The Hunter's Pet (6 page)

“Here.” He handed her the book. “Take this. I know it won’t mean much at the moment, but soon you’ll be able to read every page.” His tone conveyed an excitement she could not feel. She was not interested in what he called ‘education.’ It was all a distraction from the real business of living as far as she was concerned.

“It all starts with an alphabet,” he said, beginning the lesson. “The alphabet is made up of letters, which represent the sounds we make when we speak…”

He kept talking, but Sarah wasn’t listening. She stared at the book, at the weird symbols on the cover. What a waste of time, to sit and look at these dull objects when all around life was happening, life piled on life and all lost to these city people.

“Sarah.”

She glanced up at him.

“You need to pay attention,” he said, chiding her. “What’s the first letter of the alphabet?”

Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“A,” he said. “A is the first letter.”

“What’s the second letter? Ass? As in, you’re an ass?”

“That’s not quite how alphabets work,” William replied patiently. “But at least you’re thinking on the subject. Now, the letter ‘a’ is represented in two different ways, upper case and lower case…”

Again, Sarah’s attention waned. It was all so unspeakably boring.

“Sarah,” he said, more sharply this time. “What are you…”

She lay back and turned over on her stomach. “Just punish me,” she said. “I cannot understand anything you are saying.”

His hand hooked in the back of her tunic. He pulled back, hauling her up to a kneeling position. “You’re not paying attention,” he said, leaning over her as he held her in place. “You’re doing everything you can to avoid learning. If you could turn your brain off, you would.”

Sarah shrugged in his grasp. “Why do you care if I read? You want me to hunt. Hunters don’t need to read.”

“I suppose I could keep you in a kennel, take you out when I need you to work, do nothing for you other than provide the basics of life,” he mused. “But I don’t think you’d like that. And I don’t think it would be good for your work either. A good hunter is well rounded.”

“You want a well-trained pet. A puppy who balances a bone on her nose.”

“I want a happy pet,” he said grimly. “Eventually you will realize that.”

“If you want me to be happy, take me out and let me go free. I won’t live in this city. I can’t.”

“You can,” he said, his voice softening. “I know you don’t like it, but we will return to the wilds soon enough. We will spend days at a time hunting ores and proteins. You will see the world you love again, but not until you’re trained enough that I know you’ll be coming home with me at the end of the day.”

“I’ll never be that well trained.”

“You’re already halfway there,” he informed her with that handsome smile. “You just need a little more time, that’s all.”

He was so sure of himself. She wondered what made him so certain. How many other hunters had he trained? And where were they? Lost, probably. The wilds were dangerous for domesticated people. If she spent too long in the city, she too would lose her instincts.

“I need to go back,” she said. “If you keep me here, I’ll forget what I know. I’ll lose strength. I’ll lose connection with the wilds. And then I will be useless to you.”

He frowned. She’d made a point.

“You know what,” he said, scratching his chin. “Let’s go out.”

“Truly?”

“Wait there.” He pointed a finger at her, instructing her to stay on the bed and then he left. She waited for what seemed like a long time, wondering if perhaps he had lied.

“Right,” he said, coming back into the room. “Let’s get ready.”

He was wearing the same camouflaged outfit he’d had on the day he captured her. Mixed emotions of hatred and lust shot through her. He looked damn good in his hunting attire, the armor conformed to his musculature perfectly, emphasizing the breadth of his shoulders and the powerful set of his hips. His hair had been tied back, leaving his jawline clear for her admiration. He locked eyes with her and smiled. “Today we hunt.”

“We hunt?”

“That’s right,” he said. He had something in his hands, a band of metal. She recognized it from the first day they’d met. It was a collar, meant for wrapping about her neck, meant for control.

“I’m not wearing that.”

“Ah, but you are.” He beckoned her forward with a crooked finger. “You’re going to wear it because this is your ticket to running free today. No leashes. No cages. Just you and I.”

