K T Harding - [Hinterland 02]

by K. T. Harding

  Hinterland

  Book 2: The Wolf’s Quarry

  K.T. HARDING

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 1

  Raleigh Douglas tensed every muscle to spring. Her assailant took a running jump and flew through the air. His sword slashed across her face. She barely darted out of the way in time to stop him laying her cheek open.

  He wielded two curved swords, one in each hand. They whirled around his head fast enough to create a whirlwind blowing in Raleigh’s face. Two short daggers stuck out of the leather belt strapped around his waist. He wore a tight-fitting metal breastplate, and a steel helmet obscured his features so she couldn’t see him.

  Two rounded plates covered his eyes. They bulged to make him look like a bug, and the snoutish extension over his nose and mouth protruded to a barred grate to resemble fangs.

  No matter how many times Raleigh reminded herself a living breathing man fought and sweated and bled under that helmet, the grotesque appearance still worked on her nerves. It frightened her so she had to summon all her will to fight back. Her heart fluttered, and she fought to the death against this most fearsome foe.

  Her opponent landed in a light crouch in front of her. Raleigh recovered in an instant and cut back the other way with her curved throwing blade. She thrust out her left arm and slammed him in the chest hard enough to knock him off balance.

  He stumbled back. He tucked into a backward somersault and came up onto his knees. The moment he came upright, he lashed both ways with his swords, first left and then right. He brought the swords together in a cross right in front of Raleigh’s neck. He would have taken her head clean off if she hadn’t caught both swords in her curved blade and locked them there.

  He flexed his arms to press his advantage. Raleigh blinked sweat out of her eyes and gritted her teeth to resist. She wore no armor at all. If she gave an inch, he would cut her and probably kill her.

  The harder she resisted, the harder he pushed. He fought his way to his feet and forced her back. Her muscles burned, but she couldn’t let go. She couldn’t give in. A faint grumbling noise came from under his helmet. He growled and snarled through the grate. She looked up into the face of death.

  He forced her back another step. Then, with an imperceptible change in his arms, he twisted his arms to seize the upper hand and drove her down on one knee. She locked her elbows, but all her muscle power couldn’t stop him. He dominated her until she dropped her other knee. She couldn’t hold him off.

  He let out one last enraged bellow and smashed the blade out of her hands. She collapsed onto her back on the ground, and he reared above her with both swords poised to strike. His shoulders bulged with muscle, and he hauled back his weapons to severe her head from her body.

  In her last moments alive, she kicked her foot out and snapped his leg out from under him. He wobbled sideways and missed his stroke. Both swords whistled past Raleigh’s face. She barely had time to roll to one side before they both cut the air to embed their cutting blades in the dirt where she just lay.

  Raleigh sprang to her feet, unarmed, but he stood still. He wrenched his swords, but he couldn’t free his weapons. His great strength sunk them so far into the ground he couldn’t get them out. Raleigh paused to watch him wrestle with their handles. The tension dissipated while he struggled with them. His muscles relaxed until he stood up straight and faced her.

  Raleigh’s shoulders slumped, and her hands uncurled at her sides. She picked her blade up off the ground and wiped it off. “That was great! Well done! You had me there for a minute.”

  Her assailant let go of the sword handles, put his hand behind his head, and pulled the helmet off. A shock of shaggy flaxen hair tumbled out, and Dax McDermott shook his mop out of his sparkling blue eye.

  He seemed to grow an inch every night, and his shoulders and back and legs filled out with muscle every time Raleigh brought him to train in the backyard. They woke up before dawn every morning for these daily training sessions, and each day, he rose to every challenge she set for him. He burned for a challenge, and her encouragement nourished him and fed him and made him grow even faster.

  He grinned his flashing smile at Raleigh. “Yeah?”

  She clapped him on the shoulder. “Yeah. You keep getting better and stronger and more confident. Another few months, and I won’t be able to stand against you.”

  He waved the helmet to one side, but he couldn’t stop his cheeks glowing. “Maybe then you’ll let me fight you without all this armor on.”

  She laughed. “It’s your funeral, buddy. Now come on. It’s way past lunchtime, and I’m hungry.”

  They crossed the yard to the big brick house standing behind them, but when Raleigh approached the gate, she stopped in her tracks. Knox Bishop leaned against the post watching them. His eyes smoldered, and he set his jaw in a hard line.

  Raleigh smiled at him. “Good morning. How long have you been up?”

  Bishop pushed himself off the post and squared his shoulders at the two of them. “Go inside, Dax. Put all that stuff back in the armory where it belongs and go back to your work.”

  Dax hung his head and mumbled, “Yes, Sir.”

  In the few short weeks since Raleigh started his training, Dax grew taller than Bishop, but Bishop could still overpower him with a single look. Raleigh hated to see Dax brought low by Bishop’s disapproval. Dax worshiped Bishop more than ever and ached to join him on his hunts into unknown worlds, but Raleigh didn’t intervene.

