“Someone less klutzy then?”
He finally smiled. “Someone not as easy as you.” I gaped. Hunters tended to say whatever they were thinking, but that was cold.
“I don' t mean that the way you' re taking it.” He touched my chin. I closed my mouth. “I mean I like the chase. I like when prey keeps me on my toes, surprises me.
You' ve got a little sass, though. I might keep you a bit.”
“It' s hard to learn any good moves when you wind up under a hunter within five minutes of landing in the Quarterz.” I pointed to the little dagger I' d hooked to my belt.
“I came here to practice some.”
He let go of my wrist, plucked a vine tendril from my hair. “You' re very beautiful.
Exotic. I' m not surprised they take advantage of you while you are too new to fend them off.”
I ducked my head, couldn' t think of a response to that.
“What' s your name?”
I bit my lip, kept my eyes on my bare feet.
“I' m Grizz.” He offered a hand.
“Snatch Me,” I mumbled. His hand swallowed mine when I shook it.
“Don' t look so embarrassed. It' s a good name. You just need the skills to make it a wish instead of a given.”
“Care to be my tutor?”
“Hmm.” He caught my hair in his hand, coiled it around his fist. He was looking me over, really looking. This time the look didn' t make me feel like a cricket.
“That' s not how it works, girl,” he said when he completed his study. “I caught you. That makes you mine. Doesn' t make me anything of yours. You want to be an apprentice-I might allow it. But you think about that a second. I' m not going to make it easy.”
“You hate easy.”
“I do.”
“Me too.”
Grizz harrumphed, gave me another looking over and reached for his leash. “You prove worth all this trouble, I might let you level up, party with a real hunter instead of the wannabes they have over there in the Quarterz.”
“Uh, I' ll do my best.”
“I' ll put the leash to roam, that leaves you free to move around.” It closed around my neck and went invisible, but I could still feel the pressure, like fingers prepared to tighten.
“The leash keeps other hunters from
“you, but it doesn' t let you get more than twenty feet from me.” He took my dagger from my belt and tossed it, sending it in an arc across the clearing with his traps and out to the river. It disappeared with a watery plunk.
“You don' t want that useless piece of crap. Let' s get you some proper weapons.” He started into the swamp and I had to jog to keep up with those long ground-eating strides of his. When I fell too far behind, the leash supplied incentive to catch up.
Proper weapons turned out to be a bow and arrows, which he made for me while he explained how to get around the common tricks hunters employed. I got shooting lessons. And since you have to hit a hunter with five arrows before you disable him, and since it' s hard to aim that good when you' re running to stay out of leash range, he made me a little blow gun and described a strategy.
“You hit him with an arrow and you fall down. Then when he moves in to grab you, hit him with the dart. That' ll knock him out for five minutes. Plenty of time to get to cover. You don' t ever use one of those little fuckers on me. Got it?” I nodded, knew my eyes were big as saucers. This was not someone I dared to cross.
After I could demonstrate reasonable skill with the weapons, things got physical.
And no, it wasn' t that kind of physical.
I had to learn to use a scaling rope, which has a hooklike anchor thing on the end-
good for climbing trees or walls or fences. He put me through drills that made boot camp look like kindergarten. He kept me at it for hours.
When the green swamp mists deepened to a smoggier color with the fading light, Grizz took me to his place-a platform high in an old tree. Dinner was fruit and cheese.
He cut small pieces with his knife and fed me tidbits, popping them into my mouth with his fingers. I stretched out on my back beside him, almost too tired to chew, hoping he wasn' t going to make good on the promise to show me what it was like to be had by a real hunter.
“A grateful girl would be licking my fingers clean after each bite.” He crushed a grape between his fingers, rubbed it over my lips. I opened my mouth, caught his fingers in my teeth. Our eyes met. That quivering feeling came back, only located lower down this time. Maybe I wasn' t too tired after all.
Waster killed the mood by materializing on the platform beside us.
Grizz looked from me to Waster. “You didn' t tell me Waster had claimed you for his, girl.”
I sat up. “He didn' t.”
“Was he your first?”
I nodded.
Grizz grabbed my shirt, a sleeveless, button-down type that I' d tied just above my navel to allow some air circulation. Grizz added more circulation by ripping it from the top of my right shoulder down the back. One of his fingers traced a zigzag pattern.
The space between Grizz and Waster had gone electric with bad mood rising.
“Why doesn' t she know she' s yours? Where' s her collar?” I was connecting dots…zigzag pattern…W… Waster?
“That' s not your business, Grizz. She' s wearing my mark. I give her some freedom, but she' s mine to take away if I choose. I choose.”
I twisted around, tried to see over my shoulder, which of course I couldn' t.
“You marked her and she doesn' t know it?”
“It' s my business what she knows and doesn' t. My business if she wears a collar.” Grizz stood, towering above Waster. “There' s limits, Waster. Rules we don' t break.
You set most of them yourself. Lines that can' t be crossed, because not everything that happens here stays here. You cross one of those lines when you don' t tell her that mark lets you keep track of where she is, lets you drop in when she' s with someone. You cross a line when you don' t collar her so everyone knows right off whose girl they are playing with.”
“Don' t tell me how I should look after her.”
They were getting ready to fight. It was about me, but they acted as if I wasn' t there. Waster deserved a smack upside the head for not telling me he could find me like that. But it was one thing to have a battle between the sexes, to blow off steam with tussling and hot sex. This kind of fighting was something else.
“Don' t worry about it, Grizz,” I said. “I' ll go with him.” Waster took the leash from his belt. But when he snapped it nothing happened.
“Unleash her, Grizz.”
Grizz' s hands stayed on his hips.
Waster was scowling. “Aside from the fact she' s mine, she stole my boat.” That broke some kind of ice. Grizz laughed out loud.
“A wicked little hacker, is she?” He slapped his knee. “You cyber hot-wired Waster' s boat? That ain' t playing fair, little girl.” It hadn' t been easy, took two hours worth of coding and was completely against the rules.
“Who said this was supposed to be fair?”
He slapped my back hard enough to dislocate some joints. The band around my neck melted away as Grizz said, “Maybe you don' t need me to stick up for you.”
Waster didn' t look as if he was as amused by my cleverness as Grizz was. I knew he would be less amused
