The Hunted

by Anna Leonard

  He looked a little ill at the thought, and she suspected her skin tone wasn’t much better. Best not to go there, even in theory.

  He looked at the papers she had been scribbling on, puzzling out her handwriting and matching it against the map and the bus schedule he’d gotten from the motel’s front desk. “So the plan is to make them think that we’re hugging the coastline, and instead go inland. And then…”

  She looked him straight in the eye, the green flecks shimmering even in the motel’s crappy lamplight. “After then we come back and hit them from the backside. Make them sorry they ever took this job. Make them think twice before they shoot at a selkie—at seal-kin—again.”

  His people might not be warriors, but she was a New Englander, a Yankee born and bred, and she damn well would defend herself and her kin!

  For the first time since the beach, Beth felt optimistic again.

  Dylan, clearly, felt the same way. “You’re amazing, you know that?”

  She blushed, and shook her head. “If it works, I’ll be amazing. If not…”

  If not, they would be dead. And skinned. Skinned first, still alive…oh, God, she was going to throw up.

  He took her hand again, squeezing her keyboard-calloused fingers in his own much larger ones. A shiver ran through her at the contact, milder than before, as though the urgency had been muted, but was still very much there, just waiting, and the nausea faded. “It will work,” he said firmly. “We’ll make it work.”

  They checked out of the motel a few hours later, their sparse belongings packed into their knapsacks, and headed for the nearby Greyhound station. It was a small, depressing space inside a fenced-in parking lot. The building was filled with plastic seats and lined on one side with four ticket windows, only two of which were open. Beth hated it on sight, wanting nothing more than to back out the door, to go into the fresher air outside, away from the molded orange plastic and dingy gray walls. Only the fact that they had no choice kept her moving forward. That, and the fact that Dylan was already ten strides ahead of her, getting into line for one of the ticket windows.

  If they had money for a plane… But they didn’t. They barely had enough for this.

  She adjusted the strap of her knapsack over one shoulder, checked to make sure that her sneakers were tied securely, and then, delaying tactics run through, got on the same line, making sure there were a few people between them.

  Dylan bought a single ticket to Boston, leaning in at the ticket counter and flirting so outrageously with the middle-aged clerk that she was reduced to helpless giggles. It was all part of the plan, ensuring that he would be remembered if anyone asked later. Misdirection was key.

  Beth, taking out her wallet and counting out the cash needed to buy two tickets inland, to Albany, felt something clench and burn deep inside her. Not jealousy, as such, because she knew that it was all a show, that he would not stray from her, but…she poked at it a little, until it unfolded enough to be recognized.

  Rage. Not at Dylan, but at the innocent woman behind the counter, whose only sin was to find Dylan’s charm charming.

  “Seal-kin women are fierce, huh?” she said to herself, echoing Dylan’s earlier words. “Buddy, you don’t know half of it.” The realization surprised her—she had never thought of herself as particularly passionate before: her occasionally violent springtime yearnings had always been out of character enough to be disturbing. This new side to herself should have been just as disturbing. Instead, it felt like a part of a puzzle sliding into place. It was still incomplete, holes in the entire picture, but at least now she knew that something was missing, and where, maybe, to find it.

  She moved up in line and bought her tickets, paying in exact change and speaking as little as possible, not to avoid notice, but because she wasn’t sure she trusted herself to be civil to the woman behind the screen. Her name plate said Corinda. She was a flat-faced woman, with sweet brown eyes and a mouth that seemed to smile easily, despite her depressing surroundings, and Beth felt guilty for hating her.

  Hate. The difference in how she felt, all because of that casually flirting encounter—something she had planned, had told him to do—and her reaction to the possible actual relationship between Gena and Jake, the guy she had been dating for five years…

  Beth had never understood the phrase “different as chalk and cheese” before. Now she did. The way she felt about Jake was chalk: practical, but dry. Dylan was the cheese. The thought made her smile wickedly as she put the tickets away in her jacket pocket. She had no cause to be jealous of Dylan… and that certainty allowed her to enjoy the sensation of her jealousy without letting it take control—and hopefully reap the benefits of those emotions later.

