Hunter Hunted (The Eternals Book 2)

by Richard M. Ankers

  My dark eyes scanned every detail of the bedchamber evidence of Linka's punched and clawed defiance in every inch of the place. Each scratch in the ice, each fleck of Nordic blood led me to believe they'd taken her in a whirl of vortex ferocity. I hoped so, for I could not bear the thought of a prolonged execution.

  By the time I staggered from the room, Aurora awaited. Her serene features shared my anguish.

  “She is not here,” I said.

  “Thank God,” she sighed. “It makes no sense, though. Who would do this, Jean? Who would massacre my people? For all my mother's faults, and those who did her bidding, they did not deserve this. We never hurt anyone, never even interacted with others. There is simply no reason for what has happened, it defies logic.”

  “Don't take this the wrong way, Aura, but I noticed the royal house were not amongst the dead.”

  “What do you mean by that?” she bristled, ice in her voice.

  “I mean only that they've either been taken by those who perpetrated this atrocity, or were a party to it. I do not know which, but I shall find out.”

  “And, Linka?”

  “She did not go without a fight. My heart tells me she is an unwilling participant in this, at least, I must hope so.”

  If Aurora had not pulled me close and wrapped her beautiful yet deadly arms about me, I should have wept until I was no more, but she did, and I didn't.

  “We must search the rest of the city, Jean.” Aurora spoke with a calm determination drawn more from fancy than fact.

  “This is the city?”

  “No, my friend, the other doorway leading from behind the throne, that is where our real home lies. Hvit is much more than you were permitted to witness. Come, there is nothing left for us here.”

  Aurora took my hand and led me away at a sprint back whence we'd came, out into the throne and its jigsaw of death and through the second doorway into architectural wonderment. I had seen much majesty in my time: homes created to their master's whim, magnificence beyond imagining, colour and texture as one, but I'd never seen such as I beheld. It was like a master craftsman had combined the dreams of generations, spun them together in a tapestry of unreality. The glasslike austerity of the Hvit I had roamed was as much a facade as the Nordics' lives. I had, in my usual way, judged before thinking, categorised without knowledge: I would not make the same mistake again.

  The throne room was cavernous, a giant of creation, but with every doorway that Aurora cast aside, I realised, I'd seen nothing. Walls of gold inset with every imaginable gemstone twinkled in the light of myriad chandeliers. Velvet cushioning adorned mahogany chaise longues, silk drapes hung from ornate ceilings. Paintings of times long since past adorned almost every square inch of wall, tapestries and murals filling what remained. It was a record of sorts of memories passed down through the generations. I could have marvelled at them for years, but I only had seconds to spare. Every precious metal, every glimmering jewel was present in those decadent halls, those throwbacks to gothic beginnings and I understood what the Nordics truly protected. Theirs were not creations, not fabrications of scientific minds, but the real masterpieces of a people unparalleled. Millennia had rolled by in the sculpting of Hvit, and I revelled in its magnificence. If I'd cared to admit it, I would have said the place perfect. If someone, or someones, were to spend eternity anywhere, then the city under the sea was the place to do so. How it must have pained Serena to find out it would all end? Who could have borne such news without a hint of madness? To see the legend of a race as old as time itself erased, forgotten, lost to star stuff, it was almost beyond comprehension.

  How many halls we passed through, I could not honestly say, but when Aurora paused before one ebony doorway of an immensity unparalleled, I realised something amiss.

  “What is it, dear girl?” I asked, taking her hand in my own. Aurora trembled as though about to shake apart, a flower in a hurricane.

  “This is as far as I have ever been. What lies beyond these doors is unknown to me, Jean.”

  “You have never been allowed free wanderings of your own home!” I said, astonished.

  “No. What lies beyond these doors was for the select, I was not one of them.”

  Aurora's voice welled with shame. A girl, or really woman, of such majesty, such stature as she, deliberately kept at heel like a pet, the thought turned my stomach. To be both a princess and slave, how Aurora had stood it with the grace and resigned dignity she had was beyond me. Only through such a revelation did I appreciate the magnitude of what her following me had entailed. She was a braver person than I'd ever be. She had left everything and nothing for a dream.

  “Aura, let me help,” I said taking hold of one of the ivory handles. The inlaid coral decoration felt soft in my palm, less abrasive than the rest of the place. “We'll do this together.”

  “Together,” she breathed, and closed her eyes.

  We turned the two handles as one and let the mighty doors swing open of their own accord. It was not what I expected to see.

  “What is this, Jean?”

  “I'm glad it's not just me.”

  “This is no time for humour.”

  “Who's being humorous!”

  “But, what is it?”

  I took a staccato step into the chamber and tried to interpret what I beheld. The area was smaller than the other halls, but still vast. Darkness prevailed in the place, but that was no object to Aurora or I. The perimeter of the chamber was furnished with one almost continuous length of table that stood laden with objects and artefacts the likes of which I had no perception of. The chamber looked like a repository for everything from scrap metal to the most delightful objet d'art. Stuff littered every tabletop to the extent I could not see even one fraction of revealed surface. That paled into insignificance compared to what lay heaped on the floor.

