An Unauthorized Field Guide to the Hunt Read online

  He smiled moments later when the leaf arrangement on the stems, the shape and color of the berries, and even the dark fertile soil indicated he’d discovered a meal that wouldn’t poison him. He shut down the screen to conserve battery life and returned it to his pack, trading the device for a collapsible cooking pot.

  He circled the bushes, picking berries at chest height. Other forest scavengers had already stripped fruit from that point down. No matter how his stomach grumbled, he harvested a thin band along that watershed mark so he wouldn’t leave obvious signs of his presence. Luckily he spotted wild mushrooms beneath the lowest branches that his screen once again assured him would not kill him. Between the berries and the mushrooms, he filled his pot.

  That should increase his odds with bookies taking bets across the galaxy. Another step closer to becoming too valuable for his family to kill.

  Carrying the pot so he could toss bites into his mouth, he moved on. The berries burst tart and juicy on his tongue. The mushrooms were bland and unpleasantly rubbery, but he’d been able to harvest more of them so the volume pacified the yowls of his stomach.

  He veered off his current heading when half the berries and mushrooms were gone. The gods must have blessed him, because the sound of gurgling water guided him to a pond the size of his sleeping quarters back home. Ordinary lilies floated on the surface. Insects buzzed, and their wings snapped. While he finished his supper, he crouched behind giant ferns and studied the tracks in the mud surrounding the water source. No claw marks, which was both warning and relief. Nambians and other taloned competitors hadn’t visited the pool. But neither had the cats. Maybe they were all too busy fucking to care about one lone human roaming their hunting ground.

  When he felt the cool night creeping near, he set out again. He needed to be far from a water source and hidden by the time the forest gloom deepened to pitch-black.

  The cats were nocturnal. Mostly.

  Shane hiked as long as he practicably could, but this time his luck gave out. He wanted a pile of rocks, a hill not built by biting insects, maybe a cave. He found none. Fallen trees that might’ve provided a camouflaging shelter had been markedly absent during his journey through this section of the arena. The forest was the forest was the forest. There were towering trees and random clusters of bushes and then still more trees and bushes. In some areas predators could survey the forest floor from above virtually unimpeded.

  Damn cats didn’t play fair.

  When the shadows of dusk began darkening the woods, Shane couldn’t wait anymore. Others would stalk the arena once daylight fled. Fellow competitors would exploit species adaptations that made the inky black their home. Without weapons and blind at night, Shane would be worthless and his strength too wasted from running. He had to hide.

  Though vanishing inside a shroud of thorns made his nerves jangle, finding a shallow trench in which to bury himself under a blanket of forest detritus felt too much like a grave. A thicket heavy with leaves was his best bet. He crouched and retrieved the standard-issue sleeping bag from his backpack, hoping the thin material was warmer than it looked. Tamping down shrieking unease, he wriggled under a cascade of greenery and unfurled his bed for the night. He twisted to tug his pack into the claustrophobic space to serve as his pillow. He unzipped the sleeping bag so he could squirm inside, squeezing into the tight cocoon. Hands shaking, he arranged the lowest branches of the thicket to hide him and fastened the sleeping bag to his chin. He considered pulling the drawstring tight around his face so he wouldn’t lose as much body heat, but he wanted to hear anything nearby.

  No cat or competitor would be able to see him.

  That was bad. Very bad. Competitors who disappeared made for a boring Hunt, which might prod wardens to flush him into the open if the fighting at the landing pads had tapered.

  And the surrounding brush haunted him. Eerie. Too creepy.

  Shane couldn’t remember the last time he’d hiked so much. He’d certainly never run so far. His overtaxed muscles burned, the sting at his feet promising blisters he’d been too rushed to check at the pond. Exhaustion weighed him down. Willing his body to relax, he closed his eyes.

  They popped wide at the distant rustle of branches in the tree canopy overhead.

  Just birds.

  The arena was full of them, not to mention the millions of small animals he’d spotted as well as the tracks they’d left in damper soils. Shane had camped in the Badlands enough to understand jumping at every sound would result in a restless night that robbed his body of sorely needed sleep.

