The Hunted

by Anna Leonard

  “Dear heart, you had better be a better improviser than I am,” she muttered, jumping down lightly onto the ground and following him. “Because we are so damn off-script we’re not even in the same game anymore.”

  “Get them out of here!” Dylan heard the woman snap at her goons. He assumed that they were talking about the news crew, and doubted the goons were there to use sweet talk and logic. He didn’t know exactly what he was going to do to prevent bloodshed, except that standing on the wall waiting for someone to get shot at wasn’t going to help anyone, least of all them.

  “Dylan.” The Hunter had turned her attention back on to him. She removed her sunglasses, staring at him as though expecting her glare was enough to halt him in his tracks. “Don’t do anything rash. If you come quietly, nobody else needs to get hurt.”

  Part of him was willing to agree. The seal-kin soul, who knew the seas were a dangerous place, that under every wave might lurk a shark, that every cliff might hide a Hunter, that every beginning has an end, heard the truth in her words. She wanted profit, not a scene. She was looking for him, not anyone else.

  If he went with her, Elizabeth might escape. The innocent humans would never know how close to death they were. All it would take would be his acquiescence to what was inevitable, anyway. don’t you dare.

  White-hot anger, and a sense of outrage. And then Elizabeth was striding past him, ignoring the Hunter as though she didn’t even exist, walking steadily toward the news crew. “I don’t know what you came here for but we really don’t want a film crew around, so you might as well look for something more interesting elsewhere,” she was saying. The human with the camera didn’t lower his instrument, and the one with the mike in his hand almost laughed.

  “It’s a free parking lot, last time I checked. We can’t get some footage of a lovely day on the shore?”

  Apparently stubbornness wasn’t reserved for seal-kin.

  Goon #2 was even with Elizabeth, and the smirk on the reporter’s face was fading when he saw the knife glinting in his hand. He muttered something to the cameraman, who turned and started filming the goon instead of Elizabeth, and the driver got back into the van, starting the engine again.

  Dylan realized that he was spending too much time paying attention to what was happening ahead of him, and not enough behind, when rough hands grabbed his arms and forced them up behind his back, a sharp blow behind the knees forcing him down onto the sand. Goon #1 slipped a rope around his neck, and pulled it tight enough to jerk his head backward at a sharp angle: not enough to damage his spine, but the potential was there. Even if he changed, the rope would still be able to snap his neck—leaving him alive and paralyzed long enough for a skilled Hunter to remove the skin before finishing him off.

  “Elizabeth.” The woman called her name, and she stopped cold. Dylan’s heart paused in his chest.

  “Don’t do anything foolish. Look behind you.”

  He willed her not to turn around, but she was already moving. Slowly, as though knowing what she would see. Her face, when he could see it, was cut from stone, but her eyes were anguished, even at this distance.

  Please, he begged her silently. Don’t do anything foolish. Don’t get yourself killed. Don’t make me watch you die. I want that even less than I want you to see me die….

  “Are you getting this?” the reporter asked the cameraman, who didn’t even bother to reply. The camera kept filming.

  Goon #2 moved, and Dylan involuntarily strained against the rope, but the knife-holder bypassed Elizabeth entirely where she stood, frozen on the gravel, and instead grabbed the reporter. The blade went up to his neck, and held there.

  “I would stop filming now, if I were you,” the woman advised the cameraman, her voice almost gentle.

  Yes, Dylan thought intently. The hell with the plan. Stop now. Nobody needed to die today.

  “Stop and I’ll kill you myself,” the reporter said.

  “You will already be dead,” the woman said, her voice still as soft, the words as much a threat as the knife.

  “Lady, I’ve blown deadlines before. Hasn’t stopped me.”

  Either the reporter didn’t understand or didn’t care. Dylan didn’t know and didn’t care, either. If the woman didn’t care about killing humans, the plan had failed. The news crew would die. His Elizabeth would die; even if her skin held no magic at all, they wouldn’t know that until they had taken it from her, tortured her. Killed her and dumped her body.

