Burned

by Dean Murray

  It was late enough that the party was in full swing. The local celebrities were probably only minutes away from starting their appearances and people had imbibed enough alcohol to have abandoned most of their inhibitions, but not so much that they were falling down drunk yet.

  I was led past a velvet rope guarded by two bouncers in expensive suits who looked like they'd seen serious action at some point in their lives. I reached down to my beast and coaxed him close enough to the surface to send out a flare of energy. It was an unmistakable show of dominance, but neither of the bouncers at the rope responded to the challenge.

  Interesting—I'd been expecting Shawn to have augmented his normal security with members of his pack. Either he was working extra hard to keep me from suspecting this was a trap, or he had an incredible amount of faith in the humans who staffed his normal security force.

  My escort led me to the bar in the more exclusive area of the club and then nodded at a door in the back wall. He leaned close even though it wasn't necessary given how keen my hearing was.

  "That's the entrance to the owner's suite. There is going to be a distraction four minutes from the time you entered this area. Grab a drink so that you blend in and then work your way back to that wall. When the distraction happens go inside—the door is unlocked."

  I nodded my understanding and turned to the bartender and slid him a fifty-dollar bill. "Your best vodka—I don't care what it is."

  I followed my instructions—drink in hand—and was less than five feet away from the door, casually leaning against the wall, when the lights went out. My beast had been oddly docile lately, but neither of us had been expecting complete darkness and he sent out a surge of power that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  Some people would have dismissed it as useless dominance posturing, but I was in tune enough with my beast to know that there was a definite purpose behind the flare of energy. He wanted to know if there was anyone dangerous around us. Shape shifters—even in human form—have great low-light vision, but that's not quite the same thing as being able to see without any light at all.

  An odd hissing sound had started a couple of seconds before the lights had died and I picked up a new scent as my beast roared to the surface. For a split second I worried that Shawn knew about my ability, that he'd chosen to poison an entire club full of people to get to me, but I was familiar with most of the commonly-used poisons and this wasn't one of them. It didn't burn my nose, and it wasn't leaving me feeling sluggish or sleepy.

  Several surges of power crashed into me as I started moving toward the door to Shawn's suite, but they were all weaker than I would have expected from someone willing to take issue with my show of dominance. That meant they were all a ways away from me.

  I'd been moving with the enhanced speed so natural to a shape shifter, so all of that happened while everyone else was still fumbling for their phones. As my hand found the doorknob, the first of the lights from the phones started to appear, but they were oddly muted, as though being seen through a thick film of smoke.

  The hissing had been fog machines kicking on full bore. They probably hadn't been cool for at least a decade, but they'd served their purpose. It was still too dark for anyone to see me and I slipped inside the door as the DJ cut the music and started yelling for everyone to stay calm and hold still.

  "It's just a temporary outage—we'll have the lights back on momentarily. Please hold still so that nobody gets hurt."

  The door closed with a click that was much too loud. I heard an electronically-controlled deadbolt slam home a fraction of a second later, and my muscles tensed up.

  Carson had been right—I'd been too caught up in the raw power of my ability. I hadn't spent enough time thinking about how I would have circumvented it if I'd been going up with someone with the same ability. I'd never even considered the fact that Shawn could poison the air inside the club.

  He hadn't, but that didn't necessarily mean that I was safe. I was alone in darkness as complete as anything I'd ever experienced before. I stepped to one side, silently shifting position so that I wasn't standing exactly where they would expect me to be if they had something nasty in store.

  I scanned through the darkness, trying to pierce the veil in front of me, but it was all to no avail. In wolf or hybrid form I would have been able to pick out the light from living things from quite a ways off, but in human form I'd have to practically be on top of someone to know they were there unless they were an extremely powerful hybrid.

  I couldn't move forward—not without knowing what was waiting for me—and I couldn't go backwards unless I was prepared to try to batter down the door behind me. Based on the way it had moved, it was reinforced steel.

  Chills of unease worked their way up and down my spine. It had been too long. I didn't want to shift prematurely and appear jumpy, but if this was all just part of an over-complicated scheme to get me into the owner's suite without being seen then Shawn would have been here—by himself—waiting for me.

  I shrugged out of my jacket—the only thing strong enough to give me problems during a transformation—and let my beast out of the cage where I usually kept it confined. I shifted forms to the sound of ripping cloth and then moved forward and to the other side, trying to make it hard for anyone who might be tracking me by the sound of my transformation.

  I was now only a few inches off of seven feet tall, and I was more than a hundred pounds heavier than I'd been—all of it preternaturally strong muscle and dense bone. Hybrids weren't the very top of the supernatural food chain, but they were close. In this form I was a lot harder to kill, and my razor-sharp semi-retractable claws, foot talons and fangs meant that I was capable of bringing down any natural predator in seconds.

  I was still scanning the darkness, looking for the cool, golden light of living organisms, but there wasn't so much as a cockroach wandering around out there. I started forward, crouched with my claws up to protect my head and torso, but before I could take my third step the sound of a door opening pulled me up short.

