Hunter

by Mercedes Lackey

  Then I ducked, squeezing my eyes shut as I did so, because I didn’t need to be blinded, thanks.

  The light exploded through my closed lids as I dropped behind the rubble. Wow. I knew then I must have been pretty keyed up—that was a lot of light.

  I popped back up and called the net, threw it, and slammed it in place as Karly’s Hounds surged into the confined space. The birds were mostly shaking their heads wildly, but three of them had to have been looking in some other direction when the light went off, because they were taking to the air, screaming at the Hounds. Their feathers stood on end, and there were little sparks coming off of them like off of a burning pile of black powder. Before they could concentrate to zap the Hounds, I gave them a couple of shots to think about and ducked back down again.

  A single lightning bolt slammed into the top of the rubble above my head, leaving behind the smell of steam, hot brick, and ozone.

  I moved a little, popped up, and snapped off another couple of shots. Before I ducked back down again, I caught one of Karly’s Hounds as his jaws closed on a Ketzel. There wasn’t much to see; a crunch and a poof of rainbow-colored sparks and some light between his teeth as he inhaled the manna. Ketzels didn’t turn to ooze or goo.

  I ducked back down in time to miss getting hit by another couple of lightning bolts. They were recovering faster than I had thought.

  How much manna have these things got? I thought at Bya.

  Lots, came the answer. There’s enough for all!

  Bamph in then, I’ll give you covering fire. More Hounds in there would just add to the Ketzels’ confusion, which would be good. Better if I could actually knock down to the ground some of the ones I could hear flying.

  This time when I popped up, I took the time to aim and winged one. Bya was waiting for it with open jaws as it tumbled to the ground. It was chaos in there now, and nothing even tried to zap me, since the Hounds were gleefully at work like a pack of ferrets on a rabbit warren. It wasn’t long before my main worry was to wing the flyers so the Hounds could get them, rather than kill them and maybe waste the manna.

  When one of Karly’s Hounds crunched on the last one, I dropped the net and coiled the manna back up inside me, then spoke into my mic. “Joy to Knight. Nest down.”

  “Well done, Hunter,” came the reply. I felt a little flush of pleasure, and gestured to the Hounds to pack up around me.

  “Well done, pack,” I told them, and looked to Karly’s Hounds, who had packed up together. “Now, would you fellows like to stay with me for the rest of the day, or shall I let you back through the Barrier and you can go Otherside?”

  The Hounds looked at each other for a moment, then back at me.

  They’re staying, Bya said, and I got a second flush of pleasure. It’s quite the compliment when someone else’s Hounds consider you a good enough Hunter that they’ll pack with yours.

  “I don’t know enough about Ketzels to know if they’ve driven anything else out of this territory, so be careful,” I warned them, and we moved out again.

  Knight was a good judge of distance; we hit the edge of where we’d worked last time—or at least, that was what my Perscom said—just about midday. I elected not to stop to eat lunch, since I never did when I patrolled at home. I just kept on the move, good and wary, and ate with one hand. Good thing I did that, too, since we weren’t more than halfway back when my radio crackled to life.

  “Knight to Joy. Got a Wyvern. On the double.”

  He didn’t have to tell me twice, and I wished I could bamph like the Hounds. A Wyvern’s not a Drakken, but it was going to take both of us and the augmented pack of Hounds to down it. Wyverns can fly, as Uncle had reminded me. Like the Gazers, they can get over the Barriers, if they are sneaky and come in under conditions or places where radar and cameras can’t catch them.

  But how had it managed to get this far without radar or flying craft or lookouts spotting it? Something the size of a Wyvern should never have gotten past anything but maybe the outermost of the Barriers, but this was right on top of the Prime Barrier!

  Well, now was not the time to ask questions; now was the time to move.

  Bya, ask the other pack to escort me. You lot bamph ahead to Knight, I ordered, and felt Bya’s assent. A minute or so later, all four of Karly’s Hounds were running in close formation with me. They couldn’t bamph, and neither could I, and right now Knight was going to need all the help he could get. I went into the fastest lope I could and yet still watch out for things that could send me on my face. I kept looking at my Perscom to see how far we were from Knight, and not liking the answer.

