by Hickory Mack
Most weren’t totally human. They had bits of this and that, usually a mixture of small amounts of witch and fae. Hunters were a lot stronger than regular humans, and they were trained to be efficient killers. And there'd be nine of them against one fox. She peered at Fen, wondering if he would defend his Master and join the fight.
In the unlikely event Makkai prevailed, she’d be responsible for nine lives. If she hadn’t told him they’d be here, he might never have known. Alice wanted to run. She didn’t want to see either side win or lose.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” his voice floated down from the tree. “I would have known. The forest would have told me. You should stop worrying, it’s insulting. They will not take you anywhere you are unwilling to go, and their deaths are their own responsibility. They forfeit their lives when they chose to hunt me.”
Alice clutched the sides of her head in horror.
“Your mental voice is loud, Youngling. I was not intentionally intrusive. You were projecting your thoughts so hard anyone whose even remotely receptive will have heard them. When you’re feeling stronger, you’ll be taught to keep your thoughts to yourself. Teenagers are awful things, I don’t want to know what will be in your head,” he said solemnly. Fen snickered, a few feet from her side.
Her demon was making jokes at her expense. Alice buried her head in her arms and stayed that way for a long time, trying her hardest to quiet her inner voice but her thoughts continued in a vicious loop. How many times had she thought about how beautiful he was? How often had he known? Eventually she lost track of time, though the passing of it didn’t seem to matter to the demons. Fen sat nearby appearing relaxed, lazy even.
Makkai looked into the forest. His prey drew near, but something else was watching from a safe distance. One of the local tree spirits. He frowned in the dryad’s direction. They usually avoided him, so long as he tread carefully and caused no damage in what they considered their territories. They had a symbiotic relationship, he and the dryads. They both took care of the trees, and all benefited. It was rare for one to seek him out, unless she hadn’t come for him. He glanced down at the girl.
His ears flicked forward and his pupils nearly engulfed the iris of his eyes, his vision broadening and focusing all at once. Fen acted immediately, throwing up a barrier in time to protect Makkai’s new pet. The girl’s slow reaction time was almost amusing.
A strange noise interrupted Alice’s embarrassing attempts to keep her thoughts away from any further potential humiliation and she jerked her head up. A foot away from her face was a bullet, hovering in thin air, its tip smashed as though it had hit something very hard. Three more hurdled at her, slamming into the same invisible force. Alice back-pedaled hard, her shoulders slamming into the tree, ignoring the pain in her ribs and panicking harder than she ever had in her life. Fen’s voice spoke in her ear, though she could clearly see him a few feet away.
“Stay where you are. They can’t see me. So long as I’m here, they can’t hurt you,” he said.
“Why are they shooting at me?” she asked in a rushed whisper.
“I don’t know. Keep still and stay quiet, you’ll break my concentration,” Fen answered, urgency rather than hostility in his voice. Alice glanced at him, he stared intensely outward, in the direction the shots had come from.
A painful minute of tension passed in silence. At least to Alice it was silent, she watched Fen’s eyes track someone through the trees. Five more shots came in unison, each from a different direction. Each were stopped by whatever force Fen had conjured up for her. For just a second, she thought she saw it. A ripple like a heatwave thickening the air when they hit. It happened four more times in quick succession, five shots from the same five locations. They were testing its limits, seeing if they could batter their way through.
They stopped, deciding on a new tactic, and someone stepped away from cover, a black mask hiding his face from the nose down. It didn’t stop Alice from recognizing him. Her blood ran cold and fear froze her solid before crippling heat seared through her veins, rooting her in place. The salt and pepper hair, the broad shoulders and the cruel eyes. She’d know him anywhere. Their medic was Doctor Pax.
“Miss Alice,” he spoke in the same crisp voice he’d used in her cell, after he’d stopped pretending to be her friend. “I admit I’m surprised to find you here. I hadn’t expected to see you again. It seems you weren’t entirely truthful. Tell me, Little Miss Alice, where is your Master?”
