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

by Thea Atkinson

  "It's now, is it?" I called out to one. "Time to collect the booty?"

  The shaggy brown one growled.

  It wasn't just time, apparently, it was past time.

  I could have let them take me but it was the principle of the thing. Let myself be rounded up like a pup and paraded into Caleb's presence? Not bloody likely. As I expected, no sooner was I off and into the woods then the pack of wolves were on my heels. I pulled off my clothes as I fled, thinking to outdistance them at least. Give them a run for their money, show them what I was made of. The wolves tried to be stealthy in their chase, and yet the racket of their breathing was all I could hear as I streaked through the trees.

  I ran at breakneck speed, pushing myself harder than I had in months. Sheer determination and training allowed me to finally outdistance most of the wolves. The sound of rustling leaves as they streaked through the forest behind me had grown consistently less dense. That could only mean that there were fewer of them on my heels than before.

  My lungs burned and my haunches ached. I was overheating to a point that I thought I would faint if I didn't stop for a moment to catch my breath. As a human woman, I could relieve the overheating by letting my sweat glands do the work; as a wolf, the heat had nowhere to go except into my head. I fully planned to bring them raging to the ravine where I'd stumbled and fallen except this time, I'd be waiting when they came.

  I was careful to avoid the lip of the ravine where I knew several rocks waited to trip me, and I managed to navigate as far as the patch of brambles I had pushed myself into. I dug myself in as deep as I could and lay there, panting, waiting to see which of them stumbled and fell, which I could leap upon from my hiding spot. I needed the rest anyway. Needed to catch my wind and restore my muscles and then be off again, doubling back to overtake them and pick the rest of them off one by one.

  It was several moments, but they came just the same. I knew they scented me on the air. The shaggy brown wolf was at the head of the pack. He paused just at the edge of the ravine. His right paw lifted into the air like that of a hunting dog. The rest of the pack stopped behind him. They hadn't seen me yet, but they knew I was there. If I had been in my human form, I would have sighed in frustration. The sparse moments were not enough to reclaim the energy I had lost. They'd been too fast for me. I wasn't ready for the fight, and I knew it.

  I was exhausted. Spent of all energy and all will. I was working over whether or not I should try to wriggle my way backwards and attempt one last flight, or whether I should just give in and let them return me to Caleb when the shaggy brown wolf transformed into a broad-shouldered youth with a thick man bun coming free of its restraints. His penis hung long and flaccid from a nest of thick black hair that climbed halfway up his muscled stomach. He might have been a handsome youth but I saw in his heavily muscled form only an opponent I needed to rid myself of.

  I knew him as a member of my father's pack, but one of the newly mature wolves who thought they had some entitlement to the way things ran because their parents had given them everything they could ever want. Several seconds later, his comrades also transformed. They peered into the bushes where I still lay panting, their frustrated gazes all but accusing me of making them exert. I would have smiled if I had been my human self. As it was, I couldn't even pull my tongue in and I ended up smacking over and over again to wet it.

  "Come on out," the leader said.

  I let my gaze roam across each face, studying everyone so intently that I could recall them again at whim. I wanted to know their faces. I wanted to remember how put out they looked at having to run to catch their quarry. Those expressions would serve as an excellent side dish when I finally managed to tear their throats out. Traitors all.

  The leader advanced on the thicket, obviously planning to reach in and extract me. He could think again. I might be down, but I still had my teeth and I was still Shana. He thought I was the one trapped and that he and his gang had done the trapping. Foolish whelp.

  He was closer now, dropping to his haunches.

  "You might as well come out," he said. "You can't take us all on."

  I blinked at him. Try me.

  He chuckled. And I knew he understood the message of my baleful stare. I wouldn't shift. Not yet.

  He reached into the thicket close enough that if I wanted to I could bite down on his forearm and cut through an artery. Not yet. I had to remind myself I needed all of him.

  He paused, staring into the brambles as though the mere expression on his face could command me.

