Hunter Hunted (The Eternals Book 2)

by Richard M. Ankers

  “You should be careful, Jean,” Aurora reprimanded.

  “Why?” I sounded like a spoiled child but was getting quite past myself.

  “Beasts lurk below the ice. The water channels allow them a view; a view allows them a potential meal: we are that meal.”

  “So you have said, but I have seen no evidence of it.”

  “The fact the water is revealed, the channels flowing unimpaired is evidence enough.”

  “I don't understand?”

  “Only those who spend their lives on the ice, or under it, ever could,” Aurora said stony-faced.

  “But every moment we waste allows Chantelle to pull further from us and the wolves at our backs to draw closer.”

  “I have no concerns over land wolves, it is the sea variety we must be wary of,” Grella interjected. “It is they that keep the water flowing, they that prevent the ice from freezing over.”

  I said nothing, but my look must have given me away.

  “You should listen to what my brother says, Jean. It is for all our sakes he checks the way.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do,” Grella said stern and determined, his face carved from marble. “I can assure you, I wish to reach our prey before they reach Hvit, but better to reach it alive than to not reach it all.”

  “Well, I suppose so. You seem to know what you're on about.”

  “You can be a most infuriating man!” Aurora said in exasperated fashion.

  “I'd normally be glad of that, but not today.”

  “Sometimes, I think Walter was right in what he told me of you.”

  “Oh, and just what might that have been?” I rounded on her.

  “It does not matter,” Aurora retaliated.

  “It does to me.”

  “You don't need to know.”

  “Every time you say that it makes me want to know even more.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “In that case, it was that you are and always have been quite a trial, or words to that effect.”

  “How the hell would he know,” I replied, more than a touch perturbed.

  “I don't know, but he's right. Why can't you accept you have friends who wish to help you, and in so doing must trust them as they trust you?”

  “I've never had any friends,” I said.

  “No need to pout about it, neither have I,” Aurora replied.

  “Must you two make so much noise,” Grella chastised.

  “We don't have to,” Aurora responded.

  “No, but we may want to,” I said stamping my foot on the ground.

  Only when the ice cracked like the splitting of heaven did I realise what I'd done. A hairline fracture opened at my feet, which became a fissure and I fell through it into the ruby-tinged waters below. My head was under the surface before I even knew what had happened, my windmilling arms flailing about me as water surged into my mouth.

  For a few moments, I felt the fear which always happened upon me where water was concerned. And it was in those few seconds I realised my own flapping vibrations were not the only ones to avail my ears. There was the creaking and cracking of the ice, the surging of the ocean, but also a strange wailing as of dark, desperate angels. I'd heard the sounds before, but in my panic couldn't place them.

  I had no time to dwell on the fact, as two strong hands gripped my wrists and yanked me clear of the water, clear of the ice, and right over he who'd saved me. My landing was undignified, but a welcome relief from the sea.

  “I told you to be careful!” Grella reprimanded, glaring at me with the ferocity of his full majesty.

  My world turned to one of treacle then, a sluggish passage of time. Grella's cloak flapped, paused in mid-air, his trailing, alabaster locks hung in an Arctic updraft as the liquid surface lifted behind him and rose into the air, bulged with some unseen force. I tried to call out as the gloss black facade of nature's servant of death shot from the water and seized him. My words, like the moment, stalled, the look on the prince's face one of utter disbelief. Grella vanished below the churning waters writhing in the grip of the leviathan's jaws. The last flick of an obsidian fluke was all that marked his passing.

  I sat in the snow unmoving, shocked, unable to comprehend the visual stimuli I'd witnessed. Aurora was not so incapacitated. She closed the ten yards between her and the point of Grella's abduction in a blur of pale motion and dove into the water without a second thought. An instant later, and there was nothing to mark either of the Nordics' passing other than their memory.

  “No!” I screamed into the frigid air, but the words came far too late. I shot to my feet and slid over to the water expecting to see a flash of porcelain skin, a glimmer of reflective black hide, something to prove my two companions survived. There was neither in those cruel depths. I set about sweeping at the ice like a housemaid possessed clearing trail after trail of snow down to the glasslike surface, spreading out from a central hub like the spokes of a wheel. I created a veritable spider's web of trails, but no matter where I looked, it revealed nothing.

  Even then, I still hoped. I knew the Nordics could, and did, spend inordinate amounts of time under the water, so sought to convince myself they would return. When they didn't, I took to running up and down the length of the original fissure, which had joined other channels in the ice. It was all in vain. They were gone, and I was alone.

  * * *

  Our sun mocked me, reluctant as it was to confirm the passage of time. The orb hung in ruby elegance too weak to light beneath the ice, too impassive to offer dipped condolences.

  The channel of sea water had iced over despite my repeated attempts to chip away at it. If one hadn't known better, they'd have thought nothing untoward had ever occurred. But I knew, and my impotence haunted me.

  I patrolled the area for a short time longer before deciding I had no other option but to continue. My destiny lay North, or so the Sunyin monk had insisted. I owed it to him to at least make the effort. Like a pea in an otherwise empty pod, I stood deserted, separated by many leagues from he and those of his order who Chantelle and her motley assembly had abducted. I would return to Linka as both a coward and a failure, and pray those who taunted me with their infernal letters took pity on the shadow who'd once been feared by all.

