The Paramedic's Hunter

by Jamie Davis

  But he was sitting here in front of her, his hand laid across the hilt of that divinely wrought sword as if it were made of plain steel. It was as if he did not understand the rules, so he just chose not to follow them. There was that sort of obstinacy to admire in the man. He didn’t give up easily on a concept or on people he knew. That type of loyalty was hard to come by. Once he joined a team, he was with that team one hundred percent. She had seen it happen with their small team. Or should she call it a family? It was a dysfunctional one, if it was a family at all. She shook her head in disbelief. Somehow, someway, the two of them were supposed to get together and then stay together long enough to raise a daughter who knew them as her mother and father.

  As she watched his face, she wondered what he was seeing in that intense stare. She was not aware of any way to join their magical conference call with whatever connection Dean had with the Eldara to whom her family owed a life debt. Jaz chuckled to herself. The man who was to be the father of her future daughter, was the very committed boyfriend of that same Eldara. How was that going to work out for any of them? Jo called her Aunt Ashley, so she knew the woman. It was just that Jaz could not see how she would let any man she was with associate with a former lover after they started seeing each other. Not that there was a whole lot of men in her life. She had dabbled with some random encounters when the mood struck her, but none of them had meant anything to her, and they were certainly not the type who she would count as a long-term love interest.

  She had always envisioned that her mate would be someone who would remain behind while she went out on hunter missions and encounters. He would be someone who would understand her non-traditional background and lifestyle. It would almost have to be someone from outside the hunter clans. Men in the hunter clans would never take a backseat to a female hunter. In their patriarchal world, she would be expected to hang up her sword and turn out hunter babies to replenish the clan’s ranks. That would be their version of an honorable role for her. The very thought of it disgusted her. No, she would find new blood to bring into the clan. It was not unheard of, and she would have set her own expectations for the newcomer about what a woman in the clan was expected to do.

  Her eyes were drawn back to Dean again. He might have been a perfect person to fit that role in her life if she didn’t already despise him so much. As she watched him, his back stiffened and his eyes widened as if he were seeing something startling. Again she wondered what might be there wherever his mind was, and what he was seeing. She shifted her gaze to Joanna, but nothing had changed there. The witch girl still held her position on the floor and looked to be silently meditating if it weren’t for the barely visible waves of energy coursing from her.

  Jaz settled back, taking a whetstone from her baggy utility pants pocket. She drew her Bowie knife. She had been taught an idle hunter was a dead hunter, so she began the long careful strokes of the blade on the stone that honed it to a razor’s edge. She was a hunter. She knew how to wait for things, be it her quarry or the answers she sought.

  As soon as his hand made contact with the sword’s hilt again, Dean found his point of view changed. He was staring out of another’ eyes at a forested hillside. His angle of view was from above and looking down the side of a large hill, or small mountain. The dark green of the treetops below blanketed a broad valley with a lake in the center. The sun was just setting beyond the ridge to the west casting the mountain’s shadow across the valley floor. The image shifted as whomever it was turned and walked back into a cave set in a mountainside. From the finished look of the cave corridor, Dean was confident this was the same cave system that he had seen before. He was close to Ashley again and he tried to remember and note every detail that might help him and his friends pinpoint its exact location.

  He walked back down the long, rough-hewn rock corridor leading back into the mountain, proceeding straight until a side passage to the right opened up. Turning down that branch of the cave system, Dean watched as the individual whose point of view he shared took him down a sloping path until it opened into a cavernous chamber deep in the mountain. There was the sound of running water nearby in the darkness, and though he could see well in the dark given his host’s abilities, he could not penetrate to the depths of the large room’s far walls.

  There was a strange purple glow to one side and that was their destination. On one wall of the cavern there was a large oval of glowing purple energy swirling on the wall. It was easily ten feet tall and six feet wide and looked like a sickly purple and yellow bruise projected on the wall. Whoever his host was, they stopped together in front of the shimmering surface of the energized oval. It filled his field of vision. He heard a raspy voice and it took him a moment to realize that it was his host’s voice.

  “The hunting party sent to secure the blade has not returned,” the voice said. “I fear it has been intercepted.”

  A second voice answered from the other side of the magical field. “This is both fortunate and not,” the second voice said.

  It would have sent chills down his spine, if he was in his own body right now, Dean thought. It had the same quality as the scratching of a thousand cockroaches all at once in his head. It continued.

  “We have lost more of our Oni brethren and they are a finite resource in this endeavor. That is unfortunate. But our seers warned us that the Hunter, the Healer, and the Hexen were on their way to us. Who else but they would have the power to stop a hunting party of three Oni?” Dean watched as the swirling purple oval pulsed with each of the other voice’s words.

  “So they are here?” Dean’s host said. “How is that fortunate?”

