by Dean Murray
I'd taken too long to kill my opponent. Juan was streaming blood down his right side, but he'd killed another cat and was holding a third one at arm's length already. The disarray triggered by Juan's opening attack had evaporated and it seemed like a solid wall of cats was coming towards us now.
A particularly large cat looked like he was going to attack Juan, but at the last second he executed a lightning-fast change in direction and threw himself at me instead. I was focused on a different cat who was obviously lining up to attack James, so I was out of position. I knew that there wasn't any way I was going to manage to get my hands between me and my attacker, so I dodged left and winced slightly as his claws tore through the top of my right shoulder.
If I'd been a hair slower he would have had a shot at my neck and I probably would have been dead, but there wasn't time to dwell on that. My evasion had brought me around to where I could see James, who had a jaguar fastened to his front tearing at his stomach and chest while he used one hand to hold its fangs away from his neck and the other to try to get to something vital before it bled him out.
It wasn't a good position for James to be in, but it was a lot less concerning than the two cats who had circled around behind him so that they could attack from the one direction hybrids were least equipped to defend.
I yelled, but I already knew that he wouldn't be able to respond in time, not with the first cat savaging him like it was and a fourth cat approaching attack range from the front as well. The cat who had gone sailing past me a split second before was probably angling for a killing grip on my back as well, but I threw myself towards James anyway.
The cats were too focused on their target and the distance between us was blessedly short, so I managed to catch both jaguars by surprise. The bigger cat had already left the ground and was arrowing towards James, but I snatched him out of the air with both hands settling for a bad hold on him rather than no hold at all.
The smaller cat spun around as I grabbed her partner, but I just sank the talons on my right foot into her side just behind her shoulder and hoped that I'd get lucky and hit her heart. Stabbing the female threw off my stride, which was probably the only thing that saved me. A split second after my talons skewered the smallest cat I got hit by a hammer blow of force from behind that sent me sprawling.
I tried to lead with the cat in my claws, driving him into the ground and using him to cushion my landing. I let my fall convert into a roll, hoping to crush the cat that was furiously clawing at my back. I misjudged my momentum and rolled all the way back onto my feet only to feel another impact as someone else crashed into me.
I caught bits and pieces of the fight going on around me as I went flying head over heels yet again. James was bleeding from dozens of wounds large and small and he'd dropped to one knee, but he had his one remaining opponent immobilized and looked to be only seconds away from ending that portion of the fight.
As I landed on my side something grabbed hold of my left hand, tearing it free of the cat it had been buried in and rolling me over onto my stomach. It was a dangerous position to be in because it left my back exposed and vulnerable, but someone else had hold of my right leg and they were stretching me out in an effort to keep me from being able to free myself.
I looked to the side and saw that the small female who had been focused on James had been knocked free of my talons and was circling, looking for an opportunity to grab hold of another of my appendages so that she could help immobilize me while the big cat on my back finished me off.
I realized that this was the end, that I only had a few seconds left, but rather than just giving up I unleashed the full measure of my beast's power and pulled with every ounce of force my massive hybrid body could generate.
The jaguar in my right hand convulsed once before I let him drop away, and then I focused all of my efforts on pulling my arms and legs in close enough that I'd at least be able to meet death on my feet. The cats pulled with everything they had, but I felt my left hand and right leg slowly inching back underneath me. I looked to the side to see how long I had before the female latched onto my right hand, and saw a bright blur crash into her. Jasmin had hold of the back of her neck and she planted and started whipping the cat back and forth with everything she had.
Juan suddenly appeared and tore away the cat who had been tearing at my right leg. I surged to my feet, using my right hand to help lift the cat dangling from my arm up to where my fangs could latch onto its neck. A second later there was another dead jaguar at my feet and only then did I realize that there wasn't anything on my back. I turned around just in time to see Alison finish off the huge cat who had come within inches of killing me.
I opened my mouth to thank her for saving my life, but my knees buckled and blackness claimed me before I could get a single word out.
Chapter 10
Alec Graves
Rest Easy Hotel
Rio Rico, Arizona
Apparently I'd been injured even worse than I'd realized when I'd passed out at the compound. Judging by how relieved Jasmin had looked yesterday when I'd finally opened my eyes back at the hotel, it had very much been touch and go as to whether or not I was going to make it.
Even with my newly-accelerated healing abilities I'd still been down for nearly forty-eight hours before I finally rolled out of bed without assistance. I was feeling pretty good now—twenty-four hours later—but our medic, a tiny woman named Francesca, seemed almost as rattled by how close I'd come to death as Jasmin had been. I'd been ordered not to participate in any kind of combat operations for at least another two days.
I was pretty sure that she'd underestimated my recuperative abilities by a significant margin, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I needed every edge I could get down here on the border and if she was underestimating me then everyone else would be too. Besides, she had a point in that replacing the amount of blood that I'd apparently lost didn't happen overnight, even for one of the moonborn. The last thing I wanted right now was to end up in another fight for my life only to find out that I was a half-step slower and weaker than normal.
