Huntress (11 page)

"I’ve heard that line before."

The look he gave me was nonplussed and didn’t invite further conversation, so I’d just trudged after him to get a look at what was in the last two crates. The second one was half empty. The mats and balance bars now safely ensconced downstairs must have been the previous occupants.

It was the half full part of the crate that had me standing there open mouthed with shock and quite a bit of giddiness. Three transparent cases were filled with weaponry. I spotted a sword that was nearly as long as I was tall and other assorted pieces of steel. I turned to Drew with my eyes wide.

"This is the best surprise ever! But how the fuck am I supposed to wield something like that? Are you guys expecting me to take a Claymore into battle?"

"Well, little lady," he drawled. "It’s my job to show you."

"I don’t even think that I can help you carry one of those down the basement stairs!"

The look he gave me said "C’mon."  Then, he lifted one of them by himself and hefted it like it weighed nothing. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the state of my health, considering that earlier one of his hands had been wrapped around my neck.

"I want you to study what’s in the third crate, but don’t touch it. I’ll be back in a minute."

I moved forward and peered into the third crate, my hand reaching forward.

"I mean it Grace!" he yelled back at me. "Don’t fucking touch it!"

My hand snapped back to my side and I inched closer, standing nearly inside the crate, my toes touching the edge. There was only one thing in there.

Shafts of sunlight glinted off of the steel-like surface, showing me brief glimpses, but also keeping the object hidden at the same time.

It looked like a plate-mail cat, but my brain couldn’t connect the dots quite yet. The entire thing blended into the shadows and with every blink of my eyes, what I saw shifted, like liquid metal.

Squinting my eyes so that they were nearly shut and tilting my head to the side a bit, I could make out liquid muscles rippling with each metallic hiss of its breath. My mind was definitely playing tricks on me.

I stepped back and it moved with me. Antennae grew from its forehead as it stalked me, its body lengthening as it moved.

I had never seen anything like it. My breath caught in my throat as the head turned and flat metal eyes bore into me, holding me captive with its gaze.

The muscles between my shoulder blades burned and twitched. I felt an unparalleled need to run. The burning in my back grew hotter, stinging me, urging me to go and go
now
.

The neck lengthened, stretching toward me as its limbs elongated, becoming spindly.

I gulped and glanced behind me to the relative safety of the house. My legs were rooted to the spot. This is what they meant when they wrote "frozen in terror."  A thousand different gruesome scenarios sifted through my mind, leaving me terrified and on the verge of pissing myself.

We both knew who the prey was in this scenario.  The Monster in the Box uttered a growl to let me know that it sure as hell wasn't
it
.  I could only hope that someone would come up with something pithy to say at my funeral.

I squeezed my eyes shut so I wouldn’t see it bunch up those powerful muscles and spring upon me. Yes, I would die a coward.

"That will do," the gruff voice behind me commanded.

My body immediately relaxed and I nearly did pee my pants when he touched me.

"Oh my God, Adonis! What in the hell is that?" My voice was trembling in time with the rest of my body.

He walked past me and patted the creature that had shifted down into a Golden Retriever dog, tongue lolling out of its metal mouth.

"You’re a bad boy," he admonished and the creature shrank just a little more. "You’re supposed to train her, not scare the piss out of her."

"That—that thing is supposed to train me?"

"This here is a mercury golem. He can and will shift into any kind of nightmare that you can imagine and he’s nearly impossible to kill."

What did you say to that? There was no reasonable response here, so I asked "What’s his name?"

"He doesn’t have one. He’s just a golem."

"What do you mean ‘he doesn’t have one, he’s just a golem?’  If I’m going to be ‘playing’ with this thing every day, I need to have something to call him."

Drew grinned at me and put his fists on his hips. "Grace, what would you like to call him?"

"I dunno. Maybe Scooter or something. Something harmless. I’m already going to have nightmares about the thing."

"Ok, Scooter it is." He turned back to the golem and made an expansive gesture with his hand. "So, it’s going to be a matter of defend and attack and pray that you stay alive," he continued. "Well, except that Scooter here is a good boy and he won’t go as far as killing you. Will ya boy?" he asked as he rubbed behind Scooter’s ear.

"God save me," I muttered and turned back toward the house. "I’m going to try to write a few pages before you start beating me into submission. Give me at least two hours?"

"Sure. I’m going to move the rest of this into the house and get rid of the crates."

"Oh Hey," I stopped and looked back at him. "I forgot to ask you where you were staying last night. Do you want me to make up the third bedroom for you?"

He considered it for a moment and then nodded. "Yeah I think that would be best. However, I noticed that there was a bedroom in the basement with a bathroom. I’d prefer to use that."

"It’s not furnished," I argued.

"I’ll take care of it. Just go write."

I nodded and then immediately shook my head at this entire situation. "Yeah, ok. I’ll see you in a few. Yell if you need anything."

It took me a few seconds to realize that I was being followed. I looked over my shoulder and nearly screamed. Scooter had turned into a Beagle and was panting after my heels, following me to the house, his little tail wagging back and forth.

"I hope he’s house trained!" I yelled as I stomped through the back door, ignoring that the clicking of its metallic nails against the hardwood made me move just a
little
faster.

I'd like to say that I took my training - pre-training, really - like a man, but I'd be lying.  I'd start out stoic, but it always ended the same way - with me blubbering and hiding.

At one point, I'd run away to the neighbor's to escape Drew and the torture he considered training.  He found me a few hours later and my punishment was a work out that left me too tired to climb the stairs.  As if the agony I felt with each step wasn't enough, he'd then set Scooter on me.  I survived, but still had 2 bites and a gash on my thigh by the time I made it to my bedroom.

