Werehunter (anthology) Read online

  Werehunter (anthology)

  Mercedes Lackey

  Werehunter is a short story collection of Mercedes Lackey's early work.

  Lope through the night with a young woman who has been given the power to transform herself into a leopard, but who now finds herself pursued by a hunter who is more than human: Follow the adventures of Skitty, ship's cat extraordinaire, and telepathic problem-solver. Ride with a late night driver on a solitary road who learns that what appears to be a piece of cardboard blowing across the road is actually something very sinister in disguise. Join Lackey's celebrated occult detective Diana Tregarde as she attends a gathering of romance writers and encounters a visitor whose passionate desire is for fresh, warm blood. Return to the world of the Heralds of Valdemar. And there's much more.

  Lackey's many fans will know what to expect: unforgettable characters in spellbinding stories from a grand master of fantasy and science fiction. And readers just discovering her have a treat in store.

  The story Werehunter was originally the song Golden Eyes on the album Magic, Moondust & Melancholy , and was inspired by Andre Norton's Witch World series. The were characters from Year of the Unicorn and the Jargoon Pard meet their long lost kin in this short story.

  Stories include:

  Werehunter

  SKitty

  A Tale of Two SKitties

  SCat

  A Better Mousetrap

  The Last of the Season

  Satanic, Versus

  Nightside

  Wet Wings

  Stolen Silver

  Roadkill

  Operation Desert Fox

  Grey

  Grey's Ghost

  Werehunter

  Mercedes Lackey

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1999 by Mercedes Lackey

  “Werehunter” copyright © 1989 (Tales of the Witch World); “SKitty” copyright © 1991 (Catfantastic, Andre Norton, ed.); “A Tail of Two SKitties copyright © 1994 (Catfantastic 3, Andre Norton and Martin Greenberg, eds.); “SCat” copyright © 1996 (Catfantastic 4, Andre Norton and Martin Greenberg, eds.); “A Better Mousetrap” copyright © 1999 (Werehunter, Baen Books); “The Last of the Season” copyright © American Fantasy Magazine; “Satanic, Versus …” copyright © 1990 (Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, Fall 1990); “Nightside” copyright © 1990 (Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, Spring 1990); “Wet Wings” copyright © 1995 (Sisters of Fantasy 2, Susan Shwartz and Martin Greenberg, ed.); “Stolen Silver” copyright © 1991 (Horse Fantastic); “Roadkill” copyright © 1990 (Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, Summer 1990); “Operation Desert Fox” copyright © 1993 (Honor of the Regiment: Bolos, Book I, eds. Keith Laumer and Bill Fawcett); “Grey” copyright © 1997 (Sally Blanchard’s Pet Bird Report October 1997); “Grey’s Ghost” copyright © 1999 (Werehunter, Baen Books)

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  ISBN: 0-671-57805-7

  Cover art by Bob Eggleton

  First printing, April 1999

  Distributed by Simon and Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Typeset by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

  Printed in the United States of America

  TWO OUT OF THREE AIN’T BAD . . .

  Something very large occluded the light for a moment in the next room, then the lights went out, and Diana Tregarde distinctly heard the sound of the chandelier ­being torn from the ceiling and thrown against the wall. She winced.

  There go my Romance Writers of the World dues up again, she thought.

  “I got a glimpse,” Andre said. “It was very large, perhaps ten feet tall, and—cherie, looked like nothing so much as a rubber creature from a very bad movie. Except that I do not think it was rubber.”

  What shambled in through the door was nothing that Diana had ever heard of. It was, indeed, about ten feet tall. It was covered with luxuriant brown hair—all over. It was built along the lines of a powerful body-builder, taken to exaggerated lengths, and it drooled. It also stank, a combination of sulfur and musk so strong it would have brought tears to the eyes of a skunk.

  Di groaned, putting two and two together and coming up with—Valentine Vervain cast a spell for a tall, dark and handsome soul-mate, but she forgot to specify “human.” “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  The other writer nodded. “Tall, check. Dark, check. Long hair, check. Handsome—well, I suppose in some circles.” Harrison stared at the thing in fascination.

  The thing saw Valentine and lunged for her. Reflexively, Di and Harrison both shot. He emptied his cylinder and one speed loader. Di gave up after four shots. No effect. The thing backhanded Andre into a wall hard enough to put him through plasterboard. Andre was out for the count. There are some things even a vampire has a little trouble recovering from.

  “Harrison, distract it, make a noise, anything!” Diana pulled the atheme from her boot sheath and began cutting Sigils in the air with it, getting the Words of Dismissal out as fast as she could without slurring the syllables.

  The thing lunged toward Harrison, missing him by inches, just as Di concluded the Ritual of Dismissal.

  To no effect. . . .

  —from “Satanic, Versus …”

  Introduction

  Those of you who are more interested in the stories than in some chatty author stuff should just skip this part, since it will be mostly about the things people used to ask us about at science fiction conventions.

