Burned

by Dean Murray

  "You're putting me in a very difficult spot, Alec. I tried to warn you away, but you're as stubborn as your father and nearly as certain of the rectitude of your cause as he is. The only way for me to offer my people a life other than constantly being on the run from your dad is if we attack you now."

  "You'll regret that, Jaclyn. Your pack won't last five minutes against my people. I'll try to save as many of them as I can, but you're too dangerous for that. If you turn this into a fight, you'll be the first to die."

  She nodded. "I'm under no illusions about my ability to get my claws in your throat before you take me down, Alec, but you've forced me into a situation where no matter which option I choose I'll be faced with regrets. The only real question is whether I think my people have a better chance going up against you or going up against your father."

  The tension ratcheted up to the point where all it would take was a blink for both sides to explode into violence. Even as I reached for my ability, I refused to look away from Jaclyn's gaze. If I ended up having to kill her I was at least going to do her the honor of looking her in the eye while I did it.

  A split second before the violence started, Vicki appeared at my elbow. "Don't do this, Jaclyn. Your people can't beat us."

  Jaclyn's eyes narrowed. "You—I recognize you. Does this mean that Ulrich has finally picked a side, or is this just another of Shawn's youthful indiscretions?"

  Vicki looked off into the distance as though trying to read the future, and at that moment I realized that she was wishing she could read more than just the next few seconds of what was going to happen.

  "I can't talk about all of that out here in the open, Jaclyn, and you know it. If you want to let us inside, then I'll tell you what's going on. Otherwise we'll just have to let things play out as they would if my boss wasn't in the picture at all."

  Jaclyn had been ready to die a few seconds before—now she was faced with a possibility that offered survival for both her and her people. If Vicki had just given her a yes or no response, Jaclyn probably could have made her decision in a split second. She'd doubtlessly fantasized about the idea of the Chicago pack finally coming out in open rebellion. The question of whether or not to let us inside her walls was a completely new problem though, one that had just been drastically complicated by the promise of inside information.

  The question of what she was going to do next hung in the air between us for several seconds, and then I felt Vicki relax. I thought that meant that we were in—Jaclyn's sigh took me completely off guard.

  "No, even if you tell me that Ulrich is finally picking the side of the rebellion it still wouldn't be enough for me to put my people at risk like that. He's a long ways away, and Kaleb has people less than two hundred miles from here. Ulrich is strong, but even he doesn't have as long of a reach as the Coun'hij."

  Jaclyn turned—to give the order to prepare for our attack—and then Tasha came running into view. "We've got reports of a motorcade headed this direction, Mom. They're coming from the west. Stack and Nick are putting it at ninety-five percent probability that it's Worthingfield and his people."

  I couldn't blame Jaclyn for swearing. I'd been expecting something like this—hoping for it really—for days now, and I still felt like cursing. We could take the people that Brandon had stationed on the border, but there was always a chance that he was just one prong in a much bigger attack—an attack that could include everything from other enforcers and members of bootlicker packs to werewolves and another creature—a dark angel—like the one we'd just finished fighting.

  I looked back at Isaac and the rest to make sure that they'd heard, and then turned forward to face Jaclyn again. "You can't run—not now. I've got arrangements made to help you disappear, but it will take time for you to make it to the extraction points. If you leave now you'll never manage to fall off of their radar."

  She nodded. "Get the gates open. Tasha, get the word out to the rest of our people—we need them all here, and they need to come ready for a fight. How long do we have before Brandon arrives?"

  "Less than ten minutes. The satellites are all down. Our information came in from one of our human contacts on the other side of town—we're lucky we have even this much warning."

  The gates opened and our vehicles started pouring into the estate. Vicki's people weren't going to make it here in time—even some of Jaclyn's people weren't going to be able to get here before the fighting started.

  I grabbed Brindi as she came down the steps from my RV and sent her towards Vicki. "Tell Rachel that I want her to coordinate with Vicki's people, and then go find Tasha. Ask her for an alternate assembly point outside of the estate for any of her people who are too far away to make it here in time. If they can all meet up there with Vicki's people there's a chance that they'll be able to fight their way out even if things go badly here."

  The next few minutes flew by in a frenzied blur. We got everyone inside the walls of the estate and then we closed the gates and backed both of my RV's up against them from the inside and engaged the brakes.

  It was the equivalent to burning the boats we'd arrived in, but I wasn't going to take any chances that the gates weren't as strong as they looked—having Brandon's people run us down in three-thousand-pound SUVs was one of the worst things we could have happen. This way they would all have to come over the walls, which would mean that we would have a chance to pick them off as they tried to reform before engaging us.

  I tried to coordinate with Jaclyn, but she simply told me to hold the north and west sides of the estate and her people would hold the other two sides. Before I could break through her stubbornness, Brandon's people started arriving. It quickly became apparent that Tasha's network of observers had missed at least one group of incoming enforcers. The motorcade that arrived outside the wall was much bigger than I'd been expecting. I counted more than two dozen cars before the field of vehicles had filled up the drive and started parking out of sight.