  He’d never been hunted, though. Not like this. The whisper of leaves and every scrape of phantom twigs set his heart to pounding. The cats weren’t on his trail yet. Shane had been smart, conservative, devotedly applying the tips he’d learned at the screening center. Why would the cats go after him when much more entertaining targets like the Nambians were so thick on the ground? He’d never followed reports or betted on the Hunt because the violence of the chase spooked him, but even he knew the first days were dominated by sexual gluttony. The real Hunt started days from now when the cats grew weary of mindless fucking. Once the fog of arousal faded, and the cats had spent their lust on the most readily available prey, only then did the cats play.

  Shane trembled anyway, fear growing as the black of night swallowed him whole. If he lifted his hand to his eyes, he wouldn’t see his fingers. Not in the arena. Maybe not anywhere on Mariket. The tree canopy blocked the glow of the Seskeran moon and smothered starlight. With his eyes deprived of information, his sense of hearing sharpened. His stomach clenched at the faintest, most innocuous sounds.

  No cats were here. That scratch to his far left was twigs rubbing in the breeze, not claws skittering over tree trunks and limbs. He was safe.

  He shivered, though, because he didn’t feel safe.

  He felt like he was being watched.

  Cats were unlikely to be nearby, but wardens were rarely far. Nothing mattered to them except orchestrating the most productive Hunt that would attract more competitors for the next mating cycle. They couldn’t physically touch Shane. Hunt rules forbade that, but they could steer cats and competitors in any direction they wanted. Toward safety. Or danger.

  Making an enemy of the wardens by vanishing had been a colossally dumb idea.

  When he jerked in his sleeping bag at the chirp of an insect near his cheek, he disturbed the thicket. Shane silently cursed. His competitors and the cats wouldn’t need to go to the effort of hunting him. Shane’s nervous stupidity was as good as a clarion alarm. At least the cats were too busy fucking Nambians to press the advantage of his embarrassing lapse, and he had this first night to correct his mistakes.

  Although he’d been right about the bush concealing him, it wasn’t the best choice for shelter. Nearby wardens would drag him out and into the open. Darkness increased his claustrophobic paranoia, and the sensation of being trapped in the brush made him too jumpy, tricked him into small nervous tells that pinpointed his location anyway. If he sat and leaned against the tree near the tangle of briars instead, where he could use some of the prickly branches as cover, he would be partially exposed to the night, but steadier. Less prone to anxious twitches. He’d also pacify wardens disgruntled with him for disappearing.

  He might even manage some rest.

  He just needed to slither from the thicket without alerting the entire arena. Since moving quietly at night was a skill he must master to succeed in the Hunt, he might as well start practicing while the cats enjoyed their whores elsewhere.

  First step?

  Lowering the zipper of his sleeping bag, and to do that without noise revealing his presence, he must move the fastener down the teeth of the zip one by one. Slowly. Glacially. To ensure panic didn’t rush him, Shane counted his heartbeats between each incremental descent. One, two, three, then the fastener lowered a single notch. One. Two. Three. Then again.

  At this rate dawn would break before Shane freed himself from the motherfuc
king thicket, but he forced himself to breathe smoothly, evenly. Twenty lifetimes later the zipper had traveled as far as his left shoulder. By the time the bag had loosened to his elbow, Shane shivered from cold instead of fear. He was also convinced that leaving the thicket before daybreak was a mistake only marginally less catastrophic than hiding inside it in the first place, but he couldn’t bundle back into the sleeping bag. The sleep he craved was impossible, and the endless march of time before dawn intolerable. So he lowered the zipper until he was able to comfortably work his hips free. Blind, he groped for the brambles he’d arranged to camouflage his tunnel into the bush and moved them aside until his careful, reaching hand met only cool air.

