An Unauthorized Field Guide to the Hunt Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Epilogue

  Loose Id Titles by Kari Gregg

  Kari Gregg

  AN UNAUTHORIZED FIELD

  GUIDE TO THE HUNT

  Kari Gregg

  www.loose-id.com

  An Unauthorized Field Guide to the Hunt

  Copyright © August 2013 by Kari Gregg

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  eISBN 9781623004477

  Editor: Kierstin Cherry

  Cover Artist: Kalen O’Donnell

  Published in the United States of America

  Loose Id LLC

  PO Box 809

  San Francisco CA 94104-0809

  www.loose-id.com

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning

  This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id LLC’s e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

  * * * *

  DISCLAIMER: Please do not try any new sexual practice, especially those that might be found in our BDSM/fetish titles without the guidance of an experienced practitioner. Neither Loose Id LLC nor its authors will be responsible for any loss, harm, injury or death resulting from use of the information contained in any of its titles.

  Dedication

  With gratitude to Shane West for candid answers to frequently embarrassing questions, and to Shane’s tribe for supporting this unprecedented breach of the Hunt’s nondisclosure agreement, so the events that led to the Cycle 2315 midseason blackout could be shared with future competitors and gamblers everywhere.

  Chapter One

  “Entering an arena is like being awarded a ticket into the most exclusive megabucks lotto in the galaxy…except that ticket is accompanied by vicious claws, fangs, and a barbed penis.”

  ~ Shane West

  Cycle 2315

  Mariket, Arena 4

  Season Premier

  Shane bounced lightly on the floor in the hovercraft to stay nimble as he monitored the red light above the bay door. He used his peripheral vision to assess the ship’s complement of Hunt competitors. He wished he could believe the division of competitors for transport to Mariket was coincidental, and that his assignment to a ship with just two other humans was bad luck. Lying to himself—if only to calm his screaming nerves—would result in failure and pain, though. The cats never left anything to chance. For some unknown and unknowable reason, the cats had chosen to insert him into an arena with a group that included few likely allies. That could mean screening tests had indicated Shane was a poor candidate, to be discarded early and ruthlessly. Or the cats might believe him so well suited for the Hunt that he’d been selected for the gift of vulnerability.

  Either way when that light flashed green and the bay door glided open, Shane was in deep shit.

  He slowed his breathing by inhaling a long drag of air through his nose until his chest fully inflated, and then released it through his lips in a protracted though quiet hiss. Panic wouldn’t help.

  Shrugging to secure his backpack comfortably on his shoulders, he pretended not to notice the spicy stench from the majority of Nambians on the ship. So what if the agile and ferocious creatures could trigger their own mating heat? Any cat that would fall for the promise of a fast fuck rather than the lure of the chase wasn’t for Shane. Let the Nambians squander limited time and resources on orgies. Shane hadn’t come to the Hunt to entertain lusty cats as their whore.

  He just hoped the Nambians didn’t think much of his strategy either. If they’d identified him for elimination, Shane was doomed when they exited the hovercraft.

  The red light flickered.

  The shields had lowered to allow hovercrafts into the arenas.

  Not much longer.

  Shane’s heartbeat skipped, his pulse sprinting as his fight-or-flight response kicked into gear. He lifted his hand and curled his fingers around the strap of his backpack to anchor it. The cats never allowed competitors to take much into the Hunt, but he couldn’t afford to lose his kit. Vulnerability was fine, maybe even good. Helpless stupidity wouldn’t be forgiven.

  Green!

  By the time the pneumatic door slid wide, Shane had already leaped forward. Smaller, quicker, Shane pushed through his fellow competitors, and squinting at the blinding brightness of the arena from the gloom of the ship, he jumped through the bay door. He contorted to free himself from a tug on his pack and grunted at the jar of landing on solid ground.

  He bent to dislodge another grasping wrench on his pack. And he ran.

  To the trees.

  He focused on making it to the thick underbrush that circled the area cleared for this landing pad. The fact that cats waited in the forest, primed to hunt him, was irrelevant. At least the cats wouldn’t beat Shane—or worse—in order to strut their strength and superiority. Leaving the Hunt too soon was more dangerous than all the competitors and cats in the arena combined. An early evac was good as a death sentence to him. If he didn’t reach another landing pad and ally with a larger group of humans…

  He streaked across the field. Before he’d scrambled halfway to the woods, snarls, screams, and the thuds of fists landing on flesh erupted behind him, the sickening sounds a chorus signaling the predictable rush of medevacs during the first moments of the Hunt. Let them fight. Fewer rivals for Shane with the cats. He’d last longer. Plus the brawl would occupy wardens. He wouldn’t have to worry as much about the officials intruding to spur the season on.

  Pounding footsteps followed closely behind Shane as he raced toward the forest. He’d never believed he was the only competitor on his ship with the brains to opt out of an unfriendly alliance at this entry point. He didn’t need to be smartest, though. He needed to be fastest.

