Huntress

by Elizabeth Hartwell

  Lance is just beginning to stir, but I don’t have time to focus on him right now as I fight. My sword moves like a part of my arm, which after all these years, it practically is. The humans are easy, one of them running in fear after I gut his companion, but vampires are different. For them, each drop of blood that’s spilled is a shot of adrenaline to their minds, and they love the carnage.

  One of the vampires comes at me, and I drop, ducking his swiped arm while taking his leg off at the knee. Yanking my sword up, I have to turn what should have sliced the bloodsucker in half into just a limbing as Tym’s hammer comes whistling through the air right where my head would have been.

  “Watch it!” I yell, glad that I’ve got good reflexes. The vampire, who’s still alive but is only one-legged, turns to catch Tym’s hammer in the nose, ending that particular threat, and suddenly, we’re down to one.

  It’s a child . . . but I can see as she moves that she’s also a vampire. Based on the way she’s moving, she’s powerful as well. She’s faster than the rest, almost hovering off the floor as she darts just out of range of Tym’s whirling hammer.

  “You know how long it took me to assemble this coven?” the little vampire asks, hissing. “And you wreck it in one night?”

  The vampire darts in, so fast that even Tym’s hammers can’t keep up, but I can. Diving underneath his arm, I extend my sword, impaling the vampire through the chest and driving her back until she’s pinned to the wall.

  “Rest in peace,” I growl, yanking my sword out and swinging one more time to decapitate the creature. Her body falls to the ground, and I turn, only to duck as Tym’s hammer smashes into the wall above my head. “Tym! What are you doing?”

  I roll, desperate to gain distance from him as Tym turns back to me, his eyes glowing in the dim light. His face is a mask of rage, and as he moves, his hammers destroy everything in sight. Chairs, tables, and corpses are obliterated as the massive man becomes a one-hammered destruction machine. “Tym, stop!”

  “ALDRI!” Tym screams, his voice so loud my eardrums feel like they’re threatening to burst. I go to dive away from him again, but my foot catches on a body and I go tumbling. Rolling to my back, I see Tym above me, the hammer in his hands.

  “Tym!”

  Out of the darkness, a glowing web snatches Tym’s hammer, wrapping around his wrists and deflecting him enough that I can move out of the way of his blow. Tym falls, and another web wraps around his lower legs before a third and final one binds his arms to his body.

  “Drop the sword . . . that’s all he sees right now,” Lance says weakly from beside me. He’s on a knee, his face looking like he’s just woken up and wants to go back for another ten or twelve hours of sleep. “If you don’t threaten him, he’ll calm.”

  I stand up shakily, looking at Tym, who’s still struggling, and Lance who looks like he’s struggling to stay awake. “What the fuck’s going on with you two?”

  Lance smacks his lips and looks around. “Tell you in a few hours. I’m out.”

  Lance closes his eyes, nestling his head on his pack, but no matter how hard I shake him, he’s right. He’s out like a light.

  “Now, what do I do?” I mutter, looking at the bodies and at the wrapped up Tym. I turn to him, planting my hands on my hips. “Well, buddy? Because I’m tempted to ditch you two and do my own thing.”

  Tym roars, obviously not liking my idea, and after a minute, I sigh. I can’t leave them like this, one bound and helpless, the other pretty much helpless. Instead, moving carefully around Tym, I start dragging the bodies over to the doorway to the back, where I see a flight of stairs.

  Good enough for now.

  “So, what was that?” I ask after the sun comes up. Tym fell asleep hours ago, his rage exhausting him to the point he finally just quieted down before his head nodded off to the side. As soon as he did, the bonds on his body evaporated into nothingness.

  Meanwhile, Lance has awoken, and while I start a small fire for heat from the remains of the smashed tables and chairs, he swishes out his mouth and, somehow charmingly in the midst of all this insanity, brushes his teeth. When he’s done, he spits back into the filtering bottle and smacks his lips. “Which part?”

  “You . . . him . . . whatever happened last night,” I ask, my back giving me a warning twinge. I barely slept, keeping one eye always cocked on Tym as I sat up in the corner, my sword in my lap and my nose filled with the stench of blood.

