Page 40 of Beautiful Prey

The wind’s screaming over the top of the slope now, the first real weight of the storm, and I have to lean toward the roots to keep my voice between us instead of letting the wind steal it.

“You’re running out of choices.” I watch another sheet of sand spill into the hollow, heat surging up my spine. “In another minute the storm’s going to make this decision for you. Come out, prey. I want to watch you run again.”

Sand slams into the cutbank hard enough to tear the first branches loose. It pours over the roots in a golden sheet, hissing into every gap, filling the little hollow he’d wedged himself into.

“Your choice,” I call over the rising howl. “It’s either me or the storm, prey.”

The forest makes the decision for him when another gust tears through the pines. The whole bank shudders, roots groaning somewhere below the earth as sand begins collapsing into the hole.

The pack comes first, hurled up over the edge.

Then my prey bursts out after it, coughing, covered head to toe in gold sand, already sprinting before both boots have found the ground.

Something goes through me, starving. Fucking beautiful. I called, and my pet came out of the ground for me.

I’ll be taking that one to bed with me tonight.

“Run!” I sing after him, making no effort to hide the grin in my voice. “I do so love it when you run.”

He runs harder. He’s fast, I’ve got to give it to him. Terror seems to be doing the trick, even with the storm stealing his footing.

I settle into an easy lope instead, letting him believe the distance matters while the wind screams through the trees around us.

“Where are you going, prey?” I pitch it to carry through the trees. “There’s nowhere in this forest I won’t find you. You’ve known that since the alarm went off. You knew it before I did.”

The storm’s first wall of sand comes over the ridge in a long hiss. The world drops into half-dark, grit and the last of the rain driving flat through the trees until there’s only the pale smear of him ahead and the black of the forest around us. He runs straight into it because even the storm is better than the thing behind him. For three strides the murk swallows him whole.

I lose him for a moment, then I find him again the way you find anything in the dark. A boot skidding on wet rock. Ragged breathing. A cough as the sand gets into his lungs and he runs on anyway.

Still running.

He’s smaller than me. Lighter than me. Three days on half-rations and stream water, still blind in the same storm I’m blind in. By every number I’ve ever run, he should’ve folded two ridges ago.

Instead he keeps finding the next gap in the trees, the next foothold on the slick, the next reason my hands come up empty.

I was raised on this ground, and never once had to work for it.

I’m working for it now, lungs full of grit, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything they could sign me back home.

“Just leave me the fuck alone!” It tears out of him between one gasp and the next. “Find someone else to play with!”

“I already did.”

He almost slips on the next ridge, catches himself and keeps running.

“Then stop!” He throws the words back at me through the storm. “Throw me out of the Hunt. End it. Do whatever the hell you’re threatening and be done with it!”

“I could.” I’m gaining, and he can hear that I’m gaining. “Didn’t they tell you at registration what an Adjudicator can do to a candidate he’s taken an interest in?”

“They told me you could have me thrown out of the Hunt.” Ragged, furious, still running. “They told me you could end my Hunt.”

“Oh, they told you that.” Close enough now to watch the sand streak down the side of his neck. “But ending your Hunt is just about the least interesting thing I can do to you, prey. It barely makes the list.”

Whatever sound he makes then isn’t quite fear and isn’t quite anything else, and he throws himself forward with the last clean burst of speed he’s got left in him.

I let him have it.

Make me earn you.