I could feel the eyes of the crowd on my back, burning there like minuscule cigarette burns. My mother flicked her gaze over my shoulder and then back onto me again. Then she straightened up, pulling her loose-fitting gypsy blouse down over her hips. Oh, she had gone to such pains to make yourself look like a vagabond and a woman of delicate sensibilities. They might be fooled, but I knew better.
"You need me, Shana," she said.
""I don't need you," I said. I shook my head. "I don't need you, and Lynden doesn't need you. The pack doesn't need you."
"You're wrong," she said shaking her head. "You do need me. You need both of us." She waved behind her to take in her husband.
"If you don't leave right now, I'm going to tear you both in half."
She looked at me with what might have been pride if she hadn't let a brief moment of panic cross her face. "You know I can't do that," she said. "It's starting here and you need us."
"All I see starting is that you're gathering supporters. You want to take over this pack."
She cocked her head at me. "What makes you think I would do such a thing? I left it decades ago. What makes you think that I'd want it back?"
I shrugged. "Oh I don't know, maybe because you've always felt as though you were the one who had been wronged." "Maybe because you thought you were the one who brought all of these members of the pack to my father. That he took them from you."
I'd been young, but I had heard the arguments. And in the wee hours of the morning after she had trained me, she told me some of her secrets. She obviously thought they wouldn't return to haunt her. That a child was too young to understand. But someone who lived in her head like I did all those years-- ran over words as though they were savoury meat because it was all I had to feed my reason, working over them like beads to find out why I had been such a bad girl and deserved such treatment-- a girl like that remembered things.
She waved her hand in the air. "You were a child, Shana," she said. "How can you know what I felt?"
"I know what you did to me." It was out before I could stop it and I bit my lip to keep from saying more. The tears had started to burn behind my eyelids.
"I can't be here," I said, feeling the insane urge to tear off into the woods again. I reached my hand out, hoping Jeb would see it and take it. I needed grounding. I needed to tether to this place so I could do what I had to. So that I would not run off like a frightened child when it's all I felt like doing. The tattooed man stepped between us just as my mother stepped forward.
"Let me help," she said. She reached out for me and in that moment, I snapped. Before I could think about what I was doing, I lunged for her, my fingers aimed for her throat. I didn't have time to even think about changing into my wolf form. All I knew was I felt her fleshy neck beneath my palms and I dug my fingers in, wrapping them around her neck and shaking. It wasn't enough. What I really wanted to do was cut that thinly graceful throat and bathe in her blood. I felt an almost manic rictor takeover my face. My lips pulled back as though I were in my wolf form, my teeth bared. I was even snarling at her.
Then I was thrust back, and thrown to the ground with such force that I clamped down on my tongue. Everything in my vision went black for a second. The taste of copper stung my mouth and water pooled at sides, my body trying to wash down or dilute the blood, coating my tongue with pain-relieving endorphins. I looked up at her dazed.
I knew she hadn't pushed me. She didn't have time to even raise a hand to me. Something else had done it. Something strange. I felt an electric buzz all through my body, as though every inch of my skin was a wet and salty conductor and that I had pressed it intimately against a battery. It took a moment for me to catch my breath and when I did, my vision finally returned. I blinked around me. Swallowed. The crowd of people had intensified, and their murmuring was like a buzz of bees finding a new orchard of blossoms. They had just seen their alpha lurch for an opponent and get thrust to the ground like nothing more than a sock puppet. But who was responsible? Not my mother, surely. Not my brother. No one had pulled me away.
It took me several seconds to notice my mother's tattooed man standing next to her, his arms still stretched to the sky, fingers still waggling from the purple sparks that jumped from one tip to the other. As I watched, those little sparks gathered together and curved into one perfect arc between his palms. His hair stood on end as though he had touched an electric outlet. The tattoos on his face outlined in red as though they were fresh. His eyes were set on me with an intensity that made me wince. Him. He had done this to me. It was at that moment I heard a cough coming from where Jeb had stood and I swung my gaze toward him. He had fallen backward, pistol left abandoned next to his splayed arm as though it had spilled from his hand. He pushed himself up onto one elbow as he peered back at me. I wasn't sure whether the mystic had attacked us because I had leapt for my mother or because Jeb had leapt to protect me. I only knew that the power the man held was enough to knock us both flat and that Jeb fully understood what had just happened. Even so, His face was an implacable mask. Even I couldn't see what was going on behind those eyes.
He pushed himself to his feet managing all the while to appear as though the magic hadn't hurt him one bit, even when blood trickled down from his left nostril and pooled above his mouth.
"That's enough," he said. "You touch her one more time, wizard, and I will shoot you where you stand."
I noticed as he found solid footing, he already had a pistol in his hand, pulled, no doubt, from the other side of his body. Just how many guns did the man pack on a regular basis anyway?
Everything went silent. It was clear to me that the Mystic couldn't pull one more bolt from the air because he was swaying on his feet and the energy had begun to make a strange hissing sound. It was equally clear that Jeb was waiting for my order, trying to remind the watching pack who was truly in charge. I couldn't bring myself to give the order. I couldn't even find strength in my legs to stand.