  I wish I could have evacuated Lance and Tym to a better location, but there was no way I was dragging both of them outside or to one of the other buildings. Tym’s easily twice my size, and Lance . . . well, at least snoring doesn’t make anyone heavier.

  “I’ll start with what happened to all of us,” Lance says, putting his toothbrush away. “Best bet, we were drugged.”

  “I didn’t taste anything . . . but it explains how sleepy I got,” I admit, trying to think back. We’d been having dinner, and then . . . I woke up to the screaming.

  “Me too,” Lance says. “I thought at first maybe I was actually having a bad reaction to the pain drugs you gave me, but I was willing to ride that pony to let my arm feel better. By the time I realized what had happened, it was too late.”

  “But how? The drink wasn’t spiked. I saw people downing it with us.”

  “I’d guess either they had an antidote or it was a partial formula. Put some in the drink, some in the vegetables, some in the bread, and they just made sure not to eat the right combination.”

  It’s devious . . . but it makes sense. “When I woke up, there were vampires, and Tym was going nuts.”

  “Berserk, if you want to get technical,” Lance replies. He sees my confusion and huffs in exasperation. “You really don’t know shit about mythology, do you? Okay, fine . . . I’ll let Mr. Muscles over there explain himself when he wakes up, but I’ll tell you more about me. I told you about my binding thing, so that you already know . . . and you’ve seen the time stop. Now you’ve seen entanglement.”

  “What was that, a web you shot from your hand or something?” I ask. “I mean, it looked like a web.”

  “A net, actually. I said it before, in addition to being the god of deceivers and tricksters, Loki is the god of fishermen. Not of oceans. I sometimes wish I had Poseidon’s powers, but nets and fishermen? Yup, I’m all about that. So . . . I can make nets.”

  “That’s an understatement,” I reply, recalling what happened last night. “And they’re strong?”

  “They’re breakable, but it usually takes a pretty sweet sword or something like that. No way was Tym going to be able to bust out of them once I got a couple of layers wrapped around him. But with those powers come . . . consequences.”

  That, at least I’m familiar with. Vampires have superhuman strength, speed, and can withstand injuries that would kill normal people, but they cannot stand sunlight and of course have to drink blood. Werewolves have silver to compensate for their strength. “So, what are yours? And Lance, don’t make me kick your ass to find out. I’m tired of secrets from you on this. I don’t care that you’re paranormal, or a demigod, or whatever you want to claim. We’ve got a job to do.”

  “And to do it, you need to know my abilities,” Lance says. “Well, let’s see . . . yup, tying me up effectively neutralizes my powers. In fact, you can pretty much make me helpless with a three-foot piece of string tied around my body. There’s my personality as well, which I’ll admit rubs some people the wrong way.”

  “The trickster?”

  Lance nods, grinning. “I’m the life of the party . . . for a little while. Then people start getting pissed, usually because I have another weakness that I’m not sure is all that related to my lineage.”

  “What’s that?” I ask, and Lance grins lasciviously. “Seriously?”

  “What can I say? A beautiful woman draws me like a moth to a flame. On the other hand, at least I know I can put my naughty tongue to good use that way.”

  Lance’s grin widens, and
I’m surprised to feel a wave of heat fill my body. It’s not just the way he’s looking at me, like he wants to rip my traveling leathers off and see how I taste, but also in just how up front he is about it. Surprisingly, he doesn’t come off as perverted . . . or at least, he doesn’t come off as perverted in a bad way.

  Before I can answer, Tym groans and rolls over, sitting up and blinking as he looks around. “What happened?”

  “You went purple pants again,” Lance shoots before I can reply, and Tym’s face tells me everything I need to know. He sighs and looks around at the carnage he’s inflicted.

  “All of this . . . me?”

  “No,” I reply, hoping to spare him a little bit of pain. “I took out two vampires and three humans too.”

