by Dean Murray
Juan interrupted. "Alison and Chloe were both assigned to my team, which is how I found out what had happened to them. I tried very hard to keep Chloe alive, but she was just too young, too inexperienced and small. She didn't even last two weeks."
Alison looked like her rage was the only thing keeping her from tears. "My mom is still in Sanctuary pretending like everything is okay because Kaleb personally told her that he'd have me killed if she said anything to anyone."
"And if you cause problems here then Brandon will tell Kaleb and he'll have your mother killed. You both serve as a guarantee of the other's cooperation."
My voice came out low and angry. What had been done to Chloe and Alison was wrong. Kaleb had put a price on the lives of five people; he'd implicitly said that the extra money that Sam would generate for him was worth more than the lives of Chloe, Alison and their parents. I wanted to jump into a car and drive back to Sanctuary so that I could throw myself at Kaleb, but there was a tiny part of me that hadn't given into the rage of my beast, and that sliver of self-control knew that the implications of what Alison had just told me were much greater than she knew.
Sam having been brought in expressly to help manage the pack's tithe and Kaleb's fortune meant that Donovan was at risk in more ways than one, but more concerning was the fact that neither Donovan or my mother had told me anything about what had happened with Alison and Chloe.
I looked down and realized that James had his hand on my chest and that I was only a step away from the door. I'd thought I was still at least peripherally in control, but apparently my beast had been calling more of the shots than I'd realized.
"Sit down, Alec. You too, James. Nobody is going to leave right now, we're not done talking."
Juan's voice was even, but it was still a command and my control wasn't up to keeping my beast from bristling at the order. Power exploded out of me, and it wasn't just the limited surge that I'd been trying to train myself to use, it was everything I was capable of. Waves of energy beat against the walls in a metaphysical rush that caused James to back away from me and all three of the girls to shrink in on themselves in a clear bid to avoid becoming the focus of my ire.
"You shouldn't have done that."
Juan didn't rise to the rage in my voice. "You didn't give me any choice, Alec, any more than Alison gave me one. If I hadn't given you another target to focus on then you and James would have come to blows and you'd be halfway back to the hotel so you could steal a vehicle by now."
The things he was saying were just words, and they weren't capable of deflecting my beast—not now, not without something more substantial to back them up. I roared at him and sent out another crest of power to batter him. This time I did spark a response from him and he unleashed a pulse of energy that was respectable but less than I'd managed even before my recent gains.
"There you have it, Alec. I've much less power than you. Your beast is telling you to attack, to prove your dominance, but what will that really prove? If you kill me then you'll be giving Brandon exactly the excuse he's looking for, and if you beat me without killing me then you'll be the leader of this team but a leader without the knowledge that would allow you to keep all of us alive. Is that what you want? You, not the beast that isn't capable of planning more than a few hours ahead."
I wanted to sink my claws into him so badly that it was all I could do to stop the shift that was threatening to tear through me. My whole body was trembling from the need to transform and rend, but the incident with Jack had shown me that I was more capable of mastering my beast than I'd ever realized previously.
I focused on my breathing, letting some of the tension out each time I exhaled, and within a few seconds the shakes were gone and I was enough in control to look at Juan without wanting to kill him.
"Good job, Alec."
The words could have been mocking, but something about Juan's tone told me that he was sincerely impressed, which helped dissipate most of the rest of my beast's anger.
"There aren't very many hybrids who could have done what you just did."
I waved off the compliment. "It doesn't help me stand up to Brandon or Kaleb, so it amounts to little more than a cheap parlor trick."
"With all due respect, it has the potential of keeping you alive when less controlled hybrids would get themselves killed by picking the wrong time and place."
I shrugged and looked around as I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Reina appeared less than a minute later with a heavily-laden tray of food and beverages. Juan thanked the old lady and handed her a hundred-dollar bill. Once she had retreated back down the stairs he waved at the tray.
"Eat up. She made sandwiches and the drink is an agua fresca with watermelon. We'll be leaving in less than an hour now and you're going to wish you had something in your stomach by the time we get down there if you don't eat now."
I sampled the drink and found it to be delicious. In addition to the watermelon, it had a ton of crushed ice and what tasted like lime juice. I drained the glass and then refilled it from the large pitcher in the center of the tray.
"So what did all of that accomplish other than almost getting you and me in a fight right before we were supposed to leave on an op?"
Juan motioned towards Alison with his head. "For starters, it proved to Alison that you aren't any more of a fan of your dad than she is. That isn't going to magically make everything better, but I suspect it's going to go a long ways towards making it so that we can survive as a team rather than getting cut to ribbons the first time that one of Brandon's plans comes apart at the seams."
Juan took a bite of his sandwich and I waited while he chewed and swallowed. "It also gave you a chance to prove that you aren't just some young hothead who can't override your beast enough to stop from getting yourself killed for no good reason, which means that I can trust you more than I would have otherwise. Not only that, it helped you see that you weren't being told the full story by people you've been trusting."
