The Sylph Hunter (23 page)

Haru listened to his brothers plan their future without participating. He really hadn’t spoken much since Fareeda was freed. She didn’t have any need to speak, so he didn’t feel any real urge to.

The urges he did have were a lot more direct. Standing at the window to the suite he’d taken, he looked out at his brothers swirling over the buildings in the hive, already zeroing in on the men below, and turned back to the wide bed behind him. Fareeda was asleep, her thin, gray hair spread out over the pillow.

She was weak and frail and beyond mad from abuse, but he didn’t see her that way. He saw only the young woman he’d known and loved so long ago, and the pattern through her that resonated so deeply within him. It was as delicate and gossamer as a spiderweb, but so achingly beautiful as well. She needed special care and the best protection he could provide her.

He looked back out the window again, thinking over all the things he’d heard his brothers say. He hadn’t gone out with them, but their descriptions were buoyed by visual images and he could see what they’d seen in the city as clearly as if he’d been there.

He bit the perfect lip he’d formed for Fareeda’s appreciation, thinking. This was a queenless hive, hard to imagine but true. There was no leader here who could truly guide them, no one who would. The other battlers cheered about victories and selections, and how the hive was going to thrive.

All he saw was it falling apart.

Haru thought some more, dwelling on things he truly didn’t like. This place felt safer than that target of a floating palace, but not by much, and not for much longer. Not with the internal hatred he saw coming. Not without a leader who actually took charge. The queen had told him to do what he thought was right, even if that included abandoning her. Perhaps it meant abandoning everyone else as well. He took a deep breath and looked at Fareeda. He’d promised her she’d always be safe. As safe as he could make her.

Haru crossed the room and gathered her up, blankets and all, the old woman barely stirring as he cradled her against his chest and carried her out of the room. With everything he knew and felt and heard, Haru believed there was only one place in Meridal right now where she would be safe.

One-Eleven fed just enough from his quintet of masters to make himself feel flush again, and then he snatched them all up and carried them inside his cloud body to the square outside the hive. There he dumped them on the cobblestones, feeling a great weight lift off of him as he did so. Around him, other battlers did the same, tossing men out to join the crowds gathered there. One-Eleven didn’t much care how loudly they shouted or what they said, though he did notice they were starting to withdraw from the rear, men yelling at the others to come with them, that there was somewhere safe. They’d be killed if they stayed.

He supposed they would. One-Eleven looked around at the crowds, thinking of a new idea. Apparently, the prospect of having a female master made him clever. He had to be, he thought. Strength alone wouldn’t be enough to protect Zalia.

He flew upward, abandoning the men who’d fed him for so long as he searched out Tooie. He found him farther across the square, watching sadly while two battlers peeled a water sylph away from a scrawny, frightened-looking man. One-Eleven ignored her misplaced loyalty as he looked at the lead battler.

I have an idea,
he told him.

Another idea?
Tooie asked flatly. One-Eleven still preened at the recognition.

Watch the men here,
One-Eleven suggested.
When the Hunter starts eating them, we can target it.

Tooie turned toward him, his great, swirling lightning eyes regarding the older battle sylph. It was a bit strange to have the lead battler be younger than so many of them, but that was the queen’s choice and it did make it so much easier to bully him into doing what the rest of them knew was right.
What?
Tooie said.

Other battlers nearby heard them and converged, the lightning flickering wildly inside them.

That’s a great idea!

Do you think it’ll come after them today? We could kill it today if it did.

Brilliant!

Their adulation washed over One-Eleven and the lightning in him increased in happiness. This was going so well. Years of inferiority were washing away from him and he knew it was because of Zalia. He never could have conceived of any of this if he hadn’t known she was safe in the hive, waiting for him. A sudden, sobering thought occurred to him and he hoped Tooie wouldn’t put him on guard duty today. He still needed to go back to her and take her to the queen.

