Rogue Huntress: a new adult urban fantasy novel (Rogue Huntress Chronicles Book 1)

by Thea Atkinson

  He had no idea how immune I was. He'd come to the family half a dozen decades after my mother's ritualistic training sessions, imposed on me from my earliest horrific memory. I could hold against the silver. Longer than him at least. I didn't care how well he thought he knew me. He knew only pieces and even if some of those pieces hadn't been things I'd been proud of, I'd never have told him about that part of my life. I told no one. Not even my father. Our tutelage under Galen had made us close at times, but not that close.

  We had tested each other out, once. As early adults. I'd let him kiss me, and even though I was far from innocent, I had discovered he'd been practicing far more than I had. His skill ignited a small and tentative flame deep in my belly. Yet even at that young age, I understood a spark could cause more harm than good. There was something I didn't like in the shadows of my soul that the light illuminated. Yes. One time I had found him attractive. Now, he was just a ruthless beast who had taken innocent children and use them as pawns for his desires.

  He'd shown me his true self. The beast within him was far too primal, the ratio of human to wolf was too far off-balance.

  "Come closer," I said to him. "Let's see how much pain you can take."

  I strained even further through the bars, the silver singeing into my cheek and making me wince. I noted just how perfectly out of reach he was. I could waggle my fingers and strain for him as much as I wanted. He'd evidently measured exactly how far he needed to be to be just out of reach. Careful, cunning Caleb.

  "Coward," I said and fell back onto my bottom, defeated for the moment. I smelled my own skin burning, but I was too weak to transform again. I didn't remember my mother ever having the bars coated. Too easy to hurt herself by accident. Obviously, he'd painted the bars with the most pure form he could afford.

  Several spots of my body burned like hellfire but I ignored it in favor of focusing on the man just beyond the bars. For one vivid moment, I felt rage so acute, it reflected even so far as my mother. I hated her in that second. But for her paranoia, I'd not be trapped here in a place that made it too easy for Caleb to hold me. He knew it too well, as I did.

  "The bars aren't covered with silver to hurt you," he said. "It's to keep you from hurting yourself."

  He looked up past me and I followed his gaze to where Jeb stood half a foot away from me, inside the cell but looking so unlike a prisoner, I wanted to spit at him. I'd forgotten about him. Now, I looked at him with renewed interest. Maybe I could kill the muscle instead. Rage by proxy.

  "You're quick, Jeb," Caleb said. "I'd heard that about you." He rose to his full height, an impressive six foot four. "I suppose I owe you for saving her life."

  Jeb said nothing but I noted how clenched he held his jaw as he faced Caleb.

  Caleb grunted and swung his cold green eyes to mine. "It's a waste of time, you know, this resistance. I already have a sizable following."

  I huffed. Perhaps, but my father had been the best leader the pack had seen in eons. No doubt the followers were weak-willed, puny beasts.

  "You just need me to bring you the best," I said, sidling my way toward Jeb. "Have they stormed the manse yet with pitch forks and silver bullets? Is that why you hired human mercenaries to swarm the grounds?"

  Caleb didn't answer.

  "I see," I said. "They don't know." It was so like him: steal, pilfer, navigate beneath the stormy waters like a German sub and rise to the surface with subterfuge. He wanted to have all his ducks in row before he got shut down. That meant hours at least, days at most before someone from the pack came calling.

  "Fuck you," I said with a grin.

  "You want out?" he asked me.

  I glared at him. He knew I wanted out. He also knew I'd kill him if I managed it.

  His biceps flexed beneath the redneck plaid, purposefully, I thought.

  "It can all be over very quickly," he said.

  Over. I could be free. I could kill him in his sleep at my leisure. I had to wait until the beast within was finished squirming before I could answer. "It'll be over for you before you know it."

  He knew I meant to kill him. He wasn't a fool. I could see it in the way his fingers twitched in his pocket as he spoke. "But then how would you know where the boys are?"

  The boys. My brothers. I chewed at the bottom lip but refused to answer.

  "I'll spare them," he said, shifting ever so slightly to the left. "You submit to me. I free them."

