Burned

by Dean Murray

  I threw myself forward even though I knew I wasn't any kind of match for whatever we were up against, and to my relief I heard my people spring forward to follow me. I shifted forms and took my second step as a hybrid, fully aware that I wasn't going to make it there in time to save either of the next two victims—I was just too far away.

  I checked my ability, expecting to find that the rift—the conduit—was fine and that I was failing to stop the creature because the reservoir on the other end of the conduit was full. As I took my next step I realized that wasn't the case at all. The reservoir had been full earlier, and I could still feel the energy I'd drained off of Carson and the rest raging on the far end of the conduit, but somehow the reservoir had expanded exponentially—was still expanding. I was failing because no conduit in the world was big enough to drain the energy coming off of those wings. I could feel them whipping through the air, strands of power that seemed like they originated from the creature's back, but which actually came from somewhere else, a place of limitless, titanic forces.

  I shut off my ability as I heard a crash from behind me, and then I was close enough to engage and it was too late to worry about anything other than just staying alive. Isaac's people had cleared the area enough to deny the creature more easy targets, and the bravest were already shifting and coming back to help me, but I knew I was going to have to deal with the first couple of attacks by myself.

  I feinted forward, trying to force the creature off balance, and then had to throw myself to the side to dodge one of the tendrils. I'd learned a lot about committing to attacks and evasions from my time with Carson, and I didn't hold anything back, but I still almost wasn't fast enough.

  Despite my best efforts, the tendril hit my shoulder with enough force to throw me into the side of the closest building more than thirty feet away. It was like being hit by a wrecking ball. I'd fought dozens of hybrids, telekinetic vampires and more than my fair share of werewolves, but I'd never been hit by anything so hard.

  The closest match was being backhanded by a werewolf, but even that didn't hurt as bad. Werewolves were strong—maybe even stronger than whatever this was—but they were still all organic. When they hit you there was still some give to whatever they used to deliver the blow. The tendril of energy had no give to it, and I winced as I felt my shoulder dislocate on one side and ribs crack on the other side from hitting the brick wall I'd just demolished.

  I expected to look down and find my chest blackened and my heart destroyed, but somehow my beast had absorbed the jolt of electricity and funneled it off somewhere else. I still should have died right then and there though, because the creature had followed me, intent on finishing the job it had started.

  I hit the ground in a three-point stance, favoring my injured shoulder, and then surged back up to block the first attack, but I was operating at an even bigger disadvantage than I'd been under before. I deflected an energy tendril over my head, but the force of the blow staggered me and there were two more already headed my way.

  I dug my talons into the asphalt underneath me and slammed my claws home against one of the tendrils, fully expecting the other one to snap my neck, but it never landed. Vicki arrived at my side in the nick of time and deflected the other tendril into the ground with enough force to pulverize the asphalt where it struck.

  The next attack came barreling in with a pulse of darkness, but Vicki wasn't there where it was supposed to land. She dodged to the side, moving even before the tendril had started forward, and then our backup arrived.

  Wolves darted in at the same time that hybrids stepped forward to try to knock the darkly glowing threads out of the way. They managed to chase the creature off of Vicki and me, but nobody was getting in close enough to land anything on that dark skin.

  I tried to move in and reengage, but Vicki shoved me back into the building. "I can't keep you alive if you're in the middle of that—it's all I can do to keep myself alive."

  She was right, we outnumbered the creature more than seven to one, but we were still losing. The creature didn't seem to be able to move all of the energy tendrils at the same time, but they still moved around enough on their own to make it hard to get through them. I watched as the creature fought and finally understood how it was able to generate so much force with its blows. Every attack involved at least two tendrils—one to do the striking and another to push off of something to help stabilize the creature.

  It felt like we'd been fighting forever, but barely a dozen seconds had passed. I was still looking for options that would let us take it down when everyone around me flickered and went translucent.

  Heath. I saw the creature realize it at the same time I did. It might be able to hold a dozen of us off as long as it could see the blows coming, but the odds had just shifted entirely to our side—as long as Heath was still alive to keep us masked in invisibility. Heath had made himself invisible before extending his power out to shroud the rest of us, and he'd started moving away from where he'd been when the creature had revealed itself, but with all of the other shape shifters still milling about he hadn't had a chance to move far.

  The creature spun around, looking for Heath, but I was already in motion, and luckily Vicki's power had told her exactly what I was trying to do. The black, pulsing wings swept past me and then shot downwards, generating the thrust needed to launch the creature into the air. The creature's plan to throw itself across the distance between it and Heath would have worked perfectly, but at that instant I opened up the black hole inside of me and fed one of the tendrils into it at the same time that I slammed into another at full speed.

  A few feet away, Vicki collided with a third tendril, and the results were everything I could have hoped. The tendril I attacked with my ability flickered and then disappeared, while the other two deformed under the force of several hundred pounds of desperate hybrids moving at more than thirty miles per hour.

  They didn't collapse completely, and the claws on my good hand struggled to get any kind of real purchase on the oddly smooth substance of the energy tendrils, but without the support of three of the tendrils that the creature had been relying on, its wing-assisted jump went off course.

