Hunter

by Joanna White

  I picked the lock open on the chain on my left wrist and immediately started working on the right one. No matter what, I had to get her out of here, had to stop what they were doing.

  I had to save her.

  I worked as fast as I could until Hindah kissed her. When that happened, I froze, unable to move, unable to think, unable to process the rage and hatred that only grew with every second that ticked by.

  I wanted to kill him.

  Dalex, no Averella, bit him. He was furious, so he had them lift her to a tree using the chains around her wrists. The moment he grabbed his whip and started flogging her, my blood boiled.

  The rage was back, stronger, and it was so intense that all I could think about was getting the chain undone. Within milliseconds, it slid off. Now that I was free, I jumped to my feet and yanked on the chains, calling to the power and rage I felt inside me.

  The chains in between my ankles snapped in half. As I looked up and met Malik’s eyes, I saw my expression mirrored in his thoughts, which were full of shock.

  My eyes were completely black. As dark as night itself.

  I moved so fast even he couldn’t follow my movements as I snatched an arrowhead and threw it at him. It landed in his chest. He was only lucky that it missed his heart, but he was still knocked from his feet. Hindah paused in his next strike against Averella and met my gaze. His shocked expression was gone in seconds, but I still saw it. Everything immediately grew cold around me, as Hindah took the whip and snapped it at me. I put out my left hand making the whip wrap around my wrist. Blood formed and dripped onto my hand, but I felt nothing.

  I yanked so hard Hindah lost his grip on it. As I threw it in the air, I caught it in my hand and snapped it at Kehlarch before he could paralyze my movement. He shook his head to the side because he thought I was aiming for his face, but he had guessed wrong. It wrapped around his ankle and I pulled, knocking him to the ground.

  I sensed Hindah was almost in front of me and ducked just as he swung a sword, stabbing the air where I had been standing seconds before. My movements were inhuman, but his matched mine evenly. Twisting to the right, I grabbed his wrist behind the hilt of his sword with my left hand. With my right, I snapped the whip, so it wrapped around the tree I had been chained to. I pulled with all my strength, as Hindah pressed the sword closer to me. Within a millisecond, I released my hold on his wrist and ducked forward, moving underneath his other arm. Placing my left hand over my right, I held the whip tightly and yanked backward. The tree cracked and groaned. With another tug, it snapped in two and collapsed onto the fire. The fire exploded as the tree crashed on it. I smiled for a second before turning back to Averella.

  Picking up a sword off the ground, I turned to face Kehlarch. As he raised his hands, smiling, thinking he’d won, inwardly I smiled.

  He froze the sword and the temperatures all around me dropped several dozen degrees. I turned, moving at an inhuman speed, and threw the sword. It flew through the air and connected perfectly, hitting both of Averella’s chains.

  She fell, hitting the ground hard. I stretched out with my senses and I could feel that she was still alive, but her heartbeat was slow, weak from blood loss.

  I turned back and had to duck as Kehlarch threw an ice dagger at me. Sliding across the ground, I snatched a branch with the end being consumed in flames. As I turned and threw it at Kehlarch, I dashed over to where they had placed my Inquiri blade and returned it to its sheath. Since I didn’t sense anyone else around me at the moment, I darted over to Averella, picked her up in my arms, and then rushed away with all the speed I had, leaving the camp and the Hunters behind.

  I wasn’t sure how long I ran before I stopped to tend to her wounds. If I didn’t stop the bleeding, I knew she would die. Gently, I laid her on the ground behind a rock formation and hoped that the Hunters would lose our trail.

  Glancing around, I tried to find something, anything that would stop the bleeding. I looked as far as my eyes allowed, through trees and rocks. Ten feet away, on the other side of a rock, there was the special celfc moss. Darting over there, I grabbed as much as I could and sprinted back to Averella.

  The moss would stop the bleeding until I could get us somewhere safe where I would have more time to sew up the wounds. I rubbed the moss on all the deeper slashes, using most of it on the wounds that were bleeding the worst.

