Forsaken

by Dean Murray

  I let my shape shrink back down to my human form, ejected the magazine, racked the slide, and then handed the weapon back to Kristin as I pocketed the magazine and spare round. She snatched the weapon out of my hand and then leaned forward, talking quietly enough that her voice wouldn't carry to Ash.

  "If you put him in the ring against the black hybrid and he dies then I'll come after your mom and Rachel."

  My beast just about broke loose again, but I suppressed the transformation with a grim determination. Ash was still on edge and I couldn't afford to do anything that looked threatening. Instead I leaned forward and whispered into Kristin's ear.

  "What is to stop me from killing you as soon as Ash falls? Be careful what kind of threats you issue. You're not ready to play with those kinds of stakes yet."

  "You're not a murderer, Alec. Not by nature or choice either one, not while you have people who love you."

  I looked down at her and let my eyes bleed over to the ice blue of my beast. "How can you be so sure of that?"

  "I'm sure of it because you're not that different than I am, and I won't do those kinds of things as long as Ash is around to anchor me."

  I pushed past her and walked away, but anger still lapped at the edges of my control even after the two of them were safely several corners behind me. The last thing the pack needed right now was a willful human throwing her hat into the power structure. It was all I could do right now to keep the rest of the pack from killing each other. If Ash didn't get Kristin back in check enough that she stopped threatening noncombatants, there was going to be hell to pay.

  I debated lifting weights, but with as little defense in depth as we had right now it was too risky. I just couldn't take the chance that another challenger would show up while I was still exhausted from a workout. Eventually my aimless feet brought me out to the gardens behind the house.

  Once I stepped out into the cool winter air, I knew where I'd end up eventually, but I just couldn't stop myself. The memories were painful, but they hurt precisely because of how incredible they'd been back when they'd happened. I couldn't help the fact that Adri's leaving had poisoned them to a certain extent, but I knew that I needed to start trying to move on.

  Tasha's appearance in Sanctuary today had driven that fact home, even if it ultimately accomplished nothing else. Grief over Adri's departure was causing me to make suboptimal decisions in almost every aspect of my life, but even recognizing that fact hadn't halted the slow-motion meltdown that was my life.

  The grotto was just like I'd remembered it. The slightly cooler December temperatures were enough to send some of the vegetation on the rough rock walls into a state of dormancy, but Andrew and Donovan had carefully staggered the plant life such that there was something in bloom at nearly any time of year.

  The potted rose bushes were something else that I'd been avoiding ever since Adri had left. Lagrimas del Angel represented the culmination of two generations of work. The full, white petals edged in purple were so close to perfect that a casual observer could have been forgiven for thinking that we'd actually managed to achieve perfection, but the true beauty of the plant wasn't its visual presence.

  I took a deep breath and let the scent of the few remaining buds float into my lungs. Lagrimas somehow made everything around them smell better, so today I was sampling the solid, unmoving smell of the walls and the tiny trickle of water that made its way down the rock face. It was a heavenly bouquet, but I knew it was a pale imitation of what it could be.

  Adri had turned the grotto into something unearthly. The first time we'd been together here had been in a shared dream. We'd been so lost in our own heads that we hadn't realized there was anything unusual about the experience.

  Since then it seemed as though most of our milestones had been here. It had been here that she'd started to understand what I was for the first time, but she'd bravely seen past the beast to the man behind it. The night of Ashure Day Dance, Donovan and I had put floating lights into the reflecting pool and carpeted the entire grotto with Lagrimas petals.

  I let my mind drift back to that night, to the way it had felt to hold her in my arms, and I found a quiet sliver of peace underneath all of the pain that the memory triggered. Somewhere along the way I'd lost Adri's trust and respect. There wasn't anything I could do about that now but try to live up to the person that she thought I could be. It was a formidable challenge given the inherent savagery of pack life.

