There was no problem in getting outside the city; the real problem lay in not getting recognized on our way out. Luckily, Hunters through the years had developed some tricks to help that would see us through the crowds, and I was a master of them.

“I'm telling you, Sasha, even if you take your coat off, you're still recognizable. You haven't even changed your pants! Your uniform pants!”

“Shut up Alicia.” Alicia was a non-believer. It wasn't like she'd changed anything at all. Then again, that beard of hers was probably easily marked anywhere.

“She's right, Sasha. We have at most ten minutes before this town's authorities start following our trail. We will need to get past the gate checkpoint quickly.”

At least the crowd, panicked by the gunfire, was still running around making life difficult. The sheep would help us, in this case, as the French would be unlikely to bulldoze them out of the way.

Even Wendy got in on the act: “You don't seem to know how to hide very well, Mr. Sasha, sir.”

Alicia muttered something about my guns… as if she expected me to take them off too, or something. That just sounded all kinds of stupid. We headed down an empty alley to the outer wall.

“You can talk about my guns when you take off your stupid whip.”

“My whip is not stupid, you half-pint troll!”

Alicia used her stupid whip to throw a grapple past the outer wall, and Ivan started scaling immediately. Wendy's eyes widened as I took up position to cover. Luckily it seemed no copies of Vivian or other people around; no one had followed us in the alley.

“You seem really good at this sort of town escaping, Mr. Sasha, sir.”

Alicia headed up. While Ivan gave the all clear; there were no trip wires or any sort of alarms on the top or sides of the wall. Amateurs.

“This isn't our first time out, Wendy. We are an experienced hunter team.”

Wendy hummed at that before starting up the rope. “I'm not sure skill in being able to leave towns while being chased is a skill that should be practiced, Mr. Sasha, sir.”

I was surrounded by doubters. “Just get up the rope before I end you. Oh, and are there any security measures we should be aware of on the wall here?”

I was a professional. At least I asked, right?

“Just that it's watched, Mr. Sasha, sir. The spotters will direct pursuit to the section of the wall we're going over, but with the panicked crowd I don't believe we will lose any time.”

So still in between five and ten minutes. More than enough time, considering. The French wouldn't chase us out of town too far; they wouldn't consider the risk worth it. Long experience told me so… any pursuit we had would be the kind we'd be free to annihilate.

I put my jacket back on as we cleared the wall. Niceties were to be observed, and the witches had a right to know who was coming for them. I led us left.

“Wendy, you can scout if you want, but not out of sight. Understand?”

She saluted smartly. “Yes, Mr. Sasha, sir!”

Then she took to the trees like a monkey, while we ran on the ground, but she waited from time to time.

We couldn't keep the pace; well I could, but Alicia was already blowing hard and we couldn't keep silent while running off trails in any case.

Back to the coast we went, slower now, because I had no doubt there were witch patrols out, whether we were expected or not. Of course slow for us was still a pretty quick by normal standards. Soon enough I was right, as Wendy stopped, hunching up in the tree with hand raised. I slowed with a shrug, walking up and positioning myself behind a bush.

There were two familiar witches on the other side of the bush and a bit further downrange, leaning up against each other back to back and watching the forest. Seriously, if we kept meeting them, or what had to be copies of them, I was going to walk up and ask for their names; this was getting ridiculous.

Much as I hated it, we would have to sneak past them, which would be pretty hard to do considering how they were set up. They had left one blind spot, however, assuming it wasn't covered by someone else we couldn't see. I motioned Wendy back and she slithered out of the tree slowly, using the trunk as cover.

I couldn't just talk, so I used hunter sign to show where the sentries are. Then I had to use more normal signs to ask Wendy if she'd seen anyone I missed, which took forever before she got the point and shook her head no. So I then used sign to describe the route we needed to take… which was right above them. The only spot they hadn't thought to cover was directly above their heads.

Well or under them, but I wasn't a damned mole.

Ivan asked the million pound question (because pounds were worth more than euros, of course), again with sign: “How?” We weren't exactly birds, either. Alicia signed the kill order, which was what I'd normally go for, but I had a sneaking suspicion if we did that whoever had sent them here would know we were coming. And we'd probably end up fighting more of them again anyway, so it was kind of pointless.

We had to find the source, whatever that was.

