“Yes, you are.” I know she’s talking about her electronic proficiency, but the bold look in her eyes reminds me of when she looked up at me with my cock in her mouth, and suddenly I’m hard again. To distract myself, I examine the hound. “Is it supposed to be doing that?” I point to the flashing red light.
“Shit. That means it’s transmitting something.” She pulls up a new screen on the wrist com. “Data. It’s telling the guards it’s found us. Even though it no longer considers us enemies.” She taps some more, and the red light blinks out. “Okay, I’ve set it not to transmit data of any kind anymore. Not even its own location. Or footage from the camera in its left eye. So, the only thing still active is its own proximity chip.” She looks up at me, a new light glowing in her gaze. “Callum, the dog is authorized to go through the northern gate, using the signal from that chip! We just have to give it that order!”
“Holy shit!” My embrace lifts her from the ground, and I kiss her so hard my cock swells against her stomach. “Maci, you’re incredible!”
She gives me an almost shy smile as I let her slide down the length of my body until her feet touch the ground. “Thanks.” She bites her lower lip, and suddenly I want to lean forward and bite it for her. Then taste it. Then claim the rest of her mouth. Triumph looks good on her. “But now we have to go. The guards have been headed this way since the hound treed us.” She taps something else on the screen. The dog stands, and I scramble away from it, pulling her with me. “Relax.” She laughs. “I’m telling it to keep pace with us. We’re going to need it, if we’re going through that gate. Let’s go!”
It takes me a while to get used to the hound walking next to us, and not just because it’s eerily quiet, now that it’s not racing through the woods. The damn thing walks right through bushes like they aren’t even there.
Maci’s programmed it to listen for sounds originating more than a meter away, which should keep our voices and steps from confusing the machine. And even after it’s been with us for longer than an hour without biting off a single one of our limbs, I can’t keep from staring at it as we hike.
“What’s wrong?” Maci asks when she notices.
“This thing is weird. I mean, I appreciate the fact that it’s a walking all-access pass and a secret weapon, but it really isn’t much like a dog.”
“You’re right.” She smiles with a sudden thought. “We should give it a name.”
“Does it not have one?”
“He has a product code and a serial number. But those are too many letters and numbers to even abbreviate. Let’s call him Lucky. Because finding him was a huge stroke of luck.”
“Finding you was a huge stroke of luck.” I pull her closer and press a kiss into the top of her head, wishing we had time for something more. “And since then, I’ve gotten lucky multiple times.”
Her shy flush is as adorable as it is inexplicable. What makes her able to take my cock all the way into her mouth, but unable to talk about it?
Come to think of it, that’s not the only thing she doesn’t like talking about…
“So, tell me how you heard Lucky coming.”
“What?” She avoids my gaze as she steps over a root arching up from the ground.
“Come on, Maci. I know you couldn’t hear the damn dog. Yet somehow you did hear it. What’s going on?”
“I don’t really know. I’ve just always been like that.”
“You’ve always had supernatural hearing?”
“It’s not really hearing. It’s more like…I can feel certain sounds. Usually mechanical sounds. So I tend to know when something like that is coming, just a little faster than everyone else. It’s usually not much use, but I’ve gotten my brother out of a few jams. And it sometimes came in handy for finding supply drops in zone four before anyone else got there.”
“So, why didn’t you want to tell me that?”
She shrugs. “I’m just used to keeping it quiet. Back home, it made me sound weird. Here on Devil’s Eye, I don’t need to draw any more attention to myself than I already have. Although, as it turns out, killing one of the warden’s personal friends is much more dangerous than having super-hearing.”
We walk all day, taking only short breaks to eat and pee, and by the time the sun goes down on our third day in the enclosure, Maci is exhausted. Her short legs have trouble keeping pace with mine, and she’s not used to walking all day, every day.
