Bounty Read online

  “What was what for? You just tripped and fell in the fountain, Godren; haven’t you been paying attention?”

  Expressionless, Godren ran his palm over his wet face. Then he blinked, and shook his head as if to clear it. “Sorry, Seth. I’ve been a bit distant, haven’t I?”

  “Ha.”

  Seating himself on the edge of the fountain, Godren placed his hands on his knees.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Seth grumbled pointedly before Godren accidentally made some careless reference to the source of the problem. “It’s just the heat; it’ll wear off.”

  Godren looked at him. “Right. The heat.” Glancing around, he seemed to try to pull himself together, as if looking for the pieces he’d lost between here and the town square.

  “Mastodon wants you to snap out of it,” Seth informed him. “So I’d feel better if you did.”

  “You’d like me to just…cheerfully die of heatstroke?”

  “No one said anything about cheerful. Just focused. We’re on a job, Ren, and not just any job. So get on it.”

  “Right.”

  Seth took a more relaxed breath.

  “I suppose I should do something. Make myself useful,” Godren decided. Running his hand over his face once more, he stood. “I’m going out.”

  “What for?”

  “Patrolling. Just because we’ve purged the Ruins doesn’t mean they don’t need maintenance.”

  “Well I’m sure Mastodon will appreciate the gesture – just not if you do it in those clothes. I realize you didn’t hear a word she said, but she wants us out of these wasted delicacies and stuffed back into our rags, on the double. So if you don’t mind…?” Seth held out his hand and rubbed his fingers together in request.

  Cursing quietly as he glanced down reminded of his attire, Godren cast his eyes about for his change of clothes and quickly made the change.

  “Are you sure you’re in a state to take on duty and action?” Seth asked skeptically as he took the garments to return to Mastodon.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Godren…”

  “I’m taking a gun,” Godren declared, and, duly impressed, Seth shut his mouth, unable to argue the point against that.

  Spinning on his heel, Godren strode from the courtyard. He hunted down the weapons closet and opened it up, standing significantly at the threshold a moment before stepping past and collecting the gun he had come for. Loading it swiftly, he crossed back over and strode on his way, toward the upper grounds.

  “What’s abroad?” Kane asked with a mix of curiosity and surprise, eyeing the dart gun in Godren’s possession and noting Godren’s purposeful stride.

  “Just mind your post,” Godren said in curt reply as he moved swiftly past, not sparing the guardsman anything further. If Mastodon wanted to see him useful, he was going to start taking authority and getting things done.

  The alleys were dark and musty, and empty as expected near the heart of Mastodon’s headquarters. Surely, if anyone ever had the luck or stealth to breach the Ruins this far, the ghosts would see to alerting the Underworld’s inhabitants with plenty of a forewarning. So Godren headed for the outskirts, knowing that if there was anyone seeking to cause mischief, he would find them there.

  It was hard to shake the princess completely from his mind, and even when he thought he’d managed it, his lips felt warm with the memory of sharing hers. He would never quite get over that, he knew without thinking about it. And Seth would probably never let him hear the end of it. At least he couldn’t wear his tongue out voicing his disapproval while surrounded by the company of Mastodon’s nosy ghosts. If Godren was lucky, or perhaps just dutiful in staying near his mistress, Seth might not get much of a chance to tease and berate him.

  But that was as far as he let himself think on the subject, shoving it away and focusing on the possible threats lurking in the shadows and looming around every bend. His senses needed to be sharp and ready for any of those to jump out at him without notice. It wouldn’t do to be jumped and never realize there was a blade being swept across his throat because he was fantasizing about kissing the princess. Though that would be a nice way to die, he supposed in hindsight.

  The shadows stayed lifeless as he treaded watchfully through them, presenting no surprises of consequence.

  It was the elements that loomed around the bends that proved they were real threats to be reckoned with.