Tooie, however, hadn’t seemed to quite embrace the idea. He spun in place, trying to see the battlers who crowded around him, all of them clamoring excitedly. Everyone agreed with the idea of using the human men as bait to protect the women and the hive. One-Eleven really didn’t understand how Tooie could resist that much pressure without a queen to support him, but for a surprisingly long time, he did.

Only a few blocks over, the Hunter listened to the battlers’ plan. It hovered next to a building with its tendrils hanging in an alleyway used infrequently enough that only a few men wandered into its grasp. That was a good thing for now. They’d been noticing their fellows vanishing, sometimes from only dozens of feet away from them, and it could sense their terror, if not understand their words.

It could feel their anger as well, at the stealing of their females. The Hunter didn’t really care about that, having its own plans for breaking into the hive, but it did care about this sudden idea of using bait. It had hoped they wouldn’t think of that. The battlers couldn’t see it, but they could figure out where it was if they saw its food eaten, and they could manage enough firepower to eliminate all of its tentacles if it wasn’t careful. Worse, a truly lucky shot could eliminate
it
.

It looked at the men milling around the square. It wouldn’t eat that great a concentration of food all at once, even if there weren’t battle sylphs spreading out to watch for it. To do that would just make it rise and give it to the winds, which it didn’t want. It was better to graze from the edges as it had always done, to eat them slowly and only glut on the hive when it was time to trust to the winds and go.

It watched the men starting to leave, not understanding what compelled them, but pleased to see it. If they traveled away from the hive, they would be easier to hunt, and if they spread out, they were less likely to even realize they were being hunted.

The Hunter looked toward the battlers, not concerned about them, and turned away, wandering off through the streets and going unnoticed as it picked up a man here, and there, and there…

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

F
eeling very much as though he didn’t belong there and that everyone had to be staring at him—which of course, they were and he needed them to be—Devon stood on top of a crate next to the small, domed entrance to the underground complex and tried not to sound like an idiot while Airi did something with the air to make his voice project.

“I know none of you have any real reason to trust me,” he said to them, sweating at the murmurs of agreement while hundreds of men glared at him, all of them angry and frustrated. “I can understand that. But whether any of us like it or not, what I’m telling you is the truth. The sylphs accidentally released some kind of predator into the city that they can’t kill. That’s why the battlers are taking all the women. They want to keep them safe, but they don’t care if every last one of us mere menfolk gets killed.”

“And you do?” one man shouted from the front ranks. He kept glaring at Zalia, who stood by Devon’s feet.

“None of us want to be eaten,” Devon raised his fists over the crowds, “and I don’t want the battlers thinking that we’re just going to die for their convenience!” A new murmuring started at that. “We can be safe in there,” he shouted, pointing at the entrance to the pens. “The sylphs built a dome? We don’t need them. We can go underground.”

“You’ve got no proof there’s a danger!” someone else shouted.

That started a roar of protest, some in agreement with the man, most—to Devon’s relief—not.

“You’re blind! You’ve seen the battlers take the women!”

“I saw a dozen people vanish from behind me,” another shouted. “Fifty feet back they were and when I turned around they were gone. There was blood everywhere. I ran for my life!”

“I saw buildings pulled apart and that wasn’t no battler who did it!”

“Every three or four streets, there’s blood!”

I guess they don’t need much convincing,
Airi said.

No, Devon mused. They didn’t. The whole city had an air of something wrong to it, and even in the short time he’d been here, he’d seen it. How much more obvious must it be to men who’d lived here their entire lives? Just standing here, he felt an itch between his shoulder blades and kept wondering if the men before him would start disappearing, or the buildings tear apart.

His mouth felt dry. “Get into the tunnels,” he shouted anyway. “Bring as much food and water as you can find. Hurry!”

Men started moving, most of them carrying whatever food they still had, having brought it out of hiding like Zalia did once the battlers passed. Devon had no idea if it would be enough, and rather doubted it would, but that would have to wait. For now, they needed to get underground and hope the feeder pens would be deep enough without sylphs to seal the way in. He was sure there were a thousand logistical problems he wasn’t thinking of, but he could only do one thing at a time.

