by Dean Murray
Chapter 6
Alec Graves
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah
Mallory was waiting for us, for me really, at the airport as the plane landed. I thought about making some kind of wisecrack about there being no need for her to express her thanks quite so profusely, but one look at the expression on her face convinced me to keep my mouth shut. The simple black dress pants and a white blouse she was wearing indicated that she was off to work some kind of 'respectable' business deal for Kaleb, but somehow her attire didn't manage to make her any less menacing.
She wasn't the strongest or toughest hybrid in the pack and it had been ages since she'd been sent down to the border on any kind of active combat op, but Mallory was Kaleb's strong right hand and anyone who really pissed her off seemed to eventually find themselves in dire straits of some kind or another. Sometimes when Kaleb was extremely confident he could win he would challenge the subject of her ire himself, but usually he just paid one or more of the other dominants to beat on the poor soul who'd crossed her.
Ulrich Bishop in the Chicago pack had pretty much written the book on using fiscal incentives to keep a pack in line, but Kaleb had been forced to add a chapter or two of his own in the course of keeping the Sanctuary pack from shattering into half a dozen pieces.
"You're late."
The question wasn't actually directed at anyone in particular, but I was dominant to the other three so I answered.
"The pilot said he encountered stronger than expected winds which slowed us down quite a bit."
Mallory frowned. "I'll have to have a word with him about that. The planes are being scheduled too tightly to allow for this kind of slippage. Between the four of you missing your original transit window and Samantha's little joyride the schedules are all shot to hell."
I nodded and made a non-committal noise as I turned to go, but she pulled me up short by saying my name.
"I told you that you wouldn't be able to continue ducking me forever. Your friends can leave if they want to, but you and I are going to find a quiet room while the crew gets the plane refueled."
I motioned with my head towards the waiting car.
"You three go ahead. Heaven knows we've got little enough time before we've got to ship back out, the last thing you need is to be cooling your heels here waiting for me."
Mallory didn't wait to see if I would follow, she just turned around and headed back into the administrative building that she'd just come out of.
I shrugged at James and the others and followed Mallory inside. The staff inside the building practically fell all over each other in their eagerness to show Mallory to a private conference room. Kaleb was the single biggest patron of the airport. His fuel bill alone probably exceeded the revenues from the next three biggest customers and there were persistent rumors that Kaleb and Mallory were considering increasing the pack's fleet by at least another one or two planes.
It would have been a lot cheaper to fly commercial, but an awful lot of the pack's dominants didn't play very well with civilians. That, combined with the fact that Kaleb frequently needed to move around groups of relatively large people at short notice, meant that most of the pack's travel would probably continue to be via the private planes.
Once everyone else had cleared back out of the conference room, Mallory sat in one of the plush chairs and motioned for me to kneel down in front of her. I could have just as easily sat in a chair while she stood, but she liked to reinforce the fact that I was submissive to her at every turn. Apparently I waited too long to comply because she snapped her fingers at me and gestured again.
"I don't have all day, Alec. The plane will be refueled in the next few minutes, at which point I need to be on my way."
I reminded myself of all of the reasons that I hadn't mouthed off to her earlier and dropped down to my knees, suppressing an internal grimace as she placed her hands on each side of my head and sent a rush of power out.
My beast didn't like it, he responded with a surge of power of his own, but she was too focused on using her ability to notice and take umbrage. I was fairly sure that it was nothing more than my imagination, but I always came away after a session with Mallory feeling cold and clammy inside.
Nearly a minute passed before she released me and sat back in her chair with a considering look on her face.
"You're more powerful now than you were the last time I scanned you. What happened?"
Her statement took me completely by surprise. I'd known that her ability allowed her to see when another hybrid had an ability of their own as well as giving her some very specific information regarding what that ability was able to do, but I'd never known that she was able to sense general changes in the amount of power a given shape shifter possessed.
