The Hunter's Pet (2 page)

“Call me William,” he’d said as he bound her on the ground. He spoke and carried himself with a casual arrogance, safe behind the camouflaged and padded armor that protected him from the radiation currents. The people of the cities were always hiding behind this and that. They were weak creatures, only able to survive inside their constructions. Remove the walls, tear off the armor, and they would crumble.

She had tried to fight, but it was useless. He was far stronger than she in terms of sheer brute strength and she was at a disadvantage as she was caught in one set of ropes already. Carried from her home with no regard, Sarah’s fury had only grown with every passing step.

Born a mutant, her family had taken her from the city when she was still very young. Mutants had never been treated well by citizens. They were experimented upon, used for dangerous and unpleasant labor, locked away for much of their lives because they were regarded as being brutal. It was not the life her parents had wanted for their only daughter, so they had escaped into the forests that had reclaimed the old lands where humans used to live before the age of cities.

Her mother and father were long since passed, succumbed to fevers both. With their passing Sarah was left on her own. She didn’t mind that. She could have joined one of the wild tribes who lived further north, but she’d decided to stay where her family had settled, where every tree was a friend and every rock as permanent a marker as the city that glowed in the distance. Very few hunters came out as far as she lived. Those who did were easily avoided and even more easily scared off. City folk were wary of the wilds—as they should be. The forest was no place for people who lived separated from earth and sea and sky.

A grinding sound followed by a loud banging interrupted her train of thought. The cloth separating her cage from the world was drawn back and dark, scarred eyes became visible through the grating.

“Sorry,” William said. “Won’t be too much of that, I promise.”

“Die!”

He smirked and dropped the cloth back over the exterior, leaving her in darkness.

She should have killed him as soon as she knew he was stalking her. She should have run a spear through his body and left him for the wild cats. But killing was not in her nature. She rarely killed forest animals, only when she truly craved protein. On those rare occasions, she was sure to give thanks to the animal and to use every part of it. Waste not, want not, her mother used to say. It was a pre-city term, from the days when people lived wherever they pleased without the protection of the domes. Back in those days, there were little towns and small cities and none of them were walled off from nature. Everybody breathed unfiltered air. Everybody drank water from reservoirs open to the elements. Sarah very much enjoyed it when her mother had told her stories of the olden days. They sounded so quaint, so free.

Sarah was free, but her primitive life was not like the one those people had led. If she were to fall ill, or hurt herself, that would be the end of her. That was her weakness, her downfall. It was that which the hunter had exploited. A touch of the fever had distracted her and she’d wandered into his trap just as neatly as any wood pigeon.

The crate began to sway and roll. In the darkness she felt herself being drawn out of the world she’d come to love and into a realm of the unknown.

* * *

“What’ve you got there, William?” A neatly uniformed clerk was waiting at the final gate. He knew William by name, for William was one of the very few citizens who regularly went from Albion to the wilds and back. The post at the gate was a lonely one at times, and the clerk often liked to make conversation. Usually William was happy to oblige him, but this day he did not have time for it.

“My newest project.” William patted the crate proudly. The soft sound caused a fresh burst of angry shouting from inside. “She’s a little temperamental.”

“Sounds like you have your work cut out for you.” The clerk stamped his card, updated the database, and waved him through.

Albion rose in glorious white marble trammeled with diamond blue veins, conduits that carried power to the city in an organic grid. William hailed a transporter, a simple platform that would ride electromagnetic fields. He pushed the crate onto it, set the destination, then sat atop the metal box as they were whisked into the air and thence across the city. The skies were full of dancing platforms, narrow ovals sliding with smooth precision up, down around one another.

The journey took exactly 9.9 minutes from the central terminal to the crested villa that William called home. It was on the upper steppes of the city, a three-story abode commanding a view of the wild lands from its upper balconies.

