Page 1 of The Manticore's Fire

Chapter

One

Abby B. Sinclair, monster hunter extraordinaire, defender of humanity and slayer of all things unimaginable and imagined. Abby rested the end of her pen against her bottom lip and chewed on the wooden casing and considered striking out the last word. She couldn’t. It just felt incomplete without it. She didn’t want to limit any of the possibilities of landing a paying job. Stress on the paying part. That she didn’t precisely have experience in said monster slaying was immaterial. She came from a lauded family of hunters and was trained accordingly… and that had to count for something while her parents and elder siblings were away making their names and fortunes. For her, she just needed to get her foot in the door and a little exaggeration was exactly what she needed to get the job done.

It wasn’t like there wasn’t a call for her particular training. She just needed to capitalize on it. Especially since, with the long absence of her family, there was no one around to refill the rapidly depleting coffers. She was going against her parents’ explicit directions, but she was getting desperate. The simple dinner at her elbow in fact was a sad testament to what little coin she possessed. Surely if they knew how dire her situation wasbecoming, they would have agreed to let her go out for her first solo hunt. Sure, she had passed out during the bloody gormin hunt, and had been practically useless, motion sickness aside from the long trip by wagon, but she’d learned a valuable lesson about never traveling long distance in wagons. And then there was a small incident when the entire family had been employed to travel to a far-off kingdom to root out a drake from the hillside that had resulted in half the village being burned down. But that had been years ago when she was nothing more than a kid.

They were merely small setbacks to learn from. Or so her parents had assured her at the time. After all, her technical ability with her weapons exceeded that of any of her brothers. She was also faster and a superior marksman. She just needed a little more time to get over some of her unnatural squeamishness.

Abby snorted softly to herself as she sprinkled ash over the ink to dry it. Whoever heard of a squeamish monster hunter with a weak stomach? Her brothers certainly had been quick to remind her at every opportunity. It wasn’t like she physically got sick, but she couldn’t deny that there were some monsters that it disturbed her to see die. Still, her brothers had taunted her mercilessly about it for years. And despite her parents’ reassurances, the offers to go with the rest of the family to hunt also dried up after the incident with the drake.

The only reason that she wasn’t currently tormented was because her parents and brothers had been called away on a hunt, and, as usual, she was left behind to mind their headquarters. messages and meet with potential clients. She had somehow become the family’s PR person and without her first supervised solo hunt she couldn’t even apply for the regional hunter’s guild. Not that she could currently afford the eight-day trip to the headquarters. Unfortunately, it had been two months since her last letter from them and three weeks since anyonehad stopped by with a job offer, which certainly didn’t help her position now that she was desperate and trying to drum up her own work. She still got a little motion sick, but overall, she was certain her constitution was far stronger now to deal with whatever creature was thrown at her.

Unfortunately, there was one small hang up. As of yet, simple word of mouth over the last few weeks wasn’t working the way it had for her brothers. In fact, those that she told had given her skeptical looks, and those who did not had verged on condescending as they made it obvious that they were only humoring her by hearing her out. It pissed her off because she knew that if she was a man, she would have been hired on for work almost immediately to deal with the burrowing bowthie, a local species of horned rockworms that infested the area by desperate town leaders with fat pockets. Surely someone needed help dealing with those with her brothers gone. The pests were the bane of their region that not only damaged the roots of the orchards under which they tunneled but preyed on livestock and anyone that fell into their pits. There was always at least a few dozen annually that had to be cleared out since their nesting sites were nearly impossible to find and they reproduced rapidly.

Perhaps they were giving the work to one of the local guilds. She grimaced at the thought. Not only was the adventurer’s guild not one that specialized in monster extermination, but they were certain to do a hack job of it. No doubt next year they would have double the number of bowthie to deal with after the hatching season that followed the spring rains. She could have hired on with them, of course, but she knew that they generally snubbed the women among their numbers, giving them the least profitable and least desirable jobs while still taking sixty percent of their earned fees.

No thanks.

She sighed heavily and shook the ash from the advertisement, giving it one last critical look. It was fine. Once she got her advertisement circulating, her situation was bound to improve, and she would prove to her family that she had what it took to be a Sinclair Hunter. Then it would behername on their lips. She would be fined for monster hunting without license from the guild, but it would be worth it, and she doubted anyone would complain. Afterall, with all manner of creatures running about since the human and those worlds of the fae and monstrous merged two centuries ago, there was never a lack of some sort of woe-begone occurrence happening. Mostly this was due to said innumerable monstrous creatures that they now shared their world with, but also partly due to the collapse of human civilization which took fun things like electricity and most tech humanity possessed with it. With little protection against the creatures, the community leaders couldn’t afford to be so damned picky. They would eventually come, happy to have her aid.

