Fragile Bonds

by Adelaide Walsh

  I grabbed it by its linen wrapped handle and pulled it out of the box, examining the blade. It was sharp, and straight, well taken care of. I tucked a smaller handgun into the side pocket of my cargo pants and started walking. The guys would handle their clothes and weapons on their own. They didn't need me. Right now, Beno needed me. I could feel him hurting. The closer I got to him the more acutely I felt his pain.

  This time, the second time I'd followed a vision like this, I noticed a few things I'd missed the first time around. I realized that I could not only feel a pull to the subject's physical location, I could also feel his energy. Almost like I was sensing his aura or his life force. I hadn't noticed the connection the first time around with Carro, but I assume it was because I'd been too busy freaking out about having a vision at all, and I'd been preoccupied with fighting with Joaquín. This time, if I concentrated, I could feel other things, too. I didn't really have a handle on what, exactly, those other things were, but I felt them. Not long after I'd started moving through the forest, keeping to the game trail I'd been driving on before, I found myself, once again, surrounded by changeling. There were five of them this time. Apparently one of the cats had run in alongside the one driving the quad. All five men were dressed in the simple t-shirts, jeans I'd seen in the tool box, and all five of them were barefoot.

  When I realized none of them were wearing shoes, I paused.

  "Doesn't that hurt?" I whispered to the man who'd given me the four-wheeler.

  He shook his head. "Easier to move nice and quiet, like in the forest."

  We covered the rest of the distance in silence. I was too busy concentrating on keeping my footing on the rough terrain and keeping that connection I felt with Beno, open, to care too much about being ignored.

  The first sign of our destination came as thinning trees. When we finally reached the edge of a clearing in the forest, I could see the shack sitting off center, positioned near the edge of a large cleared section of land. We rounded the clearing, getting as close as we could to the structure, but it wasn't nearly close enough to make it inside with any kind of stealth. There were two Snakes posted outside the only door leading to the interior of the shack, and we had no idea how many were inside. My vision didn't reveal that information to me.

  "He's in there," I mouthed to Anton who'd caught my eye.

  He made a series of complicated hand motions to his other men and I just watched as they repositioned themselves. The Jaguar I hadn't yet met had a lethal looking rifle slung over his back, and he climbed up a tree with a fluid grace that seemed otherworldly. I was sufficiently impressed, to say the least.

  There was a moment of silence, before two shots rang out in quick succession. One of the Snakes guarding the door of the shack hit the ground with a sick kind of thud. The other jerked out of the way with reptilian quickness. In a heartbeat three more men flooded out from the small building into the brightness of the late afternoon sun. Two cats, having approached the building from behind in the moments of chaos, leapt down from the corrugated tin roof, knocking one of the men to the ground and ripping into the flesh of another's thigh. The other shots were fired, and someone from within the cover of trees returned fire. One of the snakes had taken a position within the house and was providing cover fire for the men tussling with our band of intruders outside. When I saw my opening, I took it. All five men we'd arrived with here engaged in a confrontation or attempting to distract the Snake shooter with gunfire of their own. When the Snake gunman repositioned to get a better angle on the Jaguar with the rifle in a tree, he'd left a big blind spot beside the building. The opportunity was there, and I took it. Staying low to the ground I bolted from the tree line to the side of the house, crouching as low to the ground as I could while still retaining mobility. I listened to the pattern of shots coming from the doorway and tried to signal the cat in the tree to give me an opening. I had no idea if he'd understood, but there was a split-second pause in the firing. From one heartbeat to the next I sprang from a crouch at the corner of the small wooden structure, and raised the machete up over my head, only to bring it down hard on the man's hand who'd been handling the gun from just inside the shack's only doorway.

