Marked

by Dean Murray

  We worked our way across ten more blocks, sometimes pausing at the edge of the street before running across, but with each block we covered the police presence seemed to get further and further behind us.

  After ten blocks I started to lose count. I'd been trying to support as much of my weight as possible so that James could use his arm to help balance himself, but I was starting to get tired. It was harder than I'd expected it to be with only one arm. I couldn't give myself any kind of break so my weight just seemed to grow with each passing second.

  As we crossed another street and reached what I thought was block fourteen, the radio crackled back to life.

  "We've located the suspects' vehicle. They can't have covered more than a mile and a quarter. I want a cordon from Saint Clair all the way down to Hummingbird and from Vexor Avenue all the way over to Redwood Street. We've got enough cars to put bodies on alternate intersections and K9 units are on their way to the abandoned vehicle as we speak. Hold the line for another half an hour, boys and girls, and we'll have these pieces of scum in cuffs."

  "Is that good?"

  James nodded. He was back to breathing hard enough that I thought for a moment that I wasn't going to get any more of a response than that, but in between gasps he choked one out.

  "I think so. I don't know the local street names, but we're coming up on two miles now. That should put us outside of their perimeter, which means that we can go to ground pretty soon and start looking for a car to steal."

  "Do you think they've pulled down the road blocks?"

  "No, not yet. They probably won't pull them down until they catch us, but I'll try and steal something that can go cross-country."

  I started counting again, partly so I would feel like I had something to do and partly in the hopes that it would distract me from the burning sensation in my arm as my muscles started to shake. We made it four more blocks before James slowed again. At that point a terrible thought hit me.

  "What about the dogs, James? Are they going to be able to track us?"

  "Yeah, a dog will track a shape shifter. They may have a little trouble with the spot where I shifted, but a good dog will figure it out and follow the new scent trail because there isn't anything else leaving the spot. That's part of why we need to steal a car."

  "How much further can you run?"

  "Not much further—at least not carrying both of you like this. If it was just me, I could go for a few more miles at this pace, but we're starting to get pretty close to that industrial section of town that we saw on our way in. There aren't going to be many cars out there, so if we don't find something soon we're going to be out of luck."

  "You're just full of good news."

  "Given what we're up against, I think I'm being positively optimistic."

  There was a hint of laughter to James' voice and I found myself revising my opinion of him slightly. I'd always assumed that there was more to him than met the eye—it was the only explanation given that Dom liked him—but this was the first time I was getting a chance to see this side of him. He was surprisingly likeable when he wasn't glowering and angry.

  "Are you actually having fun, James?"

  "You'd be surprised just how liberating it is to go into a situation that you don't expect to survive, Adri. Once you get over being sad about all the things you aren't going to get to do, it becomes kind of fun to see what you can get away with during the time you have left. Now hush, I need to find a vehicle that is old enough I'll have a chance of stealing it without any tools."

  We made it two more blocks with James frowning at every car that presented itself, before the radio clicked back on. "All units, the FBI will be taking over the manhunt. You'll be taking your orders from Special Agent in Charge Cruthers."

  The voice on the radio didn't sound particularly happy to have someone else muscling in on the party, but it also didn't sound like they had much choice but to cooperate. A second later a new voice took over.

  "Your estimates regarding the suspect's speed are drastically low. In the time involved, it is very likely that the perpetrators have gone nearly three miles. The dogs are headed…"

  There was a pause as someone whispered something into the new arrival's ear. I caught something about a radio and an injured police officer, and then suddenly our radio started squealing. James stopped and set me down so he could rip the radio off of my belt and tear it in half. That didn't stop the terrible screech coming out of the radio, but James then threw the radio against the ground with enough force to leave a dent in the asphalt and that did the trick.

  "What just happened?"

  "They realized that the officer we disabled was missing his radio and cut it out of the circuit."

  "I didn't even know that was possible."

  James picked me back up and started across the street at a sprint. "We could still listen into their frequency if we had another radio, they haven't done anything to encrypt their signal, they just sent a kill signal to this particular radio. Honestly, I'm surprised that a town this small has that kind of tech, but that's not our main problem."

  "What do you mean?"

  "We've only been on foot for about ten minutes. Expanding the perimeter out to three miles from our car is crazy. That's barely over three minute miles. That's my best speed over a medium distance on my good days when I'm by myself, running unburdened."

  "You mean they know you're a hybrid?"

  "Yeah, if that's a real FBI agent then I'll eat my socket wrench. The Coun'hij must have found a way to impersonate the bureau. We've got a kill squad in the area and if they haven't already picked up our scent trail they won't be more than a minute or two away from picking it up. We've probably got no more than seven or eight minutes before they catch us. We have to find a vehicle right now."

  James jumped us over another set of hedges and then suddenly we were face to face with a large, eight-foot chain-link fence that was topped with razor wire. For a second I almost thought that James was still going to jump it, but at the last second he slashed out with his right hand and sheared through a large section of links.

