Bite Back 05 - Angel Stakes

by Mark Henwick

  Over he went.

  He wasn’t a bad fighter; no alpha could be. He tried to cushion his fall with his free arm, but all I needed to do was nudge his hip and kick his legs. His spinning body rotated and he landed with all the force of the impact on his shoulders and the back of his head. Just in case that wasn’t enough, I landed on top of him with my knees in his stomach.

  Then, with my leg muscles providing the power, I straightened, still holding his bent arm across his body. The quiet pop of his shoulder dislocating was almost anticlimactic, except for him. A savage twist and the defenseless muscles and tendons tore, rendering his arm useless as well as excruciating.

  He wasn’t getting back up. My wolf had been a good girl during the fight, so I let her up and I snarled at his lieutenant, my face flickering between human and wolf. That was a trick that usually only older Were could manage. It’d give them all pause for thought.

  Not necessary for this lieutenant. The guy couldn’t meet my eyes; he was staring down at the groaning mess that was his alpha. Head lowered, shoulders down. No contest there.

  “Are we good here?” Alex said calmly to him, putting a hand on my shoulder.

  The lieutenant put his hands up and backed away.

  “No formal challenge,” Alex went on. “No interest in the Pasadena pack.”

  The rest of the LA alphas and their lieutenants were open-mouthed in shock. The fight had felt longer to me, but it had taken no more than a minute.

  “Despite that,” Alex pointed at the Pasadena alpha, “we’re here to talk.”

  “Impressive,” the Heights alpha said. “Let’s talk, then.”

  Too calm. This one is dangerous.

  I managed not to snarl at him.

  Pasadena would always be a problem if this alpha kept his position, but an obvious one. Long Beach wasn’t much better. My gut told me that both of them would feel tricked rather than beaten. And having let my wolf up, she wanted to kill them.

  Down, girl.

  Redondo might be all right and Billie was gold.

  That left the Heights with more power than he warranted.

  Of course we could challenge them all, but as with Pasadena, that wasn’t going to get long-term cooperation, and we couldn’t go on like that. If news got out that we were doing that, it would make it that much harder to approach the next pack.

  Alex understood.

  “Good. As Haz was saying, this isn’t a meeting to make full alliances. What I want today is your agreement on a couple of items.”

  He counted off on his fingers.

  “Pack Deauville can remain in Los Angeles. We give you our word that what we’re doing here is Athanate business, and we’ll be leaving as soon as we can after that’s completed.”

  He waited until he got reluctant nods from the alphas and the Pasadena lieutenant.

  “You’ll agree, with no pre-conditions, to discuss an association with House Tarez, the Altau House in LA, within the next couple of weeks. Same with the Albuquerque pack.”

  “What are we getting in return?” Redondo asked. His eyes flicked. He couldn’t hold my eye.

  “Association is a return,” Alex said. “If you’re threatened, you can call on associated packs.”

  “Of course, that means peace between associates,” I put in. “No more need to hide vulnerable members.”

  Billie snorted.

  “There’s another major objective we have,” I said. “If the Were form a representative body, then they’ll be on the Assembly. If we do it quick enough, we might have a say in forming the Assembly itself.”

  Now I had Heights’ attention. They knew all about the Athanate Assembly, of course. This syndesmon thing might be useful in ways I hadn’t expected.

  “What about help with halfies?” Long Beach asked. “That’s what the Belles used to get us here. You do this ritual thing for us, or was it just a ploy?”

  “Not in LA,” I said. “Make sure the halfies are ready to travel and wait for a call.”

  “You mean, if we sign up to these associations,” Heights said.

  My damned gut. I could feel Alex and Yelena and Haz dragging their heels. Billie too, for that matter.

  “No,” I said. “However I manage it, this is not something I’m gonna let others use to make packs get in line. If I can do it, as long as I can do it, it’s open for every halfy.”

  Second time I’d shocked them that night.

