Huntsman's Prey (7 page)

A little sigh filled the space between them and then a mouth was on his. It was warm and sweet and tasted of sugar. But it was also clumsy and bruising. A showering rain of hard, hard kisses full of virginal passion and the knocking of teeth.

Claudia wasn’t clumsy. Ever. And dreams weren’t supposed to sting.

The thought was like ice water to the face. His eyes snapped open, only to now find himself staring into the eyes of a stranger.

For a moment he was confused whether to be angry or not. Because while he did not know her, she was perhaps the loveliest creature he’d ever beheld. She had a heart shaped face, with almond shaped eyes and full pouty, perfect lips.

In his stupor, he felt his body responding and the moment it did was when he snapped from his trance. This was Wonderland, where to trust anything, especially those that looked this seductively beautiful, could be a death sentence.

Startled, he jerked back and then roared as his battered leg took that moment to remind him that moving like that was a bad idea. She jumped back too, landing in an almost feline pose.

“Who are you?” he snapped. She was crouching in front of him, her hands balled into fists on the ground as she eyed him warily.

Now that he was able to take her full measure, he realized the woman was unlike any he’d ever seen before. She had vivid blue hair (like the color of the sky right after a cleansing rain) and flat, black eyes.

There were no whites. Her eyes were completely black. But that wasn’t what made her unique. In Kingdom, and especially in Wonderland, the strange abounded. It was that only parts of her were solid. Other bits were so vaporous he could literally see through them.

Obviously frightened, a black puff of smoke enveloped her and where she’d stood only moments ago, was now a multi-colored cat. Not unlike the Cheshire himself, but this one was very obviously female. Its eyes were the same solid black, and its fur was the brightest blue, but she wore a dazzling collar of fiery jewels and her sharp claws were painted a bright pink.

“Who am I?” she said. “Who are you?” She blinked and then blinked again, cocking her head to the side while her furry tail whisked gently back and forth.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he felt the urge to spit. “Are you a woman who can change into a cat? Or a cat that changes into a woman?”

She sniffed before proceeding to clean her paw with long, slow licks of her bright pink tongue.

“Why does it matter? I saved you. You belong to me now, man.”

He snorted.

Her cat face transformed into the human face from earlier and what had once been so mesmerizing was now alien, almost macabre to see attached to the furry body of a feline. “Well I do not belong to you,” she sniffed as if offended by the very notion.

Aeric frowned. “I never said you did. And how exactly did you save me anyway?”

“You were out cold.” She shrugged a furry shoulder, as if that was explanation enough.

“So?”

“So!” She shrieked, bounding onto his chest with all four paws. Her weight was miniscule, oddly comforting. But he had to admit that the human face on the cat’s body was wrecking havoc with his mind. It wasn’t that shifters didn’t exist in his lands, but they were rare, so to see one flaunting its dual form as though it hadn’t a care in the world made him feel peculiar.

“Yes, just so, and please shift. Bloody hell you’re going to give me nightmares for years.” Muttering oaths under his breath he was sure she couldn’t hear, he waited for her to do as ordered.

“What was that?” She shoved her nose in his face, her black eyes narrowed into sharp slits. “Did you say something about me? Perhaps you’d like to repeat that for all the woods to hear?”

“What?” His brows dipped. She was as insane as the rest of them. No matter that she could talk, if he couldn’t understand half of what she was getting at, it really didn’t matter. “I said you cats are all the same, satisfied?”

“I’m not a cat. I’m a woman.”

The tail swishing behind her screamed liar.

“Girl, Cat, I’m tired. Get off me now so that I can set up camp.”

She laughed. “Set up camp! Here?” Disbelief mixed with arrogance peppered her words and made his spine stiffen.

He swiped at her angrily. “Yes. Here. And you’re not wanted, you may go.”

A visible tremor coursed down her back.

She held up a paw, ticking off claws as she counted down the ways she thought him stupid. “One. You were just bulldozed. I know, I saw it happen.”

“I was not,” he grumped.

She pinned him with an ‘if-you-say-so’ stare. “Two, you cannot walk on that leg. I had to set it.”

“It wasn’t broken,” he snapped.