  “Because they have not realized their full power yet as questers,” the voice from beyond the purple portal said. “They must accept their shared bond in order to become as powerful as they could become. Before they will be able to accomplish that, we will reach our goal and drain the soul of the Eldara in order to hold open this portal indefinitely. Then there will be nothing they can do to stop us from taking this entire area for our own.”

  “We must still pay our benefactor for helping to secure the Eldara for us in the beginning,” Dean’s host said.

  “He demanded the healer be taken alive and the hunter clan eliminated,” the portal’s voice pulsed. “We will fulfill our end of the bargain. The clan has been removed from the picture, yes?”

  “All indications are that the rest of the clan was consumed in the fire,” the host’s body said with sickening glee. “There will be no descendants other than the one who has come to us. There will be no one to continue to hound our benefactor’s long-term plans, I assure you.”

  “He will be pleased with that news. Now we must finish the task assigned to us so we will gain the knowledge from him to use the Eldara’s soul to maintain this portal indefinitely.” The portal’s colors shifted and began to coalesce into distinct shapes. “I will send through a larger party of Oni to complete the final part of our bargain. Use them wisely. They are among the last available to us.”

  “As you wish, Master.” Dean’s host stepped back from the portal as the shapes continued to solidify. He knew what to expect based on the conversation, so he was not surprised when the first Oni demon stepped from the purple borders of the magical oval on the rock wall. What did surprise him was that the procession of demons continued for some time. Dean lost count at fifteen and was pulled out, back to his seat at the table in the cabin. It took a moment to refocus his eyes and he blinked while his vision returned to normal.

  The paramedic looked around the room and saw Jo leaning forward where she sat on the floor, her fingertips rubbing at her temples. A glance to his left showed Jaz sitting in the chair next to his at the table. She had that frighteningly large knife out and appeared to be testing the blade’s edge with her thumb. She looked up at him and quirked up an eyebrow in question while returning his gaze.

  “Jaz,” Dean said. “We’ve got trouble. They know we are here.”

  20

/>   “But how much do they know about where we are?” Jaz asked again. She was pacing from window to window, looking out at the cabin’s surroundings for trouble.

  “All I know is that they know we are in the valley here,” Dean said. “They figured it out when the three demons we killed at the cabin didn’t return. Oh, and they have some sort of prophesy or something like it of their own. The voice on the other side of the portal mentioned seers and the three of us.”

  “Okay, tell me the whole thing again from the beginning,” Jaz said. “Don’t leave anything out. Every detail could be important.”

  Dean closed his eyes and, for the third time, recounted what he could see and hear from inside his host’s head in the vision. When he was done, Jo jumped up and pointed outside.

  “That’s it,” she said. “I missed it before, but it’s obvious now. They are somewhere in the mountains around this valley. That is why the demons came through the portal all at once like that. They are close enough to travel here on their own power. There must be old caves or something in these hills they are using.”

  “It makes sense, but that is bad news for us,” Jaz said.

  “Why?” Jo asked.

  “Because that means the demons are closer than we think,” the hunter said as she resumed her pacing to check the windows as the late afternoon sun streamed in from the southwest.

  The knock on the cabin’s door made them all jump. They relaxed when they heard Albion’s voice from outside.

  Dean opened the door as Jaz and Jo walked over to join him in the cabin’s entryway. They saw Albion and three others standing outside on the porch. There were two men and a woman who Dean did not know.

  “Hi, uh I thought I’d bring the other shifters from the area down to meet you guys while we were on patrol,” Albion said. “Dean, Jaz, Joanna, this is Mark, Dawson, and Hannah from the pack at the north end of the valley.”

  Dean nodded and the three of them nodded in return. He looked at Jaz who stood still just staring at the three newcomers with a suspicious gaze. He nudged her with an elbow and she shot him a glance and then nodded to them herself. Jo stepped out onto the porch and shook all their hands, greeting them enthusiastically.

  “Man, we can sure use you guys right now,” Jo said. “After what we just found out, we can use all the muscle we can get.”

  Albion looked from the teen to Dean and Jaz with an alarmed look. “What is she talking about?”

  “We just cast a little spell using the Eldara’s blade to try and locate her,” Dean said. “We think she is being held inside this valley somewhere. I was able to see caves or passages in the mountain rock shored up with wooden crossbeams. It all looked very old and broken down in parts. Does any of that ring a bell?”

  Mark scratched his beard for a minute in thought, but it was Dawson who spoke up first. “It might be the old silver mines at the south end of the valley. They have been boarded up and closed for over 150 years now. It would be a good place to hide out.”

  “It’s not just a hideout,” Jaz added. “They have opened a netherworld portal there and are bringing demons through to attack the valley. The last count was fifteen demons before we lost our connection.”

  Albion looked worried and Mark let out a low growl. Hannah was silent, but Dean noticed her fingernails had suddenly elongated into claws. The four shifters shot each other glances and then looked back at Dean and the others in the cabin’s doorway.

  “Do we know where they are going or what their intentions are?” Hannah asked.

