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

by Thea Atkinson

  "Go away until I feel better," I told him, turning away and heading again for the bed. I collapsed on it face down and mumbled into the silk duvet. "I can't give you what you want like this. Get someone to extract this bullet. Maybe then we'll talk."

  He laughed from behind me, but I heard him order the jailer to check me every hour. I might have even heard Jeb's voice moments later, telling the jailer to leave, that I'd kill a weakling like him if he so much as came near me with a thermometer. I chuckled into the fabric. Damn straight I would.

  It was a hollow threat. I was in no shape to kill a newborn mouse.

  Jeb, the torture master of Guantánamo Bay, came at me when I was at my worst. I lay bogged down in fever, unable to stop him when he reached for me with a pair of long, needle-nosed tweezers. They looked like medical instruments for a second before I realized they were black and gooey pliers. He'd pull my fingernails out. Strip each eyelash from the lids. I'd be helpless beneath Jeb's hand as he did whatever he wanted to convince me to submit to Caleb. I tried to scrabble off the bed, kicked out at Jeb when he came too close. I could stop it all if I wanted. Just say the words to my torturer and they'd be delivered to Caleb and I'd be free. I even let my beast's desire for Caleb pool into the small crevices of my mind. It wouldn't be so bad, bonded to a wolf with that much power. There was a certain, shuddering longing to feel that power fill me, knowing it belonged to me.

  Then the rational human mind scuffed aside the beast like it was a whiny bitch at a supper table. It made no sense for Jeb to be there. It didn't make sense that Caleb would want me tortured. He had nothing to gain from it.

  It only made sense when I noticed my mother standing behind Jeb, telling me I was weak. I needed the silver because only it could make me strong. Like exposure to germs strengthened immunity, so too did exposure to silver for a shifter. Best take it, Shana. Work through the pain until it became part of you, till your body accepted it like breath.

  Jeb was my mother's muscle, that's what. Not Caleb's at all. I whimpered as I realized that. I begged to be relieved.

  "I'm trying," Jeb said. "Keep still."

  I tried to bite down on his hand when it came at me again. My mother stood behind him, laughing. I knew that next thing would be colloidal silver spray in my eyes. I shuddered in fear as I waited and squeezed my eyelids shut in reflex. In the next instant, Jeb's cool fingers whispered across my forehead. I looked up at him, cross-eyed. I was vaguely aware of a cloth stuffed into my mouth, of the dry rasp of it against my tongue, sopping up my screams as effectively as my spit.

  "Shh," he said. "Be good. This won't take long."

  When my shoulder went hot as though a fire-hot poker was being jammed through my wound, every note of sound in the room seemed sucked into a vortex that claimed even the pounding thud of my heartbeat.

  "There," I thought I heard him say. "Let's see how brave that bastard is now."

  The tweezers came into blurry, red-washed view again as he inspected the tip. Some gaudy hunk of metal squatted between them and some part of me felt elated. A prickle trembled down my skin. My beast wanted out. My body was too weak to open the door for it and I whimpered, thinking the worst would be over. My mother glared at me over Jeb's shoulder.

  "Fuck you," I said, and heard the way the words came out as a mash of incoherent syllables that secreted themselves into the folds of clot in my mouth. Tears made volcanic tracks of wet down into my temples and pooled beneath my nape. I wouldn't give in no matter what they did to me. Jeb could score my heart from my chest and I wouldn't submit to Caleb. I'd told him before he would have to do better than he was, and it seemed he was trying by sending Jeb here to score pieces of muscle and tissue from my body. No doubt he walked away with a strip or two of flesh. It certainly felt like it.

  Pain couldn't reach me. Threat of harm to my brothers either. No doubt Caleb had already killed them anyway. That was the likely thing. He'd shown them to me as bait, making me believe I could save them. All I had left to fight him with until I could get my hands personally on this throat was my wits. I would think smart. Like Galen had taught me.

  Just when I thought relief would come, fresh agony made a sprint across my collarbone and tightened my jaw. I felt as though liquid were being poured over my chest and shoulder, hot liquid. Painful and searing liquid as though it were hot metal streaming down my skin, coating the nerve endings in pain.

