Burned

by Dean Murray

  Alec stabbed his father again, and the rage that I'd been conjuring up in an effort to keep Alec at arm's length flickered away—replaced by a growing horror at what he was doing. I wanted to be sick. I'd only thought I was ready to watch someone be tortured. The actual experience was so much worse than I'd expected it to be. Even Kaleb didn't deserve this.

  Between the collapsed lung and the screams, Kaleb was gasping for air now, but that didn't stop him from spitting at Alec.

  "You're still a child. You talk about me not being Dream Stealer's equal, but it's you who's trying to play far outside of your league. With every action and word you betray information that you should never have betrayed. I don't need the girl's name—not when I can return home and have her likeness sketched. I'll have her inside of our facial recognition software before the sun rises.

  "You've signed her death warrant, and you've revealed the fact that you've finally manifested your power. I have to say that you're a disappointment in that just like you've been a disappointment in every other way. You have no idea what you're up against—no idea of the stakes we're playing for."

  Alec leaned in and raked his claws up his father's left side, razor-sharp edges snicking across ribs. "That's where you're wrong. Maybe this operation didn't have the days of planning behind it that you would have gone in with, but we aren't fools. There is only one reason that we would have allowed you to see any of our faces, only one reason that I would allow you to know that I've manifested an ability. You'll never be leaving here."

  Alec must have opened his ability up all of the way—it was the only explanation for what happened next. Between one heartbeat and the next, Kaleb's massive hybrid body expanded outward and then contracted back into his human form.

  For the first time I saw fear in Kaleb's eyes. He'd thought Alec's ability was much more limited than it was, but even more importantly, he'd just realized why Alec and Taggart had included me in this operation. I wasn't here just because I could pull him into my dream where he would be fighting at a disadvantage, I was here because the three of us thought that we could eliminate him permanently.

  "You're not giving me any incentive to cooperate with you, Alec. If you're really capable of what you're implying, then you're going to kill me no matter what I do or say."

  "Of course. The only question is just how much you're going to suffer before I finally allow you to die."

  Kaleb smiled through all of the pain, and I instantly realized what he was about to do. His heart stopped beating a split second later.

  I considered and discarded the idea of trying to amp up his healing ability—it was too late for that, too late for trying to get information out of him.

  "Hold him, Taggart!"

  Even as the words left my throat I reached out, pushing him against the ground with an intangible wall of force that I hoped would be enough to keep him from leaving the dream. Taggart joined in, creating a metaphysical wind that quickly ratcheted up to gale force.

  "What just happened?"

  Alec was the only one of us who didn't understand. Kaleb had stopped fighting Taggart, stopped trying to strengthen his natural regenerative abilities. He'd thrown his efforts the other way, suppressing his body's systems to the point where his organs had all shut down at exactly the same time.

  It was inconceivable, the kind of thing that even the most disciplined of minds couldn't have hoped to accomplish by themselves, but Kaleb hadn't been working by himself. He'd had all of Taggart's considerable strength pushing against his inherent desire to live, and Alec's ability had been there to provide whatever other impetus had been needed.

  I pushed against Kaleb with my mind, anchoring him to the ground in a desperate effort to keep my identity a secret, but I could feel my strength burning away at a rate that was more than just scary. I'd been so foolish.

  I'd allowed my anger to goad me into pulling Alec to me rather than sticking to the plan. That had burned up precious reserves, but then I'd compounded my mistake by not thinking to change my appearance before pulling Kaleb to me. I'd put all of us in danger and now I was too short of strength to rectify my mistake.

  I watched the light start to go out of Kaleb's eyes, but it was dying at a slower rate than my energy was being expended. I clawed desperately for the will to remain there in the dream and see to Kaleb's execution.

  I'd never wanted anything so bad. Before this there had always been a tiny part of me that had been convinced that if I wanted something badly enough that I could obtain it. This time it didn't matter how much I wanted it. I'd expended too much of my strength—there wasn't anything left with which to fight.

  Exhaustion ripped me away from my dream and blackness claimed me.

  Chapter 7

  Alec Graves

  The Caravan RV Park

  Tucson, Arizona

  Losing our grip on Kaleb had thrown me for more of a loop than I'd expected it to. Even now, two days later, I was having a hard time keeping focused on the task before me.

  Really the entire night had been a bust. I'd wanted to reconcile with Adri. I'd actually felt a burst of excitement when she'd first pulled me into her dream and I'd realized that it was just the two of us. I'd thought it was going to be an opportunity to start to work things out. I couldn't have been more wrong.

  My anger with her had goaded me into one impulsive action after another. Taggart had been right; I should have allowed him to work Kaleb over for information. I had no experience with that kind of thing, and I'd gone too far. In the real world it wouldn't have been an issue—not up against someone like Kaleb—but we hadn't been operating in the real world.

  I'd let too much of our plan drop in an effort to rattle Kaleb, and it had produced exactly the opposite reaction. Despite being in tremendous pain, he'd outthought all three of us and successfully latched onto the one option that gave him a chance of escaping.

