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Fantasy Stories

Thrill of the Hunt

Written by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Illustration by Garrett W.Vance

She hid along the lowest ridge, feet sprawled, extended downhill. She had rolled in the dirt, covering herself and her clothing, her hair buried under a dirt-covered hat, so that she blended in. Her only risk—the binoculars. They could glint in the sun, warning him.

The sun was hot. Powerfully hot. She hadn’t expected it. She had been in Northern Europe too long with its pale sunlight and cool summers. She had never been to Argentina before.

She shifted ever so slightly, measuring the distance with her eyes. He had moved to a dilapidated farmhouse, the wood gray and sagging from the harsh weather. Grime covered the windows.

If she hadn’t known, if she hadn’t followed him here, she would have thought the place abandoned.

He lived here. The Great Wulf, who had once lived in a lavish castle overlooking the Rhine, had settled in this dry and dusty place, living in near poverty.

She wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it for herself. She tracked him here, watched him enter that ruined building. He looked like so many German exiles in this part of Argentina, back bowed, too thin, defeated.

They shouldn’t have seemed so defeated, these German exiles. They escaped.

The binoculars were heavy, and they yielded little. The crookedly hung front door. The broken stoop. Empty chicken coops.

The farm clearly did not sustain itself and the Great Wulf did nothing to change that. He hadn’t tilled the land or hired anyone to help him. He kept no animals, and he appeared to live alone.

But she had no way of telling what lurked behind that door.

She didn’t want to go in. Once she went in, she would be at his mercy. She would stay outside and kill him the hard way.

With a rifle.

And, with luck, he would never know what hit him.

****

In the end, she had volunteered.

She found that ironic now, that she had volunteered. She had learned he was in Argentina, and she saw it, not as an opportunity for vengeance, but as a way out of Europe.

Europe, so defeated, so destroyed. Everywhere she went, she found rubble, starving people, begging children. She could not help them. She did not want to help them, if the truth be told.

She used to have compassion, back before two world wars destroyed it. Or perhaps it wasn’t the wars, but the aftermaths. When she met a single starving person, she gave money or food or helped the poor soul find shelter.

When she saw dozens, she turned away.

But now that there were thousands—thin ragged near-corpses—she felt only irritation. Irritation at them for failing to provide for themselves somehow (even though she knew so many of them couldn’t), irritation at the remains of the governments for ignoring the problem, irritation at the combatants for causing this problem in the first place.

Someone else needed to solve the crisis. She could not. She would not.

She had survived, first by hiding, then by pretending to be one of them. She was blond. She had blue eyes and high cheekbones. She stole the identity of a German woman and lived part of the war in Paris, where a semblance of a civilization remained.

She stayed through the liberation with yet another piece of identification, this one marking her as French (her language skills were good enough, as long as she told people she was from the Alsace). She might have stayed there, if it weren’t for the dreams.

****

The farm’s isolation worked for her and worked against her. With her hair beneath the hat, loose clothing, and dirt all over her face, she could pass for a boy. The problem was that everyone in this little valley seemed to know everyone else.

Things would have been much easier had Wulf still lived in Buenos Aires.

She had parked her old Ford pickup over a mile away on what was little more than a cart path. The roads here were dirt, harsh, uncompromising. The side roads looked like they were created by rabbits.

She had found just enough brush to shield the truck from the most overt gaze, but it would not remain hidden for long. Someone would see it. Someone would report it. Someone would find her.

No movement inside the farmhouse. Nothing outside as well, although she did not expect it, in the heat of the day like this.

She was foolish, lying in the sun like this, with only her binoculars and two old Coke bottles filled with water.

She would need to plan better when she came to do her job.

She would need food, a bit of shade (and there was none, not within range), and enough water to make it for more than a day. If only she could wait until the weather cooled, and the rains started.

But then she would have the water to deal with, and probably the wind.

Plus there would be no guarantee that he would remain here.

No guarantee that he wouldn’t sense her.

No guarantee that he wouldn’t kill her.

