Elite: A Hunter novel (19 page)

Then all other thoughts were driven right out of my mind as the battlefield frequency erupted with voices, shouting, even screaming. Then the cam just went dead—and a gale-force blast of wind hit the town so hard that the buildings shook as the smoke was driven right out of the streets. My attention was diverted to the sky above the area where the battle was going on—to eyes able to see magic, it was like an artillery barrage or fireworks going off. Lots and lots of magic energy careening off into the air. My heart stopped dead. I had
never
seen that much magical energy all in one place before in my entire life—and this was just the residual leakage from whatever was happening on the battlefield!

Then…it all just
stopped.

That was when the battlefield comm channel erupted in confused shouts. In all the babble, I could only make out one thing:
“He’s gone!”

I crouched over my Perscom, concentrating on the voices while my confused Hounds gathered around me and people yelled at each other—questions, recriminations, even some accusations. Finally, after about fifteen minutes of this, I figured out
who
it was who had disappeared.

It was Ace.

And I wanted to scream with anger and frustration, and I wanted to beat myself in the head until I was unconscious. Because I had known, I had
just been told
that something was going to happen with Ace, and I had blown it because I hadn’t passed the information on
immediately
.

Oh ye gods, what had I done?

OH GODS.
THAT WAS all I could think, as the choppers came for us.
Oh gods.
Because what else could I think? I
had
the intel, the information was in my hands, and instead of getting on the comms to Kent, I’d wasted time looking for combat cams. I could have stopped Ace escaping, and I hadn’t. Forget how well I’d handled the Gog and Magog; this canceled out every bit of that.

Because my first concern hadn’t been for my team, or for the Elite, or the Hunters, or anyone in the whole damn battle but myself. I’d been terrified Ace was coming after me, and that was all I had thought about. I’d let
everyone
down in that instant of selfishness.

Don’t tell,
snapped Bya in the next instant.

Not even Uncle?
I thought back at him.

Bya shook his head.
No one.
Then as my legs gave way and I sort of folded up on the ground, he made his fur all soft and so did the rest, and they all clustered around me until I was encased in a nest of Hounds. I pulled off my gas mask and cried, partly because I was scared, partly because I was exhausted, partly because I was so sick at what I’d done, or rather, hadn’t done, but mostly because I just wanted all this to
stop
. I wanted people to stop trying to use me. I wanted people to stop trying to
kill
me. I didn’t want to have Folk showing up and delivering cryptic messages. I wanted things to be simple again, where all I needed to do was Hunt Othersiders and do my job well and everything else would take care of itself. I had
thought
everything would be all right, and now it was going all wrong again, and I was running out of ideas and energy.

I am not a pretty crier. My nose got all clogged up, my face got all hot and raw, and my eyes swelled up. There were some rags in my backpack because it’s always a good idea to have clean rags no matter where you are, and they were all soggy and nasty by the time the chopper came to pick me up. I sent the Hounds home as it landed. There were two guys who were wounded, but not badly, and a medic in it already. The medic gave me a sharp look when he saw my face as I climbed in.

“Are you hurt, Hunter?” he asked. I shook my head, still not able to talk coherently without bursting into tears.

He gave me a sympathetic look and patted my shoulder. He was an older guy, old enough to have kids my age, actually. “It’s been a long, long day, kid, but it’s over. Go strap yourself down,” he said kindly, and handed me a wad of waste bandage to use in place of my rags. As soon as I was secured, he banged the side of the chopper, and we took off again, me still leaking tears.

The chopper let them off first, then dropped me at HQ. I was the last Elite in, and as I trudged to the debrief office, I was not looking forward to fumbling my way through an interrogation.

But to my surprise, I was just handed a form to sign that detailed most of what I’d done, with a page at the end where I could add what I wanted. So I added the Minotaurs and the rest of the cleanup, signed it, and hurried to my room so I could start the shower and have another good long cry under the hot water. Showers are great places to cry; the noise covers what you’re doing, and the water washes away all the mess.

By this point, I was reduced to just one thought:
I want to go home.
I wanted everything to go back to normal, I wanted my friends, I wanted my Masters, I wanted people I could trust around me. Not just people I could depend on. People I could
trust
. People who knew me well enough to know when I might drop the ball and would make sure no one else did so my screwups would be covered. People who were so much smarter than me that they made Kent look like a bottom ranker. People who knew when I was out of my depth. People who I could have told about my moment of selfishness, who would have given me the lecture I deserved, then let me know they could still protect me—protect all of us. And somewhere I could be
safe
, as I could never be safe here, not as long as Ace was alive.

My brain felt like mush, my gut and shoulders and neck were in knots, and I
hurt,
wanting these things so badly. And in that moment, not even having Josh as a boyfriend was incentive enough to make me want to stay, if someone had told me I could leave.

But of course, no one would. I was trapped here. I could never go back. Things would never be “normal” or predictable again. I was so very tired, and there was no prospect of things ever getting better, no chance that anyone
would
ever let me go home again. And that, really, was why I was crying.

