Huntress Apprentice (Huntress Clan Saga Book 2)

by Jamie Davis

  Cindy laughed. “You think fighting for the light is any different? You’re just a pawn to them.”

  Quinn remembered something Miranda had said earlier. “Yes, but I don’t fight for either side. I fight for balance. Light and dark are just two sides of the same thing, aren’t they? I, on the other hand, fight for all the gray in the middle. That’s where I’ll make my stand.”

  Cindy’s eyes flashed in annoyance at Quinn’s answer.

  The demon-kinder’s reaction offered only a little solace, though. Quinn was getting dizzy and might pass out at any instant. The loss of blood from the injury was severe, not that she’d live long enough to die from that if Cindy had her way.

  She stared at her opponent, and a strange thought crossed through her mind. Quinn forced herself to focus through the dizziness on the demon-kinder’s hands. She wore dark leather gloves on both of them.

  “Hey, didn’t I cut your hand off the last time we saw each other?”

  Cindy laughed. “You puny humans are so fragile. I can’t imagine how your kind has survived in this world for so long. It took me a great deal of personal energy, but I managed to force this puny body to regrow its missing appendage.”

  “Neat trick. You should teach it to me sometime.” Quinn swayed as she said it and nearly toppled over. She reached out and steadied herself on the tree beside her. Maybe she could fall that way and roll behind cover. It would allow her to try to escape for a little while.

  “I tire of this, Huntress. Know that this was the last piece of our plan. Finishing you off puts everything else is in place. You even helped us with your ham-fisted rescue the other night. It flushed out some of the others attending the fae summit. Now I think it’s time to end you and then attend to your friends inside.” The woman tilted her head to sight along the crossbow’s stock and took aim.

  Everything slowed down for Quinn. It was as if time had stopped moving at normal speed. Her eyes were hyper-focused on the finger tightening on the crossbow’s trigger. At the same time, her dizziness shifted, now different from what she’d experienced from her injury.

  Quinn smiled when she realized what that meant. Hopefully, it had come in time.

  Ten feet away. Cindy squeezed the trigger. Quinn saw the bolt started to slide forward, propelled faster and faster as it left the bow’s front edge. Time was returning to normal again.

  At the same instant, blackness tugged Quinn backward. Despite the sudden onset of migraine-level pain, she welcomed the recall. She even pushed at it, trying to escape certain death.

  The last thing she saw was the bolt flying straight at her chest.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Quinn gasped and sat up. A thrumming snap next to her caused her to look down.

  There, still quivering in the wooden tabletop, was a crossbow bolt.

  “That was close,” she said to no one in particular.

  “Oh, my God, Quinn, you’ve got an arrow in you,” Taylor exclaimed.

  “Technically, it’s a bolt, but yeah, I’ve got an arrow in me.” Quinn glanced around, spotting the three dead bodies around the table. “Where’s Clark?”

  “He went out looking for you,” Miranda explained. “He was worried. So were we. We had to fix things here. We just finished the repair and decided to pull you back.”

  Quinn glanced at the still-quivering bolt in the table beside her and smiled. “You have excellent timing.”

  Taylor’s gaze followed hers to the feathered shaft. She shivered.

  Miranda came over and helped Quinn slide to the table’s edge. “Let me take a glance at that leg. It looks nasty.”

  “I don’t think the bone’s broken, but I’m not sure how to remove it.”

  “Ordinarily,” the witch said, “this would be a job for a surgeon. That, however, would open us up to all sorts of odd questions, so I’m going to have to work on it.”

  “Hold up until Clark gets back. Cindy is still out there, and she’s dangerous.”

  “You’re losing a lot of blood. You need to let me work on that leg now. Taylor, come over here and help me lay her back down on the table.”

  Quinn tried to resist, but it was useless; she was too weak. The two women soon had her staring at the ceiling while one of them tore open her jeans around the wound.

  “Hold her down,” Miranda ordered.

