36 – The Love of the Hunt

  Ward leaped to the right, his powerful haunches launching him half a dozen yards in the flash of an eye. At the same time, the hunter’s crossbow twanged, and that silver-tipped bolt whistled through the air. Ward might have been fast, and he certainly moved further than a man could have, but he was large, and the hunter was good with his bow. The bolt hit him in the left thigh, burying itself into the meaty muscle there. Just like the bolt piercing his side, this one burned like fiery acid, and Ward, despite his inordinate tolerance for pain, struggled to put any weight on the limb when he crashed onto the ground.

  He growled and coughed his anger, glaring at the hunter, watching him smoothly put his foot into the bow’s stirrup, holding it down while he expertly cranked the string back. He already had a fresh bolt ready to slot in his other hand, its tip gleaming menacingly. Ward didn’t wait. Trying to ignore the horrific pain lancing through his guts, chest, and leg, he drove himself toward the hunter. He took two leaping strides, then launched himself at him, claws outstretched.

  The hunter didn’t panic. He was as smooth as clockwork as he slid the bolt into its slot, lifted the bow to his hip—he didn’t have time to bring it to his shoulder—and fired it directly at Ward’s chest. He might have killed him with that shot; if it had pierced his heart or lungs, perhaps the poison of the silver would have ruined Ward’s chances of recovery. He might have, but Ward’s werewolf instincts were primed, his reflexes like a cat’s in their precision and speed. He swiped his right hand at the incoming projectile, knocking it out of the air, and then, as the Hunter’s eyes finally went wide with panic, he was on him.

  Ward had no idea how much he weighed in his werewolf form, but it must have been a lot. He flattened the hunter, knocking the bow from his hand and driving him into the moist ash and dirt. As they slid, digging a furrow in the ground, Ward savaged him, clawing and biting at his throat. Meanwhile, the hunter had drawn a silvery knife, and he plunged it into Ward’s side again and again, each puncture like a lightning bolt of pain. He only managed three stabs, though, before the blood gushing from his neck became too much, and he couldn’t work his muscles any longer.

  Ward struggled to stand, part of him still fixated on the man fleeing to the horses, wanting to chase him down. His leg failed him, though, and he could feel the hot blood seeping out of the wounds in his side; something was stopping him from healing. He took two staggering steps and fell into the ash, grunting with pain as his great lungs heaved like a bellows.

  There was no doubt about it; part of Ward’s mind was like an animal’s, fixated on an instinctual desire to hunt and kill, to run, savoring the wind, the scents, the freedom, and the drive of nature. Another part of it was still a man’s, though, and Ward reasoned the silver stabbing into his side and leg was probably doing something to poison him, something that kept him from healing. So, with the last of his strength, he shifted to his right side, and, in a motion made awkward by the bunched muscles and stiff bones of his forelimbs, he probed his side for the bolt.

  When his long, clawed fingers touched the thing, it sent waves of pain through him like electrical currents, and he jerked his hand away. Growling with determination and anticipated pain, Ward forced himself to grasp the bolt, and before the fiery, horrific pain could register, he yanked it out. Even as the barbs tore his flesh further, relief washed over him like a cascade of warm water. Still, the blood continued to flow from his many wounds. With a grunt and a wheezing growl of agony, Ward grabbed the bolt in his leg and pulled, howling with agony as its barbs tore his flesh.

  Those barbs might have been his undoing if he weren’t so explosively powerful. When he yanked, it wouldn’t have mattered if the bolts were anchored in oak; they were coming out. His flesh simply tore as he pulled, widening the wounds, but maybe that was a good thing; he hoped the fresh, hot flows of blood would wash any residual silver out of the wounds. He lay there, panting and bleeding, for several minutes before he heard the sound of running feet and then Haley’s desperate cry, “Ward?”

  “Here,” he growled, his voice guttural but understandable. He’d forgotten how dark it was for the others. “Have,” he grunted, pushing himself onto his knees and knuckles, “to catch the runner.”

  He saw Haley approaching warily, eyeing his dark form among the shadows. “Were you hurt? I heard the horse galloping away as I ran through the grove.”

