Rogue Breed (Rogue Huntress Chronicles Book 2)

by Thea Atkinson

  "I sent her to the panic room with your mother," he said, catching my eye and obviously reading in my gaze the question about his sister and then he found what he was searching for beneath his shirt. A cartridge of bullets.

  "What if the hunters find those exits?"

  He pursed his lips in thought. "What if they don't?"

  I understood. It was Lynden's only hope to leave this place. With so many of the hunters already sprawling over the grounds, I prayed that they would be so busy coming after those in the mansion that they would have no trouble letting a small boy slip out the back. Whichever route he took with the gardener wouldn't matter. One lead to a storm drain, one lead eventually to my mother's panic room, and the other led to the crypt where Caleb had kept him imprisoned for all those weeks. I swallowed down hard. I prayed he wouldn't take that route. He hadn't been back there even though I had ordered the area cleaned and completely reorganized into something of a garden in the shade. I had stripped the sprinklers of the reservoir of colloidal silver that had fed the seeming and innocuous pieces of equipment with painfully stinging water. The place should be an oasis now, but I had no idea whether or not Lynden would see it that way.

  Jeb's hand paused on the knob and he twisted to look over his shoulder at me.

  For a second, my heart fluttered.

  "Ready?" he said.

  How could I be ready? In moments, I might well see the result of Alma's prophecies.

  What I did was nod as every muscle in my body tensed for action, and everything in my vision went black at the edges as I shut down everything that wasn't necessary in that moment. There was no Lynden, no Olanna, no sounds of gunfire through the door. There was only the pistol in my hand and the prickling of anxiety making my skin hum. Then Jeb was pulling the door open and we were bolting headlong through it with pistols raised, separating sideways to find shelter behind each one of the balustrades on either side of the veranda. The stink of gunpowder was everywhere and beneath that, like some secondary flavoring meant to please a sophisticated palate lay the smell of silver. Blood and sweat came a close third. My nose twitched as it tried to separate all the different smells and assess which was closer and thus the worst danger. I laid my back flat against the balustrade, tuning my senses to the things around me. The weight of the pistol in my hands might as well if it made of plastic. I barely felt it. I took a bracing breath and peered around the railing.

  The sight that met me was a grisly one and I knew I'd be seeing it in my nightmares for weeks if we ever got through the crisis today.

  Several of my sentries had already fallen and lay crumpled in human form on the lawn. Some of those who were down were naked and unmoving, very obviously shot while they were in wolf form and were forced to relinquish it when the silver struck them. Some of them were still dressed, their weapons either still clutched in their hands or dropped abandoned at their sides. For one horrible moment, I flashed back to the afternoon I had met the same scene when Caleb had murdered my father's guards. Even the great Galen, who had retired to a life of gardening, hadn't been spared. If I had learned anything from that day, it was to double the amount of sentries and have them on around the clock no matter how much it cost me to do so. I was grateful I had done so because even though a dozen of my packmates already lay dead or dying, there were enough huntsmen pushing through the grass toward the mansion that even double the amount couldn't resist them effectively, not while the hunters' blood was laced with silver and the armor protected them from ammunition. I counted at least a dozen of them and there were a herd of them behind. It looked like something from a zombie film.

  Some poor soul was sobbing over to my left and I met Jeb's gaze with a look of horror. I knew the voice. Franco. How had he managed to get past both of us without me even knowing? Had I been that focused on Jeb and Lynden that I didn't even register another body squeezing past me out into the fray. I squeezed my eyes closed, begging some nameless god to spare the poor boy.

  I wanted to shift badly, but I knew facing these huntsmen I needed a weapon more. I would have to run for the boy on two feet and not four, try to drag him out of the chaos into some sort of shelter. I needed to do that. His voice held such agony, that I knew it wasn't just the sting of silver that was eating at his flesh. Death was coming for him.

