“Breath steadily. Firm grip with both hands,” Caroline’s said from behind him. 
Dustin would have glanced over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow, but knew what he would have seen., Although oblivious to the biting cold and snowfall, His dead wife’s ghost wore a pink leather coat over black snow pants. 
    His similar attire would restrict his movement, and he needed agility against this enemy. The snow covered his knees with soft, freshly fallen fluff, which sat atop hard-packed and slippery old snowfall. Trickles of water seeped into his waterproof boots over the tops where he stood flexing his legs against the cold, waiting, trapped by his prey. 

​

***

​

    Villagers named the beast “Sienzny Kot.” Snow cat. The hamlet’s farmers and hunters spoke Slovenian or some other eastern European language Dustin did not understand, but the elders among them communicated their meaning through cobbled together English. A beast hunted men for the sport, and left behind the bodies. 
    Dustin’s too many years of experience left him suspicious. Only fools believed all the stories of the new world in their first hearing. From Texas to the frozen north’s edge, he had hunted the worst the world offered. People’s fears had birthed animals into the world by their beliefs that they must exist. Wizards and thugs stepped up the game, and endeavored to bend the world to their will. When the wizard doubled as a thug, Dustin stepped in. He never stayed one place long, and took all requests for help seriously. As a result, he had a reputation as wide as the remnants of post Fall civilization. 
    This village’s request gave him time to do the job right, and Dustin tagged the work as important but not urgent. One hundred twenty people had tucked away sufficient food stores and wood. They could wait while he tested the verisimilitude of their claims, and what actions to take. Dustin hunted the hunter. 
    “It looks like a snow leopard.”     
    “Escaped from the local zoo at the Fall?” Caroline offered.
    Shrouded in thick white clothing, layers of socks and protective wool kept Dustin warm as he watched and waited. An occasional swig from a small canteen at his hip kept the edge off the cold, not from proverbial whiskey warming the core, but a concoction purchased back east, enchanted to keep the chill out and the toes on.
    “We could be waiting a while,” Dustin answered. “Cats have huge ranges.”
    “Or not,” she said. “Look.” Caroline pointed through the trees to where an evergreen bush rustled, and a deer walked into sight. Thirty degrees to the right, a blur of motion exploded out of the treescape. 
    Paws stretched out to grip snow, earth and roots, flinging them backward with the force of a hydraulic shovel. The cat, spotted from head to toe in dull gray across its silken white hide, ate up the distance like a cheetah. Fore legs pressed forward and hind legs reached for even more distance. The Sienzny Kot sprinted at double Dustin’s fastest pace.
    Disquiet crept up his spine as he watched from several hundred feet away. Freshly reequipped from the escapades in the Kritarchy, he was as prepared as he could be for such an encounter, but he never lost respect for such primal magically-enhanced beasts. 
    “Fifty miles per hour?” Caroline asked. 
    “Maybe...” 
    The deer’s ears flicked up and then turned its head, too late. Hooved feet found purchase and sent it bolting too slowly back the way it had come. White fur, flashing teeth and claws ripped into the prey. Inertia rolled the pair ten feet through the snow, and the Kot’s maw remained firmly clenched against the deer’s throat, as it flexed every muscle.
    No doubt the creature evolved from Abnormal beast stock, reinforced by the village’s fears that it terrorized. That alone did not make it worth hunting. Animals deserved to exist alongside the rest of the struggling world. 
    The teeth gave one more gargantuan squeeze, and Dustin imagined the vertebrae’s crackle of surrender. The Kot released its grip, shook its head and licked its jaws and reddened paws. It stood, yawned as though it had just woken from a nap, and walked away from the steaming, bloodied carcasses. 
    Dustin released the breath he didn’t know he had held, and waited several minutes for it to come back, drag the carcass away, eat or hide the body. It never returned. “It didn’t eat its kill,” Dustin said. 
    “Protecting territory?” 
    “From a deer?” 
    He waited longer. Dustin had recently underestimated an abnormal opponent. He didn’t want to do the same thing again, but as the whiteout faded to red twilight, he chanced approaching the now cold-stiffened corpse. He noted the distance between the loping strides. 
    “Forty miles per hour,” Dustin said. 
    “Fast enough,” Caroline agreed. 
    He studied the corpse, noting the length and depth of the bites and the claw marks. 
    “Could you protect against it?” 
    “With magic certainly, with mundane means? Maybe.” 
    “I hear a ‘but’ coming.” 
    “I’m still not certain we should kill it,” Dustin said. “It’s a ferocious hunter, and Abnormal, but it’s still just an animal.” 
    “Dustin the great hunter, who loves kitties.” 
    He raised an eyebrow at Caroline. “We will track it in the morning and see what else we learn.”