"I don't have to tell you that. Now that you've confirmed that I still haven't manifested an ability I'm going to go home."
"An increase in power level is useful all by itself, Alec. Surely you can't be as cavalier as you pretend regarding your ongoing inability to realize the potential I saw in you so many years ago when you were born. An ability would allow you to call your own shots, make your own way in the world…protect those you care about."
"Don't mistake my ability to differentiate between the things I can control and the things I can't as apathy."
"Ah, good, some fire finally. You're right, you have not manifested an ability despite the fact that your general power level has gone up noticeably."
I stood, but she waved me back to a seat. "I'm not going to force you to tell me what triggered your increase in power. Mostly I'm not pushing because I already have a pretty good idea. It's not uncommon for the first real dose of combat to trigger a power increase in someone, but you need to find a way to grow your power level even more. A lot rides on it."
I had to force myself not to laugh in her face. "I know that you're a level removed from most of the dominance posturing, but I've been in plenty of combat before now. It's a rare week when I don't end up tangling with someone."
Mallory waved my comment away. "It's not the same. Dominance fights do occasionally end with someone being killed but it's a rarity. Your father's rules help somewhat, but mostly it just comes down to our natural instinct. A beaten foe, one whom our beast is sure is inferior to us, is more valuable alive than dead. Alive they can help serve as a buffer, another opponent that someone else will have to challenge and beat before they can get at us. Dead, they serve no purpose at all. The only time we see a death from combat in Sanctuary tends to be when the two people involved really hate each other."
"Just in case you've been asleep on the job, Vincent and I really hate each other. I've been in plenty of danger in the past without ever needing to square off against any vampires."
I got a cold smile from her. "I'm done talking about this, Alec. Every word you've said has been the truth, but I'm perfectly capable of discerning when someone is trying to deceive me by telling me only part of the truth. I've only continued the conversation for this long because it is vitally important that you understand the extreme importance attached to you manifesting an ability. You are quickly running out of time."
I kept the relief washing through me off of my face, and I was pretty sure that I'd done a decent job stopping it from bleeding over into my scent. She'd assumed that I was trying to put her off the trail of the truth, which I had been, but I'd been trying to keep her going down the path she'd already selected, not steer her off like she'd assumed I was.
"I'm already aware of just how many of Kaleb's plans hinge on me being able to serve as a counterweight to Brandon. I'll take your concerns under advisement, but I hardly expect that anything I could do in the next eighteen hours would allow me to manifest an ability that would make any kind of difference down on the border."
"I wasn't talking about your upcoming tour of duty. Trust me. If you don't manifest an ability soon you're going to look back at our conversation and bitterly wish that you'd moved heaven
and earth to heed my warning."
I opened my mouth to ask her what she was trying to get at, but she stood and left the room in a single fluid motion that didn't give me a chance to get any words out. I hurried after her and caught up just outside of the building.
"What are you trying to tell me?"
I grabbed hold of her shoulder to turn her around and force her to acknowledge me, but she pivoted and hit me in the stomach with such blinding speed that I didn't have a chance to do anything more than tighten my stomach muscles to try and absorb some of the force of the blow.
My best efforts weren't enough, not taken by surprise like that, not against another hybrid. She hit me hard enough to knock the wind out of me, causing me to double over in pain as her knee came up and hit my face. A split second later I was looking up at her from my back.
"You don't put your hands on me, Alec. This time was a freebie. The next time you try to impose your will on me in any manner I will kill you and your father's plans can burn."
Mallory turned and walked away without waiting for a response from me. A few seconds later she was onboard the plane and one of the guys from the ground crew was asking me if I was okay.
"Yeah, I'll be fine."
I waved away his offer of a cloth for my nose and rolled back to my feet. My metabolism was already kicking in; the bleeding had nearly stopped and by the time we flew out tomorrow my nose probably wouldn't even be swollen any more.
