Hunter Hunted (The Eternals Book 2)

by Richard M. Ankers

  “Does it feel good?”

  “Unbelievable,” I answered, stretching out and cracking my bones with unrestrained glee.

  “That is what it feels like to drink orca blood even if it is diluted with a little walrus.”

  “It didn't feel like this the last time I had it.”

  “I doubt very much my mother would have fed you our orca liquor. I would guess it that awful synthesised stuff.”

  “Synthesised?”

  “Yes, the blood that disgusting man provides when we are in need of it.”

  “What man?”

  “The man that makes all the inventions. I do not know his name.”

  “But I was told your people had no interaction with the outside world.”

  “That is true, apart from him.”

  “Might I ask something, Aura?”

  “Of course,” she said raising one quizzical eyebrow.

  “Would I be far from the mark in saying he looked rather like the beast you slew?”

  Aurora looked between the walrus and me before bursting into laughter. It was joyous to hear, almost elemental.

  “I would say very much so.”

  The irony of having compared the Marquis to such a creature for years, though never having actually seen one, other than in the pages of my father's crumbling books, was lost on me at that moment.

  “We must redouble our efforts,” I said. I brushed myself down, straightened my cuffs and shook the creaks out of my neck.

  “Why?”

  “Because, my dear girl, the man I describe is the Marquis, the one I have bemoaned on our travels, and if it is he, he knows the way to Hvit.”

  “And?” Aurora queried, looking suddenly more concerned.

  “And, we are in a lot more trouble than I first reckoned.”

  We said no more, merely turned and fled in the direction we both recognised as north. I prayed we fled fast enough.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  -

  Limestone

  “Run, Jean, run. Feel what it is to be Nordic,” called Aurora, her voice in my ears and blood in my veins.

  And I did. I ran like the wind, faster than I would have ever thought possible. I felt I might have run forever, outrun the night, the light, my past, everything. Aurora's blood flowed like magical rivers through my Eternal frame and I experienced the bliss of true power. If a slow death was the cost for consuming orca blood, then I considered it a small price to pay. Perhaps, I would have said differently if cooped up in Hvit without friend nor fancy, as Aurora had, but to be Grella and free to roam with feelings such as those that sped through my every fibre…well, it should've been a dream.

  A second scenario swept through my mind as we shot across the glacial plain. I couldn't quite place it. There was some nagging thought dragging at my subconscious, something I'd missed. My temples tightened in concentration, Aurora's blood throbbing at my taut skin. I cogitated and deliberated, mulled over my introduction to Hvit and Aurora's dismissive reply of why the Nordics gave me synthesised and not orca blood, when like the Zeppelin crash I'd survived, it exploded over my consciousness.

  “Aura, I have been duped.” I spat into the snow with contempt.

  “How so?” she replied, ignoring my ill-manners.

  “Your blood.”

  “What about it?”

  “I have never tasted it before.”

  “We agreed you had not.” Aurora glanced my way, a blur of white motion, feral, a puzzled goddess.

  “But why not?”

  “As I stated, I would not expect mother to share it with you.”

  I came to a skidded stop, which Aurora matched, a plume of snow shooting into the sky toward the sun's ruby rays transfusing it into a wall of insipid tears.

  “I was an unexpected guest, yes?”

  “You were.”

  “You would think she would try to impress, not hide her might, so there must have been another reason for it. I believe I now know that reason.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Because a dangerous man is far more so if empowered.”

  “And you are a dangerous man.”

  “Aura, my dearest friend, I can assure you, I am becoming more so with every step.”

  “That does not sound good, Jean.”

  “It won't be for anyone that gets in my way.”

  “I am sorry,” Aurora said, looking as disheartened as I'd ever seen her.

  “For what?”

  “I feel so stupid.”

  “You have no need to.”

  “I should have known the man you hate and sought was the same as Hvit's benefactor. If only I'd recognised, paid more attention to his bulbous presence in New Washington, but my eyes were fixed on your main tormentor.”

