"I don't know, exactly. Only I touched her somehow, or she touched me... I've dreamt of her before, but tonight was different. I – I reached her. I feel her now. She came to me because she couldn't be alone anymore, and I... I told her, in my sleep. I said she didn't have to, so she came to me."
Pity twisted through him. He knew what it was to be cut off from all you knew. So alone... "She'll kill again, Kai. As you said, she can't help it. There isn't enough magic to sustain her here."
Kai took another step. "There's more magic in some places, close to the big nodes."
"Not enough." Eventually there might be, but not yet.
Kai was only four feet away now. She held out her hand, and the head Nathan had pinned struggled. "Let her smell me," Kai said. "She won't hurt me. She won't."
Nathan knew that every being had to decide his or her own course. He'd earned that knowledge one painful step at a time when he'd been stranded and had to learn how to make his own choices, all of them. But he felt sick, physically sick, as he slowly released the chameleon's head.
It – she – stretched her head out, sniffed the hand held out to her. And beneath him Nathan felt a vibration start.
She was purring. The beast was purring for Kai.
"Can you send her back?" Kai whispered. "Back where she belongs?"
He couldn't, no. But he knew one who could.
The mage light hung, motionless, in the center of the room, a warm orange ball pushing back darkness. Either the moon had set or clouds had moved in, for outside the night was entirely black. Cold, too, and with the window broken, that cold streamed in unhindered.
Kai paced. Nathan, impervious to either cold or nerves, sat on one of the sleeping bags, eating an apple. And in one corner of the room, the killer sought by the entire city slept, her long body curled into the same sort of cozy ball a housecat would use to conserve heat, the tuft on her tail draped over her nose.
She had a name. Kai sensed that, but couldn't find it. What she got from the chameleon weren't exactly thoughts, nothing that clear – sensations, feelings, and only the biggest of those. She knew the animal was hungry and weak, but content for the moment because Kai was nearby. She felt that contentment as a sort of rumbling at the back of her mind, like a sleepy purr.
"How did she get through your wards?" Kai asked without looking at Nathan.
"I'm guessing it was her tie to you. Your energy is in the wards. Somehow she used your key to come in."
Kai reached the wall and turned. "I don't know how to make this sort of decision." She stopped, frowning. "Come to think of it, I don't understand why it is my decision. It's your life I'm deciding, too."
Nathan finished chewing as calmly as if they'd been in his apartment, talking over a news report they'd heard on TV. "Part of it was mine to decide," he agreed. "But I've made my choices. I could have chosen not to tell you of the possibility, or I could refuse now to call. But for your sake – and also for hers" – he glanced at the sleeping beast – "I'm willing to do it, if you wish me to."
The Huntsman. Nathan would call the leader of the Wild Hunt because he could return the chameleon to her own realm. He would do that... if Kai asked him to.
"But will the Huntsman do it?" she asked.
"I'm no longer of the Hunt, but if I call, he'll come." Nathan gave a little huff of amusement, his lips quirking. "If nothing else, curiosity would likely bring him. The Huntsman keeps hounds, but he has that much in common with cats – a great, throbbing lump of curiosity."
"No, I mean... will he agree to send her back?" Saying it brought a pang deep inside. Kai didn't understand the bond she'd formed with the animal, but sending her away felt hard and sad.
Better than letting her die, though.
"Even his sister doesn't predict the Huntsman. He does what he does, and often won't know himself what that will be until he does it. But he has a fondness for me and a love for all wild things. He might kill your chameleon-cat, but there's a good chance he'll save her instead. Or do something we haven't thought of."
"And..." Her throat was so dry she had to swallow to get the question out. "And will you go home with him?"
"Kai." Her name came out startled. He shook his head. "No, of course you don't know. There's been a suddenness to all of this, hasn't there? I could have left two months ago when the Turning arrived, if that were my choice. I could leave now. There's enough magic for it."
Her restless feet brought her to him. She crouched in front of him, her heart pounding. "Why did you stay?"
"For you." He set down the uneaten apple core and took her hand, turning it to study her palm, her fingers. "Of course, for you. Though I didn't understand how deep you'd gone inside me, not until last night. I knew I wanted more time with you. But also for me." He rubbed her palm gently with his thumb. Slowly he looked up, meeting her eyes. "I'm not a hound anymore, not precisely. I've spent too many years in a man's body, with a man's brain. That I could hesitate at all to return to her taught me how much I've changed. But the queen..."
The trouble in his voice had her turning her hand in his to clasp it. "Yes?"
"I missed my hound's body, missed it badly, at first. I would miss my hands and my speech even more now. And you." He squeezed her hand. "I would miss you terribly if I had to leave."
"Would the Huntsman make you go back?"
"Well, he can't, which is why I'd call him and not my queen. He could kill me, of course, but – "
"Then, no." Her hand clenched hard on his. "Don't call."
"Wait, wait. I didn't mean he would kill me. It's a hunter's way of seeing things, that's all – that he could kill me but can't compel me. He'll come, he'll be curious, he either will or won't do what I ask." He shrugged. "And he'll tell her, tell my queen, about my call at some point, when it occurs to him to do so. But she... she'd have known when the realms shifted that I could return. Since I haven't..." He shrugged, looking away.
He hurt. She settled herself beside him, careful of his arm. It looked whole beneath the bloody rags of his sleeve, and she knew he healed fast. But she'd seen bone earlier. Surely it wasn't completely healed.
She put her hand on his thigh. "You feel torn in your loyalties."
"If she calls me to her, I'll go," he said quietly. "That hasn't changed, but... eh, there's no way to wrap this up in words." He sighed and, oblivious to her worry about his wound, put his arm around her. "It may be I've a choice ahead of me I don't know how to make, but there's no saying when that one will arrive. Calling the Huntsman might hasten it. Or it might not. Your choice is already here, Kai."
I can't let her die. That much was clear, a truth Kai couldn't duck. But she wanted another solution, one that saved the chameleon but didn't draw the attention of Nathan's queen.
One that didn't carry so high a cost, she admitted.
In the corner, the chameleon-cat slept, her mottled coat blending her into the shadows. She'd been beautiful and terrifying in action – built more like a leopard than a lion, only shaggy. She had a lynx's oversize ears and feet, an oddly shaped muzzle, and quiet colors.
Quiet now. During the fight they'd flared in a rage of orange and red, but asleep, her colors softened to a dappled brown, like sun-freckled earth. Her thought-shapes drowsed along in the colors... not forming the intricate patterns of human thought, but neither were they beast-simple.
You are so beautiful, she thought. But what do you want? Who are you?