  He rose, wincing at another inadvertent shake of the thicket, but he aligned his body with the hole he’d re-created without rustling the leaves again. He froze. Listened. A pair of night animals squeaked at each other in a high-pitched chatter that must have indicated no large predators stalked them. Except Shane of course, and he couldn’t care less about whatever forest vermin called the woods home.

  He just wanted a comfortable place to rest.

  He inched from the thicket, squirming forward so soundlessly the thunder of his pulse in his ears was louder than the slide of his body over the cool earth. Instinct prodded him to pause at the opening before wriggling farther, but he couldn’t see anything, including the eyes of the animals chittering at each other so close.

  How a planet populated by cats could have rats astounded him.

  If the rats were lively, Shane was positive he could complete his escape from the thicket unmolested. His speeding pulse calmed with each breath of fresh, free air he drew into his lungs. Threading his legs, still cocooned in the sleeping bag, through the narrow hole in the briars was agonizing. The urge to yank them away taunted him, but he resisted, inching slowly instead. He somehow managed to reach, gracefully silent, inside the brambles for his pack too.

  Now he needed to find that tree.

  In the black, sucking darkness.

  After slithering the rest of the way out of his sleeping bag, he cradled it and his backpack against his chest and awkwardly crawled. Shane had committed his surroundings to memory when he’d chosen the site for his camp. He wasn’t aware of the position of nearby wardens who could draw attention to him, but he knew where he was and where that tree should be. Since he’d invested in moving as slowly and quietly as possible, he’d even familiarized himself with the forest noises by now.

  So when a quiet chuff joined the caroling nocturnal sounds, the rats weren’t the only animals to freeze.

  Shane’s heart stopped. Just stopped.

  Chapter Two

  “Never underestimate a horny cat.”

  ~ Shane West

  Shane’s relaxed muscles bunched as he poised to flee, but stunned horror locked him in place. Oh fuck. His Hunt wasn’t starting in a few days. He wasn’t sure when his path had chanced to cross a cat’s, or what he’d done to pique this cat’s interest, but whatever reprieve Shane had thought he’d won by putting distance between him and the festive orgy at the landing pad vanished into the ether. The cat could’ve been stalking him since the pond. Since the berries. Since he set foot in the damn arena. While he’d been congratulating himself on how clever he was, busily believing his illusion of safety, his Hunt had begun.

  Run.

  Panic sweat dotted his forehead and slid down his temple. He reflexively clenched his fingers in the pack and clutched his sleeping bag to his chest. He quaked at the sounds of tearing leaves and the heavy thud of an animal leaping to a limb overhead.

  Lure him to chase. Run, damn it.

  A low warning snarl whispered on the breeze.

  Now, now, now!

  Shane leaped to his feet, shoving his pack and sleeping bag away from him. Digging his boots into the earth, he launched his body forward—any direction. Didn’t matter. He couldn’t see where he was going anyway.

  His knees lifted. His legs pumped. Fear choked him. When he barreled into the first tree, he smothered a scream. The cat’s throaty growl echoed around him, drowning out even the roar of his pulse. That husky, feral sound prodded him on. He grunted at another impact, rough tree bark digging into flesh to bruise and scrape. He kept his body loose, so the hit didn’t slow him much.

  He sprinted. Blindly.

  Smacked into another tree.

  Then into a fucking bush full of thorns. An animal concealed in the painful, prickly mess screeched, but whatever predator protested from the foliage was harmless compared to what stalked him from the treetops. Shane swerved away, but only in desperate search of a clearer path. Concentrating to listen for any trace of the cat’s route above him, Shane gained several strides’ worth of forest floor before he gasped at a hard hit against his shin. Wood snapped. Agony stabbed into him just below his right knee. Reeling at the shock of pain, he reached down, shaky fingers curling around the twig that had impaled him. Wheezing, he pulled the shard of wood free.

  First blood spilled.

  Shit, the cat hadn’t even dropped to the forest floor yet.

  Wet trickling from his leg, Shane took off. At least the slap of hurt from the injury had jarred him from his frenzied flight. Think. He had to think. Get away? Impossible. Not that Shane truly wanted to escape…yet. He’d intrigued a finicky cat, a not-inconsiderable achievement given the wealth of available competitors from which to choose. The trick was goading the cat to hunt him.

