We've got a mid-week bonus chapter. I hope you enjoy it.

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters except Irbis and several innocent short-lived bystanders; everything else is Marvel's only.

16. The Final Hunt

Creed woke up in the backyard, under the cool shade of the pine trees. The birds were singing, the sun was shining, the air was mild, neither wet nor dry. Stretching, he got up and walked to his house. The aromatic herbs in Irbis's garden filled the air with its calming influence and he was pleased he had allowed the girl to plant it. He went to the kitchen where Irbis was humming some melody he couldn't place while preparing dinner and opened the fridge to get a beer.

"Hi, Mister Creed," she said with a quick glance at him. "Is still hot outside?"

He didn't answer and she didn't ask anything else. She had picked up the common sense of not insisting on starting a conversation if he didn't pick it up at the first hint. Instead, she resumed her humming, occasionally dropping a part of the Portuguese lyrics.

"This fall's bein' hotter 'an usual," he ended up saying. Isabel turned her head to him, a bright smile as she claimed she was definitely not complaining. "Yeah, well, ya're gonna complain loud enough when the winter drops out o'nowehere with a vengeance. Ya should quit wastin' yer time on the piano and think 'bout settin' up a proper winter closet."

She nodded, the smile having toned itself down. "Eu sei, eu sei... I already have boots. Big and very hot."

"Warm," he corrected her immediately.

"Yes, very warm. And I have two winter pants and a big, ho... uh, warm kispo. Espera, anorak, dat's what de woman said is called, anorak. But you are right. I need more clodes."

He took another sip, feeling his stomach complaining. "Whatch'ya cookin'?"

"Special bolognesa," she said with another bright smile. "I put meat and real tomato, den I put mushrooms to make a difference."

There was a knock at the door and Irbis cleaned her hands at the apron. Creed wondered who it might be but didn't leave the kitchen. He heard the girl's steps and then her cheerful voice:

"Mas que surpresa! I didn't know you were coming. It's so good to see you again!" She nearly ran down the corridor to the kitchen calling his name and Creed finally entered the living room area.

The front door opened onto a small hall that prevented any visitors from prying into the house, then a door on its left opened onto the corridor that ran straight into the living area, so Creed couldn't see who was at the door. The first thing he did see was Irbis's joyful face and then, crossing the hall door behind her, Logan greeted him with his six claws and a roar.

Creed jumped up on the motel room bed and took a deep breath. Then, in a sudden fury, he ripped the sheets and mattress apart and blurted into the bathroom. The water ran cold as ice over him but it calmed his irritation somewhat. Before he was done, though, he punched the wall hard enough to crack a tile. When he finally closed the shower, he felt a bit groggy, definitely hungry, and slightly cramped.

Drying himself with a towel, he returned to the room and looked at the watch. It was three in the afternoon. The blond grunted and shook his head. No wonder he was groggy and hungry, he had slept for twenty-six hours straight. He needed to eat, but first he did some stretching, testing every muscle in his body and deciding he was fully restored from the drugs and all the abuse he had taken. Now food was indeed the only thing he needed.

The sun shone brilliantly, though a bit too hot for October, as he walked into the restaurant. It was your run of the mill diner, nothing fancy about it, and it was nearly deserted. He ordered five burgers, three beers, four fries portions holding back on the salt and a good, strong coffee. It wasn't particularly tasty, but Creed never let such details bother his eating. Food was seldom primed for his particular taste anyway, especially the darned fries. Hadn't he specifically said to hold back on the salt?

A TV behind the counter had a guy talking about what Creed thought must be sport. He supposed he wouldn't be lucky enough to catch any news about the small plane crash the day before. It had probably already lost the public's interest: who really cares about a charter flight that crashes and kills everyone inside when there aren't any teary eyed families to show on TV?