Sarah chewed her lip for a moment. He almost made it sound appealing. A collar that represented freedom. She supposed she could wear it. Perhaps. Her feet made the decision for her in the end, shuffling her body within arm’s reach of him. He wasted no time in snapping the collar about her neck, leaving the cool light metal to rest against her neck.

“This collar can have some unpleasant effects,” he warned her. “It contains a locator, so if you run, I’ll be able to find you. It also contains a few disciplinary tools, just in case you decide to disobey.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it will give you a hell of a whack on your behind if you misbehave.”

“But it’s on my neck.”

“It uses some of that technology you hate to send an impulse to your mind. It will feel as though your bottom is being spanked, even if I am miles away.”

“Lies,” she scoffed. “That is not… ow!”

He pressed a button on a little disc in his hand, and she felt a flare of heat and pain in her posterior. It was quite impossible, for nobody had touched her, and yet she felt as though she had been swatted.

“It’s very effective,” he said. “Keep that in mind as we go through the city and out into the wilds.”

“I get the idea.”

“Good. Now for the fun part. Your armor, m’lady.”

“I have no need of armor,” she laughed as he produced a tunic and leggings covered in the same camouflage and armor as his own.

“You’ll wear it anyway, and you’ll wear foot coverings too.”

“I didn’t wear any of that my entire life and somehow I survived. Why do you want to weigh me down?” She picked up the tunic. “This weighs more than a big cat.”

“It won’t be that bad when it’s on, and you’ll get used to it.” He took it from her hands and lifted it over her head. Before she could protest, he dropped it on her shoulders.

To her chagrin, he was right. It wasn’t really that heavy, but it was heavy and she didn’t like it at all. “Exoskeletons are for bugs,” she said, squirming out of it.

“You put it on, or you spend the day in the crate while I go out by myself.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Life often isn’t.” He pointed to the armor. “Put it on.”

Scowling down at the green and gray attire, Sarah had a sinking feeling that she was going to end up wearing it. Outright defiance was getting her nowhere.

“I can’t wear it,” she said, letting her voice soften. “It’s too heavy.”

“It’s not,” he said. “I had it lightened specifically for your frame. So quit stalling. I am leaving here in two minutes. You’ll either be with me and wearing this, or you’ll be in your crate.”

She stalled another few seconds, but it was obvious that she was out of choices. It was with extreme reluctance that she donned the armored tunic, leggings, and shoes. The shoes were the worst. Heavy thick rubber separated her feet from the floor, making it impossible to feel the texture or nature of the terrain. Stone or sand would have been the same.

“You’ll get used to it all,” William said, ushering her out the door.

It was her first time out of the house since arriving in the city. The only other time she’d been out, she had been in a covered crate and had not known precisely how they had arrived at his house. It turned out that they had taken a flimsy piece of magically floating plastic.

“It’s okay,” William tried to reassure her. “You just stand on it and it automatically adjusts to make sure that the platform stays stable. You could fly anywhere in the city on this and never fall off.”

Sarah tapped the platform with her boot. She couldn’t feel the platform properly through the dulling material, but she did not at all like the way it swayed. They were very high up, far higher than the canopy of the forest. If she were to fall, there would be no branches on which to catch herself, there would be no soft place to land. There would be a hard landing on unforgiving unnatural rock.

“Look,” William said, “there are hundreds of these things flying everywhere.”

He was right. There were hundreds of the scary saucers flinging themselves through the city skies with no regard for the laws of nature. Some of them had people aboard, city dwellers who did not know that flying was for birds, not men.

“I can’t.”

“You can,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. Without any further cajoling, he lifted her up and onto the platform, keeping a firm hold of her as it moved away from the security of the docking station outside his house and began floating through the ether.

“I’m going to fall!”

“You’re not,” he said. “You couldn’t fall if you tried.”

“I could fall if I tried,” Sarah argued. William had her very firmly in his grasp, pressing her back against the muscled planes of his chest and thighs. He was the one solid thing in a world of floating objects, the only thing between her and the raging fear being triggered by keen survival instincts.

“You really couldn’t,” he said. “Even if you tried to throw yourself off, the platform would compensate.” His voice, gruff and confident in her ear was very reassuring; distracting, in fact. So distracting that she barely noticed that their journey was almost over.

