Predator: Eyes Of The Demon: Anthology And Stories
Predator: Eyes of the Demon is a 2022 short-story anthology edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt and published by Titan Books on 9 August 2022. Schmidt put it together for the thirty-fifth anniversary of Predator, after Predator: If It Bleeds. The fifteen stories send Yautja through present-day Earth and the far future, with more hunts told from the hunter's side and several female Predators.
Short Stories
The collection contains fifteen stories, mostly featuring separate hunts, with several continuing characters and events from earlier Predator stories.
The Titans
By Tim Lebbon
Corporal Jeremiah Beck of the 13th Spaceborne, the Unluckies, was the last man left from a nine-person platoon of Colonial Marines on the strike-ship Aragorn. The Unluckies belonged to the same far-future Spaceborne that later fought the Rage War in 2692, in Predator: Incursion. A hidden hunter band had been using abandoned Rankin Station as a staging post, and six Marines died in the first attack. Melton and Lincoln died in a last counterattack. Beck blasted a female hunter's helmet and left a crescent wound on her face, a mark he later used when he named her Luna. The Unluckies set the station to break up, and Aragorn was left wrecked and empty. Beck reached an escape pod with a ruined left arm, half a stomach gone, and the suit melted into the burns, and the pod put him in hypersleep for more than three decades.
After rescue he was 70, Hamilton Base's librarian on Titan for sixteen years, with rebuilt arm flesh, a stoma bag, and a glass eye. About two hundred people lived at the terraforming site, and a new arrival named Bindy asked him about the old strike-ship just before a scarred hunter ship sat down on pad three with the door blown from outside. Beck told Bindy to hide, sent Chief Bill Stannard to move civilians out of the way, and took Stannard's pistol and a long knife. He found a gutted surface technician, sent two children the other way, and shouted so Luna would follow him instead of the atmosphere plants. Stannard had a fueled Sandbug waiting in Bay Two.
Luna had aged with him, one good eye, grey in the dreadlocks, and the same crescent above the ruined mandible. Beck shut the bay doors on her arm, shot the hand three times, and left the gear damaged enough that she could come after him. He drove the Sandbug into Titan's storm, bailed out, and raised his hands. She drove a double-bladed glaive through his chest. He cut her throat with the knife from his sleeve, and her mangled hand could not fire the self-destruct. Both died on the ice. Bindy, Stannard, and the processor crews were not caught in a suit blast.
The Distance In Their Eyes
By Stephen Graham Jones
Lone hunter Tel dropped on a world tagged 76re-O and found prey that would not run or hide. He gutted the smallest as a test, and the rest stood and waited. He lined seventy-four heads on a low wall, kept the most even skull, and left an orbital marker telling other Yautja to stay away. Large moths drifted toward that marker in low orbit. He logged the genetics, then threw the skull in a corridor waste bin instead of hanging it with the rest.
Days later the skull was gone, and the ship's sensors found nothing. Security playback showed it growing a thick new body with a tail, and Tel judged the villagers a larval stage that could share thought and fog his readings. He hunted with the visor delayed a tenth of a second and watched trails where the thing scraped mass off walls and added it to itself. The other trophy skulls vanished the same way, and a wall crumbled like ash. The hull began to come apart around him.
Tel floated in the pilot seat with short air after the ship broke up in open space. A cocoon on the outer hull opened, and wings pulled the slug-form out into a giant moth. It did not sting him. It locked eyes he recognized from the village dead, and he started a wrist-pad suicide, then stopped with his fingers on the control. He died looking, visor open, air gone. The moth-form flew off.
Aftermath
By Bryan Thomas Schmidt
In September 1987, Dutch Schaefer sat in a sealed room at Mountain Home, the VA hospital in Johnson City, Tennessee, after the Val Verde hunt. Peter Keyes of the OWLF and his aide Garber wanted the jungle hunter treated as salvage, and Dutch would not. They reported other U.S. signs, skinned wolves, stag, and bears, and laser-scorched trees like Val Verde. News from Pisgah National Forest near Mount Mitchell showed skinned bears and cats, skulls and spines taken, and green blood on the trees. Dutch taped a statement as insurance, faked a food outburst, choked an orderly, and left him alive with a hoarded tranquilizer while he stole keys, ID, and a uniform.