  We broke up after that.

  The Pasadena pack came and collected their alpha. I wondered if he’d stay in that position.

  The other alphas and their lieutenants disappeared into the crowd watching the band. I could see the news of what had gone down rippling through the Were. Groups stopped dancing and talked to each other.

  Even the band noticed. They redoubled their efforts. The beer stall made a decision and gave away the beer. It worked. The throng started thrashing again.

  We listened to the band, drank a little beer. Alex and Haz got dragged in to dance with the Belles.

  “You don’t want to dance, Dancing Girl?” I teased Yelena.

  “I’m watching you,” she said.

  “I need it?”

  “Yes. You got careless with that wolf, let him hit you. I think more time in the gym with me.”

  I winced. She was an excellent martial arts teacher, but lessons tended to be painful.

  “I don’t trust the other alphas,” she said, trying to pick them out of the dancing crowd.

  “Neither do I, apart from Billie. But that’s going to be Alex’s job.”

  “In between patrols.” She frowned. It was a tough call for Alex. “What are you and I doing?”

  “Going to Denver.” I ran hands through my hair. “I aim to keep doing what they need me to do, but not the way any of them want me to do it. That means we leave tomorrow, before they can stop us. Before they even get up.”

  Denver.

  Where Forsythe spent a couple of weekends a month.

  Yelena nodded and looked at her watch. “Is tomorrow already,” she said.

  We weren’t going to use scheduled airlines. That would leave too much of a trail.

  Luckily, part of Kingslund Group’s assets included a Pilatus turbojet, and Yelena flew it.

  Chapter 32

  I’d thought I would be sitting on the plane with nothing to do, but as soon as Yelena cleared the complex Los Angeles airspace, she talked me through patching my laptop into the internet through the plane’s system.

  Matt’s untraceable comms software really didn’t like working through one dedicated connection. The program’s animated octopus sulked in the corner of the screen, waving a pink tentacle at me.

  Tough. I’d looked up how Matt had done it, in general terms, and the really unbreakable part was at the other end of the link. I’d make do.

  Ben-Haim would be appalled.

  Of course the ritzy noise canceling headphones I was wearing didn’t plug into the laptop, but there was an adaptor. After another fifteen minutes of messing around, and I had the system ready.

  Who first?

  Even with the delay getting ready, I had another couple of hours before we touched down in Denver. Who did I need to call?

  Felix. It hadn’t been possible to prevent the story of the ritual down in New Mexico from getting out. The Denver pack were sitting on an unexploded bomb of expectations that I could change halfies. I had to talk to Felix.

  Naryn. Athanate protocol dictated I had to call him to alert him to the fact I was entering his domain, even if it was my domain as well. But talking to him would only allow him the opportunity to give me orders I couldn’t refuse, and would mean I ended up doing only what he wanted me to do.

  Agent Ingram. The FBI was another unexploded bomb. I’d promised Ingram when I was in New Mexico that I would talk to him right after I got back. That was a month ago. In the interim, I’d gone rogue and been through a healing process, but Ingram wouldn’t know any of that. He’d given me leeway, and
all he’d seen was that I hadn’t kept my end of the bargain.

  He was the lead agent on Project Anthracite, an FBI mission with a wide brief to uncover hidden organizations in the US. The Athanate certainly qualified. I’d managed to distract him with the army’s Ops group, which also qualified, but in the end that only served to give him more clues about the Athanate.

  The only viable way forward was to control the flow of information and the people receiving it, explaining as we went the danger of allowing that information out too quickly. Complex social and economic models had proved that it was a danger not just to the paranormals, but to society as a whole.

  When I’d first met Diana, she’d wanted to use my connections with Colonel Laine to create that controlled flow of information, going through the Department of Defense. Since part of the takedown of the Ops group had ruined that, it seemed appropriate that we switch to the FBI, especially as they were already sniffing the trail.

