The Wolf's Hunt

by K. T. Harding

  Raleigh glanced once at Dax, but he couldn’t help her. She had to trust this wolf. She could no longer count on Bishop to tell her who to trust and who to attack. She had only her own instincts left to fall back on.

  She nodded. “All right. We’ll come with you.”

  Chapter 6

  Rianne bounded away in one spring. In a flash, she disappeared into the forest. The other wolves sprang to follow her, and the whole pack left Raleigh and Dax far behind. The wolves showed no interest in their fallen comrades.

  Raleigh and Dax exchanged glances. Raleigh shrugged. Oh, well. She agreed to this. She better follow through. She stuck her cubes back in her pockets and raced into the forest after the wolves.

  She ran as fast as she could go, but even then, she barely kept their bounding tails in sight. A flash of red here, a wink of grey there, and Raleigh put on a burst of speed to catch up with them.

  They ran for miles. Raleigh’s lungs burned and her legs ached, but she couldn’t let the pack leave her behind. Whatever Rianne wanted from them, whatever she wanted to tell Raleigh about Rekworth’s death, Raleigh had to find out what it was.

  She threw her lot in with this slaying business. She made up her mind to give back the twen and complete this contract. She had to accept any scrap of information anyone in Hinterland deigned to give her. She could put the puzzle pieces together later to make a coherent picture.

  The terrain changed and climbed into low hills dozens of miles from Perdue. How she and Dax would get back to town, Raleigh hated to think. The wolves never slackened their pace. They ran far up into the hills.

  Raleigh started to fall back in exhaustion. Dax slowed his pace to keep up with her. The run didn’t bother him at all, but that didn’t surprise Raleigh. He wasn’t human, and his power took over. It threatened to break out of him at any random moment.

  The wolves charged far ahead. They would have left Raleigh behind when she caught sight of a set of hindquarters driven into the ground under a fallen log. One after another, they disappeared into the hillside. If Raleigh had been any farther behind, she never would have seen where they went.

  She drew up to catch her breath outside the entrance hole. Dax wasn’t even breathing heavily. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  Raleigh gasped for air. “We better. If we can make an ally out of Rianne, we’ll be so much better off. We won’t have to fight these wolves every time we want to use the tunnel. Even if she doesn’t have anything relevant to tell us, we should accept her hospitality just this once. It could pay off in spades later.”

  She didn’t wait for him to reply. She was in command. She made the decisions. He followed.

  She bent down and crawled into a burrow barely big enough for her to move along on hands and knees. Her hair brushed the ceiling, and her knees impressed the soft soil underneath. She inched into the dark, close hole. The circle of light vanished behind her, but she couldn’t turn back.

  The tunnel smelled of wet dog. Raleigh hardly dared breathe. Just when she couldn’t stand the claustrophobia any longer, the tunnel widened into a large open cave.

  Hundreds of wolf hybrids lounged all around. Cubs nursed at their mothers’ stomachs. Older males wrestled and nipped and tumbled on all sides. Raleigh got to her feet and brushed off her hands and knees. Dax came through to stand at her side.

  Raleigh watched the wolves in their element for a moment before she caught sight of Rianne. The she-wolf crossed the cavern to a rock outcropping against the far wall. She climbed on top of it and flopped down on her side.

  Five young cubs scrambled up. They pounced on top of her and gnawed her legs, her tail, her ears, and the scruff of her neck until she snapped at them and drove them off.

  Raleigh took a deep breath and waded into the sea of bodies. The wolves paid no attention to her, and she made sure she didn’t step on anybody on her way toward Rianne’s rock. Raleigh spotted the other wolves who attacked her and Dax, but they ignored the people they just tried to kill.

  Rianne cast a languid glance around the cavern until Raleigh stopped in front of the rock. “What did you want to tell us about Rekworth’s death? How did you become Alpha over Horeck?”

