Huntress

by Elizabeth Hartwell

  “Why?” I reply. “Lance, this town’s a tough place in a very fucked up world. Sure, I’d like all the species to work together. I’d love to be able to sit down with a fairy, a vampire, a ghoul, and maybe a few others to be able to discuss the finer points of interspecies or intersubspecies relations, depending on how we want to look at things now. Shit, with what I’ve learned, part of me would like to wander around and find out just which gods have gotten themselves involved in this little experiment of ours and how.

  “But we don’t have that option. Johnny pulled a knife on Tym, which means he deserved what he got. He’s lucky, really. I would have done worse.”

  “Promise?” Lance asks, and I nod. “Thank God.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t mean I’m not still pissed at you about it,” I promise him. “You endangered our mission, but more importantly, you endangered us with your juvenile prank. Lance, your skills make you a great member of this group. And I happen to actually like you. But you have to think things through more. Maybe start asking yourself, is this something Cerena would like me to do?”

  Lance’s eyebrows perk up, and I know what he’s thinking. “Well . . . maybe I can try that.”

  “Come,” Tym says, opening his storage box. “We can plan our next move as we eat.”

  Dinner isn’t much, just ration packs that are maybe even worse than what we ate on the road to Bane. I’m not going to complain, however. It’s better than trying to sneak past the guards again to get back to the embassy. “So what did your contact have to say?”

  “He didn’t have a place for me, only a name and a contact location,” Lance admits. “And he was a pain in the ass about giving it up, too.”

  “What does he know?” Tym asks. “That was a long conversation about just a name and a location.”

  “I had to make him a few promises. Cus was worried I was going to back out on canceling my marker with him,” Lance replies. “Also . . . well, let’s finish eating and I’ll tell you the rest. By the way, nice wrist throw there, Tym. I always figured you for the whole chokeslam them to hell sort of guy. But that was sweet.”

  “I have learned how to control my strength like I’ve learned to control my temper,” Tym responds. “Just because I am a bigger man than you, well . . . I’m just a bigger man.”

  Lance opens his mouth to protest, then closes it, then opens it again before looking at me. “Are you going to say anything?”

  I shrug, smiling as I finish the last of my rations and lean back. “Lance, it’s not the size that counts . . . although it certainly doesn’t hurt.”

  Tym chuckles, and Lance gawks at me before laughing. “Okay, Huntress, I deserve that one. Besides, you’ve never complained so far about my size.”

  We finish dinner in a companionable silence, stopping as a scream pierces the night. “Fuckin’ vampires,” I murmur, shaking my head. “I hate to ask, Tym, but—”

  Tym stands up and goes over to a small box on the wall. Pushing it, he nods as a soft buzzing sound fills the air, and suddenly, a flash of smoke appears on the far side of the wall before stopping.

  “Motion sensor UV lasers,” Tym says, sitting back down. “What, did you think I got this place for the decoration? Anything goes within an inch of the outside door or window, and they’ll be greeted with a wide-beam laser that’ll kill all but the most powerful of vampires.”

  “And piss off most everything else,” I add. “The power supply is secure?”

  “Quite. As long as it’s only used occasionally, the batteries are quite powerful.”

  “In that case, I’m gonna get ready to go,” Lance says, standing up. “Since you two will be snug and safe, I’ll see if we can go find our boy tomorrow.”

  “Why leave now?” I ask. “We’ll come with you.”

  Lance shakes his head and double-checks his knives. “Not where I’m going. My contact is in Silverburg.”

  Before I can argue the point, Lance disappears, and a half-instant later, the lasers flash, hitting nothing but wall. “He’s faster than sensors . . . impressive,” I mutter. “But what’s he mean, not where he’s going?”

  Tym looks down and adjusts himself in his place on the floor. “Silverburg . . . is the name of the werewolf enclave.”

  Chapter 20

  Cerena

  Tym’s words hang in the air for a few moments, and I swallow, thoughts running through my head.

  My first reaction is to actually chuckle. “They named their enclave Silverburg? Isn’t that a bit . . . I don’t know, cliché?”