  The blade sliced cleanly through the man's hand, the appendage hitting the ground with a thick sound. Blood sprayed across my face as he flailed, reaching for a smaller, palm sized weapon with his other. I kicked him, hard, in the head before his fingers had a chance to even brush the grip. The man fell hard on his front, unconscious. A second soldier lunged into the doorway in the moment following the silence, but I'd been ready for the response. I'd crouched down low, lower than an attacker would have expected of me, and I hit him in the gut, with all the power I could summon using the grip end of the glorified knife in my hand. He stumbled backward, gasping for breath and I flipped the blade over in my hand and swung, the broadside of the knife connecting with the man's temple, and knocking him out cold. When the soldier fell hit the floor, a glint at his hip caught my attention. I nabbed the man’s cell phone and pocketed it, almost without thinking. My focus at that moment was on what I’d find in that room when I turned to look.

  I was praying that the men outside were ok. I made the sign of the cross quickly, skating across my shoulders and forehead. Please keep Joa safe.

  Blowing out a long, labored breath, wrenching my adrenaline-fueled anxieties back under control, I turned to the room. In the center of the dirt floor, limp and bleeding, lay Beno. I rushed to him, automatically reaching out a hand to feel for a pulse. He was alive. Thank fuck he was alive. A noise behind me had me rolling to the floor, abandoning the machete and whipping out the small gun from my pants pocket. When I saw Anton standing there in the doorway, blood leaking from a deep gash under his left eye, but otherwise fine, I gave a shuddering sigh of relief.

  "He alive?" asked the Jaguar alpha.

  "Yeah. He needs a medic, though. How's everyone else?"

  Anton grinned in a way that lifted the unbearable weight of uncertainty off my shoulders.

  "Alive."

  I stood up, feeling suddenly strange. I had completed my mission. I'd gotten to Beno in time. I'd alienated the man who I'd been building a relationship with over the last month, and his people to do it. But what did I do now?

  "You got some serious skill with that thing, woman." Anton pointed the barrel of his gun at the machete I'd tossed to the floor.

  "Thanks."

  I left Anton to tend to his man, and I walked out into the eerie stillness of the clearing that had been a melee just a few minutes ago. I felt completely and utterly lost. I looked around, searching the carnage that littered the area in front of the door with blood and fat wet spatters of reddish matter. I found Joaquín nursing a bleeding shoulder and speaking on his cell phone. He turned his back to me when I got close to him. That subtle action spoke volumes. Whatever had been growing between this alpha and myself, I'd torn it to shreds when I touched Anton. I collapsed onto the ground, the adrenaline waning from my system leaving me exhausted. I laid there on my back, staring up at a blue sky fading into orange with the sunset.

  Chapter 17

  In the days after we'd rescued Beno, chaos governed the Den. It was clear that the Bears and the Jaguars had to make a decision. Which side of this conflict did they want to be on? By finding and decommissioning the Snakes that were holding Beno, the Jaguars at least had made an open statement against Dariel. The Bears' involvement remained a well-hidden secret.

  The Bears had not yet been drawn into this conflict openly, but they were still mourning the loss of one of their highest-ranking officers. They had every reason to get involved in this fight, but Joaquín remained deeply hesitant about taking a public stance against Dariel.

  As I walked through a quiet residential sector of the den, I was trying to get my head straight about my loyalties. About whom exactly I served. Who would I throw the full weight of my gifts, my connections, my access to information, my skills behind? No matter which way I sp
un the question, the only response I could come up with was ‘all the lives of Colombia.’ Why did I have to separate them? Why did we have to draw lines like this, separating people who had done no more and no less than anyone else? Why was it that I was only allowed to pick one small subset of the population to fight for? Arbitrarily bonding with that group and simultaneously alienating the rest of the people who lived and worked and had families here? I didn’t feel any less loyal to the changelings than I did to the humans, simply because the former group possessed a slightly different genetic makeup than I did. I didn’t feel any more devoted to the Bears than I did to the Jaguars, simply because I was sleeping with their alpha. This illogical, hateful tendency of people to segregate was impossible for me to grasp. I just didn’t understand. And Joaquín was asking me to not only subscribe to that line of thinking, but grab on with both hands and hold on. But maybe this was just his way. Maybe Augustina had been right to treat me like an interloper. Maybe, the only way to exist in this changeling society was to hold a single, unwavering loyalty. Segregation was, after all, a fairly common thing in our world, no matter which side of the gene pool you fell into.

