Hunting Will by Alex Albrinck Page A

twenties.
    Armed with this information, Porthos had set off into the more populated and traveled areas in the region. He came home with a good deal of useful information — and several bottles of premium bourbon. “Straight from the source!” he said. “We’ll use this for our post-Hunt celebration during the flight home. Maybe we can get our friend Clint drinking heavily and Aramis can sit this one out.”
    Aramis looked scandalized. “I beg your pardon?”
    “I’m just looking out for you, old man. You still look rather wan from the encounter with Stark, so I figured that if you could rest up a bit longer…”
    Aramis frowned. “Who uses ‘wan’ in a sentence?”
    “Too many letters for you?”
    Athos sighed. “Did you find anything helpful, Porthos?”
    “Yes. Our friend is having a party this evening. A costume party, to be precise. It’s Halloween, you know.”
    Aramis glanced at him. “And… is that supposed to mean something?”
    “It’s a day when humans dress up in scary costumes and walk around to each others’ houses and collect candy. I didn’t pack a costume, but the two of you look scary enough without doing anything special. The costumes should help us… if we use masks, nobody will be able to identify our faces later.”
    Athos nodded, ignoring the jibe. “If it’s a large party, we’ll be able to get inside without incident, and Aramis can likely take a walk outside with his old friend. Once we’re outside the house with him, we have options.”
    “We need to be careful, though,” Aramis cautioned. “Even if we get him outside the house, there aren’t any truly secluded spots nearby where we can teleport him away, or park the transport.”
    Athos nodded. “Porthos, how long do such parties last?”
    “A good party never ends, Athos. But more than likely it will run until the early morning hours, perhaps two in the morning.”
    “Aramis, do you have the sleep inducer? Preferably the type that kicks in after a few hours?”
    Aramis nodded. “The transport craft is well-stocked, especially since the formula proved useful against Stark – well, at least temporarily. We won’t run out again any time soon.”
    “Then that’s the plan. We’ll join the party, each armed with a mini-syringe. Walk in, say hello to a few people without any lasting conversations — no matter how attractive she might be, Porthos — and find Clint. Jab him and walk away. If the house is crowded, it should be fairly easy to get close enough without anyone noticing we’re up to something. We need to use the smaller syringes as the larger ones would be noticed. When we’ve all finished, we should have a sufficient amount of serum in Clint to knock him out later. We can come back and collect him when the crowds have left.”
    The others nodded. “Boring, but effective,” Aramis said.
    “And what happens if things… go wrong?” Porthos asked.
    “Standard pursuit. If the dosage is perchance ineffective, then we’ll have the darkness and isolation of his home to use against him.” He looked at Porthos. “Anything new on the woman?”
    “Outside the fact that’s she’s gorgeous? Not really. The gossip I managed to tease out of the humans suggests she’d mentally accepted dying, and that her recovery was something she had neither wanted nor asked for. She knows who did it, though. There were a few murmurs about her dating our friend Clint for a time, but it’s moved to the ‘just friends’ stage now. It’s still likely she’ll be at the party, though probably without a date. Such a shame. Speaking of humans needing to die, where’s our Assassin?”
    On cue, the man materialized inside the room, and all of them jumped. The man’s persona oozed hatred and death, and his appearance did nothing to lessen the effect. His head was shaved clean, and was covered by dozens of thick, deep scars that put Athos’ single scar to shame. But it was the eyes that made the man truly terrifying. The