  Dax strode into the big house. Raleigh watched in silence until she heard the kitchen door slam. Dax wasn’t the clumsy teenager she first met. He grew into the finest specimen of a man anybody could hope for. Praise and hard work and good food spun their magic on him so she barely recognized him anymore.

  Bishop waited until the door slammed, too, before he spoke. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  She walked straight past him. “I already told you what I’m doing. I’m training Dax.”

  He spun around to face her. “And I already told you that’s not a good idea.”

  “You already told me, but I’m doing it anyway. This has nothing to do with you. He’s a slayer, just like you and me, and I for one won’t neglect his training anymore. If you want to sit around and let him molder in the basement, that’s your business. I won’t do it. I’m training him.”

  He pulled her back from walking away from him. “I’m talking to you. You’re not training him under my roof. I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to protect him from the slayer’s life. You’re not waltzing in here and undoing all that just because you’ve taken it into your head to make him a slayer.”

  She pushed her face right up close to his and fired back. “I am not making him into a slayer. When are you gonna get that through your thick head? He’s been a slayer all along. From what I can see, he was born one, just like you and me. How long have you been standing there watching us fight? He was made for this. I’
ve never seen anybody pick up the moves as fast as he has, and he’s only getting faster with practice. Why are you too blind to see that? You won’t stop him being a slayer by pulling the wool over his eyes.”

  “He is not a slayer,” Bishop countered. “He’s an innocent kid from the wrong side of the tracks. Why can’t you leave him alone? Not everyone in the world has to be a slayer. When are you gonna realize that?”

  Raleigh took a deep breath. She fought hard to keep her voice calm. “I don’t want Dax to be a slayer. I don’t want anybody to be a slayer. I don’t want to be a slayer myself, or for you to be a slayer. I would much rather live a quiet life on the farm and stir the porridge pot and pet the cat, but that’s not going to happen. I’m a slayer, and I’ll always be one. You’re the same way, or I’m no judge of character. Dax has been drawn to you for years. Why do you think that is? He’s itching for combat, and he’s built for speed. He won’t be satisfied until he learns the trade. Unless I’m way off, it’s only out of respect for the great Knox Bishop that he’s stuck around you as long as he has without finding some other unscrupulous charlatan to train him.”

  Bishop’s lips twitched under his thick mustache and his voice rumbled out of his chest. “Are you calling me an unscrupulous charlatan?”

  Raleigh let her breath blow between her lips. “No, I’m not. I’m saying Dax needs training. It’s only a matter of time before he follows us into Hinterland again. He would get killed in seconds if he didn’t have the training to protect him.”

  “He won’t go anywhere near Hinterland if I have anything to do about it,” Bishop snarled.

  “You can threaten him all you like,” Raleigh returned. “He’ll go there one of these days, with or without you, and he better have the training he needs to survive. If you won’t train him, I will.”

  She spun on her heel and stormed off to the house. Bishop called after her in a dangerous bark, “Raleigh!”

  She didn’t turn around, and she didn’t stop walking. He made her so mad sometimes she wished she could hate him. She wished she could break away and go off on her own instead of hanging around this tyrannical, overbearing egomaniac.

  All he cared about was his precious reputation, his carefully constructed fantasy world where Dax was an innocent kid who needed protecting from the horrors of Hinterland. Bishop wouldn’t wake up and see the reality staring him in the face. Dax wasn’t a kid anymore, and protecting him from Hinterland was probably the most dangerous thing anybody could do to him.

  She burst into the kitchen and found Dax and Mrs. Mitchell, the housekeeper, eating at the rough table. Dax hunched his big shoulders over his bowl of steaming lamb stew. He didn’t look up at her when she walked in. He let his long hair fall over his face so she couldn’t see him, either.

  Mrs. Mitchell didn’t bother to motion toward the third bowl of food sitting on the table. Raleigh sat down and picked up the wooden spoon next to it. She scooped up a mouthful and started chewing when the kitchen door flew open. Bishop stepped in and glared at all and sundry.

  Dax didn’t look up, but Mrs. Mitchell locked her ferocious gaze on Bishop’s scowling face. For a moment, they confronted each other in matched determination before Bishop turned tail and disappeared upstairs. He didn’t dare disturb the kitchen when Mrs. Mitchell looked at him like that.

  Raleigh took another bite of her lunch. The morning’s training session made her hungry, and the good lamb stew fed her tired muscles, but her ears followed Bishop upstairs. She counted the footfalls along the upper landing until another door slammed. She lived in this house long enough to detect where he was and what he was doing. He entered his office/laboratory/workshop where he spent nearly every day when he wasn’t out hunting monsters and tracking down his bounty.

  Once that door slammed, a palpable wave of relief washed over the kitchen. Dax still sat silent and brooding, but his shoulders relaxed and he brushed his hair out of his eyes. Raleigh regarded him across the table, but said nothing until he finished eating and retreated to his attic room over the carriage house.

  Poor kid. She hated seeing him caught between the two people he cared about most in the world. He wanted so bad to train, but he didn’t want to displease Bishop. The conflict between Raleigh and Bishop over Dax’s training made Dax too uncomfortable to sleep in the servant’s quarters anymore.