​

***

 

    They laid the idea of letting the animal live to rest a day later as he and Caroline stood over its latest attack’s remains. The pawprints were easily followed through the white landscape, and the night had brought no fresh snowfall. A traveler, his body frozen like a contortionist: his back arched, his fingers clenched against pain, had died the same night Dustin contemplated his next steps. His eyes, frozen and blue, stared at grey sky, confusion etched into his death mask. 
    Dustin ran a finger near the single bite along the neck. No rake marks marred the stomach and no secondary clawing marked the chest. A single puncture wound crushed the windpipe and exsanguinated the man inside a minute. Frozen drool solidified around the wound. 
    Dustin's eyebrows furrowed as he rose from the wind-tossed snow. The nameless dead man stared past him at heaven. 
    “Don’t blame yourself. You had to be sure.” 
    “Should have been pretty sure at the deer. Hungry animals don’t leave their kills behind untouched.” Dustin shook his head. “His rations untouched, his bowels uneaten, and no flesh was torn from his bones beyond the hoop of jagged puncture marks on his throat. The beast hunted without hunger. If I had taken the shot last night this man would be alive…” He cut himself off. She knew what he knew. 
    “You did what you needed to do. We needed to see what it could do, or we would be fighting it blind. Now we know.” 
    Signs enough had piled up for Dustin’s decision. 
    The question of the hunt remained. He would honor his contract with the village, now he just needed to figure out how to kill the creature. A simple long rifle shot from a perch was the best answer, but he’d spent his last appropriate bullets months before, and now the gun sat in a storage shed two hundred fifty miles southwest. He had his pair of nine-millimeter pistols and reasonable uncertainty he could hit the creature at short range before it tore into him. Picking the battleground took precedence.
    His fault. He’d meant to scout a few weeks out, and then return for his gear, find more ammunition, and finish preparations. Then the incidents with the blue skinned people trapped him in the frozen hellscape longer than he wanted while hunting answers. He could go back, but he didn’t relish a two week walk, and he wasn’t ready return. The Kritarchy held too many fresh reminders of bad days. 
    Two more days he waited for the beast. It made the same circuit, anointed the same tree with its musky scent, rubbing its jaw along the bark like a house cat marking a wall. 
    “Almost cute if not for the stained red fur,” Caroline said, pointing to the muzzle. It returned the way it had come. 
    “We’ve seen patterns enough,” Dustin said. 
    “How close do we need to be to make it find us?” 
    “I need to find a suitable site first, bait it second,” he answered. 
    In far western New York State’s boulder and rock-strewn hills, it did not take long to find what he wanted. Long sharp escarpments towering thirty feet over head created a ravine a hundred feet long, which narrowed to a point. A natural terrain funnel, with wind blowing predominantly into the ravine, meant he could work while always downwind of the animal. It was a small safety measure. 
    “Spikes here and here to herd it,” Dustin said. 
    “If you can get them into the ground. It’s frozen.” 
    He dug at the snow, going several feet with his hand axe and knife before he convinced himself the ravine caught snow and piled it high. The south-facing wall was darker in color, wet where water leached from the rocks tricking down below the snow to pack it firm like ice. 
    “Soft enough to get some sticks into, strong enough to hold for a few seconds.” 
He remembered the barrel roll the cat and deer had undertaken and pictured even forearm-sizes branches snapping like toothpicks. He pictured the Snow Cat’s deliberate, visceral hatred of life. Even with sharpened sticks it would charge him on site. 
    “Not long,” Caroline said. 
    “Long enough at that range. I just need to slow it down.” 
    “What’s the backup plan?” she asked. 
    She always looked out for him, even when he didn’t think to, but this time he was ahead. 
    “You know how cautious I am. I’ll think of something.” 
    He hadn’t thought of anything in Columbus. Rhys had saved him, not planning. He squeezed his eyes shut, pressed away the feeling of flies crawling against his skin, his eyes, his lips…and studied the ravine again purposefully. 
    “Dusty?” 
    “Just thinking.”
    “I know.” 
    “Nothing I want to talk about.” 
    The ravine site offered all he could ask for. A long clean shot, where the beast couldn’t swerve, and if it jumped onto the ice slicked walls it would tumble to the ground. This was the battleground.