  With a frantic glance, he pinpointed the least dense sliver of overgrown thicket ahead, and legs pumping, he shot directly for it. Whoever was trailing him—more than one competitor, judging by the collection of uneven panting—would be on him once he entered the woods, but he might still give them the slip if he forged a quicker path through the barrier of briars.

  He barreled into the prickly patch of leaves and twigs, lifting an arm to shield his eyes from jutting thorns that whipped at him as he used his momentum to punch a hole in the brush. Brambles gouged his hands, his neck, any exposed skin. Ignoring the sting, he raced on. The scritch of tearing fabric and a brief flare of pain at his thigh didn’t stall him. Even the vines tangling around his feet didn’t slow him. When he tripped, he simply rolled, allowing the weight of his body to shoot him forward. He tumbled once, twice. Too fast. A disorienting spiral of violent green whirled around him until his legs hitting a slend
er tree jerked him to a stop. Shaking his head to clear the dizziness, he scrambled on all fours through a tunnel of dappled leaves. He was almost in the forest proper. If young trees grew here, and native wildlife had made a path of bent limbs in the thicket to feast on ripe berries, he must be close.

  The brush thinned.

  Shane lurched to his feet. He stooped in the cramped space. He could move faster now that the thicket wasn’t as dense. Even as the underbrush cleared around him, he knew he’d failed, though. The labored pants behind him had dispersed, curses and sucking breaths echoing from both his left and right.

  He hadn’t outrun them.

  As the leaf cover melted away, he spotted one of the other humans running to his right. He was smaller than Shane, who was considered tall back home on Narone where sporadic growing seasons had stunted evolution in human development. The crown of Shane’s head barely reached the chins of his kind everywhere else, but this human was shorter still. Shane could take the guy in a fight if he had to. Not so the gigantic Aretu to Shane’s left, whose black eyes streamed wet from the daylight that must be blinding him, but whose long legs and wide stride ate up the distance Shane tried to put between them. He wouldn’t fare well against Aretu talons or camouflaging black fur come nightfall.

  At least one other competitor—probably two—ran behind them, but the greater need for haste didn’t allow Shane to glance over his shoulder. The walls of rich, lush green they’d burrowed through muffled cries and growls from the melee they’d fled at the landing pad, but that didn’t mean any of them were safe yet.

  Shane stumbled to a halt only when lack of oxygen made him cripplingly light-headed, and his empty stomach proved it wasn’t so hollow Shane couldn’t wretch up bile as a result of the brutal pace. He bent over, hands braced on his knees, and vomited on the forest floor.

  The Aretu didn’t look back. It kept running. Good riddance.

  The human next to Shane cried out and collapsed to the ground in a heap of flailing arms and legs a few paces away. The other human from the ship slammed into him. The two of them rolled in a clump of limbs. Their combined shouts rang out loud enough to draw every predator in the arena. Fantastic. If Shane weren’t so busy puking his guts into the dirt, he would’ve cursed. May as well shout the news from the treetops. The traveling feast is here!

  Startled by his disgust, he jerked away from a canteen shoved under his nose—more specifically from the shimmering scales of the triple-clawed hand offering water to him. “Not to drink. To rinse your mouth,” an unmistakable trilling voice said.

  Horror jolted up his spine and forced Shane to tilt his head higher.

  He hadn’t evaded the bloodthirsty Nambians after all.

  Hard to tell since this one leaned over him, but the Nambian looked like a runt, not quite as tall as others of his kind and not as bulky with muscle. If Shane straightened to his full height, this Nambian would tower above him by the span of only a few hands. The iridescent scales were smaller too, roughly the size of Shane’s thumb instead of his fist. This predator was young, barely an adult, which might have driven the reptile to flee a species alliance at the landing pad. That same alliance would have also picked off weaker members—the Nambian youth—as soon as rival species had been dispensed with. He might have believed the young adult was playing smart, if not for the notorious sacrificial loyalty of Nambian competitors in the Hunt. Forfeiting one Nambian to eliminate a trio of humans wasn’t a bad strategy, just unfortunate. For Shane.

  “Allies?” the Nambian hissed.

  Shane mightily resisted the urge to throw up again. “Thanks,” he told his assassin. He accepted the silver canteen and pretended clumsiness, spilling a little of its contents to ensure what spattered to the forest floor wasn’t acid. Maybe poisoned? Under the Nambian’s reptilian gaze, Shane lifted the canteen. He shifted casually to the side and placed the webbed skin separating his thumb and forefinger between the opening and his mouth before feigning a sip. He spit sour saliva into the dirt to dutifully “rinse.”

  Returning the canteen to his kit, the Nambian squeezed Shane’s shoulder. “I will see,” the scaly predator said through his weirdly lipless mouth, gaze indicating the other two humans groaning nearby. “Stay.”

  Since the Nambian hadn’t attacked yet, Shane sat on the ground and rested. Struggled to catch his breath. Maybe the Nambian preferred to eliminate the pesky humans from the Hunt one by one. A single man wasn’t as strong as one of the cunning reptiles, no matter how young, but humans outnumbered the Nambian for now, so Shane was probably safe. He’d exercise patience while the others tried to pull together an alliance among this landing pad’s refugees, and wait for his opportunity to slip away. Praying for a distraction, he watched the Nambian stride to the others.