  The opening he'd created was more than big enough to let me through, but it was still too small for a hybrid. I dropped down to the ground and pushed through the fence as I felt a flare of energy behind me and turned to find that James had shifted back to human form.

  I looked around as James followed me through the opening in the fence. I must have lost count of a few blocks somewhere along the way because we weren't just near the abandoned industrial section of the city, we were actually there.

  I was standing in the middle of a large open space that was full of weeds and piles of metal, scrap or otherwise. More importantly though, I could see a large flat-bed truck thirty yards away from us.

  "What about that truck, James? Is that something you can hotwire without any tools?"

  James manhandled Alec through the hole in the fence before looking in the direction I was pointing. "Yeah, assuming that it still runs and that it's got enough gas to get us more than ten or fifteen miles, it should work. Come on."

  James shifted forms again and threw Alec over his shoulder as his long, hybrid legs ate up the distance between him and the truck.

  I followed along as best I could, carefully dividing my attention between the ground in front of me and James' actions as he reached the truck. James put his fist through the driver's-side window, shattering it with a casual display of force as he lowered Alec to the ground.

  As I picked my way around a piece of machinery that looked like it belonged on a farm back in the early eighteenth century, James used his claws to tear through the plastic sheath around the steering column. A second later he'd also slashed through a bundle of wires and then he shifted back to human form and pulled the door open.

  The sound of howling wolves told me that the Coun'hij was getting closer. I hurried forward and stopped next to Alec as James started twisting wires together.

  "I wish Dom was here, she's bett
er at this kind of stuff; I'm much more at home working on an engine."

  A second later James struck two of the wires together and the engine roared to life as a long, blue spark shot from one wire to the other. The engine turning over was one of the most welcome sounds I'd ever heard, but it nearly cost James his life because it covered up the sound of the approaching shape shifter.

  James had just bent down to pick up Alec when something—probably a stray breeze—tipped him off to the fact that we had company. James straight-armed me, shoving me to the ground at the same time that he threw himself in the opposite direction.

  The thing that hit the side of the truck had started out as a slender, gray form that sliced through the darkness with the speed and grace you only saw from a wolf, but by the time it collided with the driver's door it had shifted to a six-and-a-half-foot-tall tower of muscle and claws.

  The force of the impact rocked the heavy truck on its suspension, but I hardly noticed because of the sudden lance of pain that pierced my leg. The hybrid had speared me with one of his toe talons, but it was nothing more than an afterthought—he didn't have time for more than that because James had already shifted forms and thrown himself at the enforcer.

  Watching two hybrids fight had always been a surreal experience, but for the first time I could remember I was actually able to follow what was happening. James shoved the other hybrid back into the truck as his claws tore into the enforcer's arms and chest. I somehow retained enough presence of mind to roll to one side, putting more distance between myself and the fighting. The ferocity of James' attack was sufficient to keep the enforcer off balance for a fraction of a second, but James was slightly shorter and less bulky than his opponent.

  The enforcer blocked one of James' slashes and then ducked under the next attack and suddenly they were circling each other nearly ten yards away from the truck. They were both bleeding now, but James was continually falling back before his enemy's onslaught.

  James was the one circling now, trying to work the perimeter, dashing forward and back in an effort to create an opening in the enforcer's defenses, but with every second that passed he was picking up new wounds. The enforcer suddenly blurred into motion, slapping aside James' claws and then sinking his fist into James' side.

  Before James could react and try to get his other hand into play, the enforcer grabbed his wrist and threw James into a pile of large metal pipes. It took a lot to break even the smaller bones in a hybrid body, but I heard something snap inside of James as he collided, and I knew he was going to be even more outclassed now than he'd been up to this point.

  I could still feel blood trickling out of the hole in my leg, and I knew I'd already lost too much blood, but that all paled against the fact that James was only seconds from death and with him gone, Alec and I would be following him within heartbeats.

  Somehow my pistol had made it into my hands without a conscious decision on my part to pull it out of my waistband. I knew next to nothing about aiming a gun, so I didn't aim it; I just pointed it in the bigger hybrid's direction and pulled the trigger.

  The kick as the first bullet left the gun was startling. It wasn't painful, but between that and the shockwave of sound that washed over me it felt as though I'd been struck. A tiny part of me tried to drop the gun, but the cold, in-control persona that had gotten me through everything that had been thrown at me since Alec had been shot was in the driver's seat and she calmly pulled the trigger again and again.

  My time sense was as hyped up as it had ever been—I was actually able to see the path the bullets took through the night sky, a dull-gray bar of distortion no bigger around than a pencil. It made it incredibly easy to adjust my aim. The first bullet had missed, but it had still served a purpose in that it had stopped the enforcer from going after James. The second bullet took the massive hybrid in the chest, but after that he started moving towards me and things got harder.

  He was moving erratically so as to make it harder for me to hit him or else he would have been on top of me after the third and fourth shots missed, but then I managed to anticipate where he was going and I shot him twice more in the chest.