I'd gone to the hotel's outdoor pool yesterday out of desperation. I'd spent too much time lying around in my bed and I'd needed an activity that would get me outside but also avoid running me into the ground in case I wasn't fully recovered.
I'd expected to get some sun and take a long nap, and gotten something completely unexpected instead. I was headed to the pool even earlier today than yesterday, partially because I was feeling better than I had yesterday, but also because I was eager to see if the steady trickle of people who had come to visit me would repeat itself.
There was one hall in the hotel that for whatever reason had been built slightly narrower than the rest of the halls. Some idiot had placed a long series of decorative tables along one side, which made it so that while two normal people could walk past each other in it, if either of them happened to be very big it became a lot easier for one of them to just get out of the way and let the other pass.
Predictably it had turned into a dominance extravaganza. For the most part the moonborn down here on the border were less concerned with dominance posturing, at least outside of their own units, but there was no getting around the fact that there was still going to be some dominance issues any time you put a large number of wolves and hybrids together in one place.
Vincent and his team were the worst. Where the other teams tended to stick to themselves for the most part, Vincent's people seemed to go out of their way to strike sparks off of members of the other teams. The fact that they were the ones who most often fought alongside Brandon in the heaviest bits of fighting meant that Vincent's team overall was considered the most elite set of fighters we had. That should have been enough for them, but instead they seemed positively obsessed with rubbing everyone else's noses in the fact that they were currently the top of the food chain.
As luck would have it, I ran into Vincent in the challenge hall, as it had become know
n. Actually, it would have been more accurate to say that Vincent practically ran into me. Despite the fact that I was nearly to the end of the hall and he would have only had to wait for a couple of seconds for me to be out of his way, he stepped into the narrow passageway and made it clear that he wasn't planning on giving way to me.
The sheer arrogance and rudeness he was displaying was enough to set my teeth on edge and awaken a surge of anger from my beast, but I just gritted my teeth and stepped off into the tiny space between two of the tables so that he could pass by.
For a second I almost thought he looked disappointed that I didn't get in his face, but whatever emotion I was having a hard time identifying was quickly replaced by a broad smile.
"It looks like you've finally learned your place."
"I've had it rather forcibly demonstrated to me that accidents happen on battlefields. I have a feeling that I'll get plenty of fighting in against the cats without needing to go around looking for fights with other hybrids."
I was walking a very thin line and I knew it. The act of having gotten out of his way was inherently submissive, but if my words were either too aggressive or too submissive, either one, he'd never believe that my recent changes were sincere.
"Yeah, too bad about that. I'm sure glad that something worse didn't happen to you or one of your friends."
The insincerity practically dripped off of his words, but I just gave him a tight smile and waited for him to continue walking by. Given my druthers I would have just walked away from him, but that wasn't proper behavior coming from a subordinate. Several seconds passed before Vincent's grin got even broader and he turned and continued on down the hall.
"I might have some errands for you to do later, Alec."
My jaw clenched from the effort of not telling Vincent what he could do with his busy-work chores, but I managed to get out of sight without responding to that final taunt that he'd tossed over his shoulder.
Judging by the scents waiting for me on the breeze when I opened the door outside, Alison, Jasmin and Jessica were all already at the pool. I'd stopped by James' room before heading to the pool, so it wasn't a surprise that he wasn't there too. He was recovering nicely from his wounds, but although he hadn't been injured as badly as I had been, he also didn't have a metabolism that was quite as supercharged as mine. He'd probably need all of the next two days to finish healing.
I came around the corner and any thoughts of James fled from my mind as I got my first view of the three girls in their swimming suits. Alison probably already had a swimsuit before we'd arrived, but Jasmin and Jess must have borrowed one of the SUVs to go shopping at some point yesterday.
All three were wearing two-piece outfits that left long expanses of stomach and shoulder bare and I idly noticed just how good of a job they'd each done in selecting a color that suited them perfectly. Jasmin's black swimsuit went perfectly with her darkly-tanned skin, while Jess' frilly white top and bottom matched perfectly with skin so white you could be forgiven for thinking that she was some kind of alabaster doll that had never been intended on being taken outside where she might be damaged.
Alison on the other hand was wearing a bright red outfit that was perfect for her lightly tanned skin and the strand of red hair that she'd re-dyed sometime between our last operation and now. It really was too bad that I couldn't shake my obsession with the mystery blonde from my dreams. I was about to spend the day with three incredibly beautiful women, but even when faced with such breathtaking perfection I still couldn't help but think of the girl from my dreams.
"I didn't expect to find the three of you here today."
Jasmin put her hand up in a languid wave without looking my way, while Jessica turned towards me and smiled in a way that made the huge sunglasses she was wearing even cuter than they'd been a second before. It was Alison however who spoke.
"Orders. Juan saw your visitors yesterday and thought that maybe it might be smart not to have clandestine conversations out in the open without taking certain precautions."