  If I needed any convincing of my direction, the howling of a wolf confirmed it. The creature seemed no nearer, a constant distance from wherever I stood, but reminder enough to move. Who drove it on, if anyone, was still a mystery, but a mystery I no longer cared for. As if that and all else that had happened wasn't bad enough, it started to snow, and how.

  There was nothing but snow tinged with the sun's blood glow, an almost solid curtain of partial death. Head down, I focused on my booted feet and paced my way in carefully placed footsteps over the Arctic snowscape. Every time I came upon one of the sea channels that sliced the ice in twain, I paused, waited and hoped, but never once did the Nordics reveal themselves. A single bound carried me over the obstacles, yet my conscience yearned to be swallowed by them and my misery ended.

  Only the promise of being reunited with Linka kept me going through that hellish weather. At least, that's what I told myself. In actuality, my gut burned with such murderous intent, such desire to vent my frustrations on Chantelle and her cronies that I thought I should incinerate the storm. It soon ebbed, though. There was something about the colour of that not-quite-night, not-quite-day, that quashed such devil's thoughts. The loneliness, a thing I thought I should never be troubled by, accentuated the isolation that walking through that non-world brought on. After a time, I could bear it no longer, as the sleepless days told on me, and I fell to the ground and into the slumber an Eternal so desperately craves. The snow was my pillow, my blanket, my balm, and I accepted the bliss of its release with only eternity on my mind.

  * * *

  How long I'd slept was impossible to judge. Without sun or moon to guide me, my instincts were rendered useless. I might hav
e lain there an hour, a year, or a lifetime. The pile of snow that fell from my rising body suggested the latter.

  It appeared my instincts were less affected than I'd first supposed. The howling of a wolf assailed my ears, and I knew what had roused me. A moment or two of clearing the snow from my right ear and a shake of my clothing, which regathered a layer of the still falling white stuff in an instant, and I was back to full working order. A second howl confirmed all I already supposed; the wolf was close.

  I was unsure if the beast was a lone hunter tracking down one of the few meals available in a world close to death, or if one of a pack like those which had attacked Aurora. Neither scenario appealed. I didn't wish to harm the creature, but knowing if the wolf or wolves were being driven by some unknown master would have changed the whole complexion of the game.

  The only way was forwards, which I judged from presuming the howling still to my rear. I trudged away in delicate fashion each individual foot placed with a care usually reserved for my first advances on the female form. But, just as they would invariably give way to reckless abandon, so did my passage. Ever bored, I soon stomped my way through the ever-thickening surface with such gay abandon as to be misplaced. I could no longer see the waterways, covered as they were by layers of snow, so saw little point in trying to avoid them. If I was to fall, then I might as well do it at pace, as not.

  However, the further I pressed the less likely the event seemed. My northwards bearing took me deeper into the heart of the Pole and the security of thicker ice. If that assumption was correct, then I needn't have worried about an orca attack, but more so of those in my wake.

  In typical fashion, I soon couldn't have cared less about the attentions of my hunter and although there was no let up in the weather, nor my general malaise, I started to whistle. I wasn't sure why, perhaps nerves had got the better of me, or I sought the intentional distraction of my stalker, either way, the response was almost immediate: a howl of pathetic pain met my sonics head on. Recklessly blasé, I carried on whistling my way through the snowstorm as much as frozen lips allowed.

  The serenade between it and I continued for a distance most would have found impossible, but I found frustrating. I made my mind up that when I did eventually find Hvit, I would march down that infernal sub-aquatic city's staircase, snatch Linka from the claws of whoever held her and leave the place with a damning curse. The whole thing played out in my besieged mind like clockwork until I felt so certain I'd perfected it, I could have completed the whole scenario in record time. I was so sure of myself, I became indifferent to being preyed upon and was more than a little shocked when I realised the howling almost upon me. The snow precluded any searching for cover, not that I supposed there was any, so I turned to face my foe. A quick toss of cloak over shoulder to free my arms, an old fighting trick, and a shuffle of both feet to firm their stance and I was ready.

  That was how I waited, unmoving, yet restless, as the snow fell all around. I gave an occasional extra whistle just to make sure the wolf did not lose itself when so close to its prey and eyed the storm. It didn't take long, as something emerged from the incessant snowflakes coalescing into a dark, ominous form. One last howl, and I was upon it. I leapt forward striking at the highest part of the darkness with my right fist, but missed. My left followed swiftly, and I grasped for the beast's throat with my next lunge. I got a certain sick satisfaction from my talons closing about the creature's windpipe, its furless throat?

  The figure I pulled toward me through that most desperate weather was not that of the lupine kind, but the human kind. The man hung like a rag doll from my vice-like grip offering weak retaliation at best. I drew his eyes to my eyes just to be certain, but there was no mistaking the quaking form of my blond-haired antagonist and sometime friend, sometime enemy, Sir Walter Merryweather.

