by Mark Henwick
Not what I needed.
Tarez was watching me carefully. “Are you all right?”
When I nodded, he continued: “Time is of the essence for all of us, and you, Amber, are the bottleneck. So what do you suggest? What can you do and in what order?”
Naryn started to protest, but Tarez overrode him. “Allow us a few more moments, old friend.”
I took a couple of deep breaths and looked down into the tangled heart of what I’d been told to do.
“As syndesmon, I have to be accountable to both sides, to truly represent both sides—otherwise it all fails,” I said. “I have to look ahead and anticipate problems, deal with them so they’re no longer problems when they arrive.” That last was just spouting one of Top’s mantras, but saying it helped me focus, helped me calm down and think.
“I need to be in three or four different places. Here—”
Elizabetta burst through the doors and ran over.
“We’ve got another problem. The local Were have attacked Alex’s patrol.”
Chapter 23
My first worry was eased when Elizabetta got Alex on the secure commset.
“We’re all okay at the moment,” he said. “No real injuries.”
Everyone who was available had piled into a van, with Tom driving. Naryn had had to leave; he was needed in Denver immediately. Tarez had hurriedly gotten him to agree to email us a list of his requirements and timeframes. I agreed to reply with my schedule and reasoning. All very businesslike.
It hurt Naryn’s authority for Tarez to have to broker a deal, and yet he’d accepted it. That put more pressure on me. Oddly enough, more pressure than if he’d been standing toe to toe and yelling at me.
Maybe he knows that. Maybe that’s why he agreed.
More pressure wasn’t what I needed, especially now, especially not with the LA Were.
I’d have problems with the Pasadena pack after injuring their hit squad. The fact that I was justified and restrained in my response to their attack on my House—that might keep it from going to all-out war, but it was not a good start.
Tarez needed me to answer any complaints and stop any aggression from the LA packs, and then turn it around and negotiate a deal between House Tarez and them. But as soon as we’d fought the Pasadena Were, we’d set off a chain reaction. They’d know I was the hybrid and I was claiming territory in LA. Even relatively small as Club Vasana was, it was territory, and by the sound of it, it lay inside the Redondo pack’s area. Saying I was claiming it for an Athanate House wouldn’t work in the long term. As far as the Were were concerned, I would be claiming it for Pack Deauville.
Pasadena and Redondo might overcome their differences temporarily to get rid of the intruder.
They might even combine with all the other packs.
That might be what was happening right now.
So, I had to stop this fight and get an agreement in place with all the LA packs. And if I didn’t get it immediately, Alex and I would need to back off right out of LA.
Altau security would be left without Were assistance just as Basilikos seemed to be increasing their efforts.
And I couldn’t work on getting Forsythe to face justice if I couldn’t even set foot in LA.
Shit.
Tom swung the van out of the studio gates and floored it, heading for the freeway.
“They aren’t organized or trained,” Alex said, still talking to me on Elizabetta’s commset. “We pinned them down easily, but—”
“They’re on their cells right now and you’re going to be surrounded,” I said.
“That’s about it.”
He gave me details of how they’d managed to turn the tables and trap the attacking Were in the tangle of rail yards and container parks between Commerce and Vernon, just south of downtown.
Listening to him, I felt a wave of relief. Alex simply got it. With their better training and weaponry, he and the Altau patrol could have killed the Were that had attacked them. Alex didn’t know Tarez was asking me to recruit the LA Were as associates, but he understood in his wolf gut that we, as Pack Deauville, needed to keep the lid on this. Letting Altau kill Were wouldn’t do that.
But they couldn’t just sit there and be overwhelmed when the LA packs’ reinforcements arrived, or some passing member of the public called in SWAT teams.
Not knowing about the lockdown, Alex had been hoping for additional Athanate forces to persuade the Were they couldn’t defend themselves and then we could carefully calm everything down into a discussion. That wasn’t going to happen, but at least the call from Tarez had ensured the Altau patrol would be following Alex’s and my instructions to the letter.
This van represented everyone who was available to help: Bian, Tom, Elizabetta, two other guards from the house in Hollywood Hills, and me.
“Alex, any thoughts on how to capture them without risk to either side?”
“No. They’re inside an old warehouse, but we have no idea where. I’ve only got nine people. It’s too risky to fight our way in.”
The pack’s reinforcements would be on their way. I didn’t know how quickly they would come. I assumed the packs didn’t have a specialist team on standby waiting for a call. If that assumption stood, they’d need to meet somewhere, get vehicles, weapons, equipment and a briefing, and then make their way across the city.
It was reasonable to assume we had a lead on them, maybe an hour.
Cut your assessment in half, and still expect to be caught short.
That had been instructor Ben-Haim, a man for whom a half-empty glass represented unbridled optimism.
So half an hour lead. Maybe less. No time to divert for extra equipment. No time to scout the layout of the buildings.
It was all amateur hour.
I rubbed my hands down my jeans, silently urging the nighttime LA traffic to magically evaporate so Tom could go faster.
The LA pack were amateurs, too. Amateurs should be easier to capture.
