The Hunt (The Wilds Book Two)

by Donna Augustine

  “Meet me in the small barn in five minutes.” Even without looking up at him, Dax’s voice got to me. Like the deep, raspy quality of it scratched an itch somewhere deep inside. It was kind of like a mosquito bite. That first scratch was heaven, but damn if it didn’t drive you crazy soon after. That was what it was like with Dax. I couldn’t wait to be near him, until I was for a while and he did something that drove me crazy. Sometimes I thought he did it on purpose, but why would he want to piss me off?

  Order given, he turned and headed back inside.

  I went to speak before he was out of sight, but the bacon I was trying to swallow grabbed on to a tonsil for dear life and launched me into a fit of coughing. It was just long enough to give Dax time to clear the porch and set the door to squealing again. It was Wilbur’s revenge, for sure.

  The bacon finally gave up the struggle, but I’d lost my chance to show my full indignation. I’d been waiting weeks for him to start training me, and now it was drop everything and come right away? I’d just written him off and taken matters into my own hands. I’d realigned my plans, and they were damn good…

  A noise seeped out of me, a cross between a disgusted sigh meets a groan of irritation. Who was I kidding? My plans sucked. They included a whole lot of reading and even more guesswork so that I could model myself after someone who was a fictional character from books most people hadn’t heard of. It was so bad I almost felt I needed to mock myself, because I certainly deserved it, and a good opportunity to mock should never pass without a word, even if it was directed at me.

  So here I was, plateful of Wilbur and the dictator calling. I could pretend that I could learn everything I needed from books, but reading wasn’t exactly the same as doing. I’d learned that lesson well. Then there was the fact that Dax certainly knew things that weren’t written down—anywhere. As far as information went, I had more than a suspicion that Dax’s down cards were a royal flush compared to mine. Oh yeah, that’s right. I hadn’t even been dealt into the hand yet. I hadn’t so much been playing as getting played so far.

  I did the only thing someone who held absolutely no cards did. I carried my plate of leftover Wilbur into the kitchen and headed out to the small barn, the one that served as a gymnasium—or in my case, a place to beat up newbies.

  It sucked to have no cards. Once I became a badass, things would change. I’d be the one kicking ass and I’d do anything to become that person. By my count, I’d already spent too many years getting my ass kicked. It was definitely time for a change.

  * * *

  As I crossed the field toward the small barn, the place was coming alive like it always did in the mornings. Everyone had a job. Well, almost everyone. I didn’t. Or not one assigned to me, anyway, even though I’d asked. Neither Fudge nor Dax seemed to want to give me anything on a regular basis. Fudge had told me to ask Dax. Dax had told me he was too busy to talk every time I’d managed to corner him.

  After four or five mornings of watching everyone do their thing, I knew I had to have a thing, too. Everyone here had a thing. If I didn’t have a thing, I didn’t feel like I was really here somehow. So I’d handled it myself. Like today, if I hadn’t had plans on meeting Bookie later or been heading to the barn to meet Dax, I’d be in the garden again, to the main gardener’s chagrin. It wasn’t my fault he wasn’t a good weeder and I’d discovered gardens needed constant tending.

  I pushed open the wooden door to the small barn. The place looked just like it had the last time I’d been here: mats on the floor, a bag hanging in the corner, the smell of hay clinging to the air that was stacked along the wall, and rays of sunshine streaming in through the window, set high above the door. The only thing different this time was me.

  The last time I’d come here and sparred with Dax, I hadn’t really believed that it was going to be a fair fight, or as fair as it could be fighting with someone who had an unknown but significant amount of weight on me. Back then, deep down, I still hadn’t thought someone who could really hurt you would hold back from doing so. Yeah, I’d left with some bruises, but nowhere near the beatings I’d taken at the Cement Giant.

  Turned out that I loved sparring. It had been one of my first moments of really feeling alive. No, better than just alive—alive and empowered.

