Hunter

by Joanna White

  “That’s pretty far away, for water. We’ll need it fairly often.” I glanced at the ground.

  “I know. What else can we do though?”

  I didn’t know.

  None of us did.

  Chapter 8

  JARED

  When I woke, I couldn’t remember what had happened.

  “Jared. Jared, can you hear me?” a familiar voice asked.

  Dalex’s face appeared above my own. It was light gray out; it must have been close to sunrise. I started to sit up, but several hands grabbed me to help me lean against a tree. Annoyance flared that someone thought I needed help; I felt stronger, and couldn’t feel any pain, but I brushed the annoyance aside.

  “What happened?” My voice was hoarse, and my throat felt dry.

  “There are mermaids in the lake. They sort of put the three of us in a trance. Dalex managed to save all of us. So, we owe him our lives,” Lehlax said.

  I looked over at Dalex. Once again, he surprised me. “Thanks.”

  “You were in the water the longest. I almost didn’t get to you in time.” He glanced at the ground. Something was in his voice, something I couldn’t identify. I tried to see into his thoughts, but I still sensed nothing. The annoyance returned when I realized I couldn’t even feel anything from Sine or Lehlax.

  “I’m here, so you did. Can I have more water?”

  Dalex nodded and handed me a canteen.

  I drank, savoring the coolness going down my throat. It soothed my throat and instantly I felt my power returning.

  “What did the mermaids do?”

  “They put you in a trance. It didn’t work on me, probably because I wasn’t as far out. Wherever they touched any of you, your skin started graying and your veins popped out. Because of how weak you all are, I think they fed off your life force or something,” Dalex explained.

  “When you told me what had happened, I was thinking the same thing,” Sine interjected.

  “Now we know why no one survives up here.” I glanced out at the water. Even Hunters were in danger up here; Hindah never allowed us to travel this way, although none of us knew why… Until now.

  “Yeah, and we decided we don’t need to be coming back up here, except to get water from the upper part of the creek. Unless we can figure out a way to get rid of the poison,” Sine explained.

  I nodded, trying to think. Even Hunters needed water to survive. Who would have been foolish enough to try to get rid of it?

  My mind instantly flashed to Hindah. I guessed he must have been trying to toy with them, besides just wanting to kill them all off slowly. Not to mention he was willing to risk not having water either, which was bold. How long before Hunters would need it? This whole thing screamed of desperation.

  “Even if we did somehow manage to figure out a way to get rid of the barrels, there’d be no way to get rid of the poison that’s already in the river. The most we could do is warn anyone that we could so more prisoners don’t die,” Sine explained.

  “The lake feeds the river, so it would flush the poison out once the barrels are destroyed,” Lehlax corrected.

  Everyone else nodded. I was having a hard time adjusting to the fact that mermaids existed and that they had almost killed three of us. I stared at Dalex, trying to figure out a reason that made sense why all of us had been caught in a trance and not him. Was it the same reason why I couldn’t read his mind?

  There was something different about him. Was it that he had Hunter potential or was it something more? It was trying to figure him out that piqued my interest. I underestimated him time and time again. And even when he had saved me, I still had managed to underestimate him yet once again. He continued to prove himself. Dalex wasn’t as weak as he looked.

  He had a secret, that much I knew.

  Then again, everyone had secrets.

  I was deceiving these people, befriending them, just to play with them before the other Hunters and I killed them all. It would only be a matter of time.

  As I looked at Lehlax and Sine, it became difficult to breathe. They had lost all their friends and even then, they would die too. I looked at Dalex. Why did my stomach twist at the thought that any of them would die? I was feeling something unusual, something almost desperate. Something I couldn’t explain. Something I had no way of knowing. For the first time, I wanted to protect them, not kill them. Why?

  Feelings were alien to me. As they were to all the Hunters.