Rolling her inky eyes, she huffed. “Of course it wasn’t broken, I had to set it in stone. See.” She pointed down to his leg as if he should already know that and what an imbecilic ass he was for not already realizing it.

His jaw dropped. From the knee down, his leg was absolutely and completely set in stone. “What have you done to me?” he roared.

He had to give her credit, she neither blinked nor startled at his outburst. “If you know anything about anything then you know that a leech’s vine is tipped in poison. By tonight your leg would have swelled to the size of an elephant’s trunk and by tomorrow it would have rotted out completely.”

He hadn’t known that. A hunter by trade, he prided himself on knowing all there was to know about flora and fauna. But having been so averse to coming into Wonderland it was true that he hadn’t exactly made a point of learning this place as he had others. But surely he should have known at least
that
about the vines. Wracking his brain though, the memory simply wasn’t there.

Was it possible that things continually evolved in Wonderland?

“The only way to spare your parts,” she licked her lips, yanking him from his thoughts, “is to get you to the fairy spring right away. The stone has frozen the spread of the toxin, but the moment the stone comes off it’ll pick right back up where it started. So the stone stays.”

“How did you get the stone on me anyway?”

She touched a paw to her cheek. “And you call yourself a hunter. I’m appalled.”

Annoyed, he scowled. “I’m a damn fine hunter.”

Her look spoke volumes, said if he was such a good hunter he wouldn’t be in the predicament he was now.

“I’ll have you know, no one sane enters Wonderland, especially not to hunt. I’m only here to help a friend.”

Her brow tipped.

“And why am I bothering to explain myself to you anyway? Thank you for saving me, I can take it from here.”

“You are most vexing. Do you know that?”

“Me?” The audacity of this creature made him want to laugh in frustration.

“Tell me, man, do you even know where the fairy springs are?”

His nostrils flared. “I’ll have you know that I do.”

“Good.” She nodded. “Then you’ll know to get there you’d have to cross the ogre’s bridge. I hope you’re good with riddles.” With a sweet as sin grin she turned to go.

“Wait.” His hand shot out, grabbing hold of her tail. Which didn’t stop her at all, as her tail wound through his hand like vapor.

All the same, she hissed as if he had yanked on it.

“What ogre? There’s never been an ogre.”

Her nose curled. “How long has it been since you’ve been here, Hunter? That foul smelling creature set up shop ten years ago.”

Shaking his head, he realized it had been a while. A long while since he’d been back. At least fifteen years, if not more.

Plopping his wrist over his eyes, he realized he might be stuck with this creature, at least until he could get to the spring.

Why hadn’t Danika warned him about any of this? Or at the bare minimum given him a map to follow?

Then again, perhaps this was all part of his ‘ruing the day he ever mocked her’ bit. He sighed, peeking at the cat woman from between his fingers. She was gazing down at him, her tail swishing back and forth.

“What are you really? Cat or woman?”

“Does it matter?” she asked again.

“I’d just rather travel with whichever form is truly yours. It’s hard to focus when you’re both.”

Her lips twisted, but she didn’t speak again. Instead the black cloud covered her once more and this time when it parted she stood before him a woman.

He sat up, staring at the mile high length of her slender legs. The smooth expanse of her flat, ivory stomach, and the firm mounds of her rosy tipped breasts. Those obsidian eyes of hers blinked at him as if waiting for him to say something.

It wasn’t shocking that she was nude. Of the few shifters he knew or heard of, none of them could shift with clothes on. It was a fable told by puritans to make the truth less shocking. And besides, his years of traveling in between realms and meeting nymphs and maidens of the sea, nudity had long since stopped being shocking.

Although he could admit, at least in the privacy of his own head, that her nudity was most assuredly affecting his…parts, even if both her arms were currently invisible. She seemed to have a problem reforming completely.

The waves of her hair spilled down around her shoulders like vivid blue ink.

“What is your name?” she asked after allowing him time to study her.

And he supposed that if she was willing to stay in her true form with him, then he at least owed her that. “Aeric. Yours?”

