On the Prowl

"Kai." Nathan touched her shoulder, frowning. He'd brought the mage light up again, hoping the cessation of dark would calm her. It hadn't. "Kai, it's all right. Wake up."

She stopped making the distressed noises. Her eyes opened. "What..."

"You were dreaming, I think." She'd whimpered, turning her head from side to side, then stilled. But her hand clasped his so tightly, and she'd kept making those small, unhappy sounds. "A bad dream."

"It was... I've had it before. The crying one." She blinked fuzzily. "So lonely. At first I thought it was you, but this time I knew... she just wanted to be held, so I  -  What? What is it?"

He'd sprung to his feet. The plucking inside him announced the breach of his wards a second before the beast crashed through the window.

Glass smashed, flying everywhere. The chameleon landed on the floor between the window and him  -  and he stood between it and Kai. It was eight feet long counting the lashing tail, its shaggy fur like mottled smoke. Feline, with an oddly shaped muzzle, tufted ears, and the oversize pads of a mountain or arctic cat. And it needed only a split second to orient itself before launching all eight muscular feet at him.

Kai screamed. He heard that, but his entire being was focused on his prey. He couldn't move and expose Kai to those claws, so he locked himself to the earth and met the attack.

Claws raked his forearm, ripping flesh from bone, spattering blood. He rocked back only an inch as he smashed his other fist inside the gaping mouth, aiming for the roof of it, where bone was thin and could be driven into the brain.

But the beast was fast. It flung itself back, howling  -  and bunched its hindquarters, readying for another attack.

"No!" Kai cried. "No, don't  -  don't  -  stop!"

The beast shook its head. And looked at her.

That second's inattention was all Nathan needed. He had his knife in his hand as he leaped onto the beast's back, seizing the great head so he could draw the blade across its  -

"Don't kill her! She can't help it, and she's so lonely, so confused  -  don't kill her, please. Please."

He froze, panting. His arm shook with the need to finish.

But the chameleon wasn't moving, either. It wasn't moving.

"See?" Her voice wobbled, but she came toward them. The idiot woman started toward him and his prey. "She won't hurt me. She won't  -  won't even save herself, because I told her n-not to hurt you."

The beast's muscles tensed. A fine trembling ran through the great body.

Slowly, slowly, Nathan eased the knife away from its throat, but he held his position otherwise, crouched over the chameleon, his wounded arm strobing pain with each heartbeat. "If you stay back, I won't cut her throat. But stay back."

She stopped. "You're bleeding. Your arm. I need to... no, it's stopping already, isn't it? You said you didn't like to bleed in a fight, but... Nathan, she couldn't help it. She's so alone, and she was dying."

There were tears on Kai's face, shiny in the small glow of the mage light. Nathan stared at her, stricken. "What have you done?"

"I don't know, exactly. Only I touched her somehow, or she touched me... I've dreamt of her before, but tonight was different. I  -  I reached her. I feel her now. She came to me because she couldn't be alone anymore, and I... I told her, in my sleep. I said she didn't have to, so she came to me."

Pity twisted through him. He knew what it was to be cut off from all you knew. So alone... "She'll kill again, Kai. As you said, she can't help it. There isn't enough magic to sustain her here."

Kai took another step. "There's more magic in some places, close to the big nodes."

"Not enough." Eventually there might be, but not yet.

Kai was only four feet away now. She held out her hand, and the head Nathan had pinned struggled. "Let her smell me," Kai said. "She won't hurt me. She won't."

Nathan knew that every being had to decide his or her own course. He'd earned that knowledge one painful step at a time when he'd been stranded and had to learn how to make his own choices, all of them. But he felt sick, physically sick, as he slowly released the chameleon's head.

It  -  she  -  stretched her head out, sniffed the hand held out to her. And beneath him Nathan felt a vibration start.

She was purring. The beast was purring for Kai.

"Can you send her back?" Kai whispered. "Back where she belongs?"

He couldn't, no. But he knew one who could.
* * * *

The mage light hung, motionless, in the center of the room, a warm orange ball pushing back darkness. Either the moon had set or clouds had moved in, for outside the night was entirely black. Cold, too, and with the window broken, that cold streamed in unhindered.

Kai paced. Nathan, impervious to either cold or nerves, sat on one of the sleeping bags, eating an apple. And in one corner of the room, the killer sought by the entire city slept, her long body curled into the same sort of cozy ball a housecat would use to conserve heat, the tuft on her tail draped over her nose.

She had a name. Kai sensed that, but couldn't find it. What she got from the chameleon weren't exactly thoughts, nothing that clear  -  sensations, feelings, and only the biggest of those. She knew the animal was hungry and weak, but content for the moment because Kai was nearby. She felt that contentment as a sort of rumbling at the back of her mind, like a sleepy purr.

"How did she get through your wards?" Kai asked without looking at Nathan.

"I'm guessing it was her tie to you. Your energy is in the wards. Somehow she used your key to come in."