It was Lynden who broke the tension. In an almost imperialistic command, he shouted loud enough, I knew the crowd heard. "Enough," he said.
The murmuring grew louder. Someone shouted my mother's name.
His naïve little head swiveled toward the lawn and for a second I thought he might start to cry, but then he clenched his fists together beside his legs and yelled at them. "Shana is your alpha," he said. "And you better remember it. Now go home."
There was a trembling warble to his voice. He was doing his best to hold it together, poor thing. It must've been astounding and frightening to him to watch his sister be felled by a man obviously held a great amount of power. No doubt he was worried what would happen next, what with Jeb standing there pistol raised, the mystic obviously powering up for another bolt. Me, lying on the ground, a discarded sack of flesh.
It was Artemis who spoke next, a simple order of one word and the crowd dispersed. "Go," she said and they went.
Somehow I had to catch my breath, find the strength to stand. I rolled over onto my side and scrabbled to my feet. The look Lynden sent my way was one filled with relief but beneath it skittering under the surface was one of fear.
And I couldn't say I blamed him.
OLD BLOOD
I burned to tear into Artemis, but I was too weak and too damned spent to do so. I'd felt that unexpected burst of power and everything Alma had said to me came flooding back. Magics, visions, power. It was here the same as threat of the hunters was. If I was smart, I'd figure out how to use it, how to use Alma's magic, if she had it, and how to find a way to turn that magic back on them until the pack was safe and Artemis was gone and dead.
I struggled to my feet and staggered with as much dignity as I could muster under the circumstances to the front door. Enough of our dirty laundry had been aired for all the pack to see. I threw a command over my shoulder that the council be rounded up for an impromptu meeting. Some of them had been in the crowd, I knew. I'd seen them. Even heard one of them shout my mother's name.
&nb
sp; I heard them behind me as they followed. The Council consisted of ten members, and I had eyed about six of them in the masses of people who had begun to gather. Good. The more the merrier.
Lynden's soft sobs finally broke free his tenuous hold on his sense of control as we strode through the front door. I knew Jeb would take up the rear, forcing Artemis and her man ahead of him so he could watch them. I could almost feel his eyes on me, taking in the environment carefully, studying my posture. He would want to be ready when I was.
I headed toward my father's council room. My council room now, I told myself. It was a bit of a shock every time I entered the posh room to remember that I was the alpha now. I had come here with Jeb months ago to overthrow Caleb, fully planning to let myself be killed in order to save my pack. How far had I truly come in such a short while to now feel as though I was walking on eggshells around my own community, the shifters who might never have known how close they had come to being rogue. Perhaps I should have let the word spread of Caleb's coup and the efforts of Jeb and I to keep this pack together under the same sort of diplomatic rule they saw beneath my father. Maybe then they would appreciate exactly what was happening now.
In coming here then to rescue my brother and Jeb's sister and to take Caleb out as I did so, I had been fully prepared to die in the attempt. Jeb's homemade grenade I had clenched in my hand turned out to be no better than a dud and so the complex had been saved an explosion, but that didn't mean it was fully repaired. The windows that originally looked out over onto the grounds and allowed the moonlight to stream in during council meetings had to be replaced because they had been shattered as the council members broke through them to leap for the safety of the grass below.
While it might have been nice to have an escape route under threat, the ease with which they had broken the glass in the first place made me realize exactly how vulnerable we were to attack within the confines of the room. I had asked the maintenance men to install bulletproof glass as well as an escape hatch in the ceiling that could be locked from the inside only. I had grown nervous after the coup. I hadn't been about to let any part of my household go unguarded and be left vulnerable again.
Without swinging around to take in any of the other party members, I strode to the head of the table, only designated so by the high backed chair that sat on the other side of the room. The table itself was circular, much like Arthur's round table. My father had been a fan of the legend and a fan of the Democratic method of governing and I was doing my best to honour that tradition, but looking at my mother as she filed in and headed straight for the seat next to me, I was having a difficult time reflecting on the glory of democracy. I wished I could just roust her without ceremony.
She sat in the seat next to me without so much as a question about whether or not she should be there. Then she looked at me with those gleaming eyes of hers and opened her mouth to speak. I held up my hand to stop her. This wasn't her place. It was mine. If someone was going to call the meeting to order it would be me.
"It's unusual for us to come together during the day," I said, looking around the table at all of the council members who had assembled. Gerald sat on the other side of the table directly across from me. As a true patriot and the member who had agreed to my ascension, he had deferred to the seat closest to the door while the other five had taken seats closer to my mother. That didn't bode well. I let my glance rake over them quickly, just long enough to take in exactly which wolves would side so visibly with Artemis. Jeb, however, stood agitatedly next to the door frame. He had put his pistol away, but I could see his fingers itching over his jacket. Always well dressed. Always ready for action. The two seemed at odds with each other and I couldn't be more glad of it in the moment.
I had even let Lynden slip into the room and find a chair close to me. I reached for his hand under the table and gave it a squeeze. He should see what governing was truly like. He should see how difficult it was, how thankless. And then he should see how important it was for somebody to be willing to do those difficult and thankless things. If he never became alpha, he would need to be an understanding beta.
