Half Lost (The Half Bad Trilogy #3) - Sally Green Page 0,77

behaving much as it always does. I’m surprised. I thought she’d be packed up and ready to go or dug into six-foot-deep trenches by now.

I tell Celia, “I’ve found one. There’s no camp that I can see. I think there is only one pair, very good and very quiet, traveling light. They’re not here to attack.”

“We’d be fighting by now if they were going to attack,” Celia says. “But more will be here soon. And there’s no way of knowing how long they’ve been here, how much they’ve seen.”

Celia turns to Greatorex and says, “Ideas?”

Greatorex replies, “We patrol every morning and evening. The trainees know to look for any sign. They’ve seen nothing. And if the scouts had found us more than a few hours ago, we’d already be dead. Odds are they arrived this morning but they’ll have phoned in a report and more Hunters will be on their way here right now.”

“We need to leave. Will they be able to work out what we’re planning from that?” Celia nods at the broken-down pile of tarps and wood.

“They’ll know we’re up to something. They’ll go through the possibilities and work out that we’re practicing an attack. The Council meeting is the obvious target.”

“Will they think we’re strong enough to attack it?”

“They’ll believe we’re desperate enough.”

Celia rubs her face. “There’s nothing we can do about it. We need to move now. Evacuate the non-combatants to Camp Two immediately. I want them gone in fifteen minutes. Close the cut behind them. All attack personnel prepare to move out on my orders. But first”—and Celia looks at me—“I want those two Hunters. Greatorex, send out your top trackers. Scour the area. I want that second Hunter traced and hounded down. Nathan, you go to the first one and wait there. They’ll reunite if they feel threatened. I want you to take them both out. We can’t have prisoners; they’ll slow us down. If you detect any more Hunters, the start of an attack, you come straight back and we all leave.”

I think that this is the first time Celia has given me a direct order to kill someone. And it occurs to me that it’s a strange thing to be ordered to do.

“Are you OK with that?” Celia asks.

I meet her gaze and say, “Sure.”

I leave without a word to Gabriel, without even looking at him. What can I say? “Back soon—I’ve got to go and kill two people.”

I go quickly back to the Hunter, turning invisible before I leave the camp. I can’t think about right or wrong, just about doing the task. For all I know, a hundred Hunters might already be waiting for me.

I slow when I reach the rise and then stop and listen. The hiss of the phone is still there. I get my breath. I’ve run flat out most of the way. I calm my breath to make it slow, smooth, silent, and regular. Then I move closer to the source of the hissing. The Hunter is still and silent, possibly asleep. I consider killing her now, but then she’ll be visible and I think the other Hunter will come back to warn her once she knows the Alliance fighters are onto them.

I decide to wait. If she moves I’ll kill her.

It’s not long before I hear footsteps coming from behind me and I’m not sure if this Hunter will be visible or not.

Visible! A woman in black. She runs close to me and straight to her invisible partner. Then stops and says, “Floss? Floss, are you here? We need to move out.”

Floss appears close to the other girl’s feet. She’s dressed in the same way and is sitting on the ground, back against a tree.

The Fairborn is in my hands without me thinking about it and I stride up to them and slit the throat of the one standing. I’m still invisible and Floss probably can’t work it out; all she sees is blood and her dying partner, who now falls to the ground. But Floss is a Hunter and her automatic reaction is to pull her gun and shoot. I stab her in the neck. She shoots again and the bullet taps my shoulder and she lashes out at my face with her other hand, a final strong swipe with all her energy, but it feels like a gentle pat to me and she bleeds out over my hands.

I let her body fall. I know they couldn’t have hurt me but my orders were