  Taylor came around to stand beside Quinn. Her friend gave her half a smile and leaned over to grip the injured leg.

  Miranda grabbed her leg with one hand and the stub of the bolt with the other, then muttered some words Quinn didn’t recognize under her breath. It must have been some sort of magic because Quinn’s amulet grew colder for a few seconds.

  The witch tensed her shoulder muscles, and Quinn prepared for the coming pain. A pulling sensation yanked several times at her leg, jerking and tugging. There wasn’t any pain, however.

  After a few seconds, Miranda sighed and stood upright, holding the bloody bolt in one hand. “Taylor, jam as much of that gauze into the wound as you can to stop the bleeding. Just stuff it in there using your fingers until you can’t fit any more or the bleeding stops.”

  She turned to Quinn while Taylor worked on the wound. “It was stuck in the bone, but it doesn’t appear to have broken it. You’re tough, I guess.”

  “Just good huntress genes,” Quinn murmured. Her words slurred, and she had trouble keeping her eyes open.

  “Quinn!” Miranda leaned over Quinn’s face, holding it in both hands. “You need to stay awake until your hunter healing kicks in.”

  Her attempt to correct Miranda came out as an almost unintelligible jumble of syllables.

  “Miranda, what’s wrong with her? I stopped the bleeding like you said.”

  “I don’t know. She should be getting better once we removed the bolt. Unless…”

  Miranda turned away, moving out of from Quinn’s narrowing field of view. She was really having trouble keeping her eyes open. It was almost as if she’d been…

  “Drugged,” Miranda announced. “They did something to these bolts, probably some sort of poison. Taylor, go up to my room and bring my big shoulder bag down. There are things I need in there.”

  Miranda’s face came back into view, although the huntress had trouble keeping it in focus.

  “Quinn, I think they poisoned the crossbow bolts. I’m going to try to counter it magically, but to do that, you need to stay awake so I can see what’s working. Got that?”

  Quinn’s attempt at the word “yes” simply came out as a single long hissing sound. She’d lost the ability to do anything as her entire body rebelled against itself. Her eyes remained open only because she couldn’t command the muscles to close them fully.

  Figures and shapes moved in and out of view. Quinn wasn’t sure all of them were real. After a while, she thought she picked up Clark’s voice asking about her. Then her ears stopped working, and though she hadn’t closed her eyes, everything faded to black silence.

  She wasn’t sure how long she slept or if being unconscious even counted as sleep. Quinn’s eyes fluttered open to bright sunlight streaming through the window of her room at the farmhouse.

  Sitting up, Quinn lifted the blankets to check out her leg. There was a large bandage covering the wounded area, which looked clean. There was no blood seeping through it. She probed the dressing with her fingers to see how tender it was. There was just an ache, and that appeared only when she pressed down hard.

  Quinn folded back the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. She wore panties and a t-shirt. She stood, waiting to make sure her leg would bear her weight. It felt fine, with only a slight twinge to tell her anything had been wrong. It looked like her crazy-fast healing ability was still in play.

  Crossing to her dresser, she pulled out a pair of jeans and slipped them on, followed by a fresh shirt. She turned to check out herself in the mirror behind the door. Someone had brushed her hair and French-braided it while she was out, probably Taylor. She loved that kind of thing.
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br />   Quinn slid her feet into a pair of brown knee-high boots and left to go downstairs. Voices in the kitchen drew her that way, and she entered to find Clark, Miranda, and Taylor in the midst of a lively conversation.

  “Clark, you can get angry if you want,” Taylor said. “All I can tell you is the truth. They destroyed enough of the system that we’re significantly limited in how far I can project Quinn in VR mode. I wouldn’t trust it anymore for much beyond a mile from our location.”

  “You said you didn’t know for sure,” Clark replied.

  “I don’t have to. I built safeties and redundancies into the system as I assembled it. I might be able to push the radius out some, but it’ll take more time and equipment to get it back to full strength.”