  Ward growled and coughed a curse, but it was garbled by his bestial rage. He pushed himself to his feet, realizing he’d lost much of his wolfen form. He was bipedal again, and though his fingers were tipped in claws, the black fur on his arms was gone. He looked down and saw his bloody human body. Even so, he wanted to catch that horse, and other mounts were waiting there on the road. He took another step, staggered, his knees wobbling, and fell to his butt. “Shit.”

  “Ward, I can’t see very well, but it smells like blood. Are you hurt?”

  “Yeah,” he groaned, probing his side, finding the wound where the bolt had pierced his flesh much smaller and barely bleeding. “I’m healing, but I think I lost a lot of blood.”

  “We have two prisoners; Lisa’s watching them. Even so, I understand what you mean about stopping the runner. Should I go after him?”

  “You can’t see. Can you run and get my pack? Light a torch on your way back. I just need some damn pants and a healing tonic, then I have to catch that guy. If he gets back to town, everything turns to shit.”

  “Here.” Haley stepped forward, holding something out. Ward took it—a small glass vial.

  “I had a couple on me.”

  “Thanks,” Ward grunted, downing the tangy, honey-sweetened healing draught. A wave of warmth spread through his adrenaline-soaked limbs, and he immediately felt better. “I still need some pants and my—your dad’s—sword if you can spot it.”

  Haley didn’t respond; she just turned and ran off into the darkness, likely using the firelight in the cabin as a guide. Ward scanned the orchard and saw another light, a lantern, and he was pretty sure he could see Lisa standing in its glow. He hoped they’d secured the prisoners well. Tentatively, he clambered to his feet and tried walking in a circle. His knees didn’t wobble.

  He knew the healing tonic sped things up in a person, most notably the mending of flesh. He was pretty sure it also cranked up blood production and metabolization, too. His stomach rumbled, and his hunger clawed at his guts, desperate to be fed. His body was ripping through its stored reserves, the healing tonic having kick-started his lycan regeneration. He was starving, and he knew if he were fully wolfed-out, he would probably tear the hunter’s corpse to shreds.

  He shook his head, his lips twisting into a disgusted frown. “No, I wouldn’t. I’d go get me one of those horses.” While waiting for Haley, he stalked over to the hunter’s body, noting a brace of silver bolts in the thick, glistening blood sheeting the man’s chest. Something tickled his nose, and Ward leaned close and sniffed. As he caught a whiff of the man’s well-oiled, hooded leather cloak, Ward had to turn away and sneeze. Something in the oil, an herb of some sort, was overpowering his sense of smell.

  Thudding steps approaching brought his attention to Haley’s running return, this time with a bobbing, jouncing lantern held in one hand. Ward’s pack was on her shoulders, and, in her other hand, he was relieved to see the sword he’d dropped somewhere along the way. How had she spotted it in the dark? Ward unclasped the dead hunter’s cloak and yanked it off the body, holding it in front of his nakedness as Haley’s circle of lantern light encompassed him. She set the pack at his feet, and he nodded. “Thanks. How’d you see the sword in the dark?”

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  She pointed to her strange, pale eyes. “When there’s another light around, everything gets brighter for me. The firelight in the cabin works great.”

  “Shit, I forgot about that.”

  Haley smiled, and he could see dots of blood on her cheeks and chin, no doubt splattered there as she beat the snot out her share of hunters. She turned her back to him, granting a little privacy. “I’ll help Lisa with the prisoners, gather some of the horses, and come after you.”

  Ward dropped the smelly leather cloak, yanked open his pack, cursing his lost boots and lack of a spare pair, and then pulled out some pants and pulled them on. “Do that and loot the bodies, too. Make sure you collect this cloak. I want to have an alchemist tell me what kind of oil is on it. It makes it hard for me to smell anything else when it’s around.”

  “Um, right, we can do that. Are you sure you can catch that guy? He’s already been riding for five minutes or so.”

  “Yeah. I’ll catch him. It’s black as pitch out here, right? I don’t think a horse will gallop in this kind of dark, and he still needs to wind his way up that narrow road to the highlands.” Ward wasn’t sure where his confidence came from. He supposed it was the wolf speaking; how could prey outrun him?

