Hunter's Season: Elder Races, Book 4

Author’s Note

Dear Readers,

I loved writing Hunter’s Season for several reasons. In it I was able to wrap up the story arc of the mysterious Elder Races Tarot deck, and I was also able to, at long last, return to the Dark Fae land of Adriyel to catch up a little with Tiago and Niniane, the hero and heroine from
Storm’s Heart
. This story also gave me the chance to give two very deserving people, Aubrey and Xanthe, a HEA (happily ever after) ending after their long, hard journeys.

You will also find a small HEA for a cameo character, a six year old Wyr housecat nicknamed Mouse, who has had her own rough journey. This character was the creation of the winner of my “Create an Elder Races Character” contest, in which many of you entered wonderfully creative inventions. I had huge fun taking the details of this small character and weaving them into the story, and I hope you have just as much fun reading about her.

Because of your enthusiasm and continued interest, I would love to dedicate this story to you, the readers.

Thank you so very much.

Wishing you many hours of happy reading,

Thea

Chapter One

Hearth

As soon as Xanthe reached Adriyel, she left her mount at the palace stable and sent a message to Her Majesty’s Chief of Security that said: “It is done.”

Xanthe did not sign the note. He would know who had sent it. She did not expect a quick response either. With the completion of her assignment, any urgency or need for action had ceased.

Because she had been gone to America for some time, she stopped at the marketplace to buy food: fresh bread, meat, eggs, vegetables and fruit. The familiarity of the task soothed nerves that were tired and stressed from living with too much strangeness and danger for so long.

At midafternoon, the best of the goods had already been picked over, but there was still enough variety to meet her immediate needs. The market stalls were stocked with meat and fish, vegetables, fruit and grains from nearby farms, a variety of cooked foods, beautiful cloths of rich colors and intricate needlework, pottery, spices, soaps and metal work, and the recent, jarring addition of American goods. Hawkers called their wares, and the smells of cooking food wafted along the narrow cobblestone streets.

Xanthe paused as the small creature she carried in her pack stirred. A small creature might be too hungry to wait until she had cooked supper. After a moment’s thought, she backtracked to the baker’s stall to buy a meat pie. Her last purchase was an earthenware jug of fresh milk and a small tub of soft cheese. When she had finished the milk and the cheese, she would return the jug and the tub to the dairyman.

The wriggling in her pack became more urgent.

“Patience,” she said to it.

Then she walked out of the city, down the narrow road that hugged the river for a couple of miles to the overgrown path that led to the small two-room cottage that had been her home for her entire life. Ignoring the increasingly strong wriggles in the pack on her back, she studied the cottage as she approached. It had a neglected air about it, as well it should, since she had been gone for over four seasons, but the roof looked solid enough. It led her to hope that the inside was dry.

She opened the door and looked into the shadowed, dusty interior. For a moment, it all looked too rustic, small and strange. Then the strangeness of the last several moons—months, they were called in America—fell from her eyes, and the cottage became once again as familiar to her as the back of her own hand, and she was home.

She remembered something a human had once said to her while she had been in the strange tent city at Devil’s Gate in the American state named Nevada. The human had been sunburned and had worn a cynical expression when he said, “You know how that old saying goes—you can’t go home again.”

Xanthe had never been to America before, and she didn’t know how the saying went. She wasn’t sure what the human had meant.

She eased her packages onto the dusty table, shrugged out of her pack and set it carefully on the floor, and took off the shoulder harness that carried her sword, straightening tired shoulders. The day had already been full of travel, and there was still much to do before she could rest that night.

She propped the door open to the fresh, cooling air of the evening. Now the small creature in her pack was voicing shrill unhappiness. It sounded like a crying baby. She opened the pack and pulled out a thin, wriggling orange striped kitten that leaped out of her hands onto the table and circled the wrapped meat pie and dairy, meowing piteously.

“Yes, I know,” Xanthe told it. “But you must wait a moment or two longer.”

She had fallen into the habit of talking to the kitten on the trip from the crossover passage to Adriyel. They had developed a habit of sorts in the evenings on the short three day journey— the kitten would fall asleep, purring, either on her lap or beside the campfire while Xanthe studied the lovely hand painted cards of the Tarot deck she had been given by a Vampyre and two medusae on her trip to Chicago, to the crossover passageway that led back home.

People in America had such an odd term for places like Adriyel. They called them Other lands, but to Xanthe, America was the Other land.

Most of the time the kitten seemed to enjoy the sound of her voice, but it wasn’t interested in conversation at the moment. It swatted at the pie and meowed again, showing slender sharp white teeth and a tiny pink tongue.

Xanthe checked the cupboard that held the crockery. Along with all the other furniture in the cottage, her father had built the cupboard well out of hard seasoned wood. No small creatures had taken up residence in it, so she wiped out a bowl with the bottom of her sleeve, poured some milk into it and set it on the floor.

As the purring kitten leaped down and began to lap at the creamy liquid, she unwrapped and broke open the meat pie. It was still hot. Fragrant steam rose from the middle. She scraped meat and gravy onto a dish, blew on it until it had cooled slightly and set it on the floor by the bowl of milk.

While the kitten gorged itself on supper, Xanthe set to work. She dusted and swept out spiders and a few mice nests. With the kitten as a mouser, they wouldn’t be back. Then she brought in half rotted wood from the small pile left under the lean-to, started a fire, uncovered the well and drew water, diced the raw meat and vegetables into a pot and set it over the fire to cook, washed the table and chairs, dragged the mattress out of the simple bedroom and beat it until the clouds of dust stopped rising, dragged it back inside and unpacked the linens and blankets that had been stored with fragrant cedar chips in a chest.