  “You’re safe now, Averella. Just stay with me, okay? Stay with me! Open your eyes,” I softly told her, touching her cheek with my hand as light as I could. Hearing voices in the distance, I swallowed hard and glanced down at her, slipping off my shirt. I avoided looking at her chest, biting back bile in my throat, as I gently eased her arms into the sleeves and slid my shirt over her. The voices grew, which meant they were getting closer.

  We had to keep moving. I picked her up and darted in the opposite direction of the voices. It seemed like hours that I ran with her in my arms. I didn’t stop until I was sure we were safe, at least for now. The sun rose, but I kept running. I had something inside me, a strength I had never felt before, even when I had been at my strongest. I had an urge… a need to keep going; a need that wouldn’t let me stop, a need that kept me moving.

  For the first time in my life, I was doing something good.

  Finally, hours after the sun had set again, I stopped. I sensed someone about thirty yards away from where we were. I carefully laid Averella on the ground behind a tree. Looking through the tree we hid behind, I unsheathed my Inquiri blade.

  “Lehlax!” I called as loud as I dared.

  He turned, surprised, then when he recognized me, relief flashed on his expression. Sine turned and saw me, too. They both jogged over.

  “Jared! We thought they had killed you and Dalex—" Sine started, then stopped, when he saw Averella at my feet.

  He gave me a questioning look.

  When Averella groaned, I looked away from him and bent down next to her. “It’s okay, you’re safe,” I murmured.

  She groaned again, and her eyes fluttered but didn’t open all the way. Gasping, she desperately tried to breathe in more air.

  “Stay with me!” Her eyes fluttered again. “Come on, open your eyes.”

  “What happened?” Lehlax asked as he and Sine bent down next to us.

  “The Hunters,” I muttered with a growl.

  She gasped again.

  “Stay with me, Averella. Stay with me,” I urged her. I couldn’t lose her. I wouldn’t. Not after all the prisoners we had lost…

  Not after all the prisoners I killed.

  Her eyes finally opened all the way. It took her a minute to focus, but when she did she whimpered. “It’s okay they can’t hurt you now. We’re safe,” I told her gently.

  “He’s…a…?” Lehlax started, looking from her to me in complete shock.

  “She’s a woman,” I finished for him.

  “What?” Sine yelled.

  Averella gasped again and her eyes started blinking rapidly. “Averella?” I asked, gently touching her cheek.

  “He’s—" Lehlax paused, looking at me. “I mean she,” he corrected, “has lost too much blood. Here, move her shirt.”

  I lifted her shirt so that he could see her stomach.

  “The moss helped.” Lehlax’s eyebrows knitted as he examined her wounds.

  “Do you have supplies so that we can sew her wounds together?” I asked him.

  “Yes. Sine?” he asked.

  Sine nodded, mutely, still in shock, and opened a bag at his hip.

  Lehlax grabbed gauze, a needle, thread, salve, and water.

  “Put that in her mouth just in case she wakes up,” Lehlax told Sine. Sine put a stick in her mouth for her to bite on. “You will have to hold her down to keep her from moving too much. I don’t want her body damaged any more than it already has been. Where are the deepest cuts? We’ll start with those,” Lehlax told me.

  I pointed out the worst ones; one on the middle of her back, one on her leg, one that reached from her lo
wer back around her hip where her waist was, and then I paused.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “One on her collarbone,” I finished.

  He nodded. “It’s either her privacy or her life, Jared. Which one would you rather lose?”

  I didn’t answer; I couldn’t find my voice. But I nodded and helped him gently take my shirt off her.

  Suddenly, I froze, sensing something.

  “What is it?” Sine asked, seeing my expression. Lehlax had already started to sew the cut on her collarbone.

  “Hunters,” I growled, holding my Inquiri blade.

  Lehlax paused. “We can’t move her. The moss only works for a certain amount of time. Without it, the wounds could start bleeding again. If she loses any more blood…” His voice trailed off.

