Hunter Hunted (The Eternals Book 2)

by Richard M. Ankers

  * * *

  “What is it like to be human, Sunyin?”

  Aurora's hair pooled out behind her in a slip-stream of spilled milk. Tendrils of softest white, the wind tickled them against Sunyin's face and made him sneeze.

  “I do not understand?” he replied after itching his nose.

  “Does it differ to being an Eternal?”

  “I do not know; I have never been an Eternal.”

  “Do you crave blood?”

  “I crave peace.”

  “Do your eyes hurt?”

  Sunyin touched a wrinkled hand to his face before realising what Aurora meant. “No, it is all I have ever known.”

  “All?”

  “My memories are unclear. I cannot remember the past, only that Jean is who I sought and that he has always been kind to me.”

  “Pfft!” Merryweather huffed but kept any further comments to himself.

  “I think Jean is special, too,” Aurora spoke bluntly.

  “I am sat here,” I interjected.

  Aurora looked to me, or more through me, to be exact, before turning back to the monk.

  “What does a monk do?”

  “Monk-ey about. Get it? Monkey.”

  “Thank you, Walter.” I cast him one of my most withering looks. He pretended not to notice, as usual, and picked at his nails with a twig he'd removed from his hair.

  “A monk harmonises with himself and nature,” Sunyin said after some consideration.

  “I know nature!” Aurora enthused. “In the Arctic, we have whales, wolves, and I even saw a Polar bear once.”

  Merryweather twitched at that, pausing mid-prune. I observed as the cogs turned in his mind. Seeing my watching him, he returned to his former task.

  “I know not the creatures you mention, but I believe this world possess so few that they must be precious to you.”

  “The whales are, although I do not believe there are many left.”

  “Do you watch them?”

  “No, we drink their blood,” Aurora's emotionless response.

  “That is not good. Every creature has the right to life, the same as us. After all, there is not long left for them to do so.”

  “How long?” Merryweather blurted with wide-eyed intensity.

  “Not long.”

  “How long?” he said rising to his feet.

  “Sit down, Walter, there's a good boy.” I patted the metal floor and clicked my teeth. But, for a second, a fraction of a moment, I thought Merryweather would rebel. He delivered such a look of malice, such utter contempt, I thought my insides should twist and knot. Of course, as is the nature of the game between men, I returned his glare tenfold. Even then, he tottered on the brink of madness before I made to stand and he quickly bowed and reseated himself.

  “How do you know the world will end, yet you cannot remember your recent past, old monk?” Aurora asked her question as though nothing had transpired.

  “I feel it.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you sound so certain.”

  “I am certain, Princess.”

  “I do not understand? You trust fate and feeling over fact and certainties?”

  At that, Sunyin offered his hand to his pupil. She looked at him hesitant, then took it in her porcelain own. The old monk closed opaque eyes, then smiled the gentlest smile I'd ever seen.

  “Do you feel the sun clipping the Arctic waves, Aurora? Do you see the darkness perforated by day? Do you know your father will one day find you, and love you, and shelter you?”

  “Yes,” Aurora replied as ice-blue tears slid across her glacial skin.

  “Do you have any proof?” the blind monk asked, but with no hint of superiority, only love.

  “I do not. I know only what I feel in my heart.”

  “Then, as I said at the start of our conversation, you and I are more alike than you realise, child.” Sunyin released Aurora's hand, as the Princess curled up over her knees.

  “What a load of crap!” Merryweather baulked. “Eternals don't have hearts. Not that work, anyway,” he added with a dismissive wave.

  The next thing I knew, Merryweather dangled by his throat over the platform's prow. Aurora said nothing, she didn't even twitch, as Merryweather screamed his apologies. She held him there at arms-length hundreds of feet above the barren floor, eyes narrowed, lips twitching. She was a goddess amongst men, an angered one at that, and even I feared her.

  It was Sunyin who, as always, seemed to know just what to say in such a situation.

  “Have we left the mountains yet?”