Yuahro was a Youngblood on his first solo hunt in those woods, younger than his father T'an'tath wanted for humans. He had taken a cat, an antlered animal, a fighting dog, and a tusked one that gored his thigh, then sealed the wound and slept on his shuttle. Dutch heard diner talk pointing at Mount Mitchell, took an unlocked pickup with a scoped Remington 700, and followed clawed prints, a bear carcass, and a skinned boar with green blood on the bark. Yuahro fought a bobcat uncloaked. Dutch shot him in the shoulder and the thigh as he tore the spine and skull from the cat.
Plasma fire chased Dutch through the trees, and the two closed with a hunting knife against wristblades. Dutch hit him with a branch and buried the knife in a shoulder. Keyes wanted both alive, and teams with M24s were on the mountain when T'an'tath's ship arrived and opened fire. Agent Pereira was killed, and the federal chopper nearly went down. Yuahro ran for the ramp, T'an'tath knocked Dutch's thrown knife aside, and both casters fired. Dutch boarded Keyes's chopper under that fire, then stepped off the skids as it lifted. Yuahro left wounded and alive.
Proving Ground
By Linda D. Addison
Trainer A'kael found Elder Zan'tih dead behind his desk on Yautja Prime, a tear in the heart wall and no outer wound. The council set a test for clan leader: A'kael and rival elite Bachaann would each take three unblooded to Earth, two of their own choosing and one assigned, and the judgment would rest on how they led and whether the young lived or died with honor. A'kael took Thwutha, Va'kal'jaad, and council pick Pa'jaadh. Bachaann received Gan'touh-De. The mothership dropped both shuttles toward a military weapons-test site, then Bachaann's hull exploded from inside over Salvador, Brazil and crashed through a church roof in the Calabar favela, a continent off the planned landing.
Gan'touh-De was pinned by ceiling metal, green blood pouring from his chest, and the implode charge started by itself. Bachaann left him, and the shuttle collapsed the building. Frania and her grandson Gino saw the church roof go from the street. A'kael landed intact, turned toward the crash, and blamed Thwutha for the sabotage. He jumped her with both wristblades. She cut off one arm, Pa'jaadh sealed the stump, and she held him for Bachaann, who killed him with Thwutha's own smart disc.
Before that meeting, Bachaann had made Do'tah and Zuhra Blooded on four armed men who came to the rubble, a razor rope and a disc for first blood, then a spear through the last pair. The combined hunters ran cloaked to the beach under helicopter fire that killed some of the human shooters in the trees. A'kael called her cloaked shuttle down at dawn, and they left. The mothership reviewed the helmet records, named A'kael clan leader, assigned Bachaann the missed military-base hunt, and said Gan'touh-De was to be spoken of with honor. Va'kal'jaad, Pa'jaadh, Do'tah, and Zuhra lived.
Lion Of The Himalayas
By Ammar Habib
Old hunter Abdallah Khan lived alone in a Kashmir valley after Indian soldiers killed his wife Saira and four-year-old Fatima in a village raid. He had tracked that unit to a drunk camp, killed them with his khanda, and buried the family under a Deodar in an unmarked field. Villagers later asked him to take an Asian black bear they blamed for three wood-cutters. His dog Tipu was found by the river with the spine nearly torn out and the skull crushed, nothing eaten. Abdallah took the family locket off the collar and followed tracks up a ridge to a cliff, where the prints stopped.
A hunter over eight feet unmasked on the ledge, jumped down, cut Abdallah's rifle in half, and opened his shoulder. Abdallah cut the hunter's torso, then stepped off the cliff into the rapids. Mirza's son, no older than thirteen, pulled him from the shore and bandaged the wound. Local talk said the Shikari watched the Indian army, lured strong soldiers into the mountains, and left children alone. The hunter had passed the boy's hut without touching him.