We could also circle around and try from somewhere else, but that would take a thousand hours! Clearly, up and over was the way. I handed Wendy a rope and made monkey motions. She looked a little green, but nodded and set off, going to the very tops of the trees before tying us humans a route across them. I made sure to keep her in sight, even while slowly climbing up after her.

Climbing trees made us a little more noisy than walking, but since we started far enough back, the witches didn't seem to notice.

Soon, and by soon I mean a small eternity later, we were all rope crossing over them. They didn't look up; even witches suffered that issue, though to be fair it was hard to see things like dragons or gargoyles or whatever in a forest like this.

Ivan tapped my arm and pointed to the rope, once we were down. If they looked up, it was easily visible, but I shrugged at him. Every great plan had a few flaws, and any move we made to recover the rope would probably backfire on us. We just had to not have them look up for a half an hour or so, and we'd be back where we had been baited away from this morning.

Turned out there was another pair of sentries – both Vivians. They were far more alert, looking around and even up constantly. There was no help for it, they would have to be worked around or taken out. And I voted on worked around, since I wasn't flinging my last bottle of rum at them no matter what; I'd drink it first. Alicia was with me, cradling her vodka like the fragile child it was.

Working carefully around them the only way we could led us to the cliff-side. There were witches under it, patrolling around. But we all had our mountain goat training, so I started climbing. We could work our way down a little, then across, then back up. Wendy had to have mountain goat training too, she kept up.

About fifty feet of this and there was a trail down, caused by a rock slide. It wasn't much of a trail, and if we weren't careful we could make a lot of noise going down (or just die), but We'd been down worse. And it wasn't patrolled, at all. The nearest witch was at the bottom. We got to the last bit of cover on it without sliding so much as a pebble, and I grabbed Ivan and stole his binoculars.

There was a cave down there, just above the tide line. Looked like in an hour or two, it would be half submerged. There were also some sort of… things in the water near it. Dark green with black markings, large bloated forms just floating. A light was coming from the cave, showing off more witch guards that I thought I recognized.

This looked like the end of the tricky road, though. The beach was crawling with them; the moment we rounded our little outcrop here we'd be seen, and then it'd be a running fight to the cave, just to see what was inside. At least this wasn't as bad as going by water would have been. That was my first thought, and with those things in the water, I no longer liked the idea of swimming.

There were some hunter teams that were good at fighting in water; mine wasn't one of them.

We couldn't even talk things over, which was more a blessing than anything. 'Thoughts?' I signed.

Ivan sighed. Alicia sighed. Even Wendy sighed. Alicia signed back: 'we're in for a fight, it seems. Escape plan? Maybe the ocean?'

We were all good swimmers, but we weren't dolphins. Even without the green things, that was a risky option. I handed over the binoculars and she took a look.

“Well, shit. I assume you're dead set on going through with this? That's enough witches to call out an entire branch on.”

She wasn't wrong. “Yeah but they're weak.”

If we had to, I had no doubt that we could go through them.

Alicia wasn't on board. “With that many, they don't need to be. Only takes one.”

The witches on the beach all turned their heads at once, looking inland but away from us, and all before I could say 'we need a distraction'. I tapped my team and rose, sprinting across the beach as the witches began shifting. In the distance I could hear the sounds of a fight that could rapidly become a war; The French had followed us after all, somehow. Maybe the rope had left enough of a trail?

Either way, the growing commotion worked for us as we worked our way around the edge of the beach.

The two witches at the cave entrance never saw us, and died without a sound. The real problem lay just inside the cave, and it saw us.

It was a gigantic sea slug, with eye-stalks zeroed in on us, and a double row of slick green pods squeezed in the limited space behind it – and several witches clearly displayed inside it, all being dissolved or eaten or something. A witch was leaning against it, uncaring of the slime rubbing off on her green robe and wicker hat, and perfectly safe.

She was small, even without the giant slug for contrast, and wore a sickle at her hip. She was blonde, with wide blue eyes and freckles dotting her cheeks. She looked young and innocent, but I knew better. She had collected witches, quite a few of them, and fed them to her familiar. Normally something I could give her a pass for, but I recognized a few people who weren't witches in there too.

What was she doing here? She levered herself up and touched her hat, even as two pods around her broke, disgorging perfect copies of witches in her slug; they even had the hats. I'd never heard of her before, but she'd heard of me.

“Sasha Norre, the maniacal marksman. The Hunter's send their best; I'm honored. Tell me, how's your mother?”

