On the Prowl

chameleon tried to answer—felt the creature’s need, deep and vital, to be understood. She needed for Kai to know—to know—
    “Dell,” Kai said, her voice thick with tears. “Her name is Dell, and she trusts me. Call him, Nathan. Call the Huntsman.”

C HAPTER 13
    T HE wind is never gone long in West Texas.
    Thirty minutes later, Nathan stood beneath a cloud-hung sky in scrubby dirt that might have once been a yard with that wind tugging at his clothes and hair. Kai was beside him; he doubted she could see at all, for even his vision had trouble picking out details in the darkness.
    The chameleon—Dell—had followed, and sat on her haunches on Kai’s other side, sniffing the air, unafraid. But she was a night creature, wasn’t she? Like him.
    His mind was sharp with disbelief. Could his long exile be about to end? Not yet , he told himself, which was true, since the Huntsman was unlikely to bring his sister along.
    Yet it felt false. Memories crowded him hard, jostling out the nebulous images of what-might-be. He thought of a name, a scent, a face that had once been the dearest in all the worlds to him. The hand that had stroked his head, the voice that had praised him for a good kill.
    The Huntsman. After all these years, he would see the Huntsman again…but other faces, other scents and names crowded into his head, too. People long dead, those he’d known and liked, some few he’d loved.
    And beside him, Kai. Kai.
    “Is there anything I should know?” she asked nervously. “I mean, assuming your spell works and he and I understand each other, do I bow, or wait for him to greet me, or shake his hand, or what?”
    “Ordinary courtesy will do. The Huntsman has little patience with ceremony. He…” Nathan’s voice broke. Emotions welled up too strong, too fast, pulling him in too many directions. “He doesn’t…aieee,” he moaned, as the grief of the long-ago sundering rose up as fresh as newly shed blood.
    He scarcely noticed when he started weeping, but he felt it clearly when she moved behind him, wrapped her arms around him, and held on. And it was as if at last, at last, someone held him through that first, terrible grief, when he’d nearly gone mad with despair. At last something closed. It could close now, and the raw place inside could begin to heal.
    His sobbing died, and he found the stillness inside he’d touched a few times before. Twice, when he stayed with the monks in Tibet. Once when he stood on the edge of suicide and decided not to step off…a sensible decision, he’d often thought since, for a hellhound was not easy to kill, and he’d have had the devil of a time making sure of himself.
    The cold, arid wind was quickly drying his cheeks. He turned and touched his lips to Kai’s forehead. “Love,” he said, “is very strange.”
    And then he faced the night again, and spoke the Huntsman’s Name.

    KAI heard wind, only wind, yet she saw Nathan’s lips move. She knew he’d spoken, but something in her mind refused to hear what he said. But the wind kept rising—blowing harder now, whistling scornfully through her jacket, the cold biting deep.
    No. Not just wind. She heard…howling.
    They came on the darkness, black shapes racing across the black of the sky. Like the darkest of storm clouds they seemed to build, to mount taller rather than draw nearer. Fear, atavistic and complete, numbed her limbs and dried her mouth.
    Not Dell’s. The chameleon-cat howled back, a wail of fear and defiance. Kai reached for the cat with her hand and her mind, soothing her.
    Nathan took her other hand, bent, and whispered, “He likes to make an entrance.”
    Terror and laughter tangled in her throat, and the choked sound she made was built of both. She held tight to Nathan’s hand.
    Part of her saw the man come striding down from the sky, his boots as sure on the air as if it were forest floor. Part of her saw him just suddenly here —only ten feet away, standing in the ordinary dirt beside a mesquite bush. Him and his hounds. They were black, and many, and varied—some greyhound-lean, some mastiff-strong, all of them tall. And silent. After that howling, they were silent now, and unmoving.
    And she hardly noticed them, for she was staring at him.
    She couldn’t have said if he was young or old, tall or short, only that the shape of him was perfectly right. He wore a vest over a hairy chest and rough-sewn trousers tucked into hide boots, with a quiver of arrows slung over