Page 347 of Hunters and Prey

“You’re leaving ...” She pressed her lips together and then nodded curtly. “Yeah, you got to do what’s best, ya know. Your dad’s a stand-up guy. He knows best.”

“I want you to come with me.”

She looked up sharply. “What? I can’t. You know I can’t.”

There was doubt in her tone, and I pounced on it. “I had a dream. You and me with our own workshop in the glades. That was the plan, but you know what? We can have that in the Furtherlands. I’m sure we can. Fuck everyone, Helgi. You don’t owe them anything.”

Helgi had her fair share of demons from her childhood. A whore for a mum, and a dad who’d left when she was barely five years of age. Her mother had passed on a year ago, and Helgi had taken over the upkeep of the house for her layabout brothers who’d both gotten themselves wives but couldn’t be bothered to work to keep them.

She licked her lips, considering. “You want me to go with you?”

“I need you to go with me.”

Helgi averted her gaze and blinked several times in rapid succession. She was trying not to cry, and I gave her a moment, looking off into the distance until she composed herself.

“I dunno, Anya,” she said finally. Her voice was steady, the threat of tears averted.

“You’ve done enough for them.” I placed a hand on her shoulder. “You deserve your own adventure.”

She grinned up at me. “You know what, you’re right. Sod ’em. I’m in. But on one condition.”

“Name it.”

“We do this last job. It’s gonna be big. I can feel it. And the money will set us up in the Furtherlands. We can buy the tools we need for the workshop. Maybe source some of the tech parts you like with the chips and shit?”

Excitement sparked in her eyes, piercing me and infecting me with enthusiasm. She had a point, but I’d made a promise to Dad.

“I promised my dad I wouldn’t do any more jobs.”

Helgi cocked her head. “But didn’t he teach you to honor your commitments?”

Helgi and her loopholes and that infectious grin, argh… “You know what, he really did.”

She winked. “Now, let’s get this done and then we can plan our journey.”

She was going to come with me, and suddenly the whole journey into unknown territory didn’t feel so crazy. It felt like an epic adventure waiting to unfold.

We never went on a job without loading up. Years of chopping wood and pulling the plough because the damn ox was too lazy had honed my muscles. And with Jezebel snug in her sheath across my back, twin daggers at my hips, and two small ones tucked into my boots, I was feeling the weight. But it was a pleasant sensation, as if I was finally fully dressed. Worn leather slacks, sturdy leather boots, and my thickest shirt, the one padded at the elbows and across the chest to minimize impact in case of hand-to-hand combat, completed the ensemble.

With my mini arsenal and Helgi’s preferred crossbow and throwing stars, we made a good team. I rocked out the hand-to-hand while she remained at a distance and picked off our targets one by one. Not that we’d had to get into many scrapes like that—just two or three over the last year.

The most recent had been a month ago when Barret had sent us to retrieve a woman’s child. Her estranged husband and his band of unlawful merry men had kidnapped the boy and were holed up in the wildlands to the west. The forest land had been a public park once—rivers and trees and pretty monuments for humans to look at—but over the decades it had overgrown into something resembling the inside of a particularly horrific dark fairytale. One trip was enough for a lifetime, and Helgi and I had barely escaped with our hides intact. Of course, we’d retrieved the boy and handed him over to Barret to be reunited with his mother. So, it had been worth it for the warm fuzzy feeling. The tiny bag of silver helped a bunch too.

Thank God these coordinates weren’t anywhere near the wildlands. Still, it was an hour drive with compass and map, but we made it with the full moon as a guide and with at least fifteen minutes to spare. We parked Juniper on a dirt track bordered by brush and made our way onto the other side of the rundown street. Rusted vehicles from the time before were piled up neatly here and there as if some giant had used them as playing blocks in a solitary game. They’d been stripped of useful parts a long time ago, but I made a note of having a look just in case.

The place was so far gone that no outlander had bothered to make it home. I’d been this way several times over the years. Passed by, but never ventured in. The whole place had a ghostly vibe to it. How many people had died here in the first war? How many bones would we find? How many apparitions still haunted the dust and rubble now overgrown with moss and fungi?

“Stop pondering,” Helgi huffed. “Let’s get to the checkpoint and find out what we’re here for.”

Barret would probably be waiting for us with the details of the mission. It had to be big if he couldn’t risk writing it down. My stomach quivered in anticipation. Helgi led the way, her large body surprisingly light on its feet as she leapt over bricks and chunks of cement laced with metal rods that protruded from the stone like rusted teeth. Yeah, the war had decimated much of the island. Fire and ash had hung in the air for years, or so the stories said. The world had burned bright for a time.

And all because of a book.

A grimoire, to be precise, found by humans whose whole purpose had been to excavate things. The Dreki had come into our world because of that book. It had opened a gateway and allowed magic to flood our island, bringing with it a whole host of crap. It had called the Dreki to our world and they’d swarmed our skies, led by their dragon queen. Some say the Dreki had been humanity’s saviors at first, helping to fight the awful beasts that the grimoire had resurrected, but others said they’d merely acted to protect their new home. Whatever the reason, once the threat had been eliminated, they’d turned on humanity, forcing them to procreate with them for the purpose of building a new race. Nothing had ever been the same again. The rest was hazy history—warped, retold, written, and erased, and then penned again until no one knew fact from fiction.

Helgi stopped to study the map, and then we skirted a building and came to a halt, because in front of us were several shadowy shapes of hulking male figures.

“Hey! What the fuck?” one of the figures said.

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