She knew. She was pretty well informed. Maybe they were meeting for tea on Sundays or something?

“Well, witch, my Mom's, still a bitch. What are you even doing here? It's not like this city even has the usual stuff you look for.”

She grinned as the witch copies placed themselves in front of her. I recognized our resident air user, the one who had given us a bit of trouble earlier.

“Come now, a port town like this, filled with tourists and thriving industries, with all those happy people? How could I not want that? Some leg work, a few nights roughing it in a cave while Mr. happy did his thing, and an entire city is mine. I don't suppose you'd just go away, would you? After all, witches won't exactly be welcome in my city, so it's kind of a win for you.”

I wanted to make a show out of thinking about it, but more of those slime cocoons were breaking behind her, and I was pretty sure the witch clones behind us were coming back.

“Yeah, I think not, sluggy. I'm going to have to ask you and your pet to please either surrender or die now.”

Sometimes they did surrender. The powerful ones usually didn't though. She stayed true to form, stamping both feet as she yelled back.

“My name is Lima, not 'sluggy'! Honestly, I thought your mom raised you better; guess I was wrong.”

Time to be a professional. “So, I take it you aren't going to surrender then?”

Rule number 10; never give the witch more than three seconds to surrender. At least she answered.

“No, thank you for the courtesy, though.”

Heh. Joke was on her; some witches you can't take prisoner, and she seemed to be one. I went straight for the eagle, and her eyes widened; her reflexes weren't above human, then. The first shot was full strength, and it straightened the tunnel and smoothed out the imperfections in the wall.

A full five percent charge used for it, and all it really did was excavate. Sure the slug looked a little more melted, and all the witch clones were gone, but the witch? Safely held in the slug's mouth, or whatever it had. It spit her out gently while I shook the smoke out of my face. She looked around, eyes wide, and I couldn't resist a grin.

“Your fault for being in a place you can't dodge.”

I shot again, this time seeing the slug actually swallow her again. She had her mouth open but whatever she said or yelled was lost in the roar of my strongest gun.

The slug was faster than I first thought; I actually had to roll out of the way.

“Sasha, we've got problems!” I caught a glimpse of Ivan dodging a burst of something, probably air, as he threw some of his special knives. Alicia was already tearing into a clone with her whip. I couldn't see Wendy, but I did hear the report of a .32 caliber to my right, so I had a pretty good idea where she was.

The slug slowed; maybe the earlier speed was a sprint of some kind? Either way, it was now making good speed towards the ocean, but nothing we couldn't outrun. Shots three and four went right up it's backside, and it was finally beginning to lose cohesion and bleed, or whatever it was slugs did.

There were witch clones near that jumped in the way; they were melting, dripping all over the sand. The slug even ate a few on it's way to the beach.

I had to dance my way through several attacks. I switched hands, and shot five tore through the makeshift clone wall and hit the slug again. It left it's ass behind this time but made it to the water. From the top of it, I could hear Lima's voice ringing loud and clear.

“You deserve your reputation! See you later, Sasha! Have fun playing with my toys!”

I had to switch arms, which gave her enough time to submerge. I still took the shot, only to have a sand berm raise itself into place and absorb most of the shot. The water no doubt did the rest of the work.

There was a full army on the beach with us now, but at least there was nothing hostile at our backs.

The giant stone crabs chose that moment to burst from the sand and attack. “We need to get out of here!”

Ivan agreed. “Tell me something I don't know!”

Alicia dodged getting snipped in half only to eat a rock. Wendy took two steps to help her before she kipped up, spitting mad, beard bristling. Her jacket had stopped it. Several more rocks were headed our way when I took my next shot, obliterating the incoming.

I'd wanted to aim at the witch clones themselves, but we could probably kill more in the long run if we were alive.

Wendy yelled at me. “Mr. Sasha, sir! What if you turn that big gun of yours on the cave behind us? Blast us a way out?”

She had a decent idea, but… “It doesn't have the power for that! It just shoots enhanced explosive rounds!”

Sure, they were charged, and sure, they did more damage than normal, but the kind of landscaping she was talking about would take way too many shots. That rock was pretty dense; all my Eagle had really done was smooth out the protrusions in an otherwise straight cave, nothing that drastic. Wendy spared the time to send me a 'what the hell does that mean?' look before she had to dodge some water formed into throwing knives.

