as the idea hit her, the burn flared stronger. With a wolfish smile, Sara padded after him.

  Hunting.

  'Keepie.' An urgent voice in his ear. 'Keepie!'

  The figure before him blurred with his dream… something prowling through a jungle? Something disturbing; familiar. He blinked.

  'Keepie!'

  He sat up, disoriented, rubbing his eyes.

  'I have a surprise for you!'

  He squinted at her silhouette, the sun blinding. But even so, what he saw looked wrong. He suddenly realized she was naked. And practically vibrating with suppressed excitement.

  'Hold out your hand and shut your eyes, and I will give you a big surprise,' she chanted the children's rhyme hoarsely.

  Something was terribly wrong.

  He held out his hand. Through the slits of his eyelids, a moment before she dropped the repellently wet thing into it he recognized the organ. Gods, it was hot! His own heart stopped. No. She couldn't have…?

  Just then, he heard a terrified scream in the distance. It went on and on. Leeth only grinned as she turned partly toward it. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he realized another thing that was wrong. Her front was drenched in blood. The screaming went on. His mind shut down. Leeth spun back to him, bursting with the anticipation of his joy. He looked down at the soft heavy thing he held in his hand. Somehow, he knew the heart was human.

  Shit. Oh. Shit.

  'I Hunted him, Keepie! I Followed, I Shadowed, I Pounced! He was strong, but I was stronger. I Killed him. Oh Keepie, it was wonderful!' She whooped with joy; did a sort of dance.

  He stared at her in disbelief for long seconds. He looked down at the heart, frozen. She misinterpreted his gesture.

  'Then, I realized you'd want me to bring you a trophy, like with my first Hunt.

  'I thought of bringing you an easier bit to get off, but then I thought I should bring you back the proper thing, even if it was harder.'

  His mind struggled to cope. He had raised her, trained her, striven to mold her magically into the essence of the Huntress. Yet why was it only now that he understood the natural consequence of this? He had made her into a killer.

  He looked at her with something not far from dread.

  'I found a stick, and broke it to make a sharp edge.'

  She noticed, at last, his paralyzed reaction. She reached out and gently touched the heart. 'I didn't hurt it, even though it wasn't easy to get out. I didn't know ribs would be so springy and hard to break. I didn't damage it, though, see,' and she turned it over, reverently, wetly, in his hand.

  His gorge rose, but he swallowed, forcing it down. Found his voice, with difficulty.

  'Did anyone see you, Leeth?'

  'No,' she said scornfully. 'Of course not.'

  The screaming had stopped, a strangely dissociated part of his mind noted. They'd be searching for the killer, soon. He looked at her, looked at the grass around her, expecting to see a pool of blood. There was none. He looked closer at the ground. In fact, there wasn't any blood at all. He looked around, expecting to see a trail, and a body. Belatedly, he noticed the blood was smeared all over her face and upper body.

  She wiped herself down, he thought numbly. Afterward, she took the time to wipe herself down.

  She licked her fingers. With a horrified start he realized she was licking the blood from them. His stomach rose again. Suddenly, he remembered the thing he held. His hand shook as panic started to build. How would they get rid of it? For long seconds his thoughts spun in all directions. He took a grip on himself.

  'Leeth, do you know what will happen now?'

  'We'll have a F
east? I can collect firewood.'

  Mentally, he recoiled, stomach churning, and he barely held his gorge. But even as he did so, he noted the startling simplicity of her thought processes. He shook himself.

  'No, Leeth. There won't be time.'

  She looked puzzled. Then disappointed. Then hurt.

  'There won't be time because the police will be here shortly. They'll be looking for a killer. When they find her they'll arrest her. She'll be taken to jail-'

  She started to protest, but he spoke over her.

  'Taken to jail, before being executed.' He wound down, panting as if from physical exertion. All those years, all his work. To be so foolishly wasted. He began to get angry.

  'But why, Keepie? The police only arrest people who do bad things.'

  At first the sheer lunacy of the remark stunned him into silence. And then, he realized that from her point of view, all she had done was kill one of the gray people: one of the “sheep.” That never, in all those years, had he let her be given the slightest clue that killing was wrong. Of course he hadn't. How could she embody the archetype if she thought that? He pressed his hands against his temples. Think!

