Hunter Hunted (The Eternals Book 2)

by Richard M. Ankers

  “Get to your feet, mi amigo.”

  Raphael's tremulous voice disgusted and disturbed in equal measures. A little of the darkness that had often overwhelmed my beloved Alba wormed its way into my own psyche. How she'd lived with such a beast both baffled and drew forth a pity I'd never before felt nor understood.

  “You are my brother-in-law, Raphael, that is all,” I retorted. “If you call me your friend again, I shall not look kindly upon it.”

  “Aww, poor Jean. What does it feel like to know you are about to lose your wife for good?”

  “I believe I've faced that fear once and triumphed. I see no reason why I shall not do so again.”

  “Really.”

  “Really.”

  “We shall soon put that to the test.” He kicked my derrière so hard I fell back to the gravel. “Now, move, MI AMIGO!”

  I gritted my teeth, rolled back up onto my feet, tumbled again entangled in my cloak, then tried again. More successful second time around, I shuffled off down the drive. It was the sound of the most pitiful voice I'd ever heard that halted me.

  “Jean,” Sunyin moaned, but a slap to the back of my head prevented me from looking at him.

  My mood aligned itself with the weather: miserable. The rain slipped down my arms rolling away to join the waterfall that cascaded from each fingertip. Only the sound of Raphael licking the inside of his cheeks rose above the pounding torrent. His lascivious slurping increased in magnitude all the way up the driveway until all of a sudden it stopped.

  I risked a glance to my captor, who stared to the upper regions of my home. I followed Raphael's gaze to that of a pale, female hand waving from a grime-covered, bedroom window. It was a good job he didn't look back for I'm sure my countenance looked twice as perplexed as his own.

  “Alba,” he gasped.

  My reaction would have been much the same if he'd not rushed past to bang upon the front door, knocking me flat on my face in the process. It appeared that Jean the bait was less and less required.

  I watched from the dirt as Raphael stepped back and waited. It felt like the world held its breath. His Hispanic followers were marked by their absolute silence. Nobody dared disturb their master's moment. He had waited for centuries, dreamed of it in his own sick way, and his anxiety was palpable.

  All was hushed except the beating rain. It rapped off the rotting porch, clinked off cracked windows and stirred the stink of the rotten ground so as it permeated my sinuses; I thought I'd never be rid of the stench.

  It was the clopping footsteps of boots on wooden stairs that shattered the still. I counted their descent, step by creaking step, the tension causing me to bite my parched lips. After the thirteenth and final step there was silence from within. The occupier toyed with whether to answer the door or not. It did not last. One, two, three steps more, and the door handle turned.

  Raphael ran greasy fingers through his long brown hair, much good that it did him plastered to his tanned face and neck as it was. He straightened his bedraggled clothing and waited like an expectant dog seeking to be fed.

  The door groaned open like a rusted, coffin lid. A hiss of stagnant air escaped into the night. The interior was black as pitch and otherwise vacant. I held a non-existent breath.

  Raphael turned nervously back, looked wide-eyed at me, then at his people, before striding inside. The door slammed shut behind him.

  Those were the longest few moments of my undead life. I'd no idea who'd opened the door and even considered it the actual ghost of my once beloved wife. I had heard of such things but never believed in them. Not a sound emitted from the other side of the closed door, not a whisper.

  “Crash!”

  In the time it took to form a memory, everything changed. Raphael's body split the door asunder and hurtled past into the evening gloom, a trail of shattered raindrops the only evidence of his passing. I gawped to where he'd hailed from as something luminescent materialised from the obsidian darkness and spoke.

  “What a disgusting little man, and such a strange colour.”

  “It is called a tan, Aurora. Apparently, humanity used to trifle in them.” I grinned from ear to ear.

