Tempting Gray - Untouchables 02 (4 page)

“He’s not your man, you fat cow!” The insult
rang the length of the basketball court. The current crowd featuring one mad
pregnant woman, one jilted angry lover, and the man between said two women was
in the midst of a great row.

Arabella had seen plenty of baby-daddy fights
in her day and didn’t hesitate to intervene. Plus it helped that most people in
the pack knew and respected her.

“Hold it right there!” Arabella said nice and
loud.

Whichever insult Amber the jilted lover was
about to spew froze at Arabella’s command. It took only one second for Amber to
realize who yelled the command and deduce that Arabella had no real power in
this situation. Which was true enough.

Amber rolled her eyes. “Jeez, it’s just Ara.”

Ara had to give her credit, she was one of the
few people who actually pronounced her name correctly. It was Ara pronounced
like
aura
not
air-uh
.

“Yes, it’s me, which means this family drama is
over.”

“Mind your own business, Bella,” said the man
at the center of it all. Jeff Gordman was known around the pack. He was
good-looking, quick smiling, and sweet with woman. He loved them and they loved
him. That’s how he came to have two lovers at once, though Ara wouldn’t doubt
if he had a few others on the side too. However nice Jeff normally was, when
his women found out about each other there was always drama. This time one of
them was big with his baby.

“Listen, you’re at the basketball courts where
kids play. There’s even one right there, see?” Ara pointed to a mother pushing
a baby in a stroller nearby.

Michelle, Jeff’s pregnant lover, glared a hole
at Ara. It looked like Arabella had unwittingly made herself a punching bag by
stepping into this conversation. “That’s Patty’s new baby. He’s about six
months old. I don’t think he can even see us over here. Since you seem to be
such an expert maybe you can clarify. Do babies that young see from, oh, thirty
yards away?”

If anyone could glare well it was Arabella. She
had a heck of a glare, or so she’d been told. She put her eyes to full force on
Michelle. “I was trying to be nice about this but I can see that is no longer
an option. There may not be kids around right this very second but that does
not mean you three are allowed to stand out here and air the dirty laundry with
a bullhorn. Take the drama home and finish it there.”

“Like I’ll go back with her!” Amber said. She
pulled a cigarette out of her purse and lit up, sucking on it like this would
be her last smoke ever.

“Oh please, slut, like you’d be allowed in my
house,” retorted Michelle.

Jeff squeezed the bridge of his nose. “We’ll go
to my place.” This announcement riled up the girls until they were both
shouting at Jeff. Arabella couldn’t dredge up even a smidgen of guilt for him.
Not even a faux-frown.

Aha! Ara’s eyes lit up. “You can use the
conference room at the library. I’ll call ahead and tell them to let you use a
room. As long as you keep your voices at adult, normal ranges then you’ll be
fine. If you get loud, you know who the librarian is.”

Jeff groaned. “Matilda.”

Amber shook her head. “She’s the strictest
librarian in the world. I can’t believe she’s still allowed to work there.”

“It’s because she works for free and does an
excellent job,” Arabella said, grinning. Old Matilda worked like a horse and those
who dared to break one of her rules would live to regret it later. Arabella had
seen what Matilda was capable of. She shivered just thinking about it. Library
fees could be expensive.

The trio came to an agreement and left. Arabella
hopped into her Jeep and continued on her original mission. Today she was going
to see the president. The president. She’d been on her way when she’d spotted
The Troubled Trio at the basketball courts. Now that she was focused again on
her task, she gnawed on her bottom lip.

The new president of the vampire and Were
council, Zeke Hunter, was also Ara’s alpha. She and all others were under his
protection while she lived on his lands. She’d talked with alpha Zeke on a few
occasions, enough to agree with the rumors of his sanity. The Were was not all
there in the head.

How he still managed to become elected and beat
Dominic Blackmoore in the race only proved how smart he was. At least some of
the time anyway, when he had his senses about him. Zeke swayed many voters with
his promises of change and new mating laws that would open between vampires and
Weres—something previously unheard of—and pairings were now allowed between
same-sex beings. He’d made good on his promises so far.

Zeke did not keep a normal office, such was
part of his oddness. Instead, he preferred to keep to a tent which he and his
closest confidants moved regularly. It kept Zeke as one the hardest to track Were’s
in the world, and that was on top of the alpha’s natural power to keep untraceable.

Arabella found the tent in the clearing as her orders
had said. A group of guards hung around the tent. Two more Were’s were
shapeshifted into their natural Were form. Their bodies were muscular but
covered in a heavy tuft of dark hair. Their faces had been replaced with snouts,
teeth with fangs, hands with heavy paws. They prowled around the tent, sniffing
the wind, always searching to catch alarming scents.

These Weres could shapeshift. Some Weres,
powerful ones like Zeke, were even multi-transformational. Meaning they were
able to transform into a variety of powerful predators. That was rare though. Ara’s
smile was as bitter as the sour taste on her tongue.

What I would give to be a real Were.

The guards didn’t stop her or ask for her name
as she passed through the flap of the tent. Inside the tent it was like a fully
functioning business. Along the walls were desks, tables filling the middle of
the room. There were open laptops with programs running, TV monitors with the
captions on, and paper everywhere. However, the alpha was nowhere to be seen.

Arabella peeked around the tent to ensure she
was alone, then poked her head out of the tent flap. The guard nearest her
turned around. “What is it?” he asked. Zeke’s guards were infamous for being
the best fighters. And by great fighters she meant excellent killers. That’s
what they’d been trained to excel at, among other secret talents of which Arabella
couldn’t possibly begin to fathom. She was not a fighter. She was a tracker.

Arabella wasn’t sure how to say it. “Um…there’s
no one here.”