  Tym shrugs. “It is unmitigated gall. But they are a confident group. Their clans are more . . . unified than any of the other factions in Bane.”

  “We should go after Lance then,” I reply, getting to my feet. I hate werewolves with a passion, and for Lance—

  “Don’t,” Tym says, holding up a hand. “With his abilities, he’s the best sneak thief and spy in all of Bane. In fact, the more paranormal a being is, the more he can use time stop and entanglement on them. It’s a . . . well, side effect of his powers.”

  “Explain,” I order. “Because werewolves and vampires don’t seem to have any restrictions against humans.”

  Tym sighs, leaning his head back against the wall. “It’s a matter of semantics, I would guess. Tyr told me, when I was a child, that the gods are not allowed to directly intervene in human affairs. They cannot use their powers directly on humans. Which is a good thing, because they could make us all slaves with a snap of their fingers if they wanted. Something or someone’s stopped them and put limits on their powers. Those same powers affect their offspring as well. In my case, my strength . . . it isn’t applied against my enemy but to my own body.”

  “Your enemy just happens to be at the end of your fist,” I point out, and Tym nods. “So that’s how wolves and vampires do it?”

  “Yes. But Lance, his entanglement, his time stop, they apply to the world around him, not him. The less paranormal, the less affected, and the more energy and will he has to use to maintain the effect. But around Silverburg? Well . . . let me tell you how I first met Lance. We were in Fairy Town in Alliance territory.”

  “What were you doing there?” I ask, and Tym chuckles.

  “I was transporting weapons to a human group. It was half of my business at the time. I am, or was at least, a reasonably good weapons merchant. Lance . . . well, I don’t know what he was doing. My contacts had demanded that we meet at a fairy bar. Suspecting they were up to no good, I’d taken precautions, and I was right. The humans were being controlled by fairies, who tried to use their powers to seduce me and steal my shipment. When that didn’t work, they brought their humans out of every nook and cranny they’d stashed them.”

  “How’d you get out?” I ask, and Tym laughs.

  “Suddenly, humans started disappearing. It was like this series of flashes. You’d blink, and suddenly, two people would be gone. Blink again, another two, and another two. In ten seconds, every human was out of that bar, and it was just me with a dozen fairies. They looked surprised but encircled me. I was prepared to fight when time stopped again, and in a blink—”

  Tym laughs hard, his memories carrying him back, and I wonder what he’s thinking of. “Well?”

  “The fairies were all stripped naked, back to front in a daisy chain, their hands stuck to the hips of the fairy in front of them. The leader of the whole group was in the front, bound hands and feet to the floor, and Lance had covered his face in makeup, making him look almost like a girl. On the floor of the bar, he’d carved Gloryhole, 2 bits. I didn’t even notice him at first until he said something from the bar itself, where he was happily pouring himself a triple whiskey. You know what his first words were to me? ‘We’d better get out of here before one of them gets a stiffy and things get way too gay for me in here.’ I’d never even heard of anything like him before. He even took the whole bottle of whiskey with him.”

  That’s Lance to a T, and I laugh. “So he’ll survive.”

&
nbsp; “He’ll survive,” Tym confirms. He purses his lips and looks over at me. “So . . . why do you hate the wolves so much? I hear it in your voice. You distrust most paranormals, which isn’t a bad thing in Bane . . . but you hate the wolves.”

  I scratch my jaw, not sure if I want to go into this, but then I realize I need to. If this team’s going to be effective, more cards need to be laid on the table. And I’ve already told Lance, I might as well tell Tym. “My parents were killed by a pack of wolves. They were Hunters, both of them.”

  The training ground is dusty, but I don’t care. It’s fun to be here with my classmates in the Initiate class, playing ball. I know the instructors tell us that the skills we learn playing with the ball are supposed to be important for our later training as Hunters, but I’m not thinking about that. I’m thinking about Justin and the fact that last time we played, he splashed me with mud since it was right after a rainstorm.

  He’s got the ball right now, and I’m coming in from his blind side, ready to tackle him, when suddenly, he pulls up. I don’t care, though. I lower my shoulder and punch the ball free just as I hit him with my shoulder, rolling off him and picking the ball up. “Yes!”

