Apex: A Hunter Novel Page 6

  I heard the thing’s tongue-jaw shoot out with a juicy flup, and my gut clenched as I instinctively ducked. Then I looked back over my shoulder. Suddenly the hot air around me seemed icy. “Cielle, this thing is as fast as ever, and we’re going to be in range quick,” I said over our freq. I hoped I didn’t sound as panicked as I was starting to feel. “You need to get off your shot before I have to give up and bamph away from him, because if I do that, he might come for you!”

  Cielle didn’t reply, but I didn’t expect her to. She needed to concentrate, since the target was moving faster than anything she had ever hit before. And much, much bigger than she had ever hit before. In fact, she had wanted me to call in a couple more Elite—we’d had our first argument over it. She’d had to cave because I pointed out there just weren’t any Elite to spare. You can do this, Cielle, I thought at her fiercely. You can do this.

  We came over the ridge that was blocking her view, practically flying. A split second later, so did the Drakken. Dusana and I turned to get him set up for the shot. He followed us like he was on a string, and in seconds we were running parallel to where Cielle was. I held my breath.

  The bright white beam of light and power flashed toward us—but it was lower than it was supposed to be. She was going to miss the head! I wrenched myself around on Dusana’s back, a dazzle-spell readied to blind the Drakken so we could get away…

  …just in time to hear the thing give out a piercing shriek that turned my insides to mush and see its front quarters collapse. It hit the ground, momentum still carrying it forward, limbs jumbling and flailing over its body, while Dusana wisely dodged to the right to get out of the path of the meat avalanche.

  Stuff was flying everywhere; we got pelted by debris as we put on more speed. We pulled up to a halt as the Drakken finally stopped somersaulting over itself, and we waited, tense and ready to run again in a split second if it showed any signs of recovery.

  The thing’s head reared up again, but I’ve killed enough animals, normal and Othersider, to know it was dying. It shrieked once more, nose pointing at the sky; then the head and neck fell limply to the ground with a huge thud and a cloud of dust.

  Cielle’s four Hounds came streaking in overhead to soak up the manna, and a moment later, the rest of my pack raced through the long wheat to join them. I got off Dusana so he could get his share, then started trudging the quarter mile or so toward Cielle, who was up in a tree with an unrestricted view of this side of the ridge.

  This was a farm that grew strictly wheat or wheat-like grains, but as with everything else since the Diseray, it was scarcely the monoculture such fields of grain used to be. There were at least six different varieties of wheat and similar grains sown in these fields, all carefully chosen so they would all ripen together—that way if a disease or pest got one variety, there’d still be something to harvest. I only recognized one; the rest were all new to me, which made sense, since these fields were several thousand feet lower than the fields of home.

  Cielle’s tree was just one of a tree line that divided one field from another. When I got there, Cielle was sitting on the ground with her back to the trunk. “You did it!” I called. “I knew you could! Great work!”

  “I didn’t think I could get the head-shot, he was going so fast,” she said, looking up at me wearily. “So I made the beam as big as I could and went for the body.”

  “You carved a big enough hole in him to drop him. Good call,” I said, and dropped down into the grass across from her. “That was picture-perfect. We can call this one a win.” I keyed in the HQ freq. “Team JC.”

  “Team JC, go.” Oh good. If they answered that fast, it meant no one was up to their asses in alligators, and we would get a little bit of respite.

  “Drakken down. Ready for recall.”

  “Team JC, roger. Got a chopper not far from you with room for one. Elite Joy, can one of you hold until the second chopper’s free?”

  Quick calculation told me that meant Hammer, Steel, Dazzle, and Tober were inbound; with Hammer and Steel in a six-man chopper, there really was only room for five. “Copy that, HQ, yes, I can hold, and Cielle could use about five thousand calories right now.”

  Cielle mouthed Thank you at me. I grinned.

  “Copy that, Team JC. Chopper will be there for Hunter Cielle in less than five.”