One more shot and I had to holster the Eagle; I couldn't afford to break another arm here, one was enough. I counted four taken by the blast, then it was back to the .45. Wendy glanced at my now bad arm with a wince and sidled close to it, her own small guns out.

“I'll get this side, Mr. Sasha, sir.”

I appreciated the sentiment, but it was misplaced – even if the thought of someone I barely knew on a weak side wasn't enough to make me a little twitchy. “Can't do that. You stay glued to me, you'll get nailed. Don't worry about me, I've dealt with this before.”

We managed to work our way around the cave and almost back up the cliff side by a trail even a goat probably wouldn't use before our luck ran out. There was another small army of clones waiting for us up top.

……

Somehow, we were still alive. Somehow, the witch's – Lima's – afterthought hadn't killed us all. We had managed to make it back to the forest before Alicia went down, and now we were all back to bark against a large tree, leaking more than a little blood. The witch clones had only half melted, and we had killed a lot of them. Too many. The fact that they seemed to forget all teamwork and tactics helped, but the sheer number ensured we weren't unmarked.

It was an insult, really, when Wendy, the only mobile on of us came back, leading the Hunt's reinforcement team. A reinforcement team consisting of Deisel, Koi, and Merlin along with a few extra scared lab coat types. What was the little freak even doing out in the field? I thought the Gloom had him safely locked away in the dungeon?

His first words didn't exactly fill me with confidence. “Good, you're still alive. Hm, not for long without medical attention, it seems.”

“Yeah, screw you too, weirdo.”

The only guy that could make a better case for being a girl than many guys and girls both (but not me, I was a man's man, despite the crap Alicia spewed) levered me up without a hint of effort, reaching out so one of the lab guys could slap a bottle of stuff that looked like water in his hand; I just knew it was going to sting when poured over places I'd rather not get wet.

I wasn't wrong.

Merlin's bedside manner sucked. “Oh, quit being a baby, Sasha. It only stings for a moment, and speeds healing greatly. With proper follow up, you may not even scar that beautiful body of yours.”

I had to ask. “You don't have a bear costume lying around anywhere, do you?”

If he wasn't a creeper, I was a witch.

He didn't get it. “No, why do you ask? Is there a reason for such a thing? Should I get one?”

Alicia almost choked on her blood laughing, before shooting me a dirty look. No self-control, that woman.

“You really should, and wear it around as much as you can. It'll help smooth over many a social situation.”

Despite the acerbic tone and the expected sting, the freaks hands were feather-light and gentle as he bandaged me up. “I'll consider it. First that woman and now this; just running from one fire to the next isn't good for you.”

“Clearly.” He didn't even look at Ivan or Alicia, leaving them to his assistants and Deisel, who despite having the same first aid training all of us got didn't strike me as the nurse type. No, he only had eyes for me.

He tied the bandage around my torso off, one hand lingering just a bit longer than the other. “So, what happened here?”

I didn't want to tell him.

“Come on now, Sasha. I am your superior in the field, you can tell me.” Some clean vials were slapped into his hand and he started collecting my blood in them.

I turned to Koi. “He always do shit like this?”

Koi rolled his eyes and nodded. “Been escorting him for a week or forever now, and yes he does.”

Good to know, I guess. He was working on my legs now, or I'd already be running. But he wasn't wrong about the chain of command, and as many of the Hunt needed to know, as quickly as possible.

“New witch, no word of anyone like her on our network, and she seemed inexperienced. Didn't use any spells on us at all, and showed a distinct lack of proper planning.”

She did hole up in a cave while trying to take over the town, after all, and didn't target important people; instead, she ate witches and military personnel. Of course, she could have been aiming for a military style take over, and it would likely be hard to hide a ten foot tall and 40 feet long or more slug, but I still wasn't ready to give her a pass on sound decision making.

“She relied heavily on her familiar, a 40 foot long slug that ate people, witches included. Whoever the slug ate, it could produce clones of, with matches to at least some memories, skills, and magic. Though the witch clones produced by her familiar were less powerful than the originals. I'm also willing to guess she can only do it while the people are still alive.”

Just a hunch of mine. Ivan signaled silently that he'd take that bet, and I signaled back that he was on.

Merlin did not bother to hide his interest. “Fascinating. Would you say she's a match for the four greats?”

The four great witch powers, with my Mom - no Olivia, being one. Adding another to that list would be the last thing we needed. My sister was close enough.

