Apex: A Hunter Novel Read online

  The first one rushed the Shield again, and this time I allowed him through. He was charging so hard that he ran right past me. I let him have it. I was using my assault rifle with steel-jacketed bullets, and at a short distance like this, I almost didn’t have to aim.

  They don’t do well with steel bullets or buckshot. Two in each knee, two in each elbow slowed him down; he dropped the club and turned with a howl to face me, and that was when Cielle got him.

  She was right; whatever she wanted to call her magic, it looked like a laser beam about an inch in diameter, and it went through his skull like a laser beam, too. Since he was turning as she nailed him, he spun as he collapsed. Cielle’s Hounds swooped down out of the sky to get his manna; mine held back, knowing I didn’t need extra magic energy at this moment.

  I let the female through. There was stirring and howls inside the building—must have been at least five or six more in there. Way more than the village could have handled on its own, especially with just conventional weapons. The female got the same treatment, and then things went quiet. Ogres weren’t as stupid as Gogs and Magogs; they had figured out that running out to kill us only got them dead.

  I’d have felt sorry for them, except that they eat humans, just like Gogs and Magogs do, and they prefer to eat children when they can get their hands on some. It’s really hard to have anything like sympathy for something that thinks the best possible start to the day is with a baby sandwich.

  Cielle said aloud what I was thinking. “We need a new tactic. Something to drive them out.”

  As she said that I saw her face light up. At the same time an idea popped into my head. “Skunk spray!” I said as she said, “That stink stuff you used on Ace!”

  So…she actually could come up with plans. Made me wonder if being paired up with Ace had impeded her. I could easily see him just taking over, making all the decisions, not even listening to her, and she’d just taken the path of least resistance.

  But it was pretty clear she was sharp and could think for herself.

  We nodded at each other and dug into our gear.

  Standard load-out these days included our gas masks, and both of us put them on. The Hounds, of course, had their own means of dealing with stink or toxic fumes. I dropped the Shield for a moment, cracked and shook up a chem-light, and tossed it into the dome. It took me three tries before I could get one I could see from where I was standing, but once I did, I put the Shield back up. The light would be my target.

  I’d been cautious when I’d unloaded the stink on Ace at the Trials, since I was inside the same Shield as he was. I didn’t need to worry about that today; I cranked the potency up as high as I could.

  The howls of outrage, followed by coughing and gagging, started almost immediately. The Ogres rushed the door in a mob, and I had a hard time just letting one of them through at a time.

  I fumbled the Shield once and let two through. “Look out!” I yelled. Cielle got one, missed the second by trying a hasty second shot, and the Hounds had to intervene to save my ass before she got it with a third shot.

  We stopped then, breathing heavily, and looked at each other. I could see she was angry. But I could also see she was keeping her mouth slammed shut on her anger.

  “My fault,” I said first, before she could speak.

  That surprised her for a minute—and I could guess why. I could never imagine Ace apologizing for anything.

  She took two or three measured breaths, then the anger faded and she shrugged. “The second one squeezed through. I’ll be prepared for more than one at a time from now on.”

  And that was it; we went back to work. After the first three went down, Cielle was powered up by her Hounds, and she was able to snap off laserlike shot after shot with ease. Between her magic and my rifle, we made short work of them.

  By the time we finished them off, all our Hounds were sated, and it was pretty clear that we made an excellent team. I dismissed the skunk-spell—it would be too cruel to subject those poor villagers to that—and called in for pickup while Cielle texted the mayor to let him know his building was clear. Ogres, thank goodness, were one of the Othersider types that would go to goo and sink into the earth pretty quickly after they were dead, so there wasn’t going to be anything to clean up.

  Our chopper arrived at about the time the villagers came to get their vehicles out, and I was happy to see that Cielle ran for it and jumped right in rather than standing around and doing fan service. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had, and I would have waited for her to sign autographs and all that. But the fact that she understood without my needing to remind her that we were on the clock just pushed her further up in my books. I hoped everyone else’s partners were working out just as well.

  And sure enough, we hadn’t been in the air more than ten minutes when we were diverted to handle a flock of Wyverns trying to make a communal nest. Despite the storm, it didn’t look as if we were going to get much of a respite.

  “Oh god,” Cielle moaned, putting her head back against the headrest in the chopper. “I think I’m going to eat everything in the mess, then fall on my face.”

  I had already fastened my chin strap and was as limp as possible. “Well, night shift just went on duty, so we’re done for the day. Think you can handle the pace?”

  She cracked open the eye nearest me. “If you can, I can.”

  I grinned. That was what I wanted to hear. I would have replied, but Kent came on the Elite general freq.

  “All incoming teams report to the armory. There will be something to eat and drink to tide you over until you can get real food.”

  We both groaned at that. Then we put our heads back and tried to get as much of a rest as we could on the ride.

  We had to wait while another chopper cleared the pad; there was one in the air behind us as well. It looked like the Elite had been spread all the heck out today, putting out lots of (relatively) little fires. We were both too tired to sprint for the building, but we did manage a weary trot and found about half of the day shift already in the armory ahead of us. True to Kent’s promise, there was a lot of ice-cold water and a tastier version of the energy squares waiting for us. When we were all sprawled on seats, munching and drinking, he looked around and smiled.