  “I’ll put up smoke.” I went out into the field and set up a flare in the dirt. Cielle stood up just long enough to open the Way; her Hounds came flitting back, looking sated, and dove through the Portal without stopping to land. That was some very pretty flying. As soon as they were safely Otherside, she dismissed it. Mine, greedy pigs, were probably vacuuming up every last bit of manna from the Drakken carcass—which would probably stay there until it was reduced to bones and scraps of skin by scavengers.

  By the time red smoke had risen about a thousand feet into the air, I heard the distant whumpwhumpwhump of the chopper. Cielle did too; she got to her feet and we both stood at the edge of the tree line to wait. The chopper popped up over the ridge and down again, no more than ten feet off the ground, the wheat fanning out under the downforce from its blades.

  The pilot was good; he dropped his skids right in between the rows to save the wheat, holding the chopper steady as a rock. Cielle ran out, staying low; when she got to the door, three pairs of hands grabbed for the shoulder straps of her backpack and hauled her in. The pilot rose straight up, swiveled the bird in place, then took off. I caught Steel waving to me from the door.

  “HQ to Elite Joy,” my radio said.

  “Go, HQ,” I replied.

  “Your ride will be there in about thirty minutes. We’ll call you at five so you can put out another marker. Meanwhile, relax and enjoy the view.”

  “Roger, HQ.” I went and put my back to Cielle’s tree and slid down it. The radio op had probably meant “enjoy the view” ironically, but I did enjoy the view. It was a lot cooler under the trees than out in the field. A light wind cut across half-grown green wheat, the closest thing I’ve ever seen with my own eyes to waves on a big body of water. And I liked all the sky, I seriously did. The only time I would see this much sky back home was if I was looking out a window at the Monastery, which is up above the snow line on the Mountain. Once below the snow line, the mountains around us cut off so much of the sky that sunrise was as much as an hour later than it was at the top of the Mountain, and sunset as much as an hour earlier.

  For once nothing was chasing me, I wasn’t chasing something, and I wasn’t completely exhausted. The water in my bottle was even still cool. I sipped and put it back in my pack.

  “It is a bucolic scene, is it not, shepherd?”

  My blood turned to ice, and I jumped to my feet. Lavender was no more than six feet away from me, gazing out at the field of wheat.

  He looked…exactly like he had the first time I set eyes on him, when he had stopped a train and tried to bargain with me for some of the people on it. Beautiful, of course—even the feral Folk were beautiful. But too beautiful, too perfect. Taller than a human, with a thin, seemingly delicate body and face, eyebrows like antennae, and pointed ears about as long as my forearm.

  He wore—well, I couldn’t tell if it was the same costume as before, but it was at least very similar, in the same colors. His long silvery-lavender hair, perfectly groomed and smooth as ice, was done in some sort of elaborate style with strings of sparkly beads behind his right ear. He had a silver headband stretched across his forehead, with a lavender stone in it that matched his lavender eyes. His costume was less warlike than Gold’s had been—it was all made of some soft, shiny silvery-lavender stuff, with floaty sleeves and lots of layers, and every visible bit of it was covered in silver embroidery and more sparkly beads.

  But this time, instead of floating a couple of feet above me, his feet were firmly on the ground. And he had no Shield.

  He glanced at me sideways, eyes glinting, mouth curving up ever so slightly. I felt the sudden agitation of my Hounds,
and knew that they were racing across the field to get to me.

  “You are in no danger from me, shepherd,” he said, as if he was reading my—

  Of course he was! Hastily I triggered my Psi-shield.

  That faint smile got just a fraction larger.

  My Hounds came tearing across the last few feet, then stopped dead. And stared at him. They packed up around and behind me but made no aggressive moves.

  “Peace, faithful ones,” Lavender said. “I told your shepherd I am no threat. And indeed, have I not given you ample evidence of that? I have helped you several times, aye, and saved your large companion as well. But you do well to be wary, for there are many others of my kind who are a threat to you, and to humans in general.”

  “The one in the gold armor,” I said. “Are you done being enigmatic now? Because all those guessing games of yours nearly got me killed last time you ‘helped’ me.”