  There’s no cheering, no yelling. It’s then that the silence hits me and I look around. Everyone’s stopped, looking toward the fence that surrounds the play area, and I turn to see Edward, one of the Elders. He towers over me, but then again, I’m not that old. With him is a Hunter, a young one named Crassus, if I remember right. Dad brought him around before this last mission.

  “Cerena Lightmoon,” Edward says, approaching me. “Come with me, child.”

  Somehow, in his face, I know . . . and the ball drops from my arms, forgotten.

  “What did he say?”

  I blink, pulled back into the present as Tym’s voice pierces the fog of memory. “They were on the way back to Solace, only a day or two out, when the wolves hit,” I reply. “The party had decided to camp out on the Scorched Earth. There were no ruins for miles and everyone was tired. And they felt confident. They were close enough to Solace that there’d be nothing that would dare threaten them. So they bedded down for the night and posted guards. The wolves attacked them while they were asleep.”

  Tym winces, nodding. “A pack of wolves does not care about any territory but their own and that of other wolf packs.”

  I nod. “Edward told me that the territory was claimed by a young upstart pack leader, Lucian Tsavo. Apparently, Tsavo approached the caravan days prior, trying to get some sort of bribe from the Hunters, but Edward and my parents decided to send him on his way with nothing . . . and Lucian remembered.”

  Tym sighs. “Of course. Cerena, I don’t know if you know it, but the largest wolf pack in Bane . . . Lucian Tsavo is the Alpha.”

  I growl but say nothing. If Tym is correct, it’s probably better for the mission that I’m not with Lance right now, because I’d have a hard time keeping my mind on the mission and not on slaughtering him. “I see.”

  Silence drops between us again, my mind whirling with the irony of my lifelong enemy being just a short distance away. “After my parents’ deaths,” I say, breaking the silence, “life changed.”

  Sweat trickles down my spine between my shoulder blades, and I’ve got an itch where some dust has worked its way under my shirt, but I don’t care. Let it itch, let it become an irritation. I don’t care.

  What I care about are the two senior Younglings in front of me, the sticks in their hands. They’re both angry, their eyes slitted as they square off against me, a first-year Youngling who shouldn’t even be speaking to them, two who soon will graduate the course and become Hunters. I should be clearing the hallways when they approach, because these two aren’t going to be Wall Guards. They’re going to be Team Hunters, the elite of the elite. I should be afraid of them.

  Instead . . . I challenged them.

  But while they have a reputation, I have a reputation as well. My muscles are taut, and these aren’t the first older students I’ve ‘trained’ with. That none of us are wearing sparring gear and our weapons, while wooden, are unpadded, doesn’t matter.

  The one on the right, a lithe, supple girl named Kristina, attacks first, as I suspected. It’s a deadly feint, because if I ignore her attack to focus on the follow-up from her partner and lover, Achillus, she’ll skewer me like a kebab for the fire. But if I respond too hard to her, Achillus will break my spine with his own blows.

  Instead, I play the middle path, deflecting Kristina while whipping and kicking Achillus’s wrist. I hear him grunt, his left hand temporarily useless. Taking advantage, I plant my foot and wrench my body around. My thigh muscle screams at the abusive treatmetn. I’ve been spinning one way and am now demanding it take the strain of stopping me and spinning me the other in nearly an instant, but I don’t care.

  What I care about is the hard slap as my wooden sword smacks into the back of Achillus’s leg, buckling his knee and allowing me behind him, my one arm wrapped around his throat and his body a shield against Kristina’s attacks while I choke the life out of him.

  “Yield,” I growl, lifting my free hand to point my sword at her. “If you want to feel his cock inside you again, you’ll yield.”

  “Don’t—” Achillus rasps, but his voice is fading quickly. My arms might be skinny compared to his, but I can already pass the Hunter physical fitness test, including the twenty pullups and twenty handstand pushups that challenge many of the women. So it’s nothing to curl my arm a little tighter, squeezing off the blood supply to his brain.

