Huntress

I am actually going to die, I thought in frozen horror.

The room was quickly descending into chaos; everyone else was now standing or yelling or trying to get out of the way. Eris was obviously not known for her aim or discretion. I stood motionless, seemingly unable to move or think, breath coming in short panicked gasps. No one ever pointed a gun at me before.

Persephone was now saying something to Eris, who still had me in her sights, but I couldn’t hear it. Both of them had their eyes off me.

“What are you doing?” a voice hissed in my ear, and a body gave me a shove to the side. “Move! Get out of here!”

I looked aside in shock, to see a tall guy maybe a year older than me grabbing my arm and dragging me toward the door. Quickly my limbs came to life and I started to scramble toward where I thought the front door was.

“Faster,” the guy snapped at me, clearly frustrated. By now we’d been seen. A shot rang out behind us, shattering glass.

“Hey!” Persephone yelled, pointing at us. My mysterious rescuer swore viciously and now practically dragged me bodily through the house.

We burst through the front door and my legs suddenly got it. Ohh, running. Right. Still holding my wrist he took off and I followed, eventually wrenching my arm away so I could run more efficiently. I had no idea where we were going, but it classified as away, so it had to be better than nothing.

Behind us we could hear cars starting and tires screeching. The guy swore and suddenly banked to the left, jumping over a fence. I followed, backpack banging on my back, as we wound through a backyard and hopped another fence.

I was already gasping for breath. “Who the hell are you?” I choked out.

“Alec.”

“That’s it?” Fence; backyard; yapping dog. Keep going. “That’s... all I get? Alec?”

“Just... shut up and... run, will you?”

We kept up the punishing pace as long as I was able to, which was a shamefully shorter distance than it once would have been. By the time we skipped four more fences, ran down a lane and crouched, listening for pursuit sounds, I was gone.

“Can’t… run… anymore…”

“I think we’re safe, anyway,” he said, and let himself fall from a crouch to the ground. His chest, I saw with a little gratification, was also heaving from the effort.

I concentrated on breathing for a second and then had to ask. “What the h-hell just happened?”

To my surprise, he glared at me. “You just made me blow my fucking cover, that’s what the hell just happened.”

“What?” Instantly I was on the defensive. “I didn’t make you do anything!”

“Yes, you did. If you had just moved like a normal person I wouldn’t have had to push you out of the way. She was going to shoot you!”

“She might not have…”

“Oh, willing to take the chance, were you?” he asked, voice heavy with sarcasm.

I knew I’d been stupid, even if it was out of naivety, which made me just as mad as being attacked. “Shut up! Excuse me if no one has threatened my life before, I thought I might have been allowed to be a little freaked out…”

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he stated matter-of-factly, looking disgusted. "I can't believe you just walked in there."

"Like I had a choice."

Still breathing hard, I struggled for a comeback as he rose again and looked around. To my frustration nothing came and I simply had to get up too.

“Now what?” I asked him testily.

To my slight disgruntlement, he shrugged, drawing my attention almost inexorably toward shoulders that were broader and stronger-looking than I would like in someone who is annoying me. Once I got on that train of thought it was hard not to notice the torso beneath the shoulders and the large arms attached. Or the fairly well-defined jaw line nicely covered with short dark stubble, the same length as the hair on his head.

“Dammit,” I muttered, too soft for him to hear. I hate it when I can see why people are arrogant.

Then I looked again and thought, well, sort of. His nose is a little hawkish, and there was something not quite right about the shape of his head. Sure, he was handsome, but even now, under soft streetlight, I could see pockmarks from old acne scars under the stubble.

Alec was checking a mobile phone. I found myself wondering why he was dressed so formally – dark pants, button down shirt, waistcoat and tie. The slowly-lightening night time made it hard to distinguish colour.

“Come on,” he muttered, putting the phone away and looking around again. Then we set off at a fairly brisk pace down the alley we were in.

After about twenty minutes of walking I decided he definitely wasn’t going to tell me anything voluntarily.

“So…” I started. “Where are we going?”

“Glebe.”

This was a mild relief. We were going in the right direction. “Where in Glebe?”

“You should know, you were sent there.”

I assumed that meant we were both on our way to see Asp. The fact that Alec knew her was both relieving and a little worrying. “Oh, good, I had no idea how I was going to get to Lombard Street, I know nothing about Glebe…”

He looked back at me curiously and then made a movement with his mouth I could have sworn was half a smile.