Her earlier tiredness was rapidly turning to exhaustion. She could have stayed in the city overnight and faced the long neglected cottage in the morning, but she had been too anxious to return to wait. After making the bed, she checked the bubbling pot that hung over the fire. Her mind was filled with visions of how pleasurable it would be to eat a hot bowl of stew and fall into the bed, when a gigantic shadow darkened her doorway.

The kitten shot past her feet, looking panicked, all its fur standing straight up. Xanthe raised her eyebrows as she turned to watch it race into the bedroom. It disappeared under the bed.

Then she turned to the doorway where a massive dark man stood, dressed in severe black. It was the Dark Fae Queen’s chief of security, Lord Tiago Black Eagle, thunderbird Wyr and forever alien in the heartland of the Dark Fae.

Surprised, she bowed to her employer. “Welcome, my lord. Please do come in.”

His features were as severe as his clothing. He looked foreign to eyes that were used to the slim build, large gray eyes and pale skin of the Dark Fae, but Xanthe had since gotten used to his harsh face and imposing demeanor.

Obsidian eyes narrowed as he stared in the direction of the kitten also. “Tenanye,” he said, greeting her in that abrupt way of his that no longer seemed quite so odd after her sojourn in America. “I believe I told you to stop calling me that. Tiago will do just fine. What the hell is that doing here?”

She raised her eyebrows again as he gestured to the bedroom. “The kitten?” she asked. “I found it wandering the grounds on the other side of the crossover passageway in Chicago, so I brought it with me.”

The crossover passageway from Adriyel to Chicago was located on an eighty-acre tract of land just northwest of the Chicago’s downtown Loop area. The grounds held a large Georgian style mansion and were bordered by a tall stone wall that was topped with rolls of barbed wire, but the front gates were made of wrought iron and since Adriyel had opened its borders, more often than not, now those gates stood open.

None of the Dark Fae staff at the mansion would adopt a companion animal, but along with giving open access to other creatures, there was more than enough opportunity for urban wildlife to take advantage of the open gates and slip into the large, wooded area.

Tiago gave her a strange look then brushed past her to stride into the bedroom. “Come out from under there,” he said firmly.

Xanthe stared at him, her tired mind blank with astonishment.

The kitten slunk out from underneath the bed. It seemed even tinier and more delicate as it hunched at the Wyr lord’s feet.

A wave of heat prickled Xanthe’s skin as horrified comprehension began to dawn.

Tiago looked down at the small creature, hands on his hips. It stared up at him, still looking panicked, eyes completely round and fur bristling.

He ordered, “Change.”

The kitten shapeshifted and became a dirty, unkempt girl who stared, seemingly mesmerized at the immense male in front of her. Tiago angled his jaw out and tilted his head at Xanthe.

Xanthe rubbed her forehead, her shoulders slumped. “Oh, gods,” she said. “I kidnapped a little Wyr girl.”

“She never once changed in front of you?” Tiago asked.

“No, sir. I had no idea. You know my magic sense is minimal.” Xanthe had telepathy and the ability to traverse crossover passageways. She could also sense some Power in strong items and individuals, but without a Wyr’s sense of smell, she hadn’t any way to tell that the kitten was anything but what it seemed. She lifted her shoulders. “I thought I was rescuing a feral cat.”

“Well,” Tiago said after a moment. “I’ll take her back to the palace with me. Niniane will know how to take care of this.” He shot a look at Xanthe. “As for you, I will be in touch. I want to hear details about what happened.”

“Understood, my l—sir,” Xanthe said.

The little girl tore her gaze away from the towering figure in front of her to look at Xanthe. She whispered, “I want to stay here.”

Immediately and in unison, Xanthe and Tiago said, “That can’t happen.”

“You named me Mouse,” the girl said, her gaze pleading with Xanthe. “I was going to live in the cottage with you and be your mouser. You said so.”

The plea tugged at Xanthe’s heart. She thought of the kitten, curled on her lap and purring as she talked idly to it. She honestly could not remember all the things she had said. She walked over to squat in front of the child.

“That was when I thought you were just a cat,” Xanthe told her softly. “While I would love for you to stay, I have no way to take care of a Wyr child.” She had no way to take care of any child. Her life was too dangerous.

“But I like it here,” the girl said plaintively. “I wouldn’t be any trouble. I can be a cat all the time.”

“I’m sorry, no,” Xanthe said as gently as she could. She touched the girl’s matted hair. “This place would not be good for you, darling. You deserve a much better place, where you can be both a cat and a little girl and go to school.”

Tiago didn’t wait for any more protestations. He scooped the girl up and turned toward the doorway. He said over one broad shoulder, “Relax and take some time for yourself. You’ve earned it. I’ll send for you in the next day or two. Be ready.”

“Yes, sir,” Xanthe said.

Then he strode out the door. The last thing Xanthe saw of the girl were large sad eyes peering around the Wyr lord’s shoulder.

Xanthe walked over to the sit at the table and rub her face. She would not reconsider as those large sad eyes had asked her to do. She could not.

Silence settled in the cottage. It seemed so much emptier than it had before Tiago had come. She stared at the items on the table that she had unloaded from her pack. There were various toiletries, weapons—her shoulder harness and sword, along with throwing knives—and the old, hand painted wooden box that held the Tarot deck.