Hunter
The Last Mission
By Billy_Ray77
Chapter 5
The plane was up and well on it’s way before Anna spoke. It was her first time on an airplane and she had watched out the window with fascination as it taxied and took flight.
Once she had decided that one area of vast blue ocean looked very much like the next area of vast blue ocean, she turned to me with a smile.
“So why am I here and not Elenita?”
She was blunt. Cute... well, gorgeous really, but blunt.
“You don’t think I might prefer you? You are very beautiful.”
She regarded me briefly, “You think I am pretty, yes... but you do not love me.”
“What makes you think I love Elenita?”
“The way you are when you talk about her—same-same with her when she talk about you. You and she... very much in love, I think.”
Elenita was right, this girl was very perceptive.
“Sometimes love isn’t enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes the... situation... means that love is not possible.”
“But... it is. You do love her.”
“Okay, sometimes the situation means that love cannot be acted upon.”
“O-o, talaga (yes, that is true), I can understand. At home... before... I am in love with Jory. We are going to getting married... but then I come to Manila.”
“Paumanhin iyo. (I am sorry for you) maybe he will wait for you.”
“No,” she said, a sad look in her eye, “he will not... not with what I have become... what I do... but, utang ng loob... I must help my family.” She said that last part with small shrug.
Utang ng loob, or ‘debt of the heart’ is a nearly inviolate obligation among Filipinos and many other areas of the western Pacific and Asia especially among family centered cultures.
I put my arm around her slim shoulders, “I think he would be very foolish not to. I think you are a girl who is worth waiting for... worth loving, no matter what you must do.”
She looked at me, puzzled, “And Elenita is not?”
“That is different. It is not her situation... it is mine.”
“She is telling me what you do... like pulis (police man)... tapos... not pulis.”
“Sort of, but the men I look for are very bad... very dangerous.”
“I see. You want to protect her from men who might hurt her... so you hurt her instead... and...” her eyes studied me, “you hurt yourself also.”
“The ‘hurt’ that I cause is one she will get over. She will meet someone else and be happy.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no... but I think you will not... get over.”
Scarey perceptive.
Or was this why Elenita had insisted I bring her... to convince me to marry her.
“Look,” I pointed out the window towards the island just coming into view, “There is Boracay.”
My clumsy ruse worked and she became distracted by the scenery once again as we flew over our destination. There were no airports in Boracay so our Cebu-Pacific flight would land in Caticlan and we would take a ferry to Boracay. Despite our relatively early departure, it would be fairly late in the day before we would be settled in our hotel.
While watching the memories of Anna and Mirabel I had noticed one particular brochure had gotten most of my target’s attention and had booked a room at that resort. Tomorrow I would engage in small talk with the desk clerks and maids to see if he was indeed staying there and what room or villa he was in.
It wasn’t a sure thing, and if I struck out I would have to visit all the other resorts until I found someone with his face in their memory. Anna could be with me a day or a week—I found myself hoping it would take a while, but knowing what that would mean to the women he had taken, I would try and find him as fast as I could.
After landing in Caticlan we took a shuttle to the port and boarded a ferry. There wasn’t much conversation during the boat ride as it seemed Anna was much better with air travel than she was with sea travel. I couldn’t blame her. The ferry boats, despite being fairly large were very light, narrow craft with large outriggers to either side for stability. They tended to ride with the waves, rather than cut though them. Not too bad, generally, but the ocean was a bit rough that day.
It was nearly dinner time when we reached the resort. It had several types of accommodations available. One or two room suites in several three story buildings that lined a main drive, duplex bungalows nearer the water and larger, single occupant villas along some of the better stretches of the white sand beaches. They could have gone with taller buildings for the multiplexes, but more than three floors meant elevators—which were more suited to the high-rise hotels along the more densely populated economic zones.
The desk clerk and bellhop didn’t have any memory of my target so we simply checked in. We were in a two room suite on the top floor of one of the multiplexes. From our large balcony we had a good view of the wide sky, the lush hilly landscape and the never ending ocean.
The ocean view was very different from the dense jungle and rice terraces she had grown up with and, though those had a unique beauty all their own, this new vista had the lovely young lass enthralled.
Anna wasn’t quite up to eating, so we made a brief, but leisurely exploration of the shops, pool and other offerings of the upscale resort. With her stomach settled, we ordered dinner from room service and ate it in the cool breeze of the well furnished balcony. As we ate, we were treated to a spectacular sight as a fiery golden sun settled into the shimmering blue ocean.