  'It's the Law, Leeth. There are rules that say you mustn't-

  'I mean, that if you kill anyone at all, the police have to find you, arrest you, and in the end, kill you.'

  'But…' She was silent a moment. 'Even the gray people? Does the Law say you're not allowed to even kill the gray people?'

  'Even them.'

  'But why? Why protect the sheep? What's the point?'

  'Ahh.' He wracked his brains for the correct answer for the Huntress. 'It's not meant to be easy, Leeth. If it were easy, then hunting could be done by the soft, the slow, or the weak. So there are guards and obstacles, and you have to pit yourself in challenge against the protectors: the police.'

  Her eyes shone. 'So they're hunting me now! And I have to prove I'm better!'

  'That's right. You have to hide what you've done. Pretend you don't know about it. Get rid of any incriminating evidence.'

  She looked puzzled.

  'Like being covered in blood,' he pointed out. Then added, 'or carrying a still-warm human heart. You need to wash. I think another visit to a pond is in order.'

  She grinned.

  'And tell me, where are your clothes?'

  'I took them off while I stalked him. They're not very far. About half way.'

  The heart, they buried.

  Harmon's wish for no one to find them while she bathed and dressed appeared to have been granted. He now sat on the edge of another park bench while Leeth dressed in the sun, shaking her head about and rubbing her fingers through her hair to try to finish drying it.

  Just as he decided it was enough, that they could leave, she stopped and jogged over to him.

  'Two people coming. Big.'

  Damn, he thought. It might look suspicious if we hurry off. With an effort, he composed himself, waiting.

  And waiting. Still no one came. Nor could he hear anyone, either. He looked at her, doubtfully.

  'Are you sure?'

  'Yeah. They'll be here real soon.'

  'How-' He stopped himself. Now was not the time to investigate.

  'Remember,' he Suggested, reiterating his advice, 'You're just Sara. We're out in the park for some relaxation. You know nothing about anything unusual happening. You're a little worried by the scream.'

  He was surprised by just how well, how thoroughly, the spell affected her. In fact, he watched what transpired with something like shock. Even her aura changed! Noting her total unawareness of him, her inward focus, he quickly followed the first spell with a mindmeld.

  Probing her mind, he saw what had happened, and gradually relaxed. He had framed her Unfolding as a marking of her transition to adulthood. For reasons that weren't clear to him, by giving her a new, adult name to signify that, it had changed her conception of herself in some fundamental way. His Suggestion just now had interacted with that. He watched as “Leeth” was packed away and “Sara” returned.

  He felt a curious sense of loss; the return of the happy young child, Sara, made him realize that person was now lost to him. Lost through his own actions; slipping through his fingers as irrevocably as if she had fallen from a cliff.

  With a shock, it dawned on him that he was reacting like a father who had just realized his little girl had grown up.

  Yet despite reasoning that out, it still hurt.

  He felt he hardly knew this new young woman, his feral creation. With Sara standing now beside him, he felt… at ease. A certain tension had dissipated.

  Just how much had she changed? In her mind, he saw that Sara was still there: but Sara was a child. The person hidden now, beneath, was a woman.

  He hoped-

  Footsteps, trying to be silent, ended his introspection. He looked speculatively at the innocent young girl, Sara, as two men entered the clearing. Police. One, built like a professional football player. The other – built just plain fat. He shifted his perception to the Imaginal plane. Both men were tense, worried. Alert. Some dead sections in Footballer's aura, typical of cyber augmentation. As their eyes fell on Sara he saw the increase in interest signaled by their auras. Then, with a mental start, he realized one of them was a mage. The fat one. Saw the shift in Imaginal pattern as the other realized that he himself was, too. Saw the fat one murmur to the big one as they approached.

  'He says you're a mage, Uncle,' Leeth – no, Sara – whispered to him. How did she-? Could she hear them? How on earth-? The two citycops spread out a little, the big one drawing his gun. Harmon didn't have to fake anxiety as he spoke.