  “Since I don’t see any angry faces, can I assume this experiment is working?”

  We all chimed in, Elite and Hunters, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Cielle and I were about the fourth to speak. “Kent, I won’t say this went like clockwork,” I said. “But that’s just a matter of not Hunting together before. I can’t speak for actual statistics here, but it felt like we handled twice the Othersiders with half the effort it would take me alone.”

  I looked over at Cielle, who seemed a little cowed by so many Elite in the room; she took a long drink of water and gamely spoke up. “I don’t know about the ‘half the effort’ part, but I can keep up, and I’ll get better with practice. I’m still in.”

  About the only people who were a little cool on this were Knight and Scarlet, and after a little discussion it seemed to be more of a problem of Powers not meshing with their new partners than anything else. So there was some swapping around for tomorrow—neither Cielle nor I wanted to un-partner, of course—and Kent called an end to the meeting. He caught us before we left the room.

  “So. You two getting along well, I take it?” He raised an eyebrow.

  Cielle giggled, and for the first time she sounded like the Cielle that had hung all over Ace. I gave her a real close look and saw she was blushing slightly. Her posture had gone all girly; she’d ducked her head coyly to one side, and balanced most of her weight on one leg with the other foot just touching the floor with her toe. I realized I’d seen girls pose like that back home, when they were talking to boys they liked. She had a crush on Kent! Was that why she had volunteered? If so, it wasn’t stopping her from giving 100 percent and more. I just grinned and nodded. “It was just like I said, sir. Twice the result, half the effort, s
o far as I could tell.”

  He consulted his Perscom. “Statistics would seem to bear out your feelings, Joy. Cielle, your channel is going crazy over the new footage. You’ve skipped up three ranks since this morning.”

  Her face lit up. “I have?” she squealed, then got her composure back. “I honestly wasn’t thinking about that—” But she looked as if Kent’s words had given her back all the energy she’d expended.

  “Go eat half the mess, and get some rest,” Kent said, in a “brotherly” tone that told me he had noticed Cielle crushing on him, all right. “Tomorrow you have to do it all again.”

  When I got to my room, though, I threw myself down on the bed with my hands tucked under my head; I needed to think.

  I’d promised to help Josh without getting a chance to think things through, and that might have been a stupid move on my part. I knew for a fact that there was a power struggle going on between Abigail Drift and Uncle. I also knew for a fact that she’d use me to get to him. This might be a setup on her part; Uncle was in charge of all Hunters not in the army, and there had already been one traitor—Ace—among the Hunters. So if Drift was using Josh, getting him to talk me into helping him escape—was there some law against Psimons running away from PsiCorps? I was willing to bet there was; after all, there was a law that everyone with psionics had to be identified and trained by PsiCorps. Psimons were valuable assets to Apex. Josh running like this…would that be like a soldier deserting? And helping Josh would make me a traitor to Apex. Setting me up as another traitor would not just get rid of me, it would cast suspicion on Uncle. Nobody was blaming him for Ace at the moment, but if it looked as if I had turned my coat, well, that was a second Hunter gone bad on his watch. Plus, I was his niece, and he’d never escape getting tainted by my sins. It would be child’s play for Drift to get Uncle booted at that point and put someone of her choosing in his place.

  On the other hand, if Josh actually was in trouble, I owed it to him to help. If he vanished into that PsiCorps program that boosted Psimon powers at the expense of their lives…I would never forgive myself. I couldn’t let that happen, I just couldn’t.

  All right, then. There was only one thing to be done at the moment, and that was to take this whole problem to Uncle. I was reaching for the remote to wake up my vid-screen and make a call to him when the screen lit up.

  It was Kent. I sat up, both from surprise and because I didn’t want him to see me sprawled like a drunk on my bed. “Joy, the prefect is on the way over for a meeting and suggested you sit in on it.” His face and voice were utterly neutral. “He should be here in five minutes. Can you come to my office?”

  “Right away, sir,” I said, really glad now I hadn’t changed straight into sleep gear. My muscles protested, but I managed to lever myself off the bed.

  Just as I reached Kent’s office, I saw Uncle coming from the opposite direction. Kent opened his door. “Excellent timing,” he said. “Come with me, both of you.”

  I raised an eyebrow at Uncle, who shrugged. So he had no more idea what Kent had in mind than I did.

  But I quickly got the idea when Kent led us to the indoor garden and koi pond at the center of HQ. There were no electronic devices in here other than our own Perscoms, so there was nothing that could be surreptitiously turned on to eavesdrop. And the noise of the waterfall that kept the pond aerated would cover the sounds of our voices outside this room. Kent locked the door behind us. We all got fish food, sat on the raised edge of the pond, and started tossing bits to the slow-moving koi.

  “Psi-shields,” Kent said, and I obediently turned on the one built into my Perscom. Uncle didn’t move, and neither did Kent, so they must have already had theirs on. I didn’t keep mine on all the time; it gave me an odd feeling, like a faint ringing in my skull, and it made it really hard to talk to my Hounds.

