by Murray, Dean
"Because of the dispossessed?"
"Yeah, they top the list. If we're at the point where even Isaac isn't thinking things through, then what's to stop one of them from coming in and taking over? No dispossessed can come in and defeat a healthy pack, but there are so many of them. Once word gets out that a pack is starting to disintegrate a steady trickle of them will come through looking to topple Alec."
"Right, but Alec's one of the best fighters around. Everyone says so."
"They'll wear him down. Without his power that's all he is, a good fighter. Sooner or later someone will get lucky, or someone will force a challenge when he's hurt. If the pack won't lay everything on the line to protect him it's only a matter of time."
It was stuff that had been nibbling away at the back of my mind for a few days now, but it was different hearing Rachel lay out the future in such stark detail. I opened my mouth, not sure what I was going to say, when it struck me that I hadn't once thought about Andrew.
"Rach, what about my dad? I mean right now. There are vampires in the area and Alec's about to leave Dad, Donovan and your mom all by themselves."
She reached out and squeezed my hand.
"I know. It's a bit scary, but I expect Donovan is helping all of them plus James' mom down into the vault. Alec wouldn't have left them alone, even protected by the vault, if there was any other option."
Relief washed over me, not just because Andrew was going to be okay, but because Rachel hadn't seemed to judge me for not thinking of him sooner. She'd probably thought of her mom first thing. For me it still wasn't second nature to think of the old man in the wheelchair as someone I loved. Probably because I didn't. Not yet. He was such a nice old man that I was pretty sure I'd come to love him, but for now he was just as much of a stranger to me as everyone else currently in my life.
I looked up at the rear-view mirror and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw James' Honda and Jasmin's Mercedes headed towards us. I dropped the Escalade back into gear and followed them to the high-school parking lot.
Isaac, James, and Dom all exited their vehicle at the same time that Rach and I jumped down out of the Escalade. Jasmin swung her door open, but neither she nor Alec made any move to get out as the rest of us clustered around the Mercedes.
Alec didn't look up from his phone, but as soon as we were all assembled he started firing off questions at me.
"How many of them did you smell, and where were you two when you smelled them?"
I opened my mouth to respond and then felt my face flush as I realized I'd been so panicked that I hadn't even tried to gather the most basic intelligence on what we were about to face. Rachel patted me on the side and then stepped closer to the car.
"We were at Monument Park, Alec. That's really about all we know."
He tapped his screen a few more times and then shook his head. "We need more to go on than that, Rach. You're not doing Jess any favors by sheltering her right now. Jess, how old did the scent smell?"
"I…I'm not really sure. It seemed old, but that might have been more of the nature of the scent itself. Like old blood."
I felt more than heard a low rumble and realized that Isaac hadn't appreciated Alec's tone with me. I mentally sat on the inclination to bristle at Isaac's reaction, but I hated the fact that I did actually need his protection.
Alec nodded at something on his screen and then took a deep breath. "Okay, here's how this is going to go down. Rachel, you're going to drive Jess's car. The rest of us will go out on foot in two-man teams, Isaac and Jess on one side, James and Dom on the other, Jas and I in the center."
My insides tightened up at the thought of being out on one edge of the group, but it made sense to keep Alec in the center such that he had the shortest possible distance to get to whoever ended up in trouble.
"Dom, Jess and Rachel will all be on a conference call. Jas, you'll give Rach your phone as well and she'll speaker a call with me such that if anyone finds something, the other two groups will know immediately."
Rachel nodded, but I could tell she was scared. Out of all of us, she was the least able to protect herself, but Alec wouldn't send her home alone, so she had no choice but to tag along and hope the relative safety of the vehicle proved sufficient.
Alec waited until the rest of the pack nodded and then continued. "Vampires tend to be somewhat solitary, so it's likely that we're not going to come up against more than three of them. That means we'll likely have them outnumbered, but I don't want anyone caught off guard if we end up facing a larger group for some reason."