  "You won't," I said, blinking up at him. "Because they'll kill you in your sleep."

  He grinned and I noted a short chuckle from Jeb that I knew Caleb heard too because his fingers twitched against his leg.

  "Did you know Jeb here is very skilled in persuasion?" He knelt in front of me again. "He was stationed in Guantanamo before they shut it down." He blinked at me impassively, letting the words sink in, then he addressed Jeb without so much as a glance. "Isn't that right, Jeb?"

  Jeb said nothing but he sighed as though he had heard his credentials used a hundred times by a coward to gall another man. I hadn't managed to make my way all the way over toward him, but I had gone far enough I could leap for him. Before I could, Jeb set a track for the cell door. He nodded at the jailer on the other side and the man reached for a key. Caleb stood, quiet appraisal of the man inside the cell with me frankly apparent on his face. He pushed his fists down into the pockets of his jeans as he studied Jeb's authoritative stride. I had the feeling Caleb was already adding up the hundreds of ways he could use the human to his benefit. Jeb wanted something from Caleb, that was evident. It was also evident Caleb would not give it up until he had used the human past what that thing was worth.

  I watched as the jailer inserted the key into the lock. Maybe I didn't have to settle for the mercenary. Maybe Caleb would be a possibility after all. I swallowed down the anticipation, braced myself.

  Perhaps two more heartbeats and the door would be open. Perhaps three and Jeb would be striding through it.

  Half a heartbeat was all I needed, and I leapt for the door. I had been told I was the one of the best fighters in my pack. Only one other was stronger than me, and that werewolf was about to die.

  At least that's what I thought until I heard the report of a gun and felt the searing path of a tiny projectile into my shoulder. The stink of gunpowder wavered into my nostrils, bringing along with it the faint tang of silver.

  I didn't have to smell the metal to know it was in the bullet. My shoulder burned like I had lain it across a hot griddle.

  I dropped to my knees a foot from the door, catching myself against the bars and collapsing. My free hand clamped onto the wound in a useless attempt to relieve the pain as I lay there, rolling onto my back. My beast recoiled and left me to feel the pain. Until the bullet was out, I wouldn't be able to transform again. In the meantime, I'd be in agony until I could extract it.

  I stared up in angry disbelief, imagining the jailer had shot me on Caleb's orders, and I wanted to let him see from my face exactly much pain he would be in if I ever freed myself.

  Except it wasn't the jailer who met my gaze as he aimed his pistol directly at my chest. It was Jeb.

  Whatever's Easiest

  I panted through the pain, trying to work out if it was a warning shot or an intent to kill me. Caleb's gasp on the other side of the bars indicated his surprise, and as I peered up at Jeb, I understood that if I made one more move, he would squeeze the trigger again.

  "Stay down, Shana," Jeb said. There was something curious in his eyes as he regarded me, but all I could think was how badly I wanted to scoop them out of his sockets. And I would before long. Oh, how he would suffer when I got out of this god-forsaken prison and had a chance as a free wolf to tear him limb from limb.

  "Don't get up," he said. "I don't want to shoot you again."

  I growled at him, letting him see my teeth even though I knew they were merely human ones. I might not be changed, but I certainly felt feral.

  "When I kill you," I said. "I will take my ti
me."

  He made a face as though he wanted to tell me that such a thing wasn't possible. And then he was on the other side of the bars, and the door to the cell had clanked closed.

  Caleb edged closer to the cell, peering in at me as I lay there on the floor, holding onto my shoulder.

  "I'm losing patience, Shana," he said. "He shouldn't have had to shoot you." He twisted around so that he faced Jeb. "I should make you pay for that."

  Jeb shrugged with one shoulder and holstered his gun beneath his jacket.

  "You have enough doctors in this place, I'm sure they can dig it out."

  Jeb looked at me, his crystalline eyes roaming over my body in a frank appraisal that had nothing to do with desire. "If I were you," he said to Caleb. "I would just take her while she can't transform. Might be easier on you."

  "You bastard," I said and tried without success to roll over onto my side. The pain lanced through my collarbone and made me groan. "I'll tear you apart. Even your mother won't recognize you."