  Without warning, and without a sound, a fleet shape on four legs tore around the corner up ahead and flew at Godren in a terrorizing blur of raised hackles and tearing claws. Its intent, predatory eyes were eerily un-glinting, nothing but sunken shadows in the hunter’s skull, but Godren felt that lethal gaze lock on him as the predator rushed unchecked for the kill. He barely had time to react, jerking the dart gun horizontal, before the swift beast flying down the alley ripped from the ground and launched at his throat. The raised gun diverted the otherwise fatal attack, but suddenly Godren was knocked flat with a snarling wolf atop him, and his throat was still being brutally sought by ripping, mindless fangs.

  Nothing could have prepared him for an attack like this. A snarling man swinging blades over his head and screaming battle cries – that wouldn’t have caught him off-guard. A stealthy jump from the back, he would have been ready for. Even a surprise conjured in the manner of some unnatural, lethal crone wielding lightning-fast, spidery knives…he could have handled that.

  But what, by the gods’ bloody, sacred rule, was a wolf doing in the city?

  Godren thrashed at the murderous animal, adrenaline skyrocketing as the fierce creature clawed and bit him, lightning jaws impossible to deter completely. He was out of his element, so much more helpless against pure savage drive. At first he used the dart gun as a barrier between his body and the beast snarling in his face, but the animal quickly adapted and found ways past the obstruction. And since he couldn’t get the weapon properly positioned for any affective shot, he very quickly got rid of it in a release halfway between discarding it and losing it.

  Then it was his bare hands against his naturally equipped foe, and they were wrestling across the alley in a desperate struggle for dominance. Godren wildly pushed and hit at the thing, deflecting fatality after fatality, but he was using all of his strength just keeping the animal from killing him, and it was scoring blows that would eventually overwhelm him regardless of their individual severity. Crude claws dug into his chest and shoulders, dragging deep slashes that he hardly felt in the heat of the terrible moment. Dripping canines snapped in his face past hideous snarls. And those sunken eyes remained eerily, chillingly dark and un-glinting, even this close up. Yet Godren could still clearly feel their bloody intent, hot with unstoppable, savage lust for his throat. He was so afraid that any instant the tearing creature would get to his face, and the mindless pain of that anticipation kept him fighting frantically for his life.

  His exertions were mortally draining, though, and he grew lightheaded and sick to his stomach from the sheer breathless effort of it all, his muscles watery and trembling as he held the dominant creature at bay. Blood ran down his forearms, and his shirt was in sticky tatters. The wolf’s teeth were bared red in his face, sharp and lethal and gnashing at everything in their path.

  Somewhere in the midst of those next few moments, Godren realized that his only chance was the dart gun. Taking his life in his hands, because it was all he could hope to do, he threw all his strength into keeping the wolf off him, thrusting his knees into its belly and shoving at its face with is forearm, and cast out his desperate reach for the weapon abandoned somewhere on the alley floor beside him.

  For a grazingly close instant that sent his stomach racing, the wolf’s ripping jaws lunged past his arm, and though his knee kept the bite from reaching his face, he knew he would not keep the next lunge at bay. It would come before he could retrieve his frantically roving hand to fend it off – but then his knuckles clattered against the idle weapon, and he clamped his whole arm down on the gun
in his haste to seize it any way he could.

  There was a sullen twang, somehow distinct past the loud snarls of the animal atop him, and Godren felt the cold numbness spreading through his hand almost before he felt the initial sharp puncture.

  A new shock spread through him, this one cold and stilling, as he realized he’d just shot himself. But a triumphant snarl rapidly nearing his unprotected throat triggered his reactive instincts, and he threw up his hands to save himself. The teeth destined for his throat clamped down on his infected hand, biting hard and deep, and as he let out a fierce growl of pain, closing his eyes against it and the inevitable death blow that was sure to follow, some extremely unorthodox miracle stood in the way of his fate.

  The wolf’s jaws closed around his neck, teeth puncturing, but the animal’s lethal grip faltered there. It gnawed once, uncertainly, and then worked its suddenly lethargic jaws loose, whining in confusion. Stumbling off of Godren, it stood beside him, legs slightly splayed to support its unbalanced stance.

