Hello, friend, I sent to her.
We zoomed by and onward until the road ended in a gate that led to another, smoother road. Jackson finally slowed down then, stopping just before the gate.
He kicked down a strip of metal at the side and, after we both climbed off, propped the car up on it. Turning, Jackson reached for my helmet and gently pulled it over my head.
I couldn’t help a small laugh. “I’ve battled dragons, Jackson; I think I can manage to take off a helmet.”
“Sorry,” he said, as another smirk fought its way onto his lips. He set the helmet on the seat of the car and stepped away. “We’re going to go on ahead while my brothers load the dirt bikes onto their trucks.”
Dirt bikes: a two-wheeled motorized vehicle used for going off roads and onto uneven terrain.
I stared at him for a minute, realizing that not only had I been calling these dirt bikes by the wrong name with them not correcting me, but they had laughed at me about it back at the beginning of the ravine.
Jackson looked up, perhaps realizing I wasn’t following him toward the gate. “You coming? I don’t think they’ll catch up for another few minutes, and we should probably get going,” he asked, his brows arching high on his forehead.
“I’m coming,” I said. As I followed Jackson, I decided I was going to have to teach the werewolf a lesson about who he was dealing with.
Chapter Six
Jackson
“Fine, we’re all fine. Nothing happened,” Becca, my twin and second-in-command, said through the truck’s speaker for perhaps the fifteenth time after we moved into cell reception area.
“Good. We’ll be there in about twenty minutes; we’re pulling onto the PCH right now.” I pressed the button on my steering wheel to disconnect the call and then glanced over at Artemis as we turned onto the Pacific Coast Highway.
She sat on the far side of the wide suede bench seat of my truck. Though the traffic was light, probably because it was Thursday mid-morning, this was the first time we’d seen any congestion. We saw almost no one on the trip down from the Santa Monica Mountains. The whole trip down, though, Artemis glared at the roads like their existence was a personal insult to her.
My best guess for how long she’d been away from the world was at least a hundred and fifty years, but it could be as much as two hundred or more. She didn’t know what a car was, which was how I got the first date. She didn’t know squat about Los Angeles, which was where I got the second.
Her expression didn’t change, but her gaze darted over the long lines of cars on either side of the PCH. We pulled along the ocean where beachgoers lounged on blankets and under umbrellas. Even during school and work hours, there was very little visible sand between bodies. Los Angeles. Home sweet home.
“Why are you staring at me, Jackson Hunter?”
Damn it. I was busted. But to be honest, it wasn’t entirely my fault; my wolf took a lot of the blame on this one. The way she’d smelled as she pressed her body against mine while we descended the mountain, every instinct in me told me to claim my mate. Even though the scent of her arousal had dissipated to almost nothing, my wolf wouldn’t settle.
She shot a smirk at me. “Aren’t you supposed to pay attention while you operate this vehicle?”
“I was just wondering if you wanted your window down.”
Looking forward at the windshield, that same small amount of confusion furrowed her brow.
“Here,” I said, using my controls in the door to roll down both of our windows. If I weren’t watching her way too close, I wouldn’t have noticed that she startled. But she did, just the slightest bit.
Strands of her dark curls flew around her face as she turned to me. “There are some questions I need to ask you before I start hunting,” she said.
“That would be before we start hunting, right?” I raised my brows at her, but followed quickly with, “Sure, ask away.”
A smile flitted across her lips, and she shook her head.
“Do you have a lover?”
I glanced sideways at her, not able to hide the amusement I felt at her question. “Why?” I asked.
She pushed her hair out of her face and gave me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry for prying into your personal relationships. I promise I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Do you have a lover outside your pack?”
“No.”
“Did you recently?”
I worked my jaw. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of my past. Usually, I could give two fucks what anyone thought about my sex life. But, right now, I cared. Whether I wanted to or not, I cared.
As if she knew how uncomfortable I was, she reached between us. “You think I will judge you because of my vow, don’t you?”
It hadn’t even occurred to me, but I didn’t correct her.
She shook her head. “Most people make that mistake. Many also believe I hate men, but it's not true either.” A smile lit across her lips. “You should meet my family. Aside from my mother, the ones I love the most are both male and far from celibate.”
“I’m not judging you.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “I haven’t had a steady girlfriend for a while, but there have been women. I don’t see werewolf women, but the women I saw were in the community somehow. Witches, mostly.”
As much as she had denied it bothering her, after I said the words, her lips puckered and eyes narrowed just slightly, making me think she wasn’t as free of judgment as she claimed. “Have any of them gone missing as well?”
I blinked at her. “Not . . . that I know of.”
“Of the wolves that went missing, were any of them your . . . girlfriend?”
“No,” I said immediately and emphatically. My pack follows me; I’d never sleep with one of them.” Unless they turned out to be my true mate, I didn’t say, but that had never come up.
“So, what are you actually asking about?” At first I thought—hoped, damn it—she’d wanted to know about my love life for her own reasons, but I suspected it was something more hunt-related now.
Obviously.
Virgin goddess.
My wolf was a sadist.