Like he had killed so many before.

****

The first dream seemed benign. Her father, sitting in his favorite chair, a worn red velvet chair her mother wanted to replace. Her father had had kind eyes and silver hair. In the dream, he held his pipe, puffing it occasionally, filling the room with the scent of his specially blended tobacco.

She had awakened in tears, still smelling the tobacco, still feeling the warmth of the room.

She missed him. She had never mourned him or her mother. She had moved on—she had to, or she would have died—but now, in the comfort of her Parisian bed, in the first winter after the war (the second war), she felt herself shivering from loss.

If she let in that loss, she would have to let in all the others, and she would collapse. She would never be able to move, never be able to function.

She fled Paris for Venice because she heard that it too was untouched.

But that was a lie. Venice looked the same—no one had bombed its lovely bridges. The canals smelled as ripe as they always had—but the winter was cold and damp and no one had money. So many exiles in that place, so many formerly wealthy Europeans trying to find the life they had had between the war, mourning what they had lost.

It drizzled when she arrived and it drizzled when she left. She had been cold the entire time she was in Venice and she finally decided to go home.

To Germany.

****

She stayed low to the ground as she hurried along the ridgeline, watching the road for any signs of anyone. She headed back to the truck.

The silence in the valley was vast. She now knew that when she started that truck’s engine, people would be able to hear it for miles.

The valley was narrower than it looked, or perhaps the tall mountains simply reined in sound. Or the heat, accompanied by the unbearably thick humidity, caused some kind of acoustical feedback.

She didn’t know.

But it posed yet another risk, in a job filled with risks.

She wasn’t sure how she would solve them yet.

Or if she could solve them.

All she knew was that she felt compelled to try.

****

When she decided to return to Germany, her first thought was how bad could it be? Sure, she had read the reports of the Allied bombings. She knew that some areas had become craters. She knew that Dresden was gone.

She toyed with going to Munich—her family had lived there for a generation, but that was the generation before hers. She barely remembered the city. She wanted to see Berlin.

She had grown up in a tree-lined neighborhood, in a big rambling house, with fireplaces in each bedroom, and a massive double fireplace on the first floor. Her parents never shut the front parlor, not even in the winter, because they could afford the wood to keep the place heated.

As she edged toward adulthood, she would tease her father, saying he had used some sort of alchemy to make the wood last. He hadn’t denied it.

But later, she realized it wasn’t the wood he had magicked. He paid for the wood, like he paid for most things.

He never touched the wood. But he used his own brand of magic on the heat, moving it from floor to floor, keeping the entire house warm, when the homes of her friends always had cold spots and closed unheated rooms.

She had been raised in a wealthy household, a scholarly household, and she had taken the comfort for granted.

She had taken it all for granted—the clothing, the rich food, her parents as they laughed late at night.

A child raised in love, her mother used to say, will always be able to love in return.

Perhaps, once upon a time, her mother had been right. But her mother had no idea what the future was going to bring them.

Her mother, who would die screaming, blood oozing from the pores in her skin.

Her mother, who would plead for the lives of all four of her children.

Her mother, who, when offered the chance to save one, would refuse to save any at all.

****

Even with the windows open, the truck was too hot. She wrapped her shirttail around her hand just so that she could grab the door handle, feeling the metal sear into her palm as she tugged.

She didn’t relish the drive back. The open windows would merely blow the hot air around, not cool it off.

She had no idea how anyone lived down here, why anyone lived down here, how they survived the summers or why they even tried.

Christmas had been the worst. She hadn’t expected it. She never thought of Christmas in a tropical place, on the wrong side of the equator, where summer and winter were reversed.

She liked the cold, the snow, the dismal gray sky. She hadn’t been prepared for the unrelenting heat and the glaring sunshine.

It was on Christmas morning—less than a month ago now—that she realized the Germans here truly were exiles. No self-respecting German would celebrate Christmas in a place like this, not voluntarily, not year after year after year.