There were usually at least a couple of cars from the pack at the airport at any given time and today was no exception. The dark blue Honda Civic and the black Nissan Pathfinder both had Kaleb's circular sigil affixed to their rear windows, so I used the standard code to unlock the Honda and a few minutes later I was on my way back to the house.
A few years back, two of the locals had figured out our standard unlock code and gone joyriding in one of the pack cars that Kaleb had purchased by the dozen. Kaleb had sent Brandon to teach them a lesson.
Neither guy had been able to walk unassisted for nearly two months. The police had investigated, but nothing had come of it. Actually that wasn't right—nothing had come of the investigation, but after that everyone in Sanctuary had realized that Kaleb had GPS transmitters on all of his cars and that they'd be idiots to touch his property.
Brandon had strutted around like a king after that and I'd realized just exactly how little influence my mother really had. She'd managed to anonymously pay for the worst of the medical bills that Brandon had inflicted on the two guys, but she hadn't been able to do any more than that.
I'd wanted Brandon to end up in prison, or for some kind of civil case to be brought against Kaleb, but both had remained completely above the law, just like always.
I started my drive back to the estate in a bad mood and thinking about Brandon just made things worse. By the time I got home, I was angry enough that I probably would have done something stupid like challenging Brandon if I'd run into him in one of the halls.
Fortunately, he was down on the border and I didn't run into anyone else on my way to my room. I cleaned myself up and headed into the small training room that Kaleb had attached to my bedroom as a reward when I changed to a wolf for the first time.
I'd used it religiously for several years until I'd realized that it didn't matter how much I worked out I still wouldn't be able to match the unnatural strength of someone like Brandon or the supernatural healing that Kaleb routinely used to wear his opponents into the ground before finishing the fight in an abrupt explosion of violence.
The fact that Vincent was now stronger than me was proof that weight training did indeed pay dividends even for shape shifters, so that meant that I needed to squeeze regular training sessions into my schedule on top of the studying that I'd need to get my GED.
I was midway through my fourth set of curls when someone knocked on my bedroom door. Some of the anger that had started to die down while I'd been working out flared up and I stalked towards my door fully intending on giving somebody a piece of my mind. My beast was just as unhappy and waves of power preceded me, beating on the door in time with my steps. I flung open the door and then upon seeing that it was Donovan who was waiting for me, reined my anger in.
"Have I come at a bad time, Master Alec?"
"No worse than normal, Donovan, I'm just not handling things as well today. Please come in."
Donovan gave me a respectful nod and then waited as I turned on the three privacy generators stationed about my room.
"What can I do for you, Donovan?"
"Not for me, sir, but rather for your mother. She sent me to ask if you would be willing to spend the evening with your sister. She's heard that Master Kaleb is quite incensed over the damage to his troop rotations occasioned by her shopping trip with Mistress Rachel and she expects that he will pay her a visit tonight to discuss his unhappiness over her recent actions."
"And she'd rather Rachel not feel like it's her fault for asking Mother to take her shopping."
"Exactly, sir. May I tell her that you'll acquiesce to her request?"
"Yes. I'd much rather spend the evening stewing, but it would probably be good for me to not be by myself tonight. Mother could have just called me and saved you the trip across the house."
Donovan gave me the small smile he used when I questioned the traditions that my family had followed for more centuries than I could even imagine.
"Some things are simply better conveyed one person to another rather than over one of those technological devices that your generation is so fond of."
I shook my head at him. "And by that you mean she couldn't get away herself, but she wanted you to report on my state of mind in greater detail than she thought she'd be able to get by talking to me over the phone."
"Of course, sir. And since the secondary purpose of my visit is now out in the open, may I ask how things went? Your mother heard that you'd been injured and was quite concerned."
"All in all, they could have gone quite a bit worse than they did. James and I were injured, as were two of Jack's wolves, but Jasmin and Jessica came out of it with flesh wounds and James and I will pretty much be back at full strength by the time we land in Arizona tomorrow."