​

***

 

    Three more days of preparation brought him here. Small red droplets splattering the snow from Dustin’s left arm emblazoned a trail any human could follow, much less a carnivorous machine that could hunt on scent. 
    “It couldn’t miss that,” Caroline said. 
    “I would guess not.” 
    He waited for a clear day, with a crystal blue sky overhead and just enough heat to melt the ravine’s frozen walls, washing the surface with a patina of water over ice. Wooden stakes, lined up three deep and spaced a little more than a foot apart ran the ravines’ length in a serpentine pattern, he hoped would prevent the giant cat from sprinting full tilt in a straight line. Even so he had a hundred-foot run. That would buy him time to aim and fire. The wind blew north toward the hunting ground where he had seen the cat patrol, and he had marked a dozen trees with his blood to lure the beast. 
    He wouldn’t be alone for long. 
    Partially thawed ice slickened the rockface in the southern sun’s mid-day glow, and formed blue ice walls atop green moss. Too smooth to climb out, or climb down. There was only one way the beast could come. 
    “It’s here.”
    She always knew just before he did. A calm attention to senses his mortal living flesh couldn’t manage, and which never errored. 
    Nearly invisible against the gray and white backdrop, the snow cat stalked across the rocky opening, a hundred feet from where Dustin crouched. Pointed tuffs of white fur on the tips of its ears turned toward Dustin as its head watched elsewhere. 
    Every breath roared abhorrently loud, but he couldn’t escape the confrontation. Dustin crouched where he belonged, between the helpless and the beasts. Hairs rose at the back of his neck and recent failures threatened to flood back, but experience kept them at bay in the moment. Both hands gripped firmly on his pistol and he sighted down the barrel at the creature. He could miss at this distance, or wound it and have to track it to its lair, and corner it. An idea proverbially bad in its consideration. Never fight a cornered animal. 
    White teeth glimmered in the fading daylight as the head turned into the channel of rock and ice. Whiskers pulled forward feeling the air and the nose lifted as it drew short probing breaths. The snow cat sniffed, looked up from its position, and stared overhead at a pin trap which held several large boulders in place at the top of the ravine. 
    “Did it just find your trap?” Caroline asked. 
    “Bullshit,” Dustin said concurrently. 
    He kicked out, knocking free the rope and counterbalance that held them and watched as the pile of rock tumbled down and the cat bounded closer, past the incoming bludgeoning. 
    A throaty growl echoed. 
    “Did it sound pissed off that you tried to trap it?” asked Caroline. 
    “Not the time for these observations.” 
    Dustin pressed deeper into the icy hole which harbored him, staring down the long run at the beast. The cat growled three more times; its vocalizations a mix of pitches. To Dustin it sounded almost like human speech. Snowy clods kicked up behind the hind legs as it sprinted directly at Dustin, reaching its full speed within a single stride. 
    “Breathe steady.” 
    Each stride brought the creature twenty feet closer to him. It charged, ignoring the wooden points on all sides. It didn’t slow, or zig zag as Dustin wanted, but snapped through the small spears, which snagged fur and drew red lines across its chest as it shattered them one after another. Two seconds dragged out, before Dustin’s heightened senses. 
    Snow fanned in every direction by the claws digging into the snow, and the soft fur tuffs between black padded toes. The cat bared its teeth and it clear blue eyes focused on his throat. A red arc around its neck where arterial spray had cascaded across its fur not a week before remained visible, a curious detail as it charged. Dustin held his gun trained on the beast’s head, knowing a clean torso shot wouldn’t be possible from the front. He fired, clipping a shoulder, and barely slowing the Kot’s pace. He fired again, going wide as the cat slipped and changed cadence. 
    The twigs and leaves that camouflaged the shaft Dustin had prepared collapsed around the beast’s body, and the snow cat, yelping, plummeted fifteen feet straight down. Ten feet long, and wall to wall across the ravine, it had taken most of a day to dig out, and there had been no guarantee the creature wouldn’t hop right over it. 
    “You know how cautious I am,” Dustin said to his wife again. 
    He stood a respectable distance from the hole over which the counterweighted wooden branches had snapped shut. A white head thunked against the makeshift ropes and wood, cracking several. The trap hadn't been built to withstand a repeated assault, only an immediate escape. 
    They made eye contact. 
    Hatred emanated from those eyes. Cold certitude pervaded Dustin’s mind that the creature came into the world for a singular purpose. Kill. Dustin witnessed consciousness on the beast’s fringes of understanding. It wanted to kill with motivation that drove past hunger, and understood with more than a trapped animal’s primal instinct that it had been caged to be killed. 
    The snow cat did not break its stare with the hunter and hunted. It did not pace the bottom or throw itself at the walls and ceiling again. It stared at him, and growled. 
No, Dustin corrected himself. It spoke. It spoke in a language he didn’t understand, but vocalized words nonetheless. 
    Four sharp barks of the gun echoed in the ice and snow. The smell of nitroglycerin and graphene filled the air, swirling the wind’s currents. 
    “Someone created it,” Dustin said, staring down at the utterly still corpse, red soaking the snow and coat. 
    “Why?” 
    “Who,” Dustin countered. “Someone created an Abnormal snow leopard, to hunt humans.” 
    “You’re going to find out who.” 
    “Soon. But first things first. We talk to the villagers again. You know how cautious I am.” 

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