Abdallah went to the graves, then climbed back by night to wait on ground he knew. Traps did not hold the hunter at the cave. Sword and blades cut both of them, Abdallah's ribs, thigh, and forehead, and one mandible from the hunter, who waited while Abdallah stood, then charged. At dawn the boy, who had heard blasts in the night, found Abdallah dead at the cave mouth, smiling, khanda in one hand and the blood-stained locket in the other. There was no second body.
The Fix Is In
By Jonathan Maberry
After Gameworld from Predator: If It Bleeds, Hogarth Fix lost the money he had taken from Sake Chiba's safe when an IRS squad seized it, and a short trial followed. DoD lawyer Pelagatti arrived before sentencing and offered a deal: salvage a crashed hunter ship on asteroid Keiko, never see his children again, and they would keep the house, schools, a nanny, college money, and Daisy's cancer care. Refuse, and he lost them anyway. He signed. Daisy was seven and slept in an Oxy-med tent. Lucas and Yee were the other two.
The job was a joint United Worlds Department of Defense and Garibaldi Group salvage, and the hull was the black cargo ship Onyx. Lieutenant Wilson stayed aboard. Sergeant Vasilievici ran the ground team in roach combat suits, with Fix among eleven contractors that included Bagger, Boyd, and engineer Singh. One dead hunter lay outside in a sealed gold-over-green vacuum suit. Four more lay dressed on bunks with blades and helmets, a trophy wall of skulls and spines behind them, and a sixth bunk looked recently used and empty. The galley was set for six.
Perimeter comms failed, Wilson screamed on the command channel, and they lost that channel. Bagger and Boyd were dead at the nearest sentry post. Fix judged the injured survivor had staged the dead, watched them enter, then taken the Onyx. Singh said the wrecked hunter ship would take about three months to repair if everyone worked. Vasilievici ordered them to start. The remaining soldiers were stranded on Keiko.
Bitter Hunt
By Kim May
Female hunter Ak'kili and her hound Xave followed three bad bloods to a desert world of red stone, lava tubes, and nights cold enough to kill without mesh netting. The trio had hunted unarmed females and young on several worlds, a break of the honor code that had also stained her clan through her son Dakdwade. Their scout ship sat in orbit with the pod-bay doors open. She tried the passwords she knew, dropped the shields on the fifth, and hit the fuel tanks. A singed human skull drifted past from the trophy vault. She set a new ship code that would wreck the hull if they used an old one.
Xave tracked the nearest pod west toward the foothills. Ak'kili used the hound as a feint, put a smart disc in the first hunter's throat, burned the torso with the plasmacaster, and took the head. She recognized the face as one of Dakdwade's hunt-mates and could not recall the name. Twakese, a male she had trained, ambushed her on the lava field and detonated his own disc when she jammed it in stone. She broke his ribs, cut him down, and took his head so the elders could see the crescent scar on his chin. He did not regret the unarmed kills.
Dakdwade tried old codes on her pod to draw her in, and Xave sat at his feet. She pinned the hound to the landing gear with a net so he would not interfere, cut the tendon in Dakdwade's left heel, smashed the self-destruct on his gauntlet, and opened the good thigh. She finished him with a wristblade through the windpipe and the disc. She took his head. Clan standing would be restored, and she did not console the hound.
Field Trip
By Robert Greenberger
Pregnant hunter Donatiki led four unblooded on an Earth survey in October of the 2020s, near a Battle of Hastings reenactment in England, about 3,400 people registered and more than a thousand on the field. Engine relays misfired, and she kept cloak and life support long enough to land about a twenty-minute walk from the camp. She forbade killing and told them to watch only. The four, Tenude, Felke, Ekenke, and Ionige, saw the costume fighting and treated it as a war game or a rite. They had not earned combisticks or plasmacasters.