“There are a lot of men still at that sylph hive,” one old man pointed out to him as he passed, carrying a crate filled with live chickens. He looked withered and tired, his expression resigned at yet another disaster to deal with.

“I know,” Devon assured him, clapping the man on the shoulder and urging him on toward the entrance. Getting in was slow going through such a small door, but no one was fighting yet. If the Hunter attacked, there’d be a panic and no one would survive.

He looked at Zalia, standing loyally at his side. “You should go inside.”

She looked at him nervously. “I’m not leaving you.”

“Zalia,” he protested, much as he liked having her there. She made him feel good, but he didn’t want her in danger just to make him feel better. She needed to go back to the hive and try to negotiate a truce with the battlers, before they decided to continue the insanity by doing something like breaking into the feeder pens and taking whatever food they did have, but he wouldn’t send her until he found a way to do so that was safe. Despite how it was likely the best way, if not the only one, he couldn’t bring himself to want a battle sylph to snatch her up and take her back. Besides, they seemed to feel they were done capturing all the women. None of the men had seen any for a while now.

She shook her head, her lips pressed together. “I’m the only woman here. It wouldn’t be safe.”

Devon hesitated, but only for a moment. Of course it wasn’t safe. This wasn’t the Valley. These men were frightened and angry, some could end up being violent, and any battler who came to her rescue would just drag her back to the hive. Even worse, if the battler was in a bad enough mood, he might decide to take out his anger on all of them.

“Okay,” he agreed, reaching down to squeeze her hand, remembering again their intimacy with a warmth that was so much nicer than the heat of the day.

The men continued to file past, young, old, many of them bringing male children or infants with them. All of them looked frightened and as eager to get under cover as Devon. They kept looking over their shoulders at the clear sky and the spot between Devon’s shoulder blades continued to itch.

I want to go underground,
Airi whimpered.

“I know,” he murmured, hopping down off the crate to Zalia’s side when she looked inquiringly at him. He felt the same way.

Still, he stood there with Zalia and Airi, letting the men shuffle past. Maybe he was just deluding himself, but Devon felt that if he stayed there, everyone would see him and stay calm themselves. People need to see that someone is in charge when they’re uncertain, Leon had told him. Devon didn’t think he could be anything like Leon, but he could fake it, at least for now. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to keep them from panicking if they were attacked though. The best he could hope for was to keep them moving and pray it didn’t happen.

He also stayed to take a mental tally of the amount of food coming in. There were a lot of men who didn’t have anything and those who did didn’t have nearly enough. Not to feed so many for long.

Devon looked toward the hive that loomed over the rest of the city, his mind churning away despite his rather honest desire for it to just stop. He had hundreds of men filing past him right now, all of them as safe as he could make them, but who knew how many men were still outside the hive, too angry to listen to the word spreading about the Hunter, or expecting they would be granted a place in the hive if they waited long enough.

Leaving them there would make it a lot more likely the rest of them would survive, he thought. There wasn’t enough food for these men, let alone so many more. The battle sylphs had taken too much. It made sense to save only those he could, instead of risking mass starvation.

The only problem with that idea was that it was battler logic and Devon wouldn’t do it.
Couldn’t
do it. Devon closed his eyes and took a deep breath, slowly letting it out again.

“What is it?” Zalia asked. “Are we going inside now?”

Devon felt that same horrendous itching between his shoulder blades that screamed he was nothing but a target and an easy meal out here—he and both the females he loved the most. He hadn’t wanted Zalia to go back with the battler to the hive, not with the risk of the creature stumbling right into the Hunter. He hadn’t wanted to stay aboveground for the exact same reason. The way back was nothing more than a gauntlet now, filled with the blood of the dead and only an idiot or the truly desperate would risk it.

“No,” he said at last, feeling Airi press against him while he looked into Zalia’s wide black eyes. “We have something we need to do first.”

One-Eleven floated over the crowds in weary contentment. The females were safe in the hive, if still a little upset about it, and the men were gone. It was just sylphs and women now, as it should be.