  But all of that depended on maintaining the trust of the people we connected with. Starting with Agent Ingram.

  It wasn’t as if I could pass him to Diana. Would he be happy to wait until she was recovered? I couldn’t even guess at how long that would be.

  Why does no one seem to know what’s going on with her?

  Focus. Ingram.

  Only way to tell if I still had his trust was to talk to him.

  All the other people that I wanted to talk to: Jen, Alex, Bian, David, Pia, Tullah, Mom—all of them—I’d have to manage when I could.

  And screw Athanate protocol. I’d text Naryn at the last moment.

  Ingram first. Then Felix.

  Both needed extreme care.

  I got three rings on Agent Ingram’s cell number before he answered. “Well now, there’s a person who used to call me on this number from a phone I never could trace, just like this one, but she’s gone to ground. So you won’t mind my asking who this is.”

  I tried to hear past the lazy Texan drawl and the half-humorous opening, neither of which was evidence of what Ingram was thinking. How badly had I damaged his trust? And how dangerous was that for the Athanate?

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “I am pleased to hear you’re alive, I guess.”

  Right. He was pissed.

  “Look, I admit I broke my word, and I will explain all about that, but I just need a little more time—”

  “That hound ain’t gonna hunt no more, Ms. Farrell.”

  Crap.

  “Y’see, I had your word for a meet after we last spoke, and the impression you were the kind to keep it. So, certain as I was we were going to progress this, I made some reports up my chain of command.”

  This was getting worse. I had a reasonable idea of who Ingram reported to. Only the Deputy Director of the FBI.

  “Being the cautious kind, I gave myself leeway, but we just pissed that all away. Worse yet, I fired up my boss so well he talked to his boss.” The line went quiet, giving it time to sink in. “These are not folk you keep waiting, Ms. Farrell. Suffice it to say, my boss is madder’n a bear woke up for Christmas.”

  “What can I do?” This was down to damage control.

  “You can come in and then we’ll be all over you, tighter’n bark on a tree. That’s what you can do.”

  He’d lock me up. I couldn’t let him do that. Worse, he had to suspect I wouldn’t let him. And he still said it.

  Why?

  “It’s time to call your play. I’m at the CBI. You have till I clock out at four,” he said. “At that point, Ms. Farrell, I go in a secure manner to my double-secure house with my triple-secure line back to Washington, and I hand over everything I have.”

  Shit!

  “You hear me, Ms. Farrell?”

  “I hear you.”

  “Good.”

  The line went dead.

  “Bad?” Yelena had heard my side of the conversation, which wouldn’t have told her much. On the other hand, she could see my face.

  “Serious development,” I said, looking at the clock on the dashboard and calculating. “Change of plan kind of serious.”

  I shut up and left her to fly the plane. If we crashed, then Ingram would talk to his boss this evening, and I couldn’t let that happen, not yet, not until Ingram was onside with the Athanate and the need to control Emergence. And not until he was sure he could promise his boss would be too.

  Ingram had enough information, between the hints and rumors and whatever he had gleaned off interviews with Ops 4-10. He would know that there was a paranormal community. He wasn’t the sort to abandon the trail and the Athanate, for all our secrecy, couldn’t hide if the FBI’s spotlight were turned on us.

  I had till he reached his ‘double-secure’ safe house to turn him onto our side, however I did it.

  Or eliminate him as a threat.

  Was there anything in what he said, or the way he said it, that might have hinted at what he wanted me to do? What if I chose wrong?

  How much worse could I make it?

  A handful of scenarios played out in my head.

  All of them required help. Naryn was out of the question. That left Felix.

  Would he allow his pack to go up against the FBI?

  I had to persuade him it was that or exposure.

  I called his landline at Coykuti, praying he was there.

  Chapter 33

  “Amber! Are you…are you well?”

  Even an alpha wasn’t sure quite how to phrase the question.

  Have you stopped being crazy yet?