  I wanted to struggle against the machinations, but my legs had become twin lengths of lead. My wrists suffered a second searing jolt of pain. Silver, my pain -soaked mind told me. I thought I saw Jeb's chiseled face looming above mine, an almost sympathetic appeal in his eyes.

  "For all he knows," he whispered. "The damn thing is still in there. Make the best of that."

  Then that rugged face was gone. The relief of his departure, sparing me the rest of his creative brand of torture, the exhaustion and the fever partnered together like newlyweds. In moments, I knew no more.

  Take off Your Pants

  I wasn't sure what time did as it passed. If Kahlil Gibran spoke of yesterday being nothing but today's memory and tomorrow being today's dream, I was in big shit because I didn't dream at all while I was out. In fact, I barely remembered falling asleep. I only knew that I almost found consciousness once or twice. In those times, it was Jeb's face looming over mine. I cursed at him each time I recognized him and remembered why we were both there. His lips would purse together and he'd nod at someone behind him, mutter things like I'd be fine. Give it a few more hours.

  I came to in the darkness. Full night. The beast within recognized the smell of two A.M and it quickened. I wanted to transform, become my true self, feel the primal thrum of the forest floor beneath my feet. I had the feeling it was full moon and yet I knew it couldn't be. I'd only been here a few days at most. The moon had waxed just three days before my father's assassination.

  I couldn't do more than sniff the air and long for freedom. Cuffed, of course. No doubt with silver manacles while I'd lain helpless. One wrist was over my head, while the other lay free so I could move about in my sleep but not escape. Strangely enough, they didn't burn my skin. I wanted to blame Caleb, but I knew it had been Jeb. I chuckled in the gloom of the room and scooted up onto my bottom, leaning against the headboard. I felt stronger. Weak from exhaustion, perhaps but definitely stronger. The infection was waning and the pain in my shoulder had lifted. I only felt the burn of silver now if I moved too fast.

  A few more hours and I'd be right as rain. I stared into the darkness, re-acquainting my memory with every facet and furniture of the suite. I'd slept enough. When Jeb came next, he'd get a surprise. I would wait quiet as a mouse for his return and I'd let him hover over me and I'd wrap my ankle around his throat and bring him down. If he could get in, I could get out.

  When I finally heard keys jangle in the lock, the sun had long flung its blinders aside and winked awake. I hastened to lie flat, careful to position myself so I'd be ready, and I forced my breathing to move my stomach in the long, muscled undulations of deep sleep. I had to use my hearing and sense of smell to gauge the footsteps and how close the intruder was to the bed. I had to listen for his breathing, scent out his fragrance. I expected the tang of soap and licorice that I'd come to recognize as Jeb's scent. Instead it was chemicalized cologne and the sickening aroma of bubblegum. The beast in me recognized Caleb's scent and tried to tell my human self things were just the way they should be. I sent her a fuck you.

  "I know you're awake," Caleb said, but before I could respond, a frigid blast of ice water splashed over my chest and sprayed onto my face. I couldn't hold back the reaction of shock. I bolted upward, forgetting my wrist was manacled to the headboard. I jerked as it caught at me before I could lurch from the bed. My teeth clacked together.

  I was gasping and coughing and it took several moments for me to to realize something dangled from Caleb's fingers.

  "Sweet god," I said as the stink of fresh blood and the beginnings of rot clawe
d its way into my olfactories. I gagged not because I was afraid of the smell of death or was queasy about the act of killing. I gagged because I recognized the face of the head he grasped, divested of its aged and beloved body.

  "You didn't," I said, clutching at my stomach with my free hand.

  "No," he said. "You did." He lobbed Sayed's head at me and I was just quick enough to avoid being struck on the chest with it. I rolled on the duvet and came to a stop with his face gaping up at me.

  I tried to pull my hand free of the cuffs. "Bastard," I said. "You can't blame his death on me. The council will know better."

  "The council will die one by one until you submit."

  I couldn't pull my eyes from Sayed's dead ahead gaze. The wisest of our counsellors. The kindest. The Ghandi of Beo pack. His caramel colored skin had a pasty appearance and the way his black eyes were frozen in accusation taunted me, sent a wave of guilt up my spine that made me shiver.

  "Your fault, Shana," Caleb said.

  "No."