Jasmin was starting to pace, but it wasn't nerves on her part, she was actually keyed up at the idea of facing down one of the other supernatural group of bad asses out there. I let my mind wander as I wondered if she'd been like this before Ben had left. It was a mistake; I missed part of Alec's instructions.
"…probably going to be carrying swords or some other kind of edged weapon. Work the flanks, and unless it turns out that we're outnumbered, there's no need to get in a rush about anything. We can wait until everyone arrives and we've properly tired them out. Once they get sloppy it will be relatively easy to drag them down."
Dom cleared her throat. "Alec, what of their powers?"
"We'll just have to hope these are young. A vampire usually has to be at least a couple hundred years old before their powers really become useful in a fight, and even then it requires a degree of concentration on their part, so keep the fight mobile; and if there is more than one of these parasites, make sure we don't leave any of them unoccupied."
A few minutes later Isaac and I were strolling towards the center of town. The rest of the briefing had gone more or less as I'd expected right up to the point where Alec had handed Rachel a deadly-looking semi-automatic and told her to avoid getting pulled over.
Isaac and I had been walking for several minutes before I decided to broach the subject of my unauthorized field trip. I muted my phone so Rachel couldn't hear and then cleared my throat.
"Don't take out your anger on Rachel, okay? She was just trying to be my friend."
"As if I can take anything out on Rachel. As long as Alec is determined to let the two of you act foolish, there isn't a whole lot I can do about it. Best turn the phone back on. If we get jumped there isn't going to be time to unmute it."
I shrugged, uncomfortable with Isaac's bitterness. It was simultaneously a pointed example of why Rachel was right to worry, and a reminder that I wasn't the only one who'd lost something when Oblivion had stolen my memories.
My very identity had vanished, but Isaac had lost his best friend and paramour. My loss was by far the larger, and Isaac never tried to imply otherwise, but it wasn't like this was easy on him either.
We crossed over a stream and I felt the faintest trace of the rancid stink again. I turned to say something to Isaac, but he'd caught it too.
"Tell Rachel we've got something. The others should start angling this direction."
I started relaying instructions as Isaac jumped down to the stream bank and then waded out into the middle of the water. He grabbed a stick that was floating by and held it up to his nose.
"Tell her they're upstream somewhere. The scent we're picking up is from stuff they are throwing into the water."
Rachel paused for a second after relaying my news. "Alec says that since we smelled it from the park they must be further upstream than that. He and Jas are dropping back for the cars; one of them will pick you up in five minutes, and we'll start over from the park."
Once we arrived at the park, Alec and Jas started walking upstream. The rest of us ranged out to either side while Rachel paralleled us as best as she was able from the road. The scent got more frequent and stronger the longer we were walking. When we finally rounded a corner and saw a large industrial complex Isaac shook his head and then pulled me back behind the hill.
"Should have known the bloodsuckers would choose this place."
"Is this place special somehow?"
&n
bsp; "No, just an eyesore Alec would have had taken care of years ago if Brandon hadn't been so determined to maintain it as you see it now. Alec probably has plans to clear it out still; the Coun'hij just threw a wrench into all of his plans."
We'd been walking long enough for the sun to start to set behind us. I didn't necessarily fancy hunting vampires down in the dark, but in theory they were more sight-based than we were, so it should all even out.
Rachel pulled up slowly beside us, lights off, engine barely idling, as the rest of the pack jogged over. Alec started pulling off his clothes to reveal the stretchy ha'bit we all wore underneath our clothes. The rest of the pack followed suit as he started explaining the plan of attack. I slowly did the same. The ha'bit was better than being naked, but I still felt uncomfortable stripping down to so little around people I'd known for such a short time. Worse was the fact that I didn't feel comfortable slipping into my four-footed shape, especially not if we were about to get into a real fight.