  “What could mother have wanted with all this rubbish?” Aurora glided over to the nearest conglomeration of so-called rubbish and prodded it with her toe. “Have you any idea what it's for?” she asked, moving to the next.

  I considered an appropriate response but just mustered a, “No.” There seemed no pattern, no practical explanation for the piled accumulations. “Are you sure you've never seen this place?” I asked, still unable to accept her confession.

  “Do I need to dignify that with a response?” she answered coolly.

  “You just did. But I find the whole thing so incredible. This chamber reminds me of my home, though it is centuries since I last saw it. My parents used to have a plethora of half-dismantled devices strewn about the place. I can't remember a time when there wasn't some strange object begging for attention. My father would say they needed to know how the things worked to assist them with their understanding of humanity. Knowledge was power, my mother would add, or some such nonsense. I remember them lecturing some minor lord on what buttons to press to change the colour of his garden. The man looked at them with such disinterest, I thought they would kill him. They both despised those who disliked their precious sciences, which was pretty much everyone.”

  “I know nothing of such things,” Aurora replied. “I prefer magic over science like that of my cloak.”

  “Do you not think it a thing of science that simply appears magical?”

  “Perhaps, but to me, it will always be magic. I hate to think what kind of woman I would be, or where I would have been, without it.”

  “Yes, I imagine it should have been a most helpful gift. Did nobody else know of it?” I asked, as I trailed after her. Aurora sashayed between the towers of junk taking in the scene without, like I, actually understanding it.

  “Oh, no, if they had, they would not have allowed me to keep it. They all knew what it meant to me, of course. Once, Narina even pretended to take it. She cast the cloak over her shoulders and pulled it closed whilst I held my breath, but it did not work for her as it always worked for me. I think it was only ever meant to be mine, Jean. I have clung to that fantasy.”

  “A
fine fantasy to have, Aura, but I don't think it, or we, are best served perusing this place. We should move on.”

  “I agree,” she said and made for the opposite side of the chamber.

  Another double doorway stood parallel to the others but of a less grand design than any we had thus far passed through. These opened out into a chamber of similar proportions and wreckage to the last. However, I recognised one portion of scrap amongst the many others. There surrounded by a melee of metal sat a partial cockpit almost identical to the one within Captain Scott's Zeppelin.

  “Jean, there is something strange here I have only just recognised for what it is.” Aurora stopped dead in her tracks and tilted her head one way then the other.

  “What is it?”

  My enquiry was met with a finger brandished to red lips. “Do you hear it?”

  “I hear nothing,” I answered truthfully.

  “Exactly, for the first time in my life, Hvit is silent.”

  “That cannot be right.”

  “I assure you it is.” Aurora's eyes narrowed. A revelation abounded.

  “What is it, dear girl?”

  “Do you not think it strange that Hvit is deserted, all dead, and the music has stopped?”

  “Perhaps, they murdered the orchestra, too,” I offered. Her look of disgust made me wish I'd kept quiet.

  “Or there was no need for sound if there was no one left to hear it.”

  “I thought it was to drown out the orca calls.”

  “So did I, but what if, instead, it was to drown out the sounds of people working? What if it was to quell any inkling of lives unlike our own?”

  No sooner had the words left Aurora's lips than another piece of the puzzle that was my life slipped silently into place. Someone had been hard at work and not one of the Nordic peoples had known of it.

  “But why, Aura? Why all the subterfuge, the secrecy? There has to be a reason. There has to be!”

  “Secrecy has been the key, Jean. Have you noticed the walls are neither curtained, nor ice, but solid? Nobody was meant to see what transpired within these chambers from within, or without. Having hunted, swam the ocean in battle with our mammalian foodstuffs, I can attest to the fact these walls are as disguised on the outside as the entrance to them was on the inside.”

  “Then onwards, whilst there is still a chance of finding…” But my words were cut short by a crashing and banging of such magnitude, I thought Hvit's walls had shattered. I expected tonnes of saline ocean to come roaring in, to envelop me, consume me, crush me in a watery grave. I feared the embrace of the sea.

  But I had no time to dwell on such thoughts as Aurora shot forward through the piles of scrap and out of the adjacent doors. She disappeared into a corridor of physique cramping narrowness. It was so small in proportions that Aurora ran through the thing stooped over, her head almost to the floor. Yet even in so awkward a position, the girl moved at an incredible pace; I was less fortunate. There was no way one such as I, a specimen of a more formidable frame, could do the same. I wiggled and shoved my way along in her wake, more worm than man. By the time I caught up, she'd burst out from her warren-like confines into the vastness of the main burrow, its gigantic roof shattered into revealing an obsidian night high above.

  An Arctic breeze swept across me like a slap to the cheek, a sobering draught free from lavender residue, it was the draught of a hall open to the elements, roofless, contents disgorged.