  “Snake got him. Does anyone have something sharp?” one of the humans, the chunky blond who had crashed into the first man, asked.

  The Nambian pivoted to angle his creepy scaled head in query at Shane.

  “No,” he reluctantly admitted.

  The creature grinned, pointy teeth menacing. “I do.”

  Figures.

  “No, get away from it,” the other human whined, clasping his knee to his chest.

  “You’re bit, and it’s already swelling,” the blond said. “Do you want to leave the arena on an accident medevac this early?”

  Rucking up his Hunt shirt, the Nambian withdrew a forbidden dagger from the waistband at his scaly abdomen. “The venom must come out,” he agreed, beady black eyes focused on Shane instead of the others. “You could die.”

  As if Shane needed another clue that the Nambian would make Shane his bitch if he didn’t get the hells away?

  The blond guy held out a hand for the contraband knife. “I grew up on a farm with a lot of vipers. I know how to extract venom. I’ll do it.”

  Smirking at Shane, the Nambian handed over the knife.

  Stupid bastard.

  The blond proved humans could be as sly and deadly as every other species sent into the arenas by sticking the blade between shiny scales and into the Nambian’s gut. As they wrestled for control of the smuggled dagger, Shane hauled his winded ass off the ground. He’d sprinted out of sight before the echoes from the first screams died in the alien forest, and the wardens’ shouted warnings to “Stand clear! Drop the weapon!” rang out. A trio of cats wearing the standard blue Arena 4 med tech jumpsuit streaked by Shane.

  One less Nambian to compete against.

  The snakebite would trigger the medical evac of the other human too.

  Maybe Shane’s luck had turned.

  * * * *

  He jogged all day. The five landing pads inside the arenas were spaced so far apart he wouldn’t stumble into range of other competitor groups and a more secure human alliance until tomorrow, but Shane hadn’t survived to adulthood by being careless. Once he broke free of the perilous bottleneck at his entry point, he doubled back to ensure the blond hadn’t continued following him. Then he slowed his pace to watch for signs. Scuffed dirt. Broken branches. Disturbed leaves.

  Nothing.

  While he hadn’t been fostered in the countryside of Narone in his teens, Shane had dodged raiders after one of his brothers had arranged for a malfunctioning speeder to dump Shane in the Badlands once. He could avoid others when he needed to.

  He sure needed to now.

  Cats most readily accepted humans. No one was sure why. Thousands of offworlders queued through the cats’ screening center on the Seskeran moon every mating cycle, and dozens of species had made the cut to be inserted into one of five arenas on Mariket. All were hunted. No other offworlders won the Hunt as frequently as humans, though, which put one hell of a target on Shane’s back. That the cats pounced on and toyed with humans most was unnerving. Add the ferocity of other species desperate for a victor, and the harrowing odds against humans usually persuaded those tempted to enter the Hunt to reconsider. Winning was too horrible to contemplate. Remaining on Mariket, hidden among t
he cats? Rarely if ever to be seen again? Regardless of the cats’ widely reported pampering of victors, most humans stayed away.

  Shane hadn’t enjoyed that luxury. He needed to compete. His brothers’ attempts to kill him had forced him to the one spot in the galaxy impregnable to uninvited offworlders—Mariket. If he managed to impress the cats and convince them to accept him in trade negotiations after the Hunt concluded, he would become too valuable to his home planet to waste. Narone wouldn’t tolerate losing Shane to petty family squabbling. He would finally be free of his murderous kin. And safe.

  If he didn’t fuck it up by mating a cat.

  He must compete well. Very well.

  Just not too well.

  Rather than pondering the perilous dance of his Hunt, Shane concentrated on scouting for berries, nuts, and anything that looked edible as he jogged. He’d made not thinking about the Hunt and the cats his mission inside the arena. That mission would be more successful if instead of freaking out, he narrowed his focus to what was immediately necessary. Escaping his hovercraft’s group of competitors before his bruised and bloodied body became the stepping-stone of a victor? Necessary.

  Shane squinted at pea-sized purple berries in the highest limbs of the bushes ahead.

  Finding something to fill his cavernous stomach and show off his self-sufficiency?

  Vital.

  Sweeping his surroundings for predators, Shane slid his pack off his aching shoulders at what must’ve been well past midday. Hard to tell with the gloom, Mariket’s sun hidden by the forest canopy. He unzipped his pack and retrieved one of the few personal items the cats allowed—his flatscreen. Unlike many competitors, Shane hadn’t been driven to the Hunt by poverty, so his screen was security coded to power up in the palm of his hand alone. Stomach gurgling, he waited while the device read his handprint and decided that a dirty, sweat-streaked Shane was still indeed Shane. The screen glowed to life. With a few taps of his fingers, Shane was thumbing through a plant identification guide he’d loaded into the handheld device.