  Rianne half closed her eyes. “Horeck? He was easy to defeat, and once I showed him I was stronger, my idiot cousins backed down in a heartbeat. Nowadays, if anyone’s stupid enough to challenge me, I put him in his place right away. It makes it much easier to keep order.”

  Raleigh took another look around the cavern. “You’re doing a great job. This place is thriving.”

  Rianne cocked her head. “You’ve never seen this place before, have you?”

  “No, I haven’t, but I can tell your people are peaceful and prosperous. You have a great lair here.”

  Rianne purred and rested her chin on her arms. “Thank you. I knew you would understand. You’re cut from the same cloth as Bishop.”

  Raleigh blushed. “If you have something to tell me about Rekworth’s death, I’d appreciate it if you could go ahead and tell me. We want to get back to the market before it gets too late.”

  Rianne’s head swung up, and she cocked her ears. “I want to tell you something, but it has nothing to do with Rekworth’s death. I only said that to get you to come back here with me.”

  “Why would you do that?” Raleigh asked. “You could have told me in the clearing.”

  “I couldn’t tell you there. I had to find out if you were the kind of person I thought you were. I had to see if you were brave enough and compassionate enough toward our people to come back here, if you trusted me enough to follow me into the burrow.”

  “Well, I’m here now,” Raleigh replied. “What did you want to tell me?”

  Rianne took a deep breath. “It’s about Bishop.”

  Raleigh held up her hand. “It’s okay. I know you two were more than friends in the past.”

  “It’s not that,” Rianne told her. “It’s what you told me about….about him being dead.”

  Raleigh sighed and stared at the ground. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I know it’s a shock.”

  “He can’t be dead,” Rianne insisted.

  “I know how you feel,” Raleigh told her. “I don’t want to believe it, either, but it’s true. One of the Guildsmen set off an explosive device. He blew the whole Guild building to the moon and left nothing but a big crater behind. Bishop was in the building, and he wasn’t in any condition to get out of it before the explosion. I lost my brother in the same explosion. Bishop is dead.”

  Rianne blew air through her nose. “I’m sorry for your loss, but this is what I want to tell you. I have contacts all over Hinterland. I hear things. You understand how it is. I’ve followed Bishop’s exploits for years without him knowing, and I would have heard if he was dead. He must still be alive.”

  Raleigh’s head shot up. “What?”

  Rianne got to her feet. A few wolves looked up at her before they went back to their business. She lowered her head between her shoulders to bring her face closer to Raleigh. She rumbled low in her chest. “Listen to me, little girl. Knox Bishop was the most notorious slayer and bounty hunter in the world—not just in the human world, but in Hinterland, too. Everybody knew Bishop. They admired him and feared him and hated him, but no one could deny his power and his influence. He changed lives. He changed history with his work.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then you must understand that his death would have rocked Hinterland to its foundations. Everybody would have been talking about it. The world wouldn’t be safe anymore without Bishop in it, but it didn’t rock Hinterland to its foundations. No one is talking about it. No little birds are spreading the news to the four corners of the world. The hybrids in the mountains would be running for cover if Bishop died, but they aren’t. Bishop is alive somewhere. I know it.”

  Raleigh stared at her. Her heart thundered against her ribs, but she didn’t dare argue back. This could
n’t be happening. Bishop couldn’t be alive. She watched with her own eyes when that hammaslahti crushed him in its jaws, right before it slammed his shattered body into the Guild building walls. She watched the whole horrible sight unfold while Dax dragged her out of the building. Then the building vaporized in a massive explosion that left nothing behind.

  Rianne stretched back out on the rock. “You don’t want to believe me. That’s natural after what you’ve been through. Carry on with your contract. You’ll find out I’m right.”

  Rianne turned away and didn’t look at Raleigh again. Raleigh couldn’t speak. She stumbled across the cavern and scrambled up the tight passage into the open air. She didn’t have to hear Rianne say the words. She and her wolves would be Raleigh’s allies from now on. Raleigh could come and go through the tunnel to the market. Raleigh never had to worry about the wolves attacking her again.

