Part of me hoped they would vote to get rid of the girl, but I knew it wouldn't truly solve our problem. I wanted to fight. I wanted to get rid of the threat altogether. Not have it crop up again somewhere down the line when we least expected it. I needed to make sure my pack was safe for generations and that anyone who took over after me could live safely within it. Not to mention the way they had torn through the rogue female pack. The thought that they had killed any wolves under my own protection still rankled. Now I wanted each and every warbrood huntsman dead.
No one spoke. I looked at Jeb and he shrugged.
"Declare it," I said to the group. "And we will do it.
Bless his heart, Gerald was the one that said the word I wanted to hear. "Annihilation."
I had to smother the smile that wanted to stretch across my face.
"Then it's decided," I said. "We fight these men." I looked at my mother. "You have your freedom," I said to her. "Use it wisely."
As we all left, I felt as though things had only seemed decided. Something still bothered me, and I couldn't put into words what that thing was. As they all filed out in front of me, I hung back, looking out to the windows over the grass. It hadn't been so long ago when I had been willing to risk everything to save this place. To avenge my father. To protect my still-living brother. I had told myself then that I would protect this pack and anyone under its allegiance with everything I had, including my own life. I thought them all worth saving, then. Surely I thought it was equally worth fighting for now even if it meant bringing the entire pack to war.
I crossed my arms as I stood there, staring out onto the property and remembering each moment as I had struggled through my nature to kill the brother I had lived with for decades. I had just gotten to the part where I held the knife to his throat on the grass outside of these windows when I felt a soft touch on my shoulder. I'd been in such deep thought, I hadn't even heard the girl approaching behind me. I swung around, thinking it was a measure of how safe I had felt in this pack since Caleb was gone, how safe I had felt before it that he could return now. I looked into those small black eyes and neatly delicate face.
"What is it, Alma" I said. I couldn't really blame her. She had just needed protection and had run where she thought she might receive it.
I watched her swallow as she tried to gather the words together.
"Something's bothering you," I said.
"They lied," she said.
"You mean my mother?"
The timid girl nodded.
"I know that," I said.
"No," Almal said, gripping my shoulder tighter. "They lied about everything."
She released my shoulder and I watched as her trembling hand swept her hair away from her neck. There beneath her ear, trailing along like gentle kisses across her throat were the same kinds of tattoos the Mystic wore on his face.
"Those two have known each other for years," she said.
I noticed that as she spoke, she seemed to have lost all of the strength in her legs. She staggered over to the table and floundered for her chair. I watched her pull it out with trembling hands before she sagged down onto it. She folded her hands into each other and laid them on the table in front of her, never seeming to be satisfied with where they lay. She wouldn't look at me.
"You're one of them," I said and felt a sudden knot twist my stomach. It explained everything: her reluctance to offer information, her scant bread crumbs of helpful insights, the reason she was here in the first place. I felt such rage come over me, I trembled with it. "You betrayed me. From the start. You lied."
"Not betrayed," she whispered. "Not that." She too was shaking and she looked thoroughly miserable.
My voice had a hard time coming out from the tightness of my throat. "You better explain or I might kill you right where you stand."
She looked down at her hands, entranced by the twisting movements they made within each other. I wanted to reach out and pin them to the surface and only managed to keep from doing so by jamming my hands beneath my armpits. Waiting for her to speak was a unique kind of agony, made worse by the way my intestines had begun to cramp and twist. I think I even broke out in a sweat.
"I've been held hostage by them for decades," she finally said but she didn't look up. "Ever since I was a little girl."
Just like her legs had given way beneath her, I found my own doing the same. All of the flashes of my childhood spun through my mind in that moment. Hatred bubbled in my chest. I too reached out for a chair and sank down on it. I watched the way both of our hands folded together and clenched on the table. Two pairs. Comrades in arms. I felt an uncharacteristic sort of kinship with the girl. Someone else who had suffered beneath my mother's hand like I had. Someone who understood. I felt immediately ashamed for questioning whether or not I should protect her. She was one of us as surely as any rogue female I'd met at Dara's.
"Tell me," I said, and my voice was a ragged thing I barely recognized.
She let go a long breath and then inhaled sharply as though she were bracing herself.
"Most of it I spent in a cage." She looked down at her chest, appearing to scan over her body. "I suppose it's why am stunted this way. My foot all twisted up."
"I have different powers than he does," she said, peeking up at me from beneath a fringe of hair. "And added together, our powers are incredible. He... used me."
There was a catch in her voice as though she were trying not to let go a sob. "He and Artemis both did. Kept me locked up."
"You never tried to escape?"
She got a strange, almost manic glint in her eye. "I saw those hunters coming. I knew what they would do to the pack she was in. I knew what they would do to all of us, but I didn't say anything. I couldn't warn them. Not when it meant my freedom."
She sounded as though she felt guilt ridden. Racked with something there could be no fix for.
"It's my fault that they're here. I'm responsible for what's going on now."
I didn't want to tell her that I had been thinking the same thing, not now when I knew how filled with guilt she was. How much she had suffered. In fact, I couldn't think of anything to say because I knew my own guilt would sound through my voice. Instead, I just let her talk.