  Disconcerted by his live state, Godren’s eyes opened on their own, confused. He eyed the disoriented wolf out of the corner of his pained eyes, not making any move to distance himself. Part of him was relieved, but mostly he was just in pain. It was hard to be grateful you were alive when you hurt so much.

  When the wolf continued to suffer progressive symptoms of the poison it had ingested, Godren let his eyes fall heavily shut again, trying to bear the agony of his injuries. A few moments later, he heard the furry impact of the wolf collapsing beside him.

  “Angel?” a husky voice asked in surprise.

  Godren was jerking upright faster than he realized he had heeded the alarm triggered by the voice. His lightning-fast, dizzy eyes locked on the figure in the alley before him, and as the other figure flinched toward a weapon at his hip, Godren already had his hand on his knife. Somewhere in the back of his mind he put together that ‘Angel’ was the wolf’s name, and that this was the wolf’s master, or why else would he have called the animal by name? The man’s surprise at Angel’s collapse and reaction to Godren’s swift resurrection implied he had thought Godren was dead and that his wolf, still standing at the time, had won as expected. The only chance Godren had, in this state, was the element of surprise, so he threw his knife without pause.

  His aim and strength were faulty, but his weapon struck the wolf tamer in his reaching arm, and, cursing, the bulky man spun and fled as Godren came to his conclusive senses and reached for the wicked dart gun. He only got in one crude shot, missing, before his foe scrambled around the corner and out of sight.

  Godren swore fiercely in his head, from pain and frustration, and from suppressed fear as well, as the fire in his bitten hand was counterbalanced by the alarming numbing of the injected poison. Hurt, curse you! he ordered the bloody bite, willing the numbness to stop spreading. He let it bleed freely, his only chance at losing the poison, hoping it would all drain out.

  I’ve got to get back, he realized, instilling a driving sense of urgency in himself. He couldn’t linger here untreated.

  Struggling up while it hurt to even breathe, Godren gritted his teeth and used the alley wall for support. He held his hand to him, head down to avoid the pull on the wounds to his neck. A lump on the back of his skull pulsed, and his spine felt bruised and wrenched out of place. A few ribs didn’t seem to be faring well, either, and the gashes crisscrossing his torso flamed like raw, burning trails. Holding the dart gun awkwardly to his side in a useless, vertical stance, he limped off toward Mastodon’s keep, dragging one foot painstakingly after the other. He was fortunate not to encounter any additional ordeals on the way back, for he would not have even put up a fight. Of course, he didn’t count himself fortunate; all he knew was the pain it took to keep moving, and distantly he wondered why he was being so cruel to himself, why he was putting himself through this. Why didn’t he just lay down? This torture was pointless.

  He was able to force his head a little higher when he reached Kane’s threshold, though, which he took as a very good sign. At least the poison wasn’t progressing to drowsiness and seizing control of everything – though there was some heaviness in his arm – and he thought his hand hurt a little more. It ought to, he thought as he eyed the blood running down and dripping off his crimson fingers.

  Kane stood at the sight of him, duly appalled but not really duly concerned. Mastodon’s men were pitiless, and Godren didn’t expect to ever earn even an ounce of real sympathy.

  “I’d like to see the other guy, if it was you that came out on top of this one,” the Underworld’s guard remarked.

  “Just kill the fire, Kane,” Godren growled through gritted teeth. He half inched, half fell down the spiral of stairs, and then limped to Mastodon’s study and awkwardly burst through the doors.

  Mastodon stood at the sight of him as well, something he was oddly gratified by. And in contrast to Kane, she actually did look concerned. Of course, it could have just been for her own interests, if there was an enemy abroad clearly so fierce, but Godren took heart and felt disorientingly reassured.

  “Gods,” Mastodon uttered, looking properly alarmed. “What happened?”

  Godren moved into the room, uncaring that he left a speckled trail of blood in his wake. He didn’t strain himself to present her with an answer.

  “I see you aren’t shy about bleeding on my carpet, after all. Here, let’s get something on that.”

  “No,” Godren protested. “Let it bleed.” He fell into the chair at the front of Mastodon’s desk, trying not to wince. “I shot myself.”