  If it had been up to me I would have gone after him again the very next day, but Taggart had overruled me. We both understood the danger of letting Kaleb communicate his findings to the rest of the Coun'hij, but in all likelihood he'd done that as soon as he'd awoken the next morning.

  Killing Kaleb now wouldn't put that cat back in the bag, and apparently Adri had pushed way too hard in her effort to keep him inside of her dream for long enough to actually kill him. To hear Taggart tell it, Adri would have gladly gone back after Kaleb, but her physical reserves were simply too low.

  Denied any form of meaningful action, I'd been left with two recurring thoughts that only grew more disturbing with each passing hour. Kaleb had been right. I'd been in over my head when it had come to our plan to kill him. It hadn't just been the fact that he'd outthought me, either. I'd known that Adri pulling me into her dream was a less optimal course of action and I'd let the mission proceed anyway.

  That mistake had cost us our best chance at taking him unawares and getting the information we needed out of him, and it might very well cost dozens or even hundreds of lives before all was said and done. It wasn't the kind of thing any leader could get away with doing on a regular basis. I'd been in over my head inside the dream where we'd had all of the cards. Was I just as outclassed here in the real world?

  That thought all by itself would have been enough to keep me up at night, but I was also having a hard time coming to grips with my actions during the dream. We'd needed to get the identities of the rest of the Coun'hij out of Kaleb, and torture had been the only way to accomplish that, but I'd gone to a much darker place than I'd intended on going.

  I wanted to build a better world, but if I replaced Kaleb and turned out to be just as bad then I wouldn't be doing my people any service.

  Carson, James and the girls had all arrived with me in Arizona more than twenty-four hours earlier, but there wasn't much we could do all by ourselves. I'd detached Jack so that he could begin setting up extraction routes for everyone. He'd taken more than a million dollars in unmarked bills, and his last surviving people with him.
r />   I'd considered sending Alison and her mother out to set up an alternate set of contingency plans, but she just wasn't as good at it as Jack was. Maybe in a few months she'd be up to it, but right now there was too much chance that she would get caught on camera somewhere and end up squarely in the Coun'hij's crosshairs.

  Taggart and his group had met up with Isaac's people about the time we'd arrived in Arizona and had finally made it here to Tucson less than an hour ago. We'd already planned out our next course of action using a series of coded texts, so there wasn't any reason for me to linger around our base of operations hoping for a chance to see Adri.

  Instead, Carson and I had set out within minutes of Taggart's arrival. We weren't leaving unaccompanied though—Heath was coming along with us. I'd met Heath briefly in Minnesota and been very impressed by the sheer power of his ability. Invisibility was a huge force equalizer, and it was useful in a much broader set of circumstances than Grayson's power.

  Unlike Grayson, who was only marginally useful in one-on-one situations, Heath was more than capable of taking out most other hybrids without them even realizing what had hit them. The jury was out on who was the most deadly in a bigger engagement. Heath was limited by the number of people he could keep in his field of view at any one time, and he couldn't do anything about the sound of them moving around or even the sound of their hearts beating, but Grayson was likewise limited with regards to just how many people he could immobilize at one time.

  If I'd had to choose between them though, I would have picked Heath. Grayson had proven oddly undependable for someone with the potential to be so lethal. Heath on the other hand was very nearly the perfect second-in-command. He was honest, dependable, and seemed to have no real desire for the top spot.

  Even better where I was concerned, I was pretty sure that my absorption field would nullify his ability, which meant that even a change of heart down the road wouldn't be enough to allow him to best me in single combat. Isaac had been incredibly lucky to find Heath. I was eventually going to have to take control of that group—the only question was whether that was going to cause hard feelings on Isaac's part.

  It was becoming apparent to me that I was going to need Isaac's counsel if I was going to have any hope of defeating the Coun'hij without getting all of my people killed. I was going to need all the help I could get.

  I shoved the latest round of worries to the back of my mind and focused on the task at hand. The three of us were in wolf form, covering ground on four legs at a prodigious rate with Heath at the back of the formation so that he could keep all three of us hidden from observation—satellite or otherwise.

  It was a unique experience. Carson and I had to be careful not to make any sudden changes in direction that would result in Heath losing track of us, but after a few problems early on where one of us suddenly materialized back into view, we figured it out and quickly crossed the ten miles between our base of operations and the Annikov estate.

  I was more than a little nervous as we approached the house—not that we wouldn't be able to fight our way out if it came to that, but that in doing so we'd ruin the entire operation and end up forced to exercise the extraction protocols that Jack was still trying to get into place. If that happened some of us probably weren't going to be able to fall off of the Coun'hij's radar, but I couldn't continue to wait—not when the Coun'hij might be attacking the Tucson pack at any time.

  I probably would have screwed up the infiltration into the house, but luckily Carson stepped up and took point, effortlessly leading us around all of the security. I spared a moment to wonder if his ability extended to more than just manipulating emotions. If he was actually capable of sensing emotions from a distance, then he had an even bigger advantage over most hybrids than I'd realized.