And damn it, I had to get my head back in the game. I’d obsessed about this killer plaguing my pack for months now, and suddenly I was forgetting it left and right.
She looked forward, releasing her hair to blow in her face and not answering me.
And now, no matter what my wolf was telling me, I was starting to get pissed off. “You might not think you’re going to need me to do this hunt—but I promise you that you are. Even if you’ve been to this area before, you don’t know the city like I do. Right now, we’re on the outskirts where there are few people, but real quick here, there are going to be millions of people and cars, thousands of streets and buildings. And you might be the best tracker ever, but I’m damn good at it—and if you try to leave me behind, I’ll track you.”
She gave me a challenging look. “You could try, mortal.”
“You’ll also likely need detailed information on the murders, connections in the government and police, and money, all things I have. We could chase each other around la-la-land, or we could just work together and get this shit done with. This is my fight, not yours, and I’m not handing it off to anyone. That creature, he’s mine.”
“She’s yours.”
I squeezed my steering wheel, hard. “Damn it. I’m not being sexist.”
“And I’m not being critical.” She sighed. “I’m almost certain your monster is a woman.”
I waited for her to continue, but she just stared out the window at the passing coastline. Fuck it. I broke first. “Then what kind of monster is she?”
Artemis glanced over. “I’ll tell you soon. I’m not rejecting you as a hunting partner. I agree, in this terrain, you are more knowledgeable than me. Even though I could navigate it without you . . .” she looked as if the words almost pained her on the way out, “We’ll move faster together.”
“Thanks.”
&nb
sp; “But you must promise not to do anything foolish, like try to protect me.” She gave me a very serious look that underlined her point in a fat black line and added an exclamation point for good measure. “Immortal.” She pointed at herself and then at me. “Mortal.”
“I get it,” I said, and it was true. My wolf was the one who didn’t understand and the one panting to do something foolish. Even now, he was urging me to grab her seat belt and buckle it—something she had flatly refused to do after she climbed up into the truck. But I wasn’t thirteen anymore, and even if my wolf were acting up more than usual, controlling him wouldn’t be a struggle.
Flicking my blinker to signal left, I turned away from the ocean and onto a private road. At the end of the road, we stopped before the seemingly solid wall enclosing my three-story house. It opened to reveal a human peeking his bald head out from a guard booth. Harold nodded and ducked back into the booth.
Knowing my time with Artemis was about to be over, I asked, “When you say you’ll tell me what this monster is ‘soon,’ when is soon?”
“It needs to be after I talk to your pack. Then you will take me to the place where your most recent pack mate died.”
I nodded to Harold, the security officer the studio had sent us. He gave a half wave as he maneuvered his bulk back into the custom-sized chair we provided for him.
“And then you’ll tell me at the scene,” I insisted.
Her hand grabbed at the door handle as if she was very ready to get out of the car. “At the scene, I will know for sure.”
Even though we hadn’t fully stopped, she opened the car door and hopped out, shutting the door behind her.
I slammed on my breaks. “Damn it,” I swore as I hopped out.
She was already striding to the front door like she was just going to stroll right into the pack house. Her bow was again slung over her back, meaning she’d somehow grabbed it out of the bed of my truck as she jumped out the door.
“Artemis,” I called.
Her eyes widened, and she looked a little surprised as I stalked toward her.
“How about we compromise here? I’ll do my best not to try to protect you—even though it goes against my instincts. In exchange, you don’t ditch me—leave me behind,” I corrected, as she probably didn’t know that expression. “Even if that means that you wait two minutes so I can park my truck.”
Her gaze moved over to where I’d parked in the middle of the driveway. “You needed me in there for a hundred more feet?”
“Yeah, I did. Because my pack in there? They don’t know you. You’re coming in armed, and they’ve had a hell of a couple of months. They’ll attack you—and I don’t want that for either you or them.”
She looked between me and the house, and I wasn’t sure if I imagined it, but I thought her cheeks might have reddened just the slightest bit. “I agree to your compromise in most circumstances.”
I wanted to argue with the ‘in most circumstances’ but damn it, I was tired of arguing. I just wanted to get inside, make sure my pack-mates were safe and then head out to hunt down the psychotic she-monster that thought werewolves tasted like a delicious snack.
A woman monster.
I was going to have to get used to that idea; it had been a ‘he’ in my mind for so long now.
True to her word, Artemis waited for me to catch up to her and stepped in next to me. We left the truck where it was and headed up the private road toward where the house perched on the cliff-side.
My house looked just as I left it—meaning no new gunshots gouged into the patched-up Spanish tile roof. The house was restored to its original mission adobe style. A wide porch stood out from the house. Around the porch, thick square columns held up an awning that gave us a little shade from the sun on days like these. The arched portal held a door made of six inches of solid oak. Usually, when an outsider visited, they commented on the old style of architecture, the carved archways and thick adobe columns and walls; Artemis glanced around with a small smile on her lips as if this was the first sight she’d seen today that she was at home with.