  I lowered myself down to the floor of the grotto, and put my back against the rock wall. As the minutes passed, something tickled the back of my mind. It was almost like I was on the verge of some kind of mental breakthrough. I could feel the thought, whatever it was, working its way up from my subconscious.

  A split second before it seemed like I'd have my realization, my phone rang. It was James.

  "Alec, we've got another car inbound. I think we'd be pushing our luck to expect that this one isn't a challenger. Do you want Tasha there?"

  I took a deep breath and reminded myself that it wasn't James' fault that my thoughts had just gone skittering away.

  "Don't make it a command, but please have Donovan stop by and extend an invitation for her to be there if she'd like. You can handle rounding up the rest of the pack?"

  "Yeah, we're all getting plenty of practice at this kind of thing."

  A few minutes later, I was back in Donovan's Zen Garden waiting for the rest of the pack to arrive as a cool breeze caused the trees to slowly sway back and forth. Tasha pulled me off to the side a few seconds before Donovan and James arrived with the challenger.

  "Alec, I caught a look at your latest arrival. James agreed to have Donovan lead him around the long way so I could brief you about whatever I knew. This guy's name is Raphael and he's really bad news. Honestly, I figured you had at least a few more weeks before this caliber of challenger started showing up."

  "It had to happen sooner or later. What makes this guy so dangerous?"

  "In a word, he's Agony-lite. He can't do permanent injuries as quickly as Agony can. It seems like he has to concentrate harder to make it happen, but the effect is essentially the same."

  I nodded, my mind feverishly fitting the pieces together. "He's here now because he figures he can intimidate the rest of the pack into standing up to any future challengers. He doesn't just figure he's a better fighter; he figures he's got the kind of deterrent we're currently lacking."

  Tasha was pacing now, obviously following the same chain of logic I was. "You're probably right. He's not the scariest dispossessed out there, but he's got a chance of making it work. He could have been part of the Coun'hij if he'd wanted to, but he turned them down because he knew he'd always be playing second fiddle to Agony."

  "Where do you and your mom stand with regards to an alliance with the Sanctuary pack if he were in charge of things?"

  "Why, are you thinking of stepping down?"

  I shrugged. "Possibly. It depends on a lot of factors. If there is an option that preserves the pack and just requires that I become one of the dispossessed that might be the lesser of all evils."

  "The Coun'hij would see you dead inside of a year. It wouldn't matter how good of a job you did hiding; they'd find you and kill you once you didn't have the protection of a pack."

  "That still might be the lesser evil."

  Tasha didn't look happy about my train of thought, but I knew that wouldn't impact her answer. She'd been groomed to rule her pack since she'd been able to walk. She knew all about hard decisions.

  "I wouldn't marry someone like Raphael. He'll keep people in line through torture more even than by intimidation. I wouldn't bring that into my pack and subject my friends and family to dealing with him. We'd either find another way or we'd fail, but I wouldn't consider him an option."

  "Fair enough. Sounds like it will be a fight then."

  Raphael had already shifted to his hybrid form by the time Donovan and the others brought him back to Tasha and me. His words came out with
the deep, almost alien sound of a throat that hadn't been designed with speech in mind.

  "Are you so scared of me that you wouldn't even greet me with your pack, Graves?"

  "Quite to the contrary. I had other, more pressing business to attend to than meeting one unimportant dispossessed challenger who will probably be dead before the sun sets."

  We both knew it was all nothing more than blatant posturing, but I could still see that my comment had angered him. He relied on his reputation and someone claiming they didn't know who he was seemed to drive him nearly into a killing rage.

  "Come face me and we'll see who lies dead at whose feet."

  "I don't fight the trash. You can challenge as per your right, but we'll have to verify that you're worth my time before you'll get a shot at me."

  "I think you'll find that your pack is even less willing to fight me than most. I promise you all now that anyone who stands against me today will pay for their actions once I've taken over this sorry excuse of a pack."