  I stomped my way out of the den and into a small, grassy area kept cleared for den residents to use while outdoors. The open area irritated me and I kept going. I needed the jungle. I needed to be alone. I needed to think. I knew Joaquín was angry, but I had the sinking suspicion it was because he saw my loyalties as divided. And I just didn’t know if I could give him what he needed to rectify that. I wasn’t sure I had that in me. I walked, covering the distance to the lush creep of the forest in minutes and wound my way deeper into the trees.

  The night after we’d rescued the Jaguar lieutenant, Joaquín disappeared as soon as we got back to the den. I’d been expecting an apocalyptic fight, but he was just...gone. And that was so much worse. But, if the man needed space, I could give him space. I waited for him to cool off in his flat, where Rora had dumped me as soon as we touched down back at the den. When it became obvious he wasn’t coming back that night, I’d taken a walk through Punto Cero, trying to come up with my side of the argument. When I had sufficiently planned my defense, I came back to the apartment and tried to sleep. When sleep did finally claim me, it was a stuttered, restless one.

  The next morning, I woke up, alone, to a text message from Bella on my phone.

  Den security has requested a meeting to debrief all those involved in the recovery of the Jaguar. Please plan on attending today. This is not optional.

  She included the meeting details, and I sent her a quick confirmation letting her know I’d stick around the den until after the meeting. I didn’t exactly have an easy way to get back to Bogotá anyway. Joaquín had left my car at Isla’s place when he grabbed me yesterday. Had that only happened yesterday? It felt like days had passed since I was laying on Isla’s couch. So much had changed since that innocent moment. I felt like the trust and the fragile bond that had been developing between Joaquín and I—was there yesterday morning—had been shredded in the intervening hours. When I arrived at the meeting, Bella seated me in a chair across from Joaquín, amid a crush of other people who had apparently been involved in the rescue. Also seated at the table, was Anton, flanked by two of his officers—Grafton included.

  Rora gave a debriefing presentation, laying out the measures they’d taken, in conjunction with the Jaguar’s security team, to conceal both parties’ involvement as well as possible. We’d left at least three of the Snakes alive though, so we had to be prepared for the possible fall out. She explained the heightened level of security both packs were adopting, defined a communication plan should any of us be contacted or targeted. She flipped through slides detailing the safety measures we should all be taking personally, and then asked all personnel under clearance level A to exit. That stung, but I understood. I wasn’t a part of this pack. And if I knew pack secrets and was captured, I was an unnecessary liability. I stood up to leave, but Rora called my name before I’d even pushed in my seat.

  “Stay. I think you should be here for this.” Joaquín shot her a narrow-eyed look, and I didn’t even try to conceal the confusion that must have flit across my face. She glared at the both of us. “I need you here as the representative for the human rebels.”

  I considered the title for a moment. I guess I had accepted that title when I took responsibility for my little group of spies. It felt strange to think of myself as a leader of anything. I retook my seat in the large conference room and waited until everyone who’d been asked to leave cleared out.

  “If this is about the alliance, Anton, the answer hasn’t changed,” Joaquín growled as he sat, arms crossed over his chest in open obstinance.

  “Joa, cut the alpha crap and listen to the man. It’s a solid suggestion,” demanded Rora.

  “I fucking won’t. We’ve never allied with another pack before, especially one that has just openly declared war on a group that, let me remind you, Lieutenant, has more firepower, more troops, and more resources than we do. The answer remains no.”

  “Joaquín, please consider what an alliance could mean right now,” Anton pleaded. “If we unite the packs in Colombia alone, we could stand against Dariel.”