Giving the advertisement one last shake, she rolled it up to deliver to the magistrate’s office where it would be copied and distributed. She slid it into a leather tube as the bell above the door chimed, drawing her attention to the stranger who stepped inside with a burst of hot air. Her eyes widened as she stared at him, the advertisement in her hands forgotten. He was wrapped entirely in a heavy cloak with a deep hood that obscured not only most of his face but the majority of his upper body, revealing just a hint of a long, knee-length tunic over leathers. His pale green eyes visible over a scarf wrapped over his mouth and nose scanned the room, landed on her, and narrowed while somehow looking past her at the same time as if she were something completely inconsequential. He stepped toward her, and she could hear the faint clatter of something metallic hidden beneath his cloak. She had little doubt that he was well-armedbut what was someone who was obviously quite capable and menacing doing there?

“I’m looking for Tomas and Beatrice Sinclair. It’s quite urgent that I speak with them—Immediately.” His voice was pitched low but had a whip of authority to it that made her frown.

While she would normally go straight into her well-practiced apology on part of her parents, something about this guy rubbed her the wrong way. For one, it was clear from his dismissive and yet demanding demeanor that he expected her to jump to her feet and rush off to fetch them like a good little dog. But there was something else about him that she couldn’t quite define that made her want to escort him quickly from the building. Like his presence alone was tainting the atmosphere that always felt comfortably like home to her. As desperate as she was to acquire her first client, she had no intention of trying her sales pitch on him.

Pasting a polite smile on her face, she slowly set the scroll aside and folded her hands on the table in front of her.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. At least not right now,” she amended as his gaze sharpened on her. She spread her hands wide in a mock apology. “As it happens, they are out of town.”

“And when do you expect them back?” he replied, each word clipped angrily from between his teeth.

She shrugged without demonstrating even a modicum of concern. “I couldn’t quite say. It’s been a few months so the optimist in me says that they could arrive tomorrow, whereas the pessimist in me says that it’s just as likely that I will go another few months without word from them.”

And possibly starve in the meantime. No, she couldn’t let herself think that way.

“Damn it all. I cannot wait. That could be too long,” he growled with frustration, and she felt her lips curl withsatisfaction. She caught herself and fixed a polite smile on her face before he could notice.

“It’s indeed a gamble, I would say,” she replied as she inwardly asked forgiveness of the gods of prosperity and abundance. She would be sure to be extra cordial to the next customers who stepped inside. She worked hard to smother her smile as he took a frustrated step back from her table and angrily turned away. “But you know how these things are, and as it’s been weeks since I’ve heard from my parents,” she added. “You could be in for a lengthy wait.”

“Parents?” He paused and then whirled toward her, his eyes focusing on her with something more than a bored disinterest by her mere presence. “Ah, I see it now. You have Tomas’s dark hair and eyes but Beatrice’s face and complexion. An interesting pairing… and may I assume that you have your parents’ skills?”

“They trained me,” she confirmed reluctantly. As much as she wanted to hurry him out, she didn’t want rumor to get around that the Sinclair daughter was useless. “I excel in marksmanship, tracking, and some minor magic.”

“Naturally,” he murmured, his eyes gleaming with far more interest than she was comfortable with. “With Beatrice’s sorcery, there is no doubt she would’ve taught any child born of her a few useful tricks. But you are your father’s daughter, if your skills are as you say. I never met any other male who could hunt with such agility and silence to catch his prey entirely by surprise. Nor any other who could strike so quickly and unerringly. You can do this?”

She frowned at the note of challenge in his voice. “Of course. My father trained me himself since I was small and claims that I may even surpass him now in every technique he drilled into me.”

He just wouldn’t let her actually practice them out in the field.

“Excellent,” he murmured. “If that is the case, then I believe you may suit my needs.”

Abby blinked. That hadn’t gone at all how she had planned in her head. She’d assumed that he would scoff at her forthright claims and take himself out to look for other options rather than a far too-bold girl with too much attitude. That’s what she’d often heard boys complain when she’d become old enough to notice them and why they summarily dismissed her as a difficult female not worth their time. She had assumed the same given the bearing of the man in front of her, and yet his words had completely taken her by surprise.

“Pardon me?”

“You shall travel back to Dezia with me, a glorious country in the heart of the Sanna Desert, your father’s birthplace.”

---