The Hunted

by Anna Leonard

  She shuddered. “But if it’s part of you, how could the Hunters take it?”

  “With a knife,” he said bluntly. “A flensing knife, and a scraper, and a sturdy rope to hold us down, because the skin must be taken while we live, or it becomes useless.”

  She understood now; he could see it in her eyes, in the way her body seemed to close in on itself. He wanted to comfort her, to assure her that she would always be safe, that he would die to protect her, but he wouldn’t lie to her. He would die if needed, but that alone would not make her safe. Not anymore. She needed to know all of it, to protect herself, as well.

  “That’s why they chase us. Why they need to be sure what we are before they move. Why they will never stop, once they are sure.” He paused, not wanting to kill the last light left in her eyes, but having no choice. Not if it would keep her alert and alive. “You can’t go home. They’ll be waiting. If you had any family left—”

  “I don’t.”

  He had known that her parents were dead, that she was an only child. The gossip he had encouraged had told him that much. The flat tone of her voice, the matching flatness in her eyes, warned him that there was more to it than that, and he yearned to take her into his arms, to kiss the lines between her forehead away and reassure her that she did, now. That she had him, and his sisters and brother, his parents and their siblings…an entire colony who would welcome her home, to a home that was hers by right, not just because he had chosen her. But he said none of that, because he didn’t know if he would be able to follow through on that promise. He couldn’t go home, either, not while these Hunters followed them. He couldn’t risk it.

  “You do, though,” she said. He had spoken briefly of them, the night before, whispers of siblings, and parents. Of a colony, an island village entirely made up of seal-kin and sea-cousins, of fishermen and sailors, traders and the occasional craftsman, living off the sea as much as they could, trading with the human world for what they could not make or harvest. He could see them becoming real to her, where before they had been merely stories, other people in someone else’s life.

  “They’re safe,” he said. “They know the danger, and the Hunters don’t know how to find them.”

  “So long as you don’t lead them back there.” She had followed his thoughts, or jumped to the conclusion herself, he didn’t know. She was smart, she understood all the risks now. The very real danger they were in, not just them, but anyone they turned to. His kin, for the sake of what they were, and her friends, for their ignorance.

  The lines in her forehead got deeper, and he gave in to the temptation to touch them, smoothing them out with his fingers, then standing up and moving away from her and the distraction she offered.

  “Yes. We have to…stay away from them. From everyone. We have to shake the Hunters off our trail somehow.” That was the right thing to do, lead danger away from the colony. His sister’s children, his cousins, his kin. That obligation rose in him, as hot and strong as the need for his mate. Seals and their kin might not be warriors, but they were protective as hell.

  “Okay.” She looked up at him expectantly. “How? Let’s do it, and then we can get back to our lives. I left a client in the middle of a project, and he’s going to be significantly pissed about it.”

  He blinked, astonished that she could understand so much and still be oblivious to the basic fact, and spoke without thinking. “You’re not going back.”

  He said it so calmly, it took her a second to realize what he had said. Even then, it took her another minute to react.

  “Excuse me?”

  He heard the tone in her voice, but couldn’t quite identify it. Irritation, perhaps. Or astonishment.

  “You may be fabulous in the sack, Dylan,” she went on, “and yeah, I admit we got something going even more than that, but my life is my own and you don’t get any say over it.”

  Rage. That was the tone. He opened his mouth to protest, then decided the hell with it. Might as well be speared for a shark as a stingray, then.

  “You’re my mate. Or, will be, soon.” You didn’t win a mate just with one night and a meal. Not a mate worth having, anyway, and he already knew she was that. He rushed out with the rest of it before his nerve failed him—or she killed him. “And you would be easy prey to them, alone.” He would not allow that.

  All thoughts of the Hunters went out of her head with an almost audible whoosh, and she started to splutter at him. “You…arrogant, overinflated, highhanded, son of a…”

  Despite himself and the seriousness of the situation, Dylan grinned. The shorter hair on the top of her head was sticking up, and her eyes were rounded and bright with temper. If he hadn’t known she was seal-kin before, the temper would have been a giveaway. Selkie women were notorious for their short fuses, and a male learned quickly what was real and what was merely blowing off steam.

  She was seriously angry. But not at him. He could feel that through their newly forged bond, the same way he had identified the rage in the first place. It was anger at the universe, and fates. But if he didn’t defuse her, and soon, he might lose her trust anyway, just when he needed it.

  She had to trust him, or she might do something foolish and get herself killed. And that might kill him.

  “It’s not how I wanted to do this,” he admitted, concentrating on allowing his regret and ruefulness to show, to reach her through that tenuous bond. “If I could have… If I had thought it through, I would have done everything differently.”

  “Dinner and dancing?” Her hair was still ruffled, but the spark was tempered by a smidge of humor now. Still angry, still churning, but not so fierce, so misdirected.

  “Maybe not dancing. But I would have wooed you. Shown you that I was worthy.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and raised both eyebrows at him. “Show me now. Get us out of this. How do we stop these Hunters?”

