“Are we going to pick their names out of a hat or what?”
“I’m sure one day you’re going to make perfect sense to me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Who are we tracking down? Who’s the lucky bastard we’re going to be chasing through the woods?”
“We’re not going to chase anyone. There’re only two of us, not enough to flush anyone out or block off all the escape routes. No, if we’re lucky our prey won’t even know we’re there until it’s too late.”
I swallowed nervously, dancing from foot to foot as the cool night air brushed against me. I was wearing a military issue body suit. It was the only way I could describe the camouflaged tactical gear they’d provided for me back at the holding facility. In addition to my new threads, they’d also slapped some sort of metal device around my ankle. I’m pretty sure it was supposed to help track my movements during the course of the night. I hadn’t had a chance to try and pick it yet, but from the looks of it, it seemed pretty sturdy. Gabriel had a collar that was supposed to act the same way, and saw him fiddling with where it rested on his neck on more than one occasion.
Brushing a stray bit of hair from my eyes, I watched Gabriel crouch before me. They’d released us in the same park they’d abducted us from, and even now I could see the black van that had transported us idling in the parking lot. Waiting while Gabriel got his bearings and prepared to shift.
So far I still didn’t know the name of the person we were hunting, and suspected that it was likely to stay that way. The closer the time came to go after them, however, the more significant the change I sensed in myself. There was an element of excitement swimming just beneath my skin. It was like I could feel every cell, hear every nose, smell every scent in the world around us. I wasn’t just hopping from foot to foot because of the cold, but because I wanted to run. To chase something and bring it down with hands and teeth and instinct.
I felt like a live wire, something electric and dangerous, and I knew if I was close to bursting out of my skin that it must be ten times worse for Gabriel. You wouldn’t guess it just by looking at him however. He seemed calm, collected, even at peace. As if he were right at home and the thrill of the hunt was as familiar to him as breathing or shifting between forms.
I knew when he was ready. I could feel it in every cell of my body. I felt his bones begin to melt into one another, to lengthen, harden, and break. Even the feel of his skin melting away was a visceral sensation. As if it was happening to me personally. I felt, as much as saw, the fur sprout along his body, and soon I was looking into Gabriel’s wolfy form.
He huffed a greeting at me, shaking his coat as he settled into his new body. Hesitant, I reached out and touched him and let my hand rest against the crown of his head and enjoyed the banked warmth that caressed my skin. His eyes glowed bright and he pressed himself into my touch, enjoying the contact.
The van honked its horn and Gabriel pulled away. Nipping at my fingers without making actually contact. Taking that as a sign to get a move on, I followed in his wake as he took to the surrounding woods.
At first nothing happened. He just wandered in circles, sniffing the ground and investigating whatever caught his interest. He chased a chipmunk up a tree, tried to engage me in a game of fetch with a fallen branch that was too heavy for me to throw, and on more than one occasion I had to kick him away before he peed on my leg in a bid to mark his territory.
All of that, and not once did we engage in any activity that resembled a legendary hunting expedition. If anything, I felt like I was walking an annoying, albeit lovable, Doberman. Currently trying to dig a hole to the center of the earth and hacking up a clump of grass he’d just eaten, Gabriel seemed like the least dangerous mammal I’d ever met. I was probably better prepared for action than he was.
I wondered what sort of person we were going after. What sort of man or woman could have caught the attention of the Sidhe? What if they were female, young? Innocent. They probably had no idea what was happening or why they would be tracked down. In my mind, I gave them a gender, a face, a name, a history, and when next I blinked back into reality it was to realize that Gabriel had vanished. I could hear him crashing through the trees ahead and without thinking further I took off after him.
What on earth had gotten in to him?
One Rider, one hound.
Isn’t that what he’d said earlier in the day? As his “rider” if I couldn’t focus on our prey, maybe that meant that he couldn’t either. With that thought in mind, I allowed my earlier excitement free reign. Our target was still an unknown, but now, as our intents linked, a name began to travel down the length of the bond connecting Gabriel and I. The name of the girl we hunted.
Asrai.
It thrummed in my blood, pounded away in my head like a second heartbeat, filled my lungs until all I could do was lift my head and sing it to the sky.
Asrai, Asrai, Asrai.
Gabriel’s answering howl met my ears and I laughed, jubilant and wild. Free.
I felt free.
I never wanted the Hunt to end.
I didn’t have to see Gabriel to know where he led. It was a call, a silent urging to choose this path over that one. A demand to move faster and faster still, to leap over logs, duck beneath branches and cobwebs, and skirt like a dancer around dips and holes in the ground that would have tripped me up. I could see the terrain through his eyes, so that it was like I was traversing the same area twice. Once as him and once as myself.
It made me blind to the fact that I was still human. That I had limitations and weaknesses.
When he finally let me pull up short, I collapsed on the ground. A convulsing, broken thing as my lungs fought to keep me breathing and my heart ticked away like a bomb ready to burst. My feet churned up the earth and my back arched. I wrapped my arms around myself, nails biting into my elbows as my own body fought me. For a moment I was afraid I was going to die, and to this day I don’t know how long I lay there trying to recover. Time was marked by how often I turned on my side to vomit and dry heave before exhaustion finally brought me to unconsciousness.
I awoke to Gabriel licking the side of my face and making low, worried canine sounds in the back of his throat. I reached a shaking hand up and sunk my fingers in his fur, comforted by the smell of him, a mix between the Gabriel I knew and the Beast I didn’t. With each worried swipe of his tongue, I felt some of the agony in my body disappear. Ten minutes later, I felt good enough to try and get to my feet and from there Gabriel led me to what he’d found.
Looking through the stand of trees, I gazed across an empty expanse of land to a house. I wasn’t sure how many miles we’d run, but the house was far enough out of the city limits that its neighbors were few and far between and its backyard stretched for a good acre or two.
It was a quiet little two story, brow-beaten, but obviously well lived in. The lamps in the house were shining warm and bright through the windows. They were having some sort of party. Dozens of people milled past the windows, drinking and laughing. But they weren’t the ones who drew my attention.
There was a swing set in the back of the house. It looked forlorn, as if the owners had meant to place other things around it but had never bothered. Now, swinging alone in the night, was a girl.
She was about seven years old, brown hair in a no-nonsense pixie cut that swung with the momentum of her swing. She wore a tattered pair of jeans and a hoodie, and she looked pale beneath the moonlight filtering across the yard.
I spoke her name on a horrified little sigh.
“Asrai.”