I got out of the shower dripping and just wrapped myself up in a thick, soft robe without drying off, and flopped down on the bed. My eyes were sore. My cheeks felt better after the shower, but my nose was raw. I felt Bya tapping anxiously on the back of my mind and sat up long enough to bring him over.

He curled up around me and just let me not think. For once, no one was pestering me (and right at that moment, I would have considered even a call from Josh to be “pestering”), and it slowly dawned on me why that was.

Something far more important was occupying everyone here at HQ, and probably the Prefecture, and definitely at the army HQ. Ace was gone; this was the first time someone had vanished right off the battlefield in front of everybody, and it was a disaster. Above all else, they had to make sure
no one
talked about that outside of the Hunters and the army Mages and those in the conventional forces who had actually seen it happen. And then what would they do? I had no clue and probably neither did they, but they were scrambling.

Let the news come to you naturally. Be as surprised as anyone else
. Bya was sharp. And correct. And he was right about another thing, that I shouldn’t report that “my” Folk Mage had warned me (although, Cassandra-like, the Folk Mage hadn’t exactly been clear about what he was warning me against).

If I’d reported that contact, though, all I’d get out of it would be
more
trouble. They’d just had one former Hunter, now Mage, defect (I was already pretty sure Ace had defected, and I figured it wouldn’t take long for everyone else to come to the same conclusion). They knew from the recordings made that day when the Hounds and I saved the train that “my” Folk Mage had made
me
an offer. They’d be right to assume that, if he’d shown up again, it wasn’t just to give me some vaguely worded warning, but to repeat the offer; and in their shoes, I’d be looking at me with a lot of suspicion.

I was just glad that there hadn’t been a cam around to record his second appearance in my life.

You should eat,
Bya chided.

Ugh. I still felt sick to my stomach. Too much running on terror and adrenaline, and too much crying. But there were some liquid meals in my cool-box, and I mustered enough energy to get two and drink them.

I was too tired to sleep, somehow, so I dimmed the lights, then put on some music and just lay there with Bya serving as a source of warmth and comfort and as a pillow. It was rest, kind of.

Every so often I thought about getting up and going to the lounge, but I just couldn’t bring myself to move. I had that feeling of heavy exhaustion that comes after you’re over the worst of a bad illness but aren’t in any shape to get up and do anything.

At least with everyone else running around trying to deal with what Ace had done, probably no one was thinking about me. Except Bya.

Why do you do this?
I finally asked Bya.
Hunt with us humans, I mean?

He took a long time to answer, and I wasn’t sure he would, actually.
Me?
he asked.
Or all Hounds?

All Hounds,
I clarified.

He was quiet for a few more minutes.
Partly the same reason why wolves came to hunt with humans and became dogs. Together we are better hunters than either of us alone. And since our prey hunts you humans, it is easier to join you and wait to ambush the prey than it is to chase it down.

That made perfect sense, of course. But I started to feel disappointment—

But Bya wasn’t finished.
But mostly it is because we like you. We are more like dogs than wolves, now. We come to you because we like you, we enjoy Hunting with you, and we enjoy your company. All of us like our Hunters at least a little. Some of us like our Hunters a very great deal.
And he gave me a nudge and a lick.
I would have to like you very, very much to clean your runny nose with my tongue, no?

I was astonished enough to be jarred right out of my depression. That was one of those things I had always hoped I was right about, but I never thought I’d hear Bya just say it. I put both arms around his neck and hugged. “I love you too,” I whispered into his ear.

Good. That is as it should be,
he replied, and I sensed his amusement.
Now rest. Learn the wisdom of the Hound. Always rest, eat, and play when you can, because the universe conspires to keep you from doing any of these things nearly as often as you would like.

Did anyone else have this kind of closeness with their Hounds? Surely
someone
did….Archer was always curled up in a Hound-ball when he was resting. So was Kent. And I wondered, just before sleep finally hit me between the eyes, if this was something Hunters and Hounds could somehow use against the Othersiders.

We were shorthanded as I came to find out when I signed in. Three of the other Elite had been injured, not critically, but we might be scrambling for a few days.

Between that and Ace’s defection—and it was all over Hunter HQ that he
had
defected—no one was paying any attention to me, which was exactly the way I liked it. No messages waiting for me when I woke up, no one calling as soon as my status went green. As I walked into the mess for breakfast, I had planned to be early to continue being left alone…but so, it seemed, had everyone else. The mess was packed.

I listened to the gossip over breakfast as I ate off in a far corner. It was pretty lively. There was even some about me…some people were wondering what I’d been doing after the Minotaur attack—though in light of Ace’s disappearance, people were just shrugging it off with a “Well, looks like Joy’s finally had a moment of hitting the wall.” Which was humiliating, since some people were snickering when they said it, and it was pretty obvious there were still Hunters here that thought I was getting above myself and needed a little takedown. On the other hand, it wasn’t all
that
humiliating, and there were a whole lot worse speculations they could have made.