After dinner I called the front desk for an eight o’clock wake up while she luxuriated in the shower. At home the only shower she’d had was a bamboo spout during a heavy rain, and the one in her place in Manila had been pathetic. This one was a real treat.
When she was done I took one myself. I came out of the shower to find her sitting on the bed. As I approached she reached out and guided my rising cock into her mouth. I played no mind games this time. She enjoyed sex and I knew from my previous foray into her mind that when with a ‘client’ she didn’t find desirable, she would imagine she was with her erstwhile lover, Jory. I did peek and found she wasn’t doing that this time—which was flattering.
I could feel her ardor rising as she worked on my grateful cock—despite my lack of any empathic link and it didn’t take long before she lay back, pulling me on top of her and guiding my straining cock into her warm, wet softness.
Sexy, sensitive and responsive, she had me on edge as quickly as she was. She came hard—that was the when I got the first hint of trouble.
I felt her cum and couldn’t help but cum myself. Then came the rush. The peptides... It should have been impossible as I had not established a link—but there it was.
I should have stopped then—I could have stopped then—but as the intoxication overtook me I chose not to.
I ‘chose’ not to...
I knew the exhilarating rush would be short lived and wanted more. One more orgasm, my befuddled mind reasoned, maybe two... enough to let it ride for a while, then I would stop.
As though I would have any control.
My self imposed limit was quickly reached and surpassed with no resistance or the slightest second thought. We groped, stroked, rubbed and grappled for hours. Orgasm after orgasm shook us as we both became stoned on sex.
The loud ringing at eight o’clock woke me, still high as a kite. Her head was on my chest, the long, silky black hair erotically tickling my sides. I tried to reach the phone without waking her, but it proved impossible.
I groggily lifted the telephone handset then set it back down as I kicked myself for not stopping last night. I was now in no condition to work, but... today was merely going to be simple reconnaissance—the gradual slide from my high shouldn’t be too much of an impediment.
I knew I couldn’t let it happen again... as soon as I could think clearly enough to figure out exactly what ‘it’ was.
“Mmmm...” she purred, “I always like the giling-giling, but that was very different. I never feel that way before.”
Her delicate fingers tickled at my cock but I stopped her.
“As much as I would like to continue with you,” I said, gently moving her hand off my hardening member, “I have to work today. How about some coffee instead of sex?”
“Not as much fun,” she giggled—I guess she was still a little high as well, “but if it is mocha, it is almost as good.”
A girl after my own heart—cafe mocha was nearly as strong an addiction for me as sex. Now that the thought was in my head, I had to have some and I didn’t intend to wait for room service. The previous night’s dinner order had shown me how long that could take.
“That sounds perfect.” I said, swinging my legs to the floor, “I’ll run down to the restaurant and get it, you wait here.”
She mumbled something and snuggled into the pillow.
I floated blissfully down the stairs and along the short road to the main building, returning greetings from the cheerful employees I passed along the way.
I made my way too quickly up the few stairs into the restaurant and held the rail as a short spell of vertigo dizzied my mind and slightly unsettled my stomach. I needed that coffee.
The large open air eatery was only about half full at this early hour and I told the hostess I was only there for some coffee to go. She took my order and invited me to have a seat while it was prepared and a waitress would bring it to me.
I made my way to the high tables facing the beach, noting several familiar faces I assumed I had seen either on the shuttle, in the lobby or while we had explored the resort’s amenities the previous day.
While I waited, I tried to wrapped my impaired mind around what had happened with Anna. I knew I hadn’t initiated a link, but it, or something very much like it, had been there.
If I hadn’t done it... there was only one other explanation that suddenly dawned on me. But it was an explanation that was so improbable as to be nearly impossible.
Anna was an empath! It would certainly explain her uncanny perceptiveness.
Nearly impossible, but not entirely. Feral telepaths—those that had the genetics but did not come from families with an active one who could guide the youngsters new to their power—were fairly rare, but not entirely uncommon either. Feral empaths were unheard of.
Perhaps, I reasoned, they were only unheard of because we didn’t hear of them. A feral telepath attracted attention—if only ours—due to the confusion and stricken lives left in their wake. A feral empath wouldn’t draw that sort of attention. I shuddered to think of some poor kid coming into his or her ability in a typical large city. An already confused and anxious adolescent feeling the tsunami of negative emotions from throngs of cynical and angry inhabitants. We didn’t encounter these kids because they likely never survived for long—quickly driven into despair they likely killed themselves very early in their young and tortured lives.