  “Uniting the packs is an impossible task. Especially now when they’re running scared. You cannot produce a single clan that would be willing to make an alliance.”

  “We haven’t tried yet!” Anton insisted.

  “I can,” I injected into the violence swirling between the two men.

  “You can what?” Snapped Joaquín.

  “I know a pack who would be interested in an alliance. I can reach out to the Caimans. Start the conversation.”

  The gaze of everyone in the room drilled into me, but I held my ground.

  “So now you’re the human leader, the savior of the Jaguars, and suddenly a liaison among changelings?” the Bear alpha spat, the spite in his voice cutting.

  Before I could respond and no doubt say something I’d regret, Rora cut in. “Yes, Adriana. Do that. Reach out, see if they are willing to agree to a meet.”

  Joaquín did not seem impressed with the idea, or my involvement on the whole.

  “Right now, Dariel has overthrown the human governance and has, thus far, left the packs out of his game on the bigger scale. It’s not our fight,” Joaquín stated. His tone brooked no argument.

  “Excuse me?” I asked. “If we ignore the fact that a third of the people the Snakes have abducted and murdered have been changeling, one of those bodies being your officer, you’re still saying that you would stand there and watch the humans burn so long as it doesn’t affect you? Did I hear that correctly?” I was disgusted by the mere notion of the idea.

  Joaquín looked at me, fire in his eyes. “Not all of us are so willing to throw ourselves at enemies that don’t even belong to us.” The double meaning of his words clear and cutting. “Carro was working for a human run company when he chose to act against the Snakes. It had nothing to do with the pack.”

  I ignored that hurtful and willfully blind remark and clung to the logic of the situation. “Isolationist policies do not work. They have failed, consistently throughout history, and are failing every single pack embracing them today. They are failing in the Congo where the birds and the predators are killing each other. They are failing in Asia where the humans and the changelings are at war. They will fail you here and now in this conflict, Joaquín.” I let that hang in the air between our small group.

  When Joaquín did not speak, Rora did. “She is right, Joa. We’ve never allied before because we’ve never needed to. But we don’t have a choice anymore. The Snakes will come for us.”

  Joaquín stared around the room, venom in his eyes. He growled, and I couldn’t shake the image of an animal cornered. “You do not know that. And don’t think to tell me how to hold my territory, Rora.”

  Rora did not back down, but Anton read the tension in the room.

  “We will go,” he paused just lo
ng enough to draw Joaquín’s attention, “but please reconsider.”

  On that, he and his men left the room. The Bear alpha pinned his second and me with his gaze. “You both forget your place. Get out.”

  Rora growled. “Do not let your bruised pride be what leaves our pack vulnerable.” She grabbed my arm and dragged me from the conference room leaving Joaquín alone.

  As we left, I demanded Rora take me home.

  “I can’t keep you here, Adriana, but I urge you to consider how much heat that rescue brought down from the Snakes. You were part of that operation and there are now men out there who have seen your face. There are photos of you all over the web, it won’t be hard to find you. If they get to you when you’re alone...we won’t be able to help.”

  I snorted. “Seems as though Joaquín wouldn’t let you help me even if you could.”

  She turned to me, her mouth softening. “He’s hurting right now, Adriana. In his eyes, you’re his woman, and he had to watch you climb all over another man. I get why you did it. I admire you for being strong enough to do that. But for him, it was a slap in the face. Don’t give up on him just yet, though.”

  “What would he have had me do? Should I have turned away? Let that man die? I can’t do that Rora. I’ll never be able to just turn my back on people who need me. This gift, these visions apparently demand an intimate connection, and I’m willing to pay that due if it means I can save lives.”

  “Ooh,” she hooted, “that boy is in for one hell of a ride.”

  And on that rather...ominous prediction, she backed up, took a few steps down the hall and then turned around to toss me a set of keys.

  “Mi casa – su casa,” she called, and then took off at a jog down the passageway.