  “It seems that they kidnapped the Eldara in order to drain her life force to create a long-term portal to the netherworld. I think they need her sword to complete the process,” Joanna said. “The newly transferred demons are here looking for us, since we have the ability to throw a monkey wrench into their plans and rescue her.”

  Jaz jumped in, “I do not think they knew specifically where we are in the valley, though they will surely check here, and at the dryad’s cabin, too.”

  “We cannot allow them to open a permanent portal here in our valley,” Dawson said. “We would all become subservient to them and that is unacceptable.”

  “I don’t know what we can do, Dawson,” Mark said. “If they are already in the valley and heading this way, we won’t have time to contact other packs to help, and we aren’t strong enough to take them on by ourselves. There are only six adults in the pack, plus Albion and Arlo, and there’s Old Barney the werebear, if we can find him. Even with the hunter, the witch and this human, it will never be enough to stop more than fifteen demons.”

  Jaz shook her head. “We need to take advantage of the demons being out in the valley looking for us and not in their hideout. Now is the perfect time to go there and try to get Ashley out.” She looked at Dean and Jo.

  Dean nodded and when he looked at Jo, the Wiccan teen nodded, too. It made sense, even though it abandoned the rest of the valley’s inhabitants to fend for themselves. He wished he could come up with a solution for them. Then he got an idea.

  “I might have a way to get you all some help while the three of us head off on our rescue mission,” Dean said. “We have to try and shut this portal down and get Ashley out of there before they get too strong. Jaz is right. This is the perfect opportunity to do that. But, there is another person who has a vested interest in this, someone who might be the best solution of all, if what I’ve heard about her is true.”

  Jaz looked at him with a curious glance, but Joanna seemed to see where he was going and nodded enthusiastically.

  “Ashley, the Eldara, has a twin sister,” Dean explained. “For reasons she can’t tell me, she is unable to participate directly in the rescue of her sister, but she is a Valkyrie. I suspect she might enjoy coming to the valley to help you all deal with the demons. Does that sound like a good idea? I don’t know her very well, and I’ve heard she makes a bit of a mess wherever she goes, but I think she’s a ferocious fighter.”

  Albion smiled for the first time since he had heard about the demons on the loose in the valley. “A Valkyrie or two would be a welcome addition to our little militia,” the werelion said. “I agree. They are strong warriors, and I think they would be interested in ridding the world of a few demons, seeing as how they are destined to face them in the final battle at the end of the world.”

  “Good, I’ll contact her.” Dean said. He looked up at the sky outside the cabin. “I don’t know exactly how long this takes, but here goes.” He took in a deep breath and shouted, “Ingrid, I need you.”

  “There’s no need to raise your voice, you know,” the smooth tones of Ingrid’s British accent sounded behind him in the cabin.

  Dean and Jaz both spun around in surprise. There stood Ingrid, dressed in her black leather pants and jacket outfit, just as Dean had last seen her. Joanna ran forward and wrapped the new arrival in a hug.

  “Aunt Ingrid, I’m so glad to see you,” Jo said. “Things are a little tense here and I could use a friend right now.”

  “Hey, Kiddo,” Ingrid said with surprise. “What are you doing here and now? Aren’t you a little out of place?” Ingrid looked at Dean and Jaz and then back at Jo. “Do they…?”

  “Yes, they know who I am,” Jo said. “That’s why it’s been a little tense.”

  Ingrid let out a long laugh at that statement. “Oh, I’ll bet it has been, and more than just a little tense.” She looked back at Dean and Jaz, “Don’t worry you two. I know it’s a bit of a shock, but you will both get over it eventually.”

  She walked forward and took in the four shifters standing outside. Turning to Dean, she said, “I assume you are using your one chance to call for help? Remember I cannot participate directly in Ashley’s rescue. That option has been forbidden to me.”

  “I told them,” Dean said. “But I think we have found a way you can help without directly fighting to rescue Ashley. How would you feel about helping this valley’s residents fend off a few dozen Oni demons?”

  “Ooo, y
ou’ve got my attention,” Ingrid cooed. “Go on, I’m interested.”

  Dean and Jaz explained the situation in the valley. Albion and Mark jumped in occasionally to lend their input about what the valley’s residents could do. Dean pointed out that if they could tie up the demons in the valley, it would allow him, Jaz and Jo to slip around them and get to the abandoned mines at the caves.

  Ingrid listened, asking questions when she didn’t understand something about what Dean had learned through the sword’s strange connected visions. When they were done explaining what they had in mind, Ingrid gave them a large, feral smile, showing her white teeth.

  “This is going to be great fun,” the Valkyrie said. “Plus, I think I can persuade one or two of my Valkyrie sisters to join the party, too. We haven’t had a good demon hunt in years. I’ve got to go and make a few inquiries. I’ll be back just after dark. We’ll stage here at the cabin and lure them in. That should give you, Dean, along with your lady friends, a chance to move around them in the dark and make your way to where they are holding Ashley.”