  Clark threw his hands in the air. “Great, and we still don’t know how they found our location.”

  “Filippa or one of her people could’ve let it slip to someone,” Taylor suggested. “She’s been here and would know how to direct someone to come back.”

  “I thought you trusted the fae woman?” Miranda asked Clark and he nodded in response.

  “I do, mostly, but not everyone she shares information with is trustworthy. Our secret is only as good the least reliable link in the chain. That’s why we’re packing to move to a new location.”

  Quinn cleared her throat from the doorway. Everyone’s head swiveled around in her direction.

  “Quinn, what are you doing up and out of bed?” Miranda asked.

  “I woke up, and I feel fine. What else would I do?”

  Miranda came over and stared at her leg for a few seconds. Quinn almost felt her deciding if she could order Quinn to let her take a look at the injury. She had to head that line of thought off right now.

  “I checked the wound, and it’s pretty much healed. I could’ve taken the bandage off, but I decided to leave it for one more day. I have super huntress healing, after all,” Quinn added.

  Miranda looked doubtful, but Quinn gently pushed past her and went to the table where Clark and Taylor sat.

  “What’s our plan now that they know where we are, and that we can fight them on their own turf inside the VR?”

  Clark shook his head. “We don’t have one because we can’t turn our system back on now that VirSync knows how to chase us down.”

  “But we can’t give up. Something Cindy said right before she shot me last night is bothering me.”

  Taylor laughed. “Quinn, it wasn’t last night, it was three nights ago. You’ve been out since we took the bolt out of your leg and discovered the poison…”

  Clark waved his hand to stop Taylor from continuing. “Quinn, what did Cindy say that bothered you?”

  “She said something about their plan already being in place. She also said our rescue of Filippa and Alistair ended up helping them.”

  Miranda shook her head. “That doesn’t sound good. We don’t have the VR rig ready yet. The alert system is still working, though, right?”

  Taylor nodded. “Nothing has come in since the attack. I pinged the signal interrupter to make sure it was still active and got the correct confirmation message back. They haven’t used the VR at all except to attack us here.”

  Quinn walked over to the sink and stared out the window at the yard outside the farmhouse. “She seemed awfully smug, as if their plan was ready or had already started.” She turned to face the others. “I think we have to get everyone together and find out where this fae summit is taking place. Once we do that and get close enough, we can get Taylor to try to see if the VR setup is working nearby. Then we’ll know if they’ve infiltrated the place.”

  “Filippa said they’d begin the summit by the end of the week,” Clark told them. “That’d be about now. She was supposed to contact me to let me know when and where in case I found out about any threats to them. She never did, which I assumed meant she didn’t want our help.”

  “Clark,” Miranda asked. “Is there any place in the city an event like this would be held so it could be kept a secret?”

  “There are more than a few places. Maybe as many as a dozen that possess the necessary proximity to a nexus of ley lines. Taylor, can you detect the use of the VR tech if we get close enough, assuming they’ve found a way to mask it from the bot you installed?”

  “Yeah, but I would need to be pretty close. Maybe as little as a hundred yards or so.”

  “It’ll have to do,” Clark said. “Let’s load up. Miranda, you can drive. I’ll ride shotgun. Taylor, you ride in the back and get your detection gear ready.”

  Quinn stopped them as they all started to leave the kitchen. “What about me?”

  “What about you?” Clark said.

  “You’re not leaving me here. You’re going to need me.”

  “You’ve been confined to bed for three days after nearly dying.”

  “Clark, look at me. I woke up because I’m healed. Huntress genes, remember?”

  The old hunter stared at Quinn for almost five seconds before he nodded. “Gear up. This could get bad, so bring your A-game. I don’t like how this is shaking out.”

  Quinn resisted the urge to jump up and down and pump her fist, but she couldn’t stop the broad grin on her face as she raced upstairs to get her Bowie and to change into her huntress garb.