Kai reached the wall and turned. "I don't know how to make this sort of decision." She stopped, frowning. "Come to think of it, I don't understand why it is my decision. It's your life I'm deciding, too."

Nathan finished chewing as calmly as if they'd been in his apartment, talking over a news report they'd heard on TV. "Part of it was mine to decide," he agreed. "But I've made my choices. I could have chosen not to tell you of the possibility, or I could refuse now to call. But for your sake  -  and also for hers"  -  he glanced at the sleeping beast  -  "I'm willing to do it, if you wish me to."

The Huntsman. Nathan would call the leader of the Wild Hunt because he could return the chameleon to her own realm. He would do that... if Kai asked him to.

"But will the Huntsman do it?" she asked.

"I'm no longer of the Hunt, but if I call, he'll come." Nathan gave a little huff of amusement, his lips quirking. "If nothing else, curiosity would likely bring him. The Huntsman keeps hounds, but he has that much in common with cats  -  a great, throbbing lump of curiosity."

"No, I mean... will he agree to send her back?" Saying it brought a pang deep inside. Kai didn't understand the bond she'd formed with the animal, but sending her away felt hard and sad.

Better than letting her die, though.

"Even his sister doesn't predict the Huntsman. He does what he does, and often won't know himself what that will be until he does it. But he has a fondness for me and a love for all wild things. He might kill your chameleon-cat, but there's a good chance he'll save her instead. Or do something we haven't thought of."

"And..." Her throat was so dry she had to swallow to get the question out. "And will you go home with him?"

"Kai." Her name came out startled. He shook his head. "No, of course you don't know. There's been a suddenness to all of this, hasn't there? I could have left two months ago when the Turning arrived, if that were my choice. I could leave now. There's enough magic for it."

Her restless feet brought her to him. She crouched in front of him, her heart pounding. "Why did you stay?"

"For you." He set down the uneaten apple core and took her hand, turning it to study her palm, her fingers. "Of course, for you. Though I didn't understand how deep you'd gone inside me, not until last night. I knew I wanted more time with you. But also for me." He rubbed her palm gently with his thumb. Slowly he looked up, meeting her eyes. "I'm not a hound anymore, not precisely. I've spent too many years in a man's body, with a man's brain. That I could hesitate at all to return to her taught me how much I've changed. But the queen..."

The trouble in his voice had her turning her hand in his to clasp it. "Yes?"

"I missed my hound's body, missed it badly, at first. I would miss my hands and my speech even more now. And you." He squeezed her hand. "I would miss you terribly if I had to leave."

"Would the Huntsman make you go back?"

"Well, he can't, which is why I'd call him and not my queen. He could kill me, of course, but  -  "

"Then, no." Her hand clenched hard on his. "Don't call."

"Wait, wait. I didn't mean he would kill me. It's a hunter's way of seeing things, that's all  -  that he could kill me but can't compel me. He'll come, he'll be curious, he either will or won't do what I ask." He shrugged. "And he'll tell her, tell my queen, about my call at some point, when it occurs to him to do so. But she... she'd have known when the realms shifted that I could return. Since I haven't..." He shrugged, looking away.

He hurt. She settled herself beside him, careful of his arm. It looked whole beneath the bloody rags of his sleeve, and she knew he healed fast. But she'd seen bone earlier. Surely it wasn't completely healed.

She put her hand on his thigh. "You feel torn in your loyalties."

"If she calls me to her, I'll go," he said quietly. "That hasn't changed, but... eh, there's no way to wrap this up in words." He sighed and, oblivious to her worry about his wound, put his arm around her. "It may be I've a choice ahead of me I don't know how to make, but there's no saying when that one will arrive. Calling the Huntsman might hasten it. Or it might not. Your choice is already here, Kai."

I can't let her die. That much was clear, a truth Kai couldn't duck. But she wanted another solution, one that saved the chameleon but didn't draw the attention of Nathan's queen.

One that didn't carry so high a cost, she admitted.

In the corner, the chameleon-cat slept, her mottled coat blending her into the shadows. She'd been beautiful and terrifying in action  -  built more like a leopard than a lion, only shaggy. She had a lynx's oversize ears and feet, an oddly shaped muzzle, and quiet colors.

Quiet now. During the fight they'd flared in a rage of orange and red, but asleep, her colors softened to a dappled brown, like sun-freckled earth. Her thought-shapes drowsed along in the colors... not forming the intricate patterns of human thought, but neither were they beast-simple.

You are so beautiful, she thought. But what do you want? Who are you?

The great head lifted, the eyes blinking open. Golden eyes. Even in the shadows, Kai could see they were a brassy gold, like old coins. The thought-shapes stilled, then seemed to struggle. Kai felt the struggle as the chameleon tried to answer  -  felt the creature's need, deep and vital, to be understood. She needed for Kai to know  -  to know  -

"Dell," Kai said, her voice thick with tears. "Her name is Dell, and she trusts me. Call him, Nathan. Call the Huntsman."