  “Dearest Aura,” I said, taking her by the shoulders and looking her deep in those bluest of eyes. “There is only one person who has and continues to act the fool, and that is me, not you. Others have used me to achieve their goals, not mine, and I have only ever looked to the end of my nose for answers. I have lost my true love to a woman who has tested my professional services as a confirmed killer. A test she confirmed at the expense of her own sons' lives.”

  “By mother, but how?”

  “She did not send her children out for you, I am quite certain of it, despite what she may have told them. She sent out all four of her male heirs with one purpose.”

  “What purpose, Jean? I am not following.”

  “To be killed, Aura. To be murdered by me in some faraway land where they would die unknown and unheralded. A land neither of us would've found our way back from. She seeks to rid herself of all who'd usurp her.”

  “You are certain of this?”

  “It is irrefutable. She, like all who sense the end, strive for even a second longer amongst the living. There is no greater enticement than a fraction of a moment extra to those who face the torments of the damned.”

  “And you suspect the Marquis integral to this?”

  “I believe so. The man is a master manipulator. He has twisted her mind and has used me, his blunt and unwitting tool, to carry out her plan. I fear my Europan wanderings have already facilitated the murder of most of those who could have opposed him.”

  “Do you think he knows of the sunlight?”

  “I envisage he suspects, but being the coward he is, he will not risk testing his theory. You Nordics are so different in composition to the rest of us that it could have been a fluke. How could he be sure without testing his theory on others?”

  “The Hispanics?”

  “Yes. The Marquis would have had to persuade them to the point of absolute certainty as no descendent of our vampire past would risk the light willingly. He has had to change their make-up over time, use subtlety, coerce, because Raphael is nobody's fool. He has used my brother-in-law by enticing him with imagined promises and the hope of walking in the day with his sister. His research, his dabbling with the Sunyins' genetics, as well as Raphael's own people, have shared the single goal of stepping into the light.”

  “So, why does he need this Chantelle, Linka, the others? I cannot fathom it, Jean.”

  “Because the Marquis has no heritage. He is not a member of the Hierarchy, nor would they likely ever have accepted him. He requires a face to represent him, and in Chantelle and Raphael he has secured two. Not that either of them will realise it, of that I'm quite certain.”

  “And Linka?”

  “Linka has the gift her mother bequeathed her. She is the only Eternal the Marquis has indisputable proof of having survived the sun. Is she a miracle, or a freak? I am sure he drools over that knowledge, that he has had many a restless night because of it. He has done all this, Aura, for I feel it in my rocklike heart. It is he who's responsible for my parents' death, he who has brought me such misery.”

  “But why your parents?”

  “There were no others with the scientific knowledge required to out-think or outflank him. He had to have them murdered,
and I will have his head for it.”

  “Then, Jean.”

  “Hmm,” I replied as my talons dug deep into ice-cold palms.

  “Run.”

  * * *

  I seethed with murderous intent. All I envisioned were the bulbous jowls of that most hated man wobbling before me. He bobbed, as if in water, just out of reach, always just beyond my grasp.

  The landscape passed in a haze of turmoil, Aurora's anchoring presence the one definite in a world made mad. If she hadn't been there, I thought I should have gone quite mad and wandered enraged into the ocean and the slow death of a watery grave.

  “Jean,” called my pale angel cutting through the murder in my mind.

  Aurora closed the small divide between us pointing ahead and diagonally to our right. At first, I could not see what I was supposed to, there was nothing but snow and ice, curlicues of misting vapour, a freezing fog to disturb the scene. I shook my head to show my ignorance. Aurora's response was to grasp me by the collar and come to an abrupt halt, almost scragging my head off in the process.

  “The water,” she said.

  I followed her guiding finger past the land, through the gathering gloom and out to the waters beyond. “Orca,” I proclaimed.