  One of the other tendrils clipped me, but we'd succeeded in our objective, and the creature landed more than a dozen yards away from the last place where Heath had been. Black tendrils of energy lashed out in every direction, a buzzsaw of destruction that killed another of Isaac's wolves, but Heath was more than fifty yards away by that point, and a second later Adri opened up with her handgun.

  The first bullet creased the creature's shoulder, but then it shielded itself with its wings and a second later Adri's magazine was empty and the creature was headed in her direction. It couldn't see her, but given just how much reach its wings had, it didn't need to get very close to be able to kill her.

  Adri was desperately backpedaling, but she was making too much noise—the creature was using it to track her. I was running toward the two of them, and I wasn't the only one, but we'd all started moving too late and even if we managed to get to Adri, there wasn't any way we were going to be able to get past the flailing mass of tendrils that had turned the air around it into a kill zone.

  My emotions were a confusing mess where Adri was concerned right then, but I didn't want her dead—not if this might have all been the result of the Coun'hij's machinations. My heart jumped up to my throat as the creature closed to within a few yards of Adri, and then Vicki was there behind it, but she wasn't looking at the creature, she was looking at me.

  My mind spun. She'd started racing toward Adri even before the creature had landed. Her ability had told her that this moment was coming, but she seemed just as stymied by the furiously slashing wings…only she wouldn't have bothered running all that way if she couldn't see a future that might allow her to save Adri.

  She needed me to make that happen. My gift had shut off again as soon as we'd thrown off the creature's jump, but I opened the rift wide open again and f
ocused all of that absorptive power on one single tendril again.

  Vicki was moving forward again even before the strand of energy disappeared. She leaped between two more tendrils that would have ripped her in half if her course had been off by as much as a few inches, and slammed her claws home in the creature's back.

  The wings rippled as the creature screamed out, throwing Vicki clear with such force that I was worried that I would arrive to find her dead. Adri was out of the danger zone and Heath continued to silently fall back, carefully keeping the rest of us in sight so that he could maintain our invisibility shrouds.

  By the time I made it over to Vicki she was struggling back to a sitting position. She was rattled, and if she'd been anyone else she would have been killed, but she must have thrown herself free of the creature a split second before the wings would have torn her off of him. That had been just enough to soften the blow.

  I helped her to her feet and turned to see Isaac and Taggart both silently positioning themselves to attempt capturing some of the dark energy tendrils in the hopes that they would be able to replicate Vicki's feat. The creature was injured—bleeding profusely—but it wasn't dead, and none of us wanted to let it get away. We'd already paid too steep a price to let it come back and attack us another day.

  It either divined our intent or had access to some kind of shadow precognitive ability of its own. It used its wings to throw itself more than fifty yards away from us and then turned back around to mock our efforts.

  "You'll all be dead before the day is out. Even now a force closes in on those you came here to defend. They will be wiped off of the map and then the enforcers will come for you. A pity really—I could have feasted on this group for months."

  The creature sprang away, using the strength of its wings to move faster than any wolf or hybrid could have run. Some of my people—our people—made as if to follow, but I called them back.

  "Following it will just give it a chance to pick us off one by one as we spread out trying to chase it down. Come on—we need to get to the Annikov estate."

  Chapter 18

  Alec Graves

  The Annikov Estate

  Tucson, Arizona

  The next few minutes were a blur of activity as we tried to get the wounded stabilized and load them and our dead into vehicles. Less than five minutes after the fight ended, we were all back on the road and I was praying that we would be able to make it to Jaclyn's in time.

  My RV was more than a little worse for the wear—Vicki hadn't slowed down to open the door when she'd sensed my impending death—but it was still one of the best places to treat the injured. Unfortunately that included me.

  Brindi was awake again—a little disoriented—but other than that okay. She wrapped my ribs while Vicki set my shoulder and taped it into place. It would all have to be re-done once I shifted back to human form, but I couldn't keep fighting with the breaks unstabilized and I wasn't going to go into whatever awaited us in human form.

  "I left my guys behind to try to contain the situation, Alec. Everything happened too quickly for them to get out and assist in the fight, but hopefully they can tranq all of the humans who might have seen our throwdown with the Coun'hij's own personal dark angel."

  "That wasn't an angel. It can die—we just couldn't figure out a way to hit it hard enough."

  "Fair point. You do realize if we all show up at Jaclyn's estate and there isn't actually an attack underway that you'll have painted a big target on her back, right?"

  "Yeah. In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess. Besides, it was your boss who told me that this was going down. What's the matter? Don't trust him?"

  "No, I trust Shawn, but that doesn't mean that he can't be wrong. I guess more than anything I'm worried about the fact that I had to reveal myself to everyone back there."

  "My people are trustworthy, and now that we've exposed Nellie—or rather the thing that was pretending to be Nellie—as the spy, Isaac's people shouldn't leak either."