"Jas, Isaac, James and I will go in through the front gate. Four legs and stay low and under cover as much as possible, we won't be moving super-fast. Jess, Dom, I want the two of you to circle around the right side and work your way to the back exit. It's a bit overgrown, but I don't fancy trying to run them down if they've got a vehicle and they try to break that direction. Pull the gate shut behind you, wedge it closed the best you can, and then stay there and stop them from opening it back up."
My heartbeat shot through the roof. It was bad enough when I did that with Rachel, it was worse when it happened with the rest of the pack. Unlike her, they could all hear my pulse and it was a blaring announcement of just how scared I was.
Isaac shifted slightly closer to me, the instinct to reassure me apparently at odds with his sure knowledge that I wasn't comfortable with him so close when I was the next best thing to nude. Alec pretended not to notice and continued, turning to Rachel.
"Rach, turn the Escalade around and then lock the doors and keep the engine running. If you see them break this direction either on foot or in a vehicle honk the horn. Twice for on foot, three times for a vehicle."
I was shaking now. Not even Rachel could fail to see my terror.
"Alec, don't make Jess go, she's not ready for this."
Alec shook his head. "They shouldn't have any problems, but if they do run into a vampire, things will go much better if there are two of them. They don't have to bring it down, they just need to hold it up until the other four of us can get there."
Isaac opened his mouth, probably to protest as well, and Alec turned on him with a flare of power that set my teeth on edge.
"Don't, Isaac. I know what you're going to say, but you're reaping the fruits of your decision earlier. If you'd backed down then, we'd have worked with her before now. At worst she'd be comfortable on four legs. At best she'd be some real use in a fight."
The answering rush of power from Isaac was impressive, but still not in the same league as Alec. For the briefest of moments the decision hung in the air and then Isaac bowed his head and took a step back.
The energy bubbling off of Alec was still nearly enough to bring me to my knees. Alec opened his mouth as if to say something, but instead just pointed at Dom and me and then whipped his arm around towards the back of the complex.
I looked over at Dom, but she'd already dropped down to hands and knees, and in between one breath and the next her form rippled into that of the big cat that was her alternate form. I sucked in as much air as my lungs would hold, and then let my beast rush up from the corner of my being where I usually kept her chained.
It hurt, but in an odd kind of way that was over so quickly that I almost didn't remember the pain of the transition once it was done. For a second I just basked in the glory of being a wolf again. Every single sense was enhanced, but my top two favorites were just how incredibly sensitive my nose had become, and the way that everything had a thin film of light over top of it.
Isaac had tried to explain the theory behind why we could see a soft glow around anything living, but frankly I didn't care why, I only cared that it turned the otherwise-dull landscape into a glistening paradise. I swung my head back and forth, drinking in the beauty, and then a low growl from Alec reminded me that I was supposed to be following Dom.
I slipped off into the relative darkness. Tracking her was easy, she'd made no attempt to try and hide her scent trail, and she wasn't moving overly fast, so I caught up quickly. I'd spent as little time as possible on four feet, but now that I was gliding through the night with such ease it was hard to remember why.
Dom brushed up against me, shouldering me to one side, and I had to fight back the growl that tried to bubble up past my teeth. She was vastly more experienced at all of this than I was, but in this shape it was harder to remember those kinds of things. My beast didn't care who was most experienced, it cared who was the strongest, and we'd never had it out to see who was dominant; at least not that I could remember.
I stepped on the urge to launch into a full-blown dominance challenge right then and there, instead choosing to fall back enough that I could just follow her. Not being able to talk was less than convenient. It was one of the many advantages that hybrids like Alec, James and Isaac had over the rest of us. Those on four legs had to rely on body language to try and communicate. Dom had mentioned in passing her belief that lack of speech had been the primary reason that cats like her hadn't ever come out on top in the wars they'd had with the wolves.
Unlike wolves, cats seemed to get stronger and stronger as they aged. It meant that a really powerful southern shape shifter was a match singly for some of the smaller packs, but their solitary nature had so far kept them bottled up down in South America.