  His heart had started beating again, too fast. His gaze met Beth’s, and he tried to pour his love, his regret, into that gaze. It wasn’t enough. He needed to touch her, to hold her, to keep her safe. His need overwhelmed everything else, even common sense. His mate was threatened, and he was helpless.

  His skin itched, feeling dry and rough.

  You are not human. You are seal-kin.

  The voice told him nothing he did not already know, and he would have flicked it aside, except for the images that accompanied it. Images from his childhood spent in the waves, on the rocks, sleeping with the seal-cousins, watching and learning as much from their example as from his mother’s.

  Seal-pups, daring their first swim. Dams, protecting the young against the bulk and occasional anger of the males. Males…swaggering with the mating urge, competing for the right to breed, both in play and seriously, giving in to the urge to survive, one way or the other…

  You are seal-kin. You are not helpless. And you do not act alone.

  Understanding grew. The reporter wasn’t just risking everything for a story. He was changing the odds, the way dolphins sometimes helped others, even humans, escape sharks by distracting them, holding them off.

  There was a chance that the plan could still succeed. Risky, dangerous. It meant more risk. It meant being powerful, as well. It all depended on how skilled the man holding him was—and how distracted he was by the drama in front of them. How much they could trust these reporters. And how much Dylan himself was willing to risk.

  Even as Dylan thought that, he was rising, charging forward with every muscle in his body thrown into one goal. As he had hoped, the element of surprise caught his captor off guard, dragging the man off his feet even as the rope tightened around Dylan’s neck.

  A neck that was changing form even as he moved, as his skin rippled and flowed around him, his shadow falling away and sliding to the ground under his feet, the rope slipping over a head that could now move at angles a human neck could not, a body that was shaped and weighted so differently, the Hunter had to regroup and recapture him.

  It was one thing to try to skin a helpless foe. It was another to take down an enraged, full-grown, uninjured bull seal in defense of his mate.

  The bull gave the human no chance, but moved forward. Not to the side of his mate, but to the source of the threat: the woman wearing the leather coat. He wasn’t large, as true bulls went, but his weight was greater than his human form, and almost entirely solid muscle. He hit her hard, his rounded head smack against her abdomen, and she went crashing against the hood of the sedan, setting off the car alarm and making two other goons tumble out, their guns drawn and ready to fire.

  He kept the Hunter pinned against the car, knowing that they dared not shoot him, not now that he had changed: their only hope was to coax him back into human form, and take him hostage again.

  “Dylan!”

  But Beth didn’t know how to change, or if she even could. He hadn’t told her…there was so much that she didn’t know, that he hadn’t thought to tell her yet. Hadn’t let himself worry about, with so much else yet to deal with…

  The human mind held sway, even inside the seal-form, and he reared awkwardly up to his full height, snout-to-face with the Hunter.

  She stared back at him, not an angry glare, or a frightened one, merely…a stare. All business, this one. Good. That was good.

  Some of his own anger washed away in turn, giving him room to think. The human mind was in control, his possessive anger still s
immering, but submissive to rational thought. The plan was changed, but it could still work. Could even work better, if he did everything right.

  He risked a glance over his sloping shoulder. The two goons with guns were still there, one of them aiming at him, the other with the barrel pointed at Elizabeth. The knife-wielding goon was still holding the reporter, and the cameraman was still shooting film. The third news crew member could be seen dimly through the car window. It looked as though he had one hand on the wheel, and the other was holding a cell phone up to his ear.

  He might be calling his station. He might be calling the police. For all Dylan knew, he was calling to check for the most recent sports update. It didn’t matter. The unknown man had to be…not discounted, but not counted on, either.

  And where the hell were the police! How dare they ignore his mate’s call for help?

  His Elizabeth. Her voice. She was speaking.