  “We’ll lead them away from here,” Sine said.

  I furrowed my eyebrows. “Are you sure?” I asked him.

  “Yes,” Lehlax answered for him. “Take this and finish sewing her up. We’ll lead them away from here to buy you some time. She needs rest so take her to someplace isolated and safe where she can take time to recuperate.”

  I nodded. “Thank you.”

  He nodded as he and Sine stood up. “We’ll head south,” he murmured to Sine. They took off running.

  I took the needle and finished where Lehlax left off. I embedded it into her skin, pulling it as tight as I could, then punctured it back through. I repeated the process twenty-one times until that cut was completely sewn back together, and then started on the cut on her leg next. There was already a hole in her pants where the whip had sliced it, so I ripped it a little more and then repeated the process. When I was done, I had only done it nine more times. After that, I started on the slash on her waist and sewed it up until I reached her side. She whimpered as I turned her over as gently as I could. I continued sewing up that wound, and then carefully turned her over onto her stomach. She groaned, almost a scream and I hoped that Sine and Lehlax had gotten the Hunters to follow them. If the Hunters were in the area and heard her…

  I finished sewing up that wound completely and had stitched it thirteen times by the time I had finished, before starting on the wound in the middle of her back. It took longer, and by the time I was finished, it took over thirty stitches to sew it together completely. I started on the smaller cuts after that, one by one until I made sure they all were sewn together.

  After that, I took the salve and started rubbing it lightly over all the cuts. Lehlax had told me it was to help with the pain and to keep infection from settling in. She had a gash on her forehead from being hit against a tree. I cleaned the blood off as gently as possible and, since she didn’t make any sound, I assumed she had passed out again. Opening her mouth, I poured some water into it, tilting her head back until she swallowed. I wished I had something to put on her eye, which was swollen, and turning black and blue, but there was nothing else I could do.

  Finally satisfied that her wounds were taken care of, I leaned back against the tree and sighed. Her crimson-colored blood stained almost every inch of me. There was dried blood on my head from where I had been punched earlier, but I just leaned my head back and looked at the sky.

  The sun was just coming up over the horizon. It was morning again already. I closed my eyes and relaxed for a few minutes. For the first time, I noticed the dull stinging in my shoulder. I glanced at my left arm and remembered the slash that Malik had given me as punishment for almost ripping his wing off. I took the needle and thread in my right hand and glanced over my shoulder. This wouldn’t be pleasant, but I had to stop the bleeding. I refused to use the water to heal the wound. I wasn’t sure whether it was to keep from Averella becoming suspicious if she would even remember, or because I wanted to feel human.

  I told myself it was the former, but deep inside, knew it was the latter.

  Slipping the needle through my skin and across the cut just like I had done for Averella many times before, I weaved it back through. Eight stitches later, I stopped when my arm couldn’t reach the rest of it. Fortunately, it only extended another inch down my back. I yanked the needle so that the string ripped out of it. Somehow, I managed to make a knot of some kind on the end of the thread. Sighing, I leaned against the tree, grabbed the canteen, and drank some water. Instantly, I felt refreshed.

  But I couldn’t push back the horrible pit that had formed in the middle of my chest.

  CHAPTER 11

  AVERELLA

  It took several tries, but I finally forced my eyes open. I had been going in and out of consciousness for quite some time. When I finally woke up all the way, it was dark, and I was lying on the ground. The stars were bright overhead, and through the leaves of a tree above me, I could just barely see them twinkling. I was about to smile, but then the memories slammed into me of everything that had happened: the maze, getting caught, Hindah, the Hunters, Jared, the chains, being whipped, the flashes, and then Jared’s voice telling someone, “She’s a woman.”

  That phrase echoed around in my head over and over again, until it became like a chant. It was a chant that I wanted to stop. I wanted to cover my ears and push it out of my mind.

  “Averella?” a voice asked me. I glanced to my left to see Jared’s face looking down at my own.