"We could have pooled our magics together, he and I." She twisted her fingers in her hands and finally pulled them down into her lap where they disappeared beneath the table. "We could have put our magic together and found some way to destroy them."
This time she looked at me full on and I saw strength in her. Determination. Forged by pain and suffering. I knew it like I knew it in my own gaze.
"I can see things," she said. "You know that. But what you don't know is how much more I can see when I'm joined with another of my kind. We could have used that magic to search for the head of their group. Their father or their grandfather, or whatever it is that's the head of the family there. There were other mystics in the group. A couple of elder ladies and one or two young children. The elders were very good at their magic, and the children were very young at it. The old ones were too weak to withstand the strain on their own. It would've taken all of us to combine together, but we could've done it."
"But you let them die instead," I guessed and she nodded miserably.
"If I hadn't, I would still be there in a cage. Let out for the short time it took to join together and destroy them. Then put back in my cage for god knows how long."
I didn't know what to say. I was sick with the revelation. I was even sicker knowing the choice the poor girl had been forced to make to survive.
"But if you have a similar power--"
"Not similar. Different." She was very specific in these words. "No one else could see things the way I do. That's why Artemis and Check kept me there. Like a pet that they found useful to keep the others enthralled." She spat these last words out. "Until they forced me to let the hunters come." She buried her face in her hands. "Oh god. All those dead."
She began rocking back and fort
h, crying silently. It broke my heart the way she moved. Her backbone was all curved as though the weight was too much for her frame to bear. Watching her, I felt as though something was breaking inside.
"It's not your fault," I crooned. I reached out to touch her, wrap my arms around her shoulders and pull her close. We were two of the same. Two peas in a pod. Tortured by the same woman, living with the shame and horror of it. I'd had decades to pull myself out of the miasma of guilt and hatred, and this girl had only what? Weeks?
I felt her trembling as she lay against me. Such a small frail thing. A tiny bird held in a cupped hand. While my mother's torture had hardened me, it had broken this girl. We were like two halves of the same fragile vessel molded by the same woman.
The thought struck me like an eighteen wheeler.
"Who are your parents?" I said, choking on the words even as I knew I didn't want to hear the answer.
Alma lifted her eyes to mine. "I think you know," she said.
I eased away, gripping the girl's hands tighter in my own. I squeezed my eyes closed, all the better to hear the news. To brace myself for the way it would sound. Even as I waited for it, I prayed the answer would not be what I expected.
"Tell me," I said.
"My parents are Alma and Check."
UNDER THE RAIN OF UPHOLSTERY
I should probably have responded to the girl. It's what a good alpha would have done, a good sister, even. All I could do was blink at her as I tried to process the information. My sister. My half-sister. A strange mixture of elation and terror gripped my heart. It hadn't been just me Artemis had tortured. She had done horrible things to this young girl in front of me, worse things, probably than she had done to me. I had paved the way, hacked through it like a machete in a jungle to allow my mother to hone her skills and perfect them so that by the time she got to this frail thing, she had practically created a new creature. I felt as though every molecule of light had decided to take a permanent vacation. Each time I blinked at her, the darkness drummed onto my eyeballs. I found I couldn't speak. Language wasn't enough to articulate everything I felt in that moment and I ended up standing quietly and excusing myself. I strode calmly to the door and walked through it and down the hallway as though nothing had passed between us. But by the time I reached the end of the hall, I had started to run.
What I had endured under my mother's tutelage had been brutal, but it had hardened me, not broken me. I couldn't bear facing Alma again knowing what we had both endured under our mother's hand and knowing she had ended up deformed because of it while I had ended up top wolf in my pack. Certainly she had endured far more for far longer than I had. Perhaps given the opportunity for her to live in the same pack as my father, she might have come out differently. Perhaps as a full-blooded sister, my father might have even discovered my mother's terrible pension for training and saved the girl the agony.
Every wolf seemed on edge now that my mother had returned. Should they follow the old blood, and request for me to step down? Should they uphold me as leader as they had sworn to do? I understood their difficulties. The old blood, especially blood as old as my mother's, was a draw. Especially in light of a newly appointed alpha who was still finding her feet. But I knew things about that old blood that ran through my mother's body that they did not. She might have ancient lineage, but it had warped her. I suspected somewhere along the way there had been plenty of inbreeding to keep the line pure. And I still couldn't forgive my mother for the things she had done to both me and my sister. Sister. I was still working that out. After losing one half-sibling to Caleb, it was a disquieting thought that I might have another full-blown full-grown sibling that I didn't know. Could I trust her? Had she been too warped by my mother to settle into a position of trust herself?
And what of that power she had? If it was anything like Check's, it was powerful indeed, and she had seen Jeb's death. In the few days since the Revelation, I had thought of little else.
Even though the morning dew hadn't yet dried from the grass, I strolled across the lawn barefoot, inspecting the RV that my mother had left abandoned in the driveway as she and her tattooed mate took up residence in her suite of rooms. On her own terms, of course. She had ordered the cell doors be left permanently wide open and had the key safely tucked between her breasts on a chain. That had been Lynden's idea. Let her feel as though she was safe and that no one could lock the door behind her without her being able to escape it. I smiled to myself because I had agreed without hesitation. I had a second set of those keys made shortly after I had taken over leadership, and I was glad of it now. If she decided to lock herself in and threaten anything as foolish as a coup from the sanctum of her panic room, I could get her.