  I nodded at Jeb and he gave me a curt hand signal to tell me to stay put. Fat chance of that. These were my wolves. I launched myself around the balustrade. As luck would have it, one of my downed guards lay sprawled halfway up the steps, his arm reaching for me or for a dropped assault rifle that had spilled onto one of the treads. Even with my harried glance, I knew he had merely suffered a superficial wound to his leg. All he had to do was drag himself the rest of the way up the stairs. It was about to grip him by the shoulder when Jeb moved next to me, and I saw one of his calloused hands gripping the boy's shirt by the shoulder. With one hardy yank, he had given the man enough thrust that he could push the rest of the way with his foot. Both of them disappeared again behind the balustrade and then Jeb's face appeared again around the railing. He nodded at the boy's discarded assault rifle.

  I kicked it toward him and then he was launching himself over the railing and off into the grass. I would've liked to have had a moment to take in the sight, but I felt a singing breeze move my hair and I realized at the same time that it had been a bullet. Adrenaline choked off my distant vision and I was pumping myself toward the bottom of the stairs, crouching as I reached the bottom.

  Blood pooled over the grass, sending thin fingers around the corner, and the smell of it coated my palate with copper.

  Franco. Just as I thought. He was gripping his belly with both hands and when he saw me, the weeping abruptly stopped. A sort of calm came over his face as he caught my eye. He trusted me. He expected me to make it all alright. My heart knocked against my voicebox. I would try, but I didn't think I could fix what was wrong. He needed to shift, and the cloud of silver hung around him like a cloak. He'd never manage it. Not like that. I looked around frantically for cover and found a clutch of shrubberies planted to camouflage the propane tank that fueled the house.

  I fell to my knees next to him, and reached for the automatic weapon that had fallen out of his reach. I pressed it into his hands, careful to lay the side of it against his stomach where the wound was gushing blood.

  "Take this," I said. "Keep the pressure on." I didn't want to think about the smell of bowels that had now added itself to the aroma swirling about my head.

  I crab walked my way behind him, thinking to do the same as Jeb had done and grip the boy by his shoulders so that I could pull him backwards with me to the safety of the shrubbery. But that would leave me vulnerable to attack. It was up to him to keep watch for both of us.

  "If any of the bastards come near you..."

  "They die with my last breath," he said and then there was a sort of sigh that made me think he had just taken it. A quick glance at him revealed that he was still clutching the weapon but that his eyes had rolled back into his sockets. Unconscious. Great. I was bucking backwards, moving him just inches at a time with me. Almost there. If I could get this boy out of sight, and if I could get cover, I just might be able to add my gunfire to the rounds whizzing through the air. So much action, so much noise and commotion, it was hard to take it all in even with the training I had been subjected to through the years. It made me appreciate what Jeb must have gone through as a recruit for a more military purpose. The two styles were very different. Tracker and assassin for the werewolf pack meant stealth and individualization, while military very much relied on strength in numbers in full on attack. I knew he was much more suited to this chaos than I was, and although I was far from shutting down, I was second-guessing myself at every stage.

  I needed him. The pack needed him. And we were lucky to have him. I ran my hand over Franco's stomach, making sure his hand and weapon were against his wound, trying to decide whether I should abandon him or dig inside for the silver bull
et so he could shift and heal. That was when out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Jeb slinking toward a huntsmen who was lying beneath one of my guards, stabbing upwards into his belly with a sliver blade. I knew he would make short work of the bastard tearing through the poor boy. What Jeb didn't see was a huntsmen coming at him from the side. Everything inside me wanted to shout, and yet every muscle somehow turned into ice.

  Alma's his voice echoed in my mind. Death is hanging on him.

  I managed a weak word, maybe it was his name, maybe it was a protest. All I knew was in the next second something collided against the side of my head.

  I fell in a crumpled heap next to Franco who had gone unconscious from his pain. At least I hope he was unconscious. The fleeting desire for any sort of quarter disappeared as I looked up to see a tattooed face wearing a rictus smile. No mask on this one. He wanted me to see his determination to kill me.

