Elite: A Hunter novel (27 page)

And when I finally arrived, with my shotgun loaded and off the safety, Myrrdhin rewarded my assumption by being just on my side of another junction, the rest packed up at his back.

I think they are trying to get into another service tunnel to hide,
the Hound said.
I smell magic as well as snake.

I got my net spell ready. We didn’t have much time; if they got into that service tunnel, we’d have the devil’s own time getting them out. If they used the service tunnel to try to escape, we’d need the whole Elite team down here to find them and corner them. I thought fast.
Bya, you and my
Alebrijes
except for Dusana sneak in as close as you can get, then
bamph
to the other side of them. Once you do that, we’ll rush from this side. We’ll get them caught between us, and I’ll net them.

Bya nodded, and he and the others…faded. They didn’t go invisible, but they lost their bright colors and turned the exact same color as the ’crete of the tunnel. Then they plastered themselves against the wall. If they moved slowly, there was a good chance they could get close enough to make this work.

We waited, watching as the Hounds crept slowly away, then out of sight around a curve. And waited. I really hated waiting, especially when I couldn’t see what was happening.

Now!
Bya “shouted,” and we all rushed down the tunnel and around the curve.

Only to see that the
Nagas
, instead of retreating, had rushed Bya’s half of the pack as they materialized just beyond them.

Dammit!
My stomach lurched. And I felt it like a knife in the heart when I heard one of my Hounds yelp in pain. This had just all gone FUBAR. I cast the net anyway, hoping that when the
Nagas
discovered they were trapped, they’d turn their attention to the net instead of the Hounds.

It sort of worked. And being encumbered by the net spell restricted their movement enough that they couldn’t put the full force of their muscles behind the blows of their swords. “Go!” I yelled at the other Hounds, and they leapt forward to the defense of their fellows.

It got very chaotic and ugly, and there was more yelping, which hurt almost as much as if
I
was the one getting slashed. It didn’t stay ugly long, thanks to my incendiary rounds, which very quickly changed the
Nagas’
minds about attacking, but by the time they were all piles of ash, and I had dropped the net spell, Bya, Shinje, and Kalachakra all had some ugly, deep gashes, going all the way down to the bone.

So we delayed a bit more, while I poured manna into them to heal up their hurts, while the rest stood guard. I was cursing myself the entire time, apologizing to them out loud and crying a little. Nothing makes me feel worse than when I let my Hounds get hurt.

Finally, Bya grabbed my wrist in his mouth.
Stop,
he said.
Stop blaming yourself. We are partners. We know what we are doing; you don’t force us to do what we wouldn’t do on our own.

“Yes, but—” I said, sniffling, and still feeling guilty as sin.

Stop,
he ordered. And so I didn’t object. But I still felt horrid.

He licked the tears off my face, and I blew my nose on a rag, and we all got up off the ’crete, put ourselves back in scouting order, and went back to the dead Psimon.

This one was a man. And like the second one, he was
old
. He was bald, but his scalp was covered in age-spots, he was wrinkled, frail-looking, and painfully thin. Now that I was right on top of him, I couldn’t see any signs of dragging, hauling, or even signs that anyone had touched his body since he fell here. Nor could I see any signs of damage on him, not even a bruise.

There was also not a trace of magic, and I
looked
.

I sighed and called it in, got vid and the ID off his collar, then began trudging back to my exit, since I knew I was about to be ordered out.

This
time the coldly officious Psimon wasn’t waiting for me, and I had taken the precaution of ordering a pod before I climbed out. The pod was waiting and I got into it. No one had told me that I had to wait around for the Psimon, and I didn’t intend to.

It almost felt like the dead Psimon had been
planted
there for me to find. And that just got altogether too creepy for me. I needed help here, and Kent wasn’t going to be able to give it to me. I had not been ordered not to talk about
this
incident, so if anyone found out that I talked to Uncle about it, with his help I might be able to skate on a technicality. I also called my uncle from the pod rather than waiting to get to HQ, where someone might intercept me—feigning that it was a social call. He took it anyway, though I had to wait a little.

“How long has it been since you had a home-cooked meal?” I demanded when he took my call.

He blinked at me in surprise. “Quite some time. I rarely cook for myself. Why?”

“Because I assume you spend time somewhere
other
than your office, and if you can get someone to deliver groceries, I’ll meet you there and cook for you, like a dutiful niece should,” I said. He raised an eyebrow, and I nodded. We were getting really good at reading each others’ nonverbal cues.

“Send me your list, and program your pod for the Arbors. I’ll tell the door-comp to send you up.” I had no idea where “the Arbors” was, but generally, any building that had a name rather than an address tended to be…appropriately fancy.

So I sent the grocery list of things I would need for spaghetti and salad, informed HQ I was paying my uncle a personal visit over supper, got the okay, and told the pod “the Arbors,” then sat back and watched the city in the sunset.

The sun was just touching the horizon when the pod pulled up at a tall building in the Hub. I got out and walked straight up to the door, holding up my Perscom to the scanner beside it. A vid-plate lit up with a bland male in a suit. “Elite Hunter Joyeaux Charmand, you are expected,” said what sounded a bit like a synthesized voice. “Please proceed inside and to the elevators.”

The heavy metal doors swished open, and I walked into a lobby: marble floors, marble walls, marble seats, and a lot of plants. There were vid-screens showing news channels on the walls to the right and left, and a bank of elevators at the rear. No need to ask which one I should take, there was one waiting, with the door open.

When the elevator doors opened again, I was in foyer in the middle of four hallways. Each hallway had two doors on it; each door had a little nameplate outside of it. I found the one that said “Charmand” and presented my Perscom to the scanner; the door opened for me.