Ionige dropped his cloak after seeing hospital administrator Jessica Haning, who was also pregnant, then later cut the throat of reenactor Lawrence when Lawrence walked into the trees. Donatiki struck him for it, and bloodlust broke her control of the rest. Olivia was cut in the abdomen. Donatiki snapped one man's arm when a sword hit her maternity armor, then went into labor and collapsed. Felke was blinded with a flaming stick and killed by a spear through the neck under the helmet. Nigel and Oliver died on the human side, and David had his larynx crushed.
Jessica went to Donatiki with a carving knife, then put it down. She and Lily stripped the lower maternity armor, and Jessica's husband Colin cut the umbilical cord after Charles and Paul tried to stop the birth and other women formed a barrier. The newborn was about a foot long, coated in blue, then nursed. Four rescue Yautja collected Donatiki, the infant, and the downed unblooded, and left without speaking to the humans. Jessica and Colin lived, and local police were called after the hunters were gone.
Cannon Fodder
By Gini Koch
In 2422, Leader Zalande of clan H'ppattah dropped three failed hunters, La'vindi, Hekkati, and Sula'amini, on Fourth-Salturna Exodus for a last chance to restore honor and change Hunt Names. Humans who had refused the Expansion Government lived in armed villages, and the official cover was a terraforming predator. The real program was Operation Sidestep, a bait world so Yautja would leave planets the government wanted. Captain Joel Haber ran H-Squad from the Landmark. Black-ops officer Marlon Flucher ran L-Squad, the Brig lifers, in a chill-suit that hid him from heat sight, with Master Sergeant William Compton and Alana Gonsalves, called Cali, among them.
The three hunters wrecked H-Squad in the first pass. Hekkati tore off Haber's head and spine, La'vindi killed Tank after a plasma launcher broke her cloak, and Sula'amini took two trophies of her own. Zalande then barred plasmacasters for the next round. Hekkati arrow-killed Bling-Bling and Dash before Flucher blew her apart with Tank's launcher. Sula'amini crushed Yolo, then Scary and Booksmarts tore off her helmet, blocked the self-destruct, and stabbed her with her own combistick.
Flucher stabbed Compton, treated the world and the Marines as expendable bait, then downed La'vindi and tried to lock a collar on her for study. Cali shot Flucher, stripped the chill-suit, and let La'vindi live. They found Scary, Yolo, and Booksmarts dead beside Sula'amini, and Zalande alive. He moved to self-destruct. La'vindi pinned his arm with a combistick and killed him with Cali's rifle, left clan H'ppattah, and took the scout ship with Cali aboard. They were the only survivors of that hunt party.
Little Miss Nightmare
By Peter Briggs
R'Kyn of clan P'Rekh was a female culturologist who had stopped sport hunting after her sibling R'Hyn died on a quartzpike hunt, tangled in serraweed and killed by an Arcturian Sickleridge brood. She came to Earth to study one human she treated as an Aberration: bomber Tracey Dahl, who used the names Mallory Knox and Cathy Ames. Dahl's confirmed blasts included a D.C. basilica during Mass, a Houston megachurch, a Michigan mosque, thirteen devices at a million-women march that killed nearly 700, and a Paris flower-market bomb whose residue matched the U.S. mix. After the march she faked her death in Vermont with a corpse double and a bent coroner. R'Kyn reached fixer Parry Mendoza first and left him headless, flayed, and hung in a Lake Champlain boathouse.
Senior ops manager Trinh Hue Dang and Johnny Ortiz tracked Dahl through France after Slovak bomb-maker Stefan Horvath gave the Mallory Knox name. In Prague, R'Kyn killed the arms crew with net, disc, and harpoon, and plasma fire touched off the stores. Dahl escaped in a Skoda, dumped it, and reached Rome with few bombs left. Trinh emptied buildings, posted snipers, and put drones in the air. R'Kyn's cloaked flitter fried the drones and comms, then she killed the tac team in the apartment. Dahl fled in a stolen yellow Fiat, shot the Italian driver, and R'Kyn rode the roof until laundry lines ripped off her helmet.