  "Come on out, bitch," he said. "Don't make us come in after you."

  The others had come up behind him and were crouching down as well, all transformed or transforming. Seriously. How stupid were these wolves that they would make such a rookie mistake. All clustered together like that, a she wolf could take out one or two of them in a single leap. Twist and turn a little bit, jaws open, teeth clamping, and she could take out four or five. I waited. Expecting that at any moment they would understand their folly and back away.

  They didn't. Like the fool's only newly mature youths could be, they wore their sense of invincibility as though it were armour. One more heartbeat. That was all I needed.

  I forced my gaze between the leader's eyes, on the spot at the crest of the nose so he would think I was watching him when I really just couldn't afford the chance that he might read the intent in my eyes. I needn't have worried. The wolves were strong and muscled, yes, but they were obviously untried. They had used brute force so often they didn't understand strategy. Obviously, they believed a few wolves could capture their pack's lead assassin without incident.

  My heart slowed, and my lungs stopped heaving beneath my ribcage. The belly that had been trying to force a gag up my throat settled. I could lay my tongue in the cavern of my mouth where it should be. I was much improved.

  I exploded from the bush in a fury of teeth and claws. I struck out at anything with my hind legs as I bit down into skin and tore through flesh. One of them fell beneath my paws, making it difficult for me to gain purchase and I found myself twisting upside down with his arms wrapped around my belly, my legs flailing about in the air. I writhed my way to an upright position, digging through the belly of the youth who leaned over me, obviously thinking to grab hold of my legs. I heard someone swear, and then hands roamed my fur, seeking purchase, grasping and pulling.

  I think some of my fur was yanked out as I pulled away from someone's grip. The taste of blood in my mouth reminded me of the sight of my father's head hanging from Caleb's fingers and I savored each swallow. Birds took fearful ear-piercing flight. I heard snarling, and only realized it was my own throat making the noise when I realized that the leader had got hold of my haunches and had pinned my hind quarters to the ground. I clawed my way forward, using the last of my energy to shift into human form. Without fur for them to cling to and to thicken my form, I would be slippery with sweat and hard to grip.

  None of them seemed to be expecting the transformation and those hands slipped free of my skin. As I made my way free, I was stumbling as I pushed myself to a staggering run. Naked, I got far enough away that when one of them lunged for me, I threw a roundhouse kick into his legs and those of his companion who had haplessly followed. They fell to the ground with a thud and the hiss of the air leaked from their lungs. Without pause, I reached for the fallen and broken piece of a nearby tree branch, using the thin, pointed end as a whip. I swung in a circle, contacting anything that came close. I had whipped one of them hard enough in the cheek that he fell to his knees and swore at me. I was already searching for a rock to plow into his skull when I heard the report of a gun.

  Before I even realized where the sound had come from, one of the attackers fell at my feet. A spot gaped open in his skull where the bullet had torn through and blood oozed onto the moss and leaves in a mixture of tissue and fluid. Reflex dropped me to my haunches, and I panned the area with a wary gaze, ready to pull the dead body of mine as a shield.
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  While most of the youths halted, frozen in indecision, two of them still came for me. Another report sounded. The crack of it striking bone was enough to make even a hardened assassin nauseous. That boy, too, fell to his knees and was screaming long before his comrade also fell beside him. This time the wound was in the boy's throat, and both of his hands had flown up to cover the gaping wound. Three of them down. Three to go. The direction of the shot, the explosion of its report when I was keenly aware of every sound now revealed where the shooter was. I swung around, still half squatting, half ready to sprint, I aimed for the standing form, thinking I could take out his legs before he had a chance to aim at me. Bad aim, I thought at first, until I saw that the shooter was Jeb.

  He was dressed in camouflage T shirt and khaki pants. His face had been painted in streaks of brown and green and he stood with his pistol held out, his feet planted. The expression on his face was hard and focused as he took aim at me.

