Elite: A Hunter novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

that point, the chopper had arrived, and we climbed into it. Mark gave us a wave, then turned and went back on his patrol, his four Hounds spread out in the air ahead of him. As we rose and picked up speed, Archer suddenly frowned and leaned out the open door a little. Before I could ask what was wrong, he’d tapped the pilot on the shoulder and made the circle in the air with his finger that meant “circle around.”
    Then he turned back to me. “Down there!” he shouted, pointing, as the chopper tilted and began its arc. “It can’t be. But I could have sworn I saw…” His voice trailed off in a way that meant that what he’d thought he’d seen wasn’t just a monster.
    A chill flashed down my backbone, and I leaned forward as far as the harness I was in would let me, and peered down at the ground where he pointed.
    And…there was something down there! I got a glimpse, hardly more than a second, of flying lavender and mauve that could have been hair or fabric or both; then a flash of light from something highly reflective. Jewelry? And then…
    It was gone. There was nothing below us but weeds and bushes. I looked up to meet Archer’s baffled eyes.
    “Did you see that?” he shouted.
    I nodded slowly.
    The chopper straightened back up and got back on course, and the pilot called back to us. “Want me to circle around again, Hunter?”
    But Archer just gave me a warning look and replied, “No…I was just making sure we hadn’t left any live Gazers. I thought I saw one, but it was just some tangle of old junk.”
    I kept my mouth shut. If Archer didn’t want to report this, then neither did I. And after all, what had we actually seen? Nothing but a brief glimpse of…something. Maybe it was just our tired minds playing tricks on us. After all, we’d just been fighting Gazers, and they mess with your head. Then again, so do the Folk.
    But…that flash of lavender …the color I associated with that Folk Mage who seemed particularly interested in me…I won’t lie, just thinking about the possibility made my gut knot up and my whole body go cold with terror. I didn’t know why he was interested in me, but when you catch the eye of any of the Folk, much less a Folk Mage, that is generally not a story that ends well.
    I nodded soberly at the senior Elite, and he shrugged, grimaced, and made a little twirling motion with his finger next to his ear, the near-universal sign for “brains scrambled.” I nodded again. We both sighed and settled back for the trip.
    I closed my eyes and wondered if I ought to go back on rotation again. I was snapping back from the exertion of the Gazer Hunt pretty quickly, but then, all I had done was throw dazzles and hold down the net. Archer was pretty drained, but the longer I sat here resting, the more I felt ready to go. By the time we landed, I just wanted something to eat, then to go out again.
    But as we left the chopper, Archer grabbed my elbow, and we walked far enough away from the thing so we could talk without shouting. “Come inside; I want to talk with you a minute,” he said. “Let’s get something to eat.”
    The Elite had a little kitchen of its own, since we were often too late or too early for the regular meals. There was a freezer full of prepared stuff and a flash-heater, and a cold cupboard with a glass front full of stuff that didn’t need to be cooked. Archer got himself three plates’ worth of frozen, while I made some tomato sandwiches. We sat down at a little table that could seat about six if you crowded up, and ate.
    One of the other Elite, a younger (and really nice-looking) guy call-signed Retro wandered in and grabbed three or four pieces of fruit. He was in his Hunting outfit, as were we—green and gray and silver leather, sleeveless, and…quite tight. He turned and saw us there and grinned. At me. I blinked a little.
    “Hey, Joy,” he said, starting an actual juggling routine with the fruit. I blinked again. He had disconcertingly blue