  “I do not care for it,” she returned in Arctic tones, as her sapphire eyes blazed a path through the night. She threw back the hood that covered those pristine, albino features and revealed herself to all, dropping the cloak that concealed her perfect, white self. She was magnificent. Spectral, she hung there and took them in. She regarded those who'd bound me, an avenging spirit that sparkled with crisp energy. The beat of hastily retreating footfalls informed that her dramatic entrance had served its purpose.

  “Quickly, Aurora, you must untie me, they have my friend.”

  Aurora observed me with those oceanic orbs as though I'd said a foreign word. Then, with a shake of her head, as though clearing her thoughts, she swept to where I lay. A moment's grappling and the sound of snapped chains signalled my release. I got to my feet, wobbled, then fell over.

  “Would you like my help?” she asked.

  “Of course, I would!” I snapped unfairly, but desperation was already upon me. Aurora grasped me by the collar, lifted me to my feet, then held me there until I felt balanced. A second later, I was off.

  I ran as fast as my aching legs would carry me. Out of the driveway, I sped, almost toppling in a pothole as I turned up the street. There was nobody there. Trying only to think about reaching the ship in time, I burst off down the decrepit road. The rain pricked at my skin like a million tiny needles. I cared not, it would not slow me. Neither would the wind that had picked up in protest at my good intentions; payback for prior misdeeds.

  The instant I made it into the clearing, I knew it too late. The Marquis' ship was already fifty feet in the air and making rapid ascent into the dark and tempestuous sky. I remained where I stood until it had long passed from view.

  * * *

  Grief marked my short return home. Not only had the Marquis evaded me, yet again, but he still held Sunyin. I feared for the blind monk. I doubted his captors would take their failure well. There was nothing for it but to pray he was more use to them alive than dead.

  It was a forlorn, bedraggled me that trudged despondently up my driveway. Aurora awaited my return just as I'd left her. Her Arctic presence ghosted a welcome I did not greet well.

  “Why did you not come with me?” I growled into the wind.

  “I could not.”

  “What the hell do you mean, you could not? You knew how much that man meant to me, yet you did nothing to save him.”

  “I saved you.”

  “I didn't want saving! I've never wanted it! That man was worth a hundred of me!” I raved. “Why, Aurora? Why did you not stop them?”

  “I could not.”

  “Of course, you could! You're stronger than them, me, all of us put together.”

  “It would not have achieved our goal.”

  “What goal? We have no goal! I have no goal!”

  “You wish to find those who've manipulated you. Letting Alba's brother and the Marquis escape was the best way to expedite this. You may never find out who does so, otherwise.”

  She spoke in that calm, disassociated way that all the Nordics used. It angered me. I felt so desperate that I almost struck her in my rage, or tried to. Fortunately, I did not. Perhaps it was the ever-present pattering of the rain across my skin, or the hypnotic effect of her billowing luminescence, either way, my passions subsided and I sat back down upon the sodden porch steps. Much to my shame, I wept.

  “What are you doing?” Aurora enquired after standing watching me for a time.

  “I do not know, Aurora, I really don't.”

  “You seem frustrated.”

  “I am. It is not a feeling I am used to, nor welcome, yet of late it has frequented my life.”

  “But we have achieved our goal.”

  “What bloody goal?” I snapped.

  She stared impassive, unabashed at my outburst.

&nb
sp; “I'm sorry, Aurora, I did not mean that. I am tired, hurt, and have just lost my only friend. I have achieved nothing.”

  “Sunyin is not your only friend, Jean. I thought you would have known this by now.” She sat on the step beside me, milk-white hair streaming behind her in the wind. “I am your friend, as is Merryweather.”

  “Merryweather!”

  “It was he who knew you would come here. It was he who insisted I did not intervene at Raphael's home though I wished to.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Walter is on the ship, Jean. He will notify us when and where they land.” She held out a small, metallic device I instantly recognised as that which Merryweather had spoken into once before.

  For the first time in a long time, I smiled.