  "Yeah. I had that same thought, but once a secret like this is out there isn't any putting it back in the box. Shawn's involvement will get out eventually—it's just a matter of trying to figure out how long we have so that he can stay ahead of the retaliation headed our direction."

  "Yeah—hopefully we can send a message of our own here in the next few minutes. If we can wipe out a significant chunk of the Coun'hij's enforcers it will go a long way towards making sure that Kaleb and the rest won't be able to come after anyone. Make sure that your people don't waste any time. I want them on the road as soon as possible—the sooner they join up with the rest of us, the safer they'll be.

  "Put up signs saying that the motel is closed, drug all of the humans up, and then lock them in a room somewhere. If we survive the next couple of hours then we'll go back and deal with figuring out who saw what."

  "And if we don't?"

  "If we don't then it's the Coun'hij's problem."

  My RV, James at the wheel, was in the lead so I got a firsthand view of the flurry of activity from the estate as we drove up to the gates around Jaclyn's house.

  I was tempted to leave myself in my hybrid form. It would make dealing with the pain so much easier, but it would also escalate the situation out there in ways that didn't need escalating. There was no sign that the estate was actually under attack yet, so I shoved my beast further back into the corner of my mind where I normally kept him. A second later I'd shifted back to human form and was getting scowls from both Brindi and Vicki.

  "You realize that you just ruined all of our work, don't you?'

  "Yeah, sorry. Couldn't be helped."

  I pulled myself to my feet with a groan, and then peeled off the tape as I exited the RV. "You need to open the gates and let us in—I have reason to believe that you're about to be attacked by an overwhelming force."

  The guy behind the gate, a short, musclebound guy who looked like he was in his fifties, shook his head. "The only invading force I need to worry about right now is the one trailing along behind you. I'm not letting you inside."

  "Get Jaclyn down here."

  "Ms. Annikov doesn't come running for the likes of you. You can turn around and leave, or I'll have your entire group arrested."

  It boggled the mind to think that this guy didn't know who he was dealing with. Even if he didn't recognize my face, the simple fact that I was shirtless and wearing a ha'bit should have told him that I wasn't just another random human.

  I lashed out with a surge of power that forced him back a step. "If you call the police you're going to have an even bigger mess on your hands than if you make me come in there after you. I'm going to say this once more. Get Jaclyn down here in the next five minutes or we'll rip your precious gate down and beat you with it."

  I turned around and walked away without looking back to see how he would respond. I headed down the column of vehicles until I found Carson, Taggart, Isaac, Heath and Grayson. Adri joined us as I started talking, but I didn't acknowledge her presence. We weren't fighting inside of a dream, so this wasn't her area of expertise, and things were still too raw between the two of us to risk starting a conversation with her—there was no telling where it would go and I couldn't deal with another distraction right now.

  "I just gave them a time limit. They've got about four and a half minutes to get Jaclyn down here. After that, I want those gates open. I'll neutralize anyone in the guard post. Heath, can you take a group and go over the wall? I don't think that Jaclyn has any snipers working the top of the house, but there's no way to know for sure and I'd feel a lot better knowing that our people aren't sitting ducks up there."

  I couldn't tell if Heath was carrying a grudge about my having accused him of being a Coun'hij agent—he was too reserved for that—but he nodded in all of the right places, and Isaac seemed to trust that he was professional enough to do his job regardless of his personal feelings toward me.

  "Grayson, I know that your power is somewhat hit-and-miss, but can you be rea
dy to deal with anyone further out?"

  For the first time I could remember, Grayson looked agitated. "Yes. After what we just saw back at the motel, I think I'll be able to muster up the mojo to do what needs to be done."

  I turned to Carson, Isaac, and Taggart. "I need the three of you to coordinate the rest of our forces. I'll be too busy using my ability to give orders once the fur starts flying, but I want this to be as bloodless as possible. We go in and neutralize people rather than killing them. I've got a stash of high-strength tranqs in the storage compartment in the second RV. Tranq anyone that gives us any problems, but use small enough doses that we have a chance of getting them back on their feet if the Coun'hij shows up."

  The other two agreed right away, but Carson studied me for several seconds before nodding. "You're not going to give them any choice, are you?"

  "I'll give them as much of a choice as I can, but let's not be under any illusions. I came down to Arizona because I have good reason to believe that Kaleb and the others are planning on executing every member of this pack. I'm not going to just walk away and let them all die. In a very real sense, their choices disappeared when we showed up at their gate—the line member over there just doesn't realize it yet."

  We split up, and I arrived back at the gate just in time to see Jaclyn hurry up to the gate.

  "Are you out of your mind, Graves? You just signed our death warrants! Once word gets out that you showed up on my doorstep the Coun'hij is never going to believe that I'm still a neutral party."

  I laughed. "I should have known that I could trust you to both see the reality of the situation and still delude yourself into thinking that you could play both sides, Jaclyn. The Coun'hij knows that you're not independent, but you're right, I just took away the slender pretext that you've been hiding behind. I have very strong intelligence indicating that there's a group of Coun'hij enforcers on their way here as we speak, or I wouldn't have come, but you're right. It's time to make a choice."