  To my surprise, he chuckled. Like everything else about him, his laughter was beautiful. Possibly, quite literally, enchanting. “Impatient little mayfly. I will tell you a thing. My name is Torcion.”

  I nearly had a heart attack. The Folk never, ever tell us their names. As some of the old lore goes, if you know a thing’s name, you can control it magically.

  “Speak my name thrice, shepherd, and I will hear you wherever I am and come to speak with you.” His expression darkened. “But do not think to lure me into a trap with it. You shall not survive the attempt.”

  “I—wouldn’t do that,” I managed. And I knew in that moment it was a promise. He had never hurt me—in fact, he’d helped me. I didn’t know why, but he had. And he had told the truth; he had saved Steel from certain death back at the first Barrier Battle.

  His expression lightened again. He looked as if he was about to say more, but the radio crackled to life. “Elite Joy, your ride will be there in five.”

  “Roger, HQ,” I said, and started to get up to plant the smoke flare, only to sit back down again. I wasn’t sure how he’d take my getting to my feet—he might interpret it as a sign of potential aggression.

  “Go,” Torcion said, one side of his mouth quirking slightly. “We will speak again. Beware, there are those within your magic walls who serve only themselves, and would not hesitate to offer you up to the Alliance of Seven if it advanced their ambitions.”

  And with a gesture so casual it was almost absentminded, he opened a Portal behind him and stepped through it, leaving no sign he had ever been there.

  By day’s end, as usual, I was exhausted, but I knew that sleep was going to be hard to find. I finally brought Bya over as soon as I had finished my shower. What do you think? I asked him as I pretended to watch Apex News in bed, with Bya acting as a support and pillow behind my back.

  He gave you his true name, Bya replied, but there was doubt and reluctance that mirrored my own. I do not know what to think. Those of his realm beyond the Portal are enemies to me and mine.

  Huh. Two pieces of information about Otherside. That there were “realms” there, presumably separating types of Othersiders, and that there was fighting, or at least enmity, over there.

  What do you feel? I asked instead of probing him about what he thought. I had always been able to rely on the Hounds’ instincts. I was gambling I could trust them now.

  My head says it is foolish to trust him, but my instincts say we can, Bya replied after a very long pause. My instincts are seldom wrong. But…when they are wrong, they are very, very wrong. It means that the creature they are wrong about is clever and duplicitous enough to fool anyone, even me.

  What do the others think? I persisted because I knew there could be differences of opinion in my pack. I’d never interfered with that; Bya was pack alpha, and what he and Myrrdhin decided for the pack was what would be. But right now it might be a good idea to find out if there were any dissenters and hear them out.

  There is no dissent. Myrrdhin and Gwalchmai favor this Torcion—perhaps because their realm is nearer to that of his people than ours. That surprised me so much I nearly jumped.

  If that’s the case…I wondered. If they favor his people…

  I did not say that, Bya corrected, to my relief. I said they favor him. They know more of his people than I. I think they are probably better judges than I regarding whom to trust in this situation.

  Well, all right, then. Even though it went against the grain, even though it went against everything I had been taught…I would trust a Folk Lord. For now, anyway.

  I now had two people—or I guess you could say one person and one “creature”—who I was trusting despite certain misgivings. And with either of them, it was possible my trust was wildly misplaced.

  Josh and Torcion. Either of them could land me in more trouble than I could handle.

  I’d been exchanging texts and the occasional message with Josh after “making up” with him, but my schedule was giving me a reasonable excuse to keep interaction to a minimum. The only problem with that was—dammit, I was waffling. Half the time, I was dead certain he was telling me the truth, that Drift was about to take her ire out on him for protecting me. The other half of the time, I was certain he’d faked everything about being my boyfriend. I just didn’t know him like I thought I did, and these fractional bits of contact weren’t giving me any information.

  And I hated, I absolutely hated, what I had become. I never used to be suspicious of people. I never used to even think about politics and all the garbage it brings with it. All this sneaking around and thinking of plots and counterplots was not me. It wasn’t who I wanted to be.