  I was used to Bya and how good all his senses were. I guess I was subconsciously expecting the same thing out of Karly’s Hounds, but we were no more than a few hundred yards from Knight, according to my Perscom, when we literally ran into the second Wyvern. I tripped over its tail and ran into its bony rump.

  I’m not sure which of us was the more startled, the Wyvern, or my group. I sure know I was the more scared. I was scrambling backward as the Wyvern whipped his top half around and snapped for me. He actually got my backpack, and I thought I was going to die right then and there. He picked me up off the ground and shook me when I fired off the first spell I could think of—the one I’d just used, the explosion of light.

  At the same time, one of Karly’s Hounds gave off this angry snarl, like someone ripping a giant sheet of tin in half. And it jumped with its jaws wide open and latched onto the Wyvern’s cheek where there was some loose hide.

  I was half blinded by my own spell, but the Wyvern let go of me with a shriek, and I dropped to the ground. I remembered a narrow place we’d just passed, it must have been a hallway or something, two big concrete walls really close together. I scrambled to my feet, heart racing, sweating with terror, as Karly’s Hound hung on for dear life while the Wyvern shook his head back and forth, the Hound dangling from his cheek. I shook my head, cleared my eyes, looked back, and spotted the hallway. Took aim at the Wyvern’s eye, got off a good shot. Missed the eye and hit the eye ridge, which made the Wyvern stop long enough that the Hound could drop off and run to us. Then we all pounded for the hallway with the Wyvern right on our heels, and wedged ourselves all the way into the back while the thing raged and snapped at us from the end.

  “Joy?” my radio bleated.

  “There’s two,” I said breathlessly, choking back a sob of fear. “Two Wyverns.” I was shaking all over, my stomach in a knot. I took a deep breath, bringing up every bit of discipline I had to get myself back under control, because if I didn’t, we were dead.

  “Roger.” No more from Knight. I just crouched there, waiting for some of the fear to ebb so my brain would work again.

  I had someone else’s Hounds with me, and I was facing one of the nastier medium-size critters among the Othersiders. The good news was that his only weapons were teeth and claws. The bad news was he was half the size of a house, he was faster than me, and he had a big, blunt, ugly head, with teeth as long as my finger, on the end of a longish neck. Not as long as a Drakken’s, but long. And his hide was pretty armored, so unless I could hit an eye, I was only going to give him flesh wounds.

  I looked at Karly’s Hounds. “I think we’re in trouble,” I said.

  Suddenly, there was a bamph and the small space got a bit more crowded. But I didn’t care, because Bya had joined us.

  Friend is safe for now, Bya said, staring at the Wyvern. In a hole.

  “We’ve got cover,” Knight said over my radio at the same time. “I sent back your alpha. HQ says no Elites are free at this time.”

  “Got him, he’s here, and thanks.” With Bya next to me, my head started working again. More good news, the walls were sturdy enough, and the Wyvern light enough—flyers don’t really weigh much—that he wasn’t making any headway in his attempt to get at me. Probably the same was happening with Knight. I made my head slow down; went into what was almost a Zen state, the way I would if I was sparring one of the Mast
ers. There was a way out of this…I just had to observe and keep on observing until I could spot it.

  If I shot out the Wyvern’s eye, he might or might not pull back. I might even be able to get both eyes, then he would pull back. But he still wouldn’t be vulnerable….Did I have manna enough to flatten him to the ground with a good hard smack, or a levin bolt, and then hold him down while I chopped off his head?

  Maybe, but then I wouldn’t have anything left to help Knight with.

  I had grenades, which would at least bruise him, maybe break rib bones, but to use them in this passage would be suicide.

  Then I noticed that the Wyvern always lunged at me with its mouth open, and I got an idea that was either brilliant or insane and stupid, but I couldn’t think of anything else and we were running out of time. We couldn’t wait until an Elite or a team was free again; that might take until nightfall, and by then the Wyverns would have friends.

  Bya saw what I was thinking. He whined, but bamphed out and back, and when he was back, he dropped a length of metal pipe as long as my forearm in my hand.