Donovan nodded, but it was obvious to me that he was considering his next question very carefully. "May I tell your mother that your power level has grown?"
I wanted to put my fist through a wall, but I forced my anger back down and nodded. "Yes. I hadn't planned on keeping that a secret from Mother, but I didn't expect for the secret to get out on its own so quickly. First Mallory and then you. At this rate the entire pack will know before I leave tomorrow. Is it that obvious?"
Donovan pursed his lips and then shook his head slowly. "I would say no, at least not for most of the dominants, but we submissives tend to become very good at remembering relative power levels, and you were quite angry just now. Under normal circumstances nobody other than Mallory could tell that anything had changed, but you will need to be very careful to remain in control of your emotions if you want to maintain your secret."
"I seem to be having a harder time than usual controlling my anger today. Honestly I'm not sure how Mallory got so far under my skin, but she sure pissed me off today."
"If I may, Master Alec, I've noticed a definite trend that would seem to indicate that the more powerful one's beast is, the harder time one tends to have keeping one's feelings in check. While you've become quite accomplished and controlled over the years, it is possible that your recent increase in power is going to take some getting used to on a number of fronts."
He was probably right. It made a lot of sense, which meant that I'd have to be even more vigilant than normal for the next little while, but that wasn't what had caught my attention. There'd been a slight change in his expression when I'd mentioned Mallory. It had been so small that I would have almost thought I was imagining it, but it wasn't the first time that it had happened when I'd mentioned her name around him.
"Donovan, j
ust now when I talked about Mallory you…well, it was almost like you flinched."
"Indeed, Master Alec. I have tried for years to break myself of that habit, but it appears that I have not yet fully succeeded."
"Can I ask what happened or is that presuming too much?"
Donovan was silent for several seconds before finally nodding with a jerky motion that was nothing at all like the smooth, graceful, proper movements that normally characterized him.
"I must admit that the story is difficult for me to tell even now. Your mother has no doubt told you that your father was an entirely different man back before you were born, but you may not have realized that many of the pack were likewise different back then. Mallory and I have both been in service to your family since back before your father was born."
I nodded. I didn't tend to think about just how old Donovan was, but much like Jack he'd been around and lived through things that I'd only heard vague references about in history books.
"I fought my feelings for many decades, but the truth was that during our shared service, first to your grandfather and then to your father, I developed feelings for Mallory."
I felt my eyes go wide, but Donovan didn't seem to hold my surprise against me.
"I wish you could have known her back then, Master Alec. She was a strong, brave woman who was consumed by the plans that Kaleb had for the pack. It seemed that nothing was impossible back in those days. Kaleb was outmaneuvering the Coun'hij at every turn and he'd laid the groundwork for alliances with Jaclyn in the south and Ulrich in the north."
"What happened?"
Donovan shrugged. "Nobody knows, not even those of us who were inside of Kaleb's inner circle back when it happened. We had a visitor late one night, a man who demanded to be shown to Kaleb's office and who conversed with Kaleb for nearly ten hours before disappearing into the night. After that things slowly started to change. The differences were almost imperceptible at first. Still, I should have seen them, but I was foolishly focused more on Mallory than on Kaleb."
"She betrayed you, didn't she?"
"Yes. In hindsight, looking backwards with a knowledge of who she's become over the last couple of decades, it must seem obvious that she would betray me, but I didn't have that advantage back then. I'd struggled with the possible impropriety of my feelings for years, but finally one day I expressed my admiration for her in stronger, plainer terms than I ever had before. She told me that she was flattered, that she'd sensed a special bond growing between us over the years, but that she hadn't ever thought it proper to act on it before now. She told me that she needed some time to think things over and confirm to herself that a relationship between the two of us wouldn't violate our oaths to Kaleb and the pack."
Donovan's smile was bittersweet. "We spent more time together over the next couple of months. I wanted to press her for an answer, but I knew that she wasn't the kind of woman to respond well to being pressured, so I kept my silence and just enjoyed the fact that we were together so much more than before. Things came to a head when the two of us ran into Agony."
