Page 23 of The Manticore's Fire

Sixteen

Samir woke within the lean-to, his ears pricking as the fine, barely visible whiskers around his cheeks slowly lifted and expanded. Something was wrong. There was no sound. It was as if the entire oasis had gone silent in the very late hours of the afternoon. Even the drone of insects was significantly reduced. There was the bitter, somewhat sour, musk in the air that made his nose wrinkle.

Someone was out there. A human male from the smell of it. Samir bared his teeth, his frame nearly vibrating with the tension suddenly running through his muscles.

Abby stirred at his side, her head lifting as she blinked sleepily. “Samir, what is it?”

He shook his head and rested his hand on her in warning. “Shhh,” he whispered.

Rolling toward the opening, he remained on his side, listening before slowly rising to all fours, his tail hooking menacingly around him. He heard her move behind him as she likewise crept from their bed. The intense heat of afternoon beat down him and he glanced toward his female worriedly. He had not intended for her to be out in the sun. Abby frowned at him and shook her head slowly.

“I’ll be fine,” she whispered. “Don’t worry about me.”

He reluctantly grunted in acknowledgement and prowled through the grass and fronds concealing their shelter. He did not get far before a massive, long-handled battle ax descended with a whistle before driving into the sandy turf and lodging there. Drawing his tail around in the direction of the threat, Samir snarled and snapped his tail, expelling two long barbs in the hunter’s direction. The brush a short distance away suddenly swayed and tremored erratically as if something crashed through the growth to evade his attack. That and a hissed expletive gave away the male’s position.

Samir locked onto it as Abby made her move and ran toward the ax. Her hands curled around its long handle, and she groaned as she set to work tugging it from where it was buried in the sand. Reassured that she was likely outside of range to be harmed, unless the human had another throwable melee weapon, Samir rushed forward toward the brush, stabbing violently with his stinger. The first strike did not land as the male rolled away, but on the second strike, a metal shield rose to counter his attack, and a short sword materialized as a tall human leaped up from his hiding spot to slash it at him in an all-out attack. Growling, Samir spun and snapped his teeth at the male’s exposed side while striking again with his stinger in counterpoint which the human countered with his blade, the clack of the blows loud in the oasis.

Samir grinned mockingly at the male. While loud in their strikes against his tail and stinger, the hunter’s weapon was nowhere near strong enough to penetrate the natural armor of his tail or break his stinger. With his massive, clawed hands, he knocked the shield from the male’s grip and lunged as he went in on an attack. Unfortunately, he misjudged the effectiveness of a thin blade which the male pulled from a sheath strapped around his thigh. It was more a needle than a true blade thoughpossessing one long sharp side. The hunter parried Samir’s stinger with his blade, driving his tail to the side at the exact moment he stabbed the blade down, driving it between two segments of his tail’s exoskeleton.

Roaring in pain, Samir dropped back from his attack to remove it, giving the male plenty of time to put space between them. The human stood, his chest heaving faintly as he stared hatefully back at him. A low sucking sound followed by that of sand and grass giving way filled the vacuum between them, drawing the hunter’s attention in the worst possible way. Samir froze, his heart growing chilled with an ice that spread through him as the male’s gaze landed on Abby just as she straightened, the battle ax clenched tightly in her hands.

Recognition flared in the hunter’s eyes for just a moment before his lips twisted with disgust. “So, you are the one they sent—the one that was supposed to save Veldala. Still alive?”

“Naturally. I’m not so easy to kill,” Abby replied.

“So, I see,” the male slowly replied, a scornful smile curling his lips. “Of all things I had imagined, it was not to find youwiththe manticore. Mangled somewhere to be brought back, that I had anticipated. I had even accepted that I might have to locate dismembered body parts to return you whole to the king. Whathaveyou been doing out here, hunter?”

“Surviving,” she replied. “Go back. I do not need your assistance, hunter?—”

“Mesine,” the male replied, his eyes narrowing speculatively as he glanced between Samir and his female. “I cannot go back, not once being dispatched. You know the code of the guild.”

“But this is my kill,” Abby argued, her hand tightening around the handle of the ax in her hands. “By guild code you are not allowed to usurp or interfere with another’s hunt. Go back and report your findings to the local guild chapter and get your orders directly from them. But I have this handled.”

“Do you? If there is no harm in it, let us work cooperatively,” Mesine suggested. “Together we can dispatch the manticore and share the fruits of the accomplishment together.”

“I don’t think so.”

The male’s brows lowered in annoyance. “And what, do you imagine, will stop me from just killing you here and reporting your death to the guild? This is what they expect, after all. You will be just another casualty of the manticore and will bring me even more acclaim when I kill him.”

Abby snorted in amusement, but Samir was not laughing. His eyes narrowed on the human as he prowled back to Abby’s side, looming protectively over her as he changed tactics from offensive attacks to forming defensive protection around his female. Mesine’s threat was all too real, and Samir would be cursed in the deepest pits of the numerous hells before he would allow the human approach any closer to his female. She was his weakness, a liability perhaps, but she was his greatest treasure, and his first concern was to make sure no harm came to her over dispatching the male swiftly and brutally. Her presence was a distraction that could weigh against him and result in a costly mistake. He had no regrets for himself. She was worth any handicap dealt to him. But he was under no illusion that any mistakes he made now would likely cost them both their lives. Abby would be dispatched merely for being with him. There was no likely no greater sin for a hunter than colluding with monsters.

As if sensing his worry, Abby shifted her weight so that her side brushed his. The contact was minimal but the solidarity within it swept through him and a small amount of his tension gratefully eased.

The hunter regarded them, and he smirked. “Ah, so that is the way of it. The monster hunter became the monster’s whore.”

A low growl vibrated through Samir, his mane rising and puffing out aggressively as his tail rose. No man would call his female that and continue to possess a tongue within his mouth. At his side, Abby swung the ax in a relaxed manner by her thigh as she regarded the male thoughtfully.

“What bothers you more about that scenario. The fact that I enjoy being with Samir and being fucked by him, or the fact that he has better dick than what you could even hope to aspire to in your most vivid fantasies?”

Samir blinked, startled and suddenly very flattered by her unexpected proclamation. If it were not for the fact that they had company, he might have drawn her down into the sand to demonstrate just how much. The human, however, did not think so much of it. His face darkened with a flush of anger, his hand tightening around the pommel of his sword.

“Fucking bitch. Females should never have been let into the honored guilds. Your base nature is foul and corruptible. It was only a matter of time before a woman hunter debased herself with her prey. This will not go unreported, I assure you. How does it feel knowing that your corruption will bring down every woman in the guil?—”

Abby whipped the ax with such astonishingly unexpected speed that Samir tensed at the movement as if directly under attack himself though he watched the ax whirl toward the unsuspecting male caught up in his own monologue. Despite the length of its handle, it spun through the air with deadly precision, splitting the male’s head on impact like a ripe melon. Blood and brain matter splattered, and the hunter dropped, his look of shock immortalized on his ruined face.

Samir eyed her with concern, worried how she might react after killing another human. Before his eyes, Abby’s triumphant glower faded as she stared at the fallen male before she suddenlywent pale and turned away, her body doubling over as she wretched horribly.

“Abby?”

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