  “What we have here,” she was saying, her voice hardly trembling at all, “seems to be a bit of a standoff.”

  “We have the guns,” one of the goons said, twisting his so that the sunlight gleamed on the barrel.

  “True. But if you were going to shoot either one of us, you would have already. You roped him, and threatened someone else with the knife, so obviously damaging our skins is not on your sick—and it is really, really sick by the way—agenda.”

  “They want your skins? Because of seal-boy over there? Are you like that, too? Max, are you getting all of this on film?”

  Even with an oversize blade to his jaw, the reporter couldn’t resist asking questions. The goon holding him jerked the knife a little more tightly against the stretched-tight skin, and he finally subsided. The faint hint of human blood drifted into the air, discernible only by Dylan’s hyperaware nose, and it made him shudder.

  “Back off,” the Hunter whispered, her words clearly meant for him alone. “Back off and I will give orders for my men to let her go. You are the one we came for—you’re the only one I’ve recorded. Come peacefully, and nobody else need know about her.”

  It was tempting. It was also, he knew now, a lie. He had changed in front of witnesses. The Hunters could not allow that to remain unchecked. They operated only out of the rest of the world’s ignorance.

  That was what he was now depending on.

  And even if he wasn’t determined to bring this damned Hunter down, he had made a promise to his mate not to die. He didn’t break his promises.

  “Yeah, they want our skins. They’re collectors.” Elizabeth was speaking again, standing between knife and gunpoint as poised and calm as though she were in her own home. A home he had never seen, he realized. He didn’t know her favorite colors, what she liked to eat, or even if she was a morning person or a night person, really. He knew that she hogged the pillows, that she slept on her stomach with her knees curled to the side, and that she liked to snuggle after sex….

  And that he wanted the rest of his life to learn everything else.

  My mate. Mine.

  “They’ll kill us…and you, probably, because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Elizabeth was still speaking in that calm voice, her gaze on the reporter, flicking occasionally to the bull seal, but never losing track of who she was speaking to.

  “She’s insane,” the Hunter said. “We were trying to capture them peacefully, to prevent them from harming anyone else. You saw how this thing charged me, attacked me—can you imagine it in the middle of a crowded mall, losing control like that?”

  “Lady, no offense, but your guy’s the one with the knife to my throat. I’m not really inclined to be sympathetic to your line.”

  “Fucking crazy bastard,” Dylan heard the cameraman whisper, in tones that were half despair and half admiration, and he felt his whiskers twitch in amusement. They were still filming. Everything was being caught on tape….

  “So what now?” the reporter asked Beth. “My guy’s in the van calling the cops, and they say they’re already on the way, soon as the damn drawbridge comes down. But are cops really gonna help matters any, or just get us all killed that much faster?”

  A good question. Dylan didn’t know.

  “There’s only one way out of a standoff,” Beth said. “Everyone backs off at the same time.”

  “Yeah, and why do you think we’re going to do that?” Goon #3 asked, speaking for the first time.

  “Because once the cops arrive, one way or the other, it’s over,” Beth said with calm practicality. “You can shoot everyone, and then, hey, guess what? You’ve got human blood on your hands. Worse, you’ve got cop blood on your hands. You people operate out of sight, out of belief. People may not believe in selkies, but they do believe in cop-killers. You think your bosses—you think that your customers—want that kind of attention? Especially attention backed up by film?”

  There was a long, drawn-out second of hesitation, filled with tension like broken glass.

  “Marg—”

  “Shut up!” the woman snapped, and Goon #3 subsided.

  “That still leaves you with the film,” the woman said. She had abandoned the sweet tones, and was back to the brisk, businesslike voice she had used before on the beach, during their first confrontation. “Not that I believe anyone will trust the veracity of your…exposé, but I have no desire to be splashed over the evening news, even on a Podunk little channel such as yours. Give me the film.”

  “Hell, no, I won’t,” the cameraman began, but Elizabeth interrupted him.

