Hunted [Wild Hunt Series: 1]

11: Shail

The crag cat's bellow made my ears ring. My head spun. I could barely catch my breath. In the time it took me to prop myself up the spiders had dropped onto the cat. It hissed and spat, ripping them off its body. Their toothy mouths pinged harmless off its thick hide, and the ones that dropped on its face were violently wrenched off before it could latch onto a sensitive area like the cat's eyes and ears.

One of the rejected spiders scuttled toward me on its seven remaining legs. I scrambled onto my feet, felt the world vibrate as my body threatened to pass out, and then I'd found a branch. I swung it at the spider, swatted it into the ground and impaled it with the branch. The stick crunched through its hairy exoskeleton.

I leaned against it to catch my breath.

A steady, guttural rumble drew my attention off the twitching limbs and onto the crag cat. The spiders lay in ruins around it, and those that still had the ability, had retreated back up the trees. Muscles moved beneath the cat's thick hide. It was easily larger than I was, and seemed even larger now that I was staring down its plated snout.

"Woah, there," I said, feeling my hands shake, noticing how pale my fingers were in the night air. I couldn't find the knife, wasn't sure what had happened to it.

The cat hissed, lips drawing back, fangs flashing in dappled moonlight that reflected off the running water. It stepped sideways around me, club tail high and steady, and in that moment i couldn't tell whether it would swing that tail upon me, or tear into me with its mighty jaws.

I inched toward the splattered meat. It countered every movement, stepping closer, back arched, claws extended. "This is for you," I said. "A present." Slowly, so slowly, fighting against my body's want to collapse, I crouched down, lifted a piece of bony flesh.

The cat tensed.

I tossed the meat in front of it.

Immediately it sprang back toward the waterfall, hissing.

I tried again with a smaller piece of flesh. It landed just beside the first piece. The cat's head rose above its shoulders. Its nose twitched. The arch of its back flattened. In a series of long, hesitant motions, it crept forward to the meat, sniffed it, watched me, and finally nipped an end, pulling it toward the water. It devoured the larger piece first, then returned for the second, which it ate where it'd fallen.

"Good right," I said in soft encouragement, feeling the leaf-litter for more bloody chunks. "Want some more?" It was slow progress, but with a series of ever-shortening tosses I'd eventually coaxed the cat within ten feet of my exhausted fingers. The last piece I held in my hand, but my arms were too weak. I dropped it in front of my feet and waited.

The cat ignored the meat at first, stepping forward one paw at a time, neck stretched out to barely sniff my elbows as I sat with my knees pulled to my chest. Its big grey face was dappled in blues and whites, spotted as a snow leopard though it shared little else in common with the Terran feline. It finished the meat, then sat back and cleaned its paws.

"Holy shit," I muttered, wiping sweat off my face. I was doing it. I was actually surviving with this thing. I wouldn't call it a bond, but we were getting somewhere.

Teeth sunk into my neck. I screamed, grabbing at the rubbery trunk of a spider. It dropped onto my face. The cat hissed, swiped its claw across my arm, and ran. I spun hard onto the ground. The spider stayed attached, sharp claws digging into my face as I dug my fingers into the trunk. Blood sprayed across my face as I ripped it apart. The spider released with a shrill scream, flailing, trunk slapping my chin.

I grabbed at my neck. The first wound had been a patchy messy, but this had ripped flesh. I felt sick. I wretched blood into my fingers.

And I sat there, shaking, weak, leaned against the tree while the crag cat watched from the safety of the water.