I took in the group again. "You all know my mother," I said without looking at her. "You know she has the old blood, and you know that she has come here offering help. What we need to decide is whether that help is needed."
Gerald cleared his throat from across the table and then swung his gaze around to each member of the Council. I noticed he kept his eyes away from Jeb. "She's of the old blood," he said. "Our pack would be nothing without her. Even if we don't get her help, we should at least allow her back in the pack."
I heard my own intake of breath. If anything, I had thought he would support my position, rather than the other way around.
I could feel my gaze grow hard as I regarded him. "She's not asking to be let back in," I said carefully, aware that my mother's eyes had landed on my profile with a bee sting of focus. "She's offering to help us with the threat we now have in front of us."
"Which is?" he said.
"We took in a rogue female," I said. "And because of her, we now have a squadron of killers at our doorstep."
"Huntsmen," my mother interjected almost meekly, as though she hated to correct me. "A family of Huntsmen. Generations old."
I swung my gaze to hers and locked on it. I hadn't asked her to speak. Hadn't invited her. The back of my neck prickled in anger. "I didn't ask for your information yet," I snapped.
"Nevertheless, Shana," she said with an indulgent, matronly tone, one of a wise mother correcting a foolish child but with such care and compassion, anyone listening might believe she hated to do it. I knew better. My fists clenched beneath the table.
"It's important information," she said. "These men have been hunters for generations. They are human, yes, but they have been trained since they shed their nappies. Their family is known as the warbrood and it goes back as far as my own line does. They almost decimated my entire lineage back before we even immigrated here. They've been born and bred to hate supernatural creatures. They are ruthless and merciless killers. All well-trained."
I noted that each council member went ramrod straight in their chairs. Gerald put his steepled fingers together and placed his chin on them, staring directly at my mother.
Jeb leaned forward and placed his finger top tips on the table. "They're not the only ones who are ruthless," he said with a note of menace in his voice.
Not to be outdone, my mother looked at him coolly. "One killer in comparison to hundreds?" she said. "I doubt you have the skill."
I knew Jeb wanted to counter that, but I waved my hand at him.
"Then what do you propose?" I asked her.
Artemis reached out to touch her husband on the shoulder. "Check here is a mystic." She smiled at me without humor. "As you yourself have seen. His power is almost limitless."
"Almost. He has some power. I did feel that." I might admit it, but I didn't have to go all ga ga over it or let her know how badly shaken I was at feeling the result of it.
She nodded with a secret smile. "He's the last member of his coven." She gave him a loving look. "And I believe he's the last of his kind. A werewolf who can't change but who holds the magic of transformation like a chalise to drink from at whim." She looked at him with indulgent eyes.
"How unfortunate he's the last," I said and couldn't manage to mask the sarcasm.
She ignored it and scanned the table, taking in every eye and indulging it with a loving sort of expression. "I met him just months ago when I myself was running from these hunters."
"You," I scoffed. "You run?"
She nodded at me. "Oh yes. I was running. Once they have your scent, they don't stop trailing you until you're dead."
A long, painful silence met her words. I had to clear my throat to clear the tension.
"Then it could well have been you who brought them upon us."
"I won't pretend that it's not a possibility," she said. "But I do think they might have
caught scent of something even stranger. Something they thought was even more threatening to their pitiful race." She slid her gaze over to Jeb who blinked back at her, unimpressed.
"Alma," I guessed.
She nodded. "The girl's powers, you see. I only found out about her myself through Check." Again she looked at her husband affectionately. "I believe he is the key to taking these hunters out altogether. It's all in the leader, he says."
Check nodded quietly. But he didn't speak.
"You believe this, Check?" I asked him. "Ridiculous sort of name for a grown man of your ... um...powers."
Again, he nodded. But silently.
My mother leaned back in her chair, letting the room take note of the delicate line of her throat, the perfectly regal set to her shoulders. She wanted them to see the value of good breeding and ancient lineage. I hoped they'd see all the warped results of inbreeding.
"Check says if we can find the leader--"
"Check says," I blurted out. "Check does an awful lot of talking for a man who says nothing." I glared at him, unable to look at my mother without throwing myself at her throat and tearing it out. "So we find the alpha and we kill him. Easy enough."
Artemis pouted at me as though I were a silly girl. My throat felt scorched by the curses I wanted to hurl at her, but kept choked down. Instead, I inhaled slowly, pinched the bridge of my nose.
"Your information has been useful, Artemis," I said stressing he fact that I did not feel related to her one bit. "But I think your assessment is off. There is a second option. We have a family of hunters generations old out to get us and it all seems to stem from this young girl."
I exhaled loudly and pushed through the options, not caring for any of them and knowing which decision would ultimately be the right one for the pack. But this was diplomacy. We all had a choice.
"We can roust the girl I swore to protect and hope these huntsmen leave with her, or we fight the bastards and get rid of them once and for all."
Rogue Breed (Rogue Huntress Chronicles Book 2) Page 12