Who Hunts the Hunter by Nyx Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

Tikki lopes and runs. The trail is clear before her—the scents, the signs in the snow—drawing her onward. She will never stop, never pause, till she has her cub again and the elves have been repaid.
    The trail of the elves’ ACV follows the old road through the forest, around the foot of a mountain, upslope and down, through dense copses of woods and across half-frozen rivers of broken rock. Every running step, every breath, every current of air slipping past her nose and ruffling her thick fur reminds her of the winters of eastern Siberia and Manchuria. She and her mother once traveled for weeks in search of prey, constantly on the move, testing the air, watching the ground for signs, battling other creatures to prove their right to the prey they hunted. That was when she learned of the strength nature had granted her, that she could push herself to the point of exhaustion again and again, and still continue the hunt.
    Now, she plows over a snowbank two meters tall and suddenly descends to the point where the snow-covered track through the forest meets a narrow, icy strip of pavement called the Road to Nowhere.
    The locals gave it that name, but Tikki knows that every road goes somewhere, and she’s seen and smelled and heard enough to know what goes on. In the summer, the Road to Nowhere leads directly north to the border between the United Canadian and American States and the Republic of Quebec. The runners who ride this road in every kind of armed and armored vehicle carry cyberware and chips and simsense rigs into Quebec. Such things are taxed very heavily there, enough to make smuggling a lucrative trade. In the night, when the air grows still and hearths glow with heat and liquor paints the air, she has heard two-legs boasting of the fortunes to be made along the Road to Nowhere.
    Two kilometers further on stands the last waystation on the Road: a rickety wooden structure that might once have been a barn or a home, but now serves as a watering hole, an oasis amid the trees and snow.
    A dog begins barking as Tikki approaches, but she knows the dog is chained to a small house at the rear of the tavern and poses no threat. A soft rumble of warning rises out of her throat and the beast abruptly goes silent, smelling like fear.
    Between the tavern and the ice-covered road wait a collection of vehicles, a Sikorsky-Bell Red Ranger, small and swift and heavily armed, a Chrysler-Nissan G12A, and others, vans, pickups, all with custom mounts and oversized tires. Among them sits a boxy Mostrans KVP-14T Air-Cushion Vehicle. It has a weapons pod over the cab. Tikki slips through the shadows to the side of the vehicle and sniffs at the cargo door. At first, she isn’t sure what she’s smelling, but then something changes in the air and she catches the scent of her cub. The scent comes from inside the truck, she’s sure of it. But it’s old. Her cub was here, but now it’s gone. Gone where? She glances around, sniffs the air, then waits.
    Darker clouds boil across the sky. Lightning flashes in the distance. The door at the front of the tavern creaks open and bangs shut. A male approaches, a human male, clad in natural fibers and odd bits of jewelry and smelling of alcohol. A large knife and a sawed-off shotgun hang from the belts slashing across his hips. He slips on the hard-packed snow in front of the tavern and staggers drunkenly. He pulls open the driver’s door of the Mostrans. Tikki steps out from the vehicle’s rear.
    “Hoi.”
    The male jerks as if startled, and grunts, and turns to look at her. She is in her human guise now, and she is nude. She steps nearer. A faint sheen of melted ice gleams from her skin. The male stares at her, then smiles. He says something in some unknown tongue, then switches to English, oddly accented."Where you come from?”
    “Looking for friends.”
    “Here I am.”
    Tikki shakes her head."Elves.”
    “Don’t need no fragging elves.”
    The ploy is not working, Tikki realizes, and