“Go inside and call line sixteen on the phone
at the desk. Not the wireless phone on the wall. Make sure you only use the one
on the desk and dial line sixteen,” he said.

So far this wasn’t too strange. Once she heard
a story of a man who had to perform a dance, sing a song, then run five miles
before Zeke would see him.

“And then what happens?” she asked

The guard blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I guess I’m wondering who I’m calling and why,”
she said slowly.

“He’s underground and doesn’t know you’re here.
Call line sixteen from the black phone on the desk.” The guard spun back
around. End of conversation.

“Okie dokie then.”

Arabella found the phone and punched the button
for the correct extension. The phone rang, then rang some more. “Hm…” The line
reached the minute marker of ringing when Arabella heard it—the sound of
something mechanical engaging. The sound came from the middle of the floor
beneath one of the tables located in the center of the room. It sounded like an
elevator lift.

Putting the phone down, Ara watched as a secret
door lifted up from the wood floor and a familiar man pulled himself out of a
trap door. Alpha Zeke Hunter stood brushing dust off of his shorts—mostly doing
a shitty job of it too, Ara noted.

Zeke had blond shaggy hair swept back from his
face. The hairstyle made him look more like a surfer than an alpha with
questionable sanity. His eyes were blue as the ocean, body in fine physical
condition, but, his mind fluctuated between astute intelligence and pure
cray-cray
.

“Arabella Ophelia Donahue, daughter of Robert
and Hilde Donahue, born in France though you never lived anywhere for long
until you came here in my pack. Your stay in my pack has been your longest
residence to date.”

“That’s correct, sir.” She’d moved into Zeke’s
pack some fifteen years ago.

“I know a man who knows a man who said you have
a special talent. Something unusual.” His smile transformed his handsome visage
into something spectacular. The smile combined with his compliment made her
blush.

“I wouldn’t call it a talent. It’s just
something I can do.”

His smile was that of a predator’s. “That’s why
it’s called talent, Oprah.”

“Oprah?” Ara blinked slowly. “Did you just
called me Oprah?”

“That is your middle name, is it not?”
Suddenly, his head jerked to the side and he looked as if he was listening to
something she couldn’t hear. His eyes glazed over like that of a zombie.

“It is not,” she assured him. Did he even hear
her? Three full minutes passed before the alpha snapped out of whatever daze
held him. “Oprah.” He didn’t meet her gaze so she wasn’t even sure if he was
talking to her or himself.

“My name is not Oprah,” she said.

He looked down at the floor a moment before his
body glided down to it. Then he commenced in doing aggressive, military-style
pushups. Down and up he pushed himself at rapid pace. “Oprah.” His voice was
muffled from his breathing. And from talking to the floor.

“Ophelia,” she corrected.

He was on pushup twenty-two and hadn’t broken a
sweat yet. “Arabella Oprah Donahue, I require your assistance in a grave matter
of importance. It is
very
important to me.”

Ara stifled the urge to jump up and down
screaming. A personal task from the president, what more of a career
opportunity could she ask for? “What’s the job?”

Pushups lead to more pushups which lead to some
kind of handstand push-up that made Ara wince. He made the athletic move seem
easy.

“Well?”

“I need your help to find my mate.”

Ara stilled. “Wait, what did you say?” She
couldn’t have heard that right. The infamously single Zeke had a mate and he
wanted her to help find this person? How was she supposed to do that? If anyone
had the power to find her it was him. He was the president after all!

The alpha jumped to a stand. He began
stretching his arms, swinging them about to loosen them up. His hair had fallen
in his face but he didn’t bother to fix it. “I’ve heard about you, Oprah. You
might not be able to shift, but you have something else unique to you. And as
far as I know it’s unique to you alone.”

Nothing could send a chill faster through Ara’s
stomach then the harsh reminder of her deficiency as a Were. Her earlier
excitement deflated like a popped balloon. She cleared her throat. “I don’t
know if others have my…problem.”

“I assure you they do not or they would be here
and not you, Oprah.”

Even her glare did nothing to affect the alpha.
“My name isn’t Oprah.”

A guard came into the room. He carried a rolled
up document and a black velvet box. Zeke gave the man an approving nod and the
guard spread the document open on a table covered in papers, pens, and rolled
up fast food wrappers. It was a map of the United States. Using color-coded
sections the map depicted all the Were territories which all the alphas ran. It
labeled the vampire strongholds throughout the country. The box he set to the
side.

Zeke ran his hands across the map, almost
lovingly. “Leave, Freddy.” The guard removed himself without a word. He started
to hum a song. He still had yet to explain anything to her and now he was
humming a tune. It took a few seconds for her to place the familiar tune.

There once was a man named Michael Finnegan. He
had whiskers on his chin again. They fell out then grew back in again. Poor old
Michael Finnegan. Begin again.

And the alpha did repeat the song, over and
again, as he stared at that map as if it held all the answers and none of them.

“I have a task for you,” he said with sudden
energy.

“I’d like to know what that task is if it isn’t
too much trouble.”

“I need you to find someone for me using your…unique
ability. And you’re going to do it with this.” He opened the black velvet box.
She didn’t know what to expect inside—a severed head, a gun, a bottle of wine—with
Zeke’s mental stability, she wouldn’t have been surprised at any of those
things. But it was none of those things.

A hairbrush.

Tucked into soft black velvet cushioning was a
classic-style woman’s hairbrush. It had soft bristles that had begun to yellow
with age. The brush looked like it was made from silver. An engraved floral
pattern covered the head of the brush. It looked a hundred years old, perhaps
more. They simply didn’t make hairbrushes like this anymore, or at least not
that Ara had seen. This was made from real bore hair, not synthetic fibers. It
looked like it might even be heavy if she could pick it up.