  "My mother is dead," he said. "And in light of that threat, I'm glad of it."

  The way he said it, I remembered the brief amount of time Caleb had let me see my two brothers, Luca and little Lynden. At ten, they were just precocious boys. Their change hadn't yet come upon them, but they already exhibited all the traits. They adapted quickly, they had a higher pain threshold than children their age. Even so, they'd be confused and afraid. They had been unharmed at the time Caleb had trotted them out to display in front of me like trophies, shackled with silver chains. They cried as they stood there, unable to stay strong under the pain of the metal. Even so, I knew Caleb wasn't interested in causing them pain, it was more than a display of ownership, it was about a show of power. He could and would execute them. I had only to recall the decapitated body of my trainer and the still bloody head of my father as Caleb lifted it to show me, to remind me that the man in front of me meant business.

  But I wasn't stupid. Caleb would never let them live. They were the straightest blood path to my father while Caleb was but a fosterling. Werewolf lives were long, and their collective ancestral memory even longer. Even if he managed to assert control over the whole pack, those boys represented a power he would always fear: loyalty. Rebellion in their name could come a decade or three down the line, but it would come. I had no choice. I had to neutralize his threat the way I neutralized every other. It was my duty and I was bound to it. I had failed once; I couldn't fail again.

  Even if my temper seethed, and my shoulder burned with pain, I did my level best to take in Caleb with nothing more than cold detachment and calculation as he stood there .

  "What happens to the boys?"

  His demeanor shifted, betraying a subtle bit of hope as he sensed victory within his grasp.

  "If you do as I ask, nothing. They will grow to be happy, healthy werewolves."

  "Meaning that if I don't do as you ask, they will not grow at all."

  The hand in his jeans pocket worked itself into a ball.

  "You know how these things are, Shana," he said. "Packs only follow the strongest. If I can't force submission from a simple woman, how can I manage an entire pack?"

  "Such a charmer," I ground out. "And to think the last time you tried to woo me it was with such pretty compliments."

  He edged closer, careful not to touch the bars, but leaning in enough that I could see the ruthlessness behind his expression.

  "I meant them for all the good they did."

  I thought of all the times I'd laughed with him. All the flirtatious and harmless evenings sitting with a cold beer on the stoop. I'd not for one moment thought this man had been secretly conniving a coup. I wondered how many years the plans had gone on, whether or not each time he flirted with me had been just a weak attempt to see how it would go and if he'd finally just given up trying to woo me.

  "So now it's force," I said, bile rising to my throat to flood out the desire that my beast tried to slip past me. "They have a word for that."

  He lifted a plaid-covered shoulder. "Facts are facts. I need you to show me and the pack you submit. The rest will fall in line."

  "Except mere submission isn't enough, is it?"

  "I need you without question."

  "Bondage," I spat out and he sighed.

  "You twist the word into something ugly. Bondage is for humans and the weakest of wolves. Alphas have a choice. I choose you."

  From the corner of my eye, I caught Jeb's movements as he leaned against the bars as though to illustrate how impervious he was to the silver. The seersucker of his Armani suit jacket puckered where it touched and he examined his nails with such interest it was obvious he was mocking the both of us.

  I dragged myself closer to him, hoping to get within hand's reach. "And what do you get out of this, human?"

  Jeb turned to grip the bars with both of his hands, wrapping his fingers fully around them and giving them a shake.

  "My humanity is an insult, is it?" he said, jerking his head toward Caleb. "Your kind don't seem so different to me: kidnap, murder, sexual bondage."

  While I chose to ignore him, Caleb took the taunt badly. He transformed just enough, his hands turned into meaty white paws with fearsome looking nails. He swiped at Jeb who must have seen the blow coming but only braced himself for the connection. Four streaks of blood rose on his neck, and rather than mopping them up, he let them bleed onto T-shirt beneath his dress shirt. I wasn't sure whether he was frozen in fear or rage as Caleb confronted him.

  "Two strikes," Caleb said to him.