  "Alec, it's me. We're having a problem getting the lights back on—somebody threw the wrong switch upstairs. Just stay there for a second until we can get the lights in the club back on—I don't want you to fall down the stairs."

  His voice sounded like it was coming from ahead and below me, but that was the only evidence I had that he was telling me the truth.

  "This isn't what we agreed to, Shawn. If I pulled something like this on you I'd never hear the end of it, and I'm not the one who backed out of a rescue operation that then went to crap under suspicious circumstances. I didn't even bring a phone because you were worried it might be tracked. Tell me why I should think that this is anything other than a trap? I have half a mind to rip your expensive door off its hinges and take my chances in your club."

  "There are something like a hundred and eighty people out there, Alec. If you are in your hybrid form when the lights come on there's going to be no way to keep this quiet. The Coun'hij will send in teams to clean up the mess, but even Oblivion won't be able to wipe away all of the evidence."

  "I'm already out of favor with the powers that be, Shawn. I'm not sure why I should care about creating more work for Oblivion or any of the rest of them."

  "Then don't do it for them, do it for the innocent people you'll be forcing them to kill. If we have a breach of that magnitude they'll take drastic measures."

  I wanted to shrug off his concerns—they were exactly what he would have said if this was all just so he could get me off by myself where it would be easy to kill me—but there was something in his voice that made me think he was telling the truth.

  It was enough to stop me from really turning the screws, but not enough to make me back down completely.

  "I'm still waiting for a reason, Shawn. You've got exactly five seconds before I rip your door off of its hinges."

  "The Coun'hij is fully capable of manufacturing a crisis to bury something like this, Alec. If you
do this they'll set off a dirty bomb in downtown Chicago, or stage a massive train crash, or one of a dozen other things that will result in tens of thousands of deaths. They will do anything to bury your headline so far down nobody will even remember seeing a hybrid stroll through my club."

  "Maybe, or maybe they won't do anything to anyone but you. You've gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that nobody else knew I was here. If I'm seen leaving your suite, you and your dad are going to have to answer some tough questions—questions that you might not survive answering."

  I cocked my arm back, ready to slam my claws home into the reinforced steel of the door, and for the first time Shawn sounded desperate.

  "Alec! Stop! You can't do this. Of course I'm worried about the Coun'hij finding out that you were here. Hell, I'm almost as worried about my dad finding out I invited you here. That's all true, but that doesn't change the fact that I didn't lure you here so that I could ambush you."

  "Prove it. Turn on the damn lights or we're done here."

  "I can't—they're out in the entire club. I've been on the phone with my people trying to walk them through getting them turned back on—that's the reason I didn't come out to talk to you before now."

  "Then get your phone out here and use it as a flashlight."

  Even as I spoke, I raked my claws across the metal of the door, testing the thickness of the steel by cutting deep furrows in it. Shawn swore again, and I heard him fumbling in his pocket, and then right as I started my hand forward a dim light peeled back the darkness.

  "Sorry. I should have thought of that before now. I was worried about anyone seeing light under my door and knowing that you'd just come down here."

  I took careful stock of my surroundings. I was standing at the top of a long stairwell that doubled back halfway down. The light was enough for me to be able to see the steps, but not enough for me to be sure that there wasn't some kind of tripwire or other nasty surprise waiting for me partway down.

  "I want more light. You've got people there with you—some of them have phones. Get them."

  Apparently I'd just given Shawn one order too many. I felt a flare of power slam into me, but my beast was long past being docile today. My answering flare of power was a bare-knuckled assault on Shawn and everyone else down there with him.

  There had been a time where I'd tried to hide the full extent of the energy crackling around inside of my beast, but that time was past. I had a bigger secret to keep now, so anything that made Shawn back down before I had to uncork the miniature black hole inside of me, was a good thing.

  Someone down there gasped in astonishment at the sheer power I'd just unleashed, but it wasn't Shawn and that meant it didn't matter. When Shawn spoke again I could hear his beast straining against his control.

  "I know I was the one to reach out to you this time, Alec. I also know how things must look to you right now, but you don't get to come into my house and tell me what to do. Calm down or I'll have my people calm you down."

  "No, Shawn, you won't. If you don't get me some additional light I'm going to go through this door regardless of how much trouble it might get you and your dad in with Kaleb and the rest. Then I'm going to watch the resulting fireworks, and when everything settles down I'm going to pay you a visit and rip your heart out of your chest, and nothing you—or your people—can do will stop me."

  It was my beast talking. This was why most of the communication between packs took place via phone or video conference. It was entirely possible that Shawn and I really did want the same thing right now, but things had escalated and now neither of us could back down without losing face.

  Under other circumstances I would never have even dreamed of issuing an ultimatum like that to someone with Shawn's level of power and influence, but that didn't stop me from meaning it in that moment. I heard a growl from somewhere below me, but contrary to what I'd expected, the growl didn't come from Shawn.