On the other hand, amateurs are unpredictable, and these were Were. Which made them more unpredictable.
Not productive line of thought.
Instead, I went through what Alex’s patrol had with them. They had two anonymous vans like ours, and a discard truck—a barely drivable scrap vehicle still with the distinctive yellow signage of the Bureau of Street Services. Amazing how useful it was to be able to close a road when you needed to.
What else? They had gadgets to suppress cellphone signals, but not enough to cloak the whole scene.
And they had a limited supply of ammunition, tailored to the covert nature of their mission. Silencers fitted on their FN90 guns. A few flash bombs and smoke grenades. Kevlar vests hidden under bulky Carhartt work jackets. Infrared optics. Oh, and sunglasses—this was LA, after all, even after dark.
Great.
“Okay, team,” I said over the commset, “this is what we’re gonna do.”
Chapter 24
The patrol’s discard truck no doubt had a long and distinguished career in LA’s ceaseless war on the potholes in its five-hundred-square-mile domain. That was all forgotten as I swore at it. It had one last job to do, and it had decided it also had one last trick to pull.
I couldn’t get it into reverse, and the clock was ticking.
Alex’s team was almost in place.
Tom’s voice on the comm: “Team North, green.”
Elizabetta: “Team East, green.”
Dammit. Dammit.
Another crunch as I pulled at the gearshift. I needed to be rolling. Now.
Alex: “Team South, green.” In place. The main team, including Bian.
Silence on the comm. Everyone waiting for me.
In desperation I stomped again on the clutch, grabbed the gearshift in both hands and rammed it into every forward gear, one after the other. Each time it engaged, I eased off the clutch a fraction, trying to stir up the gears so whatever was catching moved just enough.
Then I hauled it back into reverse with a
ll my weight.
With a sickening grind, the gear caught and the truck lurched backwards.
There was no time left for finesse.
I slammed the pedal down and yelled over the comm: “Rolling!”
Five.
Backward visibility was bad. It was great good luck that no one had parked along this street as I tore down it, the engine screaming protest and the truck weaving drunkenly from side to side, bucking over the potholes. The hazards were flashing and the backup warning screeching.
It was a bit late to discover the truck’s steering differential was shot as well.
Four.
A screech as I swerved and a bang as I clipped a streetlight and lost a side mirror.
Three.
I yanked on the string leading into the back and hoped the grenade arming pins all came out cleanly. There was no way of telling.
Two.
I had to swerve again to line it up.
Don’t hit Tom!
One.
Fingers crossed.
Zero.
The back of the truck slammed into the north wall of the warehouse. The wall burst inwards. The back of the truck crumpled. The flash bombs and smoke grenades went off.
Alarms screamed.
Tom and his team ripped the sealing boards off the windows and emptied their guns on full automatic up into the ceiling. No silencers.
Elizabetta smashed windows in neighboring buildings.
The whole street was drowned in a cacophony of alarms, lit by flashing lights.
The Were inside had been in a safe, comfortable refuge where all they’d needed to do was hold out until reinforcements arrived. Suddenly, they were under a full-scale assault. The wall was breached. Bombs had gone off, and there was smoke pouring out of this truck that had appeared right in their safe area. Someone was firing at them. Added to that, they were probably half blind and deaf from the flash bombs.
And they were amateurs. They did what sensible amateurs would do: they bugged out.
All but one.
I heaved my way through the rubble, obscured by the billowing clouds from the smoke grenades.
Someone inside fired.
They were shooting at the truck, as if that was going to achieve something. A ricochet went over my head, making that evil wheep sound.
Timely reminder. You’re just as dead if you’re killed by chance. I crouched.
We didn’t want to kill any of them, but I didn’t want any of us dead either. And leaving a trigger-happy Were in here when emergency services would be on their way wasn’t a good outcome either.
Luckily I had one last flash bomb.
There was the sound of the patrol vans skidding to a halt outside the south entrance. As they emerged, the Were would be caught, bound and tossed into the vans.
“Team South, four secure.” Alex’s voice, tense and level.
Done.
I had to move on the final one.
“Team South, one more coming up soon. Fire in the hole,” I said, and threw the flash bomb in the direction the shots had come from.
Boom.
I covered my ears and eyes, so I was in a lot better shape than the hapless holdout.
Tom beat me to him anyway.
He vaulted through the broken window, rolled and came up in one smooth motion, his reloaded gun pointed at the last Were, who had dropped his gun and was stumbling backwards, completely blind and deaf.
He’d recover.
“Pick him up, Tom. Time to go.”
I scooped up the gun he’d dropped, and then we grabbed his arms and sprinted to the south exit.
“Coming out with prisoner,” I yelled. It sounded like I was calling from the bottom of a well. Despite covering up, my ears were still ringing.
Tom repeated it on the comm and then we were outside.
Bian grabbed our prisoner and threw him in the back of the last of the patrol vans, following him inside.
Our van pulled up. Elizabetta was already inside.
“Go, go, go.” I leaped onboard as the driver hit the gas.
And we were gone.
Chapter 25
“Hello, boys,” I said cheerfully.