  He opened his mouth once as though he wanted to say goodbye, then pointed the gun he held at my face.

  SILVERY STRANDS OF BLOOD

  Normally, my reaction times are pretty damn fast, but I'd never had so many stressors coming at me all at once. I couldn't imagine what it must be like to be a soldier in the middle of battle during some kind of epic or where gunshots and men screaming with the least of the worries that could come from the chaos. My job typically meant I was stealthy in my execution, not full out barreling toward a threat or multiple threats and taking them out in record time. All of these things were still vying for space at the front of the line in my mind as I looked up at the huntsman, and all of these things combined together had frozen my muscles into a tight knot that for the life of me, I couldn't untie. I was aware my mouth had gaped open in the face of his victorious sneer and then everything changed in the next heartbeat. A blur of black came in from the side of my vision and collided with the huntsman with such force that he exhaled with a grunt as the bellows of his lungs collapsed.

  All that I managed to register in the next instant was the reflexive report of the huntsman's gun as it exploded harmlessly next to my ear and the way the man fell onto his side on the grass, dropping the pistol an arm's length away from me. Before I had time to process the surprised look on his face, a growling and scrawny pitch black wolf leapt on top of him. She made short work of the man's throat and my stomach lurched as blood spurted in geysers over the grass, some of it splattering onto my arms. Blood had never made me queasy, and it certainly had never made me uneasy, but I knew I would remember every freeze-frame moment of it for weeks to come because the hot stink of it made me double over. Silver, I realized even as it took to sizzling on my skin in such a sickening way that my nose twitched and my gag reflex churned in my throat. I staggered down to one hand, helpless in the face of it, heaving on my own stomach tissue as it worked in vain to expel what little bit of my morning coffee still remained.

  So soon after feeling the brunt of the mystic's magic full force, and my body seemed reluctant to suffer through any more of it. And there was definitely magic in the Huntsman blood. Hell, it smelled of rancid mud and oily black boots. Dark magic. The kind that put a person in mind of flesh stagnating in pools of trapped water with nothing but mosquito larvae and algae to keep it company. Not the kind any shifter would want to encounter, and if they did they would pull a abrupt about-face and tuck tail between her legs as she ran for shelter. This was what we now encountered on my own property. Swarming through my gates and taking down a dozen of my best guards. These huntsmen, all fortified with magic and who knows how many days worth of colloidal silver running through their veins, spilling out onto my land and stinking up the air. I could swear I heard sizzling as his blood met the grass and puddled around his body. I scraped at my skin frantically, trying to wipe myself free of the congealing mess and only succeeded in smearing the blood even worse. The pain of silver made my eyes water and the stench sent fingers of nausea crawling through my belly.

  I gained my feet only through sheer determination. He was only one huntsman among many after all, and no doubt the rest of them were already slicing through my crew and heading toward the house. With an entire family of huntsman bent on eradicating my entire pack, I couldn't afford to be squeamish. And I couldn't afford to be slow. The wolf that had taken down my opponent for me was already changing back into human form and others would need our help.

  My eyes scanned the property, looking for more of the masked vermin, and even as I registered that something had shifted, a hum went up through the air. I felt my scalp sizzle with electricity and hairs on my arms rose. It was a deep and vibrating enough current that it made my jaw ache all the way up to my eardrums. The dozens of huntsmen I expected to be razzing the grounds with dogged and merciless determination and the wolves I knew would be fighting desperately to defend themselves against such ruthless prejudice all sort of froze as though they had been stun-gunned. Then in waves, they fell sprawling to the earth like a tsunami cresting its way toward me. While the hunters fell into twitching heaps, the wolves fell to their knees if they were human, and shifted back into human form if they were wolves.