  Shane’s feet sped over terrain he couldn’t see, but his mind had engaged now. He lifted his arms to grope for obstacles ahead of him as he fled. When anything other than chill night air brushed his grasping fingertips, he shifted his body to deflect the collision. Sometimes he moved to the left, others to the right, varying the pattern to make his bearing unpredictable and therefore more difficult to track.

  Stumbling through the darkness, he smothered breathless, hysterical laughter because…seriously? With the racket he was causing, a child would have little trouble marking his location. What else could he do? Stay where he was? Fight? Shane was no soldier. Hide? Where could he conceal himself from a creature on native hunting ground that regularly stalked more lethal animals than one short human through the night?

  Shane ran. Panting for air, fear zapping through him, he ran.

  The cat toyed with him. He could take Shane down anytime, whenever he wanted. With every limb that creaked overhead, and when the leaves high above him shook, another rush of adrenaline cascaded through Shane, giving him the energy he needed to scramble faster. Longer. Harder.

  Sly and intelligent, Mariket’s cats were no different from other species of big cats offworld in one essential respect: cats loved to stalk and pounce. The only thing cats liked better than playing with their prey was a challenging hunt. Shane might be hobbled by his blindness in the dark, but he could do better than this.

  At the next thicket, Shane dropped to his knees on the forest floor, and hands forward to protect his face, he dived underneath instead of dodging to the side. Despite the thorns that tore his clothes and skin, Shane darted ahead. His gut balled for one stuttered, gasping breath as dense underbrush slowed his pace. He shuddered in relief when he pushed through to the other side.

  He jumped to his feet and raced on.

  The cat watched him. Closely. The scratch of claws on tree trunks and whooshing leaves descended from the canopy, lower and lower still, following Shane’s path from above. Did Shane’s strange behavior fascinate him? Arouse him?

  Shane gulped.

  Recklessly, he grasped at the first limb within reach above his head and twisted, swinging his body in a new direction. He burrowed through brush too. He leaped. He jolted from side to side rather than staying on a straight path. He used his only weapon—unpredictability—to make the cat’s task of hunting him as difficult as he could, but no one, not even Shane who had slavishly used the screening center’s training facilities to strengthen and tone his muscles, could run forever. He’d never gi
ve up. He’d never let the cat run him to ground. Shane would continue streaking across the forest floor as long as he had breath in his lungs.

  His breath was becoming a lot harder to come by, though.

  Shane panted so loudly the sucking inhalations resounded in the darkness. His muscles burned, legs shaking with the strain of the marathon sprint. Sweat slicked him, wetting his clothes. In spite of the frantic demands his brain issued to his body, he slowed. Woozy from prolonged oxygen depletion and overexertion, Shane stumbled and tripped, but no matter how frequently he thudded to the ground, he pushed back to his feet. If his legs didn’t work, he used his arms to pull himself up by vines wrapped around tree trunks or by the brambles that shoved sharp thorns into his skin.

  He wasn’t weak or a quitter. The damn cat would take him down, or Shane would run until his laboring heart exploded.

  Chest squeezing so tight, the hurt of that combined with the increasing pain of muscles cramping in his side, Shane believed it just might. Competitors had died in the Hunt before. During the screening process, the cats required a thorough medical exam that weeded out unhealthy specimens, and their training included fitness and nutrition regimes tailored to get each species in prime condition. Competitors attacked one other to prove their superior strength to the cats, though, and medical evac teams didn’t always reach the wounded in time. No matter how carefully the cats prepared the arenas by removing unwanted dangers, accidents happened. The same rare venoms the cats traded offworld—the most toxic substances in the explored star systems—could be delivered by the bite of an insect or slime coating a frog. Some competitors ignored their survival training and gave in to starvation by risking foraged nuts or berries that turned out to be poisonous. Some collapsed under the physical strain long before the cats’ mating cycle ended.