  Tym sighs, nodding as he stands up and goes over to his pack. Wordlessly, he takes out his ration pills and pops three of them before redoing his stuff and pulling it over his shoulder. I stand up, but Lance is faster, shaking his head as he grabs my pack and brings it over to me. “Give him a mile or two. His kind doesn’t like talking about it.”

  We get going, our pace slow as the sun creeps higher into the sky. I let Tym take the lead for the stretch, the walk easy since we’re headed slightly downhill. As I do, I munch a ration pack and keep pace beside Lance. “How’s the arm?”

  “Better, actually,” he says, grinning as he shows me his fingers and wiggles them. “It was a wonderful restful night for me and my body’s healing powers. You?”

  “Feels like someone’s shoved a splintery stick up my backbone, but I’ll get over it,” I reply, watching as Tym reaches a rock that looks like a good place to rest. “Can you give him and I some privacy?”

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Lance jokes, then snorts. “Never mind, I don’t swing that way at all.”

  He jogs ahead, saying something quietly to Tym as he pulls ahead. Tym nods and waits at the rock while Lance scouts the trail about a hundred yards ahead of us. I get to the rock and sit down, taking off my pack to get a sip of water. Tym does the same, then looks at his bottle. “I should have refilled at the village.”

  “I took care of it,” I reply, handing him my second bottle. “Take what you want and just filter it back into yours.”

  He nods gratefully and takes a deep drink before capping it and handing it back to me. For some reason, I drink from the same bottle, giving him a little smile as I do. Tym’s face is cloudy, those expressive eyes of his hooded with regret, it looks like, but it helps break the stormy expression a little. “Now you’ve got my cooties.”

  His little attempt at humor makes me smile more, and I take a big drink. The fact is, Tym’s hot in that broody philosopher warrior sort of way. I bet when he’s by himself, he’s the kind that lies around reading old books and trying to ponder the mysteries of life in the post-Apocalypse. “Don’t worry, the Hunters give us plenty of immune boosters against cooties. But thanks for the warning.”

  Tym nods, and we share out the rest of the bottle before speaking again. I put the bottle away, hooking it into my filtration system to clean and refill, and look up at him. “So, Lance told me his deal. It’d really help things if I knew yours. He says you’ve got powers and weaknesses?”

  Tym nods, his fists balling as he looks down at his arms, then out at the Scorched Earth. There isn’t much to look at right now, just a lot of dirt, some scrubby patches of brush, and that’s about it. There’s plenty of danger, of course, but it’s the sort of danger that stays quiet and hidden until it wants to jump out at you.

  “My blessing is my curse,” Tym finally says, looking me in the eyes with a smoldering gaze that would melt most women’s panties. Even I’m feeling it, and I wonder why my traveling leathers are choosing this moment, of all times, to chafe. “I have to stay under emotional control at all times.”

  “Or else, what?” I ask. “Last night, you were screaming, saying things in a language I’ve never heard before. Lance said something about berserk.”

  Tym nods, breaking his eye contact with me, but my body still feels flushed and warm. “Tyr and Thor . . . two names, but like I said before, actually the same god. What you heard was Norse. They just fucked up that the two were the same. But when I get . . . when I get angry, or scared, I can fall into a berserker rage that gives me the strength of fifty men.”

  I whistle softly. If he’s not lying, that makes him stronger than all but the most powerful of vampires and werewolves. “But?”

  “But it is truly berserk. I’m as much a danger to my friends as my enemies then. I can smash walls, destroy people, and not know who I’m hitting, nor caring. I . . . I don’t even remember what happened last night after the rage started. I remember waking up, the little girl vampire talking to Dwight, calling him Father . . . and then it all went behind the haze.”

  Tym stops, and I watch him struggle with his guilt. “Tym, you didn’t hurt us. You almost did, but Lance and I are fine.”

  “I’m glad . . . but I still must maintain my control,” Tym says. “There’s another weakness, but I’ve been able to avoid it most of my life.”

  “What’s that?” I ask, and Tym shakes his head. “Tym—”

  “No,” he says, getting up. He pauses and looks down at me with the same smoldering look as before, and I realize he wants me. They both want me, and part of me whispers that I want them too. Not for life-long companions, of course, but in terms of a roll in the sand? I could do worse. I’m betrothed to worse, honestly.