  His entire body ached to hold her, to show her off to the entire colony as his. He wanted, more than anything, to impress her. “We don’t. We can’t.” He shook his head, aware of the odds against them. “Traditionally we evaded them, avoided them. Stayed underwater until they decided they were wrong, or that we weren’t coming back.” And then the colony moved, finding a new home somewhere safer.

  “You mean run away. Or swim away.” She was furious again, suddenly, and this time it was directed at him. He didn’t understand why.

  “And what then?” she asked. “Because that woman? She didn’t strike me as the type to just go ‘oh, well’ and walk away. Or maybe she will—and come back to find someone else the next time. Maybe someone like me, who doesn’t know what they are until it’s too late.”

  He loved her passion, the fierce protectiveness that was coming to the fore, but it frightened him, too. Frightened him for her, for what it might lead her into. “You’d rather end up draped over some criminal’s shoulders? Have your flesh cooling in some dump somewhere while he or she lives the good life at your expense?” Just the thought of it sickened him. The Hunters wouldn’t stop to ask if she was a shifter or not, if they suspected she was seal-kin. He had just found her. How could he lose her?

  “They need to be stopped!” She glared at him, as though the Hunters were all his fault, as though he had called them into being and then refused to take responsibility, and then she turned away, stalking to the other side of the room as though even looking at him was too much to handle now.

  He was angry now, too. Angry at that very fierceness he had just admired in her, angry at her innocence in the heart of evil. “How do you stop a shark, Beth? They swim, they kill, they eat. The Hunters hunt. They hunt us. It’s what they do.”

  She turned to face him, her eyes wide and the pupils dilated. “If you hit a shark on the nose hard enough, it leaves you alone. Isn’t that true?”

  “Unless it’s really hungry. Hunters are really hungry. We bring them too much money and power for them to back off.”

  She stopped, stepped away, sweari
ng under her breath. He studied the carpet, waiting, while she muttered, moving around the room. It took a few minutes, and the tension in her was making him feel ill in a way he had never experienced before, his stomach tight and roiling like a storm. If her getting riled up made him this unhappy, he was going to have to spend the rest of his life either making sure she stayed calm, or hiding with the seal-kin until it passed.

  He tried to think about the Hunters. They had been around for so many generations, were such a constant threat to the seal-kin, it seemed that the only thing to do was avoid them, the same way you tried to keep away from sharks. Sharks. Natural predators. Top of the food chain. Hunters weren’t top of their food chain. What could warn them off a Hunt? What was above them in the food chain? What could scare them, and yet not threaten his people, as well?

  Then Beth stopped muttering and looked back at him. The gleam in her eye was still there, but it had a different feel to it. A sharper, more focused glint.

  She had calmed herself down. How? The answer came to him easily. She had a plan. From the way she was looking at him, it didn’t involve hiding. The fear and queasiness was still in him, but it was tempered by a surge of anticipation. Oh, he had found himself a proper mate, he had. Life would certainly never be dull, assuming they survived.

  “Beth. My Elizabeth.” He had a feeling his own eyes had a corresponding glint in them. “What are you thinking?”

  She shook her head, and he wasn’t sure if she was denying that she was thinking, or just not ready to verbalize it.

  “Tell me.” He patted the bed and, when she sat down, pulled up the sole chair in the room and perched opposite her, their knees touching. “Tell me what you’re thinking. Let me help work it out.”

  Beth lifted her hazel eyes to his, and, hesitantly, started to talk.

  “You said it was all about money, to them. How much they could make.”

  He nodded. “From what we have learned over the years, from what we’ve seen, they’re not bigots or cruel or sadists. Just…business folk. Everything they’ve ever done… I don’t think they think of us as people. Just product.”

  She shuddered, but her words gained strength and confidence as she went on.

  “That’s what I thought. That’s good. I mean, it’s bad, but it’s a weakness. For them. We can use it against them, I think.”

  She continued talking, and Dylan felt his pulse race with more than desire, her ideas meshing with his own thoughts, his words interspersing with hers until, between the two of them, a plan began to form.

  Chapter 10

  The way Dylan’s ideas meshed with hers was a little disconcerting, and his utter faith in her was nice but disconcerting as well, like having a piece of cloth and suddenly being expected to wave a hand and have it become a dress.

  Beth hadn’t always been a planner—as a kid, she’d pretty much taken things on faith, the way kids do. After her parents and cousin died, Ben and Glory had showed her how having something always in mind gave you a thing to focus on, to build on. It was comfort, in situations where there was no possible comfort, and she discovered that things tended to go more smoothly when you had an idea of what you had to do, and what you needed to do it. Like cooking, Ben said, it was easier to improvise a dish if you already had everything in the pantry.

  “So.” She was thinking out loud the way he had told her to, trying to mentally inventory their pantry, as it were. “What do we have to work with? Not much. Selkies might be able to change their shapes with a wave of a hand…fin? Flipper? But unless you’re holding out on me, I haven’t seen any sign that you can work anything else with your…”

  Say it, she prodded herself when her mind balked at the word. Here, in this room, in front of him, at least, say it. What’s he going to do, laugh at you? “With your magic.”