  I waited for him to explain the plan to Karly’s Hounds. They didn’t like it either, but…well, that Wyvern could outwait us. And maybe all this activity would attract friends even faster. I pulled a grenade off the bandolier and pulled the pin. Then I had the pipe in one hand, a grenade with the pin pulled, and my thumb on the safety in the other. The Hounds and I all looked at each other, and the Hounds nodded. I swallowed hard and let my fear turn into adrenaline.

  “Three,” I counted down. “Two. One. Now!” And we all lunged at the Wyvern as he lunged at us.

  The Hounds went for the loose skin on his lower jaw to keep his mouth open. I fired off a tiny version of the flash-spell right in his eyes, and at the same time, shoved that piece of pipe forward into the open jaw, jamming it in as far as I could. I felt teeth gash my hand, but not the pain, not yet, just a tearing sensation. When I felt the pipe stick tight, I shoved my other hand with the grenade in it as far into the back of the thing’s mouth as I could.

  I didn’t get off unscathed; both my right hand and left arm got slashed by teeth as the Wyvern rattled his head around, trying to dislodge Hounds, grenade, and pipe. Dripping blood, still not feeling anything yet, I backpedaled into the rear of the hall, the Hounds let go and followed me, and the Wyvern pulled back, tossing his head up and shaking it, grenade either caught in his throat or—

  Well, a few seconds later it went off, blowing apart the monster where the shoulders met the neck.

  Then I began to hurt. I looked; they were good slashes and they’d need stitches, but at least nothing vital was cut and it wasn’t to the bone. I’d been hurt this bad before, and finished my Hunt. I could do the same today.

  Bya licked my wounds, which cauterized them and stopped the bleeding, though they hurt like fire still, and we clambered over the remains of the Wyvern. The Hounds waited just long enough to suck up the manna before it escaped—not long—and we headed for Knight. Bya went on ahead and flashed an image of the sitch into my head.

  Knight’s four Hounds were still outside the hole, fluttering with agitation. The other Wyvern, a slightly bigger one, had its head stuck down the hole Knight and my other Hounds were at the bottom of. But now that it was two Hunters and fifteen Hounds, four of them flyers, the advantage was all on our side again. And believe me, if Knight’s God was responsible for Karly’s Hounds deciding they wanted to come along today, then Knight could drag me in for a thanks prayer any time he wanted.

  I eyeballed the ruins and found the place where I wanted the Wyvern brought, right between two none-too-stable walls. Then I asked Bya to tell Knight’s Hounds what I wanted, and I described the rest to Karly’s.

  “Knight, one target down, luring yours out and hopefully crippling it,” I said into the radio, and before he could object, I signaled to his Hounds to start.

  You can probably figure out what we did; the flying Hounds dive-bombed the Wyvern with rocks and raked him with their claws until he backed out, and made him mad enough to break off from the hole where Knight and my Hounds were hiding and come after Knight’s Hounds. They lured the monster between the walls, which I dropped on him with two grenades. Got lucky too, pinned both his wings. He couldn’t move then; Knight and I and the Hounds basically bit and slashed and shot at him until he was dead. It took at least an hour. It was the long way to kill something, but a lot smarter than ramming a grenade down his throat.

  As Knight moved in for the coup de grâce—at this point I was too tired to do anything but watch—I caught some movement up on a wall.

  Whatever was there was only there for a second. But I could have sworn it was…watching us. Watching me. It might have been a human. If I was living out here and heard a ruckus, I’d want to see what it was, but maybe I wouldn’t trust Hunters enough to stick around once I saw they’d won. Just because we hadn’t seen anyone here, that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Feral kids, maybe.

  A shriek from the Wyvern snapped my attention back to the fight, as Knight managed to chop the head off. And when I looked back, whatever had been watching us was gone.

  We didn’t have to drag our sorry tails back to the pylon and the pod that would have been waiting for us. Given the fight we’d just had, and the shape I was in, they sent a chopper for us. Like the trains, the choppers have some sort of shield that lets them pass right through the Barrier. There was barely room for us and the field medic and all of the Hounds, even after the Hounds made themselves as small as they could, so the cabin was pretty crowded until we landed. I didn’t much care, since that meant I had warm, furry bodies holding me up while the medic checked over my slashes.