But the mutant couldn't help grinning at the memory. He had conducted a very nice interview with James Birskin the night he had arrived in Salt Lake City, in what had turned out to be a close call. Apparently, a security guard had noticed his break-in shortly after he had left and put out the alarm. Birskin had been on his way out when Creed had arrived and put an end to the escape. The mutie-hater frail of a man had been too willing to spill his guts, though, so Creed quickly found that there were only three refugees in the mutant-human war to talk of in the area. One was the freshly arrived Mary Olive; the other two were two Wisconsins, father and son. All of them were set to be relocated that same night, because of the alarm. If anyone were to access airplane passenger lists in search of any fugitives, they would only look at local airports, so they were to travel by car to a far-off airport; Reno's airport, to be more precise. From there they would fly to some random destiny on a charter flight.

It was quite a drive, from Salt Lake City to Reno, and Creed knew better than to chase them on the road. He caught the first plane instead, and had still had to wait a couple of hours for his prey to arrive. In the meantime, he had been able to find the charter flight he wanted and board the plane undetected. They were all airborne before he had revealed himself.

Creed called the waitress and ordered a couple more burgers and fries.

"And make sure the darned fries don't have too much salt this time." If there was something he couldn't understand was the love for salty food most people seemed to have.

It had been another lucky strike, and he recalled the three men's fear, not counting the pilot. One of them hadn't been fully there anyway – the sheriff. His head was pretty messed up because Irbis had thrown a rock at him at close range, and the boy had been willing to say much to save his father. Unfortunately he hadn't known much. Miles had been more helpful, though he had required more incentive. The pair of father and son had been the ones to first identify Irbis as a mutie-lover, and the ones to break her Mary Olive identity. They'd been working on a big project that instead of targeting the all-powerful mutants and attacking them head-on preferred groping at the grass-roots of the problem. The little powerful mutants, their forgiving families, their embracing friends. Basically, they were organising one big data-base that could later be used for several purposes.

And Irbis? Oh, she had escaped, barefeet and waterless, out into the desert. They didn't expect her to survive for long, seeing as the day had been particularly hot for October, and the next days weren't bound to lighten up.

Creed had jumped, since he had taken a parachute with him, while the plane crashed. Then he had found that road-side hotel with an excuse for a diner. Creed counted a couple of bills and dropped them on the table. Now it was time to take to the road and search the desert for Irbis. She had been out there for 32 hours, and he supposed he might take another 24 hours to find her, having much road to cover yet. He'd be searching for her dead body.

xXx

The jeep was hidden from anyone driving through US-6 highway, neatly stashed away a mere 300 yards from the road, behind the hill that Irbis had run over two nights before. It had still been dark when Creed had arrived, and he hadn't felt like going out and starting the chase just yet. After all, he had spent some good hours driving before finding the spot of the girl's escape. But then the sun had risen and Creed had gone out of the vehicle.

It was rugged terrain, no doubt, the slopes mounting up and up until they reached several peaks in a crisscrossing which created small labyrinthic valleys. There was a reason they called it the Confusion Range, after all. Had she followed those valleys in the midst of the night darkness believing she'd be able to backtrack thanks to them later on, she'd be irremediably lost. But then again, she'd be irremediably lost whatever course of action she might choose. He followed her track easily. She had been running barefeet and made no attempt to disguise her tracks; when the slope had grown into a full mountain, she had dragged herself up and then slid down another slope to another valley, which she had followed on and on. Funny enough, with all the twisting around, she had been able to keep her course fairly northward, getting farther and farther from the road.

A baseball cap protecting his eyes from the sun and a backpack with a few bottles of water, the man took only an hour and a half to cover the 4 miles and a half that Irbis had taken an entire night to cover. The range of impressive hills overcome, the girl had stopped for a while. It must have been a few hours after sunrise, since she had hesitated before advancing out into a vast expanse of sparse, dried up vegetation that comprised the Tule Valley and then decided to take refuge behind a rock which had offered shadow for most of the morning.

Creed noticed the tired tracks that left from the morning shadow. She had abandoned it near midday, he decided, and carried on. Probably searching for another shadow. She had followed a battered dirt road and, reaching a crossroads, had chosen to go south, back to the highway, rather than north and the desert. She had never reached the highway, though. Creed had driven carefully and would have picked up her scent if she had. He followed the track for a couple of miles, up until an elevation which would have offered a nice afternoon shadow and where the girl had rested for most of the day. Creed didn't need any rest, so he continued following the tracks she'd made during the second night out.

