A Question of Will by Alex Albrinck Read Free Book Online Page A

immediately. He would approach the house unseen, denying the human woman the opportunity to take a shot at him from a distance, traveling through the thick tree cover of the forest enclosed within the massive walls circling the community. He would enter the house through the rear door, as the woman would no doubt be looking for him out the front. He had ways of defending himself and disarming her, but those methods worked best in close quarters.
    He expected the Hunters would be lurking in these trees as well, and he soon spotted them. The men were, for reasons he’d never quite understood nor cared to consider, named after the characters in a human work of fiction known as The Three Musketeers . Supposedly the three characters worked together to defend their leader from attacks, which was reason enough for their Leader to appreciate the monikers one of their number had suggested. The Hunters enjoyed the names, and nobody seemed to remember what they’d been called before receiving the pseudonyms.
    Athos was quite appealing to the ladies, with his handsome face, dark hair, and dark eyes, and the scar across his right cheek — ironically, a gift from Will Stark — only added to the appeal. Athos was the nominal leader of the trio, if only because he was the most sane and level-headed. His gift for knowing when others were telling the truth — even when those questioned did not know themselves if they were telling the truth — was incredibly useful as a tool for making decisions during the course of Hunts.
    Aramis was the most peculiar in appearance. He’d seen a photograph of a human man wearing a top hat and monocle, and had become fascinated with the accessories, and now it was difficult to get the man to leave the hat off. Thankfully, he’d given up the monocle, at least during Hunts, after his fellow Hunters could no longer take him seriously. He’d compromised by wearing wire-rimmed glasses he didn’t need. His wardrobe choices, combined with his white-blond hair, served to make the man look more like an aging professor than a young law enforcement officer. His demeanor, though, was more akin to a member of the Inquisition. Aramis knew every rule, law, and Oath of their organization, and the prescribed penalties for each, and he expected everyone else to know them and follow them with extreme strictness. Aramis tended to react with great emotion whenever someone slipped, as if he’d been personally violated in some fashion by their rule-breaking, no matter how minor the infraction. The mere mention of Will Stark’s name could lead the man to convulsions — a fact that The Assassin enjoyed abusing on occasion.
    The final member of the trio was the most bizarre in terms of behavior. Porthos wore his brown hair to his shoulders, often tying it back in a ponytail, and liked to wear a dark cloak with an oversized hood. The man believed that such garb gave him an air of ominous mystery when on Hunts. Porthos was the Hunter most at ease mingling in and exploiting human culture and technology, a useful skill for gathering key pieces of data used on Hunts, but a habit which led to the display of many odd human mannerisms, including a lack of filters or decorum when speaking to other Aliomenti. Porthos could find anyone who emanated any of the Energy their group cultivated, tracking it like a bloodhound following a scent. His primary personality quirk — an ease of mingling with humans — led him to often question humans in order to narrow the search area for a suspect, or find some obscure detail that made the Hunts easier to conclude. It was Porthos who had tracked Will Stark to the outskirts of this domed city in southeastern Ohio, and it was Porthos who had unearthed the detail about Stark that necessitated the Assassin’s services.
    Porthos spotted The Assassin and made his way to the killer. “Nobody’s left the house since we got here, so the human woman should still be in there, and you can go blow her up