  Before I went to sleep, I got into my archived messages and called up every exchange Josh and I’d had since he ambushed me in the hallway. Fortunately we hadn’t done too many face-to-faces, thanks to my insane schedule, so he just left messages. I studied what he said, and how he said it. And I honestly couldn’t see any indications he was acting. He appeared genuinely relieved in the first message he’d left.

  “Oh, remember that friend I told you about? Looks like things are working out for him,” he said on the screen. Everything about his body language was indicative of relief; his posture was relaxed, as were the tiny muscles around his eyes. Josh’s friend in the PsiCorps Admin must have told him he was safe again for the moment. “And Prefect Charmand is upgrading me to an office of my own,” he said. I assumed that meant Uncle had gotten the same message—that Josh was safe for now.

  The next several messages just reinforced my impression. But in the last one, just today, he was worried again. Not frantic but—“Office pressure sucks. I wish you could get a night off like we used to have.” He must have been feeling impelled by PsiCorps to make real contact with me again. When I recorded a return message I would in turn “remind” him that I had bigger things on my plate than going Straussing, just to reinforce what he was saying.

  If you keep studying those recordings you are never going to get any sleep, Bya reminded me.

  Then he made himself all soft and cushy, instead of supportive, and I shut the vid-screen and the lights off and gave in….

  As always, morning came too soon. I’d been jarred awake by a callout around three a.m. last night because they’d needed me for my nets. We’d faced the biggest flock of Nightwings anyone had ever seen. Nightwings are what they sound like: flying black critters with no discernible body that feed by enveloping the victim. They are a lot smarter than you’d think, given they mostly look like those ocean critters called “rays.” They know how to break windows or go down chimneys to get at their prey. The flock that had descended on yet another little town had been large enough to drain every Cit in the place twice over, if one of the creatures hadn’t gotten a little too eager and rushed in before the rest. People managed to get themselves and their kids into basements or windowless rooms and called for help, and that was where we had come in.

  Cielle’s big power hadn’t been of much use, but her winged Hounds were, and her nets were good enough to catch individual Ni
ghtwings. Meanwhile, those of us who could trapped them by the tens and twenties. The Hounds certainly ate well. If Nightwings couldn’t envelop you, they were pretty well helpless.

  I met Cielle at the door to the mess. We went and got our breakfast bowls and sat with Kent and Scarlet and their Hunter partners. Cielle looked as if she wanted to say something. Kent raised an eyebrow at her. “No, we’ve never seen a swarm like that before. I hope we’ve cleaned them out for a while.”

  “If they’d gotten into Apex…” Scarlet shuddered. So did I. I could just picture it, streets full of people out to have a good time, people who had no idea what those things were, didn’t know to run from them—it only takes a Nightwing a minute to absorb someone, and they can “eat” a dozen or more adults before they are sated. Cielle’s mouth formed an O.

  “Well, it didn’t happen. And now that we know they can flock in those numbers, I’ve alerted everyone that can spot them before they get to Apex,” Kent said firmly. “Bullets kill them very effectively, and a few helichopper gunships would go a long way toward thinning out the flock to a manageable size.”

  We’re being reactive, not proactive, I realized in that moment—and I knew that Kent, despite his outward confidence, was probably thinking the same thing.

  We needed to get a handle on this situation and start turning the tide.

  Right. If only we could just figure out how…

  WE’D SCARCELY FINISHED breakfast when we got the full callout signal, which was for us and the night shift; we groaned but shoved ourselves away from our tables and headed for the landing pad.

  As we all learned on the way to our rides, this one was for a city called Bastion that had wisely kept its physical walls and its artillery. And when we got there…

  It was hideous. The walls had been swarmed by an organized army of Othersiders. It looked like a replay of the first Barrier Battle. We all bailed without waiting for the choppers to set down and summoned, quick and dirty. The enemy knew we were coming—choppers are not quiet—and we knew they were going to be at our throats in minutes at best. Portals to the Otherside popped up all along our rough line, and the Hounds came pouring out. By the time we’d formed up, the Othersiders had turned away from their attacks on the walls. They formed into rough groups of Nagas, Ogres, and Minotaurs and came after us.