  The enforcer was less than two steps away from me when James crashed into him from the side, slamming him into the side of the truck with so much force that the driver's door crumpled like cheap tin. This time I heard bones break inside of the enforcer's body, but that was all just an afterthought. James' claws punched into the enforcer's chest and a second later the bigger hybrid dropped bonelessly to the ground in a way that I knew meant he wouldn't be getting up.

  James ripped the ruined driver's door free of the truck, picked Alec up—heedless of the damage his claws were doing to Alec's fragile human flesh—and slid him into the cab of the truck.

  "Get up, Adri, those shots are going to have every cop in the city here within seconds."

  I slipped my gun into my sling and tried to get to my feet, but my right leg just wouldn't work. A second later James was there, now in human form, and I was being tossed into the truck next to Alec.

  "Adri, you're going to have to apply pressure to your leg, if I stop to bandage you we'll be caught for sure."

  I couldn't get the words I wanted to come out, so I settled for just nodding. I felt remarkably numb considering what I'd just been through, but something told me that James' orders were important. I pushed against the hole in the top of my leg with my one good hand, but that wasn't going to do anything about the hole in the bottom of my leg.

  I unexpectedly found my voice and turned back to James. "It's not stopping—I'm still losing blood out of the bottom of my leg."

  "Crap! You should have said something. Here, stick your hand underneath your leg and I'll apply pressure from the top."

  I got my hand underneath my leg and then nearly passed out from the pain as James reached over and pushed down with a good chunk of his two hundred pounds.

  "I'm sorry, Adri. I know that probably hurts, but you've already lost a lot of blood and I need to keep enough inside of you that I'll have enough to work with once we finally get a chance to stop and work on you."

  James had looked away from the road to check on me, so I was the first to see the huge, furred figure step out of the shadows and onto the dirt road in front of us. My gasp brought James around though and he stepped on the accelerator, obviously intending on running over this latest member of the Coun'hij kill team.

  The ancient truck leaped forward as the engine roared in protest, and then we were practically on top of the enforcer. James threw himself towards me at the last second, trying to make sure that he was out of the reach of the hybrid, and I realized that he'd never actually expected to be able to hit the enforcer.

  He was right. The red-furred hybrid spun to one side just before the truck would have smashed into him, and then slashed at James. I saw it all happen in painful slow motion. His claws took James in the leg, tearing through skin and muscle, but even I could tell that it wouldn't be a lethal injury. I thought for a split second that James' plan had worked, that we were going to be able to get safely past the hybrid, and then a jolt of energy surged out of the enforcer's claws.

  I only caught the fringes of the shock, but it was still enough to make my heart stutter and to force every single one of my muscles to simultaneously contract as though my body was trying to rip itself apart. It was much, much worse for James.

  The hand that had been pressing against the top of my thigh shot up and hit me in the face hard enough that I saw stars, at the same time that James jerked the wheel to the right. There was a single crystal-clear second in which things were quiet enough that I heard James stop breathing, and then we slammed into the side of the building at more than thirty miles per hour.

  The crunch of broken metal and shattering bones was nothing less than horrifying. James was ejected from the car just as my torso hit the dash with enough force that I felt most of my ribs break. Alec hit a split second later, and the sound made me want to be physical
ly sick, but I couldn't seem to conjure up the determination required to get my body working well enough to check on him.

  The seconds leading up to the crash seemed to be seared onto my mind. We'd hit the building at a shallow angle—in fact, if James had been able to cut the wheel a little more to the right we would have gone in through the door we'd just shattered rather than slamming to a stop against the structural steel that had supported the door's hinges.

  The image of the door being flung out of our path a split second before the truck wrapped itself around the large steel support played itself over and over in my mind. I'd already been in shock from the fight. I didn't think it was possible to go into double shock, but my mind felt like it had stripped a gear. It spun over and over again without ever catching on anything.

  The sound of the truck's passenger door being ripped off of its hinges brought me back to myself enough that I was able to turn my head and meet the red hybrid's eyes. They were an inhuman yellow that seemed to show no remorse for what he was planning on doing. The hybrid reached towards Alec with claws that gleamed in the faint moonlight.

  "Not so fast."

  The words came a split second before a dark-skinned hand grabbed hold of the hybrid's wrist and threw him deeper into the darkness of the building. It all happened so fast that even with my augmented time sense I was still left confused and struggling to put the pieces together. I had vague impressions of a clean-shaven head, but that didn't make any sense. No human could possibly be strong enough to pick a hybrid up and throw them like that.

  Even a shape shifter in human form or a vampire would have a hard time casually slinging around that much weight, but the flashes of action that had stayed with me confirmed that my savior was male and undeniably human-looking.

  Whoever he was, he turned and shot after the enforcer with a speed that was every bit as fast as any hybrid I'd ever encountered, and it only took a moment before he was deep enough into the building that I had no hope of following the fight other than by the enforcer's growls and the sound of flesh impacting against metal.