"You knew that already?"
"Yeah. Even without Alison's story having been confirmed to me via other sources I still would have suspected as much. I've been in healthy packs before. I'm atypical because I don't usually hang around for very long, but I've seen how a pack is supposed to function and everything coming out of Sanctuary smells like a cat that's been dead for six days."
"So you don't trust Kaleb either?"
Juan gave me a hard smile. "I don't trust very many people, and I definitely don't trust anyone associated with the Coun'hij."
"Then why are you down here fighting their war for them?"
"I'm not. I'm down here helping them fight my war. My mother was a human, a lot like yours is supposed to be if rumors can be believed, but she immigrated here from Mexico before meeting my father. I've spent time on both sides of the border, I've seen the pros and cons to both countries and one thing stands out loud and clear with regards to Mexico. All of its problems stem from corruption, which ultimately can be placed at the feet of the shape shifters who've set themselves up as untouchable whether via the drug trade or some other mechanism."
"So you want the cats dead."
"Either dead or following policies more like the wolves follow in North America. I've been fighting this particular war since before Kaleb and Puppeteer were born. I'll take advantage of their current willingness to prosecute it, but that doesn't mean that I'm not looking for a better offer."
"You're taking a massive risk telling us that."
Juan leaned back in his chair and shrugged. "Yes, I am. Not as big of a risk as you might think though, and it needed to be done because you need to know that I'm out here as a potential resource and what my terms are."
"Why me?"
"Because any resistance to Kaleb and the Coun'hij will naturally congeal around you. You're the golden boy Mallory has been excited about for more than seventeen years. Brandon too, but by all accounts he's turned out to be a disappointment from the standpoint of realizing the potent
ial that she saw in him so many years ago."
"I just finished finding out that Brandon is the single most deadly individual in the world, how can he be a disappointment? Puppeteer could probably take him down under the right set of circumstances with enough werewolves, but nobody else even comes close. Besides, how would you even know that?"
"Back when you and Brandon were first born Mallory was so excited she couldn't keep her mouth shut, at least not inside the pack. That changed pretty quickly, but as discontent inside of the Sanctuary pack has grown, her early slipups have become common knowledge inside of certain circles."
Juan took a long drink of agua fresca and then looked back up at me. "As for the other part of your question, Brandon is a disappointment for the same reason that Kaleb is vastly more important to our people than Puppeteer could ever be in the short term. Puppeteer is an example of an ability that serves as a force multiplier for short periods of time with a very limited application. It's become obvious, despite Kaleb's efforts to keep it a secret, that he's dramatically increasing the birthrate there in Sanctuary. That whole bit about him being able to heal faster than anyone else who's ever lived is nothing more than a sideshow. His real power boils down to the fact that his pack is growing four or five times as fast as it should be. That's why the Coun'hij puts up with him. Part of it is that they are running scared of just how big the Sanctuary pack has gotten, but mostly they are greedy. By helping him keep as many shape shifters around him as possible they are creating a population explosion that could expand our numbers by an incredible amount over the next couple of hundred years."
It was like a punch to the stomach. I'd already been forcibly educated as to the fact that I wasn't being fed as much information as I'd thought, but this was something else entirely. There were entire planks that my world was built on that I'd never even suspected existed. I looked over at James and the girls and they looked just as shocked as I felt.
"So they are hoping that I'll manifest some kind of ability that will benefit our people more broadly, something like what Kaleb has rather than something like Brandon or Puppeteer have."
"Exactly. That's why you've been given a ton more rope than most of your fellows and it's also why Kaleb and Mallory have been so careful to keep you isolated from the other packs until now. They didn't want anyone giving you a more complete perspective on your worth out of worry that it would make you more difficult to deal with. They can't afford to go wrong with you."
My laugh was a bitter, mocking thing. "I don't see why. You've just finished telling me that Kaleb turns any pack into a baby factory. If he alienates me it's still only a matter of time until the pack produces a dozen more with as great or greater potential."
Juan shook his head. "Frankly the math behind all of that doesn't interest me in the slightest, but statistically speaking hybrids with your level of potential are extremely rare—think a fraction of a percent of all moonborn births. There was some talk that Kaleb had somehow shifted the odds when you and Brandon were born at the same time, but it's been nearly two decades and there hasn't been a repeat, so it's looking very much like that's not the case. That means that Kaleb and Mallory will probably only get to see another two or three savant births. Mallory is older, she might see one or two less, Kaleb is younger so he might see one or two more, but he won't even be able to identify his potential successors without her. There's always a chance that one of the non-savant level hybrids will manifest a particularly useful power like Kaleb's which has an impact all out of relation to the power required to fuel it, but it's unlikely."
"So Kaleb needs me to solidify his hold over our people and secure his legacy."
"Yeah, that's pretty much the size of it."
