by Dean Murray
The entire attack had taken barely more than a second. I let go of the hybrid's neck, hit the ground, rolled through two full revolutions to bleed off the rest of my momentum, and scrambled back to my feet just in time to see Alec change forms and throw himself at the enforcer on the far side of the fight.
"Jess, James, help the runners!"
Alec's command cut through the air a split second before he collided with the other hybrid. The impact was nothing less than titanic. The enforcer saw him coming and tried to sink his claws into Alec's chest, but Alec knocked the deadly claws high and to the left as he dropped his shoulder and hit the other hybrid with enough force to knock both of them off their feet.
The wolves who had been harrying at the hybrid's flanks, dodged out of the way with yelps of surprise and then spun back around and latched onto the enforcer's wrists before he'd even had a chance to come back down from his first bounce.
The second enforcer was as good as dead. Alec was no slouch in a fight and probably could have given any of the hybrids a run for their money even without help, but with a pair of wolves in the mix it was just a matter of time before Alec came out on top.
Jack and the third hybrid were still trading blows. They were both bleeding from half a dozen different places, but he seemed to be holding his own, so I charged after James and Jess.
The gray wolf I'd figured for a goner had been bleeding profusely, but he'd still been walking under his own power. Even if he couldn't help Jack out, the other wolf who had been fighting the hybrid I'd just killed should be enough to tip the balance. Besides, I wanted those other two hybrids and I was faster than Jess and James.
The air had a cold, mechanical smell to it and the huge fans that kept carbon monoxide from killing everyone made it harder to follow the scent trail, but my nose was so sensitive that it didn't matter. Nothing less than a torrential downpour could have eliminated the scent markers left by six moonborn in full flight.
I had a lot of ground to make up, but my earlier jitters were so far gone that they might as well have never even occurred. Nobody else was as well-suited to chasing down a fleeing hybrid as I was. The trail unsurprisingly led back up towards the surface rather than deeper underground, but I'd half expected for the two of them to split up.
One of them could have retraced the route we'd used originally to get down here. They would have been going against the flow of traffic, but it would have doubled their chances of getting away.
I came around a corner a second later and saw why they'd chosen to stick together. One of the enforcers had shifted into hybrid form and stayed behind to deal with Jack's wolves. It was too bad that one of the wolves hadn't been able to slip by and continue after the other enforcer, but the hybrid had picked his spot well. He had the ramp pretty much blocked off.
James and Jess were only a dozen yards ahead of me. I had a second to hope that James would be smart enough to make a hole for me and then he shifted forms and crashed into the hybrid.
Alec's attack had been dangerous. He'd charged full-speed into another hybrid from the side and if his timing had been even a little off he would have missed his block and been killed. James' attack was nothing short of reckless. He didn't charge in from the side, he charged the enforcer from the front. It was virtually guaranteed that he wouldn't be able to block attacks from both of the other hybrid's hands at that speed, but it was exactly what I needed.
One of Jack's wolves grabbed the enforcer's right wrist in her jaws at the same time that the other locked onto the hybrid's left leg, and then James barreled into him, sending all four of them skidding across the concrete.
I sailed over the entire mess in one giant leap and reacquired the scent trail of the last enforcer. My lungs were burning now. The ground was blurring away underneath me, but that was only part of the problem. I wasn't just racing across level ground, I was going up at a rate that would have left a professional marathoner sobbing on the side of the road.
Under normal circumstances I would have just cut back my speed, but that wasn't an option right now. I had to catch the enforcer ahead of me or Jack's people were all in just as much trouble as we were. At least the hybrid I was chasing had to be suffering as much as I was.
I jumped over a curb and leaned over hard so that I could make the next corner without slowing down. The real problem was that this kind of chase didn't play to my strengths. I was fast, but speed wasn't just about strength and endurance, it was also about agility. In a normal run there was plenty of dodging around trees and the like. It was avoiding the obstacles that tended to slow down the hybrids in wolf form so much, but that was exactly what was missing right now. This had turned into a brutal competition to see whose endurance gave out first.
The scent trail had seemed like it was getting closer for the last few seconds, but I wasn't sure it was anything more than wishful thinking until I hit the third floor and was able to hear him up ahead of me. Someone, probably Jess, was behind me too, but they were losing ground on us; if—no, when—I ran the enforcer down I was going to have at least several seconds where I'd be by myself, seconds where he would push the engagement and try to kill me before help could arrive.
Lactic acid buildup was becoming a problem. Not only was I gasping for air now, my muscles were burning. I didn't have much more time before my body simply refused to continue moving.
We'd made it nearly back up to ground level without anyone seeing us, but our luck ran out on the second floor. I arrived just as a red Mazda bounced off of the enforcer's massive hybrid body before the driver slammed on the brakes and brought the car to a screeching halt.
The only thing I could come up with was that the car had taken my opponent by surprise and he'd been too far off balance already to avoid it so he'd just shifted forms to at least give himself the benefit of being hit while he was in the form best suited to take that kind of punishment.