  I thought about all the prisoners I had killed. The countless innocents whose throats I had sliced open, whose necks I had snapped, whose chests and stomachs I had stabbed, whose bodies I had caught in a whip, whose heads I had crushed with rocks…

  The images flashed, and the list went on and on. Never-ending. Involuntarily, I winced. The feeling intensified and then combined with something else. I looked at Dalex and tried to imagine killing him.

  I clenched my jaw, not taking my eyes away from Dalex’s. Did I still want to kill him? My first thought was no. But I knew I would if I was given the order. The thought of him dying, or Sine or Lehlax dying, especially by my hand, filled me with something worse than watching Wexx die.

  Was this what hopelessness felt like? Or sorrow? This felt worse than those words could explain. I finally blinked and had to look away from their gazes. Seeing their expressions caused the feelings within me to change. I didn’t want them to see me for what I was, to know the horrors I had done without hesitation.

  The thought of them finding out that I was sent to betray them all was unbearable. Dalex… Sine… Lehlax…

  None of them could ever find out.

  “Jared?” a voice asked.

  I knew it was Dalex without even looking.

  “Are you alright?”

  I shook my head, clearing my throat. “Yeah.”

  That feeling returned, and I looked away from him, suddenly unable to meet his gaze. No words would form in my mouth. All the people I killed flashed through my mind and I wanted Dalex to stay away from me. For his own sake.

  They all should.

  “Jared?”

  “We should find some way to blow up the barrels.” I cleared my throat and refused to look at Dalex or the others. Whatever the feelings were, I pushed them back until I couldn’t feel anything, until I was back to feeling blank inside.

  “Yeah, okay,” Dalex replied, reaching to help me stand up.

  I winced when he touched me. I didn’t deserve to be helped, by Dalex or by anyone.

  I looked at his face involuntarily.

  “Sorry,” he said, yanking his hands back and looking away from me awkwardly. I did the same. As much as I pretended to be a prisoner, I wasn’t. I didn’t deserve the loyalty and devotion they gave each other.

  I was glad for the distraction when Sine and Lehlax joined us after collecting their stuff.

  “What are we going to use to blow up the barrels? It’s not like we have any explosives around here.” Sine crossed his arms.

  “There’s a certain kind of sap inside the bark of some of the trees they grow here that will ignite as soon as it touches fire.” Lehlax sheathed his sword, along with several daggers.

  “How do we get it without it hurting us?” Dalex glanced at the barrels of water in the rapids behind us.

  “It won’t hurt us, just don’t eat it; it is poisonous. We’ll gather some around the barrels, make a fire, and get out of the area as quickly as possible,” Lehlax answered.

  “Great so we’re destroying one poison with another,” Sine muttered sarcastically.

  Lehlax didn’t say anything, but he did shoot him a look. He walked into the trees, gesturing for us to follow. He stopped at one of the taller trees, like one of the many trees I had climbed thousands of times to get a good look down below. The bark of the tree was a darker shade of brown than the others.

  “I don’t see what’s so different from this tree than the others.” Dalex crossed his arms.

  “It’s hard to tell unless you’ve been
here awhile. We should split up. Sine, can you tell it apart?”

  Sine nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Okay. You cover the north side tree line. Don’t go too deep; there should be enough to gather, come back, and still stay close. Jared, can you tell the difference?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay, you go with Dalex and cover the south side of trees, to the right of the river. I’ll cover the other side,” Lehlax informed.

  “So, all we need to get is the bark?”

  “Yes, it will still ignite the sap,” Lehlax answered.

  We all nodded and walked off in our separate directions. Dalex grabbed a dagger and started scraping off bark from one of the trees.

  “Where are our weapons?” I asked, hoping they hadn’t lost my Inquiri blade. I would kill them if they lost my blade.

  “I left them on the bank away from the water,” he replied, without looking up. I nodded and went back to the bank. I grabbed my Inquiri blade, checking to make sure it wasn’t damaged. Glancing at the pile of weapons, I snatched three daggers and headed back to Dalex. Two of them I hid in my belt and boot, while I used the last to scrape bark off the same tree as Dalex, but on the opposite side as him. To my surprise, Dalex already had a pretty good size pile started.