“Aeric. Aeric. Aeric,” she said his name three times, each time growing louder until finally nodding and smiling brightly. “Yes, that will do Aeric. You may call me Lissa.” She emphasized the double ‘s’ with a sibilant hiss.

“Lissa? Are you sure it’s not Lisa, Lissa sounds wrong.”

She looked offended, her face screwed up into a tight scowl as she said, “And who gets to decide? You are not my parent.”

He rolled his eyes, that didn’t even make sense. “As you say. Now how am I supposed to walk with this thing on?” He pointed to his stone booted foot.

“One step at a time.”

“Bloody hell.” He was beginning to suspect she was related more to the Cheshire than to a human, but it wasn’t worth arguing over.

Standing to his feet he expected his walking to be hindered by the stone, but he could step down without much of a problem, blessedly, there was no pain either.

“Don’t run though,” she cautioned. “The stone isn’t as solid a mass as it might appear, should it split apart the toxin will spread even quicker than before.”

“Lovely.” Retrieving his pack, he shrugged it on, only just remembering that Chrysalis had stolen his pouch with the tool necessary to capture her.

Lissa stood beside the empty stump of the leech tree frowning as she peered down its cracked opening.

“What?” he asked, wondering if she saw something inside.

“I do not understand how this tree attacked you, it’s been dead a long time.” With a gentle shudder, she turned away from the stump and headed back toward the tree line, away from the brook.

“How did you know which tree attacked me?” he asked slowly, something wasn’t adding up here. “Were you following me?”

She shrugged. “I heard the scuffle. We all did. I came just at the tail end of it and saw her very nearly defeat you.”

He scoffed. “She did no such thing.”

“As you say.” Her lips twitched and it bothered him for some reason, but he was determined to ignore it. Because he did not know her and he had a job to do. Period.

“The sun will set soon,” Aeric said. She was one bat short of a belfry, he had no choice but to follow her, but he was positive this arrangement would not last.

“If you’re implying that we need to make camp. I couldn’t agree more. But we have to get as far away from the water as possible. The dingletoads come out at night and that is their preferred hunting spot.”

“Dingletoads don’t sound particularly frightsome.”

Her eyes grew wide in her head. “It is obvious to me that you will not last a night, let alone a day in Wonderland without my help.”

“Creature, you exaggerate.”

Her head swiveled like an owl’s on her neck. “I’m beginning to think your friends sent you here to die.”

He scoffed. “I’m the Queen’s Huntsman, there is nothing I cannot find and kill.”

“Are you here to kill?” She stepped around a pile of scattered leaves.

Or at least he thought them a pile of dead, brown leaves, until he got closer and the leaves rattled back at him. Picking up a long walking stick, he stabbed the center of the pile.

It hissed and screeched, writhing and curling in on itself as it went through its death throes. Taking pity on the beast, he stabbed it once more through its head. The eight foot long snake fell silent after that.

“What did that leaf adder ever do to you?” She shuddered.

“They’re dangerous.”

“Only if you’re a fox tailed rat or not paying attention to where you’re going.”

“Oh, for the gods sakes, if you’re going to sit here and lecture me on what I should think and do—”

She frowned. “I wasn’t doing that.”

“You were.”

They didn’t speak again for several long, tense minutes. And once his temper died out, he realized he
was
making an ass of himself. He wasn’t normally so argumentative, but something about her just brought the ire out in him.

Though she did not deserve it. She had set his leg after all; the least he could do was show a little more gratitude for it.

Gods he hated a pricking conscience. In truth, it wasn’t that he had a problem with her, more so that his mission was already failing so spectacularly and it’d only just begun. But every time the words “I’m sorry” landed on his tongue, he couldn’t seem to get them past his lips.

Bearing most of his weight on the stick, he followed her around so many twists and turns he knew if she left him now he’d be thoroughly lost. They walked up trees, down into the earth through hidden stairwells tucked behind fat, mossy boulders. At one point they even walked
through
the trunk of a tree.

For the first time he noticed the animals were out. Earlier they’d been silent, but he heard their chattering squeaks now. Chrysalis had spooked the creatures into hiding. That generally only tended to happen in the wild when they sensed a bigger, stronger predator around.