But Anna had survived... and thrived. She had grown up in a sparsely populated area, but it was still some sort of testament to her inner strength and tenacity, not to mention her family... they must have been unusually positive and loving, even by this culture’s standards. As her untrained ability manifested, she had felt that hope and love as the predominant emotions around her—neutralizing whatever negativity she certainly encountered from time to time.
Manila must have been very hard for this precious flower despite whatever inherent strength she possessed. There was no way I was going to send her back into that meat grinder.
Her stay with me was going to be short-lived after all. As soon as I got back to the room I was going to call Frank and have him send someone for her. She needed the support and training of other empaths before she would be able to survive for any real length of time outside of her protected environment. Whether she wound up working for the council or not, she needed that training.
I shuddered when I thought of what a typical street in Manila must have felt like. Well, that nightmare would soon be over for her. I was going to see to it.
It was then that I realized something other than Anna’s plight was troubling me.
A tiny voice was trying to warn me that something about this morning wasn’t right. I had missed something... had I forgotten to lock our room? Had I left my key behind?
The key was in my pocket so I went back over the recent events and distinctly recalled having double checked the room door. What was it? It felt more important than that.
Was it one of the maids, bellboys or gardeners I had passed? They were all exceedingly cheerful but that wasn’t out of place—Filipinos were renown for their cheerfulness.
My foggy brain tried to put together the pieces of the puzzle.
Then...
All those familiar faces... one of them wasn’t right... one of them didn’t fit with my recollections of our meanderings about the resort. One of them I had already known.
Him!
He was right here, seated not twenty feet away having his breakfast!
As nonchalantly as I could, I turned in my chair, as though looking for the waitress with my coffee. He was no longer at his table and, looking around, I saw him disappearing down the steps. Now that I had him, I couldn’t risk losing him. I had to follow him to find out where he was staying.
I wasn’t stupid enough to confront him in my inebriated state, but once I knew where he was I could bide my time and go after him as soon as I was sober.
Sliding out of my chair I followed, careful to stay far enough back that he wouldn’t notice me. He wandered out of the main building, obviously in no big hurry as he walked easily up the main drive, passing the multiplexes and side streets leading to the bungalows.
There were fewer guests in this area so I ducked off the road into the light brush. Difficult, due to my flip-flops, but I managed to keep up and stay relatively silent by moving deliberately so I wouldn’t trip or stumble—at least I was quieter than the birds and insects all around us.
He turned up the path to one of the villas and I moved deeper into the brush in case he turned around. When he pulled out the key and entered I knew I had him.
I stayed to the trees until well away from his villa and then back up the road to my multiplex. I remembered I had a coffee order waiting and though it may be well cooled, it was still chock full of caffeine and chocolaty goodness, so I walked on to the main building to collect it before returning to the room.
The large ceramic cups were full to the brim and I carried them carefully as I pondered how I would go about convincing Anna what she was. I wasn’t sure she would believe me, but, being an empath, I would be able to convince her that I certainly believed what I was telling her.
Frank was going to be the tougher nut to crack. He wasn’t going to believe it—he was just going to think I had finally gone off my nut.
My flip-flops slapped on the open air concrete steps as I made my way to the third floor. The ocean came into view as I mounted the final steps and turned towards our room.
That was when the boot struck my forehead.
I was propelled down the stairs and my training kicked in, at least I figured it must have been my training as I certainly wasn’t making any coherent decisions. Not wanting to go ass over tea kettle in the middle of a fight, I backpedaled, trying to keep up with the momentum. Luckily, the concrete wall of the landing didn’t have a railing around it so I didn’t snap my spine, I just had the all the wind knocked out of me.
I fought to draw a breath as my gaze slid up the stairs, now soiled with the dripping coffee and shattered mugs, to the top where I saw my target. He was quickly replaced by a large tiger that sprang down the stairs.
Invoking hallucinations during combat was nothing new to me, we trained with it as an offensive measure, but our foes rarely had the power or skill to do it so convincingly.
As the tiger closed rapidly I was still gasping for air but that didn’t mean I was out of the fight. My back was still pressed up against the wall and I brought my right foot up to chest height and kicked as hard as I could. The tiger vanished and I saw him fly backwards onto the steps as I gasped my first breath.
I knew him. To induce a hallucination he had to be in my head—I hadn’t felt him enter as my body was shocked from the impact with the wall but he was in there... and I knew him.
Still somewhat out of it, I tried to push off the wall, hoping to bring my foot back down on his balls—it was all I had in my condition. He rolled out of the way at the last second and my naked heel impacted hard upon the concrete. Ignoring the pain I threw myself in the direction he had rolled in a effort to tangle him up but he slipped past me and took off down the rest of the stairs.