William loosed his grip and took her hand instead. “Come on,” he said, “almost there.”

Sarah allowed herself to be led through what was a frankly bewildering set of smooth rock canyon walls through to a room where a man in a pristine white robe and a most ridiculous hat asked William for his identification.

“You understand that by going into the wilds, you risk solar contamination,” the man in the robes droned, reading from a plastic card. “You understand that the city takes no responsibility for injury or death resulting from excursions into the wild. You understand that the wilds are unregulated and not subject to city law, or order…”

“You understand that you can find your ass with your hands by reaching behind you,” Sarah interrupted, thoroughly bored with proceedings.

“Please keep your pet under control,” the border official said dourly. His tone was offensive, but not as offensive as the hat, which made him look both stupid and officious with double peaks, one at the front and one at the back, and a bright yellow bauble perched atop the otherwise teal-hued piece of headgear.

“She’s under control, just eager to hunt,” William replied. “We are burning daylight.”

* * *

William understood Sarah’s frustration; the bureaucracy of the city could be tedious at the best of times. There wasn’t much call for real labor of any kind, so 99% of the jobs were bureaucratic in nature. Getting a house built could take up to five years, four of them entirely taken up with paperwork. There was often paperwork for obtaining paperwork, which would then allow one to apply for further paperwork. It had taken a full three years to be certified as a hunter, and another three to be approved for pet possession.

Sarah stood impatiently by while William’s permits were checked. The friendly clerk who usually dealt with his affairs was off duty, and a particularly officious fellow had taken his place. The hat was a particularly obnoxious touch.

It took a full hour for everything to be approved, a full hour in which Sarah grew increasingly frustrated. He had promised her the wilds and all she’d gotten was a serious dose of boredom.

“Can I at least take the armor off?”

“We will be outside soon,” William promised. “This doesn’t usually take this long.”

“Contain your pet, sir,” the official said, scanning his screen line by line. “I cannot concentrate with her whining.”

“Calm down,” William said, running his hand down her back. He let his fingers trail up to the back of her neck and scratched lightly. She let out a little purring sound as he massaged her, relaxing bit by bit with every rub. Her eyes closed slightly, lidding as he worked his thumb up along the back of her neck toward her hairline.

“You have twelve hours,” the official finally said. “Proceed to the outer chamber.”

Finally, they were close to the outside. The outer chamber was technically out of the city, a vented area where people going out could acclimate to the weather outside. The city was kept at an ambient temperature of sixty-four degrees and constant mild humidity. The outer world did not conform to those ranges; it was a swirling vortex of all kinds of weather, some of it wild.

“I can smell it,” Sarah said, almost on her toes with excitement. “I can smell the wind!” She rushed to the grated windows and pressed her face to them.

“Door’s over here,” William said. “It will open shortly, looks like we have a nice day out there.”

He was right. The door opened a moment later. The walls slid away and there were the wilds. Sarah was gone in an instant. She caught sight of a flash of green and she ran. There was not a moment of warning, or so much as a shout of excitement, she just sprinted for freedom.

William snorted and hit the pulse button. A distant yelp told him that it had delivered an electronic swat to her backside. But that was not enough, the tracker on his arm told him that she was still running. She was going to run until she couldn’t run anymore—and he was going to let her. There was no hurry to catch up; she was on the grid and there was no way to escape that.

For hours, Sarah ran. William stopped here and there to drink from crystal streams and to eat of hanging fruit. It was quite a pleasant day, aside from his pet’s disobedience. When he was ready, he continued on again, following her tracks. He happened to find a few fowl along the way, managing to hunt both his prey and his pet at the same time.

Almost three hours later, he found her curled up in the fork of a tree. She was fast asleep beneath the golden leaves, an expression of pure calm on her pretty face. It was almost a pity to wake her up, but they had to return home. Darkness would not be far off, and though he was prepared for a night in the wilds, he preferred the idea of a hot bath and a comfortable bed.