Trinh and officer Powell chased in an Iveco Massif, and Dahl shot Powell dead. The Fiat crashed into a piazza wedding, and Trinh hit a bus stop. At the wreck R'Kyn destroyed the last drone, beheaded Dahl, and left free. Trinh fainted and lived. Ortiz was found dazed at the wrecked apartment and lived. Most of the Rome entry team were dead.
The Trophy
By A. R. Redington
Rhea Ortega was a Class A bounty hunter for the Headhunters Association. The job was to kill a man who used the name Exterminator, last seen on the planet Zoam-9 in the Prynaerus system, for fifty million credits. Proof could be the body, the head, or a working data chip. The target had flown for the Gal-Sar air brigade and later worked as an assassin and trafficker. Rival Alek was in-system when the job posted, and she overtook his ship on the way in. Near the planet she found a wreckage field of civilian ships, Class A hulls, and Gal-Sar craft, plus one SOS that ended in a scream. Explosives were unsafe there because of methane under a thin crust.
Five bounty hunters around the crash died in seconds to a cloaked pair, a large female in gold-plated armor and a male whose mask smear matched hers. Inside, the Exterminator was dead, chest burned through, one hand gone, and the data chip missing. The male destroyed the corpse's head, wounded Rhea's shoulder, and lost his shoulder cannon before she cut his throat and took the mask. Alek had sabotaged her ship and brought grenades anyway. He held her at gunpoint on the ramp, then the female speared him. Rhea shot his grenade belt, the blast tore him apart, and underground methane went up.
The female survived under wreckage, boarded Alek's ship, and started a wrist countdown. Rhea cut off the arm with the bomb, stabbed her through the neck, and later took the head. A mothership intercepted the hull in a trophy hall, replayed the two hunter deaths, and an Elder pressed the Exterminator's severed hand, chip in it, to Rhea's chest. The clan took the skulls and helmet, left her Alek's ship under power, and she flew to Gal-Sar Bastion with the bounty proof.
The Monster
By Michael Kogge
Biology teacher Jane Lisbon hired Army vet Reynolds, photographer Flannagan, and grad student Schaller for an October Sasquatch trip in Mendocino County, using a paid hand-drawn map off a gravel spur that an old man said cannabis growers had cut in the 1990s. Jane taught tenth grade at Lewis Wilson High and had been in those redwoods at age nine with her father. Reynolds had lost three men from an old unit in Guatemala and came to kill a "demon" a CIA contact had called a killer clan. Schaller was writing a dissertation on the cultural impact of Sasquatch stories in Mendocino and Humboldt Counties. An electronic squeal hit the truck stereo, then a hidden spiked log blew both tires.
They hiked to a mapped waterfall, camped, and knocked on redwoods until something knocked back. Reynolds fired a pistol he had brought and shouted that the Guatemala killer would die that night. A cloaked hunter opened him at the waist, left Flannagan's head on a branch pole and the body hung upside down, and cut Schaller in half after a blue bolt hit their tree. The hunter lifted Jane by the neck and asked about Sasquatch. She jammed Schaller's phone light into a helmet slit, triggered Flannagan's infrared flashbulbs, and jumped into the rain-swollen river.
A nine-foot Sasquatch pulled her onto the bank and touched her cheek. The hunter netted it and aimed a gauntlet cannon at Jane. She dove onto the netted animal so the hunter would not fire, then mashed the wrist controls until the net went slack and she was thrown into a tree. The Sasquatch snapped the hunter's arm at the joint. They locked together on a ledge over the waterfall and went over the cliff. Morning showed no body, blood, helmet, or hair. Jane lived with broken ribs and no proof of either creature.
Ghost Story
By Joshua Pruett
Locals called the hunter at Camp Blueblood the Ghost That Kills. The first known massacre was summer 1971, five children mutilated. Wayne later told the campfire story of Sofia, whose older boyfriend was hung and gutted after she dropped his gun. Geology students Kim, Wayne, Jules, and Darpan camped there on a weekend erosion survey behind old cabins. Washout had exposed a buried fish-shaped ship with a trophy hold of animal, alien, and human bones, about fifty years in the ground. Night hunters looking for missing Robby walked into the same woods in two pickups, about sixteen armed men under Colby.