He pushed the crate under the ornate arch that marked the gate of his private compound, and thence into the vestibule of his home. It took a moment or two to activate the force field that would keep his unwilling guest in and any curious neighbors out. A purple haze delineated the areas of control, making it easy to stay away from if one wanted to avoid an unpleasant shock.

“I’m going to let you out,” he said, addressing the crate. “Stay away from the purple parts, they’ll give you a nasty shock if you try to breach them. If you’re thinking of being destructive, think again. Break anything and you’ll be back in the crate before you know it. I’m going to open the door now. Come out nice and slow.”

He waited for a response. There was none. Worried that she might be somehow harmed, he opened the crate. She flew out, fingers clawed, face contorted with primal rage. He caught her before she could scratch his eyes out, but he was off balance and her momentum took them both over backwards. She tumbled over his head and hit the force field. There was a sound like a cross between a gun shot and the sound of an electric bug catcher and she emitted a loud yelp, scampering away from the purple wall at full speed.

“I told you,” he said, rising to his feet. “You’ll only hurt yourself if you misbehave.”

“Let me go!” She shrieked the words, clasping at her arm with her hand. The arm must have been exposed to the field for a second or more. It probably hurt like hell, might even have been burned.

“I need to attend to that arm,” he said. “Come on. I have something that will soothe the pain.”

He strode into his home, past the expensive furniture and unique works of art, through to the bathing chamber. He did not look over his shoulder to see if she followed, he simply acted as though she would. There could be no hesitation in dealing with a wildling. They were instinctive people; they sensed weakness, insecurity, and doubt within seconds and immediately took advantage.

Entering the bathing chamber, William retrieved a solar cream from the cabinet and turned, expecting to find his pet there. She was, glaring at him balefully.

“Sit down,” he said. “This takes a few minutes to work. It smells bad too and you’ll feel some tingling, but it will heal that burn in five minutes.”

“I hate you.”

“Give me your arm.”

He ignored her hate, her anger, her fear. None of those impulses would be rewarded with attention. When she failed to extend the limb, he took her by the hand and began slathering the cream over her skin. The effect was fairly instantaneous. He felt her relax as the pain abated. She was still angry and afraid; those emotions could not be soothed with salve, or any other topical treatment. Only time would make those abate.

It had not escaped his attention that she was slightly under the weather. There was a flush to her skin that could not entirely be attributed to anger, but it would be difficult to take her temperature given that she’d probably bite the thermometer. He could try the other end of her body, he supposed, but she would not much like that either.

“How long have you been sick?”

“I’m not sick.”

“You’re sick or scared. Probably both.”

“I’m not scared of you.” She snarled the words with an intensity that would have been scary if it weren’t coming out of a fever-soaked scrap of a woman. She had gone downhill quickly since being put in the crate, no doubt a result of the stress of being captured. One had to be careful with wildlings; as much as they needed firm handling, they also needed to be kept quiet for the first few weeks of their captivity. Too much stress and they could perhaps perish from the latent ailments that were part and parcel of living wild. Fortunately, fever was not all that dangerous in the city. It was common enough amongst hunter pets, especially when they were first brought in.

William had the necessary medication on hand, of course. The only problem was it tasted awful, and judging by the demeanor of his prize, she was unlikely to take it willingly.

“I’m going to give you something to bring the fever down. It won’t taste good, but you’ll feel better.”

“I would rather die than take anything from you,” she replied predictably.

William retrieved the bottle from the medicine cabinet and poured out a dose into a little clear vessel. “If you do die of this fever, you won’t have the satisfaction of revenge now, will you?”

He held out the dose and was not at all surprised when she slapped it out of his hand. Reddish brown liquid fell to the floor and pooled in the tiles as he patiently poured out a second dose.

“This is your last chance to take it,” he explained. “If I have to do this a third time, I’ll make you drink it.”

He extended the medicine to his captive. This time she slapped it toward him, spattering his clothing with the sticky mess.