And…well, the apartment beyond was like something out of a pre-Diseray vid about very rich people. After seeing the lobby, I expected a lot of glass and metal and stone. Instead—

The walls looked exactly like the peeled-log walls of one of our community halls back home, varnished and gleaming a ruddy gold, with a high, log-beamed ceiling. The floor was wood, covered in what
looked
like the hides of buffalo and bears. The furniture appeared to be made of more peeled logs, with comfortable cushions of stuffed leather, and added pillows in warm fabrics. The light came from a chandelier that apparently was constructed of a mass of antlers, and table lamps with square stained-glass shades.

Back home, all this would have still cost a spectacular amount of money. Here? I couldn’t even begin to calculate it.

“I’m in the kitchen,” my uncle called from somewhere inside.

I followed his voice and found Uncle in a kitchen that matched the rest of the apartment. He was taking food out of a box.

“I’m assuming—” I began.

“Psi-shields second to none, installed by people I personally trust,” Uncle said as I took out what I needed from the well-stocked cupboards and began making spaghetti sauce.

“Good,” I said with relief. “I have some vid to show you. And I got a couple ID codes too.”

“You go clean up. The bathroom is through that door,” he said, and nodded to his left. I transferred the vid from my Perscom to his directly, and did so.

Once cleaned up and changed into the loose pants and top I found in the bathroom, I told him everything I knew while he helped me make dinner.

Anyone who was watching us through the panoramic windows would only have seen uncle and niece cooking together, since we kept our backs to the windows the entire time. And I could feel a very faint buzz in the back of my skull that told me Uncle’s Psi-shields were strong enough for me to
notice.

I was pretty sure he knew how to watch a vid on his Perscom without letting anyone spying through the windows see it.

“Well,” he said as we made salads while the sauce cooked, “you’ve done more than I hoped for. Far more. Keep up the good work.”

“No one’s trying to blame you for these deaths?” I asked. “Or the Hunters?” I gulped. “Or me? Because this last one…if I was writing a drama-vid, it would have been a setup to make me look guilty.”

He smiled slightly and said, “I wish to draw your attention to ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.’”

I don’t know how he knew I’d devoured every single Sherlock Holmes story we had in the Monastery archives, but I knew exactly what he was talking about. The dog, in the story, hadn’t barked when it should have…and what Uncle was implying was that PsiCorps probably
should
have been looking hard for
someone
to blame the deaths of three Psimons on.

But they weren’t. Which was…interesting.

The noodles were ready then, and so was the sauce; we took everything to the dining table. Uncle sat at the end, and I sat at a right angle to him. “You are making sure, not only to keep your Psi-shield on, but to keep up the psionic blocks your Masters taught you?”

“Tighter than a banjo string,” I said fervently. “Tighter than the lid on the last jar of jam. Why?”

“Because if the Psimon who has been meeting you thinks you are coming too close to something PsiCorps does not want you to know, he’ll alter your memory,” Uncle replied grimly. “So be very careful.”

Psimons can do that?

And that was when something occurred to me. Actually, when it hit me, I felt absolutely stunned. “Uncle,” I said, “can Othersiders alter peoples’ memories the way Psimons can?”

It was his turn to blink at me, perplexed. “I suppose they can. They have similar psionic abilities. Why?”

“Because that explains how Ace got away with murdering Karly, and how he put that vamp down in the storm sewers that was intended for me without his Hounds twigging to it and telling on him,” I said slowly. “Look, now we know he’s obviously been in contact with Othersiders for a while, right?”

“Obviously, given they knew he was in army custody. We know his Hounds had no inkling he was trying to kill another Hunter. But if he had the memories altered or blocked after every meeting—”

“Then the Hounds would never know,” I said. “They’d never get anything from his thoughts; unless we actually
try
to reach them Otherside, they can’t pick up on what we’re doing when they’re off away except for strong emotions. And any Psimons that happened to check on him wouldn’t have picked that up either, if it was blocked.”

“Or the Psimons who read him after his arrest…” But he sounded uncertain. “On the other hand, while I have never known Psimons to directly lie, sometimes they don’t tell the whole truth either.”

“They haven’t been telling the truth about what’s going on in the sewers, have they?” I pointed out.

His mouth went into a thin line. “No,” he replied. “They haven’t.”

I didn’t go out on sewer Hunts for the next week, since I was out on teams from dawn to dark; this wasn’t
obviously
increased Othersider activity, or at least, not something Kent said anything about, I suppose because Elites got callouts every single day, but it was definitely a workout. Flocks of Wyverns, another small Drakken, an entire tribe of Ogres, just one callout after another, and generally at least two every day. That was because, thanks to my huge pack, not only was I in demand on a small team, I also didn’t get worn out as fast as some of the others, so I
could
handle two calls a day.

But by the time I finished stuffing my face each evening—more often than not, long after the mess hall was closed—I was generally so tired (and often bruised up) all I really wanted was to
maybe
mindlessly watch a vid, then sleep, although Retro would always look for me. He was easing off on the asking-for-a-date business; instead, he’d try to make me laugh. I did need those laughs, and I hated to admit it, but he
was
hilarious. Usually he’d tell some outrageous story about what he’d been doing that was
so
over the top I found myself laughing until my sides hurt.

And I dreamed about Karly most nights. Funny dreams, though: all she would do would be to show up, nod decisively once, then fade away. They weren’t the sort of dream that left me upset, or crying, or anything like that. Maybe they were just my subconscious telling me I’d solved the mystery of how Ace had done his murdering without giving himself away, and it was time to get on with catching the rat.