  She could almost wish they would, though. She could almost wish they killed her and Dax instead of this. After seven weeks of anguish and grief, Raleigh almost settled into a black world without Bishop. She moved through that world dead to joy and pleasure, but at least it was her world.

  Why did Rianne have to go and ruin it? Why couldn’t she let Raleigh live the rest of her life believing Bishop was dead instead of throwing her into turmoil like this?

  Raleigh shook Rianne’s words out of her mind. Bishop wasn’t alive, and Raleigh had more important things to think about right now than chasing phantoms across the universe. She had to get back to the market and get some mussels for the twen. She had to find out who Bishop was working for before she could even think about handing over the twen.

  She glanced sideways at Dax. The young man stared off into the forest. When he caught Raleigh looking at him, he returned her gaze as if nothing had ever happened. If Rianne’s words made any impression on him, he didn’t show it.

  “Come on,” Raleigh told him. “We’ve got a long way to go to get back to the market, and it’ll be dark soon.”

  She started to walk away when Dax’s hand shot out. He laid his hand on her arm, and in a blinding flash of light, the hilltop forest vanished before their eyes. They exploded outward in a shining sphere and reformed back where they were in front of the vines covering the tunnel.

  Chapter 7

  Dax and Raleigh looked around. Then they looked at each other. Raleigh gasped. “Dax! What did you do?”

  He stared back at her with wide eyes. “I…I don’t know. I just did it. You said we had to get back to the market, so I just….I just did it.”

  Raleigh turned away. “Never mind. Let’s go.”

  He grabbed her arm again and immediately jerked his hand away. When she turned around to look at him, he shrank in on himself. “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” Raleigh told him. “Don’t worry about it.”

  He shuddered. “Raleigh…I don’t know…I don’t know what’s happening to me. Help me. I can’t stop it.”

  “You don’t have to stop it,” Raleigh told him. “Just let it happen. It can’t hurt you, and it just might help us every now and then. Don’t try to stop it. Just let it unfold naturally.”

  He knit his hands together, and his eyes darted around the forest without seeing anything. “I…I don’t like this. I don’t like what I’m turning into.”

  She couldn’t look at him like this. He spent his whole life believing he was just some ordinary kid from a poor neighborhood. Now he was turned into….well, Raleigh didn’t know what he was turning into.

  She must be the only person on the planet who knew anything about it, and she couldn’t help him. She could only be there and be his friend, no matter what. She laid her hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay.”

  He stared into her face and whispered in frightened breaths. “What if it gets out of control? What if I wind up hurting somebody? I couldn’t live with that.”

  Her heart ached for him. She thanked heaven she didn’t have to face changing into some force beyond human understanding. “Listen, sweetheart. That won’t happen. Whatever this thing is, it’s part of you. It’s been part of you your whole life, even if you didn’t know it. You’re growing up. That’s why it’s coming out now. It’s like growing hair on your face and your voice changing. It’s just more of the same thing.”

  He tried to smile, but his face twisted in tormented terror.

  Raleigh took another deep breath. “It won’t get out of control. It will develop to its full power, and you’ll learn to control it. After a while, it will become a regular part of you, like using your arm or your hand. Don’t worry about it. Just let it happen, and don’t worry about hurting anybody—not anybody you don’t want to hurt. Did you see what happened when you used your power against the wolves?”

  He blinked.

  “Okay, so you didn’t see,” she went on, “but I did. Your…whatever that was, it passed straight through me and hit the wolves. It came from inside you, and it didn’t hurt anybody you didn’t want it to hurt. It’s a weapon of some kind, like a gun. You can turn it against whoever you want. You won’t use it against anybody you don’t want to, so don’t worry. It’s a force for good, just like the rest of you.”

  His face started to clear. “Do you think so?”

  “I know so. Now come on. We’ll get the mussels and get home before we decide what to do next.”