  We found an empty room and shifted back to human form, momentarily flickering back into existence as Heath lost his concentration, and then it was time to go invisible again and resume looking for Jaclyn. We found her in a windowless study at the very center of the house. She was talking to a blonde girl who looked like she was in her early twenties.

  Jaclyn looked up as we entered the room and then lunged to her feet. I reacted without thinking and opened up the rift inside of me wide enough to drop both of them to the ground as Carson stepped back and closed the door.

  I gave Heath a nod, and then we were fully visible. I looked down at Jaclyn and realized that she wasn't just on the ground, she was panting for breath. I'd been so concerned about her response that I'd used almost the full strength of my ability on just the two of them.

  "I'm sorry about the circumstances, Jaclyn, but we had to talk to you in a way that wouldn't leave any evidence behind. I'm going to release you now, but if you call out things will go very badly for all of us."

  Jaclyn didn't respond until I bottled my ability back up, and even then she pulled herself back to her feet before saying anything.

  "Are you really coming here to my territory—my house—and threatening my people? You're no better than your father."

  "I don't have to come here and threaten you, Jaclyn. Kaleb and the rest of the Coun'hij already do that just by existing. Will we fight, and even kill, if it comes to it in order to leave here when we're done talking to you? Yes, absolutely, but I'm not the real threat. The Coun'hij is organizing an operation to wipe your pack off of the face of the map. We're here to help you."

  She stepped toward me and I held up a hand. "That's close enough. I'm not going to let you close enough to use your ability on me. You can talk from where you are, or you can talk to me from the floor. Your choice."

  She shot me a look so full of venom that I half expected her to throw herself at me, but she stopped.

  "Fine, let's talk. You're right, you don't have to verbalize any threats because just your presence is enough to bring Kaleb and his murderers down on my people and me. Do you have any idea how hard I've worked over the last hundred and fifty years to stop that from happening? Coming here was beyond reckless, it was an act of war."

  She lashed out with surges of energy, flailing me with a hot, prickly wind as her beast punctuated each word with a tangible manifestation of its anger. I wanted to respond in kind, wanted to slam a hurricane of power into her, but that would just result in things continuing to escalate.

  Carson had agreed to use his power to get us out of the house without having to kill anyone if it came to that, but he'd steadfastly refused to interfere with the actual negotiations—they were strictly up to me. I had to find a way not to lose my cool.

  "Listen to yourself, Jaclyn. You and I believe the same things—we want the same things. We shouldn't be a hairsbreadth away from killing each other, we should be working together to stop Kaleb and the rest. You're one of the single most deadly hybrids in the entire world, but you're forced to bow your head to a bunch of ruthless thugs. We can change that."

  She looked me over as the other girl—presumably her daughter Natasha—stepped to her side. "I've never felt anything like that, Mother, he—"

  Jaclyn stopped her daughter with a gesture. "He didn't just mistakenly use his ability on us, Tasha. That was a demonstration—something he planned on doing. That is why he's here."

  I shook my head. "I didn't mean for things to happen like that. I was hoping to find you by yourself and then just talk to you."

  She laughed, a mocking, bitter sound. "You're either stupid or a liar. If you didn't want to come here and make a pointed demonstration of just how powerful your ability is then you would have used other channels to communicate with me. You're here because you want to try to establish the fact that you are dominant to me."

  My beast didn't like her tone, and I was losing my grip on him. The power level inside of the room spiked for a moment before I could rein him back in.

  "I came here because your pack is under an order of execution. We have only a matter of days—maybe even just hours—before the Coun'hij descends on your territory with a force that you can't hope to
match."

  "That's a likely story, except that I've heard nothing about any buildup of forces. Let's be honest, once you manifested your power it was only a matter of time before you were going to come here under whatever pretext you could manage. That's how petty dictators always work. Sooner or later you are going to work your way through every pack in North America just so that you can make sure that everyone knows not to cross you."

  I shook my head. "Maybe you're right about the necessity of visiting every single pack, but if so it's only because there wouldn't be any other way to actually talk to the other alphas. I know exactly how conversations via the normal channels go. They take forever and nothing gets said because neither side is willing to cross any lines that will get them killed if the other person takes the conversation to the Coun'hij."

  Jaclyn looked deep into my eyes, almost as though trying to see into my soul. Despite all of the advantages we had when it came to hearing heartbeats and a myriad of other tells, there was still no guarantee that you weren't working with a particularly skilled liar.

  "Are you trying to tell me that you aren't planning on setting yourself up as the undisputed leader of the rebellion, Alec? Do you really expect me to believe that you aren't setting yourself up as the next king?"

  There it was—the same issue I'd just finished resolving with Jack, the same issue that I was going to have to settle with every single alpha of any pack I wanted to bring over to my forces.

  "None of us like to give up our power voluntarily, Jaclyn. For the best of us that's because we're honestly concerned about protecting our people. For the worst of us it's because we enjoy having the power of life and death over our pack. I'm no different than you, I have people who depend on me, people who've risked everything to support me. I'm not going to hand responsibility for them over to someone else lightly."

  I could see her response coming, but got the rest of my words out before she managed to interrupt.