  “You’re right about horses not wanting to run if they can’t see. Still, it sounded like it was galloping…”

  “Only at first. I can still hear it.” Gripping his bare sword, he turned toward the marshy ground. “Please try to find my boots and my sword belt. I hope I didn’t wreck ‘em. Don’t worry about hurrying. Do a thorough search of these assholes.”

  With that, he started loping over the cold, squelching ground toward the road. In all honesty, he found the going easier in his bare feet than he had with his boots on. He didn’t sink as much, and so far, he hadn’t encountered anything sharp. He crossed the field in less than a minute, noting that the ten horses still standing on the side of the road were tethered to each other, a long rope running through each of their bridles.

  When the animals began to snort and stamp, their eyes wide at his approach, Ward tried to calm his breathing and push the wolf down as far as he could. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to explain how he did that to another person. It was instinctual and felt a lot like trying to swallow an emotion—uncomfortable but possible. Even so, the horses shied away from him as he approached, but a few soothing words and a gentle pat on a big stallion’s shoulder seemed to calm him.

  Ward pulled the tether line out of his bridle, and with an “Easy, boy,” he stepped into the stirrup and pulled himself up. The horse stamped and chuffed, moving forward and backward a little, but when Ward put a firm hand on the reins and steered him back toward Westview, the animal didn’t resist, didn’t bolt, and didn’t try to throw him. He was a big horse—bigger than Nutmeg by a couple of hands—and when he began to move, it took Ward a minute or two to get used to his lumbering gait.

  “C’mon, boy. Can you trust me? I can see fine. Let’s pick it up.” Ward kicked his heels and snapped the reins lightly, and the horse surprised him by breaking into a ground-devouring trot. Ward grinned, guiding the animal up the winding path into the highlands. He was wearing nothing but his pants and still clutched his naked sword, but he felt good. He liked being on the hunt. Had he always, or was it part of the lycan bloodline? The more he thought about it, the more he knew he’d always been kind of a hunter. He’d gotten addicted to catching criminals, after all, hadn’t he?

  The thought was an echo of comments he’d heard from people in his life—his ex-wife, his infrequent girlfriends, his sister, his friends, even his “lazy” coworkers. He was “addicted” to work. He wasn’t present when he wasn’t on the job. It was true; Ward had lived to work; he hadn’t worked to live. He’d often argued that he’d be the same no matter what sort of job he had, but that was bullshit. The truth was that he enjoyed the puzzle, the hunt, and, more than anything, catching the bad guy.

  As he rode, he strained his lycan hearing, trying to pick out the sound of his quarry’s horse over the thunder of his own steed’s passage. For a long time, he didn’t have any luck; his horse was too noisy, his thudding steps echoing too much off the rocky hillsides, but when Ward cleared the last stretch of upward winding road and came out on a flat stretch that passed over a grassy, highland meadow, he caught the faint thuds of a distant horse, and it didn’t sound like anything more than a trot.

  “Let’s go, big guy. We got this. Straight ahead.” Ward tried to urge the stallion into a gallop, and when it didn’t respond to coaxing, he tried sterner methods. “Yah!” he hollered, snapping the reins against the animal’s neck, leaning forward, and thumping his heels into his flanks. The stallion whinnied, clearly aggravated and frightened, but it stretched its loping pace, kicking into a proper gallop. Ward laughed and continued to encourage the big horse. “Yah! Yah!” he cried, moving with the rhythm of the horse’s rolling muscles and bones.

  He only galloped for a few minutes before seeing the running hunter’s horse in the road ahead. It stood out like a torch in the grays of Ward’s night vision, and when Ward realized it wasn’t moving and didn’t have a rider on its back, he immediately panned his gaze left and right. He saw another brightly lit, living creature lurking behind a tall scrub brush. Ward hauled on the reins, slowing the stallion about a hundred yards from the other horse, and the figure off to the side stood and cried out some harsh words of power. “Vrahl ignarak!”