  Somewhere in my adrenaline soaked mind, I knew he was a better shot than to have missed me. When the gun went off again and one of the attackers fell across my line of vision, I knew he was taking aim at my attackers and not me. For a second, I almost smiled at him, but then I saw second wave of wolves flooding in from the forest behind him and I knew that with the mere human's senses he owned, he couldn't know they were about to attack until it was too late. Before I could think it through, I shouted at him.

  "Behind you," I yelled.

  Even as he was swinging around to shoot at whatever threat came at him, I was shifting again, thinking that now we had the best of both worlds. Human with opposable thumbs and a gun, and wolf with ferocious teeth and snarling disposition. We were ready for them. We would take them out. Together.

  His gun went off several times, dropping wolf after wolf by the time I managed to get to the edge of the pack. By then my own sense of bloodlust was so heightened from the smell of sweat and gunsmoke, that I tore through two of them without thinking that they were mere boys, probably pressed into service by Caleb's promises of grandeur. I gave not one care for the throats I tore through. I only knew that together, Jeb and I managed to decimate the invading pack until there was only one left and he was already sprinting back in the direction of the mansion.

  Jeb looked at me with panic in his face. "We can't let him make it back to Caleb. If we do we're both dead."

  Both dead. The words flooded my mind with confusion. Jeb was Caleb's muscle same as these young wolves. Intentional muscle, unlike these young and foolish creatures who had died because of lies Caleb had obviously fed them. The thoughts that they might only be foolish pups made it all the worse when I caught up to the rogue wolf and launched myself at him, but I tore his throat out without mercy anyway and when I shifted back into my human self, and sat cross legged next to the boy's corpse, Jeb found me to tears streaming down my face.

  He was panting hard, clutching at his chest. The run would have proved too much for a human man when I was feeling the burn of exhaustion and effort myself.

  "It had to be done," he said quietly, creeping up on me as though he thought I would shift and launch myself at him too. He still had his gun raised, aiming carefully at me.

  I nodded, miserable, trying to ignore the threat of a weapon pointed at me. "I know."

  I would have pushed myself to a stand except my legs were shaking from effort and I knew they'd never hold me. I had done a lot of horrible things in my tenure as lead assassin for my father's pack, but I had never been sent to decimate an entire squad on my own. My own pack members at that. My chest shook with the magnitude of what I'd done.

  I swiped the tears from my cheek and glared at the man standing in front of me. I was pissed and I needed an outlet. If I expected him to quail in the face of my rage, he disappointed me, electing instead to keep the gun aimed and his face a mask as malleable as stone.

  "What the hell are you doing?" I demanded.

  The muzzle of the gun twitched a millimeter to the side. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean you need to tell me what you're doing right now or I will put you down like I did the rest of these wolves."

  For a second, a smile tried to thread itself onto his mouth, and I thought he might chuckle as though to indicate his disdain at my threat. To his credit, he smothered down the response and lowered his pistol. It rested next to his thigh and jerked there as he thrummed it against his leg.

  "I'll tell you," he said. "But you're not going to like it."

  A Woman a Wolf Doesn't Know

  "Are you hurt?" he said.

  "That doesn't sound like an explanation," I said.

  He smiled. "I know. But first you should tell me if you're hurt."

  I looked down at myself, scanning every inch of my skin. Bloody, yes, but I knew the blood wasn't mine--at least not much of it.

  "I don't think so," I said and heard the trembling in my voice. I coughed to cover it up. "The change would have taken care of my wounds. It's just the exhaustion."

  He watched me as I tried to find my feet and push myself to a stand, but before I managed it, he had peeled off his T-shirt and tossed it at me. It landed on my head much the same as his jacket had back in my mother's bathroom and I almost flew into a panic but held myself in check with the purest of focus. He might use my panic as a weapon against me and attack me while I was vulnerable. There was nothing like a gun control a little claustrophobia. I tore the shirt from my hair with a furious hand. Obviously he couldn't stand the sight of my naked body. Unable to find any emotion other than defensive paranoia beneath the posttraumatic stress of the day's events, I covered my groin with one palm as I tried to pull the shirt on with one hand.