  “Yield!” I growl at Kristina, whose swords start to waver. Her pride is telling her not to do it, that she can defeat me in time to save her lover. Meanwhile, her heart is telling her the truth. If she attacks, I’ll break his neck. “If he dies by my hand, it’ll only protect another Hunter from his weakness.”

  “Cerena!”

  The voice pierces the training ground, perhaps the only voice that could get me to release Achillus, and my arm automatically uncoils. Achillus drops to the ground, out but waking up moments after hitting, Kristina dropping her swords to help him up. Her eyes are full of hatred as she looks up at me, but I don’t care. All I care about is the voice and Edward’s presence as he crosses the sparring yard.

  “Elder, she—”

  “Take him to the autodoc,” Edward says to Kristina, his voice warm with concern. Turning to me, his eyes chill. “With me, Cerena.”

  We walk in silence up to his office, although I guess it’s an office shared by all the Elders. There’s a computer terminal on one desk, connected to the mainframe buried below the Academy, the source of all our knowledge.

  Once the door to his office closes, Edward turns to me, his face a mask of concern. “What am I to do with you, Cerena? I’ve been awake less than a month and that’s the third time I’ve heard of your getting into a fight.”

  “It’s not a fight, Edward,” I reply, unwilling to back down. “I challenged them to a sparring session.”

  “With no instructors, no padding, and no safety measures in place,” Edward points out. “Cerena, you’re going to get yourself hurt at some point.”

  “And so will those two,” I counter. “Kristina’s so worried about where her next orgasm’s going to come from that she was unwilling to do what needed to be done for victory. She should have attacked me without mercy.”

  “If she’d done so, the Hunters would have lost a damn fine young Hunter,” Edward points out. “Cerena . . . when Elizabeth said that you’ve garnered a reputation as a loner, I’d hoped she was exaggerating. I’d gone into cryosleep praying that I’d set you on the right path toward keeping at least a little bit of your childhood.”

  “My childhood ended the day you crossed the ballfield and told me Lucian slaughtered by parents,” I reply, wiping my face. “And for the past few years, I’ve had to fend for myself. I don’t blame you, Edward, but your absence has meant a lot of things changed for me.”

  “As I’m wel
l aware,” Edward says, going over to his desk and opening a drawer. He takes out a small hand towel and tosses it to me, nodding in approval when I wipe myself down. “I’ve been painfully aware for the past month that the little girl I took into my house and into my heart has become a young woman. One who, I might mention, has blossomed into the body of a young woman but refuses to dress appropriately.”

  I look down at my loose tank top, with my budding but growing breasts straining the thin fabric, and shrug. “This was actually on purpose. Achillus has a reputation for being a horn dog with a wandering eye. I hoped that I could . . . distract him. I don’t know if it worked or not.”

  “In any case, I’m going to put a few rules in place,” Edward says, coming over and putting a cool hand on my shoulder. He’s always had a cool touch, something that, as a little girl, I’d take advantage of in summer, as his hand would feel like a breeze on my sweaty forehead when I’d wake up screaming from the nightmares.

  “If you’ve read Elizabeth’s report on me, you know I don’t do well with rules,” I point out, and instead of getting angry, Edward chuckles.

  “True . . . neither did I so long ago. But these are for your own good. First, you’re going to need to start wearing proper support attire for your body. You are developing like your mother did, quickly and . . . not to sound perverted, voluptuously. Not as curvy as her, as you have the height of your father as well to balance out the swells you’re garnering, but you still need to wear appropriate support. As much for your other Academy students as for your own health. Second . . . stop challenging the older students. If you wish to spar or to work on your fighting skills, come to me. I will be happy to arrange an appropriate test for you.”

  His second rule makes me smile. Edward’s always been the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced. Then again, when you have centuries of experience on your side, I guess it’s to be expected. “Anything else?”

  “Yes,” he says, tilting my face up to look him in the eye. “Try and smile more, please? I want you to take at least ten minutes a day and laugh. I don’t care if you have to force it or if you have to find the silliest entertainment holos in the library. I want you laughing at least ten minutes a day. You’re far too serious, my sweet Cerena. And while you’re not my daughter, I do care about you . . . and I don’t want you growing up having forgotten the most powerful medicine in the universe.”