  After making sure—discreetly—that Dylan had already left the bus station, she wandered outside herself. A vendor was selling lunch out of a cart, and she bought a soda and then walked down the street to a bench where she sat, to all intents and purposes merely enjoying the feel of the sun on her face while killing time before her bus left. The two buses would depart at approximately the same time, which was why they had been chosen off the main schedules, rather than their actual final destinations.

  Ten minutes before they were due to board, Beth tossed her now-empty soda into a nearby trash can, picked up her knapsack and headed back into the station, the tickets in her hand. Dylan was lounging in the station already. She paused, admiring him from the distance. He should have looked like any other guy, dressed in blue jeans and a plain white cotton tee, cheap sneakers on his feet. Should have, but didn’t. Even in repose, he looked sleek and muscular, like… Beth stopped, shook her head. He looked like a sleek, muscular seal, lounging on a rock in the harbor. Totally at ease, and completely alert at the same time.

  Alert enough that when his head turned her way, she tensed. He might have sensed her, but she got the feeling that he was looking right past her, through her, as though she didn’t exist.

  Her elbows itched.

  She scratched at them absently, trying to fight the urge to look over her shoulder. The bus was over there. Why wasn’t he walking toward it?

  danger.

  Yeah, she had figured that out, thanks for the warning. She didn’t know if it was Dylan’s voice in her head, or simply instinct, but just as she had in the ocean, she trusted it implicitly.

  Trusting it, she didn’t look over her shoulder to see what he was watching so intently, but instead walked casually across the linoleum floor, past the wall of ticket windows, past the rows of molded plastic seats. Past Dylan, who was still watching the door.

  He didn’t react to her. She didn’t react to him. But as they passed, a warm shiver ran over her exposed arms, as though he had run his palm along her skin, caressing the flesh there the way he had just that morning.

  There were footsteps behind her. Heels, not sneakers: walking with a short, impatient stride. Fear pulsed in her veins, screaming at her to run, to disappear, to stay very still until the shadow of threat moved on. The conflicting urges, freeze and flee, warred in her brain, and only sheer will kept her moving at a slow, unhurried pace. She would not be spooked. She would not run, not when she had done nothing wrong. Not in this place, filled with witnesses. It was too crowded for anyone to try anything, wasn’t it? Dylan had said they tended to make their attacks on isolated members, when the odds were in their favor…that didn’t describe a busy bus station at all, which was why they had chosen it in the first place.

  A flat male voice came over the loudspeaker, muffled words announcing the departure of the 11:14 bus to Albany, and the 11:20 bus to Boston.

  That was their cue. All she had to do was go through that door and get on her bus. Easy enough, right? She shifted the strap of her backpack, forced her gut to settle down, and started—as casually as she could manage—toward the parking lot and the waiting buses.

  “Police! Freeze!”

  Behind her, people screamed and scattered. Beth turned to the side, finally looking back in a com
pletely normal reaction to that shout. The first thing she saw was a man with a gun out, pointing it. Her first instinct was disbelief—was he pointing it at her?—and then horror as she realized that the muzzle was aimed directly at Dylan, who was standing very still, knapsack at his feet, hands in the air.

  The second thing that she saw was the woman from the beach, several paces behind the maybe-cop, still wearing her sunglasses, even inside on an overcast day. She had changed her wardrobe to something more casual, but Beth still knew her. It had been her heels on the tile that they had heard, and reacted to.

  Time was suspended, and all Beth could feel or hear was her pulse racing, pounding off the seconds until the trigger was pulled, and Dylan crashed to the floor or, worse, he was taken into custody, leaving her alone and confused. Instinct fought with desire, flee or fight, and she didn’t know which urge to obey.