  I craned my neck in Jeb's direction, trying to assess the result. Jeb made no show except one that the comment bothered him. He blinked. I knew right then, there was more to the partnership than either Caleb or Jeb let on. That the human was here in the first place revealed how far Caleb was willing to go to force this coup to completion.

  I had to admit that the murder of an alpha wasn't unheard of in our world. Often, it was how one male was able to overthrow another and offer the pack new blood. So often did it happen, in fact, that even in a more civilized world as the one we lived in now compared to the early part of the century, many packs expected a bloody coup and often wouldn't follow an alpha who had been named rather than fought.

  Our pack had been led by the same alpha for so many generations that I had just took for granted that my father would always be there. I never once imagined any other wolf would contest his leadership and although he was a fierce warrior, I couldn't imagine my father fighting to maintain his place. In the imaginative world of a daughter, Lynden just always existed as a perfect male whom no other wolf would want to depose. That wasn't the truth, and it was abundantly clear to me in those moments I stared Caleb down.

  My father lived with and accepted the risk of being deposed every day. It was the natural order of things. When an alpha's time ended, that shifter who beat him took a mate and together they ruled the pack and offered them safety until the next contest.

  Humans fictionalized our existence and even had a good grasp on how that worked in their imaginary and fanciful world of make-believe shifters. We kept it all hush hush, and my job had been to root out those dangerous humans who discovered us and threatened the carefully nurtured notion that it was all fiction.

  Caleb would have known this too, and yet he chose to bring in a human. That alone told me that this was not the natural order of things. Caleb was after more. He might want me, yes, but I also offered him something else as well. I wondered what that thing might be.

  If Galen had taught me anything in his years of enforcing and training it was to be cagey. If you couldn't overpower someone with your strength, you undermined them with your intelligence.

  Caleb might be stronger than me, he proved it time and time again, but he was not more intelligent. It was time for me to remind him of that.

  I struggled to my feet, trying to ignore the pain in my shoulder, and I took trembling steps toward the bars, close enough that I could look into his
mossy green eyes and offer him everything in my face that he wanted to see.

  "When do we do this thing?" I said, trying on a mask of resentful compliance. He would never believe a complete turn around. I'd have to make it look as though my acceptance was a begrudging one.

  His charcoal eyelashes beat like moth wings as he considered my seeming acceptance.

  He swallowed, and I thought something in the back of his mind might be telling him this was a trick, but that he badly wanted to believe he had won.

  "With witnesses," he said. "That's when we'll do this."

  I staggered backwards, gripping my shoulder and trying not sway off my feet from the pain. Surely he didn't want to ravage me in front of a group of leering werewolves. I'd often suspected his tastes ran a bit dark, but I always assumed exhibitionism wasn't one of them. Partly because I just as often suspected he was a bit rough with his human lovers and he wouldn't want a witness to those predilections.

  "No," I said, shaking my head. "I'll do this, but I won't go through it on stage."

  "Not on stage, Shana," Caleb said. "Right here." He nodded toward the bed. "I'll have a camera set up so you won't even know we're being watched."

  "Camera?" I barely squeaked out the word. "No."

  Even though I knew my complaisance was a mere ruse to get close enough to him to tear his heart out, I didn't relish the thought of any part of the act getting recorded.

  He sighed. "Just you and me, and one camera."

  "Are you a lunatic?" The feigned resentment from before bloomed into a very real sentiment. "You want members of this pack to see their assassin debasing herself?"

  "Just enough of a show to prove my position and then the camera gets shut off and we enjoy the rest of the experience together. Alone."

  I nearly gagged, and would have ruined the ruse had I not noticed the blur of metal moving into my field of vision and heard a metallic click of a bullet engaging in its chamber. It took a mere heartbeat for me to realize that Jeb, who had remained silent during the entire exchange, had used the opportunity to step closer to Caleb and had pointed the muzzle of his pistol at his temple. I could tell Caleb hadn't expected the sudden movement either, and his Adam's apple plunged down his throat as he froze. I knew the pain of the bullets in that barrel, and I imagined Caleb didn't relish the thought of feeling the same searing agony for all of the three seconds it would take for his brains to rip away from his brainstem.