I laid a flat palm over the side of the RV, testing for the tackiness of age. Sun-bleached and coarse, the paint didn't lie. The vehicle was old. I doubted my mother had spent much time in them. It and the motorcycle were a staged accoutrement much as her wise woman gypsy clothes, meant to appear as though she was humble and good.
She wasn't' humble. She wasn't good. And I couldn't let her poison my pack or my mind when things were so dicey. I needed to keep things together. I'd deal with her later. I nearly jogged up the driveway and into the foyer. I was racing up the stairs toward my rooms where I might find Jeb when a scuffle from behind me froze my feet on the stairs. I turned. There stood the gardener leaning against the door he had just slammed, shoulders pinned backwards as his feet planted in front of him on the tiles. His shoes were filthy. He looked terrified.
"What's going on?" I said.
"We don't have enough men," he said.
My brows knit together in bewilderment. "What you talking about? What does that mean 'not enough?'" I ran through a thousand scenarios in my mind. Rogue pack. Dozens of huntsman. But I had just come from outside not moments before. If something had been wrong, I would have seen it. I would have heard something.
"We have a dozen guards out there." I felt the base of my spine go cold.
He shook his head hard enough that his hair stuck in his eyelashes. "Not enough."
He might have wanted to add more, but the sound of gunfire had sounded outside the door. Then an explosion from the driveway made both of us startle. I dashed down the stairs as guards came from everywhere within the house. I peeled back the curtain next to the door. The motorcycle I had just been standing beside was a smoking pile of molten aluminum and coughed up gears. Masked men were already leaping over the gates, using the RV as a launch pits.
It seemed the huntsman had finally arrived.
PERIPHERAL VISION
For some reason, even though I felt very safe inside my mansion with guards even now filing in and spilling to critical places throughout the foyer, there was a moment when I panicked. A barrage of gunfire sounded, perhaps even an another explosion. Small though it was, it made my heart leap inside my chest.
"I don't know what they have," the gardener– Luke, if I remembered his name correctly – said, "but ours are having a devil of a time holding them back."
I knew what it was they had. Plastic explosives. There was no sound like it, and I peered through the curtain at the side of the door. Dozens of huntsmen were already in the on the grounds, past the perimeter. A dozen more were pouring in through the now bent and sagging gates. The guards who had been posted outside the mansion were doing their best to hold their own, but they were being cut down as quickly as they stepped up to halt them. These huntsmen had skills. Not like those we had encountered back at Dara's homestead or like the ones who had met us on our return here. Those had no doubt just been scouts, meant to gather a count of shifters as well as a reconnaissance of the territory. These were the true soldiers. And to fight a soldier, we needed soldiers.
I slid my gaze around the room, looking for Jeb, expecting him to be one of the men already spilling throughout the manse to defensive points or taking aim at those who were shooting the guards outside. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed Gera
ld.
"They're here," I barked. "Get all the men we have on standby over here."
We needed reinforcements and we needed them quickly. More shifters were already spilling in from different parts of the house, thank god. The guards I had stationed in every possible entry and exit had alerted the relief. I spotted Franco among them. When my eyes landed on him, his face was as grim as mine felt. Footfalls above me made jerk my head to peer up the stairs. Jeb. Finally.
"They're here," I said, and almost winced at the sound of dread in my voice. It was bad and we both knew it.
Nonetheless, he gave me a quick nod as he pulled his pistol from beneath his suit jacket and was pulling the same jacket from his shoulders with his free hand at the same time.
"We'll do what we can until the rest of them get here," he said. "And we'll do it together."
He tossed me the pistol he held and it met my palm barrel first. Something dropped to his feet on the stairs and I realized it was his trusty backpack. For a second I was relieved, then I realized that his homemade grenades weren't always reliable. He gave me a knowing smirk and then ran past me to the armoury locker beneath the stairs. It wasn't a large one, but it did have a few things in there. My father always believed that people who came visiting should leave their weapons at the door and he created a beautiful and ornately carved wooden panel to slide over it in disguise. It was one of the first things I had shown Jeb when we took over the mansion. The first thing he had stocked with all sorts of interesting but compact weapons.
He made it to the closet and reached inside. Without comment, he tossed a snub-nosed pistol to the gardener.
"Find Lynden and get him down his father's back steps," he said to Luke. "Make your way slowly but steadily to his father's wing. Through the bedroom. Down the stairs. It doesn't matter which route you take. Just get him out of here. If anyone resists you, shoot them."
He had neglected to mention his sister, and I realized he was counting on the hunters recognizing her as human if they found her. It was one thing to execute a shifter, quite another to kill a human. It was a terrible risk, but he also knew that the more people that ran, the less chance of survival. I shot him a questioning look, not daring to ask as he patted down his shirt absently.
Rogue Breed (Rogue Huntress Chronicles Book 2) Page 13