On the Prowl

by Patricia Briggs, Eileen Wilks, Karen Chance

  Kai consulted her belly and found she'd be starting from cold, hungry, scared… and mad. Anger was a relief. Anger made her less of a victim and shut out the whiny voice. What was she doing, handing control of her life over to someone else? Nathan meant well, but—

  The door creaked and her stomach flipped back to plain old scared. She spun to face it.

  "It's me," Nathan said softly. "Took longer than I expected."

  Nathan was a black splotch against the smudged outdoor darkness, surrounded by the slowly moving shapes of his thoughts as they swam through a faint glow of indigo, lilac, and silver.

  Those were not upset colors. "I want to talk to you."

  "All right." The door creaked closed, shutting out the bit of moonlight. The grease-and-beef smell of fast food entered with him. "Let me fix the window first so we can have some light."

  "Light would be good." To her disgust, her voice cracked.

  Soft footsteps approached, along with his colors and the food smells. She felt his hand on her cheek. "Action is easy," he said softly. "Waiting is harder. Has it been bad, waiting here?"

  "It isn't exactly bringing out the best in me."

  "Hold this." Paper rustled as he pressed a paper bag into her hand. "I'll cover the window."

  The greasy-fries scent from the contents of the bag hit her smack in the reptile brain. Her stomach growled as his colors moved to the dirty window. The thunk of a hammer twice announced progress in the window covering.

  All at once there was light. A ball of it, rosy and welcoming, perched in the air behind Nathan's head as he turned to her.

  "Ah… that's not a flashlight."

  "You'd call it mage light or fairy light." When he crossed to her the light followed like an obedient puppy. It wasn't bright—maybe the equivalent of two or three candles—but was plenty for her to see the blanket draped over his arm. She didn't see the hammer she'd heard him use. "It's a simple trick. You could learn to summon one, if you wished."

  "I do wish, but later. Nathan—"

  Again he touched her, lightly this time and just on her arm. "You have questions, things you need to say. But we should eat first."

  Her stomach seconded the idea. "Is that blanket for us to sit on?"

  "Yes." He spread it out. "The drinks are in the car, as well as a few other things. I'll get them."

  "What car?" she demanded.

  "That was my decision. There's no blame to you for it."

  Which meant he'd stolen the car. "Did you steal the supplies, too?"

  "No. I prefer not to steal, but that wasn't practical with the car."

  She sighed, weary with change, fear, and decisions. Too weary to sort through the wrongs and rights. "I'll help bring things in."

  "You can, but I'll have to take down the wards first."

  "Do you mean I can't leave until you do that? That I've been trapped in here all this time?"

  "Eh." He rubbed his nose, looked at the floor. "Well, yes. I'll fix that later, all right?"

  She settled unhappily on the blanket.

  When he opened the door, the mage light winked out—no gesture or incantation needed. Every time he returned—first with Cokes, bottled water, and two grocery sacks, then with sleeping bags—the light popped back on, too.

  She wanted one.

  It was an odd and hasty picnic. With the first bite Kai discovered she was beyond hungry, well into ravenous. She devoured most of the burger and half the fries before speaking again. "I shouldn't have run. I shouldn't be here, hiding. I'd like to help you catch the creature, but—"

  "They've released your name to the media."

  "What?"

  "I heard it on the radio. Knox gave a press conference and spoke of the warrant for your arrest. I suspect your image was on the television news, but I didn't see that."

  She put down the uneaten portion of her hamburger, her knotted stomach rejecting the idea of food.

  Nathan reached for her hand. "Kai. If you don't hide, you'll be in jail by midnight. I don't know if you'll be safe there, if the chief will take the steps to assure that you are. There's ill-feeling toward all Gifted right now, and—"

  "And I'm the wicked witch the house is about to fall on. No one objects when she gets flattened. God!" She shoved to her feet clumsily, knocking over her Coke. His hand shot out, catching the cup before it finished tipping in a motion so quick it blurred.