And camels, he thought to himself, passing a nervous-looking herd. He could hear goats as well, bleating somewhere among the stacks of food they’d liberated. Earth and air sylphs were working to sort the foodstuffs and take them to storage, and crates flew through the air or flowed along the ground as they were carried to their destinations.

He circled the women again, moving around and through his brothers. The women were upset and yelling to be let out, but they didn’t really understand the situation. They’d calm down eventually, and of course, they’d be let out, once the Hunter was gone.

That was really the only part of this that bothered him. Every instinct he had said to kill the Hunter, but they couldn’t find it. The only thing the elementals said they could do was wait for it to get hungry and leave in search of more food. It wasn’t fair. He wanted to destroy it.

Maybe he should suggest killing all the men outside the hive, One-Eleven mused. Then the Hunter would leave sooner.

Yahe swept down beside him, his pattern tight with anticipation.

Tooie says you can go. Me, I’m heading straight to Kiala. It’s been days since I’ve seen her. She’s furious right now.

Really?
One-Eleven squealed. That meant he could go to Zalia, and once she was his master, he’d be able to feel her emotions like Yahe could Kiala, no matter how far apart they were. Even feeling her anger would be a gift.

Really,
Yahe told him and flitted away, headed for the exit he’d need to get to his master. Other battlers were dispersing as well, though an unlucky few stayed hovering over the women, watching to make sure none of them were hurt or tried to do anything silly, such as leaving.

One-Eleven darted toward the apartment where he’d left Zalia, eager for her company and warmth. He’d hated to leave her so soon after he’d made love to her, but duty was inviolate. He’d spend as much time as he could with her now, and given a choice, he’d never leave her again.

He swept down to the apartment and in through the open window. As his pattern wasn’t tied to hers yet, he didn’t realize that Zalia wasn’t there until he was in the room and didn’t see her.

One-Eleven skidded to a halt, lightning flickering through him in confusion as he floated there and looked around. The bed was made and her clothes were gone. Uncertain, he moved forward, looking into the other room of the apartment and shifting to his human form to call her. “Zalia?” There was no answer, and somehow, the place felt abandoned. It made him nervous. “Zalia!”

Where would she go? Was she looking for him? One-Eleven turned and ran for the window, diving out and changing to a cloud as he did. The crowds at the gate. She must have gone to join them. Humans liked being around other humans, didn’t they? She must have wanted company after her father was ejected from the hive.

She wasn’t going to be mad at him about that, was she?

One-Eleven raced back to the exit, reviewing his memory of her pattern. He couldn’t track her over distances yet, but he could certainly pick her out of a group if he was close enough, even if he couldn’t see her. It would make searching the crowd easier.

He arrived only a minute later, swooping over the women while they ducked and screamed.

Hey!
one of the battlers left to watch them shouted.
Don’t scare them!

Sorry,
One-Eleven muttered, searching through the women with his vision and his senses, looking for Zalia’s specific pattern. He’d learned it when he first saw her and becoming intimate with her only made him know it more thoroughly. There was no way it could be hidden from him, and she wasn’t there.

With a flash of near panic that made the guarding battlers rumble, he turned and rushed back to the apartment, hoping he’d just missed her. He crashed through it, careless in his worry, but found nothing. Flitting out the window, he raced to the fountain that provided most of the drinking water, thinking she must be there. A lot of women were, most of them ex-concubines who were content to be in the hive, but Zalia had never been a concubine and they wouldn’t have known her if she passed. Nor would the sylphs waiting there, since she didn’t have One-Eleven’s pattern in her.

Has anyone seen a woman named Zalia?
he wailed, really starting to get frightened as he raced through the hive, heading for where the food was being stored and the kitchens set up. Nothing. He raced back along the outer wall, searching.
She’s a beautiful woman. Has anyone seen her? I can’t find her!

Battlers swooped around him, drawn by his distress and the fear of a threat to a woman.
Where did you see her last?
one asked.

At the apartment where she’d been sleeping,
he wailed.
Before the storm. We’d just made love.