His hand closed on the belt of her wrap and he hauled her up, swinging her effortlessly onto his shoulder. She weighed only a little more than empty air and she didn’t struggle. Kane started walking again, scanning the trees surrounding him. He thought he could see a clearing to his left and he turned in that direction, scenting the air in the vain hope of smoke.

It was more than a clearing. It was a valley, carpeted in brittle grass, with the hard-baked cut of a dead river running through it. On every side, the forest loomed, stretching up in foothills towards the distant black peaks of mountains. And there, just as he had known there must be, were lights, twinkling like fallen stars in a nest of shadowy trees.

The human hung limp down his back, but she never shut up. She kept making that sound, like the breathless crying of a hoarse baby, until Kane thought he was going to go mad. He couldn’t blame her. Everyone had their limit and she’d hit hers, but he was coming up on his, and if she didn’t hush it in a hurry, he was going to do something he’d later regret.

The lights in the forest taunted him, but Kane forced himself to stop. He pulled Raven off his shoulder and set her on her feet. She staggered under her own weight and then dropped onto her butt, splay-legged and dazed, staring up at him. She was still crying and her eyes were still dry.

“Does anything hurt,” Kane demanded, trying very hard to keep his voice low, “or are you just giving me shit?”

Her face puckered up and she fell onto her side, drawing herself into a small ball and wailing into her arms.

Patience. Damn the gods, had there ever been such a fucked-up hunt as this?

Kane dropped to one knee beside his human and took his pack off. His scanner had a pin-light on it. He thumbed it on and had a look at his human’s eyes. Bloodshot and sunken. He forced her mouth open and prodded at her gums. They dimpled white and remained so. She wasn’t dying yet, but she would be very soon.

Kane considered his options, even though he already knew what he had to do. And in the end, he did it. He brought out his one and only protein boost and loaded it into the dermisprayer to give her.

Raven wailed as soon as she saw the device in his hand, and she tried to shove it away when he reached for her. Kane’s irritation got the better of him; his hand flew out and slapped across her sobbing mouth before he could stop himself. Her head rocked back and banged into the ground. She blinked stupidly into the sky, blood pooling around her lips. She began to cry again, looking confused.

‘Leave her the fuck alone!’ Kane snarled at himself in Urak’s voice. ‘Tar! It’s like kicking a baby!’ He took a deep breath, willing calm, and she chose that exact moment to say “Just kill me.”

The last shred of Kane’s temper snapped. “All right,” he said, and grabbed her by the hair. He stood, pulling her up with him as she screamed and slapped at his arms. He yanked up her tattered shirt and dug all three claws into the middle of her chest. “This is what you want?” he snarled, pushing his face close to hers. “You want to see your meat and bone break open? You want to see your heart spitting blood? You want to hold your guts as they dry? You want me to kill you? Say the word, human, and I’ll do it.”

Raven bawled wordless negation at the sky.

“Then shut up.” He dropped her and stomped away, pacing a short circle in the dead grass until his head quit throbbing. When he turned around, she was still lying on her back with her hands over her face, shaking with her tearless sobs. “I’ll forgive you for saying such a stupid thing,” he said, returning to her side and retrieving his dermisprayer from the ground, “but I won’t forgive it twice.”

He pressed the head of the dermisprayer against her arm and injected its contents through her skin with a hiss of air. “I only have one of these,” he said, packing it away again, “so you’d better not make me sorry I gave it to you. Get up.”

Raven rolled onto her hands and knees and slowly stood, wiping over and over at her dry eyes.

Kane took her arm and bodily turned her. “Do you see it?”

She looked at the lights, sparkling just out of reach in the sloping woods at the far end of the valley. “Yes,” she whispered.

“That’s where we’re going. I’ll carry you. And if you start making that damned noise again, I’ll be carrying you unconscious. You’re not the only one hot and tired.”

“I’m sorry.”

He growled at the apology and lifted her again. She felt heavier this time and wearing her over his shoulder was like wearing a fur coat, but Kane kept teeth on his temper and started walking. His body was full of complaint—he was hungry, thirsty, hot, sore and exhausted by Heat’s daily assaults—but complaints don’t change facts, and the fact was that reaching the lights meant a goodish hike so he’d better keep moving.

He needed to keep things in perspective, that was all. The human on his back was heavy now, but he’d be damned glad of her when the day rolled around and brought Heat with it. Besides, she wouldn’t be dehydrated forever, and before she’d gotten quite so sick with it, she’d been reasonably good company. She was quick enough, strong in her own way, and so determined to please. Under other circumstances, Kane thought he could come to like a human like this. He was positive that Urak would.

And it was also true that the lights he saw in the woods were a half-night’s walk away, but at least when he reached them, there were sure to be water and food, and there was likely to be a groundcar as well. The speed that would lend him in the hunt was worth this rotten night.

So he would walk, and he had better keep his temper as he did so. Things will always get worse before they get better, or so Urak had been fond of saying. And since this was about as bad as he could imagine things getting, surely there had to be improvement on the way.

“Let me down,” the human said, her voice slurred. “I can walk.”

“Be still,” he grunted. The protein boost would no doubt give her all kinds of delusions of strength, but it wasn’t flooding her with moisture. He needed her to conserve her energy, and he was prepared to use force if he had to.

“I’m okay now,” she insisted, pushing against his back to half-rise. “I want to get down.”

Kane gave her thigh a stinging slap and she fell limp again at once. He wasn’t used to fussing over humans. Apart from the little pets that Urak was in the habit of keeping, Kane was accustomed to taking the sorts of liberties that could leave a human dead if one pissed him off enough. But if the lesson of the yellow-haired female had taught him nothing else, it had taught him that he was by no means assured of finding another if he was careless with his toys.

The valley was flat and open; the woods on the other side, far distant. And the human’s impatience was contagious. Kane risked a light run, his eyes darting over the dry grass for dangers, aware that a broken ankle now would be as good as a plasma burst to the head. His own strength was not unlimited, but it felt good to run, as satisfying in its primal way as raking claws down an enemy’s chest or feeling a female’s bite on your shoulder. His pulse sounded in his ears, his feet flew over the dry earth and the female who rode him swayed with his stride. It was a good run, and all the while, the lights ahead drew nearer.

The forest reached out to embrace him again and Kane slowed. He was tempted to rest, to set his human on the ground and wait until his breath came slow and steady. Maybe to finish out the high mood his run had put him in by having a roll with his Raven, one untempered by Heat’s madness, and to catch a nap in the shade of Earth’s night.

But the lights, invisible now behind the sloping thick of trees, still beckoned. Food, water, perhaps a groundcar, and shelter for a few more hours of sleep. A place for Raven to regain her strength before he moved them on. These were the things he had to focus on now. The night was waning.