“Right,” he said firmly. “I guess we’ll be doing this the hard way.”

William poured a third dose and set it aside. Taking his naughty new pet by the waist, he drew her close to his body, her back against his stomach as he secured his grasp around her midsection, clamping her arms to her chest. The other hand then went to her nose, pinching it so she opened her mouth. The plan worked that far, but he soon realized he was missing a third hand with which to actually dose her. Substituting speed for extra appendages, he let go of her body for a moment, grabbed the liquid, and tossed it down her throat before she could fight away.

The result was less than perfect, but most of the medicine seemed to have been swallowed as she squirmed away from him, cursing up an archaic storm.

“You’ll thank me when you feel better,” he said, ignoring her fury.

“You’ve poisoned me!”

“If I have, I went to an awful lot of trouble to do it,” William said mildly. “Now, bath time.”

She desperately needed a bath. Maybe she’d had a dip in one of the lakes now and then, but there was grime and body grease coating every inch of her skin. It was a natural protection against parasites, and a warning to predators, but it was entirely out of place in good society.

“Baths are for the weak!”

“Baths are for the clean,” William corrected. “You’ll feel better afterward, I promise.”

“Your promises are lies!”

She was really into the rebellious swing of things. He could probably have suggested giving her freedom and she would have resisted simply on principle.

“Do you have a name?”

The question seemed to take her off guard. She put her anger on hold for a moment and looked at him suspiciously.

“What would I need with a name?” she asked bitterly. “I’m just your possession, aren’t I?”

“Even possessions need names,” William replied. “A table by any other name would, well, it would be confusing.”

Her face screwed up in irritation. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“Listen,” William said. “Obviously you’re not a normal wildling. You were obviously educated by someone, at least in the ways of language. So you have a name. I presume you’d prefer I call you by your name?”

“I’d prefer you took a long walk off a short pier,” she bit back.

“What’s a pier?”

Her expression told him that she didn’t know either. A great many of her expressions were archaic; she must have been raised by very old-fashioned parents. Most wildlings lacked her linguistic abilities. They could talk, but they did so simply and without regard for the nuances of language. They certainly didn’t make puns or statements simply because they sounded good.

His new pet was quite an enigma, a woman caught between worlds, too wild to be a citizen, too civilized to be truly wild. A fascinating, beautiful creature who seemed to loathe him with every bone in her body.

“I will call you… Gertrude. Or Hortense. How do you feel about Philomena?”

Her eyes narrowed further with every passing suggested moniker until finally she broke. “My name is Sarah.”

“Sarah, that’s a good name. An old name.”

“No older than William,” she replied. She was right. He had been named after his great to the power of a half-dozen grandfather, a man who had made a name for himself by hunting man-eating tigers in India or Pakistan back in the days before they became great hulking irradiated hell beasts.

“Let’s get you into the bath,” he said, activating the bath and watching as it almost instantly filled with warm clean water that flowed from many dozens of little portals around the rim of the tub. “Best to take your clothes off for this.”

He braced himself for the coming argument, for which he would not have blamed her. Being naked with a strange man was a vulnerable position for any woman, let alone a freshly caught wildling.

“You want my clothes off? You want to see me without my clothes?” She tugged at her tunic, pulling it up over her head. Her breasts were instantly exposed, full and round with pink nipples. Her beauty was quite stunning and for a moment his breath caught in his throat. The toned lines of her torso led down to the sweet spot between her thighs where soft green curls grew. William felt his cock harden in response. He was glad he was still in the camouflage hardened armor that protected every part of his body, including the crotch region. The underside of his cock was thrusting against the codpiece with a vigor that was almost uncomfortable.

“Very nice,” he said, playing down his arousal. “Now, would you like to get in?”

“I would not,” she said, mimicking his intonation. Oh, she was a little smart ass. She stood there quite boldly without a care for her nudity, hands on her hips as she looked up at him defiantly.