by Murray, Dean
Isaac tried to use the distraction to fight free, but Alec somehow spun him around in a blur of motion. When the trio stopped moving Alec's left hand had transformed to the deadly claws of his hybrid form, all of which were wrapped around Isaac's human throat.
"If you transform I will kill you. Jess isn't dead. The experiences are gone but she's still here and she'll need both of you to deal with what's happened to her. I want your word, each of you that you'll commit no act of vengeance, not against me or the Coun'hij, without my permission. I can't have you wasting yourselves in a futile attempt at balancing the scales."
First Andrew and then Isaac nodded their agreement. Alec released both of them. "Jas, Isaac, James and Dom. We all need to be upstairs. There's always a chance that Agony's men will decide to come back and clean house if we don't make a good show of force. The rest of you follow as you're able, but don't get between the fighters."
Alec and the others swept up the stairs. I looked blankly at Rachel for several seconds before shuffling over to Jess. She had started waking up.
"What…I mean, who are you and where am I?"
Suddenly I wished that I'd opted to help with Rachel's mom or one of the others. I was the last person who should be trying to explain things to Jessica. I barely knew myself what was going on.
"My name is Adri. I'm afraid that right now you probably won't remember anything, but you're safe."
Jess nodded and leaned up against me. It reminded me of the time I'd gone to a friend's house and her niece had visited. The little girl had run to her aunt, curled up on her lap and promptly gone to sleep.
"Do you remember your name?"
"No. That's odd isn't it? I mean shouldn't I remember it?"
I shook my head. "No, actually I expected that you wouldn't remember. It's Jess. Jessica actually, but your friends all call you Jess."
"Friends…they are important. I'm glad I have some. Do I have many? Are we friends?"
"You have a few friends, but the important thing isn't the number, it's how loyal your friends are, and you've got some very loyal friends."
Jess nodded happily and then looked over at the others. "Are those some of my friends? Are they okay? It looks like some of them are hurt."
"They will be okay, but if you feel up to it we should go help them. If you want to take my hand I'll help you up, but be very careful, you're quite strong."
That earned me a smile. "I think I'd like to be strong. Maybe someday I can be as pretty as you too."
We stopped in front of Andrew. He was doing his best to control his emotions, but hadn't been able to slow the tears that had started as soon as he'd resumed his human form.
"You feel familiar. Do we know each other?"
Andrew looked up at me with pleading eyes, apparently unable to bring himself to respond. I cleared my throat and moved Jessica's hand down to his arm.
"This is Andrew. You knew each other very well and are very important to each other."
"Like family?"
"Yes, like family."
As we were carrying Andrew towards the stairs Jess looked over at me. "How did my memories get lost?"
"A bad man stole them from you."
"Were my friends not around to stop him?"
I felt my throat tighten up and tears start to gather at the corners of my eyes. "No, sweetie, we were all here."
"Then why didn't you all stop him?"
"I don't know."
Chapter 22
Alec made sure that Agony and his men were well on their way and then he and the others came back. I'd just finished helping get Andrew and Jess settled in their rooms when Alec found me.
"I'm glad I caught you alone, Adri. We need to talk."
I pushed past him. "I don't want to talk to you right now."
Alec grabbed my arm, not holding hard enough to hurt me, but hard enough I couldn't escape. "I know you're mad right now. I didn't want you to see something like that. I've been working from the first day to try and guarantee that you wouldn't get involved in the infighting with the Coun'hij."
"Well, it's good to know this wasn't just a one-off, unexpected kind of thing. Apparently you were always capable of this kind of thing."
"That's not fair."
"You want to talk about fair? Let's talk about Alison and Jess. Neither of them were passing information to Vincent and you know it."
Alec let go of me and ran his hand through his hair. "You're right. Neither of them did anything to deserve what they got. Unfortunately what happened to them wouldn't have been changed by anything we could have done. Alison was dead before any of the rest of us could even move."
"Alison wasn't the only one who died today."
"What? Vincent?"
I'd thought I was mad, but the thought of Alec thinking of a piece of slime before he'd think of Jack or Sam stoked my fury to a raging bonfire. "No, not Vincent. Sam and Jack died trying to protect Alison and you never lifted a finger. They were part of your pack. They trusted you, depended on you, and you just let them throw their lives away."
"I couldn't stop them. I was only barely able to stop Isaac. They chose to attack Abaddon. I didn't force them to do it."
"You could have attacked. They were down a hybrid and there was a chance that Oblivion would have helped or at least stepped aside."
Alec shook his head. "We would have lost. My power isn't working anymore and Oblivion wouldn't have stepped aside. Jess losing her memories told us that. He would have fought at Agony's side and the entire pack would have been destroyed. I had to choose between Isaac or the other two and I chose to save Isaac."
"You didn't choose Isaac, you decided against Jack and Sam. You've never valued them. They've been second-class citizens since the day they joined the pack. You should have just killed them when you killed the rest of Brandon's pack."
Alec's eyes had changed. They'd started taking on the light blue of his beast, which was never a good sign. Usually I didn't worry because I knew he wouldn't hurt me. Now I was just too mad to stop and think of the implications.