My breath caught. Agony had been the shape shifter equivalent to the bogyman for as long as I could remember. He was just a hybrid, but his power was one that allowed him to short-circuit the normal healing abilities of a shape shifter. Normally we healed back from nearly anything that didn't kill us and we rarely scarred. Agony could make any wound heal with human slowness and even then they never really healed right, leaving a mass of scar tissue that pulled whenever we moved around and especially when we shifted forms.
"It was a routine patrol. If we'd known that he was sniffing around we would have brought more help, but it was before Kaleb had joined up with the Coun'hij so we weren't expecting Agony to take any interest in us. Besides, we wanted some time alone."
"He knew. Somehow he knew that Kaleb was going to throw in with the Coun'hij."
"Yes, I think he did. I still don't know how, but I think that you're right. He knew that Kaleb was considering an alliance with the Coun'hij and he was scouting around the edge of our territory looking for a weakness, looking for a way into the manor so that he could attack Kaleb."
"What happened?"
"We attacked Agony like the good soldiers we were. Believe it or not, back then I was a respectable fighter. I was no match for a hybrid by myself, but Mallory and I together had Agony on the ropes. I thought that we were going to beat him, and then Mallory was a fraction of a second too slow in backing up one of my lunges and Agony buried his claws in the left side of my chest. It was far enough back that it missed my heart, but it scarred up exactly as you would have expected, which is why I rarely transform any more. After that Agony fled and Mallory carried me back here to the estate."
"Why would she have let you get hurt like that?"
"I think that she had been instructed by Kaleb to do whatever she could to increase the bond between us. She must have thought that her delay would go unnoticed, that I would think that she'd saved my life rather than risking it. She came to me while I was still in bed trying to recover from my injuries and she told me that she wanted to be with me, but that there was something hanging over her head that wouldn't allow it. Of course I begged her to tell me what was stopping her and finally she told me that Kaleb was planning on betraying the pack. She said that she was worried that he would use our relationship to manipulate both of us and that the only way for us to act on our feelings for each other would be for us to run away."
Donovan stared off into the distance for nearly a minute before sighing. "I didn't have access to nearly as much of your father's finances back then as I have now, but I could have easily made off with millions. It would have been enough for the two of us to live out our lives on a small island somewhere safe from Kaleb and the Coun'hij both."
"You told her no."
"I did indeed. I told her that my oath to your father was more important to me than even my feelings for her. I said that if he were indeed to betray us that things would be different, but until then I would have to stand by Kaleb no matter what else might come."
"It was a test."
"Indeed, a most shrewd one at that. I'd never realized until then just how accomplished a liar Mallory was. Her scent, her pulse, her expression, her voice, they were all perfect. I had no doubt that she was telling the truth and I chose to stand by Kaleb regardless. The only clue I had during the whole lead up to their test was the fact that she'd almost let me die, but only minutes after she left my room Kaleb came in and told me that I'd passed, that I'd shown the kind of loyalty that he'd always known I'd possessed."
"At which point he put you in charge of all of the pack finances."
"Correct, Master Alec. It was a cruel irony that not too long after that Kaleb joined the Coun'hij and I started to realize that everything Mallory had said had been true other than that she wanted to run away with me."
"I'm so sorry, Donovan."
"Don't be, Master Alec. I've had a long time to work through the bulk of my feelings where Mallory is concerned. I related the story now only because I think it's important for you to know what you are up against. Master Kaleb and Mallory are capable of almost any atrocity if they think that it might bring them closer to their goals."
Donovan shook himself slightly and then bowed his head respectfully. "I'll let your mother know that she can send Rachel over at any time."
I watched in silence as Donovan turned and left my room. I went back to my weights and made it through two more sets before Rachel arrived, but my heart wasn't in the workout anymore, so I didn't feel particularly put out by needing to stop to get the door for her.