  Jaclyn's estate was on the very outskirts of the city, surrounded by more than three hundred acres of private, unoccupied land, but I was still surprised that the local police hadn't showed up. All I could figure was that the enforcers must have come in mostly as smaller groups and only reformed into a single cavalcade once they were within a short distance of the estate.

  I asked Heath and Grayson each to anchor one side of our defenses, and then left Isaac and Carson to finish splitting up the rest of our people. Jaclyn and Tasha were both standing a few feet back from the gate, waiting for whoever was in charge to step forward.

  I should have known that it would be Brandon. He approached to within a dozen yards of the gate, followed by Vincent and a few other bruisers.

  "I'm here in the name of the Coun'hij to deliver judgment for the treasonous act of providing shelter to Alec's band of misfits."

  Jaclyn's expression was grim, but apparently she'd decided to play the hand she'd been dealt to the best of her ability.

  "That's interesting timing considering that Alec just showed up at my gates a few minutes ago, but you would have had to have started driving hours ago."

  Brandon shrugged. "They may have only arrived at your gate a short time ago, but they've been inside of your territory for days. If you're not able to police the ground your pack has claimed, then you should have petitioned the Coun'hij to allow you to move or at the very least you should have reduced the area you claimed."

  Jaclyn laughed. "I don't even know why I'm bothering to have this conversation with you. If Alec hadn't come down here you would have come up with another pretext for being down here. As much as I hate to admit it, Graves was right all along. Your masters have decided that they need to make an example out of someone, and they're too stupid to realize killing us will only force them to patrol this section of the border themselves in addition to all the other demands on their time."

  Brandon showed his teeth at the reminder that he was there as little more than a hired gun, but other than that he maintained his
composure much better than I would have expected.

  "You're wrong, but I've been down here long enough to know that's par for the course. It's true that your pack is guilty by association, but the Coun'hij is willing to be merciful. I'm not here to kill all of your people, just you and your second in command. I will then take over the pack to make sure that there aren't any dissident elements left."

  It wasn't a half-bad plan. With a bigger pack, one that was less united, it might have even worked, but looking around at those of Jaclyn's people within visual range, it was obvious to me that they saw it for what it really was. They would be buying themselves a few more months of life, but once Brandon was their alpha it would just be a matter of time before their lives would be spent against some enemy of the Coun'hij.

  I stepped forward and clapped. "Brilliant. Kaleb kills two birds with one stone. He pays you off for murdering a few hundred innocents by giving you your own little fiefdom down here, he purges the most dissident elements of the Tucson pack, and he secures a new batch of cannon fodder. Too bad it's not going to work."

  Brandon resumed talking as though he hadn't heard me. "Of course your…guests…will be killed. Alec and everyone with him have proven themselves beyond redemption. It is with great regret that Kaleb signed the order for them to be destroyed, but sometimes terrible sacrifices must be made to protect our race."

  I turned to Jaclyn. "I know this is your home, so if you want to be the one to kill him I'll let you, but I was really hoping to be the one to finally put him down."

  Jaclyn's grin showed too much teeth to be mistaken as a human expression. "Let's make a contest of it. Whoever kills him gets to call the shots from here on out?"

  I shook my head. "He's a threat, but he's still not much more than an errand boy. In order to justify those kinds of stakes you'd have to bring down the entire Coun'hij."

  She shrugged. "You can't blame me for trying." Jaclyn turned her back on the gate. "I think we're done here."

  I started to respond and then all hell broke loose. Something hit on the other side of the house hard enough that the ground shook, and then hybrids started coming over the wall. I froze for a second, looking back and forth between my people and Jaclyn's, but she waved me off.

  "Go take care of your half of the battle."

  I shifted forms and for the first time since we'd arrived, felt a measure of relief from the pain of all my broken bones. I tore across the grounds and rounded a corner of the house to see exactly what I'd been afraid I would find.

  The creature—the dark angel—was back. My people were being forced back away from the wall by the maelstrom of glowing black energy tendrils, tendrils that were shredding everything within a dozen feet of the creature.

  The sound of running off to my right brought me around just in time to see the third prong of the assault come sailing over the wall. I opened my mouth to give orders, but Carson was already ahead of me. He dispatched a team of six hybrids—along with Heath—to keep the dark angel busy, and brought the rest of our people running in my direction.

  With most of our hybrids detached to fight the creature we were drastically outnumbered, and most of our remaining people were wolves, but we still had a couple of cards to play. I was ready to hit the first group of hybrids with my power, but Grayson was a half-step ahead of me. Most of them were still in midair when their bodies started convulsing.

  It was the perfect response. My ability would have kept them down, but I would have been forced to then kill them one at a time—all by myself. Grayson being in play meant that all of our people—every wolf and hybrid—swarmed over the first wave of opponents. They were all dead within seconds.

  The battle sounds coming from the other side of the estate were growing—our prong of the attack hadn't ever been meant to face real opposition. Brandon and the rest had all come over the other wall.

  I grabbed Isaac and turned him back toward the blur of motion around the dark angel. "Grab half our people and go help contain that—take Grayson with you in case they launch another wave at us from this direction."