  “Hello, Jean,” he gasped.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  -

  Beetroot

  “Evening, Jean, or is it morning, I'm really very lost with it all,” said Merryweather rubbing at his throat.

  “Was that you making all that racket?” I demanded, ignoring his ramblings.

  “Of course!”

  “What in God's name were you howling for?” I growled, unable to contain my fury.

  “I thought that was our secret signal.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, we don't have a secret signal.”

  “That's what makes it a secret. Don't you know anything about these things?” he said, shaking his head.

  “You are the most infuriating man.”

  “Look who's talking!” Merryweather interrupted before my rant had begun. “Every time I thought I was about to catch you up, you sped off again. I thought I'd never reach you. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were trying to avoid me.”

  Walter turned his back on me as he sat there in the accumulating snow.

  I had the most intense desire to boot him over the horizon but resisted the temptation. Instead, I stood and fumed in silence.

  “Ah, cat got your tongue, has it? Seen the error of your ways?”

  “You should be mindful, Merryweather, I am becoming less and less glad of your presence.”

  “Fine thing, that is. Have you any idea what kind of ordeal I've been through? Hey, have you?”

  “No, and I don't want to,” I huffed.

  “Well, too late, sunshine, I'm telling.”

  “Do you have to?”

  “They tortured me, that's what they did.”

  “You don't look tortured,” I replied giving the dandy the once over.

  “Oh, not physically, but the boredom was a terrible ordeal. Truly terrible,” he said, putting a pale palm to his head for added effect.

  “Really.”

  “Oh, yes, far worse than being hit.”

  “I may put that theory to the test if you don't shut up.”

  “Ha!”

  “Who's joking?”

  “I don't see why you're in such a grump, I'm the one that's had the hardship.”

  “What hardship!” I roared rounding on the idiot.

  Merryweather cowered in the snow before realising I wasn't quite at the point where I'd rip his head from his velvet-clad shoulders. He offered his hand for assistance, which I snubbed, to his blinked disapproval and tutted disgust.

  The pathetic nature of his efforts to stand coupled with his repeated attempts at brushing the snow from his backside only drove me to further annoyance. I tapped the snow in frustration and gritted my teeth. If it bothered him, it did not show.

  “Jean, I've been having a think.”

  “What, in between sitting and standing?”

  “Yes, if you must know, and I've decided we need to work on our communicatory skills. I suggest a howling contest in which we choose an auditory tone to be our secret signal. It's not that I'm worried about me, of course.”

  “Of course,” I grumbled before he could finish.

  “It's just that with all this snow, and your fear of water, I think it would be best if I stuck close to you. Just in case you need rescuing,” he added, with a wink.

  My hands were around his throat and lifting him clear of the snow before he had time to un-blink.

  “What…what did I say?” he coughed, as I tightened my grip.

  “Did you see what happened to the others?” I asked, eyes narrowing to a focused glare.

  “What?”

  “Did you see me go through the ice?”

  “No.”

  “The prince that saved me getting taken by an orca?”

  “No.”

  “Aurora jumping in after him and not resurfacing?”

  “You what!” he gasped.

  I released him back onto his posterior to the sound of crunching snow. Even Merryweather was not that good a liar. He seemed mortified by my revelation and sat there combing gloved hands through his mop of unruly hair in bewilderment.

  “Dare I ask?” he eventually managed.

&nbs
p; “It would be…unwise,” I replied.

  “Oh, Jean, you've killed them, haven't you. I didn't think even you could pull that off. Aurora was such a charming girl, a real delight. Once she and I got to speaking on the way to Vienna, I mean New Washington, old habits, I thought I'd made a friend for life. And as for Prince Grella, well, as the Nordics go, he was a real gent.”

  “Merryweather?” I said quizzically catching him mid-babble.

  “What?” he said startled at my interruption.

  “How did you know I was with Prince Grella?”

  “You said.”

  “No, I didn't,” I corrected. “I just said the prince.”

  “Well, who else could you have meant?”

  “Any number of people. The last person one would've assumed should be a Nordic.”

  “Not when you've seen his brothers wandering around like the proverbial lost sheep. I like that expression by the way even though I don't remember sheep. I think I shall use it more often.”

  He wandered off then in deep contemplation.

  I did not let him get more than a few yards before I had my arm wrapped around his shoulders. “Walter,” I said squeezing him like a lemon.

  “Yes, Jean.”

  “How did you know they were Nordics?”

  “Er, they were white.”

  “Albino,” I corrected.

  “White, albino, deader than dead, it's all the same.”

  I thought that a strange response, but let it slip, instead, letting my arm do the talking, as I tightened my grip on Merryweather's shoulders to the cracking of his bones. “I'd like to ask you one more thing, Walter,” I purred in my best impression of an old-world languid lion.

  “Fire away, old boy,” he joked.

  “Was Ragnar very annoyed at losing me to his brother.”

  “Oh, he was perfectly seething. Oops!”

  “Oops, indeed, dear Walter. Oops, indeed.”

  I made the mental calculation to not hurt Walter too badly as he seemed to know so much that I didn't. I had every intention, however, of finding out just how much. The question was how to get him to reveal it without having the joy of accidentally murdering him.