  I’d like to think that the feeling had come solely from the fighting, but truth was that part of it had come from who I’d been sparring with.

  When I stepped into that building and saw Dax there, fur or no fur, fangs or not, some of the yearning I’d felt that day still tugged at me a little, but we weren’t meant to be, even if the blossoming woman inside me wanted to carry on and scream no, it had to be him.

  But whoever I was meant to learn about that part of life from, it wasn’t going to be him. I’d moved on from that place. All he was now was my teacher, if indeed he was finally stepping up to the plate. That was okay. It was all I needed from him.

  Chapter 4

  My eyes adjusted to the light, as he remained leaning against the back wall. I walked farther into the barn and stopped in the center without saying anything. He’d called the meeting, so I stood and waited to see what he had planned. I was done asking for anything.

  I pointed one leg out and raised my hand to cover a strategic yawn, but inside I nearly tingled with excitement. Would he finally start training me? Was this what I’d been waiting for? Was I on the precipice of greatness? Most importantly, would I be able to kick his ass by the time I was done? Now that was a goal worthy of striving for.

  He pushed off the wall and then walked past me to the door. Instead of leaving it open like he had last time we’d practiced in here, he pulled it closed. The bar landed across it with a thump. Whatever the day’s agenda was, clearly it was not open to spectators. Good to know.

  He crossed the barn until he stopped in front of me. His eyes ran down my length, like he’d never seen me before. There was a slight shift of his head a fraction of an inch down, and then back up. The movement could’ve been interpreted as a nod of approval, if one was so inclined to optimism. I wasn’t sure if my glass was half full or half empty these days, and I didn’t know if I cared to be labeled either way. I used to be an optimist. I definitely refused to believe I was a pessimist.

  Whoever came up with that stupid glass should’ve been shot. Why couldn’t you just say it had half its contents and leave the labels to the judgers? Why must a glass cast me one way or another? Or better yet, tell the label makers to go screw altogether, pour a shot of whiskey in it, and put the glass to good use?

  I had enough issues to worry about besides people calling me names and glasses giving me labels. For instance, what my hair looked like right now, and jutting my hip out in just the right angle to show off my new curves. Oh yeah, I’m a woman now, Dax, so take that!

  “You’ve put on a couple pounds. That’s good.”

  I smiled. I’d definitely put on a couple of pounds, and in all the right places—according to Tiffy’s estimations, anyway. She might have been six, but that kid knew some shit. “Thanks. I’ve been trying—”

  “But you’re still scrawny as hell.”

  My fingers stopped preening my hair and my hip lost some of its jauntiness. Well, that wasn’t very nice. And I thought I was the socially awkward one raised in a sanitarium. He must have been running around those woods all beastlike a few years too many.

  Although the beast actually seemed nicer than the man. The beast liked me. At least it seemed like that. It had licked me. Dax’s real fangs didn’t seem to come out until after he was back in his human form.

  He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “You need to eat more.”

  “Did you not notice the heaping plate of Wil—bacon? I’m eating. I can’t fit more food in than I already shovel in on a daily basis.” I knew because I’d tried. Food was one of the highlights of my new existence outside the Cement Giant. I ate every moment I could, and in a pretty wide variety. No one could say I was slacking in that area.
<
br />   He nodded as if he didn’t like the answer, but not enough to bother arguing.

  Feet braced apart and face set in stone, it was times like this he appeared so closed off that it seemed like I’d never known him at all. Like he was someone I’d just met and not the man who’d saved me, told me he’d help me and that I didn’t need to leave. It was as if the man who’d revealed his deepest secret in the woods a month ago didn’t exist.

  He dropped his arms and took a step to the side, taking me in from different angles. “Here’s the deal: right now you are an unshaped pile of sludge.”

  Sludge? I had to remember what I read in that meditation book and stay calm. I needed a teacher. I had to pick my battles. I should let this go and rise above. Whatever didn’t improve me wasn’t worth the energy to fight. “Sludge? That’s a little harsh, no? I mean, you couldn’t have said clay? Isn’t that the term? Unshaped clay?” Okay, so I was still working on my temper. People didn’t change overnight.