  For those of you who have never heard of SF con­ventions (or “cons” as they are usually called), these are gatherings of people who are quite fanatical about their interest in one or more of the various fantasy and sci­ence fiction media. There are talks and panel discussions on such wildly disparate topics as costuming, prop-making, themes in SF/F literature, Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, X-Files, SF/F art, medieval fighting, horse-training, dancing, and the world of fans in general. There are workshops on writing and performance arts. Guests featured in panels and question and ­answer sessions are often featured performers from television and movies along with various authors and the occasional profes­sional propmaker. Larry and I no longer attend con­ventions for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that we have a great many responsibilities that require us to be home.

  Some of those responsibilities are that we are vol­unteers for our local fire department. Larry is a driver and outside man; I am learning to do dispatch, and hopefully will be able to take over the night shift, since we are awake long after most of the rest of the county has gone to sleep. Our local department is strictly volunteer and works on a very tight budget. Our equipment is old and needs frequent repair, we get what we can afford, and what we can afford is generally third or fourth-hand, having passed through a large met­ropolitan department or the military to a small municipal department to the Forestry Service and finally to us. In summer I am a water-carrier at grass-fires, meaning that I bring drinking-water to the overheated firefighters so they don’t collapse in the 100 plus degree heat.

  Another duty is with the EOC (formerly called the Civil Defense Office). When we are under severe weather conditions, the firefighters are called in to wait at the station in case of emergency, so Larry is there. I go in to the EOC office to read weather-ra
dar for the storm-watchers in the field. Eventually I hope to get my radio license so I can also join the ranks of the storm-watchers. We don’t “chase” as such, although there are so few of the storm-watchers that they may move to active areas rather than staying put. Doppler radar can only give an indication of where there is rotation in the clouds; rotation may not produce a tornado. You have to have people on the ground in the area to know if there is a funnel or a tornado (technically, it isn’t a tornado until it touches the ground; until then it is a funnel-cloud). Our area of Oklahoma is not quite as active as the area of the Panhandle or around Oklahoma City and Norman (which is why the National Severe Storms Laboratory is located there) but we get plenty of severe, tornado-producing storms.

  In addition, we have our raptor rehabilitation ­duties.

  Larry and I are raptor rehabilitators; this means that we are licensed by both the state and the federal government to collect, care for, and release birds of prey that are injured or ill. Occasionally we are asked to bring one of our “patients” for a talk to a group of adults or children, often under the auspices of our local game wardens.

  I’m sure this sounds very exciting and glamorous, and it certainly impresses the heck out of people when we bring in a big hawk riding on a gloved hand, but there are times when I wonder how we managed to get ourselves into this.

  We have three main “seasons”—baby season, stupid fledgling season, and inexpert hunter season.

  Now, injuries—and victims of idiots with guns—can come at any time. We haven’t had too many shooting victims in our area, thank heavens, in part because the cattle-farmers around our area know that shooting a raptor only adds field rats and mice to their property. But another rehabber gave up entirely a few years ago, completely burned out, because she got the same redtail hawk back three times, shot out of the sky. Injuries that we see in our area are most often the case of collision—literally—with man’s environmental changes. Birds hit windows that seem to them to be sky, Great Blue Herons collide with power-lines, ­raptors get electrocuted by those same lines. But most often, we get birds hit by cars. Owls will chase prey across the road, oblivious to the fact that something is approach­ing, and get hit. Raptors are creatures of oppor­tunity and will quite readily come down to feed on roadkill and get hit. Great Horned Owls, often called the “tigers of the sky,” are top predators, known to chase even eagles off nests to claim the nest for themselves—if a Great Horned is eating roadkill and sees a car approaching, it will stand its ground, certain that it will get the better of anything daring to try to snatch its dinner! After all, they have been developing and evolving for millions of years, and swiftly moving vehicles have only been around for about seventy-five years; they haven’t had nearly enough time to adapt to the situation as a species. Individuals do learn, though, often to take advantage of the situation. Kestrels and redtails are known to hang around fields being harvested to snatch the field-rats running from the machinery, or suddenly exposed after the harvesters have passed. Redtails are also known to hang about railway right-of-ways, waiting for trains to spook out rabbits!

  Our current education bird, a big female redtail we call Cinnamon, is one such victim; struck in the head by a CB whip-antenna, she has only one working eye and just enough brain damage to render her partially paralyzed on one side and make her accepting and calm in our presence. This makes her a great education-bird, as nothing alarms her and children can safely touch her, giving them a new connection with wild things that they had never experienced before.

  But back to the three “seasons” of a raptor rehabber, and the different kinds of work they involve.

  First is “baby season,” which actually extends from late February through to July, beginning with Great Horned Owl babies and ending when the second round of American Kestrels (sparrowhawks, or “spawks” as falconers affectionately call them) begins to push their siblings out of nests. The first rule of baby season is—try to get the baby back into the nest, or something like the nest. Mother birds are infinitely better at taking care of their youngsters than any human, so when wind or weather send babies (eyases, is the correct term) tumbling, that is our first priority. This almost always involves climbing, which means that poor Larry puts on his climbing gear and dangles from trees. When nest and all have come down, we supply a substitute, in as close to the same place as possible; raptor mothers are far more fixated on the kids than the house, and a box filled with branches will do nicely, thank you.