Alice had no trouble obeying Fens order. Her whole body trembled, the sight of the man who'd orchestrated her torture had rendered her speechless. Pax pulled a canister out of the cargo pocket of his BDU’s. Alice saw Fen tense out of the corner of her eye, but she kept her gaze on Pax, not betraying his presence.
“You’re very naughty to be out here when you should be in school. Once again your father has not reported you missing. That makes him a criminal. Like father, like daughter, I suppose.” He hefted the canister in his hand. Alice’s heart felt heavy. Stanley never saw her off to school. He wouldn’t have noticed she was gone. Pax tapped a black button on his chest pocket. “This is recording everything we do here, and it sends the feedback live to our superiors. We have ample proof to justify your execution. You have to wait a minute, we’ll exterminate the vermin first.”
Pax pulled the pin on the canister and threw it on the ground at Alice’s feet, just outside the barrier. A noxious gas filled the air in a great plume of white smoke. Nothing happened at first, the smoke could not reach her, but it only took a few seconds to breach the barrier.
Alice began coughing terribly, but other than the irritation in her lungs, it didn’t hurt her. She looked over at Fen, he was difficult to see through the smoke and she was barely able to pick out his form on the ground. He was on his hands and knees, pale and gasping for breath. Something in the smoke hurt him. Alice scrambled to her feet, glancing at Doctor Pax. He could see Fen now. More men entered the area, moving with purpose.
One of the men strode over to Fen, put his pistol to the boar’s head and fired twice. The dark-haired man crumpled to the ground and didn’t move. Alice found her voice. She screamed and screamed.
“That was way too easy. I thought you said it was a dog, a strong one. This boar is practically a baby,” the man who’d shot Fen snickered to Pax.
“It wasn’t the right beast, the mark is still on her,” Pax said. Standing only feet from Alice, he kicked Fen in the ribs.
“Stop it!” Alice shouted, a fist clutching her dress.
“Somebody shut her up,” another man said, the patch on his shoulder identifying him as the captain of the squad. Alice recognized him from the press conference.
“On it. Maybe we can flush out a mutt,” Pax said coldly. He extended his arm, pistol in hand and aimed right between Alice’s eyes. “Let’s see you stop bullets now, you demon loving little bitch,” he said and fired off a single shot.
Alice squinted her eyes shut in anticipation, holding her breath. She heard the gun fire, but the expected pain didn’t come. Heart beating wildly, she forced her eyes open. Lord Makkai stood in front of her, his six tails stood stretched straight out like a fan behind his back. He’d stopped the bullet, held it between two of his long, claw-like fingernails. One of his ears flicked back acknowledging her in the middle of chaos.
“Run,” she whispered, “I need you to be okay.”
“Tch,” he answered in annoyance, glancing briefly over his shoulder so she could see the look of irritation on his face. His ears went flat for half a second before swiveling forward again, his attention on those in front of him.
“Oh gods,” Alice heard Pax say softly, like he couldn’t take a proper breath.
“That’s a fucking fox, Pax, you said it was a dog. It already has 6 tails! We needed a brigade for this,” one of the other men said from behind his mask.
“Foxes don’t have black fur, give me a break Mav. She said it only had one tail.”
“We’ll never ge
t this opportunity again. That bastard Cornick will pay triple the price for this one so take it alive if we can. Kill them both if we can’t,” their Captain commanded.
Lord Makkai stood quietly, letting them make their plans, relaxed and ready. Alice heard two sets of footsteps, one charging forward, the second putting space between himself and the demon. A pause as the man coming toward them leapt into the air. She could see the tip of a sword above his head.
Makkai’s hand moved forward. There was a strangled cry. His hand came back, fingers curled around the sword’s hilt. It was so fast she hadn’t seen anything but his hand move, but the man crumpled to the ground, his blank eyes staring toward Alice. A strangled cry tore from her throat and Lord Makkai moved forward, stepping over the body of the dead man. He looked back at her, his expression stern.
“Stay right where you are, you’re perfectly safe,” he said, his voice spoke only for her ears. He stood in the middle of the small clearing, the sword loose in his hand, pointing at the ground.
“If you leave now, I will consider allowing you to escape with your lives. You are frightening my new witchling,” he goaded. They’d hidden well, he could only see three of the remaining eight. Alice’s eyebrows furrowed at his words.