  I confidently turned my back to him, knowing that Donovan, and probably Tasha would remain facing him and that they'd give warning with plenty of time if he moved towards us. James, Jasmin, Dominic, Jess and Ash all gathered around me. I pulled out my phone and loaded up the special app I'd had commissioned more than a year before.

  I drew a circle and then started moving the names of each member of the pack around into the positions where I wanted them. Everyone nodded, and then it was time to lay out the order of who would go when.

  I started putting the list together just like Ash and I had discussed, and then paused as I looked at the diagram I'd put together. Ash was in the center of the arc I'd drawn, and for some reason Rachel's words came back to me.

  Dominic wasn't ready to go up against a hybrid—she wasn't even in a position to go up against a regular wolf—but I couldn't get what Rachel had said out of my mind. My finger moved, almost of its own accord, and I found myself putting Dominic at the top of the list, followed by James, Jasmin, and then me.

  James hissed in displeasure when he saw the list, but Dominic put a hand on his arm and nodded slowly to me. A few seconds later we were all spreading out around the square of sand and then Dominic sprang towards Raphael.

  My heart jumped up to my throat as I saw just how slow she was. She never even had a chance. Raphael sidestepped her attack and sank a claw into her side, pinning her to the ground.

  James started towards the two of them, but Raphael held up a hand. "Stop, or I'll kill her."

  It was the one threat guaranteed to immobilize James, but it worked equally well on the rest of us. Raphael repositioned, keeping Dominic pinned to the ground, as he brought his right hand up to her face and slowly sliced her left cheek down to the bone. The slow, measured motion left no doubt in my mind but that he was using his power on her. The wound was going to scar, and there wasn't anything any of us could do about it.

  Raphael stood up, Dominic dangling from his arm. "She stood against me, and now she's felt the very first taste of the retribution I'll be visiting upon her once I kill Alec. The rest of you would be best off standing down and letting me kill him now."

  Dominic hung limply from Raphael's left hand. She was heart-wrenchingly still and I started to worry that he'd hit something critical when he'd sunk his claws into her chest. Raphael dropped Dominic into the sand as he slowly turned in a half circle, taking in the rest of the pack.

  James stepped forward, obviously intent on vengeance for what had just been done to Dom, but then things happened almost too fast even for me to follow. Dom rolled back to her feet and sprang onto Raphael's back, all four sets of claws scrabbling for purchase.

  Raphael spun around, trying desperately to knock Dominic off his back, but she had too good of a grip and hybrid arms weren't hinged in such a way as to let them get at anything behind them. It boggled the mind that Dom had been able to hang motionless in Raphael's claws, pretending to be unconscious despite the pain, but she'd managed it and sprung the ultimate ambush.

  Dominic mewled in pain as Raphael threw himself backward, slamming her into the ground, but she didn't let go. She clung to his back as he rolled away and then regained his feet. I could tell that Dom was taking a beating, but she gamely held on to Raphael's back until she saw her chance and then she took it.

  One moment she was clawing frantically to try and keep her perch and then suddenly her jaws fastened around the back of Raphael's neck. There were still another several minutes of desperate motion, but in that instant Dominic had secured her victory.

  As soon as Raphael hit the ground, the rest of the pack swarmed around her, congratulating her. Relief that Dom had survived washed through me, and then sorrow that she'd been scarred, but most of all I found myself thinking of the respite she'd just secured us. Raphael, a powerful, dangerous hybrid, had just been killed by one of the weakest members of our pack. With Tasha here to report on the events, word should spread quickly enough to deter at least some of the dispossessed currently lined up to take a shot at us. I looked over at Tasha and saw the same thought in her eyes.

  Maybe we were better matched than I'd realized.

  Chapter 8

  Adriana Paige

  Upper East Side

  Manhattan, New York

  Life had gotten a little better after dinner with Albert. The girls at school were just as bad, but I found I was able to keep things in perspective more so than before.