  Sometimes, though, it’s not possible to put the eyases back. Youngsters are found with no nest in sight, or the nest is literally unreachable (a Barn Owl roost in the roof of an institution for the criminally insane, for instance), or worst of all, the parents are known to be dead.

  Young raptors eat a lot. Kestrels need feeding ­every hour or so, bigger birds every two to three, and that’s from dawn to dusk. We’ve taken eyases with us to doctor’s appointments, on vacation, on shopping expe­ditions, and even to racing school! And we’re not talking Gerber’s here; “mom” (us) gets to take the mousie, dissect the mousie, and feed the mousie parts to baby. By hand. Yummy! Barred Owl eyases are the easiest of the lot; they’ll take minnows, which are of a size to slip down their little throats easily, but not the rest. There’s no use thinking you can get by with a little chicken, either—growing babies need a lot of calcium for those wonderful hollow bones that they’re growing so fast, so they need the whole animal.

  Fortunately, babies do grow up, and eventually they’ll feed themselves. Then it’s just a matter of helping them learn to fly (which involves a little game we call “Hawk Tossing”) and teaching them to hunt. The instincts are there; they just need to connect instinct with practice. But this is not for the squeamish or the tender-hearted; for the youngsters to grow up and have the skills to make them successful, they have to learn to kill.

  The second season can stretch from late April to August, and we call it “silly fledgling season.” That’s when the eyases, having learned to fly at last, get lost. Raptor mothers—with the exception of Barn Owls—continue to feed the youngsters and teach them to hunt after they’ve fledged, but sometimes wind and weather again carry the kids off beyond finding their way back to mom. Being inexperienced flyers and not hunters at all yet, they usually end up helpless on the ground, which is where we come in.

  These guys are actually the easiest and most reward­ing; they know the basics of flying and hunting, and all we have to do is put some meat back on their bones and give them a bit more experience. We usually have anywhere from six to two dozen kestrels at this stage every year, which is when we get a fair amount of exercise, catching grasshoppers for them to hunt.

  Then comes the “inexpert hunter” season, and I’m not referring to the ones with guns. Some raptors are the victims of a bad winter, or the fact that they concentrated on those easy-to-kill grasshoppers while their siblings had graduated to more difficult prey. Along about December, we start to get the ones that nothing much is wrong with except starvation. Sometimes starvation has gone too far for them to make it; frus­trating and disappointing for us.

  We’ve gotten all sorts of birds over the years; our wonderful vet, Dr. Paul Welch (on whom may blessings be heaped!) treats wildlife for free, and knows that we’re always suckers for a challenge, so he has gotten some of the odder things to us. We’ve had two Great Blue Herons, for instance. One was an adult that had collided with a powerline. It had a dreadful fracture, and we weren’t certain if it would be able to fly again (it did) but since we have a pond, we figured we could support a land-bound heron. In our ignorance, we had no idea that Great Blues are terrible challenges to keep alive because they are so shy; we just waded right in, force-feeding it minnows when it refused to eat, and stuffing the minnows right back down when it tossed them up. This may not sound so difficult, but remember that a Great Blue has a two-foot sword on the end of its head, a spring-loaded neck to put some force behind the stab, and the beak-eye coordination to i
mpale a minnow in a foot of water. It has no trouble targeting your eye.

  We fed it wearing welding-masks.

  We believe very strongly in force-feeding; our experi­ence has been that if you force-feed a bird for two to three days, it gives up trying to die of starvation and begins eating on its own. Once again, mind you, this is not always an easy proposition; we’re usually dealing with fully adult birds who want nothing whatsoever to do with us, and have the equipment to enforce their preferences. We very seldom get a bird that is so injured that it gives us no resistance. Great Horned Owls can exert pressure of 400 ft/lbs per talon, which can easily penetrate a Kevlar-lined welding glove, as I know personally and painfully.

  That is yet another aspect of rehabbing that most people don’t think about—injury. Yours, not the bird’s. We’ve been “footed” (stabbed with talons), bitten, pooped on (okay, so that’s not an injury, but it’s not pleasant), gouged, and beak-slashed. And we have to stand there and continue doing whatever it was that earned us those injuries, because it certainly isn’t the bird’s fault that he doesn’t recognize the fact that you’re trying to help him.

  We also have to know when we’re out of our depth, or when the injury is so bad that the bird isn’t releasable, and do the kind and responsible thing. Unless a bird is so endangered that it can go into a captive breeding project, or is the rare, calm, quiet case like Cinnamon who will be a perfect education bird, there is no point in keeping one that can’t fly or hunt again. You learn how to let go and move on very quickly, and just put your energy into the next one.