  I hated the silence, which was strange. Normally, I preferred the silence to all the shouting, fighting, yelling, screaming, and buzzing in my mind from everyone’s thoughts swimming around in my head.

  I could quiet my mind and silence the thoughts, but that took a lot of concentration. Normally, because of all the fighting, I never bothered. Pausing to concentrate took too much time. Instead, I just dealt with the thoughts and buzzing; it had become a part of me.

  When I couldn’t bear the silence anymore, I decided a normal thing a prisoner would do was to make small talk. I never saw the point or understood why they always enjoyed pointless chatter.

  “So, did you have a big family? Before this?” I didn’t take my eyes away from the tree.

  Dalex hesitated. “No. It was just my mother, brother, and I.”

  “Your father?”

  “Died a long time ago,” he replied shortly.

  I tried to sense to see if the subject bothered him, but not even flashes reached me. Closing my eyes, I pushed out further, to reach Sine and Lehlax’s thoughts. They were both concentrating on finding more bark from the trees. Lehlax’s thoughts drifted to Luke, but he pushed them away quickly. Sine focused his thoughts only on getting more bark. I glanced at Dalex, trying to at least get flashes of feelings, but I still couldn’t sense anything.

  “What about you?” Dalex asked suddenly, surprising me.

  “Oh. Uh, just me,” I replied quickly.

  “Oh,” Dalex said.

  I could feel his eyes on me and found myself glaring up at him without realizing it. “I’ve been in here too long to remember,” I added, knowing I should be polite with him.

  I was a Hunter. Hunting was all I knew; it was all I did. It was my whole life.

  ***

  About an hour later we all had a pile of bark surrounding the barrels in the water. Lehlax started a fire on the bank, close to the river where the barrels were. We all had our weapons and supplies ready at a moment’s notice. We had discussed who would take the torch we had made from the fire to one of the barrels. Lehlax wanted to do a line, connecting the barrels to the fire, which would act as a fuse and ignite the barrels once lit. However, we didn’t have anything to make it with, so, instead, we had to do it the dangerous way; one person would take the torch and light it from the fire, then throw it to the barrels and run. It was risky.

  Dalex suggested he should do it since we were probably too weak to run fast enough to get away, but I could tell he was exhausted from his shoulder wound. He still wouldn’t let any of us check it, even though Sine and I both had already offered him twice. He had lost a lot of blood, not to mention he had saved us. In all honesty, he looked as if he was only standing up out of sheer will.

  Deep inside, I knew I would be the fastest, but I didn’t say anything since I was supposed to be human.

  “I’ll do it,” Sine said. He explained that he had gotten his strength back and could run fast enough. Lehlax reluctantly agreed and we all headed down the river, watching him. When we were far enough away, we stopped and hid behind some trees, watching.

  It didn’t take long before there was a huge explosion and Sine rushed toward us.

  “The Hunters are bound to hear that and will be in this area soon, so we need to get out of here now,” I said.

  “I agree,” Lehlax murmured, just as Sine reached us. We all took off running through the woods.

  “One thing we didn’t discuss,” Dalex gasped between breaths, “was where we’re going now.”

  “Just head east,” Lehlax replied.

  So, we did. We ran until we couldn’t run anymore, then we walked until they could barely stand. I kept up appearances and pretended to be just as tired as the others were. We rested, drank water, ate what little we found, and then got up and kept moving. It went on like that for days on end. Fortunately, we never had any trouble. If the explosion had attracted any Hunters, they didn’t attack us.

  That whole time we spent mostly talking with each other. As many reasons as the prisoners had for not trusting people, they still did. It surprised me. Lehlax and Sine both talked with us openly about their lives before they were taken.

  “So, how old are you, anyway?” Dalex cast Lehlax a sideways glance as he leaned against a tree to rest.

  Lehlax threw his head back, staring at the night sky peaking in through the leaves of the trees. “Thirty…three? It’s hard to count birthdays in here. If I counted right, I think I’ve been in here for eleven years.”