  “I need to know,” I force out, and Tym nods.

  “You do . . . but not right this second. I promise you, before we come upon that challenge, I will tell you everything.”

  He moves off, and I watch him for a moment, wondering what I’m doing. I should be kicking his ass for not telling me. But the way he looks at me, and the way Lance teases me . . . I feel like I’m being warmed by a lot more than the sun, and part of me likes it.

  I just have to be careful.

  Chapter 8

  Cerena

  Careful?

  Did I really think I needed to be careful yesterday?

  Boy, was I wrong. I don’t need to be careful. I need to be kicking ass.

  Part of it, of course, is that whether they're demigod, paranormal, or just plain Outsider human who’ve spent all their days and nights running around the Scorched Earth, both Lance and Tym have enough stamina to run me into the ground.

  Seriously, hour after hour, they keep walking through the Scorched Earth, while my feet ache, my back aches, and even my head’s starting to thump with a repressed migraine.

  Lance and Tym aren’t helping any.

  “Okay, Tym, have you heard the one about the wendigo who finds a panda?”

  Tym doesn’t break stride but instead strokes his light scruff of a beard that he’s sporting after half a week on the road. “I don’t know what a panda is.”

  Lance throws his arms up, looking at him in absolute disbelief. “You’ve never seen a panda? I mean, in all the holochips and—”

  “Will you please shut up?” I growl, glaring at Lance. “Fuck, Lance, not everyone’s read the same holos that you have.”

  Lance glances back at me, the little dimple on the right side of his mouth working as he grins. “Oh, I bet if you and I compared holo histories, I could find a few we’d have in common.”

  “Highly fucking doubtful,” I hiss, storming ahead. I can’t keep it up for long. Lance and Tym both have stride length on me, and when they catch up, I’m still not in a good mood. “We’ll stop at the spot up ahead.”

  “But—” Tym says, snapping his mouth shut when I glare at him more. “Fine. I thought you were on a time-sensitive mission.”

  “I’d be making better time if I didn’t have two large pains in the ass to deal with,” I bitch, even though it’s a complete lie. Tym says nothing, and the three of us trudge to the clearing I pointed out, which has decent sightlines and some brush on the east side that’ll filter some of the prevailing winds out
here. “Here.”

  Tym sets down his pack but hefts one of his hammers. “I’m going to scout ahead, see if there’s water or a settlement,” he says, walking off before I can tell him not to. I’m tempted to tell him to not waste his time, but I could see it in his face. He’s pissed at me and wants to have a chance to calm down.

  Sitting down on the sand, I groan as my butt comes in contact with the ground. If I’ve got any weakness at all when it comes to being outside the walls of Solace on Hunts, it’s my sleeping arrangements.

  Maybe it’s a result of all the years of hard training, or maybe I’m just spoiled, but for me to get a good night’s sleep, I need to be in just the right position. In my apartment, I’ve got a bed that is perfectly supportive and will cradle my hips and lower back while not being too hard, and it will let me feel like I’m floating on a cloud while coasting through my seven or eight hours in dreamland.

  You just can’t do that on sand. And so far, between being drugged and laid on a concrete floor, half napping in the corner of a room that looked and smelled like an abattoir, and then last night’s sleep of lumpy sand with a rock pressing into my leg no matter where I happened to roll, my body feels like shit.

  I know that’s the main reason I’ve been sniping at them all day. Another part is just my natural reluctance to trust Tym and Lance. My entire life, I’ve been taught that paranormals are not to be trusted. Sure, not all of them are bloodthirsty killers, but they’re not on my team. They’re in it for their own reasons, and if the shit hits the sand, they’re going to side with their own kind.

  I get it. Some of the oldest holos tell about a world where humans were trying to move past that tribalism, past a point of view where color of skin or national identity or religion kept them apart while others kept festering the divisions. I guess the War sort of ended some of those problems at least, because after we came out of the shelters, little things like skin color didn’t mean shit compared to the hunger to suck your blood or to go howling at the moon.