Free The Hunter and the Hunted: Two Stories of the Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong Page B

blinked, kicking in my extra vision. It helped just enough to see what looked like a box, with a glow shimmering through the cracks.
    “The book,” I whispered as I skidded to a stop.
    “No,” Trsiel said. “We can’t—”
    The hell-beast shrieked deep in the cavern, followed by a growl to our left. Something was stalking us, not willing to attack unless we tried for the prize it was guarding.
    I tried to judge the creature’s size from its growl. I also tried to judge how injured the hell-beast was. The book was only a couple hundred feet away. If I could just—
    If I went after it, Trsiel would follow. I could tell him to continue on, find the exit, forget about me, and there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d actually do it, no more than I would if the situation were reversed. We were partners. If I took a risk, I took it for both of us.
    Shit.
    I yanked my gaze away from the box. “Okay,” I said, and I let him continue leading me.
    •  •  •
    As we jogged, there were a couple of times when I swore I heard something moving in the cavern. I tried not to dwell on it—there were probably lots of things in this cavern, all of them ready to make a meal of us. By the time we reached the wall, I could hear only the growling creature, but it stayed too far away to be seen.
    We felt along the walls for an exit. I cast my light ball up, searching the ceiling, but even if I found a hole, we’d never get to it. The growling came closer now, and I could make out a huge, dark form slinking toward us. Then I caught the scrabble of claws on rock. Lots of claws. The mole-foxes, with reinforcements.
    We frantically searched for an exit, casting teleport spells with every step, praying for a weak spot. A snarl sounded behind us, and I turned to see white fangs, as big as my forearm, flashing in the darkness.
    “Here!” a voice called. “Over here!”
    A light ball sparked thirty feet away, illuminating Kristof’s face. He gestured wildly, and we ran toward him. As we drew close, we saw the wall shimmering. The exit—not a hole, but a portal. He pushed us through. We tumbled again, falling into a heap in the darkness.
    “They return,” a voice hissed.
    “How do they return?”
    “They have. No!”
    The oni started to shriek. Claws scraped at me. Then Kristof murmured, “Hold on,” and he teleported us out.
    •  •  •
    We landed on our asses in the middle of a jungle, surrounded by ferns the size of trees. Overhead, a tiny prehistoric primate peered down at us, then raced off, chattering.
    Kristof looked around, frowning. “Not quite what I was aiming for.”
    I laughed and threw my hands around his neck. “It never is.”
    As I hugged him, I felt something like a breastplate under his suit jacket. When I backed up to take a look, he flipped open a button and pulled out a faintly glowing book.
    “I believe you wanted this,” he said.
    I stared down at it. “How . . .?”
    He pushed the book into my hands. “Consider it my apology, for a somewhat misguided attempt to cure your boredom.”
    “Oh, you cured it all right,” I said, grinning.
    I took the book and flipped through it. It was indeed a grimoire, filled with spells I’d never seen before. I turned to Trsiel.
    “Is this . . .?”
    “Seems to be.” He looked at Kristof. “Thank you for the rescue.”
    “But how?” I said, waving the book.
    “Trsiel came to warn me that you’d uncovered my plot and might be annoyed with me.”
    “When?” I answered my own question. “When you were ‘cleaning up’ your books.”
    Trsiel nodded.
    Kristof continued. “I was in session, so he left a message. When I got a message about oni and the Books of Moses, I realized that, in following my fake adventure, you’d stumbled into a real one. So I went after you.”
    I didn’t ask how he’d found us. Ask Kris to teleport us to the beach, and we’d invariably end up in the desert. His sense of direction is hopeless . . . with one