“Should we risk another cabin?” she asks, over a huge yawn. “I mean, I know the logical answer is no. I’ll have to access the system to find one, and the moment I do, they’ll know where we are.” She frowns. “The only down side to having access to technology is that I get really cranky when I know I’m not supposed to use it. It was almost easier not having it at all.”
“I know exactly how you feel.”
She gives me a skeptical look, and I laugh.
“I feel the same way about being this close to you but having neither the time or place to spread you out in front of me and lick you until you scream.”
“Oh…” she says, and I can practically feel her blushing, though her face is drenched in shadow. “That makes me want to stop for the night right now.”
“Well, I don’t have access to a cabin, but think I just found the next best thing…” I point, and she squints in the direction I’m looking. “Another hunting stand. Do you see it? Look for a glare of light. I think that’s moonlight shining on a camera lens. You’re pretty sure those are dead, right?”
“Deader than the Hansen brothers,” she confirms. Then she grabs my hand in a fierce grip. “I see it!” Renewed by relief, she takes off through the woods, and the hound matches her pace, leaving me to follow after both of them.
At the base of the stand—which appears to be identical to the one we found on our first night in the enclosure—she gives the dog an order to stand guard while I stare up at the camera until I’m sure there’s no red power light. There’s actually no light at all, except the glare from the moon. “All good?” Maci says, and when I nod, she takes off up the ladder. Giving me the most exquisite look at up the back of her shirt at her ass in those tight shorts.
My little hellkitten is tiny, but very well-shaped.
I follow her up, balancing the ever-dwindling weight of the supply pack along with the rifle swung over my shoulder, and when I arrive at the top, I find Maci sitting cross-legged, staring up at the sky. This hunting stand is beneath a fairly sizable gap in the canopy, and the stars and moon are on full display.
I drop the rifle and my bag as I sit next to her and look up. I haven’t had a view this nice since I first set foot on Rhodon—except the sight of Maci on her back with her legs spread. That one definitely takes the prize. But I understand her awe over the stars.
“Aren’t they beautiful?”
“Yeah. It’s fucked up, isn’t it?”
She turns to me with a frown. “Why’s it fucked up?”
“It doesn’t seem right that there should be a view like this on such a hellhole planet. The people here don’t deserve it.”
“Even criminals deserve a glimpse of the night sky, Callum.”
“I meant the clients.” And I wasn’t just talking about the sky. They had no right to that beauty—or to hers. “Bastards think money entitles them to take whatever they want. Problem is, they’re right.”
“No, they aren’t. Surely we showed them that, with the Hansens.”
I can only shake my head. “We could show them over and over, corpse after corpse, but all they’d see is murderers killing people. Criminals committing crimes. They see what they expect to see. What they want to see. Whatever justifies their actions. As if people willing to buy a girl and hunt a man are any less criminal than the convicts whose lives they’re playing with.”
“Yeah. Fuckers,” Maci says. And I laugh out loud at the bitter simplicity of the statement. Which is pretty much exactly what I was trying to say.
She yawns again, and I dig in the supply bag u
ntil I find what’s left of the package of clean underwear. “Here.” I hand it to her. “There’s no mattress, but at least we have pillows. And a sheet.” I stand and shake out the bedsheet, then fold it into a double thickness. It’s still too light to provide much relief from the nighttime cold on the Red Rock, but it might at least preserve her body heat. “I’ll take first watch,” I say as I tuck the sheet around her.
“No need.” She lifts it and invites me in. “Lucky’s programmed to ping the wrist com if he hears anything. Lie down with me and keep me warm.”
I scoot under the sheet with her, using what’s left of the package of clean tee shirts for a pillow, and spoon her tiny form with my own. She snuggles back against me, and I wrap one arm over her stomach to hold her close, even though my left shoulder already aches from being pressed against the raw wooden platform beneath us.
As tired as I am, my cock seems to have plenty of energy. Maci laughs when she feels it poke her in the back. “Ignore him,” I insist. “We’ll both be asleep in a few minutes.”