  Oh, God. She said it. She had really said it. For a moment, finally, she freaked. The world spun and rolled out of control, and she thought she was going to start hyperventilating. Then Dylan touched her hand, just the tip of one finger grazing along a knuckle, and the world settled back down and was recognizable again. Just like that.

  “Well, I can sing up a boat,” he reminded her. “Although that’s more…” He stopped, clearly trying to think of how to explain it. “That’s more like encouraging the waves to bring me something useful, than calling for a specific thing. You cast out the request, and wait to see what comes.”

  “Wave-based fetch-and-retrieve. The selkie version of Google.” He looked blank, and she shook her head. “Never mind. So. Right now, we have a wad of cash that isn’t as large as I’d like, a folding knife that probably qualifies as a concealed weapon in most states, by the way, and…that’s about it.” Brains, yeah; brains and the strong desire to live. And a half-baked plan that depended on luck and speed to work.

  Against that, they were facing an organized group of trained professionals, established and well-funded, with probably the best weaponry and communications they could buy, whose sole goal seemed to be separating them from their skins, literally and—from what Dylan said and didn’t say—while they were still alive.

  That thought made her want to go back to bed, pull the covers over her head and not come out for anything, until this whole disaster went away.

  The weight of his hand around hers, and the steady belief in his gaze, kept her where she was. It wasn’t the usual “you can fix it” feeling she got from her clients, the “you’re strong, I don’t have to worry about you” attitude she got from Jake, or even the “we knew you could do it” approval that came off Ben and Glory when she graduated high school, and again when she graduated college. Dylan was worried, and he didn’t know if they could pull this off, and he wasn’t dumping it all in her lap. He was there, one hundred percent…together.

  That confidence, that support, made her think it was all possible. That they might actually get out of this alive. “How many Hunters do you think are on our trail? Do they have backup? Office support? Financial resources?”

  Dylan shook his head and pursed his lips in thought, trying to figure out how to translate what he knew into her terms. “We’ve never actually…” He shook off the old ways of thinking and waded with grim enthusiasm into the new. “They are always well armed, and well dressed enough to blend in anywhere, or to buy their way into any situation. So there must be money there. But they chase us on foot, or small boats, so not endless funds. They have a reliable information network that lets them find us, but they rarely come after an entire colony, instead picking off individuals or small groups. They find us by chance, or betrayal, not anything planned. So they probably don’t have a huge number of people working for them directly. Not people they can trust with murder, anyway.”

  He said the word so casually it was almost difficult to match it with what they faced. Being hunted was different from being murdered, semantically. The end result was the same, though.

  Beth swallowed hard on that realization. “All right. Good. Or, at least, better than it could have been. I had this image of, God, I don’t know, some multinational conglomerate coming after us. If it’s smaller, limited, it’s manageable. They have limits. We just have to find them, use them.

  “And how the hell do you go about recruiting someone for that kind of a job?” she wondered, going off on a tangent. “First to convince someone selkies exist, and then to convince them to club them over the head and skin them… Tough, that.” She was having enough trouble dealing with it herself, and it was her life at stake.

  “In these days, yes. It used to be easier, I suspect.” Dylan made a face that would have looked better on a five-year-old being offered Brussels sprouts. “The more brutal the world, the more people are willing to believe in the supernatural, the unexplainable, the different.”

  The truth of that was in front of her: two weeks ago the thought that her family wasn’t…what she had thought, would have just made her laugh. Getting shot, and chased…your boundaries got expanded, all right.

&n
bsp; “How long… Are there any restrictions on how long you can be out of the water?” She felt silly asking, but then, she knew damn-all about selkies except what he had told her, and she was pretty sure that he had only told her the smallest portion.

  “I’m not a fish,” he said, a little indignant. “Just like you, I prefer to take long showers—” he grinned at her “—preferably not alone, but I breathe air. No gills, remember? Or do you need a refresher course already?”

  She had no idea how he did that, went from worry to lechery in the blink of an eye, and then back again, but he did, and it made the knot of worry in her chest ease slightly all over again.

  Whatever happened, she wasn’t alone in it. For the first time in oh, so many years, she didn’t have to do it all by herself.

  She kept her mind—and body—focused, but it took effort. “Will they know that? The Hunters. They’ve been doing this a long time, but how much do they actually know about your people?”

  Dylan settled into his chair, one leg stretched out in front of him, his elbow wedged on the arm of the chair, his chin resting on his fist. She wanted to take a photograph of him like that, frame it next to the shot of the seal in her office, for the subtle—and not so subtle—connections she could find in it. And to see if anyone else could see it, too. Did you have to know, or was it there in front of you, if you were only awake and looking? He had known what she was, and so had that woman, the leader of the Hunters. What in her face, in her body, gave her away? If they knew that, maybe they could protect themselves from discovery in the future?

  “I don’t know,” he was saying in response to her spoken question. “Maybe. Maybe not. I mean, they know we don’t have gills, but I don’t know how much they actually know about us, other than what they need to know to hunt and…prepare us for sale.”