  Not to mention he could use a little work himself. What was his problem? I crossed my arms and mimicked one of his standby stances. It looked like the biggest bruise today was going to be to my ego. It was as if ever since he’d turned into the beast in front of me, his personality had tanked.

  He was lucky he’d saved my ass a few times or we’d be through. Fortunately for him, I was the loyal type. Even better for him was that I needed a teacher and he was the only one with the right credentials, a BA, as in Bad Ass.

  “No. I’m in charge. I choose the terms.” He took a few steps and began a circle around me.

  The muscles on my face started to tense up, wanting to shift into something that might resemble lemon face, but I held it back until he stepped behind me. I wasn’t going to argue any further. I mean, it wasn’t like I wanted to keep being sludge, after all, and he did have the royal flush. It stank to have no cards.

  As irritating as he was being, my body reacted by standing a little taller and sucking in a stomach I didn’t even have. Why should I care what he thought?

  He circled back around to my front as he continued speaking. “There’s physical strength, of which you are almost completely devoid.”

  I looked down at my arms. They were thin, but I had a little bump growing on the good one. I’d been lifting books with my good arm every night now that I could exercise without consequences. In the Cement Giant, if you got caught exercising, they made sure you couldn’t do it again for a long time.

  “Then there’s mental.”

  I wasn’t a slouch in that department, at least.

  “You’re passing decent in that area,” he said.

  Passing decent? I’d thought I was better than that. I might not be the smartest person in the room, but I wasn’t usually too far down the line either. But I was going to suck these comments up and say nothing.

  That lasted less than a second. “Wow, decent? Really? Don’t pump me up too much. My ego might run out of control, and next thing you know I’ll insist on being called something other than sludge or another equally crazy notion.”

  He ignored my comment as he stood in front of me. We were face to face, only a foot or so apart, and that energy he exuded was starting to satiate the air around me.

  “There’s one area left. Most people don’t even realize it exists, and yet it counts for more than anything else combined. By a landslide.”

  “And that is?” I asked, expecting to hear how bad I sucked in that area, too.

  His eyes stared into mine and everything else around me disappeared into a void. His mouth softened into what might have been the beginnings of a smile, but not quite, before he said, “Magic. That’s where you’re strong.”

  Magic. The word alone made me want to mimic his almost-smile. I didn’t, not wanting to look all goofy and newbie-like over the praise.

  We’d never talked about magic but I’d known it existed in some form for most of my life. I relived people’s memories. That had been proof enough for me. Then there was Dax. He turned into a beast. Now if that wasn’t proof magic existed, there was no proof that would make you believe. Now someone who had a clue was about to let me in on all the secrets. I hoped.

  But that didn’t mean there weren’t some issues with what he’d just said. “If I’m strong in the magic category, how come I can’t do anything other than see memories?” I didn’t say, Where’s my version of fur and extra hundred pounds of muscle, but I was thinking it. This was the stuff I’d been waiting for. I wasn’t going to say or do anything to risk getting him angry now, like bringing up a topic he didn’t want to discuss.

  “How do you think you can throw those knives you wear so well with impossible targets when you’ve never been trained?”

  My eyes shot to the one at my ankle. I left the one I holstered at my hip, only using that one for special occasions. “Maybe I’m a natural?”

  He made a derisive noise that was much sexier than a snort but way more insulting at the same time. “Not even close.”

  “If it’s magic, how come I can’t throw straight all the time?”

  “You forget, you’re still—”

  I held up my hand, motioning for him to stop. “Wait. I remember. Sludge, yeah, not forgetting that one anytime soon.” I pushed the sludge insult and everything else he was dishing out today aside. I didn’t know where the bad attitude was coming from, but this was the exact reason I needed him. He had knowledge. I needed knowledge. If he wanted to call me sludge as my new nickname? He was welcome to do it, as long as he helped me become a badass. “How does this magic work? How come I’ve never had it until recently?”