“No, she's not. Not yet, but she could grow to be one. Just needs some time to learn for that.”

Merlin helped me up, almost carrying me; freak was much stronger than he looked. It shouldn't surprise me anymore, but it did. “Is the train still here?”

“Was when we left, and mostly intact.”

There were a bunch of raised eyebrows aimed at me in the sudden silence.

“What? It got attacked while we were out, I didn't do anything!”

Ivan coughed as he levered himself up. “For once, Sasha's right. The train was compromised by clones that tried to kill us. We had to defend ourselves, and there was some collateral damage.”

Alicia had to be carted out, and she was giving the assistants to the weirdo manning the stretcher the hairy eyeball (which wasn't hard for her, really… she had hair to spare). “The bar is a total loss, though.”

Deisel winced, but I was over it. I could just send him with some expense account money to get more.

Merlin made a hmm noise.

“And is there any reason you weren't leading the expedition the French sent? Your orders did say to cooperate.”

Merlin had just made it clear to me he had never been on a field op. “My orders said 'cooperate whenever possible' – it was not possible to cooperate; I simply didn't know who was a clone and who wasn't, aside from my team and the one person who hadn't left my sight since the concerted attack this morning. If I had roused the militia and organized a concerted attack, I'd have never found the witch.”

I was pretty sure that the only reason I'd seen the witch in question, was because she had been waiting on more clones to pop. If we hadn't gone immediately that cave would have been empty. It also implied there was a limit on how many clones she could have, possibly. All of which made her plans for conquest even more stupid than usual.

Merlin hmm'd again. “I suppose it was one of the better decisions to make. Still seems very risky however. For someone with the survival of all humanity on their shoulders, possibly the only person who can say such – well, you should take better care of yourself, Sasha. Speaking of which, have you given any further thought to my offer?”

I had.

On the one hand, doctors, each trying to outdo each other in creepy. On the other and more recent hand, I was getting sick of losing. I'd only done it three times, but twice in a row was a streak, and this time my team's generator juice was clicking empty. Without juice, without the magic backing our weapons or reinforcing our coats, even a weak witch could kill us unless we got tricky. We could maybe convince another team to share, but that would could screw them over later, and I didn't wasn't exactly the most well-liked person around.

And on the third hand, creepy as fuck doctors. I was sure that where there were creepy doctors, a third hand (and arm) wasn't far behind.

I realized too late that we weren't heading directly back to the train. I looked up when I heard the sing-song tones of the frog language, to see Ivan staring at me with some concern. Wonder what his problem was; no doubt I'd find out later… after the French yelled at me, no doubt.

“You!”

There he was, the chief frog, Mr. whocareswhathisnameis.

“Yes?”

He stomped right up to me. If only my guns weren't empty.

“What were you doing, shooting up the station, assaulting civilians, and fleeing questioning! You nearly got us all killed!”

Well, he did cover what I was doing pretty well; if he knew, why was he asking me?

“For the record, I never assaulted civilians. If they got hurt, it was their own damn fault.” I didn't really have time to clear my path of fire when fighting on the train, and any real hunter would know that. Hm, that was an interesting shade of purple he was turning. Merlin stepped in front of us a bit, and the frog finally paid attention and realized we weren't alone.

The he started speaking frog himself, quickly. I couldn't understand the language, but the cutesy act came through clear enough. The conversation ended with the jerk stalking off in disgust.

Merlin sighed. “Well, that could have gone better.”

“What was his problem? Not like we lost or anything.” If we had lost, he'd be saluting a witch or dead.

Merlin levered me up and plunked me in a wheelchair, alone. Did I mention he was strong for a little freak? “True, but in the heat of the moment sometimes people have a hard time seeing the forest for the trees. Several people under his command died today, to a witch we failed to kill. I wish we had been more quick.”

Yeah, that made two of us.

“At any rate, I've decided to leave Koi's team here for now, in case the witch comes back. So, Sasha, you and your team are going to have to escort me back to central. Our mission to collect certain samples from the French countryside will just have to wait until the threat is passed.”

I looked at him. He had to know that my team wasn't really capable of escorting a puppy on a walk, let alone anything else. But the train should at least work, and that would make things easy. Failing anything else I could be propped up in a gunner's seat. If we steamed non-stop for central without taking on supplies… well we couldn't do that. But we could limit stops.

“Whatever. I'm going to sleep.”

I had some heavy thinking to do, after all.