  Alex would have kept him reasonably up to date on that side of me, and I needed to talk about more personal things first.

  “I am so sorry about Martha and Silas,” I said. “And all the others.”

  A vision of the little cemetery behind Coykuti appeared in my head. His sister Martha had been the one to tend it. Who would do it now?

  And Silas, his huge lieutenant, never one for words, now silent forever.

  I am the sum of all the things I’ve ever done…

  My eyes blurred.

  “It was my fault,” I finished.

  If I hadn’t gone rogue and chased Amaral down the hill, Calling the Denver pack to me… Amaral was already beaten. There was no need for the pack to attack him and his well-armed security.

  “Yes, it was your fault,” Felix said. “It was also your fault that the Confederation were turned back when they were in a position to overrun us. Your fault that Diana was rescued, and Altau kept their leadership of Panethus and Emergence. Your fault that Amaral and the Taos Adepts died. Your fault that my pack now includes a sub-Pack, and that we have pack members who can’t decide which pack they’re in, let alone which skin they prefer to be wearing when they change.” He paused and when he went on, his voice was quieter. “Your fault that Olivia is alive. Martha and Silas gave their lives so that all of these things could happen, and to claim it was all your fault is disrespectful to them.”

  “Felix, I’m not even sure I can do the ritual again.”

  “You will be able to,” he said, without a trace of uncertainty. “You know that deep down. You’ll feel it again, as soon as you see them. We’ve got a couple of dozen of the halfies here, at Coykuti, living in tents in the old meadow.” He snorted. “Each with a friend from their pack. Never had so many visitors at the same time. All those marques. It’s driving Duane insane.”

  I cleared my throat. “Which packs are they from?”

  “The ones you know: Cimarron, and their two allies, Clayton and Mills. Glen Canyon, our neighbors in Utah. Our new friends in Cheyenne, Medicine Bow and Rock Springs. Then there’s others: a few from the Kansas Plains Alliance and Crescent Lake from Nebraska.”

  Not all of those had been friendly recently. I remembered the Kansas and Nebraska packs had tried expanding into Colorado.

  “They’ve all made some kind of deal with you?”

  For all he was my ultimate alpha, Felix got defensive. “I’m not the Confederation, Amber, I’m n
ot making them subordinate. I don’t want their territory. Just an understanding about mutual problems like the Confederation, agreements on exact territories, rights to pass. Simple, sensible stuff like that.”

  “I’ve made an offer to the LA packs to get them to start negotiating some kind of agreement.”

  “I know, Alex emailed me. Five packs. Helluva mess there,” he said. “That’s fine.”

  Fine. Meaning he gave me permission. Meaning he was in control of who came to the ritual.

  I was getting along better with Felix than Skylur, and I didn’t want to ruin that, but I knew if I let it pass this time, it would get harder and harder to challenge.

  “This ritual, the one I’m not even sure I can do again,” I said, “I know some things about it in my gut. One of those things is, it won’t work if I pick and choose who I offer it to.”

  “But…”

  “I have to offer it to anyone who asks. Otherwise it’ll stop working.”

  I didn’t really know that, any more than I knew it would work at all, but it felt right.

  “We can’t. The pack is twitchy enough as it is,” Felix said, “with all the different marques right here. We couldn’t have Confederation halfies coming on our territory.”

  “I understand. I’d need to visit them there. I guess I’m asking you to understand where I’m coming from; it’s not the halfies’ fault the packs are fighting.”

  He grunted. “I understand, but don’t go there, Amber. Don’t go up to Montana. Get them to come to you at some neutral place.”

  Sound advice.

  “Okay. I’ll see. And I’ll start closer to home. Maybe Cameron will allow me to go back to Carson Park for the New Mexico halfies.”

  Mentioning Cameron to Felix wasn’t a good idea.

  “That madman! You know he’s trying to gather up the southern packs?”

  “Yes, of course I know. Pack Deauville is associated with the New Mexico packs.”