Dom pulled up short and I realized I hadn't been paying enough attention. We'd arrived while I'd been thinking about things that had less than zero importance to me right now. A chill worked its way up between my shoulder blades and down my muzzle.
The gate was open, and given the way the vegetation had been hacked up, it was a recent change. Dom padded up to the gate, softly batted at it and then looked pointedly at me. I bristled a little at the implication, but she was right. If one of us had to reassume our normal shape, and be less useful in a fight, it was better for me to do it.
I mentally reached out to my beast and pulled her back, cramming her back down into the corner of my being where she usually dwelt. It was a fight, but it was always a fight. Eventually I pushed her back enough that the transformation swept back through me, leaving me panting on my hands and knees.
I'd forgotten just how inconvenient it was to go back to two legs when you didn't have a pair of shoes handy. The decaying asphalt wasn't so bad at least. I pulled the gate shut without too much of a problem, but I had to walk up the fence for quite a ways before I finally found a twisted bit of metal that looked like it would serve to immobilize the gate.
Dom paced me the whole way there and back, tail slowly twitching back and forth as she watched for trouble. I bit back a curse as I stepped on a jagged branch, and then I was back on the road and wedging the gate closed.
Dom was pacing back and forth expectantly so I sank back down to my hands and knees. I had a split second to realize why I was so uncomfortable being a wolf, and then the change was upon me and I was padding along on four legs again.
It was the fear that this time I wouldn't be able to push my beast back down, that I'd be trapped as a wolf forever.
We didn't range very far away from the gate, just far enough for the smell of vampire to get stronger. This close I was able to start picking out some subtleties to the stench. Cigarettes, alcohol, cucumber melon lotion. There were other scents, but they were more subtle, less easily distinguished.
I felt my guts tighten up as I realized that there was more than just the one vampire we'd been hoping we were facing. Still, three vampires shouldn't be too bad. Alec and the others would outnumber their opponents. As long as none of the vampires were too
old, too powerful, we'd be okay.
The barest hint of Isaac's scent cut through the vampire smell, and then there was yelling from an area halfway between us and the front gate. Dom and I both tensed up as strains of violence drifted back to us.
There was a meaty thud as someone was thrown into what sounded like the side of a dumpster, and then three sets of footsteps, moving our direction, very quickly. If I'd been by myself I probably would have crouched down and tried to go unnoticed, but Dom was already moving forward, sliding behind a stack of abandoned barrels that would serve as a decent ambush point.
My hesitation cost me. There wasn't time now to find concealment of my own, but in moving to follow Dom I'd abandoned the patch of shadow that might have otherwise sheltered me. I was stuck between two options, neither one quite close enough when the first vampire came around the corner of the rusted crane just ahead of me.
The other two were only half a stride behind him, and the trio slowed just long enough to confirm that I was by myself.
The one in the lead was a tall, dark-haired male with some kind of straight sword held loosely in his left hand. At his right was a shorter, ultra-slender, man with a pair of small axes. A redheaded woman with some kind of curved cutlass rounded out the trio.
"Liz, get the vehicle, we'll take care of this one."
Liz opened her mouth to argue, but the taller man cut her off with a hiss.
"The master can't hold the others off for forever."
I crouched and moved slightly, retaining just enough presence of mind to try and lure them more optimally past Dom's hiding spot. The woman took off again at a run, heading parallel to the fence in the opposite direction from where I'd found the rod we'd used to bar the gate.
I noticed her only peripherally, instead focusing on the two men who'd spread out slightly as they advanced on me. The fear hadn't left, not really, but it'd managed to loosen some of the control I normally kept on my beast, and she knew exactly what she wanted to do to these two.
We moved up slightly, judging the distance between us and the vampires as the first one walked past Dom. It was going to be tricky. Too close and I risked having to fight the leader before Dom had a chance to take down the short guy. Too far away and the leader would be able to turn and attack Dom before I could get there and distract him.