  “Yes, Jean, and they feast.”

  And they did. Twenty or more tar-black faces striped in distinctive white punctured the ocean surface in jaw-gaping joy. They took bites out of something or some things that floated upon the angry waves.

  “I would suggest the Marquis has lost more of his prized specimens,” Aurora said in her ice-cool way.

  “Hispanics, or what's left of them.”

  “Indeed,” she agreed. “If there are that many whales here, we cannot be far from Hvit. The creatures fear straying from us almost as much as we do they.”

  I watched with dark fascination as the sea wolves rose and fell in time to the undulating waves. With every rising, they would take a mouthful of arm or leg or ragged torso, I even saw a tanned face protrude from between one creature's elongated teeth.

  Aurora appeared as entranced as I. She stood there, the greying air lapping against her, cloak flapping in the sea breeze, hair dancing about her shoulders, a sorrowful figure. She pitted those dead upon the water, as she did those that fed on them. The orcas may have been abominations to her kind, but they were abominations with shared ties. The orcas had no freedom, no true liberty, they were as stuck in their domain as she had been, and Aurora felt their frustration.

  I would have comforted her then when she looked to need it most, but the faintest, sweet scent caught my nose. I sniffed at the air like one of the Nordics' wolves.

  “What is it, Jean?” A prompt acknowledgement of my behaviour.

  “I smell it, Aura. The doorway is here somewhere, I'm sure of it.”

  “This scene does not look familiar,” she commented.

  “But does Hvit not move periodically?”

  “Yes, but that is not due for some time.”

  “That is not what your mother implied before I left. Serena seeks to guarantee Hvit never being found.”

  The look she gave told its own story, as Aurora sniffed at the air in female duplicity of my own actions. We paced the area together first in one direction then another, towards the water, then back again to the looming night. Wisps of mist congealed about us like the ghosts of lost lovers stroking at our almost lives. It thickened by the second and I knew it would soon become a grey shawl. It prompted us to greater exertions.

  “Jean, the smell is strongest here,” asserted my companion.

  “Yes, you are right,” I said collapsing to my knees. “The snow is permeated with it down here. Dig,” I said in earnest.

  Aurora dropped to my side and the pair of us scrambled around in the snow. I thought, at first, the Marquis had tricked us, that some false scent had been laid to trap us. But again I worried without due cause as my fingers closed about a horizontal fixture buried beneath thick layers of snow.

  “I have it!” I cried. “Help me, Aura.”

  Drawing back the snow from the solid seam, we soon revealed the faintest outline of the Nordics' most sacred place. Aurora did not dwell on it as she stamped on the thing; the doorway popped up out of the snow catching the faint light in glimmering relief.

  “Are you prepared for this?” Aurora asked, her face impassive. “It will be…unpleasant.”

  “Only for them, my dear, only for them,” I growled.

  I launched myself onto that dark and brooding staircase. Aurora followed without complaint.

  Descending into the black abyss disorientated and confused after becoming so used to the surface's half-light, and it took some seconds for my eyes to readjust from the starburst of retinal change. But an Eternal's natural habitat is the perpetual darkness of night and my eyes soon remembered the same.

  “Jean, I would advise caution,” Aurora said, catching me by the arm.

  “You might advise it, but I will not practise it,” I replied.

  “So be it.”

  “Aura,” I said looking her in the eyes. She cocked her head to one side in her beguiling way and regarded me with intelligence, a trait I'd found lacking in the world for far too long. “You do not have to do this. If the twins are down there, you may be forced into actions you will regret.”

  “I will regret nothing. They got, and may still get, only ever what they deserved. My one regret is that Grella does not stand with us; he would have swayed the odds in our favour.”

  “He was a good man, Aura, and I share your regret. His death is a bitter pill to swallow.”

  “I just wish I could have caught him, offered solace of sorts, but the orca was too fast. The beast had fled into the open ocean before I even got close, my brother writhing in its jaws.”