I opened my mouth to ask her what she meant, but she seemed to read my mind. She reached over to the portable music player sitting on the table next to her and turned it up to the point where it would serve as a kind of makeshift white noise generator.
I nodded as I realized that also explained the seating that the girls had chosen for themselves. They'd arranged themselves into a half circle with two empty chairs in the center, presumably for me and any visitors I might have.
I picked the chair closest to Alison and gently lowered myself down into it as I considered whether or not to pull my shirt off. The truth was that the wounds had all turned into thin white scars already, but it would be foolish to reveal that fact to anyone who happened by, so the shirt was going to have to stay on.
I set my book, some cookie-cutter spy thriller, down beside me and then turned to Alison. "I haven't had a chance yet to tell you thanks for pulling that jaguar off of me. I asked Juan where you were yesterday so that I could properly show my appreciation, but he told me to mind my own business. I'm glad that you're here today. Thanks."
Alison shrugged. "You would have done the same thing for any of us. In fact, I'm pretty sure that you did exactly that for James. Besides, my having put that one down wouldn't have helped much if Jasmin hadn't gotten that female who was lining up to jump you too."
"I told Jasmin thanks already."
"Okay, so it sounds like we're all square then."
It was obvious that she was trying to get me to shut up and leave her alone, but I was fascinated by the change she'd gone through. She'd survived and Chloe hadn't. Did that mean that survival here required some kind of extreme change like she'd undergone, or was that just her way of dealing with everything that had happened?
"Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure, you're dominant to me and everything, so it's not like I can beat you into leaving me alone or anything."
"I'm not going to use the fact that I'm bigger and stronger than you to pry, Alison. If you don't want to talk to me you can just say so and I'll leave you alone."
She let her black sunglasses droop down to the point where she could look at me over the top of them. "You're serious?"
"I'm not Kaleb. I've got my own share of issues, but I do at least try not to be a jerk to people who've saved my life."
"Fine, you get one question, but I may or may not answer it depending on what it is."
"Why do you dye your hair? It has to be a pain to re-dye it every time you shift forms."
Her fists knotted up and for a second I thought that she wouldn't answer, but after a few heartbeats she relaxed and then just shrugged.
"You do seem to have a way of seeing right to the heart of things."
I shook my head. "I don't think so. Ever since I left Sanctuary all I've done is find out just how blind I've been, just how much was going on underneath the surface of things that I never even considered might be going on."
"Yeah, but that is because you trusted people who were doing their level best to keep you in the dark. I think that you're more perceptive than you're giving yourself credit for right now."
It was my turn to shrug. "Well, thanks for the vote of confidence."
I leaned back and opened my book up, but I saw her sit up out of the corner of my eye.
"You're really just going to leave it at that? You're not going to press me for an answer to your question?"
"No. You know what I'm curious about, but it's your choice whether or not you want to fill me in. Even if it were smart to try and beat an answer out of someone who is going to be watching my back over the next few months, it still isn't something I'd do."
Alison sighed and then dropped back onto her chair. "You and I are more alike than I like to think about. We both trusted the wrong people. The dye disappears after every shift so you're right, re-dyeing it all of the time is a total pain, but I do it to remind myself that I trusted the wrong person. I do it because it's a reminder
that I'm going to be paying for my mistakes for the rest of my life, however short that may turn out to be. The burden of dyeing a strand of my hair multiple times a week is a small symbolic gesture of the bigger burden that Sam and your dad left me with."
"It doesn't have to be forever."
Alison's laugh was mocking, but it somehow didn't trigger any kind of response from my beast.
"You're right. If I could figure out a way to kill Sam and Kaleb and then run away somewhere so that I didn't have to risk my life in a purposeless war that can never be won, then I could stop dyeing it."
"You think you're stuck, that you don't have any options."
"Yeah, I think that because it's true. You can be all Pollyannaish about things if you want. That doesn't have to stop us from working together, but don't let your optimism get in the way of doing your job. I'm resigned to the fact that I'm not going to make it out of here alive, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to be okay with you putting me in extra danger because you refuse to see the world as it really is."
I opened my mouth to respond but she jammed a pair of earbuds in and flipped open a magazine. I'd obviously pressed too hard, but I hadn't been able to help myself. Alison hadn't ever seemed to need my help before. She, Sam and Chloe had formed a tiny little power bloc that hadn't been very tough, but which also had taken great care to keep its head down so that nobody would have a reason to grief them. The old Alison hadn't needed me, but the new Alison did whether she realized it or not.
I forced myself to look away from Alison in the hopes that not having her in my field of vision would help me get my frustration under control. Jasmin caught my eye and turned over onto her side.
"You can't help everyone."
The words were more mouthed than actually said so as not to carry over to Alison, but they didn't make me feel any better. It seemed like everyone needed help and I wanted to help them, but I didn't even have the power to keep my closest friends safe, let alone random people who didn't want my help.