I was in no condition to follow and certainly not dressed for a fight. I knew where he was going—but he wouldn’t be there long.
My heel protested as I ran up the stairs to our room.
I startled Anna with my rushed entry.
“Pack up,” I said as I pulled whatever cash I had out of my wallet. Around forty thousand pesos—it would be enough to let her hide out for a while. “You have to get out of here. I don’t want to know where you are going, but you have to leave. Get a room in another hotel... something small and out of the way. Don’t leave your room for a couple days, then call Elenita and tell her where you are. I should have contact with her by then. If I don’t, have her call Mac—she’ll know who I mean—she should have him, and only him, come and get you. Don’t do anything else until he or I come. Do you understand?”
“I... Hunter, why are you so scared?”
“The man I was looking for is here and he knows I’m here after him. If I can’t take him out he may come looking for anyone associated with me. You can’t be here, he’s very dangerous... more than that, Anna, he’s evil. Now, do you understand what I’ve told you?” While I talked I was pulling on trousers and stepping into my boots.
She may have been a naïve girl from a backwoods province, but she was no fool, even her untrained empathy had to be picking up on my urgency.
“O-o, I understand.”
“Good girl.” I said, lacing up my boots and grabbing my weapons bag. It’s not hard for a telepath to take a bag full of weapons through even the toughest airport security. “Remember the name Mac... Elenita knows him... and find a place that only locals would stay at... got it?”
She nodded, but was still staring at me as I rummaged for what I wanted. I knew I was in no shape to fight this guy—especially given who he was, so I pulled out a nine millimeter handgun with a silencer affixed to the barrel. I would normally eschew firearms as they would attract undo attention, even with a silencer, but this was no normal circumstance.
I headed for the door. I had to get to his villa as quickly as I could. He might be killing his harem at that very moment, and he could be in the wind before I got there. “Lock this after me, then get out of here as soon as you can, it may not be me coming through here next, and you can’t be here... you just can’t be here.”
I stuffed my gun hand up under my shirt, pressing the cold metal against my chest. It looked odd, I knew, but not as odd as an exposed handgun.
I took off at a run towards his villa, keeping to the center of the street and scanning to my left and right in case he was laying in wait for me again. I didn’t know how he had spotted me and rebuffed myself for following him—I hadn’t been thinking straight or I never would have risked it. It was a stupid, rookie mistake that may cost me my life—but I wasn’t going easy.
When he was in my head I had recognized him, recognized his feel.
The Bundy hadn’t snapped when he killed Collins. Collins had snapped when he killed the Bundy. It was known that the stress of killing our prey the way we did took a toll. That was why we would debrief with an empath—they would know if we were on the edge and we could be pulled from field duty if we were at risk losing ourselves. I don’t know how he had slipped through the cracks but he had.
It wasn’t his face... he must have had some reconstructive surgery, which explained the time between his disappearance and the new trail the council had picked up on, but it was him. I’d sparred with him in training and, while there were some differences, I had no doubt it had been him in my mind.
I neared his villa, still not knowing how or when he made me. But then, my thinking was still a bit fucked up, which was why I had the gun. I wasn’t taking any chances with him. I would kick in his door and go in shooting. Yes, I knew there was a risk of someone else getting hit, but an insane tracker was too dangerous to let run loose... if an innocent was killed taking him out, it would be for the greater good—though I wasn’t sure how I would fare in the aftermath.
Killing a mind fucking bastard was one thing. Killing an innocent victim was... unthinkable. But I had to finish this bastard, and if getting someone this dangerous out of the picture meant risking an innocent, it was just something I would have to live with.
I kicked in the door, gun before me. No one in the main room. Quickly but carefully, I checked the other rooms. All were empty except the bedroom. He was gone.
There were five beautiful women seated against the far wall, Jenny was among them, seemingly unhurt. There was one who was hurt. She was curled up in the middle of the floor, sobbing.
Her arms and legs had multiple breaks and there was extensive bruising—evidence of a severe beating. She was in incredible pain. I quickly checked the others, Jenny among them—they were terrified but not injured. They thought they were bound but there were no ropes or other bindings in evidence—that was an easy trick.
Then I turned my attention to the poor tortured girl. Trying to reroute the pain into something else did not work and I had to shut down her nervous system, effectively paralyzing her—it took a lot of my concentration and it would only work as long as I was in her head controlling it. But it worked and I was able to induce a fitful sleep. It wouldn’t hold if the pain returned, but it was better than her cataloging the extent of her injuries.