“But no doubt willing and eager in the morning,” she says, and I don’t bother to argue.
Assuming we make it through the night. As tired as I am and as welcoming as her warm form feels against me, it seems dangerous to plan to spend the whole night out here. If the guards come this far into the enclosure, they will check every cabin, ration station, and hunting stand on the map looking for us.
Yet even with that danger, I fall asleep with Maci’s fingers intertwined with mine.
I wake up with Maci shaking my shoulder, her eyes wide and terrified in the moonlight. “Hellkitten?” My voice is groggy, but she’s clearly wide awake.
“Callum, get up.” Even the translation of her voice is full of alarm. “We have to go. There’s a shuttle.”
“What? Where?” I sit up and start shoving things back into the supply pack, one eye on the sky, looking for telltale nav lights overhead. But I see nothing but stars. The moon has already set.
“Headed this way. I can hear it.” She stuffs the package of new underwear into the bag. “Come on!”
“I don’t hear any…” Oh. She means she can hear it.
Maci’s already halfway down the ladder by the time I swing the rifle over my shoulder and start the climb. I’m impressed by her speed, especially considering that we couldn’t have slept for more than a few hours.
From the ladder, I look down to see her on the ground, tapping on the wrist com. As I step off the bottom rung, Lucky stands and comes to her side, having evidently been released from its order to stand guard.
“Is it the hound?” I ask, still scanning what I can see of the sky through the canopy. “Did they reprogram it while we slept?”
Maci sets off toward the north, and the dog and I follow her. “If they had, Lucky’d be eating us right now.”
“Not if they didn’t want us to know they’d taken it back. Maybe it’s just telling them where we are.”
She shakes her head as I pull even with her, shrugging the supply pack into a more comfortable position. “His tail is dark. That means he’s not broadcasting anything.” She stumbles to a halt and turns to the southeast. “There. The shuttle’s just over there.”
I don’t see anything. But… “Yeah, I hear it.” The faint but distinctive hum of an engine. “Let’s go.”
Yet Maci is staring at the canopy to the southwest now, her brow furrowed. “There’s another one. Not as close, but on its way. They’re not going as fast as they could be. I mean, still faster than we can run, but not full speed. What the hell are they doing?”
“I don’t know. Let’s go, hellkitten.” But I have to tug her by the arm to get her moving again. “This doesn’t make any sense,” I say as we jog toward the north, ducking branches and veering around underbrush the metal hound just pounds right through. “A patrol shuttle doesn’t have room to land out here, with all the trees, so what…” Oh, fuck. “They’re scanning.” I push through fatigue and demand a burst of speed from my legs, before I remember that she can’t keep up.
“Scanning for what?”
“Us. Infrared. It detects heat signatures, and as cold as the nights are here, we’ll light up their screens like fireworks. They’re bringing out the big guns. Which is no surprise considering Shaw’s lost his hunter, his dogs, and his cameras. Not to mention the signal from the wrist com. He must really be pissed.”
“But what good does it do them to know where we are, if they can’t land in the woods?”
“Maybe they think they can keep us in their sights once they find us, and lead the guards to us? Or maybe they’re going to try to shoot us from the air? Or lower guards to the ground? Whatever they’re planning, we cannot afford to be seen by those shuttles.”
15
MACI
“How does the scan work?” I whisper as I try to keep up with Callum, grateful that he’s carrying all of our supplies, because more weight would only slow me down. We can actually hear one of the shuttles now, and even though it’s moving at less than full speed, we won’t be able to outrun it. “Won’t the canopy shield us?”
“No. There are a million gaps between the leaves, and they shift every time the wind blows. IR will pick up at least some little flash of our heat signature through every one of those gaps.”
“Okay, what about one of the cabins?” Lucky stays at my side, but the pace isn’t hard enough to make his paws thunder against the ground. “Can IR see through a solid roof?”