  Chapter Twelve

  -

  Porcelain

  “It is beyond my isolated comprehension how one man can know so much,” Aurora continued. “Yet, make no mistake, Jean, he does. He is erratic in the way he releases said information, sporadic even, to the point of wanting to shake it from him, but he possesses it. Walter can be most frustrating,” she added, doing her best squint-eyed impression of a look I knew only too well. “I do not understand why he should be so. Perhaps, in his own way, Walter is as troubled as you. But he was most insistent that I did not aid you when we crashed in Hispania. He said, at worst they would hurt you, and you enjoyed pain, or something very similar, so it didn't matter. The crash threw Sunyin too far from us to save him without giving Walter and myself away. Raphael's people were fast upon him. If I did not know better, I should almost have said they awaited our arrival. Their hasty attentions prevented my taking any course of action other than that which Walter demanded. For that, I apologise. I know Sunyin meant much to you.”

  “Means,” I corrected.

  Aurora hung her head at that and paused as she gave me time to digest her information. Ever impatient, I took the initiative.

  “How did you remain undiscovered?” I pressed. “I heard Merryweather's laughter. One must surmise the Hispanics knew you there. Either that or the ringing in my ears played tricks upon me.”

  “He would not quieten, Jean. I asked him to cease, but he appeared unable. Concealed within my cloak, I was in no danger whatsoever, but Walter showed a disregard for his well-being that bordered on suicidal. By the time he eventually calmed, we had cleared the compound. Very unpleasant it was too. I had not realised a world without the cover of snow could be so colourless. I did not like it, Jean. I did not like it at all.”

  Aurora furrowed her elegant brows at that as though confounded, or perhaps just disappointed. A world on the cusp of death becomes an unhealthy obsession, and I hoped it did not become hers.

  “We hid just outside the compound and returned for the flying platform when the sun came up,” she continued. “There was a chance they'd have moved it, but fortune favoured us; they were preoccupied with you. Walter said Raphael wanted Alba above all else, and he suspected they did not know her deceased. He claimed they would come for her, as they did, and so formed his plan accordingly.”

  “Wait a minute.” I stopped her mid-flow. “Are you saying you both came here on the flying platform?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we must follow them,” I said leaping to my feet.

  “Where?”

  “Wherever.”

  “We cannot search if we do not know where to look.”

  “They'll return to Hispania and Raphael's bolthole.”

  “Walter did not think so,” Aurora replied coolly.

  “How can he know all this?”

  Aurora just shrugged her shoulders. “You do not trust him?”

  “I do not.”

  “Neither did I, but I was wrong. I told him so, and he laughed at me.”

  “That sounds like something he'd do.”

  “How long have you known him?” Aurora asked. She wiped a film of rain from her face and cocked her head to one side.

  “Would you like to go indoors, it's a long story?”

  “It matters not. I prefer being outside. Besides, I have never seen actual rain. It's beautiful in its liquidity, peaceful, all these little want-to-be snowflakes dripping from the clouds.”

  Aurora smiled then, a look of such angelic pleasure that under different circumstances I imagined my heart should have melted. The upturning of her luscious lips changed the whole complexion of her face revealing her true youth and innocence. It suited her being unburdened. However, time was as it was, and my heart belonged to another.

  “Have you truly never seen the rain?”

  “No, only wind, snow and on occasion falling ice. Nordvind and I remain in it whenever we can.”

  “Who?”

  “My friend,” she said the glow of life fading from her face. Aurora's thoughts turned inwards much as my own often did. “Hvit stifles me, Jean, more so than ever these days.” She spoke softly, her eyes to the ground.

  “I'm not surprised. Another few hours in Hvit and I think I'd have jumped in the ocean just for relief.”

  “Hvit is still my home, Jean.” Aurora levelled her gaze back to my own.

  “I'm sorry, Aurora, I was not thinking.” I gave her one of my least reassuring smiles, but she seemed to bear no ill will.

  “Hvit has much to answer for, but it is all I know.”

  “This must be quite the adventure then.”

  “I suppose so. I have my cloak, of course. Nobody would have found me should I have left, but I've never had anywhere to go.”