We were at a safe house, half a mile from the scene and on the other side of the river. Everyone was inside, Tom was calling HQ to report, and I was speaking to the LA Were, who were trussed up like turkeys ready for the oven.
The Altau patrol were still glaring at the Were. Being shot at does that to you. The fact that we’d captured them didn’t seem to be enough payback. And the Were knew it, even though they were still suffering from shock. They just about managed a snarl at me between them.
All guys. If I didn’t know, I’d have been hard put to pick them out of an LA crowd as Were. Black pants; bulky, colorful jackets; scarves; plain shirts; work boots.
I sniffed, let their marque take its unique form in my nose, tasted their Call.
“You aren’t Pasadena, so I’m guessing maybe Redondo?”
One of them spat. I ignored that. I watched the eyes. Who looked where. Who looked down.
The eyes told me that the guy who’d stayed behind in the building was their leader. He was out of it for now, lying semi-conscious on the floor. If he was awake, he’d be getting his sight and hearing back about now, but he’d also managed to pick up a bad blow to the head. We’d overdosed him with standard human painkillers and trusted his Were defenses would deal with it.
I’d guessed his number two was a rangy Latino with short, stiff hair and a horseshoe mustache.
Subtle head movements in the pack. Horseshoe stared at each of the others until they lowered their eyes, then looked back at me, his authority confirmed. It was an angry look.
Not happy. I guess not going to be my best friend.
“Long Beach,” he said.
“So that’s three packs I know of. Who are the others?”
Horseshoe chewed the question around. I wasn’t exactly asking him to reveal secrets, but he really didn’t want to answer.
I waited him out.
Finally, he grunted: “The Heights. Whittier down to Chino.”
“Is that all the packs?” I asked.
He nodded.
Four, not the five that Dominé thought.
“You’re alive because we don’t want to fight with the local Were.”
“Should’ve thought of that before you came here.” The speaker was one of the subordinate Were, and he shut up when Horseshoe snarled at him.
“You’ve invaded our territory—” he started.
“Nothing that couldn’t have been settled with a conversation,” I said. “Instead, you started shooting at us.”
Horseshoe’s eyes went to Alex.
“Oh, you were only shooting at my mate. That’s all right then.”
He looked back and I could see his nostrils flare as he sniffed the marque in the room.
He’d get there eventually. Separate out the Altau Athanate and be left with just Alex and me.
Three. Two. One.
He frowned, right on cue. “What the fuck?”
“Yeah. What the fuck are you doing shooting at folk who’re on Athanate business? We’re Athanate as well as Were. You want to start a war?”
His eyes widened. “You’re the hybrid…” he said.
He might as well have gone on and called me ‘bitch’. I could sense he wanted to.
Yup. So not going to be friends with him.
To my surprise, he sucked it up, kinda.
“My apologies. Really,” he choked out as Alex snorted. “Why didn’t you contact us?”
But he wasn’t talking to me. He’d fixed on Alex, and he was apologizing to him as if I wasn’t there.
“Couldn’t find your website, let alone your contact information,” Alex said.
The sarcasm bounced off Horseshoe.
Alex was getting irritated, and letting his dominance ooze out.
Maybe that was the way to go. Together we were an alph
a pair, and unless there were exceptional alphas in LA I hadn’t heard of, we’d be dominant over the whole bunch of them.
If only it was so quick and easy.
Alex glanced my way and I jerked my head to indicate we should get out of earshot.
In the darkness outside the house we hugged. I closed my eyes and just enjoyed the feeling of his arms for a minute, the scent of my own big, bad wolf.
“I gotta leave these guys to you,” I said finally, and told him about the New Mexico Were turning up at the club and the short version of the meeting with Skylur.
Bian came out.
“Tarez called. Advises us to cut them loose,” she said. “He’s worried that holding them will jeopardize any deal he can make with the local packs.”
“No. Alone, he isn’t going to make a deal in any reasonable timeframe,” Alex said. “Four packs who probably can’t stand each other? What’s he going to offer?”
“Yeah. We need to find out what’ll attract them,” I said. “They seem to prefer Alex to me. That tells us something at least. But first, I’ve gotta go to the club to make sure the New Mexico Were aren’t going to add to our problems.”
“I’d like to meet the New Mexico Were,” Bian said. “They’re going to be my neighbors and associates soon enough, I hope. And, if they are a problem, you need backup.”
“Deal. Alex? You okay to stay and pump these guys gently?”
“Fine,” he said. “What do I do if Tarez shows up and gives orders to release them?”
“I am the syndesmon. Skylur told me to get all Were into some kind of shape that we can get them into the new Assembly.” I sighed. Tarez had supported me against Naryn. I felt I could work better with him, but none of the Athanate really understood packs and how they functioned. Not at the gut level Alex or I did.
I squared my shoulders. “I’m going to go ahead on the basis that no one tells us how to handle negotiations with the Were.”
“Okay. What do we need from them?” Alex asked, jerking his thumb to indicate the Were inside.
“A meeting with all the alphas. I’ll take it from there. Of course, anything you can find out about them will be useful.”