She drove back to Buenos Aires in a half crouch as she waited for the bench seat to cool off. It was too hot to sit on, at least for a long period of time, and she thought about that as well.

Maybe she was making the wrong plans because she was in a foreign place, a place so strange to her that she felt on edge just by being here. The heat in December and January, a kind of heat she had never experienced before, the roads that seemed more like paths, the dirt and the dust and the faint smell of manure, coming from the various farms all around her.

In the city, she smelled only exhaust. The buildings, which someone had once described to her as having an old-world charm, did not look old-world to her. She had come from the old world, the very old world, and the buildings there had had a real charm.

Part of Buenos Aires had been built in an old world style, but with new world materials—woods that were unfamiliar to her—and painted a brilliant white so that they withstood the sun.

In the Mediterranean, when the locals used white, they painted it on brick or stone. They knew that stone kept the heat out.

The wood did not.

But, she was told, it grew cold in Buenos Aires during the winter—a damp cold, the kind that seeped into your bones. And the wooden houses were supposed to be good at dealing with that kind of cold. A local had told her that the stone held in the dampness, while the wood let it escape.

She did not know. She hoped she wouldn’t have to find out.

By the time she reached Buenos Aires, the truck’s seat had cooled enough to allow her to sit. She drew strange looks with her dusty truck, her dirty face, and her filthy clothing. But she ignored them. She knew people thought they were looking at a boy. No self-respecting woman dressed like she did.

Later, when she left her apartment, she would dress in a flared skirt and light blouse, her hair combed around her face, and her make-up just so. Down here, the locals favored bright red lipstick with a touch of rouge, and often they accented their eyes with a hint of kohl.

She was too fair to use kohl and if she used too much rouge, she looked like a German kewpie doll. But if she applied the make-up properly, she looked less German and more American. Her Spanish wasn’t good enough to make her sound like an Argentinean no matter how hard she tried. Her fluency in French and Italian actually hurt her assimilation. The words in all three languages were too similar and at times, they confused her. She had to speak slowly so that she would say the exact right things.

When she finally arrived at her apartment in one of the poorer sections of the city, she looked at no one. People didn’t look at her either. But she knew what they thought, if they thought of her at all.

They thought the dust-covered boy in the truck was the brother of the woman who had rented the apartment. She made sure they thought this. Otherwise, she never would have rented in a neighborhood like this.

The apartment came with a small garage. She deliberately looked for a place with a garage because, after seeing the poverty in the outskirts of the city, she did not want to leave the truck on the street.

The apartment and garage cost her more than a simple apartment would, but it had the benefit of placing her in a slightly better neighborhood. She didn’t care about the money. She had more than enough and her sponsors would give her even more if she asked.

But she wasn’t going to contact anyone, not until the job was done.

They had hired her, yes, for an obscene amount of money.

But she would have done the job for free if she had been able to find Wulf on her own. She hadn’t been able to.

She had needed her sponsors. They had tracked down Wulf. They had come up with the plan.

She had had no plan, not until 1947 when the dreams became unbearable.

****

In Paris, she dreamed of her father, always awakening to the scent of pipe smoke. For a while, she had thought one of her neighbors smoked the same special blend of tobacco, bringing the dreams, but the dreams followed her to Venice, and she knew then and there that they were coming from another place—although she wasn’t sure if they came from inside herself or from someone else, attempting to trigger memories.

But the dreams expanded in Venice, changed just enough that she realized they were dreams.

Her father would smoke and smile, leaning back in his chair as he contemplated something important.

Her mother sang as she set the formal dining room table. Their housekeeper would try to stop her mother from working, but her mother would have none of it. She liked to be useful, she said, and since she married, she hadn’t felt useful.

Her siblings rarely made an appearance. In some of the dreams, she felt like an only child.

She woke in tears from those dreams as well. Because she was an only child.

Now.

In the dreams, she would lean her head on her father’s knee. He would put a hand on her head.

Such a comforting gesture. Such a comforting dream. The pipe smoke, the singing, the warmth of his hand.

And then it all changed.