  The hunt was on.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Quinn sighed. They’d been out for hours, scouring the city with no luck. The first nine places Clark checked out were all busts. They detected nothing supernatural going on with Taylor’s computer rig, Miranda’s magic, and Clark’s and Quinn’s hunter senses.

  The most recent one had seemed promising at first. Quinn had smelled something akin to the shifters they’d run into in the dark alley the previous week.

  When she pointed it out to Clark, he was doubtful. After sniffing the air where Quinn had detected the scent, he said, “Not strong enough for a whole pack. More than likely, it was a loner or drifter passing through.”

  He still took the extra time to have the team search the abandoned building. In the end, they discovered a few teenaged werewolves marking their territory the old-fashioned way on the building’s fourth floor. When Quinn walked in on them peeing their initials on the dusty concrete, all three of them zipped up so fast Clark laughed aloud when one of them doubled over.

  The three boys took off before they could answer any questions. Quinn and Clark returned to the car, both chuckling. When Miranda and Taylor asked what was so funny, Clark left it to Quinn to explain while they drove to the next place on his list. The three women were in stitches, laughing and sharing a rash of bad puns.

  Clark cut them off as he turned down onto an old cobblestone road that dated back to Baltimore’s earliest days. “Let’s get back to business, ladies. We’re almost to the next location.”

  “What is it?” Quinn asked. Having grown up in the city and spent part of her time on the streets, she’d thought she knew all the ins and outs of the place. After seeing some of the more remote places Clark had taken them today, Quinn realized she didn’t know as much as she’d thought.

  “This part of the city used to host lodging houses for sailors in port waiting for another berth on a merchantman getting ready to leave the harbor. It’s mostly abandoned warehouses now, but there are some old places hidden in this area, most of them underground.”

  “What makes you think this might be the place they’d hold the summit?” Miranda asked.

  “Filippa is old. Ancient, even. She mentioned the area in passing when she visited once. She convinced me to drive her over here and regaled me with incredible stories about what she called the old days.”

  Clark drove down a long rough-paved street. It was well after dark at this point, and there was no other traffic around them. The only other vehicles they saw were old and obviously abandoned.

  “There was one spot she said was a favorite hangout for fae visitors.” Clark craned his neck over the steering wheel to see out the windshield better. “
I just can’t seem to remember exactly where it was.”

  “Stop,” Taylor called from the back seat. “I’ve got something.”

  Clark halted the car and turned to Taylor, waiting for more from the tech witch.

  She clicked her laptop and then picked it up, twisting in her seat while staring at the screen as if trying to pick up a cell signal on her phone. She noticed the other three watching her and smiled. “I modified the wi-fi antenna in my laptop to detect energy in the magical spectrum using a code modification I found in the VR system programing. I never thought I’d get to use it, or that it would even work. Well, it works, and I’ve picked up something.”

  Quinn caught a glimpse of the screen while Taylor moved the laptop around. An enlarged wi-fi signal triangle showed on the screen, with the lowest bar flickering on and off. “Are you sure you’re not just picking up someone’s local wi-fi nearby?”

  “Look around, Quinn,” Taylor said. “You think anybody has bothered running cable or internet down here? It looks like they barely have electricity.”

  Quinn shrugged as she looked at the darkened buildings outside the car. “So, which way is it?”

  “Let me try something else.” Taylor dug in her backpack and pulled out a computer cable to which she’d attached a broad, flat paddle fashioned from aluminum foil. “My grandfather told me a story once about how they used to make their old TV antennas work better with tinfoil. Let’s see if it still applies.”

  Clark rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything. Instead, he went back to scanning the nearby buildings from the front seat.

  The instant Taylor plugged in the makeshift antenna, the wi-fi signal bars filled halfway, and the flickering of the signal stopped. She beamed at them and then looked back at the screen as she extended her arm out the rear window and slowly turned the foil paddle.