  Aurora snapped free of her trance, unfurled two of the fingers that clutched Merryweather's throat, almost as if to prove she could, then lifted him back over the railings and dumped him to the platform floor.

  “We appear to have, Sunyin,” she said sitting down beside him and taking his trembling hand in her own.

  “Are you well, my blind friend?” I asked as the tremors seemed to take hold of his entire upper body. Merryweather crawled further away as if the monk carried contagion.

  “I… I do not know?”

  “Would you like my cloak wrapped around you to better keep out the cold?” I offered.

  “What is cold?” Aurora asked.

  “I remember my father once calling it humanity's taste of the afterlife to come. That was a long time ago, of course, and may not apply now.”

  “I am not cold, Jean. And, as always, I thank you for your kindness.”

  “Think nothing of it, old friend, I only wear it for effect.”

  “What effect?” asked Aurora.

  “You are inquisitive today.”

  “I do not normally get the opportunity to ask questions.”

  “Well, in answer, I should say I wear it to menace.”

  “How do you mean?” she asked putting her arm about Sunyin's quivering shoulders.

  “In my experience, a scowl and a sweep of a dark cloak is worth a thousand words.”

  “I have only a white cloak. Do you think I should have scowled at Sir Walter and swept it before him instead of what I did?”

  I laughed at that, her innocence was so refreshing. It felt like all my troubles lifted from my shoulders at her words. In fact, I burst into so intense a laughter it made Merryweather cower even further against the platform rails. I laughed with an infection that caused even the stoic Nordic to burst into her own. I should have likened it to the chiming of Linka's flowers back on the banks of the Rhine, but that just reminded me of her misery when we parted in Hvit. My laughing stopped.

  * * *

  We travelled on in silence over a dead and sandy landscape. The night wore on with its usual relentless pace, Polaris rising ever higher in the Northern sky. The moon shone down, unhindered by snow or cloud, and I watched its essence trickle over Aurora's luminescent skin. Sunyin's continued shaking made particles of pure light lift from her form and disperse into the passing night. She mesmerised me. It wasn't desire, fascination, or even inquisitiveness, just awe. How she and her people had remained a mystery for so long troubled me greatly. The fact I'd deserted my only reason for living, unless the murdering of one's blackmailers counted, with those I knew so little of, troubled me even further. But, even though the Nordic royals had proven so difficult to understand, there was something about them I trusted. I should have called it honour, perhaps, but as a man without any, I couldn't be sure.

  “What is that?” Aurora asked. Her words shattered the silence as she pointed over the craft's edge.

  “That's the beautiful turquoise of the Mediterranean Sea,” Merryweather said without looking up.

  “But there is no water.”

  “That's what was the beautiful turquoise of the Mediterranean Sea,” he replied, still looking at his feet.

  “How can it be a sea without water?”

  “That is what was the beautiful turquoise of the Mediterranean Sea before it died.”

  “I think we get the picture,
Merryweather,” I interjected kicking his foot. “This is what remains of the Mediterranean Sea, my dear Aurora,” I said. “The whole thing became defunct not too long ago. In fact, I should think it better called the Mediterranean Trickle, as that's all that's left. The Eternal engineers created a basin that holds seawater in the Aegean only. Any surplus trickles away into the Atlantic that is likewise barricaded and dammed.”

  “Who told you that crap?” said Merryweather.

  “My parents, so choose your next snide remark with care.”

  Merryweather zipped his lips though his eyes remained furious.

  “Then what are we doing over this sea without a sea?” Aurora continued.

  “I can only surmise the Marquis had come to the brilliant conclusion I would not find him if it meant crossing water.”

  “The joke's on him, eh, Jean?”

  I did my best to ignore Merryweather's attempt at humour and the return kick to my own foot. But it made me wonder just where we were headed. For one very frightening moment, I even thought he should have hidden in the all but deceased continent of Africania. Fortunately, I was wrong, as the flying platform took a sharp turn to the West. After all, who could've lived on a dead continent of nought but creeping deserts?

  “Wheeee!”

