Page 27 of Rogue Familiar

“That makes things downright difficult for us,” another put in.

“We should’ve killed him when we had the chance,” a different one growled in disgust.

“We tried, didn’t we?” The lead wizard sounded almost cheerful. “You’ve seen him. There’s no way he should be alive—unless magic is afoot. Perhaps something like the sort Ariel and Tadkiel are using to create those unkillable hunters. Yes, Lady Hanneil will be very pleased with us.”

“Enough to get taken off guard rotation,” one of the group muttered. “I tell you—hey! What’s that?”

At that moment, four things happened: Selly suddenly had control of her body again. Jadren shouted something incoherent. Vale took off at a gallop.

And the oily feel of hunters smeared across her senses.

The group of wizards that had been surrounding them now scattered like rain before a gust of wind. Hunters seemed to be everywhere, darker shadows whisking out from the shadows under the surrounding trees, leaping with their unnatural weasel like lope combined with canine slinking. One of the creatures appeared suddenly before them. A swipe of taloned paws and the wizard that had wedged Selly into the chariot with her was knocked away, leaving her alone.

Vale had disappeared from sight. A relief there, that the warhorse had carried Jadren out of the melee. The Hanneil wizards added their screams to the din, yelling to each other that their weapons weren’t working, that they couldn’t seem to get a mental grip on their attackers.

Selly smiled grimly to herself, not at all sorry to see their smug superiority so thoroughly shattered. They’d been so confident of their hold on her that they hadn’t relieved her of weapons. Not exactly in control of her situation, but closer.

Taking a moment to assess her situation as Han had taught her, she also drew an extra dagger to clench between her teeth—remembering to place it dull side inward—just in case she ended up in hand-to-hand. The hunters savaged the Hanneil wizards, though a couple kept a keen eye on her. Odds on they had tracked her here. Apparently just being a familiar lit up the magical landscape like a beacon, just as Nic had warned her. The upside of the hunters wanting to capture her was that they’d avoid damaging her too much, which gave her a tactical advantage.

The downside, naturally, was that she needed to do everything in her power to avoid capture. Never mind how badly she didn’t want to become the prisoner or possession of whoever had tasked these particular hunters. Jadren needed her. She wouldn’t go so far as to say he wouldn’t survive without her help, but he certainly wouldn’t thrive. Especially when he had people after him, too.

She’d already picked her tree. Choosing her moment, she dashed for it, using all the wily speed and agility Jadren regularly accused her of having. Though the hunters howled at her move, two dashing after to stand guard at the base of the tree, none of them managed to stop her—or even appeared to try. They were perfectly happy to have her treed, no doubt, planning to dispense with the Hanneil competition for her capture first, and then retrieve her at their leisure.

A miscalculation on their part. Glad she’d had the presence of mind—well, and Han’s insistent training—to keep her primary weapons on her body instead of on Vale, Selly settled on a sturdy branch and unclipped her bow from the strap holding it. She strung it, using the familiar motions to center and calm herself. Jadren was safe for the moment, carried away from the fighting by the clever Vale. The hunters were preoccupied with increasingly bloody scrimmage below. The Hanneil wizards had realized their predicament and had resorted to using their hand-weapons, quickly discovering that they couldn’t kill the hunters, or even slow them much.

Not without the specially enchanted moon-magic silver. Feeling cool as moonlight, herself, still as deep water, Selly began firing the short, moonsilver-tipped arrows at the hunters. It took her a few tries to adapt the trajectory for the shorter bolts, but soon she hit each target as she selected it. And she picked them off carefully, remote and ruthless from her aerie. She waited for a hunter to dispatch one of the Hanneil guards, leaving the unfortunate wizard twitching in a bloodied mess. She felt no remorse for these people who’d done their level best to kill Jadren. Once a wizard was down for good, she sent an arrow into the hunter, melting it over its erstwhile victim.

It took a surprisingly long time for the hunters to catch on to what was happening. Though, to be fair, they hadn’t been created to be clever. Persistence and obedience to their mission had been layered into the enchantment that made them, not the ability to think on their feet. With the possible exception of the lead hunter, who finally noticed its minions falling to Selly’s arrows, hissing at the hunters guarding her to put a stop to it.

The two at the base of the tree immediately leapt onto the trunk, bark flying as the talons on all four paws dug in. They leapt toward her with alarming speed, closing the short distance with unnatural alacrity, as she hadn’t climbed all that high. Her heart hammered like a trapped bird, but she would not yield to the panic. She would be cool, bright, precise.

She fired an arrow into the open maw of the hunter coming up the face beneath her, gratified when its shriek faded to ghostly echoes as it dissolved into chunks of rotten meat, leaving the four sets of talons incongruously attached to the tree. The other hunter came up behind her and she had to twist in place, something digging sharply into her spine.

It swiped at her, cutting through the leather of her pants and opening four grooves into her thigh as it fastened on her. They burned like fire but she was water; she was ice; she was moonlight congealed into hardest silver. Pulling the dagger from her teeth, she plunged it into the creature’s unsettlingly slanted yellow eye, having the presence of mind to hold onto the hilt as the thing shuddered, then melted away.

“How did you do that?” the Hanneil wizard who’d seemed to be in charge shouted up at her. The wizard was embattled, no longer in their personal chariot, barely fending off three hunters with desperate swings of a long sword. Even to Selly’s amateur eye, the wizard barely knew how to get by with it. “How?” the wizard screamed. “Who are you?”

“You will never know,” she answered, using the dagger point to dig the talons out of her thigh, flicking them away. It would hurt later, but at the moment she was encased in cold moonlight, feeling nothing. Some distant part of her wondered if she’d entered a new phase of madness, pushed past panicked immobility and frozen into some other level.

“Help me,” the wizard begged, though it sounded an awful lot like a command. “Save me—you know you can—and I will see you’re rewarded.”

Selly thunked the dagger into the tree trunk near her hip for safekeeping. No way was she putting that thing in her mouth again. Nocking an arrow, she picked off one of the wizard’s tormentors, mostly to toy with her enemy, show how easily she could help, if she chose to. She would not. Gabriel likely would, but she wasn’t her brother. She’d become something harder, crueler. “Rewarded how?” she asked idly, curious.

The wizard yelped as one hunter broke through, raking one shoulder with its claws. The wizard managed to lop off the hunter’s arm, but that did nothing to stop the creature, naturally. Or unnaturally, as the case might be. Another hunter circled behind the wizard’s unprotected back and the third stood back, the leader, eyeing Selly with interest. Selly kept her eye on that one in return.

“Anything you want!” the wizard howled. “Anything!”

“I want my wizard back, healthy and whole,” she said quietly, and watched as the two hunters leapt on the Hanneil guard, tearing him limb from limb.

The lead hunter’s jaw fell open, revealing double rows of sharp teeth. “Lady Ssseliah Phel,” it hissed, slinking toward her, “you will come peasssefully with me.”

“I don’t think so.” Satisfied that the hunters had dispatched all the Hanneil wizards, Selly fired an arrow into the lead hunter.

It didn’t melt.

Instead, it dipped its muzzle thoughtfully at the bolt embedded in its lean hairy chest, then gave her a canine grin full of slobber and self-satisfaction. “You will not find me ssso easssy to dissspatch, I think,” it said, and advanced on her.

~9~

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