Hunters of the Dusk Read Online Free PDF Page A

they could kill, but not one by itself.”
    “What if they go on a rampage?” I yelled.
    “They will not,” Seba said stiffly.
    “How do you know?”
    “I have asked them not to. They are incredibly intelligent, like Madame Octa. They have almost the same mental abilities as rats. I am thinking of training them.”
    “To do
what?
” I said, laughing.
    “Fight,” he said darkly. “Imagine if we could send armies of trained spiders out into the world, with orders to find vampaneze and kill them.”
    I turned appealingly to Harkat. “Tell him he’s crazy. Make him see sense.”
    Harkat smiled. “It sounds like a good idea . . . to me,” he said.
    “Ridiculous!” I snorted. “I’ll tell Mika. He hates spiders. He’ll send troops down here to stamp them out.”
    “Please do not,” Seba said quietly. “Even if they cannot be trained, I enjoy watching them develop. Please do not rid me of one of my few remaining pleasures.”
    I sighed and cast my eyes to the ceiling. “OK. I won’t tell Mika.”
    “Nor the others,” he pressed. “I would be highly unpopular if word leaked.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Seba cleared his throat guiltily. “The ticks,” he muttered. “The new spiders have been feeding on ticks, so they have moved upward to escape.”
    “Oh,” I said, thinking of all the vampires who’d had to cut their hair and beards and shave under their arms because of the deluge of ticks. I grinned.
    “Eventually the spiders will pursue the ticks to the top of the mountain and the epidemic will pass,” Seba continued, “but until then I would rather nobody knew what was causing it.”
    I laughed. “You’d be strung up if this got out!”
    “I know,” he said with a grimace.
    I promised to keep word of the spiders to myself. Then Seba headed back for the Halls — the short trip had tired him — and Harkat and I continued down the tunnels. The farther we progressed, the quieter Harkat got. He seemed uneasy, but when I asked him what was wrong, he said he didn’t know.
    Eventually we found a tunnel that led outside. We followed it to where it opened onto the steep mountain face, and sat staring up at the evening sky. It had been months since I’d been out in the open, and more than two years since I’d slept outside. The air tasted fresh and welcome, but strange.
    “It’s cold,” I noted, rubbing my hands up and down my bare arms.
    “Is it?” Harkat asked. His dead grey skin registered only extreme degrees of heat or cold.
    “It must be late autumn or early winter.” It was hard keeping track of the seasons when you lived inside a mountain.
    Harkat wasn’t listening. He was scanning the forests and valleys below, as if he expected to find someone there.
    I walked a short bit down the mountain. Harkat followed, then overtook me and picked up speed. “Careful,” I called, but he paid no attention. Soon he was running, and I was left behind, wondering what he was playing at. “Harkat!” I yelled. “You’ll trip and crack your skull if you —”
    I stopped. He hadn’t heard a word. Cursing, I slipped off my shoes, flexed my toes, and then started after him. I tried to control my speed, but that was impossible on such a steep slope, and soon I was racing down the mountain, sending pebbles and dust scattering, yelling with excitement and terror.
    Somehow we stayed on our feet and reached the bottom of the mountain in one piece. Harkat kept running until he came to a small circle of trees, where he finally stopped and stood as though frozen. I jogged after him. “What . . . was that . . . about?” I gasped.
    Raising his left hand, Harkat pointed toward the trees.
    “What?” I asked, seeing nothing but trunks, branches, and leaves.
    “He’s coming,” Harkat hissed. “Who?”
    “The dragon master.”
    I stared at Harkat. He looked as though he was awake, but perhaps he’d dozed off and was sleepwalking. “I think we should get you back inside,” I said, taking his