“Twenty-three Lombard?”

“Yeah, why?’

It was definitely a smile. He had nice teeth, too, even if there did appear to be one missing behind his left incisor. “Nothing. You’ll see later.”

He didn’t say anything else for another few minutes, instead leading me out into an open street and walking along the gutter. In fact, he didn’t say anything after that, either. It wasn’t until I looked around, trying to figure out exactly where we were, that he spoke.

“We just skirted the racecourse,” he told me. “Currently heading north…ish.”

I adjusted my backpack and pulled my sleeves over my hands, but didn’t say anything. It seemed to work because he kept talking.

“Unfortunately I had to leave my car back there, which means we have to walk. It’ll take a couple of hours, tops.”

At this I stopped short, dumbfounded. He left a car back there? “You have got nerve,” I shot at him. “You treat me like I’m dumb but when it comes to doing something colossally stupid like leaving your car, which we could have used, somewhere we can’t return, you’re golden?”

He didn’t stop. “Well, let’s see. I had about half a second to make a decision and about two to follow up on it. There were two options – drive away and have them follow or trace us with the car, or run away on foot and lose them. Forgive me for choosing the colossally stupid one.”

Well, when he put it like that…

“I’m sure we could have lost them,” I muttered sullenly. I knew I was being a child but I couldn’t seem to help it.

He heard me. “Not without killing someone or getting a fine.”

This guy had an answer for everything, which was frustrating in the extreme. “Fine. We’ll just walk the kilometres it’ll take us to get there. In the middle of the night.”

Actually by now I could see the middle of the night passed a while ago – now a very soft glow was beginning on the horizon on what I assumed to be our Eastern side. I pulled out my phone to check the time and in doing so remembered.

Shit. Trent.

Quickly I found the number he’d messaged me from and pressed Call. For a few agonising seconds it connected and I heard it ring. Then it rang again. Then again. Then again.

Finally on the fifth ring he picked up. “Di? Where are you? Are you alright? I saw you take off with some guy…”

“It’s cool, I’m fine,” I assured him. “You’re alright, you’re cool?”

“Yeah, I was hiding to the side of the house, they didn’t see me somehow.”

Phew. So he wasn’t dead. “Ok I just wanted to make sure you were alright. Thanks for helping me. I’ll catch you around.”

He said more or less the same thing and we hung up. By now Alec had gained on me by a few metres so I jogged to keep up.

“Are we seriously going to walk the entire way?”

Alec didn’t look any happier than I did, but nodded his head. “It’s safer, believe it or not. And this way we can go as the crow flies.”

Tired, I just nodded. I was beginning to ache and I knew we had a lot more walking ahead of us. It was easier not to talk.

We continued in this vein – gutters, side lanes, ducking through backyards where possible – for the next two hours. Occasionally we’d jump a railway line or run across a road, but mostly stuck to the shadows.

Once those two hours had passed I began to see signs pointing to Glebe. The green-and-white metal notices, usually so visible when driving, were surprisingly hard to find when on foot. And they looked a lot bigger.

“Only about two to go,” Alec told me. I assumed he meant kilometres, not minutes.

“Fine.”

Another look over the shoulder, but no words. I didn’t ask.

Something told me it wouldn’t help.

We walked for another ten minutes before I spotted another sign, this time white and thin. In black block letters it spelled out LOMBARD ST.

“Yesss,” I whispered under my breath, this time too low for anyone but me to hear.

As we walked along I counted house numbers. Twenty-nine, twenty-seven, twenty-five…

“Uh…” I said aloud, pausing slightly outside where twenty-three was… or should have been. “What?”

Alec glanced at the empty lot I was standing in front of but otherwise kept his steady pace. “Would you have told Persephone or Eris where you were going if they asked?”

I thought about it for a second. “Probably not.”

“What about if they asked you under duress?”

“Dure-?” I started questioningly, cutting off when he turned suddenly, stopped and pointed his hand, gun-shaped, at my head. “Oh.”

Then I thought about it a little more. “I didn’t know they were bad. I didn’t know it mattered if I did or not. So probably, yeah.”

He nodded, acknowledging both my honesty and the answer itself.

“That would be why the vacant lot. I imagine they would have been slightly frustrated if this was the address you gave.”