Muffled shots rang out, from high in one of the trees, five rapid shots in a row. Then a loud, concussive thud. Lord Makkai stopped the bullets but realized they were a distraction the moment he heard the deeper sound. He put his free hand up and caught the grenade in a soft cushion of air, inches from his palm. Making a show of inspecting it for a full second, he hefted it back the way it came.
When it exploded he contained its force with his magic, but some of the surrounding trees still took damage, two, including the tree the hunter had been hiding behind were blown to kindling. Seven left. He threw the sword at the man who’d fired the bullets. It lodged halfway through his body, blocked by his spine. Six. As he'd thrown it he heard another low thud. A softball sized object hurtled through the air, expanding into a containment net, crackling with a witch’s power.
Simultaneously two men came rushing forward, one unloading stun shots, the other wielding a freaking battle axe. Lord Makkai laughed mirthlessly. Where did they find these guys? Then one of their guys opened fire on the halfling. His attention shifted to protect her, effectively distracting him long enough for the net to do its job. It wound completely around his body, attaching to itself behind his back, uncomfortably trapping one of his tails. He heard it click into place. That was a new twist he hadn’t expected. A new toy for the Hunter Clan.
The men cheered, and the girl cried out. Makkai’s cruel, sharp teeth flashed in a snarl. He now knew the location of the remaining four. The net was proving more difficult than he'd expected, and one of the hidden men had gotten behind him somehow, but he wasn’t worried. He flexed his muscles, ignoring the pair closing in fast, seeking out its weakest points.
Heat built around him, he’d burn his way out. They hadn’t stopped firing, their bullets bouncing harmlessly off the barrier he’d erected between himself and his attackers. The heat built quickly, it would be a few precious seconds longer. He had to be faster, they’d be on him before he could break free.
Small hands pushed through his tails and he went cold in complete surprise. The child worked on the ball clasps that had bound themselves together. Her help was completely unnecessary, and the butterfly soft touches on his wrists sent shivers down his spine. A weight pressed hard on the crown of his head and something yanked at his chest, then he felt a primal magic snap into place. Makkai snarled savagely. This couldn’t be happening. Not with a child. Especially not this child. Not now, not ever.
“No!” The man in front of him snarled back. “Kill the girl, Pax, kill that fucking girl!”
The mechanism clicked, the net loosened and fell to the ground. Then the girl was yanked away. Makkai saw blue.
Foxfire roared to life, hot blue flames seared around him like a forcefield. He reached through the flames and seized the axe out of the man’s hand, using his own weapon to behead him. Five. The girl was screaming. He turned his back on the dark-haired man with the stun gun and leapt after the man named Pax. The doctor put the girl in front of him and pressed the muzzle of his weapon to her temple.
The fire grew so hot the ground burned in a path of annihilation around him, his crackling flames snaking along the ground ahead of him. The remaining five surrounded him, a few feet beyond his immediate reach, their weapons trained. One raised a launcher, perhaps another net, they may have thought him unable to escape without the child. He’d been toying with them before. Their odds of survival had fallen to zero now that they’d angered him.
“Let’s make a deal. Her life is worth more to us than yours,” said Pax. “Let us keep the kid, and we’ll go. We didn’t know she’s a witch, her true parentage was kept from us. We were- I was too interested in finding you to study her well enough. That was my mistake.”
“Ah, so she was wrong about who would be sent, and you are involved in the state of her body,” the fox said quietly, gazing at the pure terror on the child’s face. Pax shrugged nonchalantly.
“Nothing personal, just business as usual. If you let us have her, we’ll leave, all of this forgotten. We won’t bother you again. No retribution for the deaths you’ve caused. She belongs with us, she’ll be trained and put to good use. What use would you have for an annoying brat?” Pax asked. Alice looked terrified, the child was hyperventilating. The demon glowered, uttering a low growl.
“You are not forthcoming with the truth. What you mean to say is you will secure the girl in a cell somewhere she’ll never get out of, brainwash and enslave her, and come back with even more of your weakling soldiers. I think not. The girl belongs to me.” Lord Makkai raised his hand in a fist and a bright blue line came from within. A bullwhip of blue fire.
