7
H U N T E D
ADVANCE READING COPY
My skin didn’t burn with the sun’s rays. It wouldn’t. That
is an old wives’ tale. Or an old-guy-with-too-much-time-on-
his-hands tale. I’d burn if I was out in the sun too long, but
most things with skin do. That’s why I wore sunblock.
The people who’d attacked me obviously didn’t have dogs.
Not that canines would’ve been able to track my mostly negli-
gible scent. But some dogs, well, they just didn’t know when
to quit.
I listened. Nothing but ship sounds coming through
the window. It may have opened directly onto the docks.
Seagulls cried out for food. I sniffed. Old paint, old piss and
several other smells, but not a human pheromone that wasn’t
already a few weeks old. My pursuers hadn’t even entered
this room.
How had I become the hunted?
Rex had known I was tracking him and had obviously set
up a trap. And they’d used a drone. Not a sniper. I would’ve
seen the heat outline of a man. So they had guessed how
my vision worked. And they’d fired darts. Darts! Like I was
some sort of tiger to be knocked out and trussed up for a zoo.
But any tranquilizers that would work on humans wouldn’t
necessarily work on me, though Scotch does, oddly enough.
I have a different metabolism. In fact, sometimes tran-
quilizers are like a massive hit of adrenaline to my body.
Yet these people had nearly captured me. So they most likely
knew I wasn’t human.
It is embarrassing when your food outsmarts you. I should’ve
known that Rex was too easy to dig out of the archives.