  I spun around and took off at a sprint, Carson, Vicki and James at my back. The ten seconds it took us to get far enough around the house to see the fighting stretched out forever, and the vista of destruction awaiting us made something inside of me recoil in horror.

  Brandon had brought even more warriors than I'd expected, and the Tucson pack was fighting a rear-guard action against more than twice their number. Jaclyn had seemed confident in her ability to beat Brandon in a one-on-one fight, but even from so far away it was obvious to me that he was toying with her.

  Carson pushed past me—faster than I was in my injured state—and then he lit up like a signal fire on whatever wavelength of sight my beast bestowed on me. He was far enough ahead of me that I only caught the very edge of what he threw at the combatants, but it still drained me of much of the anger that had been powering me. I managed to retain my shape and continue stumbling forward, but the people it had been directed at weren't nearly as lucky.

  A ripple of change swept through the battle, momentarily robbing the combatants of the emotional peaks they needed to maintain their transformations. Some of them still pressed forward, trying to kill each other with their bare hands, but most just collapsed to the ground in a daze.

  Whatever Carson had done wasn't as targeted as what Grayson had done, but it still seemed to hit the Coun'hij forces harder than it did Jaclyn's people, who managed to kill several of their opponents before Carson stumbled in exhaustion and dropped his emotional damping-field.

  Between one heartbeat and the next the battlefield re-erupted with violence, but he'd bought us nearly three full seconds. It had helped, but it wasn't going to be enough to save Jaclyn—not against a monster like Brandon.

  I reached inside and for the third time that day opened up the conduit inside of me as far as it would go. What I found shocked me. As long as I could remember I'd been told that Brandon had the potential to manifest a gift like nothing that had been seen among our people in thousands of years. Somehow I'd lost sight of that in the face of his blinding speed and unbelievable strength.

  I'd seriously underestimated him. I reached out intending on using my ability to bring the fighting to a halt once again. I hadn't expected to be able to maintain the absorption field indefinitely, but I only needed three more seconds to make it to the fighting, and then every second that passed would mean one more dead enforcer, one more person who wouldn't be able to threaten my people.

  Instead of bringing the fighting to a stop, I was nearly brought to a stop. The energy crashing into me before being sucked down into the rift inside of me was unbelievable. In the aggregate, it was every bit as fearsome as what I'd felt coming off of the creature. Inside of my mind I could see a map of the people in front of me. The hybrids shone brighter than the wolves, Carson and Jaclyn both shone much brighter than the other hybrids, and Brandon was like staring into the sun.

  I felt something inside of me start to tear as I exceeded the limits of my gift, and immediately narrowed down the focus of my attack. I pulled back the edge of my field, shrinking it down so that it didn't include Brandon and Jaclyn, and then threw myself toward that dead spot on our end of the fighting.

  My people didn't know as much as they would have liked about my ability, but they all knew enough to stay out of the area I was targeting. Jaclyn's people weren't as knowledgeable. Several of them lunged forward intending on savaging a fallen opponent and instead joined their targets on the ground.

  I brushed past the two hybrids between me and the dead spot, trusting James and the others to distract the enforcers from taking swipes at my unprotected back. It was risky, but I could feel the black hole inside of me starting to destabilize—I needed to eliminate some of the power sources that were overwhelming my ability.

  I buried my right fist in the chest of my first target while he struggled to pull himself back up to his feet. I knew I would regret what I was doi
ng later—regret killing defenseless enemies—but right then I'd locked my emotions safely away behind a thick wall. Sorrow, fear, pain from my broken ribs and damaged shoulder—it was all inaccessible.

  The second and third targets were close enough for me to kill them less than a second later, and then a flicker of motion brought me around. My people were streaming around the edge of the circle of immobilized bodies and in our little corner of the battle we had numerical superiority. Coun'hij hybrids were falling to groups of three and four wolves working in unison or to paired hybrids, but the real destruction was being dished out by Carson.

  No living thing could cross the invisible line in the ground created by my ability, but Carson had figured out a way around that. He stalked along the perimeter of fallen figures and his sword licked out with nearly every step, crossing the boundary and killing with each stroke.

  I almost yelled for him to stop. I'd been focused on my targets, on killing the enforcers as quickly as I could, but what flashes I'd seen of the rest of the battle told me that Brandon was tearing his way through the Tucson pack like they were nothing more than immobile paper dolls. Carson was one of the few opponents Brandon couldn't just mow down and part of me wanted him out there fighting the biggest menace on the battlefield, but he was right. My usefulness on the field of battle was limited by how quickly I could dispatch immobilized foes.

  That was the main weakness that made someone like Grayson or Heath so much more effective in most situations. Carson was doubling my usefulness and killing enemies even faster than he could have in open battle. It was a stroke of brilliance, but it wasn't enough.

  I yelled for Jess and Jasmin as I saw them take down another hybrid.

  "Follow along behind me and kill any stragglers while they are still disoriented and weak!"

  I centered my ability on myself so it would move with me, and then I took several steps forward as a fresh wave of hybrids came soaring over the wall. My forward motion brought new enemies into my sphere of influence at the same time that it let me get to another target.