  He should have been tearing up the stairs in his effort to get to me and settle the question of who was dominant to whom once and for all. I'd actually viewed that as a benefit because it would mean that I'd have proof that the stairs were safe.

  His lack of response sent chills up my spine. He was either acting completely out of character, or he was refusing to rise to my challenge because he knew that the stairs were a death sentence. Before I could spin back around and rip the door in half, Shawn spoke back up.

  "Say that again, Alec."

  "Now who's the one giving orders?"

  "Please, say it again. The promise you just made—can you repeat it?"

  "Word for word? Probably not, but it basically boiled down to the fact that if you don't stop jerking me around I'm going to come back here and rip your heart out of your chest."

  Shawn cursed again—too softly for a human to hear. "Vicki, get your phone out—we need to create enough light for Alec to feel safe traversing the stairs."

  Her subvocalized response was too quiet even for me to make out, but a second later another point source was added to the light coming up the stairwell. I was debating as to whether or not that was enough light to make the journey safe, when a third phone was added to the mix.

  I moved to the railing and confirmed that Shawn was standing down there by himself—still in human form. The stairs looked safe, but I suddenly had an idea of how to bypass them completely.

  "You might want to back up a little, Shawn."

  He obeyed without question, and I hopped over the railing and fell straight down for more than forty feet. It was far enough to shatter bones for humans. Even we shape shifters couldn't guarantee that we'd come out unscathed from that kind of drop in human form, but my massive hybrid legs absorbed the impact without any sign that they'd been stressed despite the crash as my feet hit the concrete.

  "I guess that means we're good?"

  "I don't know—it will depend on what you brought me here to say. I haven't forgotten about the fact that you and your dad hung me out to dry just a few weeks ago."

  Shawn winced. "I know that I deserve that, but please hear me out anyway."

  I nodded and followed him through the door. Despite everything else that had happened, part of me still half expected to find his bodyguards waiting on either side of the door to put me down. What I saw instead was completely at odds with anything I'd expected.

  Shawn's bodyguards were clear on the other side of the room, and neither of them looked happy about it. He was standing less than five feet away from me—still in human form, and his best hope of beating me if things got physical were much too far away to get to him in time if I decided I wanted him dead.

  "Does your dad know that you don't always let your minders do their jobs?"

  Shawn's grin was remarkably similar to the one on the face of the bigger of his two bodyguards—the guy. The girl on the other hand looked anything but amused. I recognized Vicki from the last time I'd been in Chicago; she hadn't been any more welcoming then—even after I'd helped save Shawn's life. Apparently she didn't like being called a glorified babysitter.

  "Dad stopped being surprised by anything I do a long time ago. He knows that I make life hard on Vicki and Dax. He doesn't like it, but he also knows that I have to be somewhat…flexible…in order to carry out my function."

  The lights came on with a flicker, but I didn't let that distract me.

  "And what exactly is your function?"

  "I keep the Coun'hij guessing as to where our true loyalties lie."

  I pulled his words in and rolled them around inside of my mind, sucking all of the meaning out of them before I responded.

  "Ulrich's loyalties have always rested squarely with Ulrich and only Ulrich. The fact that you're lumping the two of you together doesn't inspire any confidence in me—exactly the opposite, in fact. I came here primarily because you've been so publically against your dad's policy of strict neutrality."

  "I know that—believe it or not, that's a huge part of why we've chosen to play things this w
ay. The Bishops have been monarchists for a lot longer than anyone suspects, but we've always been very careful not to give off any hint of favoritism to either side in this conflict."

  "That's a lovely story, but if that's the truth why did the two of you decide to break with tradition where you are concerned? Having you constantly yelling about coming out openly against the Coun'hij has to have made things difficult for your dad. Even if it helps in the short term, it's going to lock you into something other than neutrality once the pack is yours."

  "We changed things up because the Coun'hij has been ramping up the pressure on my dad since even before I was born. We've looked back through the archives and there aren't any signs that it's ever been this bad before. It was bad even before your dad jumped into bed with Puppeteer and the rest, and it's only gotten worse since he got on board. We needed an insurance policy for my dad."

  "Because they know if anything happens to Ulrich it will mean the Chicago pack will come out against them before his body is even cold."

  "Yeah. For the first time in centuries, the Coun'hij is doing everything it can to keep the head of the Bishop line in power rather than trying to arrange for an accident in the hopes that his replacement will prove more malleable."

  "Okay, I buy that—in theory at least. I can even see most of the advantages. The Coun'hij protects your dad, and he makes sure they know he'll turn on them in a heartbeat if anything happens to you. I get the feeling there's more to it though…"

  "Yeah, it's like I said before. In the time of my dad and his dad, we had to actually be neutral or else risk our secret getting out. Dad doesn't think that we can make it another three hundred years under the current system. One way or another, our society is headed to a massive rebellion. By framing me as the rebel of the family, it gives us some latitude to make contact with 'divisive' elements without worrying about leaks getting back to the Coun'hij."

  "Because when the leaks happen it's just you who's implicated rather than your dad."