  “She’s right. Nobody will air the film, not without a murder on it, and I think we can agree that’s not the optimal way to end this? Worse, if you try to air it yourself, they’ll mock you, or call you fakers. I work with digital images—I know how easy it is to fake things like this, and how hard it is to prove it’s for real. All it can do is harm your career. Live, and let it go.” She looked at him meaningfully, and something passed between them, some understanding that Dylan saw but wasn’t part of.

  The cameraman then looked to the reporter, who nodded carefully, aware of the blade still being held to his chin.

  “You think maybe we could start with you not giving me so close a shave?” he asked.

  The goon looked to the woman, who nodded. He lowered his arm, just enough to allow the reporter to swallow and stretch without risking his life.

  “Thank you.” The sarcasm was coated with a heavy hand. “Now back away, and put the shiny sharp thing away. Jesus, man, you’ve got guns still, if you’re so insecure in your masculinity.”

  “Pissing them off isn’t going to get you out of here intact,” Beth warned him, and Dylan heard the thread of exasperation in her voice, even under the tension.

  “He can’t help it,” the cameraman said, grinning tightly. “It’s why he’s still bush leagues with the rest of us, a terminal case of wiseoff.”

  “Let him go,” the woman ordered, and the goon stepped back, releasing the reporter entirely. “And now it is your turn. Please call it off.”

  Beth turned to Dylan, and then looked at the Hunter. “I think maybe you need to ask him yourself. Nicely. Treating him like an inanimate object? Not going to put him in a good mood. And I hear tell that seals are kind of short-tempered.”

  He almost barked an objection—he had told her no such thing!—but the thought of the Hunter being forced to acknowledge him as more than a thing overrode all other considerations. He looked down at the woman, his whiskers almost in her face, and waited.

  “Well?”

  “Get off me. Please.”

  He didn’t move.

  “I don’t think he believed you were sincere in that please.”

  “Jesus, now who’s the wiseoff?” the reporter asked.

  “Please back off, so we can get this farce over with.” She gritted her teeth as she spoke, and Dylan could feel her muscles tensing up again. He wasn’t sure how much further they could push it before she became dangerous again, so he shoved his weight off her—not being too careful
how badly he bruised her—and moved back several yards.

  “Sweetie, it might be better if you were in less…attention-garnering shape.”

  Dylan almost missed what she was saying, listening instead to the sound of the words. She called him “sweetie.” It wasn’t an endearment he was used to, or one he particularly liked, but from her…it was music.

  She was right, but he hated to change in front of anyone—outside of the panic of earlier, the change was a moment of exposure, and intimacy, and there was no way she could understand that yet. He barked once, hoping that she would understand, and moved carefully around the sedan, avoiding the still-open door until he felt that he was enough out of the line of sight of the humans—and the camera.

  He closed his eyes and summoned his human shape back to him. If anyone had been watching, they would have seen his shadow, discarded earlier, slip along the sand as though dragged by an invisible thread, skimming back to reattach itself soundlessly to his now-human form.

  The fact that he was naked now was just going to have to be dealt with—nobody had ever been able to figure out what happened to clothing during the change, or why it didn’t come back with the human form. It was one of the reasons his people didn’t worry too much about clothing overall, except as needed against the elements.

  He stopped, lifting his head to listen, while the others kept talking. His hearing wasn’t anything better than human-normal, now, without his seal-form’s ability to hear vibrations, but there was something…

  “Elizabeth.” He stepped out from behind the car, and all conversation stopped. “The police are coming.”

  Now, everyone could hear the sirens.

  Goon #2’s gun rose again, even as the woman demanded, “The film, if you please.”

  “Do it,” Beth ordered the cameraman, and the reporter, reluctantly, nodded. With a sigh, he lowered the camera and removed the deck, handing it over to the nearest goon.

  “The purest form of a compromise,” the reporter said. “Nobody’s happy.”