I hadn’t brought my cell, so I picked up the room phone and worked my way through our switchboard to contact the back up team. It took five attempts over forty-five minutes before I got through the the team leader’s cell—they were approaching the jetty port at the southern tip of the island and there had been no reception out at sea.
He didn’t want to believe me.
“Collins? The fuck you say.”
“Trust me, it’s him. He’s probably making a run for it and might still be at the port when you get there. Keep your eyes open.”
“What’s with your voice... are you drunk?”
“No! Just be careful. I don’t know if he’s there or not, but you guys are no match for him. Just open fire from a distance—that’s your only chance... we can’t let him get away. Some of you will probably be arrested but we can deal with that. The most important thing is to stop him.”
“Got it. If we don’t spot him, we’ll be at your location in an hour... maybe a little more.”
I kept the girl comfortable as I tried to bring my mind around. I’d made a mistake while following him, but couldn’t suss it out.
In between the self flagellation I used a sliver of unused concentration to explore the other women. As I did so, his psychosis... his addiction... became clear.
From what I could gather from their memories I determined he was using terror and pain in his victims to get the peptide release we normally got from a sex partner’s orgasm. Then he would repeatedly rape the women until sated.
But how had he come to this.
I couldn’t be certain, of course, but I could only assume that he’d been bothered by riding the mental death throws, just as all of us were. I dealt with it by indulging in my addiction and using those binges as a respite. I used the women I fucked not only for sex, but to recharge my depleted batteries with positivity. I realized that was as much a reason as any other for my picking women who liked sex in the first place. With my empathic link I absorbed their lust for life as much as their lust for sex. And, of course, I’d had Elenita.
He’d gone the other way...
He’d taken a left turn.
Once again, I’d been close enough to this left turn to understand it.
His defense against being horrified with his job was to learn to enjoy it. His mind had decided that reveling in death was better than being disgusted by it. He must have come to enjoy it so fully that he’d turned to sadism when taking out a target. Eventually he’d killed one so brutally that the the guy’s women were horrified to an extent he’d felt it. From there it had been short trip to establishing a link with them before torturing his target to death—then raping the guy’s harem to capitalize on the peptide release.
He’d become a sadistic animal that celebrated death and horror. But I still didn’t understand how Collins had manged to keep this from the empaths... unless he hadn’t.
Maybe he’d had a mental break long before disappearing. A split personality—one that did the job and one that dealt with the empaths. That would have worked. They never got into detail about what we did in the field, just how we felt after.
Then came that final Bundy—Collins had stopped being Collins and became something else... something dark and evil... something that had to die.
Something I knew could be lurking within me.
The possibility of the left turn hadn’t gone away when I became a tracker... it just became a sharper turn down a darker path.
The team arrived to report there had been no sign of him at the port so he’d either already been gone or hadn’t gotten there yet.
“There was some sort of accident right after we pulled in so it was pretty hectic, we could have easily missed him.” explained the team leader.
Then I had to get back on his trail.
“I need one of you to take over with this girl. Keep her shut down until she gets to a hospital, then they can take over with drugs.”
A medically induced coma would be just as effective as a mentally induced one.
“I got it, Hunter.” Said the team leader as he wound his consciousness into the girl and found what she had been through. He wasn’t an altered telepath but he could do what I had been doing, it just took a more thorough connection and a lot more concentration. “You go get this fucking bastard.” The look on his face said it all.
I headed back to my room to pack up and still hadn’t figured out where I had fucked up—if I didn’t learn from my mistake I might repeat it. I know, my first mistake was following the mark. But I’d screwed up somewhere else and it was always possible I would have to follow a target again at some point.
My mind was much clearer now and as I climbed the stairs I remembered the ambush and it suddenly came to me that I had been missing the most obvious answer. He had known where my room was. He hadn’t seen me as I followed him—he simply knew I would.
That dizziness I felt walking into the restaurant hadn’t been vertigo from climbing the stairs too quickly in an inebriated state—it had been hm entering my mind. In addition to his sadism he was probably paranoid as well and had been checking out everyone who came in, just in case.
He’d known who I was before I’d ever placed my coffee order.
And I’d been too fucked up to notice.
As I topped the stairs I saw the door to the room ajar. The inside jamb was splintered and I kicked the door aside as I entered, my gun before me.
“Anna?”
No answer, it seemed empty. Maybe Anna had been gone before he got here.
But those were her shoes, and that was her bag.