This house had been purchased by my predecessor before the turn of the century, back when Malibu had been a very different place. We’d held tight as the area grew more and more populated around us. We owned a stretch of land in every direction, securing our house against the possibility of neighbors. The old-style house was huge, sprawling over the cliff side. It had felt right when there was over thirty of us there, now the emptiness of the expansive mansion constantly shouted how much I’d fucked up over the past year.
Seconds after we crossed the gravel line that encircled the house up to the cliff on both sides, the door opened, and Becca stepped outside and leaned against the wrought iron fence that twisted its way through the porch’s colonnade.
My twin didn’t smile, but I knew her well enough to know she was damn happy to see me. She just had a serious load of pissed off to get off her chest before she could show it. Her long dark hair was done up in a sleek brown bun that pulled her hair away from her nearly feline features. Her big dark eyes inspected Artemis quickly, catching on the bow slung over her back and at the knife handle sticking out of Artemis’ boot. “She doesn’t look like a doe to me,” she said, raising perfectly sculpted brows. “Where’d you get her, a movie set?”
My wolf rose, and I stepped in close to Artemis, ready to let my twin have it. But Artemis’ hand wrapped halfway around my forearm. When I looked down, I found Artemis grinning widely at my sister.
“Well met, young archer,” she said.
Becca glanced at Artemis and glared at me as she crossed her arms across her chest. “You brought home a weird-ass fan of ‘My Pack Life.'” If her eyes could shoot lasers, I’d be chopped in half. “Look, you know what I thought about your idea to go on some quest for a deer, but I supported you. But bringing home groupies to let off steam when we’re neck deep in shit—I’d expect that of Aiden, but not you!”
“Becca, shut it!”
“Um, no. I don’t think so.”
Damn it. A glance at Artemis assured me her smile was still in place. It made me think she must not have comprehended what my sister had called her. I wanted to object, but at the same time, I was nervous that if I did, Artemis might figure out what a groupie was and kill Becca for the insult. I might be rusty on my mythology, but I was pretty sure mortals met gruesome demises for less. However, if I understood Artemis’ time away from the human world right, she’d never seen a television let alone watched one; the concepts my sister was spewing might have gone completely over her head. I hoped to all that was sacred in this world that was true.
My twin sister was hot-headed as hell, but she was also the person I loved and trusted most in this world.
Lowering my voice, I growled, “Becca, that’s enough. She’s never watched our fucking show.”
If possible, Becca’s glare only intensified. As her dominance was only a little less than mine, she shook off my command as only she could. “Then how does she know I’m an archer, Jackie-boy? Tell me that. If she says she’s not a groupie, then you’re an idiot for believing her.” Becca turned on Artemis. “Look, you need to get out of here now. This isn’t a good time for humans—or whatever you are, to be here.”
“Becca,” I growled in warning, something she should have heeded, but she didn’t.
Right as she drew herself up and I knew she was really going to let me have it, Artemis drew her hand away from my arm only to reach out and touch my sister’s fingers. “That’s how I knew.”
Becca turned to her, mouth hanging open.
“Your fingers. That was how I knew you were an archer—those calluses are distinctive, and I know them well.” Artemis shouldered off her bow and held it out to my sister. “Show me your skill, mortal.”
Becca was still gaping, her gaze hopping between where Artemis had touched her and the bow outstretched toward her. I wasn’t sure if she was outraged, just startled or both.
“Are you
not skilled?” Artemis asked.
“I was a world champion before they took my trophies away,” Becca said with the resentment the words deserved. It had been a shit couple of years for all of us since we came out, her especially.
“I’d like you to prove it, if you would be so kind,” Artemis said.
I thought Becca was seconds from blowing her lid, but, surprising the hell out of me, my twin reached forward and grabbed the bow. Her manicured fingers wrapped around the carved light-colored wood. “Wait—what did you call me?”
“I called you both an archer and mortal,” Artemis said, still smiling at my sister as if they were old friends. She reached back to her quiver and pulled out an arrow that my sister also accepted. “Could you shoot the sign on that tree there?”
The sign she gestured to was one Luca made back when we had things like humor around the pack house. It read: Dear drunk-asses and dumbasses, this is a cliff. Don’t fall off it.
Beside the message, a crudely rendered arrow pointed down.
“The arrow on the sign,” my sister said, taking aim.
Artemis stepped forward, standing almost directly in my sister’s path.
“What are you doing?” Becca asked, though she didn’t drop her aim.
Artemis turned fully to my sister, clear challenge in her eyes, though the grin did not waver. “A world champion could shoot past me.”
I wanted to stop this, but something in me screamed that the right thing was not to get involved.
“If you say so,” Becca said, and then she loosed the arrow.
The arrow shot through the air toward Artemis. Right when it should have passed her, Artemis moved suddenly, lifting up one finger that collided with the arrow. The arrow shot off in a different direction and with a loud ‘thwack’ embedded into the wood of our front door, dead center.
Becca and I just stared for a minute. Likely, my sister was trying to figure out what the hell had just happened, just as I was. From what I could tell, the arrow had been streaming past Artemis when she touched it and turned its trajectory nearly ninety degrees to head straight for the door.
The Virgin Goddess and the Alpha Page 6