The driver must have nearly had a heart attack, but she seemed to have only clipped him. Most of his injuries seemed to be from colliding with the concrete wall before he went cartwheeling away and back into the car a second time.
I didn't need to kill the hybrid I was facing, I just needed to keep him occupied long enough for James and the others to arrive. I slowed down, stopping a few feet outside of attack range as the Mazda's driver started screaming.
I couldn't blame her, I would have been just as freaked out in her position, but it was the wrong thing to do. The enforcer was already back on his feet and it was no effort at all for him to drive his fist through the driver-side window and impale her with his claws.
My hackles pulled back as a deep growl worked its way out of my chest. The woman had been a problem, but she could have been dealt with. The Coun'hij had special teams specifically tasked with making sure witnesses didn't make any waves for us shape shifters. She hadn't needed to die, Oblivion could have been brought in to wipe her mind, but the enforcer was having a bad day and wanted to take some of his frustration out on someone else, someone who couldn't fight back.
We stood there for one impossibly long second, both growling at each other, and then he attacked. I'd been expecting his move, and while I was tired and slower than usual, the same was true of him. I dodged to the right and moved into his attack, ripping a chunk of flesh out of his leg as I went past.
It was a small victory. More than anything I wanted to go for another kill shot like I'd done to the hybrid I'd taken down just minutes before. Every instinct inside of me screamed that fighting on the hybrid's terms was suicide, but I forced all of that to one side and leaped over the next attack, a claw swipe that was moving so fast that I almost couldn't even see where his claws ended.
I didn't try to bite him this time, I was just relieved not to be opened up from muzzle to tail. It was a close thing, he was exhausted and banged up, but he was faster with his hands than I expected. I jumped over his claws, but then he reversed his hand and tried to tag me while I was still in the air and unable to change direction. He would have
succeeded, but his collision with the wall seemed to have messed up his shoulder.
I landed and sprang away again, trying to lure him deeper into the parking garage, praying the whole time that there weren't any other humans where they could see us. Two giant wolves fighting were conspicuous enough, once you threw a hybrid into the mix nobody was going to believe that they'd seen anything but what they'd actually seen.
He took two steps after me and almost tagged me again. His talons got better traction, cutting into the concrete like they did, but that was only good for short bursts of speed. His claws missed my tail by less than an inch and then he stopped chasing me.
I spun back around and moved towards him, thinking that he was going to turn and make a run for it, but he simply picked up a heavy metal sign and threw it at me. He threw it like a boomerang, end over end, which made it even harder to dodge.
I darted to the right, but it ricocheted off of a wall and grazed my left side. Breathing was agony. He'd cracked at least a couple of ribs and I was bleeding for the first time in the fight so far.
If he took off now I was screwed. I couldn't possibly hope to catch up, and while our fight hadn't been exactly restful, he wasn't gasping for air anymore, which meant that he'd be able to outrun Jess and whoever else I could hear approaching.
I was so outmatched at this point that it wasn't funny, but I didn't think about that. Instead I bluffed. I started creeping towards him, growling the whole way and doing my best not to let him see the stabbing pain that made me want to flinch with each breath.
I must have been more convincing than I thought, that or he was just too caught up in the fight to realize he was going to kill me but lose the war. He moved towards me, and while there was a slight hitch to his stride from the chunk of muscle that I'd ripped off of him, he was obviously in a lot better shape than I was.
I put a concrete pillar between the two of us, ducking behind it to avoid his first attack, and then tried to dart in and savage his legs again. I almost succeeded. I came within inches of landing another bite, but he connected with a backfist at the last second that sent me flying.
My ears were ringing and I was seeing stars when I landed, but I staggered gamely back to my feet and saw the most beautiful sight I'd seen since Jack and his people had climbed out of their van. Jess came sliding around the corner. She was gasping and soaked in sweat, but she was here, which meant that there was a chance I wasn't going to die after all.
I expected the enforcer to turn and run. He had to know how badly I was hurt after I'd failed to get away from his last attack, but he didn't. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that he'd knocked me towards the direction of the exit. I was now between him and freedom.
He couldn't risk turning his back on Jess to rush me as a hybrid, but if he shifted back to wolf form he would be fighting me on my home turf. I might be bruised, broken and bloody, but I'd still put money on myself against some arrogant jerk of a hybrid who probably hadn't fought in his wolf form since he'd manifested a third shape.
Even better, I could hear more feet running our direction. James or the other wolves were now only seconds away. I'd done it, I'd stalled him for long enough, now I just needed to keep myself alive long enough for everyone else to pull him down.
He correctly fingered me as the weak link, so he came for me. I should have moved to meet him, or barring that at least tried to put some more distance between us. My own blood made the floor extra slippery.
I tried to dodge again, but I just didn't have the traction. He would have ripped me in half, but Jess threw herself into the fight at precisely the right time and latched onto his right wrist. She threw his aim off just enough that I escaped with three inch-deep slices in my left side rather than being killed.
Even a hundred-and-eighty pound wolf hanging from their wrist doesn't do much more than slow most hybrids down. The hybrid tried to spin back the other direction and catch me with his left hand, but by then I'd moved far enough away from the pool of blood that I was able to dodge.