  “Why do you think they kept you so weak? Limited your food and sleep and—”

  “I know what they did.” I hadn’t meant to cut him off, but everyone had their soft spots. Talking about the Cement Giant was my vulnerable underbelly that I preferred not to show.

  His expression was blank as he said, “You can’t be sensitive about it.”

  “I’m not.” It would’ve helped if I hadn’t snapped that last statement. It was hard when he was staring at me, assessing me like he was reading some instruction manual that was telling him what made me tick inside.

  “Or get defensive.”

  “What I am is impatient to hear why it made a difference,” I said, faking a sweet and calm tone of voice that hopefully hid the barbed wire fence erected around my past.

  There was a slight narrowing of the eyes, a low exhaled breath, but he continued on like he hadn’t just called out my fraud.

  “Magic takes strength. You were too weak to use it. You’ve spent the majority of your life in a state of mere existence. The energy you had was going into keeping you alive. The healthier you are, the more it flows.”

  I kicked at a stray piece of hay by my boot as I replayed his words. Years of barely existing, never enough food, constantly being woken for midnight interrogation sessions and then forced awake an hour or two later. And that hadn’t even been the worst of it. My life had been hell in the Cement Giant. I hadn’t even realized how bad it had been myself until I got out and had a comparison. Finally, part of what they’d done made sense to me. It shouldn’t have made me feel any differently about it, but it did anyway. At least there had been a reason and it hadn’t come solely from hatred.

  “You need to understand, magic doesn’t just reside within you, but is everywhere. Part of your strength is your ability to channel it, being able to use it. Think of it in terms of a bike sitting and waiting in the barn. If you don’t know it’s there, you aren’t going to take it out for a ride.

  “Some people can’t touch the bike. They know it’s there but can’t open the barn door. It might as well not exist for them. Other people can only partially access it. They can get the door open, get the bike out of the barn, but can’t get it to go past a crawl.

  “And for some people, the engine purrs like a tiger once they figure out how to stroke it right.”

  I stuck my hands in my pockets to stop from fid
geting as I bit my lower lip. He wasn’t talking about sex, so why was I imagining my hands stroking him? His hands all over me? This was what I got for getting the book with the topless guy and girl with all the hair flying on the cover last time I went to the library. It was bad enough I’d had to deal with Bookie looking at me funny. Now I had all sorts of sexy-time images dancing in my head.

  I did a mental shake. He was my teacher. That was it. I had to keep my head in the game, even if he was throwing out that strange energy that made my body tingle like the scene in chapter four.

  Magic. He was finally spilling all the secrets. No more sexy books if it was going to mess with my head.

  Or maybe only one sexy book a week? A girl needed her vices.

  “So I’m probably a ‘roll the bike out of the garage’ type? I can get it out of the barn but not drive it very well?”

  He walked over to a beam and rested a shoulder against it. While I waited to hear the outcome, it was hard not to notice he looked a little like the guy on the sexy cover.

  His face could’ve been carved from stone, but then I saw a small smile curve his lips. This was a real one, and the sparring partner I’d had in this barn weeks ago, the one who relished in having a playmate, peeked through. “No, you’ll do a lot better than that.”

  I was afraid to ask, but some of the optimism I used to have poked through anyway. “What exactly are you saying? Do you mean that now that I’m healthier, I’ll have more magic?”

  “What I’m saying is, now that you’re healthy, you’re not only going to be able to take the bike out of the barn, you’ll be kicking up dirt and stones in your wake.”

  I felt my own expression mimicking his. But try as I might to honor my new set of parameters, and just be happy he was finally helping me, I couldn’t leave it alone completely. “Why are you helping me now?”

  “I told you I’d help. I’m helping.”

  “But why?” As much as I would’ve liked to imagine this was out of the goodness of his heart, I had a feeling there was more to it than that.