  She stared at his hand. He had long, blunt fingers and a wide palm, with a sprinkling of dark hair at the wrist. Such a human hand, in spite of the speed with which it had just moved. She dragged her gaze back to his face. "Why would it want to look like me?"

  Nathan rose much more gracefully than she had. "I don't know. There's a link, though. It may select its prey ahead of time and take their shape."

  Her eyes widened as fear pooled in her belly.

  "I won't let it get to you." He closed the distance between them, setting his hands on her shoulders. "If it does come for you, I'll stop it. Kill it, I hope, because we can prove your innocence with its body. If it remains in its natural state, the shape of the mouth and teeth will match the bites on Shaw's body. If it doesn't, its transformed body will still prove that it could have worn your face."

  "Posthumous vindication isn't that appealing to me."

  He squeezed gently. "Do you think I'd let it harm you? There are beings, creatures, I couldn't be sure of stopping, but this isn't one of them."

  "I love your confidence, but you don't know much about chameleons."

  "I know mass is conserved when they change form. This one looked enough like you to fool someone who knows you, so its mass is similar to yours. If it comes after you, I can stop it."

  She chewed on her lip, trying to think her way past the fear. If she gave herself up to the police, she might be in danger from other prisoners, maybe even the guards. If she hid out, the monster might come after her.

  The chameleon was certainly the bigger danger, but here she had Nathan. In jail she wouldn't. And they needed the chameleon to prove she wasn't the killer. "Do you Change? Like a lupus, I mean."

  "Eh. No. I've had a human body and brain for more than four hundred years now. I can't go back to my hound body, not on my own."

  Four hundred years? She'd known he'd lived much longer than a human, but that… that would take some getting used to. "Tell me." She reached for the hand on her shoulder, clasped it. "Tell me how you came to be here. How you came to have that human body and brain."

  "My queen sent me, and I needed a human form for the hunt. We knew it would take time for me to track the… Kai, are you going to allow me to keep you hidden here?"

  "Yes."

  Relief stripped him naked. She'd never seen his face so raw with feeling. "May I… is it all right to hold you?"

  She didn't bother with words. Arms were better, and hers slid around him as naturally as if they were already lovers. His arms answered, wrapping her breath-stealingly tight for a second, then loosening. He ran his hands up and down her back, buried his nose in her hair. "I have wanted this," he said fiercely. "For so long, I have wanted…" His breath shuddered out.

  Silence wrapped itself around them then—a silence of heartbeats and breaths settling into a shared rhythm. Kai closed her eyes so she could absorb the feel of him through muscle, scent, and skin.

  Which wasn't touching his, dammit. Though the way their bodies were touching, she knew he wasn't sexually indifferent to her. Not anymore. "I've wanted, too," she said softly. "I still do."

  He raised his head. She saw his throat work as he swallowed. "Kai." He said her name the way he smiled—as if he'd just found it, just this moment wrapped his lips around the sound. He ran both hands along her hair. "I can't… if I'm to keep you safe, I can't be distracted."

  "You're turning me down."

  He grimaced. "I'm turning us both down, but it's hard." His eyebrows lifted in brief surprise. "That was a pun, wasn't it?"

  Actually, it wasn't hard. Not anymore. "Ah… di
d you do something just now? Because you aren't… things changed."

  "I control my body. I've been controlling it around you from the first day we met. The wanting is still there, but it isn't reinforced physically."

  Well. He'd been controlling his desire from the time they met? That struck her as a good news, bad news deal. He'd wanted her all along, but he didn't want to want her… because sex was too lonely without a bond, he'd said.

  But friendship was a bond, a strong one. That tipped things to the good news side, she decided. "Who's this queen that sent you here?"

  "I'll tell you." With a sigh he released her. "Sit with me and I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

  Chapter 11

  WHEN Nathan was sent to Earth to find a renegade mage, a redheaded queen was sitting on England's throne. The Spaniards had just founded the first European settlement in North America at St. Augustine, and William Shakespeare hadn't yet set foot on a London stage. In Italy, a young man named Galileo Galilei was disappointing his father by studying pendulums and other nonsense instead of medicine. And the Purge was just beginning.