  "Oh yes. They will all die one by one, in their beds, on the toilet as this old fart did, when they make love to their she-wolves. Oh yes," he said grinning as he caught my reaction. "I have infiltrated the most vulnerable of places."

  "Meaning you used the weak to plunder our strength." I shifted sideways and delivered a kick to Sayed's head with a wet smack to the floor. "I'm sorry, old man," I whispered and glared up at Caleb. He was wearing that infuriating plaid shirt again, a red-neck hoodlum of the worst kind, but he still looked so damned gorgeous in it, it made me cranky.

  "Your mercenary humans and traitorous wolves are weak, Caleb, if you have to fight your battles in the bathrooms and bedrooms of our elders."

  He launched himself at me so quick I was only just bringing my knee up to kick out at him. He swooped in beneath my defenses the way he'd always done when we'd trained together. Damn him, he was always the better fighter. I was still working out how to use my free hand to leverage an attack when he gripped the shoulder where Jeb's bullet had embedded, jamming a finger against the bandage Jeb had installed and poking into the tender flesh. I shrieked.

  My next breath carried to my nostrils the distinct fragrance of licorice.

  "You want her feverish again," Jeb drawled as he slouched in the doorframe of the cell. "Keep poking at that wound."

  "What I do with my mate is my business, human," Caleb said, swinging around to face Jeb. In the second he had the last words from his mouth, I gripped his throat with my free elbows and yanked him hard against me. I had him. Elation made my chest hurt. I fell backwards onto the bed with him, but I'd either misjudged how cagey he was or how weak I still was. He had somehow turned into a wriggling spider with eight legs, and in a single heartbeat had managed with very little effort to pin me beneath his forearm. He hadn't so much as broken a sweat while I panted beneath him, my head swimming like a kaleidoscope.

  "Get off her," Jeb said.

  Caleb rammed his elbow into my throat. "Stay down," he commanded. As though I was some bitch to be commanded.

  "Go to hell," I said from beneath the pressure.

  His mouth twitched and I thought he would say something until I noticed Jeb looming over his shoulder.

  "Get off her," he said again. "You want her whole or do you want her sick. Your choice." His voice carried a shrug that didn't make it to his shoulders. Indifferent. Clinical. Ever the torture master trying to be practical about the results.

  "She needs to remember her place," Caleb said and squeezed my chin painfully. I twisted free of his fingers.

  "I know my place," I said. Given enough time, I would show him just how well I knew it.

  Caleb eased off me and backed away.

  I eyed him with unsuppressed malice. I wanted him to feel the burn of my hatred through the very air that joined us. All he saw was something that made him smirk.

  "You can't wait to get me inside you, can you?" he said with a laugh. "Your human half is disgusted, but the wolf. Well, that's another story."

  "My halves are of the same mind," I lied.

  He made a sound that indicated he thought otherwise.

  "You need to face the facts, Shana," he said. "Your cavalry is dying one by one while you lay here chained to your mother's bed. If you ever want to see your brothers again, if you ever want to smell the outside, feel your change come on you, you will take the damn deal."

  "Fine," I said. "Let's do it." The sooner I gave in, the sooner I could kill him.

  He pulled his shirt edges down over his jeans waistband. He huffed as he did so as though he had finally made a stupid child see reason. He was too arrogant, however, to question whether or not I meant it. If he was surprised by my sudden change of heart, he didn't show it, obviously choosing to believe his reason and my wolf's lust had won over my stubbornness.

  "I can have recording equipment set up within the hour."

  I sighed as I lay there, trying to affect some sort of dignity with my hand stuck above my head, the blood draining from it, doing my best to hold his gaze calmly despite my urge to rake his eyes from their sockets. I would have shrugged diffidently if it didn't hurt my disjointed shoulder so bloody much.

  "Gives me time to take shower." Maybe he would even let me out of this damned panic room.

  He looked me up and down, his gaze leveling on my throat and staying there.

  "Normally I wouldn't want you to rid yourself of your scent," he said. "But I know it would make you feel more at ease under the circumstances."

  I wanted to say that the only thing that would put me at ease would be to feel his heart stuttering out its last beat in the cold grip of my hands, but I bit back that retort. Instead, I nodded at him with all the seeming compliance and docile nature of a bitch in heat.