  I would have marvelled at it, stood in awe of the great chunks of ice that littered the floor, but we were not alone. I sensed his presence; heard his tears; saw the wreckage of his rampage, long before I saw him. The forgotten Merryweather had beaten us to the scene, and the chamber trembled at his torments.

  “Walter,” Aurora cried, speeding over to him and grasping the wretched man by both shoulders. “Walter!” she bawled, as his arms flailed about him striking at her repeatedly. He raged like a madman kicking, screaming, biting at the air. His eyes, blood-red and manic, displayed, at last, the true essence of a vampiric past. Merryweather the man had departed. Merryweather the beast had replaced him.

  “She said she'd wait!” he howled like a tortured wolf. “She said she'd wait for me!” he implored, as Aurora wrapped him in a spectral embrace.

  If Merryweather found comfort in her touch, he did not show it, instead, venting his fury upon her. Aurora did not waver, did not move an inch, never once batted an eye. She stood resilient, took the pummelling, as he tore at her hair, spat in her face and wailed to the sky until he could swing and wail no more. She held him constricted until he collapsed utterly spent into her arms like a flower destroyed by the cold.

  I wanted to say something, to call out to him, comfort him, but was struck mute, for eyes bred for the night, bred to hunt, bore witness to the craft that rose into a distant, dark sky. Only when the first tinge of ruby light kissed its Zeppelin skin, a last glinting farewell, did I turn and scream.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  -

  Epilogue

  Sir Walter Merryweather found the small, white envelope amidst the aftermath of his rampage. He passed it over with a sneer of utter contempt, Aurora by his side.

  I sliced the thing open with a razored fingernail to an overpowering stench of lavender and tipped its contents into my hand: a single sheet of folded paper and a necklace with a silver cross, my cross.

  My eyes closed, world stalled, stomach fell away. Fumbling fingers tugged free what I wished them to not as dark eyes reopened to four little words.

  Merryweather reacted first, his face raised to the sky in scarlet, snarling fury, as I roared to the ground. But it was Aurora who put a voice to the message written in bold, italic script. It was Aurora who put sound to my torment as she read those words written in blood.

  Dear Jean.

  Too late.

  To be continued in book three

  The Eternals: Into Eternity

  <<<<>>>>

  About the Author

  Richard M. Ankers was born a dreamer. From an early age, if Richard was not out in the fresh air playing sports, he was lost inside a good book or secretly writing his own. A lover of everything from Marvel comics to classic Fantasy and Science Fiction, he allowed his mind to wander to these fantastical places and never quite came back. Heavily influenced by authors ranging from Michael Moorcock and Gene Wolfe to such wonders as Haruki Murakami and Margaret Atwood, Richard enjoyed being entertained, whisked away to places unknown. Every book had something to offer, snippets of the unimaginable, twists of fate and spectacular universes and Richard soaked them up like a sponge. These were the makings of his mind.

  Born and bred in rural Yorkshire, England, Richard squirreled his words away in shyness without showing them to anyone until plucking up the courage to place them online to be read and judged. Fortunately, that went better than he could ever have dreamed and hence decisions were made. Richard resigned his position as a Company Director and gave up everything he was to become the writer and person he wished to be. People have said it a brave decision but, in truth, it was the only decision he could ever have made. There would never be enough hours, minutes and seconds remaining in Richard’s lifetime to uncover all the words and worlds he had to unleash. Work began in earnest, and The Eternals came to life.

  Three years in the making, The Eternals Trilogy was born from a vision of moonlight waltzes and a dying sun. Our distant future was to end and those who thought themselves immortal would be proved less so. This is the time and place that Jean is born to and wishes he wasn’t.

  When Richard is not tapping out stories on his laptop, or adding poetry and writing to his own website, richardankers.com, which he nearly always is, you’ll find him running and taking in the scenery. Running has offered a sense of peace and relaxation only ever matched by writing. A lover of the great outdoors, he is lucky enough to have visited many of the world’s most beautiful countries such as Norway and Switzerland both of which he could happily have never left
. If he could sit with a view of the mountains with a river flowing by and birdsong, a quite corner set aside in which to write with a view of the former, you’d probably never see Richard again.

  Words and the stories formed from them have brought Richard much joy over his lifetime. Now, it is his turn to hopefully return the favour to others. Modern life is a hectic place and time is precious. Richard hopes those stolen moments with his words can bring some relief from the tedium as the authors he has read have done for him. There are few things that could make him happier.

  Richard is a passionate believer in the natural world. Our Earth is a delicate place and everybody should do their bit to look after it. There is so much beauty to be seen if only people opened their eyes. He hopes that more and more are doing so these days, and prays that it’s not too late for those to come. He is also a strong advocate of never letting anyone tell you, you’re not good enough. If you want to do something with a passion you cannot explain, you should. Life is too short for regrets and everybody is good at something. As long as that person is happy and content, nothing else really matters. So, good luck with your own futures and Richard thanks you for being a part of his.

  Richard.

  Dear reader,

  Thank you for taking time to read Hunter Hunted. If you enjoyed it, please consider telling your friends or posting a short review. Word of mouth is an author’s best friend and much appreciated.