Rachel wrinkled her nose at me as she stepped into my room. "You've been working out."
"I hardly worked out at all, but I can go jump through the shower if you want me to."
Rachel shook her head. "That's a bad idea if I've ever heard one. If you did that then I'd get bored and go back to Mom's rooms, thereby defeating the purpose of her suggesting
I come and check up on you. You're not very good at this spy stuff."
I rolled my eyes at her. "Somehow I'm not surprised that you saw through Mom's attempt at getting you out of the way. It makes life a lot easier though because it means I could go shower without worrying that you'll wander off."
"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather you stay out here and talk to me. If I'm by myself then I'll just think about Dad yelling at Mom." Rachel looked down at the carpet and then shrugged. "Mom and I went on a shopping trip, which is what has Dad pissed off."
"Usually she schedules those a week or two in advance to make sure that it causes the minimum amount of fuss possible. What made her change things up at the last minute this time?"
Rachel sighed and tried not to meet my eyes, but I reached out and gently brought her chin up so that she had no other choice.
"Mom got a call from Jack in St. Louis. He told her that you'd been hurt and that he needed some help coming up with a way to keep you there for a day or two. She figured that a request from him combined with us screwing up the schedule for one of the planes would do it. She was right, but now Dad is going to yell at her again."
There was almost more information in those few sentences than I knew what to do with. Apparently Jack was working with my mother, maybe not all of the time, but enough still that they would do each other favors, at least when it came to protecting me.
"I didn't know that Mom let you hear those kinds of things. Usually she sends you out of the room whenever we talk about something important."
Rachel nodded. "Yeah, that's pretty much just for show. If it's just the two of us and a call comes in she rarely makes me leave. As long as we keep up the appearance that I don't know anything then she figures that I'm pretty safe. Nobody will try to sweat me for information if they don't know that I'm privy to most of what she knows. You'd be surprised at some of the stuff that's rattling around inside of my head, Alec."
She said it with a smile, but there was an undertone of worry to her voice.
"What's wrong, Rachel? I mean besides the fact that Kaleb and Mother are in her rooms fighting. There's something else, isn't there?"
"Yeah. Mom has started keeping a secret from me, or maybe I've just started to realize that she's not telling me everything like I thought she was. There's something going on down at the border, something that has her worried, but she keeps dodging my attempts to try to figure out what it is. I don't suppose you know what's going on?"
I shook my head. I could feel a headache coming on. I'd always thought that Mom kept me in the loop on everything and kept Rachel in the dark as much as possible. Rachel had just shaken my worldview in a slight but very real way.
"I don't know, but I'd bet that Jack does. He more or less hinted that something terrible was going on down on the border, but when I tried to press him about stuff, he shut me down in spectacular fashion."
Rachel frowned. "I don't like this. I don't like the fact that they are keeping some huge secret from us. It makes me question for the first time whether or not I can trust Mom. It seems like the stakes just keep getting higher and higher."
"Are you still hoping that Kaleb isn't the bad guy here?"
"I'm not an idiot, Alec. I know that Dad isn't very nice, and I know that he's done some pretty mean things. The fact that I'm holding out a little bit of hope that he's in some way redeemable doesn't mean that I'm going to allow him to hurt me or the people I care about. I'm telling you though that there is something about what Dad is doing that just doesn't add up, and I'm going to keep digging whenever I get the chance to try and figure out what is really going on."
I pulled Rachel into a hug and closed my eyes as I rested my chin on the top of her head. "You're too good for this life, Rachel. Someone as kind and smart as you belongs in the normal world where you can make some lucky guy extremely happy and then have a life where the worst thing you worry about is whether or not the two of you will be able to make your mortgage payments."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Alec. You're pretty okay yourself. Out of everyone in my life, you're the one person I still feel like I can trust completely. Please don't betray my trust. I'm not sure that I could survive that."
"Don't worry, Rachel. I'll do everything I can to protect you."