  'Officers? What's the matter?' In inspiration, he put a worried expression on his face and looked around. Then back at them. 'Are we in danger? Is there some creature loose in the park?'

  The fat man's eyes narrowed. 'Now, what makes you think that, sir?'

  Sara spoke up. 'We heard a woman screaming. Uncle cast a spell and could see her, off in the distance. There was a man on the ground, near her.'

  'A spell, sir?'

  'A simple clairvoyance spell, officer.'

  The man had a truth spell running, Harmon realized, with a sinking feeling. At least, though, the faint trace of Suggestion he'd cast on Sara had been swallowed up inside her aura, as usual. Odd, really, now he thought about it. Could that signify the beginnings of some kind of resistance to it? No, inconceivable at this point, considering how often he'd used it on her and the Repetition Effect. Unless it was a consequence of her Unfolding? Had the change in her aura-

  'You're a mage then, sir?'

  He brought his attention back to the serious matter at hand. 'Yes, officer. Dr Harmon.'

  'A doctor? And you saw a man's body, but made no attempt to go to him and heal him?'

  'My doctorate is in Psychology I'm afraid, officer. I would have been of no use to the unfortunate fellow.' Of course not – Leeth had taken his heart. He couldn't have healed him if he'd wanted to.

  'Do you know anything about the murder, doctor?' the man asked, straight out.

  Harmon had hoped the fellow would rely on the truth spell. He shrugged apologetically while mentally crossing his fingers.

  'Again, I'm sorry. I was asleep at the time. I had dozed off in the sun. My ward here dragged me all over the park this morning, and I was quite exhausted.' Which was all, quite literally, true.

  The officer looked at him a moment longer then turned to Sara. Sized her up. Harmon could almost hear him thinking, “No, no way this little chick could have done that.” The Sara persona, Harmon was pleased to note with a quick Imaginal scan, was well to the fore.

  'And you, girl – ?'

  'Sara, sir.'

  '- Sara: do you know anything about this murder?'

  Harmon suppressed an exhalation of relief. Sara knew nothing. Leeth, on the other hand….

  'No, sir.'

  The mage-cop nodded. Just then his commlink buzzed, and he stepped away to take the ca
ll while his bigger and taller partner noted their Citizen IDs. Until then the fellow hadn't spoken a word, but the alertness in his eyes, the grimly-locked jaw, and his slightly-narrowed eyes whenever he looked at “Sara” made Harmon suspect this one was the more dangerous of the two.

  'You're fukken jokin’? Another one?' The fat mage listened a little longer, before turning back to them. He and his partner exchanged a look.

  'You got their details?'

  A nod, a few more hurried questions, a final warning they might be called on to give evidence, then they were off.

  Harmon watched them go, letting out a heartfelt sigh of relief once they were out of sight.

  'What did they mean, “another one,” Leeth?'

  She looked at him, confused. 'Leeth? That- that's me, isn't it?'

  His own experience certainly confirmed the Repetition Effect. The more often you successfully cast a spell on the same person, the easier it became; a fresh reason for the popular fear and distrust of mages. He casually removed the Suggestion, and she blinked and shook herself. He had to repeat the question.

  She shrugged. 'They just found another body in the park.'

  He winced. 'Leeth, did you…?'

  'No, I came straight back to you after my hunt.' Suddenly her eyes widened in dismay. 'Was I supposed to kill more than one, Keepie?'

  He closed his eyes in relief, though a shiver ran through him at her question. 'No, Leeth, one was more than I expected.'

  She grinned and took his hand. 'What'll we do now?'

  He gently disengaged. 'I think it is time we returned home.'

  'Oh, no! Can't we just-'

  Harmon guided her firmly, still arguing, toward the nearest exit.

  -

  Marc Disten did not arrive for over five minutes, then simply stood, head sweeping smoothly across the empty scene and then back again. She was heading swiftly north. So swiftly, she had to be in a vehicle. Unfortunately, her exit point was a considerable distance from the place where the Ferrari was parked. Even at a run, it would give her something like a ten minute head start. It was good that the sense of her location seemed little affected by distance. She would be found, no matter how fast she fled.