  “So, Charmand, you indicated you had something to talk about involving your Psi-aide and Joy—that means Drift, then?” Kent said. My eyes widened just a little bit, and I nearly dropped all the fish-food pellets on the ground.

  “Yes,” Uncle said, and then recited a version of what Josh had told me, nearly word for word. Except that Josh had begged him for help.

  “Josh ambushed me this morning before we went on shift, and said nearly the same thing to me!” I blurted.

  Uncle nodded. “He told me he’d gone to you for help. If I am any judge of human beings at all, he’s terrified, and he is genuinely afraid that Drift is going to dragoon him into this project of hers regardless of his unwillingness.”

  “You both know this sounds very much like a trap, don’t you?” Kent finally said, frowning and throwing the last of his food to the fish, who surged for it, roiling the water. “If I were Abigail Drift, this is exactly what I would do in order to get you both out of the way. Drift isn’t stupid; she knows if she discredits you and leaves Joy alone, Joy will move heaven and earth to clear your name and put you back in power. And getting rid of Joy alone doesn’t accomplish her goal of getting rid of you. She has to get you both.”

  The lights were coming on all over the garden as night fell: soft, dim red lights that created a kind of cozy twilight. I listened to Kent and Uncle wrestle with the problem, then finally spoke up.

  “I guess Josh didn’t tell you, but I suggested we…get back together. That might stall Drift, if she thinks he can get inside my head and give her whatever the heck it is that she wants,” I said. “It’s not the world’s best idea, but it might buy us some time.”

  “It’s also not the world’s worst idea,” Uncle replied thoughtfully. “It’s not as if you’re going to be able to meet up in person for anything, with the Elite on twelve-hour shifts. But if Drift is still thinking in terms of the old normal, when the Hunters and even the Elite had plenty of downtime, she might not realize that for a while. She might just wait for you two to start going out on dates again, and it won’t occur to her for a while that dating isn’t going to be possible.”

  “It’s about as good a way of stalling as I can think of,” Kent agreed.

  “So I’ll go ahead and contact him on public channels and make up with him,” I said decisively. And then I added, “He’s never lied to me. I broke up with him in the first place because I thought PsiCorps was using him to get at me in order to get at you, Uncle. I know there’s no good reason to trust him, and all I have going for me is my gut, but…my gut says he’s never lied to me.”

  “I’ve trusted flimsier things,” Kent mused. “And I have to say, if this is a trap Drift is trying to set up, it’s not a very good one. It does depend entirely on all of us not talking to each other, which at least in the case of you and Joy is a rather stupid assumption.”

  “Don’t get cocky—” Uncle and I said at the same time. We looked at each other and smiled sheepishly.

  “Let’s treat her as if she’s a mastermind, because she probably is. If we overestimate her, we’ve lost nothing. If we underestimate her…” Uncle shook his head, and I swallowed. I could still vividly recall how Drift had looked at me, as if I were something on her plate she didn’t want, except to feed to the dog.

  “All right, then, we have a short-term plan, and we keep everyone in the loop on what’s going on,” Kent decreed. I nodded. Then I remembered something.

  “Do either of you know if there are people missing from the towns the Othersiders are hitting?” I asked. I knew better than to ask about places like Spillover. No one ever bothered to keep track of the poor castoffs who lived there.

  Kent raised an eyebrow. “How would I be able to tell people ‘missing’ from people ‘eaten’?” he asked, reasonably. “Why are you asking?”

  “I just wondered if there were people being carried off rather than killed on the spot,” I replied. “Still thinking about what that Folk Lord said. And…Josh said something about people going missing out there.”

  He nodded, then shrugged. “Nothing has been said to the Hunters about people being kidnapped. Right now, let’s concentr
ate on what’s in front of us. How are you going to convey information to the prefect?”

  “I can code things by referencing books we both know,” I said. “Uncle and I do that already.”

  “Smarter than using an actual code,” Uncle agreed. “All right, let’s go back to your office, Kent, and I can go over those reports on Joy’s bright idea. Joy, you get some much-needed rest.”

  “Thanks, I will,” I said, seeing no need to be formal right at that moment. I got up, gave them both an awkward little salute, and headed out.

  I sighed as I got to my room. It would be nice to be friends with Josh again.

  Too bad “friends” was going to be all I had time for.

  HOT WIND SCORCHED MY face. Dusana ran so fast the ground beneath us was a blur. I was really glad he didn’t have anything like a mane, or I’d have been beaten to death by it by now. Bya was just ahead of us, leading us through a twisty mess of magic tangle-traps only the Hounds could see—another one of Cielle’s special magic spells and one I hadn’t been able to master yet. Normally they were meant for much smaller Othersiders than a Drakken, and none of these traps were going to actually stop the Drakken we were currently leading, but we had figured they should start to slow him down as he accumulated them. Kind of like someone stepping in lots of the sticky flypaper we put out in high summer. By our reckoning when we’d made this plan, he’d be moving at half speed by the time we got to where Cielle would have a clear shot at him.

  That was the theory, anyway. In practice, well, it wasn’t working. The Drakken had blundered into dozens of the traps by now, and he wasn’t one bit slower.