He cracked it once and in a quick, vicious movement, wrapped it around Doctor Pax’s neck. Makkai yanked hard and another head hit the ground, seconds before the body slumped over sideways, his weapon clattering uselessly at the girl’s feet. She stared at him with wide, horrified eyes, completely soaked in blood. Time moved sideways, everything around him slowing to a crawl, so potent was her fear. He breathed in, some of the blood was Fens, some of it was hers, but most of it was the hunter’s. His mental countdown continued. Four left.
The whip licked out, extending its length to ensnare the next one’s ankle, dragging the man through the fire. He kept it together enough to draw his weapon and fire off several shots before being caught up in Makkai's claws. This one. This one had given the orders to kill the witch. He held the wriggling captain by the throat with one hand, ripping off first one, and then the other of the man’s arms. The demon Lord watched the captain’s life spill out of him, his blood sizzling in the flames. Three.
When he went still, his lifeless body was thrown as a missile at the next man, who was fleeing into the woods. The weight of his leader took him down, but he did not cry out. When the fox approached he was back on his feet, the eyes behind the mask narrowed and hardened. Had they not angered him, Lord Makkai would have had fun with this one. The hunter had a short knife in his hand and made a close move, slicing sideways and jabbing quick, trying to put Makkai off guard.
There was already sweat on the man’s brow, too close to the roaring foxfire. This one was not going to run again. A tiny flash of light and Lord Makkai suddenly remembered the cameras. He checked the man’s pocket and sure enough, the dark little button glittered at him, a tiny spy lens. In his moment of distraction, the hunter kicked him in the gut, taking him by surprise. He lashed out and grabbed the man by the hair, picked him up and slammed him against a tree branch, breaking his neck. Two.
The remaining two had divided, one running south, back the way he’d come, the other going west. His ears swiveled, listening hard to his enemies movements and picked the southbound man, that one was moving faster.
“Fen,” he said, the word harsh.
“Get up. Take care of my witchling.”
The girl was crouched down, her head on her arms in her lap, rocking back and forth, her breath coming in ragged gasps. She made no acknowledgement of his words, lost in pain and panic. The boar demon’s hand moved, he was coming around. Good enough. If the west traveling hunter circled back, he’d be able to defend them by the time the fiend arrived. Fen wouldn’t fall for the same trick twice.
“Thank you ever so much for your concern, my Lord,” Fen’s voice came, a ragged whisper. Lord Makkai allowed the sarcasm, just this once. He had been negligent in looking out for the boar’s safety, too curious to see what they would do.
Lord Makkai moved swiftly, he’d given his prey enough of a head start, they may even start to feel hope for their own survival. He avoided the first snare easily. They’d taken their time on the way in, setting traps for the scenario they’d have to retreat. It might have worked on a dog, maybe even a wolf, but never a fox. The next trap was a leghold, subtler than the last but noticeable enough. He would have to find and dismantle all of them later.
He poured more speed into the chase, practically flying through the branches, he was nearly there. The man never saw him coming. Lord Makkai dropped down on him from above, wrenching his head to the side and killing him too quickly to bring any satisfaction. One left.
Once more his ears strained for information. He’d been right to wake Fen, the westbound hunter had circled back, this one had been a decoy. Makkai kicked the body savagely. He’d fallen for one of their tricks. No matter, he wouldn’t give chase this time, he’d let his enemy come to him. He jumped through space.
Fen sat next to the girl, wiping blood from his face. She remained as she had been, curled up into herself and rocking back and forth. He would have plenty of time to deal with her distress later. If he was right, he’d have a lifetime to atone for dragging her out here against her will.
The last of his prey stopped crashing through the forest. Lord Makkai walked to the western end of the clearing, pondering for a second. The cameras would have told them he’d returned, and they would have informed the hunter. He’d know there was no point in running away. No matter what he did, he was dead. Lord Makkai sneered, wondering what they were saying into his ears as he’d killed them one by one. He bent and yanked one of the buds out of the nearest ear.