  “He's such a happy fellow,” said Sunyin at Merryweather's aeronautical outburst.

  “You're awake, my friend.”

  “I'm feeling a bit better, Jean, thank you.”

  “That is good,” I replied. “Very good.”

  “I believe it is due to Princess Aurora's wonderful attentions.” Sunyin attempted a teeth-chattering smile.

  “I did nothing,” Aurora said, surprised at his words.

  “Kindness is never anything less than the best a person can give.”

  “Ah, Sunyin, always you see the best in people. You even see something in Merryweather, although only God knows what?”

  “Thanks,” said Merryweather.

  “Welcome,” I replied.

  “Everybody contains some good, Jean, it just needs releasing.”

  “He really is a star,” Merryweather chuckled. “Where did you say you found him, and can I have one?”

  “There are plenty of me to go around,” said Sunyin.

  “Oh, I know there are,” Merryweather sniffed.

  “You what?” I leapt to my feet, then almost immediately regretted it such was the craft's velocity.

  “I mean! I mean!”

  “Spit it out, dear Walter,” I hissed looming over his cowering form.

  “I mean, there's the younger ones that escaped from Vladivar, plenty of them.”

  “How do you know, you weren't there?” I grabbed him by his velvet lapels and hoisted him to his feet.

  “Instinct, Jean, that's how I get by. Same as knowing the Nordics would be at the wedding.”

  “How did you know they were at the wedding?” I felt the red-mist descending but did my best to control it, not that Merryweather would have known. The wind which blew through my unkempt mane and moon-maddened eyes must have scared his tongue into loosening.

  “Someone was bound to have invited them.”

  “Not good enough, Walter. How could anyone invite them, when we thought them a myth, hidden, untouchable, gone?”

  “Nobody's untouchable, these days.”

  I lifted him clear of the platform and pressed his limp frame over the handlebar controls. “The truth!” I roared.

  “Chantelle told me,” he blurted and started crying again.

  “Do you mean the dead Chantelle?” I whispered in his ear.

  “But she's not dead,” he said perplexed.

  “I know that. Sunyin knows that. But how did you know?”

  “Oh…erm…bugger.”

  “Tut-tut, Walter. So unlike you to let your guard down.”

  “I couldn't help it, you're all so boring,” he sobbed.

  “In that case, I'm very glad that we are.” I felt a sudden need to relieve Sir Walter Merryweather of the burdens of existence and lunged for his neck. But before I could make contact, fang to jugular, the craft lurched downward flipping me over the front end. I only saved myself from a life-threatening fall by retaining my grip on Merryweather's lapels.

  “Help! Help! He's choking me,” he shouted.

  “You have no breath in your lungs to choke out, you idiot!” I yelled, as my cloak whipped over my head, blinding me to everything.

  The rest was a blur. Walter struggled to free himself from my grip. I heard Aurora's iced voice, calm, yet indistinct of word. Sunyin shouted my name in panic. But most of all, I felt a shudder run through my entire frame as the ground rose up to strike me. It flipped me in the air and sent me tumbling head over heels in a tangle of clothing until I came to a jarred and very prickly stop.

  I had no requirement for the deep breaths I took, but they helped settle me. I laid there some more to make sure I wasn't actually dead, or deader, then gripped my cloak and threw it off my face. The sight of the moon beaming down came as a blessed relief; the sound of manic laughter fading into the night did not. Sir Walter Merryweather had again eluded me.

  A few more frustrated breaths, then I rolled onto my front and straight into a pair of high, brown-leather boots.

  “Buenas noches, Jean. May I enquire as to why you are rolling around in my rose bushes?”

  It was a voice I had forgotten still frequented the Earth.

  “And, where is my hermana? I apologise. I believe you say in English, where is my sister? Where is Alba?”

  Chapter Nine

  -

  Orange

  I raised my head to the annoyingly handsome visage of Raphael Santini. He stood, legs apart, hands on leather-trousered hips, long, brown hair swaying in the scirocco breeze before a mansion of orange-tinged gaudiness. The building stood at the end of a long and verdant lawn of lush green grass bordered by rows of exquisite coloured roses.