  “Eleven.” Dalex gasped, placing a hand on his chest. I didn’t miss how his knees trembled, or how he paled. In the silver light of the moon overhead, he looked like a ghost.

  A faint trace of a smile was etched on the edges of Lehlax’s lips. “I miss my home. Vonerah. It was a good village to live in. Remember, Sine?”

  “You’re both from the same place?” Dalex licked his lips and glanced from Lehlax to Sine.

  Sine nodded. “Yeah. So was Freh. We grew up together.”

  Lehlax laughed with a shake of his head. “Oh, I remember how ornery you boys were. Even with all the danger and risk of the Gredi taking you. One time, they snuck out to the mines after dark. By that time, work is over and all of us would go home for the night. But they stayed in there all night long—nearly froze to death.”

  Sine placed his hands on his knees. “It was Freh’s idea. He thought if we could stay in the mines all night, we would be brave enough for you and my dad to agree to let us go hunting with you.”

  Lehlax sighed, rubbing the side of his brow. His eyes looked faraway, but his thoughts drifted to Luke—to the first time he held him, and to Sine’s father. The two had been friends. In his mind, he pictured himself back in Vonerah, surrounded by the ones he loved.

  My chest ached for reasons I couldn’t explain.

  “I miss him.” Sine cleared his throat. “Freh had only been here four years before—” He cut himself off, voice choking.

  Dalex swallowed deeply. “We didn’t have too many mines back in my home village.”

  “Where was that again?” Sine frowned. “I think you mentioned it once, but I can’t remember.”

  “Averon.”

  Sine’s eyes widened. “Hold on. That’s the same village Wexx was from!”

  I glanced over at Dalex. “Did you know him?”

  Dalex shook his head. “No.” He glared at the ground, sliding his foot through the dirt.

  I sat cross-legged beside him, so I leaned over to him and lowered my voice to a murmur, as Lehlax and Sine kept chatting quietly amongst themselves. “You okay?”

  Dalex hesitated. “I’m not sure. Wexx… I mean. He saved me. Risked his life to save mine…” His voice trailed off.

&nbs
p; This time, I was the one who stared at the ground.

  We walked for days. It seemed suspicious to me that we hadn’t run into any Hunters on our way. Over a week after we left the lake, we reached the part of Zagerah where it rained. Constantly. We were soaking wet and cold and they were close to turning around and heading back. Although I didn’t mind the constant rainfall and the cold didn’t bother me, I hid the fact that I was enjoying it.

  “Where do you think we should try to set up camp and stay?” Dalex crossed his arms over his chest, water droplets clinging to the edges of his short black hair.

  “Anywhere but here,” Sine muttered. He shuddered and shifted his weight from his left to his right foot and back again.

  “Maybe we should go back to the lake. I mean, as long as we stay out of the water we’re fine.” Dalex glanced up at the sky, blinking rapidly. “At least the Hunters wouldn’t be there.”

  Lehlax shook his head and doubled his hands into fists. “Eventually, they would find us. When we don’t show up, they’ll start to get suspicious. They are always looking for us.” After a pause, he continued. “We should just keep walking and eventually we’ll get out of this rain forest and then we can make camp inside the dome.”

  “What dome?” Dalex asked.

  “Basically, it’s a structure made out of some kind of unusual stone that towers up for several hundred feet in the center. It’s got a small tunnel you crawl through to enter it, which makes it protected from anyone coming at you from the ground,” Lehlax explained.

  “But it’s got a hole at the top, which is why no one is foolish enough to try there unless they’re desperate.” Sine shivered and clenched his teeth.

  “Wait, why is that foolish? Only one of the Hunters can fly.” Dalex paused and then continued, “Right?”

  “Yeah and that one that can fly would drop the other Hunters in the dome with us, which would force us to either try and fight them all, in which case we would die, or a few of us would hold them off while only one or two could get away,” Sine said, gesturing as he spoke.