Elite: A Hunter novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

to hit us, but…” He shrugged, as if to say, “You can’t count on prediction.”
    And as soon as he said that, both our Perscoms gave a peculiar warbling call, like nothing I had heard since I got here, followed by what sounded like a prerecorded announcement. “All Hunters. Storm front moving in. All Hunters. Return to base.” I double-tapped mine to acknowledge, and shut the message off, a second before Archer did the same.
    “Our big storms are mostly blizzards,” I said as Archer looked at something on his Perscom. “They go on for days.” And I flashed back for a moment to one of those storms. The Monastery is mostly built into the mountain, so all the Masters do is put the thick wooden storm shutters over the windows, rely on the wind to keep our electrics charged, and move all the practices that we can inside to the big dojos. Down in the villages, though, they spend the early part of the fall making straw-sheltered tunnels between buildings, and by the time a big blizzard hits, it’s just another couple of feet of snow on top of what’s already there. Once every couple of years, we get an epic thunderstorm, but not more often than that.
    “Well, we’re locked down for twelve hours, at least, maybe a couple days,” Archer replied, and cocked an eyebrow at me. “You know all those storm-sewer tunnels you’ve patrolled? They’re that big for a reason.” He stretched as I tried and failed to imagine those tunnels filled with thundering water. “Good thing we got as much Hunting in as we did today. Our Hounds will be fine until the storm is over. But the grumbling in the lounge over the fact that the channels will be on repeat is going to be louder than the thunder.” He quirked a corner of his mouth in a sardonic half smile, and I snorted.
    “What about if something horrible pops up outside the storm zone?” I asked anxiously, as he stood up to go.
    “Hope that doesn’t happen,” was all he’d say. Then he clapped me on the shoulder. “Look at the map,” he pointed out. “Look at the size of the storm zone. It’d take us hours to get to anything that far, even without the storm. There are Hunters in cities outside the storm zone. And there are Hunters with the army.”
    But they aren’t Elite! I wanted to protest, but…Hunters and the army and plain old Mages were handling Othersiders before there ever were Elite, or Apex wouldn’t even be here. So I nodded, and he went on his way. And I noticed for the first time he had a slight limp when he walked. Well, maybe he only limped when he was tired. I wondered what had caused it.
    Curious now, I went out to the entrance to HQ that faced the coming storm, and as soon as I got outside…it took my breath away. I’d seen one of the big blizzards approaching back home as I helped put up the shutters. That had been impressive enough. This storm, though—this storm whacked you in the face with how utterly insignificant you were when the planet decided to cut loose around you.
    The sky over me was cloudless, but what faced me was blue-black, and there was already a powerful enough wind blowing that I’d had to force the door open. A little bit ago it had been warm, but this wind had ice in its breath and shoved the smell of rain down the throat and into the lungs. And the storm approached on hundreds of bright legs of lightning. The thunder was so continuous, it sounded like a thousand drummers beating the biggest drums in the universe.
    This was no place for a mere human being. I dashed right back inside.
    HQ didn’t have a lot of windows, for the obvious safety reasons, but I knew there was one spot I would sort of be able to see the sky, and that was the indoor garden with the little koi pond. So that was where I headed, stopping just long enough to get a portion of fish food, because the fish would neither know nor care that all hell was breaking loose outside their little world, and as Mark would say, it would be wrong to shake their