  I was just now feeling pretty bad about being so stupid as to run right into the second Wyvern, and must have apologized to Knight six or eight times before he calmly, and wearily, told me to stop. “You were with a strange pack you couldn’t talk to; they were with a strange Hunter they had only Hunted with once,” he pointed out. “We got out of it alive. That’s what matters.”

  “And that’s two fewer Wyverns to come over the Barrier,” the field medic pointed out as he finished bandaging my arm.

  “That too,” Knight agreed. So I shut up until we landed, and I got taken off for a better job at fixing my slashes and a debrief at the same time. A real doctor who briskly did things with sprays and gadgets while three people, one in army and one in police uniform and one in some sort of outfit I assumed was Hunter gear, asked questions. An Elite, I think. Best believe I was hard on myself. Giving myself excuses was not going to help anything or anyone, least of all me. It did seem to surprise the ones debriefing me, though, that I was basically giving myself a dressing-down before they could. It kind of left them with nothing to say except “dismissed.”

  “Dinner in my room,” I said to my Perscom as soon as I was in the corridor, because I was feeling the effects of the painkillers now and getting a bit lightheaded. At least my arms didn’t hurt, and I could move my fingers. I gave my Perscom a list of finger food, because I wasn’t sure I was up to eating like a civilized creature, and by the time I dragged myself to my door, the electric cart with a tray on it was waiting there for me. It wasn’t what I’d ordered, but actually, it was better. It was a bunch of those yummy little appetizer things I’d had at dinner with Josh, only enough to sate even the hungriest Hunter just off a Hunt. I didn’t question why that was what had turned up; I was starving.

  It hurt to lift the tray and carry it in, but I did anyway. I could barely stand at this point, but I wasn’t going to climb into bed covered in Wyvern bits, so I showered—the bandages were waterproof—and then started eating, taking one piece at a time from the tray on the table next to my bed. The effort to chew seemed almost too much, but I knew if I didn’t finish all those calories, I was going to regret it. And to waste all that deliciousness would have been a sin. It felt so good to lean back into all those soft, piled pillows. And before I was done, Bya bamphed himself int
o my room too—he must not have gone back Otherside with the rest when the chopper landed and I opened the Portal. He laid himself along the side of my bed, like another pillow, warm and soft and supporting me. He practically gleamed, he was in such good shape. There must have been a lot of manna in those Wyverns.

  When I’d shoved down the last bite and swallowed the last bit of drink, I got the announcement of a call coming in, with no ID, which meant someone wasn’t calling from his Perscom. “Camera off, answer,” I said, because I didn’t want anyone to see me just now. The vid screen came up.

  It was Josh. Now I was really glad I had ordered the camera off. Before I could say anything he frowned. “Joy, I hope you have your cam off out of vanity and not because—”

  I interrupted him. “Vanity,” I replied. “I look like I just got dragged behind a slow-moving horse through ten acres of wait-a-minute bushes. My hair’s a mess—I’m mostly okay, I promise!”

  He looked mollified. “Well, all right, if you say so. I know this is what you’re supposed to be doing, but—”

  “No buts about it,” I replied, and left a long and significant pause. Because…as much as I liked Josh…I wasn’t going to let anything get between me and Hunting. Karly’s story about her ex-wife was cautionary tale enough.

  “Fair enough,” he agreed, to my intense relief. “Did you get my dinner? I mean, the dinner I had ordered for you? I figured you deserved a Hero Dinner. I had it sent from the restaurant and told HQ so they’d give it to you when you asked for food.”

  I got warm all over and even felt a little bit of giddiness that had nothing to do with drugs. “That was you? Josh, that was one of the nicest things anyone ever did for me! Thank you so much!”

  He chuckled, and his smile warmed up his eyes in a way I hadn’t expected. “Glad you were able to eat it. I’ll call you tomorrow when your hair isn’t full of twigs, okay?” He was laughing now, a little, which I figured was a good sign.

  “That’d be great,” I said with real enthusiasm, and he rang off. I figured I would close my eyes for just a little bit and then watch the raw vid of the fight to see what I’d done wrong—and right. I would have been happy to hear the whole group’s take on it too, but…I was just too tired.