  “Quite a thing that cloak of yours. Where did you get it?” I asked.

  “It is all I have of my father.”

  “He gave it to you?”

  “Left me it.”

  “He had great foresight.”

  “Possibly?”

  “Who was he?”

  “I do not know.”

  “You do not know! Will your mother not tell you?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm, sore subject?”

  “It is.”

  “Then, in way of apology, I shall answer your enquiry as to when Walter and I first became acquainted.”

  The wind picked up then, a restless squall. The rain came down with such intensity as to send raindrops bouncing off my jet-black boots back towards the sky. My old home creaked its pathetic resistance to the gathering storm, the tiled roof taking a thunderous battering. Aurora appeared not to notice. She sat there serene at the first thunderclap, as I tried to find the words to start my tale.

  “I was a very different man back then, Aurora, I cannot stress that enough. I was an idealist. Those that wield so powerful a weapon often wield it unscrupulously. I was no different to anyone else.”

  I stopped there and apologised, jagged forks of lightning that illuminated the clouds in indigo and gold a precursor to a second thunderclap stealing my words.

  “There is a need to go further back,” I continued. “I must start with my parents for they are the root cause of most of my life experiences. They were scientists. You may or may not know that. It was they that developed the theory of our sun's death. I should not say theory though for that implies a possibility of error, and I can assure you there was, and is, none. They gathered evidence from both history and their present and formulated a calculation as to when said event would occur. Their calculation was indisputable, accurate to within a few centuries; nothing to an Eternal. They presented their findings to the Hierarchy, but, like all people faced with obliteration, they are also faced with a choice: fight, or capitulate. Eternal society, as you and I knew it, was over, finished, and capitulation its decision. My parents thought, at first, it was due to shock. It was not. Eternals, and in particular the Hierarchy, were unable to face the realisation that not only were they inferior to the by then extinct humans technologically, living off the scraps of their leftover inventions, but were also subject to their same demise: death.”

  “Do you follow me so far?” I que
ried with an intensity of gaze that startled poor Aurora.

  “Yes,” her succinct reply.

  “Death was a concept the Eternals had rarely been troubled with. Yes, an immortal could have their lives, or to be more exact, their non-lives, taken away by force, but one never expects it. The thought of not being long for this world hit them hard. They chose disbelief because accepting thoughts of mortality was an anathema to them. Most still won't accept it. But, as one after another of the ranks of power took their own lives before having them forcibly removed, the message started to sink in. That was the last bit of control those people would ever have and they exercised it. Those who remained chose to live it up, so to speak, whilst still they could. High society gathered to waltz their way into oblivion, hoping the apocalypse might somehow pass them by.”

  “I get ahead of myself,” I said, wiping the rainwater from my face.

  “Where did Walter come into all this?”

  “Ah, ever to the point, dear girl. Let me explain.”

  “When my parents and a few select others broke the news that everything would end, they were mocked. Their science was pooh-poohed as hokum. So what, you might say. And so what was how my parents took it. But, as they persevered, pressed their points, the mockery turned to an absolute dismembering of their social and intellectual statuses. At first, they fought back, through me. I had always been a hot-head, and the opportunity to vent my frustrations for the non-life I'd been born to came as welcome respite. I savoured persuading our kind to accept the truth. Whilst doing so, I garnered quite a reputation for violence. Actually, that's not entirely true, extreme violence would be more accurate.”

  “It was during one particular escapade in some nameless noble's home that I met Walter. As I turned my hand to disrupting one overly dramatic party throwing mostly men here there and everywhere, Walter reclined upon a chaise lounge applauding. I think he may have regretted doing so in the aftermath, I made quite the mess. The treatment my mother and father received, my heroes, made me indignant, and it drove me to wild excess. I could not help myself. Walter did not aid me, but made it crystal clear, he believed my parents' findings. I accepted his cold comfort in good faith. Perhaps, I was wrong to? He was indifferent to Eternal society even then, Aurora, much as I.”