  “I ain’t going back!”

  The cry came out of nowhere, as did the woman who rushed directly into the cop’s path, for an instant blocking the possible trajectory of a bullet. Dylan moved smoothly, swiftly with the distraction, almost as though he had choreographed it: scooping up his pack and stepping backward, disappearing out the side door where the buses idled, waiting to leave.

  The woman, a filthy, scraggly haired scarecrow of a figure, flew at the maybe-cop, swinging her handbag at him with surprising force. He ducked, trying to protect himself without actually hitting her. She had no such hesitation and went after him again, screeching at the top of her considerable lungs about how she wasn’t going back, wasn’t ever going back, they couldn’t take her alive, she’d kill them all first.

  The woman with him back-stepped, avoiding the tussle, her eyes scanning the waiting room to see where Dylan had gone. Beth took that moment to walk away, thankful for the baseball cap on her head that would hide her potentially distinctive black hair from sight.

  hurry.

  “Yeah, yeah, pushy male,” she snapped, shouldering her way through the glass door to the parking bay. In the background she could still hear the woman screaming insults and invective, before the closing door shut them off. The diesel fumes smelled like freedom, but she didn’t allow herself to relax even as she was sliding a ticket into Dylan’s hand and letting him go ahead of her up the three steps into the bus. Her pulse was still beating hard, expecting a voice to shout for her to stop as she climbed those same steps, watching as the driver took her ticket and checked the destination, and then nodded for her to go ahead and find a seat.

  Dylan was already seated in an aisle seat, and as she passed him, this time his hand actually did touch hers. Only a light, fleeting stroke, fingers against her palm, but it was enough to slow down her pulse to something more casually normal.

  It wasn’t until she had found a seat and the bus had closed its doors and pulled out of the station that she was able to relax. Once the cops—or whatever they actually were—had untangled themselves from that woman, they would discover that Dylan had bought tickets for Boston, and follow him there. She and Dylan, in the meantime, would get off at the first stop, well before Albany, and double back in time to confront the Hunters while they were off guard. If everything went the right way, if the rest of the plan went off without a hitch, they would be safe, then.

  And then…

  Beth didn’t know what would happen then. Go back to her house, her life, her probably furious client? Run off to some isolated village with Dylan and discover…what? She still was having trouble believing—not in Dylan, but in the fact that there were others like him. Others like her. What if they didn’t like her? What if she didn’t like them?

  What if, what if. Going that road would drive her mad. She supposed that she would worry about what they would do, then.

  Assuming they lived long enough for it to become a problem.

  Chapter 11

  The voice on the other end of the phone was distinctly not happy.

  “You lost them.”

  “Sir. Yes, sir.” There was no point in denying the obvious. The crazy woman in the bus station had been too perfect a distraction; Josh should have known better than to go in with his gun already drawn, the way the displaced and out-and-out loons tended to gravitate to places like that.

  “Both of them.”

  “Yes, sir.” The male had bought a ticket to Boston, paying cash, as expected. By the time they dealt with the hysterical homeless woman, as gently as possible considering her irrational rage, the bus had pulled out already. One ticket. Was the woman still with him? If not, what had the selkie done with her? They had both been at the motel…. Had she been a hostage? That didn’t follow: the selkies were passive, even when they fought. Taking a hostage was a human thing to do, a thing she would do, if threatened. She couldn’t afford to project, not if she was to anticipate correctly. So why was the woman with the selkie?

  If the woman hadn’t drowned, and hadn’t been a hostage, was her first estimation correct, that the woman was one of them, as well?

  That would work out well, if true. Two skins, twice the bonus and no unfortunate witnesses.

  “Follow them,” her boss ordered.

  “Yes, sir.” Like she didn’t know that. Like they weren’t already gassing up the truck to head out. Like she was some newbie on her first hunt. But she had already used up any goodwill credit she had, getting the helicopter to track them in originally. She was in no position to talk back, not until she brought the damn thing in.