Robby, lost, shot at a severed deer head, and the hunter destroyed his rifle and forearm, put wristblades through the remaining hand into his gut, and dragged him away. The students found Robby's green hat in the trophy chamber the next day, and Kim lied to Colby's men that it had been found toward the lakebed. Wilson fired at a shimmer in the trees, lost both arms to a blue flash, and Jules was beheaded after she picked up his rifle. Wayne fired a Colt at the Ghost and was reduced to mist, and Kim wrecked the dirt bike when a plasma bolt blew the front tire. The old hunter's cloak flickered, and his helmet was fused to a battle-worn face.
Colby rammed him with a pickup, pinning him to a tree, then lost the truck when the hunter shoved it off. In a cabin Kim would not pick up Colby's .460, reading the night as a hunt of armed people, until the hunter tore Colby's arms, cut his throat, and started the skull and spine. She emptied the revolver into the hunter's face at point-blank range with wristblades in her thigh. About half a day later she used those blades to finish the head and meant to keep it. Wayne, Jules, Robby, Wilson, and Colby were dead. Kim lived.
Sly Dark In The Daylight
By Yvonne Navarro
Seventy-year-old Val Wilson, a Vietnam field nurse, saw neighbor boy Robbie Rosales yanked into a tree in Swift, Colorado, population 647, on an early September afternoon. Sheriff Wayne York found the body, then a second killing four blocks away, Jack Menendez, and park victim Sandi Lawrence, her German Shepherd King dead beside her and her head taken. The hunter was Kwei Lar'ja, who called the hunt Sly Dark, a secret solo drop he had eased out of a mothership slip and believed the elders would punish. Deputy Pacios read tracks of a seven-foot walker with paired foot-claws, and Dr. Silvia ran out of freezer space at the clinic.
Kwei Lar'ja smashed into the Hunting Depot and killed Ajax Beck, Tom Beck, and Lana Beck, a Mossberg, a Desert Eagle, and an AR-15 among the guns that failed to drop him. Police vehicles filled the lot, Deputy Ryan Malik stood up and was destroyed with his cruiser, and York rolled under a car after a door was ripped off. Val took her late husband's Remington 700. Lourdes Rosales loaded a 12-gauge in an F-150 and followed the lights, and sixteen-year-old Owen Holland took his father's .38 after he learned Robbie was dead. The hunter started back toward a drop pod stocked with trophies, including Sandi's skull.
Paul McCoy's hounds hit the cloak in the park, green blood outlined a huge foot on the jungle gym, and the cloak failed. Sandi's husband Dave put a .357 into the netted chest, and Owen tackled him aside when the caster locked on. A larger, older Yautja landed, tore off the plasmacaster, broke the bladed arm, and called Kwei Lar'ja M-di yin'tekai, no honor. Lourdes and Val blocked the ramp, and the Elder put a blade in the younger hunter's hand and pushed him at Lourdes. She shot him in the face with the 12-gauge. The Elder dragged the body aboard and left. Val and Lourdes lived, and Lourdes told her husband Miquel when he got home from the road.
Dead Man's Switch
By Scott Sigler
Doctor Lewis Yellan ran a paid hunting preserve for Kivi Safari on the moon Kivi, breeding giant Yellabeasts in three octagonal pens for a lodge that had five hunt permits sold before the buildings were finished. A cloaked hunter hacked the facility at root level, opened the Pen B staff door, and shot guard Pung through the back when Pung raised a gun. Researcher Aquina Colmeyer was left unarmed in an observation bubble and was not shot there. Lewis ordered Protocol 324: drop weapons, do not run, and lie down, on the rule that this kind of hunter killed for sport and spared people who did not aim.
Interior doors opened, cameras dropped out, and Omi and Tau entered the corridors. The hunter jumped over prone Peter Van and Carla Abadi, and the animals killed them there. Lewis and ops tech Brunka opened Pen C to slow the hunt, and the hunter stabbed Rho through the chest while Kap bit his other arm. They reached the Pollinator pod, sprayed Psi with pollen, and hit the hunter with a second charge as he shut the shaft door with one arm limp. Lewis strapped on two detonators set as a dead-man's switch, so the charge would fire if his heart stopped.