It was an improvement, but I still hid under my bed – shaking - for 20 minutes.

I was grateful he'd taken over the cooking and cleaning because I no longer had the energy to do much of anything.  Training started as soon as I returned from dropping Dylan off at school and didn't end until he came home.  Then there was homework, family time, dinner, and finally more work finishing the book.

It was finally almost complete.  Drew had written the love scenes and I'd handled the rest.  Marisol and my editor had never been so happy, which led me to wonder whether he was
that
good or I was
that bad
at the hubba hubba.

It really says a lot when Marisol actually leaves me alone to write.  She'd once been so worried about an impending deadline that she'd chartered a flight into Colorado Springs so she could sit next to me - for three days straight - and make sure that I was writing, not goofing off. 

During our last conversation she’d expressed her joy that I’d found a good man to help "take the edge off" and that my love scenes had never been so steamy. Great, maybe it was time for me to pick another genre.

We’d gone an entire month with no further incidents. No major storms, earthquakes or melting phones. Drew figured it was because I was too tired to get angry. I couldn’t disagree.

The only thing that kept nagging at me was my lack of communication with Rose. We’d talk on the phone, but Drew didn’t think that it would be a good idea for her to come over and interrupt the routine right now.

"Think of it as a stint on The Biggest Loser," he’d joked. "You’re at the ranch and nobody is allowed in or out."

I knew - even over the phone - that she could tell something was up.  The prospect of seeing her and telling her about everything that'd been going on was what kept me going.  She was my best friend, but I knew that she'd think I'd finally taken that final icy plunge into Lake Crazy when she heard the story.  Eventually she'd get it.  She had to get it.  She was my link to normality, and not having seen her in weeks was stretching the link pretty thin.

I sucked at lying, so keeping her at a distance was the best way I could deal with this.  My male live-in was cause for concern.
 
When she'd finally seen Drew, she'd asked bluntly if I was having a mid-life crisis.

How had she seen Drew?  Oh, right - SHE SCHEDULED A FUCKING INTERVENTION - something about the possibility of me being either an alcoholic or a late-in-life drug addict.  I still smiled at her reaction when I'd had the urine sample delivered.

I found myself watching Dylan closely - staring intently at him, trying to figure out if he would start causing mini earthquakes or freak blizzards too. He was getting close to ‘the Change’ and his emotions were a little less than stable these days.

He'd scowl and tell me I was acting like a weird freak when he caught me staring at him.  I'd poke, pinch, prod or tickle him, trying to act normal to hide the terror I felt inside.

The good news:  I was sleeping better than I had in years
and
I'd lost over forty pounds.  I'd never felt so good.  Even though I still had around twenty pounds to go, my body had
never
been in great shape like this.

Was I worried that I'd lost forty pounds in a month?  A little, yes.  Ask any overweight woman if she'd turn down that type of transformation, though.  Go ahead.  If she says yes, she’s lying.

I hadn't weighed less than two hundred pounds in eight years. I suppose that having a full on boot camp can work wonders.  If this whole Hunter deal didn't work out, I was absolutely going to open a camp for the voluptuous girls who didn't want to be so voluptuous anymore.  I'd make a fortune beating people into submission.

I wondered briefly if Drew would let me keep Scooter for this fantasy venture. His presence did a lot to keep me on the straight and narrow. The fear of him maybe catching me someday kept me eating right and pushing myself beyond what I'd ever imagined possible.

Swirls of frost edged my bathroom window, and I could see the bushes twitching as the animals scurried along, preparing for the oncoming snow.

The weatherman had predicted four inches over the next few days but - as usual - nobody took the poor guy seriously. He was rarely accurate. Brandon was coming to grab Dylan for the weekend and I thought I’d heard something about skiing. With a sigh - and a small pang of sadness - I continued my morning routine, wishing that I could do something as mundane as skiing.

I stepped off the scale and took a few minutes to take a personal inventory. My hair had grown a few inches and I looked like a skunk with the grey stripes at my scalp. I’d been so tired that I hadn’t taken the time to see my stylist.

My face had lost its puffiness, my breasts had lifted (Take that gravity!) and the extra person living in my stomach wasn’t so prominent. I turned and looked over my shoulder at my ass with a grin. Yeah, baby! That was hours on the treadmill and weight machine at work. I had been tempted to go on a shopping spree to celebrate, but the aforementioned exhaustion made my downtime hours all about sleep and spending time with Dylan.

Time was an ever present enemy. As much as I’d like to get this waiting over with the worry of what was to come filled me with trepidation.

There was no sign of Diana and when asked where she was, Drew would clam up or tell me to focus on the now. Obviously, he thought that I needed further lessons in patience. There was just so much to do and so many questions waiting for ‘the right time.’ Who in their right minds didn’t want the right time to be now?

I pulled my hair back into a tight coil at the back of my head. Ponytails had become a thing of the past when Scooter had started using them as leverage to fling me around the room.

In a moment of utter frustration and no little amount of pain, I’d almost taken the kitchen scissors to my hair. A fraction of a second before the blades had cut into the sweaty strands, Drew had sprinted into the bathroom and grabbed my wrist.

He’d muttered something about regret, losing so much and inability to grow it back. It’s hard to focus on words when you’ve got a half-naked man gripping your wrist like you were about to cut your face off. As far as I knew, hair was the one thing that I could count on growing for as long as I was kicking.

Regardless, the hair had stayed and the ponytails had not.

It was only 6:30 in the morning but I had already showered and dressed for the day. I could hear Dylan getting into the shower as I padded barefoot into the kitchen where Drew waited with a strawberry banana egg white smoothie.