The night should have been pitch dark, out in the desert, reducing the girl's field of vision, but she was smart enough to keep to the dirt road. Creed noticed that sometimes she moved away from the path, but then she'd detect the difference of what she was stepping on and would return to her chosen trail. Nobody could say that girl didn't have some brains, that was for sure. It was a pity those same brains hadn't kept her from getting in trouble at every corner.

Unfortunately for her plans, Irbis had thought the path continued straight southwards, while it really went southwest. When the dirt road got to a crossroads, her second, she had chosen to go what she must have thought was eastwards, while really going northeast. Creed looked around him. The highway wasn't farther than 7 miles south when the girl had unwittingly turned back. Bad luck for her. The sun hadn't reached its zenith and Creed pressed on; he didn't intend to spend the entire day strolling in the desert.

It didn't take him long to reach a third crossroads, this time at the feet of the House Range. She had managed to zigzag through the entire Tule Valley and miss her target. Judging by her tracks, she had been half-dead of exhaustion by then, although her feet weren't yet bloodied. He studied the dirt more closely. She had been moving pretty slowly, definitely covering less than a mile per hour, and had kneeled at the crossroads, drawing a crude map on the ground. He grinned. He remembered when Irbis's path had joined the south-bound dirt road, on the first day of her ordeal. She had clearly seen the mountainous Confusion Range she had just crossed standing to her right, and the far-off House Range to the left, the Notch Peak in the Sawtooth Mountain being particularly conspicuous. The map showed precisely those landmarks, the two ranges and the highway. Reaching a steep mountain-like slope she had quickly surmissed she was on the wrong track, going east rather than south. So she had taken the road to the right, hoping to find the highway that way. And quite right she was, for the dirt road did come close to the higway in the area.

Creed sniffed the air. There was next to no wind, barely even a breeze, so he couldn't avoid having to follow her track. However, and even though she had reached this point some 30 hours before, she had never reached the highway. He wouldn't have missed her if she had. Which meant her dead body was probably somewhere along the dirt road.

It was still early and he continued. Irbis had held out longer than the Friends of Humanity had probably thought; had she had any water with her and Creed was certain she might have made it to the higway and, maybe, get herself a lift somewhere.

Four miles down the road, her track veered left, towards a valley-like depression in the slope. The day had caught up with her, Creed decided, and she had searched for a shadow. Her body was in the mountain, then. The trail showed the severity of Irbis's exhaustion very clearly. Some twenty hours ago, she had been facing the second day of her escape without any food or water and she must have felt pretty desperate. Probably wishing she had contacted the X-men before venturing out by herself. Or regretting venturing out altogether.

It was nearly midday when he found it, the depression where Irbis had spent the day. She had survived that day, though. Creed finished a bottle of water and looked around him. Before entering the depression, it was possible to look left, towards the Confusion Range, and glimpse the dark road cutting it in half. He was eight miles and a half from his jeep and he wished there had been some strong wind blowing from the North that would have hinted to the girl's true position. Once he pinpointed her corpse, he'd have to go back and get his jeep first; no way was he going to carry her carcass around.

Creed entered the depression, studying her tracks, and was surprised by the snake. Irbis had been desperate indeed. He picked it up. Its head had been smashed with a stone and the girl had bitten its scaly skin until its bloody flesh had been accessible. Then she had bitten and pulled the skin away to leave more flesh available. He grinned, sniffing the air. Irbis was a survivor if he had ever met one; she was alive, somewhere in the mountainous range. And indeed, the depression held no scent of death a moribund would have left behind.

She had spent the day nibbling on the snake, having drank as much of its blood as possible while waiting for the heat of the day to diminish. Then she had cut across the planate instead of going down the slope and back to the road. Smart. Creed jogged on, looking forward to their meeting. She had been advancing so slowly, she couldn't be too far off, especially as she must be hiding from the day's heat – her third already – in some shadowy nook in the range. He smirked when he noticed she had lost precious hours, the night before, taking the wrong turn and then having to backtrack. He sniffed the air. Irbis wasn't half a mile away.

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