  One thought entered my mind. Over. It was over. I peered around me with a sort of numb shock, taking in what was obviously the end of the battle, feeling a sick sense of anticlimax and worrying it had been too easy. Nothing was easy. Guilt tried to ride hard on that thought, trying to make me feel awful for the elation that it was done. It reminded me that dying was never simple, never easy. Killing even less so. All I could think in that second was I was glad it was over. I didn't think about the dead or the dying, just that no one else would.

  Then a bolt struck me and I had time to cry out before I spasmed, my arms flying out to my sides and my knees giving out so that I fell almost face first on the grass. I heard my own groan escaped my lips and my stomach started quivering uncontrollably as though someone had grabbed a hold of a very fine nerve and was giving it a shake.

  "Magic," said a voice from behind me. "Very old magic."

  From my hands and knees, I twisted to look behind me, recognizing Alma's voice, but not expecting it.

  She was already pushing herself to her feet, and in seconds, as though the bolt had done literally nothing to her, she stood behind me looming over the downed huntsman. Her face and hair was smeared with blood and it ran down her chest in rivulets. Those mousy brown locks of hers looked black and matted with it. I had to suck in a breath at the sight of her, the shock stealing all air from my lungs.

  "You –"

  "Me." She swept the back of her forearm across her mouth, freeing her lips of several clots of blood. "He would've killed you," she said. A queer expression rode her features. "You might hate me," she said. "But we're still sisters. I couldn't let him hurt you."

  Something in me broke in that moment. I stepped forward before I could think about what I was doing and wrapped her in an embrace. I felt the cold stickiness of the blood smearing on my neck as I pulled her close. She was shivering beneath the sting of the element in the blood. I found myself wiping at it with my forearm so she wouldn't suffer.

  "Thank you," I said. "That's the closest I've ever come to...." I let the rest trail off, unwilling to think about how close I had come to touching the edge of Death's cloak. When I pulled away, she had the same strange look on her face.

  "What?" I said, afraid I had done something wrong.

  "Nothing," she said. "It's just that no one ever hugged me before."

  She looked away as she said it and I followed her gaze, thinking all the while how pitiful that must be to never have been embraced. At least after my mother had put me through the paces, she would stroke my hair and tell me what a good girl I was. Thinking that this poor girl didn't even receive that made me hate my mother all the more. I was about to say something of the sort, when Franco groaned and pushed himself to his elbow. Alma rushed to his side, laying her hands over his stomach and shushing him. She started murmuring about how he was going to be okay and that if he just closed hi
s eyes for one moment, she would take away the worst of it until he gathered the strength to shift and did the rest himself.

  I watched as he stared into her eyes, mesmerized, and I watched as she spread her fingers over the wound, slipping the pinkies inside and then using those to cross over her chest and over her temples. She murmured a few foreign words, then pressed her thumbs into his eye sockets as gently as a moth touching down. She swiped a sideways into his temple and then ran her hands down his arms. All the while she did this, she swayed back and forth and I could swear I heard drums in the distance beating out a heart's rhythm that gained speed as she did. My mouth went dry as I watched it and I got the same sick feeling in my stomach as I had when I smelled the huntsman's blood.

  Even so, within seconds, Franco moaned in what sounded like pleasure and relief. Almost like a climax as Alma came to an abrupt halt. She kissed him gently on the forehead and then she peeled herself away. He was still bloody as was she, but he blinked his eyes open and a thready smile laced itself onto his face.

  She gave him a coy look. "You're better?"

  If I didn't know better, I would have sworn the boy blushed. He wouldn't meet her gaze, but he nodded.

  She peered up at me and her shoulders sagged as though she had just run a marathon.

  "That's at least some of the damage fixed," she said.

  Her words reminded me of how bad a hit my pack had just taken and I scanned the grounds to assess the damage. Out beyond the edges of the property, there seemed to be some sort of purple haze burning in the distance.

  "What do you think it is?" I said.

  "I already know what it is," she said. "It's Check."