  “Try not to remember him that way it will do you no good.”

  “On the contrary, Jean, I have every intention of remembering him that way. It is Grella's pain that my mother shall feel, and any other that stand in my way.”

  “Then, I am doubly glad.”

  “For what?” she asked, as the tears pooled in her eyes.

  “First, that I am on your side, second, that I shall bear witness to what you do to those who aren't.”

  I offered Aurora my sleeve, which she took and used to dab at sculpted cheekbones. A slight inclination of her elegant head confirmed her readiness for what lay ahead, and we moved off at pace down the stairs.

  When fury builds within a container such as mine all else becomes secondary. I lost all sense of time, all sense of Aurora's presence. The staircase became a dark transition between what had and what would be done. The further we descended the angrier I became, and the further the damned thing seemed to stretch. I paid no attention to the glass walls to who, or what, may or may not have been watching. If orca waited beyond that semi-transparent divide, I cared not. The creatures could wait and have their fill of what we left behind because I had no intention of leaving Hvit in anything other than a broken state.

  When my feet finally touched the flat of the glass corridor, I seemed to awaken from my trance-like state. My hands balled into fists, my eyes narrowed, and with a mere glance to check on Aurora's proximity I charged through the grand ice doors of Hvit's throne room and into a massacre.

  The city's denizens lay strewn across the ice floor lighted in macabre fashion by the neon glow of the blood-spattered walls. It was a carnage that Aurora's shrill cry suggested was unexpected to her, but for some reason, not me.

  However, I did not dally for there was only one person for whom I searched within those eerie walls. The raven hair of my dear Linka was my sole objective. But despite my panic and deepest fears, they proved unfounded. Every one of the dead figures was of the albino caste that marked their bearing. Hair of limestone poured from each of the scattered forms that littered the throne room floor. Linka's own raven locks were nowhere to be found, and much to my eternal shame, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

  My
scavenging took me to the foot of Serena's throne. The thing stood empty, cold, bereft of the power that normally occupied it in such ominous fashion, a mere trinket to its decadent queen.

  It was to that symbol of Nordic power that Aurora made her wide-eyed way. Respectful of her fallen kin, she made every effort to avoid stepping in the pooled blood of her people, ultimately it proving a futile task for there was too much crimson to avoid. By the time she reached my side, she'd left red footprints all over the floor. When she saw them, something cataclysmic occurred.

  It was the throne that felt her wrath. That symbol of Nordic austerity crashed to the floor in shattered pieces at her single strike. And for a moment, even I trembled before her rage.

  Chapter Thirty

  -

  Gold

  “We must check the living quarters,” Aurora commanded, a wild madness rippling like ocean waves in her blue eyes.

  I didn't require telling twice and shot through the doorway that led to the bedchambers. I left Aurora to do as she wished for there was but one room on my mind. It was to the door at the corridor end that I ran, the ice walls passing in slow motion as though not moving at all. My fear mounted with each slippery step, hopes mingled with apprehension, as the blood of the Nordic people lay strewn around me. Every surface from the ice floor to glasslike ceiling had been desecrated by a new bright crimson coating. The Nordics had not gone down without a fight, and I wondered whom could have caused such mayhem? Blood still dripped from overhead splashing upon my cheek, slapping against my clothes, but I had no time to waste in wiping it. It felt like running down a hole with an awful surprise waiting at the bottom, a murderous finale to a one-way trip.

  And then I was there, the doors to our once room torn from their hinges. The things lay smashed to tiny pieces each fragment reflecting my fear. Whoever had struck them was strong. I cared not, for at that moment I longed to face them.

  I hastened inside, the broken ice crunching beneath my booted feet to a scene of wreck and ruin. The bed lay overturned, curtains dragged from the walls revealing an empty ocean with no sign of my sweetheart other than the remnants of her resistance. I would have expected no less from my tigress.