I had to smile, but it ended up as more of a grimace. ‘Slightly frustrated’ could have easily meant ‘ready to put a bullet in my brain’.

Instead we continued further along the street, before Alec veered off to the left and opened the gate of a tall, thin terrace house. With one more glance up and down the street, he knocked on the door.

I followed him, almost tripping over a hidden garden gnome. Alec knocked again.

“It’s me,” he called.

At that the door opened, and a face appeared in the gap. “In.”

Alec shrugged into the space and, curious, I attempted to follow. A hand shot out and planted itself in the middle of my chest.

“Not so fast,” said a voice I recognised. The face that re-appeared, I didn’t.

It was older – maybe mid forties – and relatively thin. Huge green eyes, no makeup. A slightly crooked nose protruded above thin lips pursed in wry appraisal.

“Who’s this?” she snapped over her shoulder. Then she looked at my face properly in the half-light. “Christ,” she muttered, seemingly awed. “You look so much like your mother.”

I slipped through the slightly widened gap and kicked my shoes off in unconscious politeness. Even without the added centimetre or so I was still taller than the older woman by a few inches.

“Let me guess,” I stifled a yawn. “Asp?”

She nodded. I felt like I should have been honoured, or something… at least curious. Oddly enough there was nothing, just the overwhelming urge to sleep.

“Surprised?”

“A little,” she conceded. “Your hair was never black, as I recall.”

Self-consciously I ran a hand through the long straight locks, knowing I probably looked like shit. I was about to defend my choice of dye when there was a yell from further down in the house.

“Is there any good food in here?” Alec called, accompanied by the unmistakeable rattle of jars in a fridge door.

She sighed and I realised that I was also extremely hungry. The pain in my stomach had been masked by butterflies and fear, but now it was back with a vengeance. The kebab didn’t seem to have helped much.

“What’s there is all I have,” she retorted, beating a path down to the kitchen and sounding for all the world like his mother. I followed.

Alec was leaning on the open fridge door, staring at its contents. Apparently finding nothing, he then shut it and opened the freezer door to perform the same ritual. This time his face lit up almost immediately.

“Oh, sweet. Want a Cornetto, Di?”

The weirdness of him already using my nickname was vastly overshadowed by the thought of ice cream. “I’d love one, thanks.”

He threw it at me and to my slight surprise I caught it easily. Within seconds we’d both unwrapped the waffle-coned dessert and taken a huge bite.

“Teenagers,” Asp remarked dryly.

Alec rolled his eyes. "Not a teenager anymore, remember?"

Feeling oddly at home – the kitchen seemed familiar, for some reason – I slung my backpack onto a chair near the Laminex-topped table and sat down on another. It was fairly warm, too, despite being nearly sunrise. Alec pulled himself up onto a kitchen bench next to the fridge and Asp leaned against a different one.

“Did they follow you?” she asked Alec.

He swallowed and nodded. “Until Darlington. I think we lost them after that.”

This was news to me. I thought we’d lost them much earlier, during the fence-hopping and yard-skipping.

After another bite of waffle cone he went on, “Eris has lost it. I don’t even care I broke my cover, I’m safer this way. She was pointing her gun at a new person every day. Even at Hal.”

I also had no idea who the hell Hal was or why this was significant. Asp’s eyebrows shot up toward her hairline, though.

“That was cruel, too, the note,” he added. “What exactly were you trying to achieve?”

Asp didn’t look at all uncomfortable. In fact, she shrugged. “What did Persephone think of you?”

This seemed to be directed at me. “She laughed. In fact, the whole room laughed. Is that what you wanted?”

“Pretty much.”

Not even a flicker of remorse. I licked the last of my ice cream from my fingers and said, “Excuse me?”

“I have big plans for you, my dear,” she told me. “The more pathetic Persephone thinks you are, the bigger a surprise advantage we have. The look on her face when you take her down will be sweeter than anything.”

This was still confusing me. Sure, Persephone – if that was actually her name, which I found a little hard to believe – was a self-centred and homicidal bitch, but I didn’t feel any need whatsoever to ‘take her down’.

“But why?” I asked. “Why should I want to?”

At this they exchanged glances. Alec started to say something but Asp cut him off, giving him a warning look. Then the one she gave me was half pity, half deep, consuming anger.

“You don’t know?”

I shook my head, utterly confused.

“Di…” Alec said softly. “Di, she killed your mother.”