“No, but we won’t find a cabin without connecting to the system, right?” Callum asks, and I nod. “And once we connect, they’ll be able to pinpoint our signal, then—with the shuttle so close—our actual location.”
“So, we need to find something to hide under without accessing the system. Maybe we should go back to the hunting stand? We could just kind of huddle down under it.”
“Won’t work.” Callum seems frustrated with my lack of speed. He won’t say anything, but I get the feeling he’s a second away from picking me up and running with me in his arms again. “The stand is too high. Scanning at an angle, the shuttle might see us.”
I’m out of ideas, so I focus on running, trusting Callum to make sure we’re still heading north.
“It’s getting closer,” I pant, slapping a branch out of my way, but my foot catches on a root I couldn’t see in the dark and I go down hard, scraping both elbows and the palm of one hand. Lucky stops at my side.
Callum hauls me up by my arm, practically tugging me back into motion. “I know. Keep running.” But I can tell from the way his gaze constantly sweeps the woods around us that he’s looking for someplace safe to hide. With no moonlight, the forest is a nightmare of deep, star-cast shadows and grasping branches, not quite shielded overhead by a canopy that looks black at night, rather than the glowing crimson of daytime.
It feels like a bitter irony that my poor human eyes can’t see anything, but the shuttle’s electronic sensor—essentially a robotic eye—can see everything.
My lungs ache and my legs burn. There’s a stitch forming in my side, and it feels like every other tree root we pass is actually reaching up to grab my foot. “I need to stop. Just for a second,” I gasp.
Callum grabs my arm and hauls me forward again. “If we stop, we die. Come on, Maci, you can do this. Just keep moving.”
But all the determination in the world isn’t going to make me suddenly able to hike for days on end, with little food and even less rest. I can’t do this.
“Maybe they won’t kill us,” I gasp. “Maybe they’ll…” But I don’t even know how to finish that sentence, and I don’t have enough oxygen to push out any more words.
Suddenly the world spins around me, and for a second I think I’ve fallen. But then Callum’s chest presses against my side, his arms steady beneath my shoulders and my knees, and I realize he’s picked me up again.
I cling to him, bouncing in his grip as he runs, and Lucky keeps pace alongside us. Over Callum’s shoulder, I se
e a flash of light, and my arms tighten around his neck. “It’s right behind us, to the southeast.” Probably seconds away from spotting us. “Veer left.” I’m not sure what the scanner’s range is, but we can’t keep running directly in front of it. Maybe the coverage of both shuttles doesn’t overlap. Maybe we can slip into a strip right down the middle, where neither scanner reaches. Maybe…
“Do you hear that?” Callum asks, and I can feel his heart race against the side of my rib cage. He’s as tired as I am, and his strength can’t last forever. “Under the hum of the shuttle?”
I listen, but all I hear is the engine. That, and my own racing pulse.
“There.” Callum veers suddenly to the right—more directly into the shuttle’s path.
“No!” I cry, and the rush of adrenaline through my system gives the word a strange echo in my head
“This is the only chance we have,” Callum says through clenched teeth. Then he runs even faster, racing between trees and under branches, while Lucky’s footsteps pound the ground beside us.
I don’t see our goal until he sets me down on the muddy edge of a stream—surely the one we heard on our first day in the enclosure.
Callum drops the rifle and supply pack on the ground, then steps into the water fully clothed. “I think it’s deep enough. Come on.”
But I’m already freezing, with the sudden loss of his body temperature, and I’m pretty sure we’ll both get hypothermia in the stream.
“Maci!” Callum reaches for me, but I pull free from his grip. “The water will hide our heat signature. Come on!” This time when he reaches for me, I let him pull me in.
Frigid water drenches me up to my knees, and a step later, up to my thighs. I’m shivering violently by the time Callum sits in the stream, gritting his teeth against cold water that has risen up to his chest. The current tugs at his clothing. He tries to pull me down next to him, but again I resist. I’m so cold my bones are shaking.
Hunter Page 15