  There was a pause.

  “Of all the foolish things to do, Godren,” Mastodon disapproved without pity, but she moved out from behind her desk to help. “Lea,” she addressed louder, eyes directed past Godren, and a figure moved up beside the chair seemingly from the shadows of the room. Godren wasn’t surprised he hadn’t noticed her, though, absorbed in his pain as he was. Even still, he hardly looked at her. He got the vague impression of a slender, dark-skinned woman, and though it was perfectly explainable that he’d missed her in the room, he found it a little odd that he’d never seen her around the Underworld at all.

  “Assess him, please,” Mastodon requested, then focused on Godren. “This is Lea, one of my servants. She is well informed when it comes to injury. I’m sure she’ll see what she can do.”

  Silently, Lea knelt by Godren’s chair. She was tall, her reach still level with the majority of what she needed to get to, and Godren found his eyes skimming the top of her shaved head. Her eyes, nearly as dark as her almost-black skin, were utterly focused and emotionless, but gentle. She wore a foreign sort of tunic – collar encircling her neck just below her chin and fanning down over her neck and collarbone, under her arms where it fastened in the back. It stopped well clear of her knees, leaving her long black legs folded neatly beneath her.

  She began by rolling his sleeve up for a good look at his hand, careful not to bloody herself. Godren tried to hold it so she could see.

  “So you shot yourself,” Mastodon pondered. “But did you cut it open to bleed yourself? I mean, you didn’t come home in this mess simply from sending a dart into your hand. Why all the blood?”

  Godren ignored the term ‘home’, not liking it. “I didn’t cut anything,” he said. “I was bitten.”

  “You were – I beg your pardon – bitten?”

  “I was attacked by a wolf set loose in the outskirts of the Ruins.”

  Mastodon stared at him. “A wolf,” she said flatly, wanting confirmation. Godren met her eyes and didn’t change his story. “Set loose?”

  “It had a master. When it bit into the poison and stumbled off of me, its handler took the silence as the end to a one-way battle and…came into the light, so to speak. The wolf was still standing, and I know I look like I should be dead, so he wasn’t worried about the exposure.” Godren winced with the last word as Lea found a tender spot, pressing his head back into the chair.

  “And
then…?” Mastodon prompted.

  “Then the wolf collapsed, I heard the handler voice his surprise, and I reacted.” Godren paused, annoyed with the way the story ended. “He got away with my knife in his arm.”

  “Your knife,” Mastodon repeated, displeased. “I should have listened to Ossen and known the only person you could shoot with that gun was yourself.”

  Godren tried not to let that get to him. He was glad when Mastodon continued with a prompting question, so his explanation wouldn’t sound like an excuse.

  “Why didn’t you use the gun, Godren?”

  “I didn’t expect a man, after the wolf. The sound of his voice so close took me by surprise, and my survival reflexes kicked in. It’s instinct and habit to reach for my knives at the first sign of danger. I did resort to the darts, after he’d turned his back, but…I had trouble operating the gun, and my aim was faulty.”

  “Trouble because of your injuries?”

  “Yes.”

  A bit of a silence stretched out as Mastodon considered, leaning back against her desk with her arms crossed.

  “So this wolf merely bit into the poison,” she said finally.

  Godren nodded.

  “How potent were your darts?”

  “Leveled for paralysis.”

  Disapproval showed in Mastodon’s eyes, but she refrained from voicing it. “He won’t be permanently out, then. Could you retrace your footsteps to the location of the attack?”

  “I could probably follow the blood,” Godren replied wryly.

  “Take someone there, once you’re patched up. I want the animal brought back and caged.” Her eyes turned suddenly unhappy. “It seems I’m not the only one developing a secret weapon. Boldness from the bounty hunters themselves was what I was getting annoyed with. Cultivating natural predators into their scheme…that presents a whole new level of fearlessness and savagery.”

  Catching his breath as Lea set something afire, Godren replied, “Indeed.”

  “I don’t like this, Godren. I’d like you to pick up the pace.”

  “Anything more specific?” Godren prompted.