He opened the pod with empty hands, pointed to a detonator and to Psi, then threw that charge aside so the beast exploded after the hunter wrecked its shoulder and head. He pointed the remaining live switch at the hunter and demanded escort to the landing pad. The hunter understood, killed Kap, Mu, Nu, Omi, and Tau on the walk out, and passed Colmeyer's headless torso near the pad, where Tau had been eating her. Two of the three atmospheric ships were gone. At the last ramp Lewis switched the detonator off and tossed it at the hunter's feet. The hunter picked it up and walked back inside, one arm ruined. Lewis and Brunka left without going back for anyone.
Notable Hunters
- Luna was the scarred female who survived Rankin Station and found Beck on Titan fifty years later. She put a glaive through his chest, could not fire her wrist bomb, and died when he cut her throat.
- Tel was a lone hunter who took seventy-four heads on 76re-O, then died in vacuum when that prey's moth-form held his gaze and stopped his suicide charge.
- Yuahro was a Youngblood on his first solo in Pisgah National Forest in September 1987. Dutch wounded him. His father T'an'tath extracted him alive.
- A'kael was Zan'tih's great-granddaughter and a trainer on Yautja Prime. She exposed Thwutha's sabotage over Brazil and left as clan leader.
- Ak'kili hunted three bad bloods on a desert world with her hound Xave, including her son Dakdwade, and took all three heads.
- Donatiki was a pregnant survey leader who forbade killing at a Hastings reenactment, went into labor in the fight, and left with a living newborn after Jessica and Colin helped the birth.
- La'vindi was a failed hunter on Fourth-Salturna Exodus. She killed Zalande when he moved to self-destruct, left clan H'ppattah, and took Cali off-world.
- R'Kyn of clan P'Rekh tracked bomber Tracey Dahl from Vermont to Rome, beheaded her in a piazza, and left uncaptured.
- Kwei Lar'ja, who used the hunt-name Sly Dark, made an unsanctioned drop on Swift, Colorado. An Elder called him without honor and pushed him at Lourdes, who shot him in the face.
Behind The Scenes
Schmidt dated the introduction December 2021 from Ottawa, Kansas. The brief was the thirty-fifth anniversary of the 1987 film, with almost every story in the present or the future, more hunts from the Yautja side, new prey species, and several female hunters. He treated the book as a successor to If It Bleeds. Lebbon's The Titans returns to Colonial Marine space after Devil Dogs, the earlier Halley story in If It Bleeds. Maberry's The Fix Is In continues Hogarth Fix after Gameworld. Addison's Proving Ground is one of the 2022 texts that uses the homeworld name Yautja Prime in the main story.
Returning franchise names include Dutch, plus Keyes and Garber from Predator 2, in Aftermath, and Fix from If It Bleeds. Peter Briggs wrote the unused 1991 screenplay The Hunt: Alien vs. Predator, a spec that Fox optioned years before Alien vs. Predator. He contributed Little Miss Nightmare. Scott Sigler, who had written Aliens: Phalanx, closed the book with Dead Man's Switch. Titan's catalog lists fifteen original stories, 448 pages, and a 9 August 2022 paperback release in the US and UK.
Conclusion
Predator: Eyes of the Demon is Titan's 2022 short-story anthology, fifteen separate hunts instead of one novel plot, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt. Seven stories sit on recent Earth, from Dutch in 1987 and Camp Blueblood in 1971 through Kashmir, Hastings, Rome, Mendocino, and a Colorado town of 647 people. The other eight run farther out: Titan, an unnamed moth-world, Yautja Prime and Brazil, asteroid Keiko, a desert exile, Salturna in 2422, Zoam-9, and the preserve on Kivi. Most of the book's hunters end up dead, extracted, or gone back to their ships.
External Sources
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