As soon as his claws had sliced past me I reversed direction and got my own piece of his left arm. I wasn't much of an impediment, and I dropped away after just a second, but it was enough to let Jess get away from him without getting disemboweled.
Jess and I spread out, circling our foe, daring him to commit to one of us so that the other could go for something more vulnerable, but we never got a chance to start into him because one of Jack's wolves arrived a second later. By the time that James and the last wolf finally arrived, there wasn't much left to do but wait for the hybrid to finish bleeding out.
The run back down to Alec and the others was a complete nightmare. Every step hurt and I left a trail of blood that was going to eventually lead the police right to us, but there wasn't anything I could do about that. I'd be even slower as a human and I'd still be bleeding all over everything.
Jack and Alec ended up meeting us halfway down with both vehicles and the rest of our people. I collapsed into the SUV as Alec waved James into the driver's seat and slapped gauze over the worst of my wounds.
"Find us a parking place somewhere on the second floor, James, while I get Jasmin stabilized."
James grunted and then once Jess was inside, got us back into motion. I was pretty sure that I was starting to go loopy from blood loss, but I couldn't make myself care.
"You knew. You knew that Kaleb would have people waiting for us when we got off of the plane and you set this whole thing up."
Alec nodded. "Yeah, I knew it was going to be an issue even before we flew down to the Caymans. I didn't have a solution in place when we left, but I spent a good chunk of the time we were down there trying to come up with some way to get back stateside without getting all four of us killed."
"Jack. That was brilliant, I never would have thought of recruiting him."
There were already some pretty massive gashes in my ha'bit, but Alec tore them even wider. Jess kept direct pressure on my right side while Alec started taping up the more dangerous gashes between the ribs on my left side.
"You were out on patrol for a good chunk of the time that we were in St. Louis, but I got to spend a few minutes talking to him once I woke up the next day. I knew that he was furious at Kaleb over his son's death, so I figured it was worth a shot. That's why we stayed longer than you were expecting in the Caymans. Jack and his people came over to scout out what we were likely to see in the way of opposition when we landed."
Alec moved over to my other side and I hissed in pain as he pushed on the cracked ribs. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I know the drill. You have to make sure that they are only fractured and not broken."
"No, not for that. I'm sorry that I couldn't tell you what was going on. That was Jack's condition for coming and helping. He trusted me, and he believed that I thought you were all trustworthy, but he wasn't ready to risk his people's lives on that. I had to promise that I wouldn't tell any of you what was going on."
"Because if we'd been double agents then we could have ruined everything by letting Kaleb know that he needed to increase the size of his welcoming party."
"Yeah, that about sums it up."
"So what now? Jack still isn't going to trust any of us, and now he's got to worry about the fact that we'll leak the fact that he helped to Kaleb."
Alec shook his head at me. "I don't think that's going to be an issue. All three of you practically killed yourselves running down those last two hybrids. If any of you were working for the other team you would have let that last guy get away. If James had picked even a slightly more cautious way of engaging the one who was running interference then you never would have caught the last guy, and Jess could have very easily gotten you killed once she met up with you."
It took a couple of minutes for that to process through my pain-dulled mind. "I guess you're right. Jack's still got to worry about us getting captured and tortured, but he's probably safe other than that. Unless the Coun'hij is playing an even lon
ger game and they are hoping to use you to flush out all of the rebellious elements so that they can take care of the undesirables once and for all."
"I know, but Jack's already thought of that too. If he really thought that Kaleb and the others were trying to do that then he never would have agreed to talk to me in the first place."
"I guess you're right. I'm sorry too, Alec. I don't mean to be losing my edge, I just can't seem to help it."
"Don't worry about that, you did exactly what needed doing and you did a spectacular job of it, Jas. I know no matter how bad things get that I can count on you, on all of you."
He pulled out a syringe and injected me with a general anesthetic. It wasn't enough to put me out, there weren't a large number of things that would do that to a shape shifter, but it took away the pain and left me floating in a pool of relaxation.
"Alec."
"Yeah?"
"Can we go find Rachel now?"
"Sure thing. She'll be excited to see you too."
I was just enough with it to notice as Jack walked up to our vehicle and let himself inside.
"Alec, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we've got a massive problem."
Chapter 7
Adriana Paige
The Premier Pillow Motel
North Platte, Nebraska
I'd fled Eric's dream sure that I was going to wake to find Taggart's beast in control, but I'd fled anyway rather than be forced to kill another person with my gift. My fears were so embedded in my subconscious mind that I was extremely disoriented when I woke up the next morning.
I just lay there motionless for nearly a minute while I tried to process what was wrong. Eventually I realized that I wasn't disoriented because of where I was waking up, I was thrown off because of how I was waking up.
Taggart wasn't yelling or stalking around the tiny room like a caged predator, he was sitting on his bed writing in a plain leather-bound journal. Not only that, I wasn't getting any of the usual signs that alerted me to the fact that he was having a hard time controlling his beast. There was no unearthly hum of power in the air, his eyes were even their normal tired green rather than the hot yellow of his beast.