  The words exploded into the night, violent and angry, and Ward leaped from the saddle, slapping his horse on the rump on the way. As his feet hit the ground, he saw flickering orange lights rippling on the ground and knew the other sorcerer had thrown a fireball his way. The stallion screamed a terrified whinny and bolted while Ward held up Haley’s sword, runes blazing with baleful, red menace.

  Just as before, the weapon pulled the fireball into it, and Ward knew better than to try to hold onto it as the runes blazed with brilliant light. He dropped it to the road and charged the sorcerer, stretching out his hand and firing off his last mana bolt, “Vrakkun khorvek!”

  In the pale light of the blue-white ball of chaotic mana, Ward could see the other sorcerer struggling to stand. His eyes shed tears of blood, his nose and mouth were likewise bloodied, and his pale flesh was sallow as a corpse’s. He made a feeble attempt to sidestep Ward’s mana bolt, but it hit him square in the chest, devouring part of his shirt and then entering his body. The man screamed, his eyes crackling with radiant mana-hued light, his white hair standing on end, and his arms outstretched, fingers splayed.

  Ward watched him carefully as he continued to approach. He wondered what the mana bolt was doing. Was it tearing up the man’s mana pathways? Was it overloading his mana well? Whatever it was, it seemed to be agonizing. The sorcerer danced and screamed, and then, to Ward’s horror, his eyes burst, and he fell to his knees and then onto his face, unmoving. The sight of the man’s blazing eyes spraying out in a shower of mana-limned blood that sparked and sizzled on the cold yellow grass was enough to stop Ward in his tracks. He looked around the suddenly quiet meadow, almost hoping someone else could corroborate what he’d seen.

  The hunter’s horse still stood in the middle of the road, and his stallion had come to a stop on the close by it. Nothing else stirred. Ward hesitantly approached the man’s body, incomprehensibly weirded out by his own magic. Why had it killed him this time and not the first time he’d hit him with the same spell? Had the first bolt done some damage, and this second one had simply pushed him past the limit? Judging by the sorcerer’s bloody tears and nose, he’d been under plenty of strain—either from Ward’s previous attack or from using spells that were a bit too hard for him.

  If he’d been wearing boots, Ward would have kicked the guy onto his back, but he wasn’t, so he bent to flop him over with his hand. He was light, very thin, and unburdened by armor or a pack. Ward had vague hopes of finding the fellow’s spellbook, but he wasn’t sure he would; if Ward had a house in the city, he’d probably leave his grimoire locked away in a secret space. The dead sorcerer had some nice-looking rings on his hands, and Ward could see a polished amber amulet on a silver chain around his neck.

  Ward hadn’t been squeamish before, and now that he’d woken up the wolf inside himself, he certainly wasn’t afraid to squat beside the corpse and strip the valuables off it. In addition to the jewelry, he found a pouch containing more than four hundred glories tied to the man’s waist. Ward stood and was about to walk over to the sorcerer’s horse when he saw the man’s long, wooden staff lying near his feet.

  Ward stooped to pick it up and found it warm to the touch. The wood was smooth and polished but very light. He studied it, squinting in the darkness, his lycan night-vision good at making out shapes and living creatures but not fine details on close objects. Even so, as he ran his thumb over the staff’s surface, he could pick out dark shapes in the wood that reminded him of runes and glyphs he’d seen on enchanted objects like the box stolen from his hotel room. “Huh. Magic, maybe.”

  He carried the staff over to the sorcerer’s horse, reaching up to pat its sweat-lathered shoulder. “Easy, girl. You’re done running for now.”

  A lantern dangled from a metal rod attached to the sorcerer’s saddle horn and, slung over the horse's rump, was a single saddle bag, the other side weighed down with a bedroll. He unbuckled the bag, digging through it, still hoping to find a grimoire, but all he came up with was a flint and steel, a flask of lamp oil, and a cloth-wrapped bundle of food—cured meats, cheeses, and a heel of sourdough bread. Ward took a minute to light the lantern and retrieve his sword, then sat on a large boulder nearby, eating the dead sorcerer’s food while he waited for Haley and Lisa to catch up to him.

  Neon Dust