"I chose Isaac because he stood by me for years when those other three were helping Brandon try to kill us all. I chose Isaac because Jess is going to need him over the next few months or years as she tries to forge a new identity. And yes, I chose Isaac because he's more of an asset to the pack than Sam and Jack put together. That's the piece that really bothers you, isn't it?"
"They shouldn't be second-class citizens because they can't kill as well as Isaac. That's exactly the kind of crap Brandon would have said."
Alec picked up a shake as he moved towards me. "I hate to break it to you, but that's the way the real world works. We aren't civilized. It's all we can do sometimes to keep our beasts in check, and how well you fight, how well you can kill has a direct impact on whether or not the pack survives to see another day. If you scratch away the veneer of civilization out there you'll find out it's exactly the same, you've just had too much of a sheltered, perfect life to realize it."
I wished that Alec had just hit me instead. For him, of all people, to discount what I'd been through was an almost physical pain. I lashed out with the only thing I could think of that had any chance of causing him the same kind of hurt.
"I've been wrong all this time. You really are nothing more than an animal."
I turned and walked away, ignoring his sudden intake of breath. I made it all the way to the front door before I heard him following.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going home. I've got a spectacular fight waiting for me."
"You're going to have to wait a few more minutes. I need half an hour or so to check on the pack. Things are really strained right now and…"
I cut him off. "I don't want a ride home from you. I'll walk."
"Don't be ridiculous. It will take you hours to walk home, and it's not safe. There's still a chance that Agony's guys are in the area."
"I'm not safe here, not really. I'll take my chances on the road."
I could hear Alec's teeth grinding and his knuckles went white on the doorknob. "If you'll wait five minutes I'll get Rachel to give you a ride home."
I turned on Alec, poking him as hard in the chest as I was able. "How dare you bully Rachel after everything she's gone through this week. If you force her to come up here and drive me home I swear I'll never talk to you again."
Alec pulled his keys out and dropped them at my feet. "Take the Porsche. Leave it in your driveway, or in the trees a mile or so past your lane. I'll come get it in a day or two when I'm able."
**
Mom was waiting for me when I pulled up in Alec's Porsche. I'd considered leaving it on the road. I was pretty sure it was just going to give Mom one more thing to freak out about, but I didn't want to spend the next two days worrying that it'd been stolen.
As I came through the door Mom grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. "What the hell were you thinking? I was about thirty seconds from calling the cops."
"I'm sorry, Mom. Something came up. Rachel needed me."
"You mean Alec needed you."
"The whole family needed me."
Mom let me go and started pacing back and forth across the living room floor. "Adri, real friends don't ask you to do things that will get you in trouble. I like Rachel, but can you honestly tell me that you didn't see or do anything tonight that made you feel uncomfortable?"
I felt myself flinch. I knew it was a lost cause, but I lied anyways. "Mom, nothing happened tonight."
"I don't believe you. Even if you're telling the truth, it's only a matter of nothing happened yet. I'm telling you, Alec is not the good guy you think he is."
After everything I'd just seen, everything that had just happened, it felt odd to defend Alec. "He's a good guy; he's just caught in a tough situation right now."
"No, Adri. That's not how it works. Tough times don't hide a person's true nature; trials bring that true nature out. The things you're seeing now are things that have always been there in Alec, he's just been hiding them."
I shook my head. "I can't believe that. He's just been forced off to a path other than what he would have chosen for himself. He's a good person who really does care about others."
"Then your only hope of saving him is to give him the kind of massive wakeup call that will knock him back onto the right path."
I felt tears start to fill my eyes. I opened my mouth to respond but she talked right over me.
"You're not mature enough to make this kind of decision, so I'm making it for you. There will be no more Alec, no more Rachel, no more of any of that. This whole episode of your life is over."
Chapter 23
It was an unseasonably warm day. Nothing compared to the temperatures when we'd first arrived in Sanctuary, but it reminded me somehow of the furnace that had greeted us when we got out of the moving truck so long ago. Minnesota would have snow by now.
Mom pulled the Jeep over to the side of the road. We'd had another fight. She'd wanted to drive me right up to the door, but I'd finally managed to win some privacy. Odd to think after I'd fought so hard that I now didn't want to make the trip alone.
I sat fingering what was left of the necklace Alec had given me for several seconds before Mom cleared her throat. "I really am sorry about your necklace, Adri."
"It's okay, it was an accident. It was bound to happen-glass is only about the most breakable substance known to man."
"Still, I feel bad. I never would have guessed that it would splinter like that."
It was an odd break. The glass hadn't shattered or even simply broken in half like I would have expected when Mom knocked it off the coffee table. Instead a long sliver of glass had separated from the main heart. I'd kicked possible causes around off and on for most of a day now. All I could come up with was that there must have been some kind of flaw accidentally built into the piece.
"I'll bet we can find a way to fix it still, dear."
"No. You can't glue glass together. Even if you could, it wouldn't really be fixed, it would be ugly."
I angled the heart back and forth, watching the way it caught the light, throwing off small rainbows of light. In some ways what it had lost in perfection of form had been partially made up for by the way light now refracted through it.
