Page 231 of Hunters and Prey

Looking at her now, he felt like he didn’t know his wife at all.

“Do you forget coming here?” he said finally. “Do you come back here a blank slate too, like you do at home, or––”

Miri was already shaking her head.

“No,” she said. She gripped his arms tighter, maybe feeling his hurt. “No, Black. On this side, I remember everything. Here more than any of the other places I visit.”

“Anyof the other… places?”

“Yes,” she said.

She’d switched to her more clinical, logical-sounding voice. He couldn’t decide if it made him want to shake her, or if he found it endearing, given where they were.

“…The other versions of Earth,” she said, still speaking in that calm, academic-sounding cadence. “I have no idea how many of these worlds there are. I’ve been to maybe seven others, in addition to this one. I almost always land in the same, rough location on the planet… meaning in some version of San Francisco.”

Black’s mind blanked as he tried to make sense of this, but he nodded.

“The bite on your arm––” he began.

“A different Earth,” she said at once. “I’ve never been hurt here. All of the injuries came from other versions of Earth, Black. Not this one.”

Black nodded.

Really, he didn’t know what else to do.

He felt Miri’s light reacting to his proximity now.

As it did, he felt her opening to him, enough that his separation pain flared, making him hard, flushing his skin––at least until he suppressed it, partly in embarrassment, partly in annoyance with her, and maybe partly in annoyance with himself for going there. His light opened reflexively when hers did though, like a fist unclenching inside his chest.

He gripped her tighter, in reflex more than thought, his light winding into hers even as he fought to control the surge of emotion that hit him.

“Miri,” he said, clenching his jaw. “What in the hell is this?”

Before Miri could answer, Revik’s wife did.

“Your wife’s a kind of one-woman portal,” she said, smiling at him from where she now sat behind the table, leaning against her husband.

Black turned his head, looking at her.

She was halfway in Revik’s lap by the time he focused there, her arms wound around his neck as she pressed her face to his. One of her hands was inside his shirt, massaging his chest as he kissed her throat.

When Black averted his eyes, his gaze fell on the little boy.

The smallest in their family––maybe three or four in seer years, but in human, he would have looked about eight or nine months, one year old at most––stared at Black, his dark blue eyes unblinking, and too large for his face.

The little girl who’d walked in with them was sitting in Black’s seat, eating the food in the bowl Revik had left for Black. Watching her eat enthusiastically the meal her father had prepared, Black could hardly begrudge her the food.

After all, he’d more or less left it there to grow cold.

Revik seemed to notice where Black’s eyes had gone and shrugged, tugging his wife further into his lap and curling his fingers into her long hair. His narrow, angular face grew more and more relaxed, Black noticed, the longer his wife sat there.

“You snooze, you lose, little brother,” he said to Black, jerking his chin towards his daughter and the half-full bowl, his voice wholly unapologetic.

Black didn’t bother to answer.

His eyes returned to the young boy.

The boy was still staring at him, his face holding an intensity of concentration unusual even in a seer child of that age. He didn’t look at Black like he feared him, or like he liked him, or like he didn’t like him. He looked at Black the way an adult looks at another adult they’re positive they’ve met before––an adult they’re positive they know somehow, and are wracking their brains to remember where and how they met.

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