  Mrs. Mitchell, on the other hand, paid the whole issue no attention whatever. She pretended not to see or hear Raleigh and Dax sneaking out in the early morning hours to train, and she refused to allow Raleigh and Bishop to argue about it in her presence.

  Chapter 2

  Raleigh finished her stew and rinsed her bowl in the pot of hot water by the fire. She dried it and put it on the shelf. Mrs. Mitchell didn’t want her doing any of those things, but Raleigh continued by force of habit. She cleaned up after herself every day of her life on her father’s farm, and she wouldn’t stop now for anything.

  She slipped out of the kitchen, down the hall, to her own room under the stairs. She padded across the houndstooth carpet and sat on the edge of the bed. That bed smelled and tasted and radiated Bishop into her tired body. She would give anything to fall into his arms right now.

  He wouldn’t come now, though. He hadn’t come to her in three days, and now, with this latest argument, he might stay away another three weeks before he let himself come near her.

  Everyone in the house knew Bishop and Raleigh were lovers. For some reason, though, everybody continued the pretense of Raleigh being his apprentice. She still took her meals in the kitchen with Dax and Mrs. Mitchell like any other servant. She kept her old room under the stairs and slept there every night.

  Bishop stayed in his own room upstairs next to his office, and Raleigh never went there. In all her time in his house, she never entered his private bedroom. Some unspoken contract told her not to intrude on his private space. He disappeared into his work for days at a time, and she never saw him at all. Did he even think about her then? She never knew.

  Every few days, though, he appeared in her room, shut the door behind him, and they collapsed back into the deepest love Raleigh ever knew. No conflict existed in that room. They loved and accepted and sheltered each other in a passionate cloud of powerful intensity.

  How long would Raleigh have to wait before he came back to her? What if he never came back? What if he got so fed up with her contradicting him at every turn that he stopped loving her?

  A million doubts and fears crowded into her heart and soul. She never wanted anyone to love her the way she wanted Bishop, but pain and frustration and rage got all mixed up in her mind. She wanted him to come and make everything all right. At the same time, she didn’t want him anywhere near her if he couldn’t be kinder to Dax and more accommodating to what she was trying to do.

  She never really loved anybody before. She played around with Quentin Hodges back in the village of Tunstead, but she couldn’t say she really loved him. They never even had a real relationship, and there were never any other boys around.

  What if she went about this business of being lovers all the wrong way? What if she botched it and drove Bishop away? She couldn’t bear that. When it came to combat, she could face down any danger, but she couldn’t face the demons haunting her heart. They grew out of her worst fears, just like Dax in his helmet. The same armor designed to protect him from her made him more fearsome than any monster.

  All those fears boiled out of her soul when Bishop wasn’t around. As long as he stayed away, she lived in a knife-edge of tension and uncertainty. She understood combat. She knew the rules, and she knew exactly what to do to win and accomplish her mission.

  This game of love had no rules—none she knew, anyway. Maybe someone like Angela Cross knew the rules. Everything would be easy for her. She could wind a man like Bishop around her little finger and make him dance to her tune.

  Raleigh could never do anything like that. She couldn’t manipulate a man, especially not a ma
n like Bishop. She worshiped and feared him. She admired him too much. The moment he put out his hand to touch her, she melted into his embrace.

  Was this love, or something else? Was this some kind of domination game? She had no experience by which to judge. She spent her whole life around her father and her brother, so how could she learn the rules of love?

  She kicked her boots off onto the carpet and leaned back on the bed. She turned her head to gaze out the window. The sun flashed on green leaves out there and soothed her tired eyes. She hugged her knees to her chest, and Bishop’s presence clung to her all over. She breathed his pungent tobacco scent out of the bedding.

  Memories of their last encounter covered her with that intoxicating excitement that kept her hungering for him even when he wasn’t around. Her skin tingled all over for him. She let her eyes sink half-closed, and she imagined him with her again.

  A knock on her door startled her upright. She padded across the room and opened the door to find Bishop in the hall. He didn’t smile. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. She stood back, and he strode into the room.

  She shut the door behind him and sat down on the bed again. Here he was, in her room. She didn’t have to doubt or worry anymore. He wouldn’t be here if he didn’t love her and want her and admire her the same way she admired him. In this room, everything made sense. The only rule she needed to know was the cosmic attraction pulling them together.

  He took a few steps to stand in front of her. He gazed down into her face, but all the same doubts and uncertainties haunted that visage. She understood him better than ever. He didn’t know how to love her the right way. He worried he would drive her away with his impenetrable attitude.

  He raised his hand and brushed a stray wisp of hair off her forehead. His palm trailed down to cradle her cheek. She leaned into that warm hand and kissed the rough skin pressed against her mouth.

  His eyes blazed above her. She leaned back to look up at him. He was right there above her, massive, powerful, volcanic. Could she ever be good enough to deserve a man like this?