I rubbed my temples. I knew it was a bad thing to do from a negotiating standpoint, but I just couldn't help it. Juan had hit me with too much information in too short a time period that had much too profound of an impact on my worldview for me to be able to process it right now.
"You know that telling me this could send me on some kind of egotistical power trip."
"It's possible, but I don't think it's likely, Alec. You've had an awful lot of dirt kicked in your face during the last few years. When that happens you either end up getting to a point where you only look out for number one, or you become empathetic to the people around you. James, Jasmin and Jessica wouldn't be ready to walk through fire for you if you were the kind of person I needed to worry about. Not only that, you're obviously smart enough to eventually figure out that this doesn't actually change anything right now. It might allow you to bluff a little here or there to get something you might not have realized you could get before, but your ability is still nothing but potential. Until it manifests you don't have any choice but to dance to Kaleb's tune."
"But if it does manifest, especially if it manifests into something useful, then I can start calling some of my own shots."
"And with that we've returned to my original reason for letting Brandon put you on my team. When you become top dog—if you become top dog—I want to put a plug in for taking care of the jaguar problem south of the border."
"What if I decide that the best way to take care of the problem isn't to kill them all but to work out some kind of deal with them?"
"If it means that the corruption goes away and that my people get a chance to start building a future for themselves instead of lining the pockets of despots, then you'd have my full support. The truth is that there's no way that we'd be able to exterminate the cats. All they need to do to avoid dying is just keep a low profile. Kaleb's Brain Box employs something like two hundred analysts, and they still end up spending more than half of their time following up on the leads that we get from our anonymous tipster. Without him we would have lost the war months ago. The fact that wolves are more social means that we tend to be easier to identify, which means that the initiative would be completely on their side."
That was another piece of the puzzle that I'd never realized was missing until now. With the vampires it was relatively easy to track them down due to their distinctive scent. Werewolves didn't really have a smell that we could use to identify them, at least not the younger ones, but they were little more than dumb animals and the fact that they created rolling blackouts wherever they travelled meant that we always had some idea of where to go look for them. It seemed incredible, but I'd never realized just how hard of a time we would have finding the jaguars.
"If it is so hard to find the cats in the first place, how did we manage to nearly exterminate the cats back during the time of the monarchy?"
"It was a different world back then. There weren't any cars, so people didn't move around like they do now. It meant that your neighbors knew you, it meant that even if a town didn't believe in shape shifters, which most did back then, they still knew when there was something different about a family. From a defensive standpoint, the few travelers to come north were always suspected until we'd observed them during a full moon and confirmed that they didn't have to fight the need to change forms. From the offensive side of things, we just went from village to village and the villagers pretty much identified the jaguars for us."
I could feel my mind chewing on the problem he'd just presented me, but before I could even begin to find a solution Alison broke into the conversation.
"This is all fascinating and I'm glad that you think we'll be able to play nice with each other, but it doesn't change the fact that Alec and his friends have a massive target painted on their backs. How exactly are you planning on dealing with that little problem?"
Juan shrugged. "If the game were easy and safe then everyone would play, Alison. The truth is that I don't have a solution, at least not yet. The first step will be for Alec to evidence a change of heart where Brandon and Vincent are concerned. If you can start pulling as part of the team, then they'll be less likely to try anything. If they did do something like that they would risk losing the independents like me."
"Do you think that V
incent is smart enough to realize that?"
Alison was tapping her lips with a forefinger as she thought about my question even though it had mostly been directed at Juan.
"I think so. If he's not, then Brandon is and Brandon will certainly make the effort required to explain it to Vincent. Slightly more than a third of the wolves and hybrids here are either dispossessed or from small, unaligned packs. If they start feeling like they can't trust Brandon to keep Vincent from playing favorites that might get someone killed, then they'll leave and our ability to go in against the larger groups that the tipster tends to identify for us would be seriously compromised."
I shook my head. "It's not that I'm unwilling. My biggest beef with Brandon and Vincent has always been the way that they bully everyone beyond the requirements even of establishing their dominance. If they play nice with people here because they need them, then that takes away most of the reason, on my side at least, for friction between us. That all works, but I don't think that they are going to buy it if I suddenly become all chummy with them for no reason."
Juan's smile wasn't the least bit reassuring. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. Like Alison said, you've practically got an expiration date printed on your forehead now that you're down here. I suspect that you'll have an extremely good reason to change your behavior towards Brandon and Vincent in very short order."
Chapter 9
Alec Graves
Suarez Compound
Northern Mexico
Once we got the tricky parts of our first briefing out of the way, prepping for the mission went by pretty quickly. Juan filled us in on what we needed to know about the operation and then we were bundled into a helicopter.
Most of the attack force was traveling via the ubiquitous black SUVs that seemed to be the mainstay of transportation for the wolves deployed on the border, but our team had been tasked with plugging the backdoor out of the compound and Brandon apparently felt like our chances of sneaking around from the front without being seen weren't very good.