  The connection was cut, and she put her phone away, whistling tunelessly as she looked at her watch. Three hours to Boston. They should be able to get to the station before the slower bus arrived, and be ready and waiting.

  She was Hunt point. And she had lost the quarry. Responsibility was hers. And so would the praise be when they brought in not one but two prizes for auction. The thought made her smile, even through her annoyance.

  “Time,” she called to the rest of the team, half of whom were lounging around the van, drinking sodas and joking around, while the other half took care of personal business. “Finish up and let’s go. I don’t want to risk getting caught in any rush-hour traffic.”

  Her tone was casual. Nobody would ever know how annoyed she was. Her fingers ached, and she carefully, slowly unclenched her fingers. The joints ached, and there were small white half-moons indented into her palm.

  She was not going to let these two get away from her. Not again.

  They had gotten off the bus near Sagamore and gotten a room at the nearest tourist-trap motel, caring more about cheapness than aesthetic sensibility—it was cheap and tacky, but the towels were clean and it had a bed.

  Beth had paced the confines of the room, worrying about what could go wrong, what she hadn’t planned for, until Dylan finally forced her to stand still by the simple expedient of trapping her between his knees when she passed by him one last time. “You’re thinking too much,” he told her.

  “What?”

  “Thinking. Too much.”

  She stared at him as though he had lost his mind. “Dylan, we’re being chased—hunted!—and you’re telling me I’m—”

  “Thinking too much. Yes.” He placed his hands on her wrists, stilling the nervous tapping of her fingers on his thighs. “We’ve thought this through a dozen times. We’ve come up with a plan that may work or may not, but we can’t do anything more about it now, can we?”

  “No. No, we can’t.” His voice was almost hypnotic, and the way his palms were now moving slowly up and down her bare arms was definitely mesmerizing her.

  “So it’s time to let your wonderful brain rest a little, recharge.”

  “Are you suggesting that I get some sleep?”

  Those sea-green eyes of hers seemed to darken with implication, and his hands slipped up, cupping the back of her head, fingers weaving into her hair as he pulled her to him. His lips brushed hers, warm breath caressing her skin as he whispered, “I didn’t say a damn thing about sleep.”

  Her eyes had been all p
upil by that point, and her response purely primal, catching his lower lip between her teeth and tugging at it, not gently, until his fingers had tightened in her thick black hair, forcing her to let go. The moment she released him, he had recaptured her mouth, tasting every bit of sweetness before moving along the sharp curve of her jaw, up to her ear, where he nipped her earlobe in turn, leaving a tiny red mark on the soft flesh.

  “I was jealous, today. When you were flirting.”

  “Good.”

  She smiled against his skin, her tongue licking at the sweat rising on his neck. He tasted good enough to warrant a second lick, and then a third. He bit a little harder, and a moan formed in her throat.

  Suddenly she didn’t want rough. She didn’t want tumble. There was too much of that out there, waiting for them.

  As though reading her mind, Dylan lay back on the bed, his hands letting go of her hair, resting on her shoulders, bringing her down with him. She fitted her length along his body, their legs tangling, arms winding around each other as clothing was shed slowly, buttons and zippers undone with care, each square inch of flesh uncovered a shared discovery.

  She had slithered out of his grasp, sliding his pants down, stroking the revealed flesh of his legs, the fine dark hairs of his legs thickening around his groin, his warm, hard length rising aggressively into her touch. His skin was warm…no, hot to the touch, and pleasantly salty. Her mouth slipped down over the tip, engulfing it. She’d never really enjoyed this before, doing it more out of a sense of obligation than anything else. But this was different: the pleasure she got was Dylan’s own pleasure reflected back, the satisfaction at making him groan and shift, thrust and shudder, made the physical act into a gift.

  “My Elizabeth,” he whispered, trying to tug her up off his shaft, reluctantly, gently, but insistently. “Come here.”