I knew better, but still couldn't help myself. My thumb slid forward to the broken edge. It was the lightest of touches but that was all the razor edge of the glass required to slice into my skin. I was wrong, it wasn't still pretty.
"It can't be put together and it's dangerous now. Neither piece will ever really be safe again."
I exited the Jeep before Mom could respond, and started up the asphalt lane. I'd been to Alec's so many times, but usually in too much of a hurry to appreciate the scenery. Andrew and Donovan really did do an amazing job maintaining the grounds.
I rang the doorbell, managing a tentative smile for Donovan. "Mistress Paige. I'm glad to see you're okay. I've spent no small amount of time worrying about how you've held up after the events of this last week."
"I'm okay, Donovan. You're doing okay too?"
"I'm recovering apace. None of my injuries were inflicted by Agony so I expect to be as fit as ever shortly. Are you not coming in?"
I shook my head. "I don't have long." I opened my mouth to ask to see Alec, but something made me pause. I knew that Donovan's loyalty to Alec and Rachel was absolute, but I still somehow trusted him to tell me the truth.
"Donovan, Agony was lying, right?"
I'd never really seen Donovan at a loss for words, but it took him several seconds to respond.
"To be honest, Miss Adri, I'm not really sure. I'm sure it seems like our ability to decipher between honesty and falsehood is nearly magical, but in fact it's more along the lines of an educated guess backed up by more observational data than you have access to."
My frustration with the answer was probably woefully apparent to him. After another several seconds he sighed and then continued.
"Our ability to detect lies breaks down the worst when dealing with one of our own kind. Agony is quite good at suppressing his body's natural tells. Almost too good. Actually, his ability in that area borders on what you'd see from a psychopath. When you add in that he's quite good at mixing truth and lies together, it becomes very difficult to hazard a guess as to whether or not he was lying."
I shook my head, anger starting to chip away at the respect I usually showed the old butler.
"It's obvious he lied. I don't believe Jess was working with Vincent. Even if you believe she was capable of turning against Isaac and the rest of the pack, you have to know that she'd never have chosen to work with Vincent."
Donovan nodded. "Indeed, I don't believe Jess did the things that Agony said she did, but I don't believe everything he said was a lie. That doesn't…feel…right against what I observed that night."
"So what, Alison was in league with Vincent?"
I was really trying to keep the hostility out of my voice, but even I could tell that I wasn't doing a very good job. Donovan didn't seem rattled though.
"No, I don't think Alison was ambitious enough to throw her lot in with Vincent."
"You're contradicting yourself, Donovan. Either there was truth to what Agony said or there wasn't. You can't have it both ways."
"Jack possibly, he was stupid enough, but my money would have been on Sam. He was ambitious enough for a wolf with several times his ability. He knew Vincent, and I think he was higher up in Brandon's pack than anyone ever let on."
I shook my head, trying to deny Donovan's words, but he talked right over me for the first time that I could remember.
"I think that Sam was working with Vincent, not to rise up against the Coun'hij, but to give Agony and Vincent an inside track in their efforts to rip this pack apart. Agony always likes a sure thing and by all accounts he should have succeeded. I doubt you'll ever really understand how close he came to obtaining his goal, but when Alec managed to steer us more o
r less unscathed to that last meeting Agony needed a win of some kind."
Donovan looked off into the distance for a moment. "The Coun'hij rules through fear and fear alone. Any real uprising among the packs could bring them down. It would probably be bloody, but it's a very real possibility, one which Agony understands extremely well. Each and every one of his actions has to be couched in a way that provides at least some justification, or he could push the rest of my kind over the edge into rebellion. At the same time, the Coun'hij can't afford to ever come away second best in a confrontation or they risk that the fear that they depend on to keep control will start to erode away out from under them. Agony couldn't leave without killing one or more members of our pack, not if he wanted to stop Alec from becoming a rallying point."
I could follow the logic. That didn't mean Donovan was right, but it made a kind of sick sense. Vincent had been helping Agony, but killing one of his own helped sell the legitimacy of Agony's story. Vincent was the newest of the Coun'hij's thugs, so it probably hadn't bothered Agony's other guys in the slightest. Killing Sam would have been more believable, but nobody outside of our pack would have known the difference. By attacking Alison it had been practically guaranteed that Sam would jump into the fray, and where Sam went Jack usually followed. If Isaac had been the slightest bit faster, half of the pack would have been sucked into a fight with Agony's men and summarily killed.
Donovan looked me in the eyes for several heartbeats and then shook his head. "Agony wasn't going to leave Sanctuary without killing someone, probably more than one. In the end I'm glad that it was just Alison, Sam and Jack rather than someone I've spent the last decade helping raise."
I shook my head, fists clenched. "Alison didn't deserve that and I can't believe you're dismissing her death so easily."
"Who should have died in her place then, Adri? You, me? Someone was going to die, that was the only outcome left us by the choices that had led us to where we were at that moment. Alison has been supporting Sam for years. On some level, whether she knew it or not, she enabled his treachery. In our world, those kinds of actions have consequences."