  Ignoring Raphael's question, I raised myself to my feet, stretched to the accompanying clunk of my spine clicking back into place, then cast a glance over my shoulder. There, sticking out of a flowerbed of indigo-coloured roses was a very unhappy looking flying platform. Sunyin lay before it attended to by several women. There was no sign of Aurora, nor he who had come to be my bane.

  “Did you not hear me, mi amigo?”

  I gave each ear a bash before extending my hand to Alba's brother. “I'm sorry, my ears were ringing. That wasn't the best of landings.”

  “I can see that,” he said taking my hand and heartily shaking it, much to my relief. “So, now you can hear, I repeat, where is my sister?”

  Who knew why I lied, but Raphael had always been somewhat protective, and I didn't think he would've taken too kindly to my admitting to his sister being dead.

  “She's at home,” I lied.

  “That is…” Raphael paused there as if searching for the right words. The gears of his mind rattled in time to his grating teeth. He settled on, “A shame. I should have loved to have seen her.”

  “Well, you know how it is.”

  “No, I don't.”

  “She's a home bird, never leaves the place.”

  “This was her home until you stole her away.”

  “Oh, Raphael, don't you ever let that drop, it was hundreds of years ago?”

  “A mere heartbeat.”

  “I forget how much older you are than your sister and I.”

  “Age is relative to those who span millennia.”

  “I haven't spanned one millennium yet, so I can't give an honest answer. By the way, how's the rest of the family?” I said, changing the subject.

  “Dead. False plasma is no substitute for the real thing.”

  “I wouldn't know.”

  “Madre and Padre slipped into eternity about a century ago. They'd grown as bored with life as you always pretended to be. I would've let Alba know, but you know how it is.”

  “No, I don't,” I replied giving him a taste of hi
s own medicine.

  “I'm not too keen on the Rhineland.”

  “It wasn't too keen on you, as I remember.”

  “True, true, I can't deny it. Have we buried our differences, you and I?”

  I doubted very much that we had. I hated Alba's brother's guts, and I was certain he felt the exact same way about me. Regardless, I nodded and offered my hand again.

  “Bueno,” he said taking it and shaking the thing with a vigour I thought might dislocate something. It was whilst in the act of holding his hand, not a thing I was prone to with another man, that highlighted something I'd thought up to then a trick of the light.

  “You're looking a decidedly darker shade of pale,” I reflected.

  “Healthy living,” he replied, pulling his hand away. “Are you thirsty?”

  “Dry as a bone.”

  “Then, you might as well come in. I can't have you loitering around my garden. It'll be light before long and I don't fancy cleaning smudges of Jean off my roses.”

  “And, my friend?”

  “He, too, then you can tell me what you're really doing here.”

  Raphael slapped my back in an over-familiar manner, and painful one, then led the way to his front door. “Quite the spectrum of colours you've got going on,” I noted.

  “Gracias, I think!” he said with a slight inclination of his head. “I like colour. Living without it for as long as we all have, has left me feeling cheated; I dislike feeling cheated. This is my own small rebellion against our shadowed existence.”

  “I'm very impressed,” I replied, as I stole another glance to Sunyin. Fortunately, he was not far behind, strung up between two impressive looking females. The little monk did not look in good shape. I dared not tarry to verify it though, Raphael had always been temperamental even at the best of times. I thought it wise to keep on his good side until such time as I wasn't.

  He strode into the house with the swagger of a man that had total confidence in his own power. Of all the men I'd known, he more than any had earned that right. Raphael's temper almost surpassed my own. Almost.

  The Santini clan's persuasion towards violence was the stuff of legend. Even though members of the Hierarchy, they had been cast out by their fellow cronies, banished with some relief to the shores of the Southern Americas. Raphael was the foremost reason for it. That he and his kind had returned showed The New Europa Alliance, and with it, the Hierarchy, was as weak as I'd always suspected. I hoped to God he knew not just how weak.