  Isaac and I had settled into a comfortable routine, which mostly involved me hanging out at his place whenever my mom wasn't around. Albert occasionally texted me after they'd finished a big show, or when a new song seemed to be coming together better than he'd expected it to.

  All in all, it seemed like he was doing well, and somehow knowing that he was out there helped me to deal with all of the stupid craziness of being in high school and having to deal with other high-school girls.

  Isaac tended to get a little antsy if I left my building without him, so I'd taken to hanging out in my lobby each morning until he showed up to escort me to school. I was downstairs, trading texts with Albert while I waited, when I got the second best surprise since I'd arrived in Manhattan.

  It wasn't Isaac who picked me up, it was Dominic.

  "Sorry, Adri. I know this is a bit of a last-minute kind of change, but Alec wanted Isaac back, so he flew me out to take his place late last night."

  Dom yawned and then gave me a cheery smile, but I found my eyes pulled mercilessly over to the side of her face.

  "What happened?"

  "Another challenge match. Alec has tried to keep me out of them so far because I've been so tired all of the time, but something made him put me in on this one."

  She'd given me a lot to process already. I was reluctant to dive into the inner workings of the pack, but that was trumped by my concern for Dom.

  "What do you mean 'tired all of the time'?"

  "I can't really explain it. Rachel and I seem to have it the worst, but I think it's impacting Jasmin, too. I'm just always tired. I'm weaker and slower than normal, too. It's been going on for weeks. Don't worry though. I can still defend you from a lot of the nasty stuff out there; we'll just have to run away from more of it than normal."

  I shook my head and pointed to her building. "I don't care about having a bodyguard; I care about the fact that you're sick. You should get back to the penthouse and spend the day in bed resting."

  "I'm fine, Adri. I've spent a number of days in bed resting over the last little while, and it hasn't made any difference. I'll be fine. Also, I really worry about you in this city. I've already crossed over an old vampire trail, and I've only been in the city for four or five hours."

  There it was again. Vampires. It made sense that there would be a heavy concentration of supernatural parasites in New York, but the thought of walking past them and not even being able to tell what they were gave me the willies.

  "Okay, you can come with me, but I'm serious about you not overdoing
it. If you start feeling like you've done too much, I'm putting you in a cab and sending you back here."

  Dom's smile still transformed her face into something angelic. The angry, red scar didn't change that, but it was still concerning.

  "So tell me about this challenge match."

  "I'm not sure there's much to tell. Ash was still injured and Jasmin wasn't quite back to normal so Alec sent me in first. I did awfully. It had been so long and I felt so weak that the challenger didn't have any problems dodging my spring. Once he pinned me though, I realized that my best hope was to play dead, so I waited until he let go of me and turned around to face James. Once his back was to me, I attacked."

  Dom looked around and then leaned in closer to me. "I managed to kill him myself. It isn't the kind of thing I'll probably ever be able to repeat, but it should help buy the pack some breathing room. If a hybrid as powerful as Raphael falls to our submissives then there will be some who decide we're too dangerous to challenge."

  I forced myself not to show the horror I felt at the thought of gentle, kind Dominic killing someone. I knew she could still smell the shock on me, but as long as I didn't frame the feeling with words she probably wouldn't know for sure what it was that had disturbed me so.

  "What about your cheek? Shouldn't it have healed by now?"

  Dom's sad smile had an air of tranquility to it that surprised me. "No, it will never fully heal. Raphael had a power that was very similar to what Agony wields. I have a matching set of marks here on my ribs, but James still thinks I'm pretty, so they don't matter."

  I was angry now. How could Alec send Dom, one of the weakest members of the pack, in to fight something as monstrous as this Raphael must have been?

  "That's terrible, Dom. I can't believe you can be so calm about everything that happened. What was Alec thinking?"

  There was fire behind Dom's gentle eyes now and I suddenly found myself wondering if I'd ever seen her really mad before.