  For thirty-two years, Nathan had tracked the mage. When he finished his hunt, both Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth were dead; Jamestown had been established; and the Purge was over, with thousands of Gifted dead at the hands of the Inquisition, their governments, or their own neighbors. And Nathan had been stranded, cut off from all he knew, even from his proper shape.

  "like had violated many laws, committed many sins," Nathan said, "but the queens don't intervene in lesser matters. But he crossed one line too many when he practiced death magic."

  Kai lay against Nathan's chest, listening to his heartbeat as well as his voice. His arms were around her; his colors swam with hers. In front of them the mage light burned steadily like a heatless campfire. "Death magic, huh? He' must have been a major bad guy."

  She heard a smile in his voice. "Hellhounds aren't set on the trail of jaywalkers. You are… okay with this? That my purpose was to hunt and kill those who broke the queens' laws?"

  "I'm okay with policemen and soldiers. Your role was something like theirs."

  He fell silent, toying absently with the ends of her hair in a way she found most distracting. Not that she wanted him to stop. Finally he said, "I haven't killed only at my queen's command. When I was stranded here… an able-bodied man can't simply decide to never again use his hands and arms. Common sense and instinct will defeat him. That's how it is for a hound and the hunt. I couldn't simply decide not to hunt, but it was hard, very hard, to learn how to choose my own hunts. The queen never loosed me lightly, so I tried to choose as she might have, but at first I didn't understand human society. Death isn't always a solution. Even when the prey is causing obvious harm, killing can spread ill instead of containing it."

  "Have you… here in Midland, I mean. Have you hunted here?"

  "Not a true hunt. Not to the death, except for the ghoul. I've learned to take satisfaction in lesser hunts, though. I couldn't be a law officer otherwise."

  "Ghoul? You mean there was—No, never mind." She set that aside for another time. "I'm having trouble getting my mind around this. I know you, know your colors, the shapes of your thoughts. I've never known anyone with less anger. You aren't a violent man."

  "Anger is too big a response for most things. It gets in the way. You haven't seen me on a true hunt. I am violent then, Kai."

  He wasn't apologizing. He was stating a fact.

  She didn't say anything for several minutes. She wasn't sure how she felt. Nathan killed according to rules she didn't know, but he'd spent years—lifetimes, maybe, by her way of measuring—evolving those rules. He didn't just come from a different culture, but from a different species.

  Was she bothered by the violence in him, or did she just think she ought to be? His arms still felt right around her; his heartbeat still soothed her. She didn't understand, no, but maybe—right this moment—she didn't have to. "It took you years to understand how to choose your hunts," she said at last. "It may take me awhile to understand, but I hope it won't be years."

  His voice was soft. "You don't regret our bond."

  "No. I don't regret it." Though she wished she knew what it meant to him. Kai shifted so she could look at him. "How did this mage—like, you called him. How did like end up here?"

  "He knew his crimes had been uncovered to the two queens and fled. Because he was part sidhe and strengthened by death magic, he was able to leave Faerie entirely, hoping my queen would not set me on his trail once he was beyond her territory. Only a hellhound could track him, you see."

  "Sometimes you say queen singular, sometimes queens, plural. Which is it?"

  "I told you that a few High Sidhe take an interest in governing. The Summer Queen and the Winter Queen are… eh, you don't have the right words. Call them the High Lords of the thirteen realms. They don't operate a government, a bureaucracy, such as you're used to, but each queen has her court, her dominion. Each steps in when she sees a need."

  "Do they rule together?"

  "Not precisely. Their dominions overlap at times. When this happens they discuss the matter and decide which of them will act. For them to act together… that hasn't happened in my lifetime."

  And how long was that? She decided not to ask. Not yet. "But you speak of 'my queen.' Singular."

  "Hellhounds are the Huntsman's to command, and so I was, at first. But the Huntsman is brother to Winter and lover to Summer… I saw both queens often, and one day I knew I must go with zan Al'aran. With the Winter Queen." A hint of longing underlay the words. "So I became hers, and she became mine. It's hard, being queen. Harder for Winter than Summer, because who doesn't love Summer? She'll have been lonely without me."