  I swallowed deeply and looked away from him, too ashamed to meet his gaze.

  “Are you in any pain?” he murmured.

  “Not—" I started, then broke off at hearing the sound of my voice. It was rough and hoarse; it sounded as if it had been scraped raw. “Not as bad as it was.”

  He nodded. “We met up with Lehlax and Sine. He had medical supplies, but the Hunters were nearby. So, he and Sine ran off to lead them away from us. That gave me a chance to sew up your wounds. You had lost so much blood, you wouldn’t have lasted much longer.”

  I nodded, but still refused to look into his eyes.

  “Dal—" he started, then stopped and corrected himself. “Averella. Look at me.” He slipped his hand under my chin and slid it up to my right cheek and gently turned my face to look at him. I looked down at his chest. It was bare, and blood stained most of him, making me gasp.

  He looked down and realized I had seen the blood on him. “Most of it is yours. I managed to sew up my shoulder.”

  I nodded, still not meeting his eyes.

  “Look at me.” His tone wasn’t demanding, though…far from it. It was calm, gentle…pleading.

  I looked up and met his gaze, staring into his red-gold eyes. “You don’t have to be afraid of me. This doesn’t change anything. You’re still a prisoner running for your life.”

  Something about his tone, the reassurance in his eyes, the sureness in his expression, or the firm set of his mouth, made me feel completely calm. Even though I was badly beaten, and we were on the run, I still felt relaxed, as if we would get through this. But…he had been there, he had seen the Hunters and how they had beaten me…

  Shame made me look away from his reassuring gaze.

  “Averella, you know I’d…. I’ve felt anger…and rage before…” He paused and swallowed deeply. He looked away from me, as if this time he couldn’t bear to look me in the eyes, instead of the other way around. “But I’ve never felt as much…. hate as I have before…Until I was forced to watch how they beat you… And took advantage of finding out you’re a woman. I wanted…. I wanted them to experience the same pain they had inflicted on you.” He took a deep and shaky breath, finally meeting my gaze.

  I didn’t understand it, but I could almost see the same shame I felt inside of me mirrored in his eyes. But why?

  “You were angry with them?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Why? I lied to you. Why risk your life to protect me?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know. All I knew is that, for the first time since being here, it felt like I was doing something right. I feel like I need to protect you,” he said.

  “Well, you don’t have to. I… I came in here on my own
. I don’t want you taking pity on me.” I looked away from him and stared at the horizon to my left.

  His hand rested against my cheek again, gentle…yet firm. “I don’t pity you. We’re all in this situation… We are all running from them. All of our lives are at risk. We’ve all lost something… And believe me; I’ve seen you stand up to them. You’re just as good a fighter as any of the other prisoners I’ve seen here. I don’t help you because I feel I have to, but because I feel it’s something I want to do. For the first time since I’ve been in here, I’m doing something that feels right, because I want to, and not just…. Doing things for survival,” he finished, meeting my gaze again.

  “Thank you, Jared. That—that means a lot,” I told him honestly. And it did. I’d expected him, or the other prisoners to look at me differently if they ever found out I was a woman.

  I’d expected them to see and view me as weaker than them. The fact that he didn’t, meant so much. Also, now that I didn’t have to pretend I was a man, it was a lot harder to ignore how my heart sped up when he touched me, or at how close we were.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked, pulling me from my embarrassing thoughts.

  “Yeah, a little.” I shrugged, but the movement sent waves of pain shooting down my back.

  “I was afraid to leave you before, but now that you’re awake, I’ll go and gather some berries or something for you to eat,” he said.

  I nodded, hoping he wouldn’t go too far.

  It only took him a few minutes before he returned with a handful of some kind of fruit I barely recognized. My head was still really foggy, probably from the loss of blood. I tried sitting up, but he gently pushed me back down.

  “Don’t try to sit up. Here.” He put one of the pieces of fruit in my mouth. Instantly, the sweetness spread throughout me, filling me and I finally realized how hungry I was.