  She didn’t give him a chance to question further. She parted the vines and entered the tunnel. She half hoped he wouldn’t do anything crazy like that again, at least not until they understood a little more about his powers. When would that be? How long would he take to develop them?

  They might just keep erupting at random times and in random ways, without explanation, until he grew old enough to gain some control over them.

  What was he, that he could transport them dozens of miles in a split second? All he had to do was think about it, and he zapped himself and Raleigh to the tunnel entrance. Thank goodness he used his powers only to help them so far. At least he wasn’t blowing off in every direction with no order at all.

  She hurried down the tunnel and showed him how to turn at the ninth stone. She made her way to the entrance of the market, but before she went near the door, she hesitated in the dark and peered in.

  Esmeralda, the grotesque devil-woman, sat on her stool by the door. She flicked a small riding crop against her boot and cast her burning eyes around the room at nothing.

  Rianne’s words echoed in Raleigh’s head. If Bishop really was dead, all his friends and enemies in Hinterland must know by now. Word would spread, and the few who knew Raleigh was Bishop’s apprentice would treat her accordingly.

  Raleigh made up her mind to test the scenario. She didn’t believe Bishop was alive. That would be asking too much of her ragged brain, but she would conduct a small experiment, just to check Rianne’s hypothesis.

  She stepped into the room and approached the door. She smiled at Esmeralda. “Good evening, Esmeralda. What’s the entrance fee tonight?”

  Esmeralda bent over without getting off her stool. Her fangs protruded from her lips when she smiled. She took hold of the doorknob and yanked the door open. She flung it back to reveal the market inside. “No entrance fee for you, honey. You go right on in.”

  Raleigh didn’t wait to be told twice. “Thank you very much. Have a good evening.”

  “You, too, honey.” Esmeralda went back to slapping her crop against her boot and staring at the far wall.

  Raleigh stepped through the door. Dax moved in behind her, and the door clanged shut.

  Raleigh glanced back. “That was weird.”

  “What’s wrong?” Dax asked.

  Raleigh turned around to face him. “You heard what Rianne said. She thinks Bishop is still alive. She said everyone would know if he died. They would be talking about it, and Esmeralda would have mentioned it. Instead, she let us walk right through.”

  “Why don’t you just ask her if she’s heard anyth
ing?”

  Raleigh turned away. “I can’t.”

  He strode behind her into the crowded market. “Why can’t you?”

  She spun around to face him. “Do you really want to know if Bishop is still alive?”

  He gasped out loud. “How can you even ask that? You know I would do anything to get him back if I could. If he’s alive, we have to find him.”

  She whirled the other way. “We won’t find him, because he’s not alive. You saw the explosion yourself. No one could survive that. He’s dead.”

  Dax said nothing more, but Raleigh’s mind seethed in confusion. Why didn’t she want to entertain the possibility Bishop could still be alive? Didn’t she want him back as much as Dax did?

  Of course, she wanted him back. She wanted him back so bad she wanted to die every time she thought she couldn’t get him. That was the problem. She couldn’t let herself believe. She couldn’t let herself hope, after all this time, that he might be alive, only to find out later that he wasn’t. She couldn’t face losing him all over again.

  She shouldered her way through the market. Every now and then, someone looked up at her before moving out of her way. She registered the subtle change in the back of her mind. She was becoming as self-assured as Bishop used to be. People moved aside for her and let her through.

  She wound her way through the market to a row of stalls cut across the middle of the cavern. She counted down the row to the tenth stall and stuck her head under the flap leading to a tent behind it. “Chivvy! Are you there?”

  A tall Kmiub stepped from the other side of the tent. His body stretched three feet taller than Raleigh’s head. His rubbery legs sagged when he put his weight on them, and his arms flapped at his sides. His fingers dangled around his knees, and his head bobbed on the long waving neck.

  His head wove back and forth. “What do you want?”

  “I’m back for some more of those blue mussels I bought from you last time.”