The library got cold, damp, and it smelled fetid. The stink of the canals invaded her dreams.

Until one night, her father leaned forward, his eyes so blue they barely looked human. She had seen him like that only a few times in her life, and the look always sparked fear in her.

It sparked fear in the dreams as well.

“Hilda,” he said, and she cringed at the sound of her name. She had abandoned that name when she fled her dying family. She took whatever name anyone gave her now, and she lived by that name until the name was no longer useful.

But Hilda, she had been Hilda to her family, to those she loved.

Those she failed.

And those who failed her.

She would force herself awake after he spoke her name, his voice echoing in her ears. She would walk to the window and look out at the chill, sleeping city, only a few lights burning, and she would remind herself that her family was long dead, her parents were long dead.

She owed no one anything.

But she did not believe it.

She breathed.

She stood.

She lived.

They did not.

And at some point, she knew, she would have to do something about that.

****

Her Buenos Aires apartment came furnished. The kitchen smelled of cooking oils, chilies, and garlic, old lingering odors that no amount of scrubbing could erase.

The sofa sagged, but the mattress in the one and only bedroom was firm—relatively new, which made her wonder what had happened to the old one. In places like this, the owners did not replace the furniture unless it had become useless.

Sometimes, as she lay in the heat, the windows open and the city sounds echoing around her, she wondered if the person who held the apartment before her had been elderly, and if he had died in this bed.

Although it would not have been this bed. It would have been another.

To die in this heat would leave an odor, worse than the garlic, chili, and cooking oils smell of the kitchen. So either no one died here, or the dead body was found relatively soon.

Perhaps something else had happened to the mattress. Perhaps the previous tenant had stolen it.

Perhaps the springs had finally poked through.

It was a measure of her life that she though of death first, rancid putrid death, which was what she had found in Berlin.

Ragged people, the stench of death.

A city she no longer recognized.

A place she had to escape.

But she had not known that when she arrived in Berlin.

When she arrived, she thought she was following the compulsion of the dreams.

She thought she was doing what she needed to do to get a little peace.

****

“Hilda,” her father said, “he is still alive.”

She didn’t have to ask who “he” was. She knew. With the logic of dreams, she knew her father was speaking of the Great Wulf, even though she hadn’t heard of the Great Wulf until her father was already dead.

At Wulf’s hand.

Then she’d been hauled into his castle—his lair, he’d said laughing—and propped against a wall with her siblings. Her brother Gunther, all of three. Her sister, Lisel, eight. Her other sister, Eda, twelve. She squeezed between them. Hilda, fourteen.

Still, he hadn’t looked at her, the Great Wulf. Thin, austere, with dark hair and dark malevolent eyes. His lips were thin, his beard a mere wisp on his chin. His clothing matched his hair, as brown as the wooden chairs, his skin as gray as the walls.

He did not seem healthy. Hilda had difficulty thinking of him as strong. As powerful enough to murder her father, with little more than a thought.

But he had.

She had seen it.

She had seen it all.

Wulf watched her mother. Her mother, still beautiful, still relatively young. All of her children shared her blond hair, her fair skin. The younger three had her brown eyes. But Hilda had her father’s blue eyes, which she took a care to shield.

Their fire hadn’t saved her father. They had flashed so blue, she thought he would bring the world down around them. But he hadn’t had that kind of power. His gifts were domestic, gentle, built for comfort, not for destruction.

Wulf destroyed comfort, loathed it. Saw it as a threat. She sensed that the moment she walked into his castle, saw the sharp edges, and felt the chill. The most powerful man of his age, and he kept his home cold and unwelcoming.

Especially this cellar, deep beneath the mountain, no windows, nothing except a stout oak door. Eda whispered that perhaps it had been a prison once. A cell, Lisel had corrected.

Her mother had begged them to hush. She had had no powers, always relying on her husband’s, and now he was dead.

Wulf had brought her mother here, not because she was special, but because she wasn’t. Because he could. He loved tormenting people. He adored tormenting her.