  Kai felt like squirming. It was pointless to be jealous of an immortal—and no doubt supernally beautiful—elfin queen. But she was. Oh, she was. She tried to take the high road. "I imagine she was upset when the realms shifted and you couldn't return."

  "The realms didn't shift then. That happened centuries ago, after the Great War. After that your realm was hard to reach, requiring great power. The magic here wasn't replenished, so by the time I arrived there was little left." He sighed. "The hunt took too long. Over the years my own power lessened because there was less for me to draw on, to absorb. By the time I killed Ilke, I couldn't go home."

  "Couldn't your queen have brought you back? If she's so powerful—"

  "It doesn't work that way. Hellhounds travel between realms without a gate. It's inborn, that skill, and common to many of the wild sidhe. But to bring someone to you from another realm, you must open a gate. After the Great War, the Old Ones forbade opening gates to Earth."

  "Old Ones?"

  He nodded. "Strange beings, on the whole. I think they're like unicorns."

  "I'm getting seriously dizzy here."

  "Unicorns have that effect on me, too."

  Kai found herself smiling. Unicorns, Old Ones, elfin queens, renegade mages… it all sounded fantastic, even absurd. She accepted that these things were true because Nathan said so, and he didn't lie. But the reality she understood was the warmth of his hand, the chill of the winter air, and the slow, sad song of the wind outside.

  Also a steadily glowing mage light. "Did you know you'd be stranded?" she asked quietly. "When your queen set you to track like, did you know you wouldn't be able to return?"

  "I knew it was possible, yet I didn't. Not really." His thoughts, usually slow, turned busy—silvery minnows struggling to find a fit as he hunted words. "Hellhounds are sentients, but our brains shape our thoughts, and hellhound brains are not human. What I knew as a hound was different from what I can know as a man. Lesser in some ways, greater in others. I knew I could be trapped here, but that was so apart from my reality that it had no meaning until it happened."

  She nodded. "Like unicorns. You tell me they're real and I believe you, but I can't grasp it."

  He found one of his smiles, this one hol
ding equal parts sweet and sad. "Yes. The queen told me I could be lost here and I accepted that it was true, but didn't grasp that truth."

  "But she sent you. She sent you anyway."

  "She's queen." His smile turned gentle, as if Kai had said something mildly foolish. "And she's immortal. A few hundred years isn't long to her. She'd expect me to understand and accept the necessity, and she'd be right. like couldn't be allowed to live. With death magic empowering him and none here able to oppose him, he could have done terrible harm to your world. And those in the thirteen realms needed to know he'd be found and punished."

  "How would they know? You didn't find him until years after the Earth was closed to them."

  His eyebrows lifted. "The Winter Queen announced she'd set her hound on his trail. Those of Faerie wouldn't need to be present at the kill to know it happened."

  A touch of arrogance there. No, more than a touch. "Are you unstoppable, then?"

  "Short of death, yes, and hellhounds are difficult to kill. There are few who can manage it."

  "A part-sidhe mage pumped up on death magic wouldn't be one of those few."

  His gray eyes warmed with amusement. "As you see, he was not."

  "Good point." To her surprise, a yawn overtook her. "Wow. Didn't think I could relax enough to be sleepy, but I am. I don't suppose you've got a toothbrush in one of those sacks?"

  "Of course." He stretched out a hand and retrieved one of the grocery bags. "Breakfast is in the other bag—fruit, bread, and peanut butter. I didn't get anything for coffee or tea, I'm afraid."

  "I'll tough it out." She dug through the sack he'd handed her. Soap, a washcloth and towel, sunscreen, paper plates and cups, deodorant, tampons—tampons! Her usual brand, too, which she assumed he'd seen in her bathroom at some point. She shook her head, smiling. She didn't need them at the moment, but if she was as punctual as usual, she'd want them in another two days.

  How many men would have even thought of tampons?