  "A girl does have her vanities," I said trying to force the words across my tongue without gagging on them. I caught sight of Jeb over Caleb's shoulder and noted the way he smirked at his boss's back. Caleb might be buying it, but Jeb the mercenary was not. The light streaming in from the portico haloed his charcoal hair. It was such a juxtaposition of my own fury and feckless desire for Caleb that I couldn't help sucking in a breath. I decided my best bet was to avoid looking at him at all.

  "A girl does indeed have her vanities," Caleb said. "And since you're about to be on camera," he said. "I'd say a nice soak is in order. You're pretty filthy and bloody. You know the room, surely. No shower, only a tub."

  He would make me stay here till it was done then. I seethed silently, pretending his face was beneath my fingernails.

  He turned to where Jeb still stood.

  "I don't want her doing something like drowning herself when I'm this close," Caleb said to him. Then he turned a suspicious eye on me. "You wouldn't do such a thing, would you?"

  I smiled up at him prettily, except my teeth bit into my lip as I did so. "Like you said, Caleb," I said, tasting the coppery tang of blood and swallowing it down so I would remember the taste when I was finally able to chase it with revenge. "You have me at a disadvantage."

  "Still," he said, jamming his hands into his pockets. They worked in there the way I imagined his mind did, turning over every little piece of lint. "I can't take any chances." He strode around the bed to a small occasional table that rested beneath a shuttered window. I knew those shutters were for looks only. He pulled open the drawer and lifted out a pair of leather gloves. As he slipped them on, he glanced back over his shoulder, taking me in with a not-so-subtle look of distrust. Then he lifted out a set of silver handcuffs from his back pocket and tossed them to Jeb.

  "Those don't have the silicone coating," he said. "Don't take any chances. She's a wily one."

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Jeb caught them with a quick flick of his wrist. The jangle of them hanging in the air and swinging to rest unnerved me.

  "It means she'll have your throat torn out and be bathing in your blood while your eyes still think they're ogling her soapy flesh."

  No mention of the
fact that he'd sent Jeb in to torture me while I was ill. No worries that I would execute the man who stuck pliers into my shoulder while I seethed in fever. Strange. Perhaps Caleb hadn't known and Jeb had come here on his own. I narrowed my eyes as I studied the human man, trying to wrest from my memory exactly what had happened the night before. For some reason the pliers I remembered didn't seem right anymore. The feel of his hands on my skin wasn't quite so rough. I turned a studious gaze to Jeb, my mind flipping over every aspect of the memory, hoping he would shine some light on the pieces I overturned.

  Nothing from Jeb except a short seesawing of his bottom jaw. Caleb laughed as he watched.

  "That's right," he said, noting the way Jeb shifted from one foot to the other uncomfortably. "I can't trust her for one moment alone until we're bonded, and I'm certainly not going to leave the task of watching over her while she bathes to another wolf."

  This wasn't going at all as I planned. I looked from one man to the other, realizing the quiet message that had passed between them, and exactly what implications it had for me. "You can't mean –"

  "That's exactly what I mean," Caleb said, throwing me a snide smile. "I can't leave you alone, not even to take a piss. Although I hate any other man looking at your most voluptuous form, at least he's just a human, and a good alpha does what he must for the good of his pack."

  "They're not your pack," I ground out.

  His gaze traveled across the room to where the rather overly done and posh en suite bathroom waited. "You have exactly one hour," he said. "Make it worth my wait."

  "Then watch me yourself," I said, the bile rising to my throat as I imagined this human man standing over me.

  "Normally, I would like nothing better, but I have a couple of things to do first," he said. "Like arrange for the camera."

  I watched him with quiet indignation as he left, pulling the door that shut off the suite closed behind him. I was still chewing over a dozen different ways I was going to kill him when I felt Jeb's hands grip my free hand and pull it over my head to join its mate at the headboard. With stoic efficiency, he snapped silver handcuffs closed around both wrists then jammed the key into the lock for the one attached to the headboard. It clicked open and I ended up liberated from the headboard of the bed, but with my hands bound by the cuffs and with the first cost dangling from my wrist. It was in that moment that I understood what Caleb meant by not having a coating. These newer ones were raw silver with a stainless steel chain, strong enough to withstand any struggles, and painful enough to keep me from wanting to struggle at all. I might have winced, but I refused to show this man any weakness.