He had tormented her mother alone for days. When the servants brought the children into the cell, Hilda expected to see a broken disheveled version of her mother. Instead, her mother looked as she had before—her dress neat, her feet crossed at the ankles and tucked at the side of the chair, her hair pulled back into a soft bun.

Only her eyes were different. Older. Sadder. Almost empty.

Until she saw the children.

Nooooo, she had moaned.

No.

The word echoed against the damp stone walls. The entire cell smelled of mildew and sweat, a scent Hilda would later associate with fear.

Perhaps that was why she had hated Venice. The smell of mildew. The remains of fear.

Thoughts like that would jolt her awake every single time. The dream would end, but the memory wouldn’t. She would roll over in bed, wrap a pillow around her head, try to blunt the thoughts, the recollections, but she couldn’t.

She couldn’t.

They would come anyway, all of them, flashing through her mind like a broken film.

Wulf sweeping his hand toward the children he had lined against the wall. You can live, he said, if you chose which three of your children must die.

Gunther, crying. Mama. Mama. Wanting to run to her.

Lisel, holding him back.

Their mother, shaking her head.

Choose, Wulf said. You will live.

Mother, shaking her head.

Then they will all die, Wulf said, and you will still live.

Hilda meeting her gaze. Her mother’s eyes filled with tears. Let me die, she said. Let them live.

Hilda should have shielded them long before they had been brought to the castle. She should have herded them out of the house, down the tree lined street, into the vastness of Berlin itself. She should have taken them far, far away.

But she hadn’t known that then. She hadn’t known what was possible. She hadn’t known what she could do.

Her eyes warmed.

Her mother panicked, shook her head slightly, the gesture aimed at Hilda, not at Wulf. Later, Hilda would recognize the feeling, know what it meant. Her blue, blue eyes had flared, like her father’s used to, when he touched his powers.

She had finally found hers.

Too late.

But she had no idea what they were or how to use them.

Her mother slowly closed her eyes, giving Hilda an example, silently telling her to look down, away, keep her own eyes shielded.

Only one with power, Wulf said, without turning around. Sad how families work, isn’t it? The traits you want to give your children aren’t always the traits they get.

Mama, Gunther wailed. Mama.

Lisel pulling him close.

Eda clutching Hilda’s hand.

Their mother, beginning to bleed, her face, her arms, her clothing, turning slowly red.

See? Wulf said, not to her mother, but to her, to Hilda. See what I can do, just with my mind.

Hilda’s memory always broke there. Skipped, like a stone over a clear mountain lake. She could look down if she wanted to, but she never wanted to.

Hilda knew what had happened.

They had all died, in front of her.

He hoped to break her. He did break her.

And after, he set her free, telling her to return when she understood her own power, when she was ready to use it.

“He’s still alive,” her father said over and over in her dreams.

He’s still alive.

Even though they said they killed him.

Even though they said he would never hurt anyone again.

****

She had six different guns scattered around her kitchen. She kept the shades drawn and the windows closed, despite the god-awful heat. She didn’t want anyone to look inside, see the guns, the bullets, the bits and pieces of other guns, of bombs.

Bits and pieces of her indecision.

The best way to kill a man.

There were so many.

And, in the case of Wulf, so few.

She had three fears about his farm. First, she knew if she got too close, he would sense her. Not all mages could sense magic, but the powerful mages, they could. She could, and she was nowhere near as powerful as he was.

As he had become.

As he had become before everyone spoke of his death.

As he should still be.

Second, she worried that someone would see her and report her, or try to stop her, or recognize her for the outsider she was (the killer she was) and do something about it.

What they would do, she didn’t know.

She could defend herself.

She merely chose not to, most of the time.

And third, she worried about the method. She was a great close-range shot. She could kill looking someone in the eye, without the slightest hesitation. She could—and had.

But distance shooting, that took skill. Skill she had, yes, but had never tested in the field. Most of her targets had allowed her to get close or had become victims of her magic.

They were of a piece—her shooting and her magic. Maybe Wulf had