  "You don't prepare yourselves well, do you?" he said, taking note of the way I shrank into myself.

  "Why? Because we have to shift without clothes?"

  "No." He strode past me, all business, as I pulled the T-shirt down over my head and pushed my arms into the sleeves. "You don't prepare because you shift without thinking about the consequences later."

  He dug around a tree trunk where a pile of leaves and brush made a ratty nest. "If I was one of you, I'd plant a change of clothes at various depots."

  "Spoken like a true human," I said and felt in the statement enough bravado to cancel out the foreign sense of shame at my nakedness.

  Hell, wolves had been shifting back into human form and finding themselves naked for centuries. Nudity was nothing but an inconvenience and yet I was unable to stop myself from taking in the lean-bodied profile he presented as he scoured the bushes, looking for wayward wolves. He looked back over his shoulder at me, obviously nervous that I hadn't yet got dressed. When his gaze landed on me and caught mine, I fidgeted. I knew he had seen me looking over his flat stomach and trailing down lower but he didn't so much as smirk. Good thing. I might have gone ballistic if he had. Instead, he gave me an assessing examination as he raked his gaze from the top of the shirt to the hem where it landed just below my hip.

  "Good," he said. With a satisfied nod. Then he pulled a backpack from the nest and reached into small leather pouch on its side. He extracted an energy bar and tossed that at me.

  "It's loaded with protein," he said. "That should help revive you--if you find you still have a hunger for anything after such a hefty helping of raw wolf meat, that is."

  I grunted and caught the bar. I peeled the wrapper away like a banana and stuffed the mush into my mouth bite by bite. Chewing gave me a chance to reflect on the events without having to speak. I watched him with interest as he beat the bushes with his feet and peered into the darker parts of the trees.

  "I don't smell anyone," I said, offering my two cents. "At least not anyone besides you."

  "I just want to be sure," he said.

  I crawled over to a tree and put my back against it, stretching my legs out in front of me and straining my toes upward to pull out the kinks of running. I tucked the hem of the T-shirt beneath my bottom and pushed my knees up into the front of it, m
aking a sort of tent over my legs. He'd have to throw the shirt away when I was done with it. Not only would it be filled with ground-in mud, but it would be caked with dried blood as well.

  "So," I said, already feeling the energy bar shooting strength back into my core. "Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on?"

  His jaw seesawed back and forth in thought and finally he settled down on a fallen tree trunk next to the bramble nest, his legs spread out in front of him to provide balance.

  "We were sent to collect you," he said.

  "Obviously," I drawled. "But that's not what I asked."

  "I'll get to it."

  I shifted to avoid a twig that had somehow found an uncomfortable pressure point in my buttock. "Get to it now please while I'm feeling generous."

  His icy blue eyes landed on my mouth for some reason and the twig re-connected with the pressure point, making me squirm again.

  "You let me escape," I said. "And you just helped me execute a dozen of Caleb's bullies."

  "I did."

  "So?" I said. "Why the hell come after me in the first place if you were just going to shoot them?"

  "Because I had to make it look real."

  I gave him a wary look. "Make what look real?"

  "Your capture." He teetered on the log as he re-adjusted his weight. "When Caleb found out you got away, he was very pissed."

  "My brothers--"

  "Are fine," he said but there was something else in his voice. It was tight with emotion.

  I lifted my chin as much to say I knew he was lying. "That can't be true."

  "But it is," he said. "He didn't harm the boys."

  I blinked at him, trying to work out what he wasn't telling me. There was mournful set to his shoulders as he sat on his log, one that could only come from trauma. If it wasn't the boys then he was here to kill me. The dead wolves were no doubt excess baggage Caleb needed rid of before he did so.