by Dean Murray
Shawn could taste the truth of my statement—that I hadn't wanted to insult him—and that went a long way towards calming him down. He wasn't completely back to how he'd been, but that was okay, I didn't want him to go back to only listening to me with half an ear. He studied me over the rim of a glass of what looked like whiskey.
"All right, you've made your point. I actually agree with you, Alec. Agony being captured is as big a deal as we're likely to see in our lifetimes. The biggest question is whether anything we can do will make it better."
"What are you talking about? Of course we can make it better. Agony was captured just south of the Mexican border. It's only a matter of time before the Coun'hij decides to move him to somewhere more secure. Once he's in motion, his guards will be vulnerable."
Shawn sighed. "Let's just assume you're right. Let's assume that you can rescue him despite the fact that the Coun'hij currently have eyes on every pack that isn't already in their back pocket. Let's assume you're able to pull together a big enough force to take out whatever Kaleb and the rest have guarding the delivery, and let's just say that this isn't all a gigantic trap. What's the best-case scenario?"
"We rescue him."
"That's a lie and you know, it, Alec. That's the best-case scenario for Agony, but it's not what you're hoping to accomplish. The best-case scenario is that his rescue serves as a catalyst that causes our entire race to rise and overthrow the Coun'hij."
My beast didn't appreciate being called a liar. I stepped on it, forcing it back into a corner of my mind.
"It's all a question of timeframes, Shawn. In the short term I want to rescue Agony but obviously the long-term goal is to free our people."
"Right, well, here's the thing about revolutions. You only get one real attempt per generation. If you do this and everything doesn't go off perfectly, then thousands of our people are going to die and, at the end of it all, the Coun'hij will have an even stronger grip on whoever survives."
"If we're successful then…"
Shawn cut me off. "If you do everything perfectly then thousands of people are going to die and at the end there will be a power vacuum that will take another generation or two to shake out. The best-case scenario is that you get a lot of people killed and then we spend another six hundred years as a people trying to hammer out another system of governance which hopefully is better than what we've got right now."
"So the risks aren't worth it? Is that what you're trying to tell me? If so then your reputation as a firebrand is exaggerated."
"Honestly, I don't care what you think, Alec. You're coming from a position of not having any other choice. That's not the case for me. When I take over my pack, I'll have an actual possibility of sparking a revolution. It's a lot easier to throw everything to the wind when your actions only influence a few people."
My hands clenched into fists despite my best efforts. I'd come with the intention of keeping my cool. I'd even managed not to escalate things when I'd called him on the carpet for ignoring me, but his incessant barbs were becoming too much. There was too much truth to what he was saying for me to just shrug off his words.
"Where does that leave us?"
As Shawn opened his mouth to respond, the lights went off in the entire club simultaneously. It was one of the eeriest things I'd ever experienced. There was absolutely no natural light inside the club, but I could still see flickers of light emanating from the people around me. Shawn's bodyguard was on her feet, and I realized that I hadn't seen her move. I was actually tempted to say that she'd moved even before the lights had gone out.
Jess reached for her cellphone, but it died in her hands a second later. Shawn had his hands up and pointed in my direction; he was only a split second from shifting.
"It wasn't me, Shawn!"
"Crap, it wasn't me either."
Jasmin's voice cut through the bedlam as people started screaming.
"Werewolves?"
Shawn shook his head. "No the blackout is too complete. Someone physically cut the power to the building."
"What about the phones?"
There wasn't any need for me to interject anything; Jasmin was asking all of my questions.
"It's got to be some kind of EMP device. My dad has been funding research into a portable device that could knock out cellphones and cameras."
"Why on earth would you want to replicate the kind of devastation that werewolves cause?"
The question shot out of me before I had a chance to think. Shawn's response was quiet enough that I was pretty sure Brindi hadn't heard him, but he was obviously not happy at my tone.
"This isn't Utah, Alec. Our kind wasn't ever intended to live around this many humans. We needed a way to contain incidents when they happen. Things are a lot harder now that every individual walking down the street has a video recorder attached to their phone and the ability to post to YouTube."
The girl next to Shawn was already moving along the side of the booth, headed towards the dance floor with a speed that screamed she thought we were about to come under attack. Jess pushed Brindi out of the booth and Jasmin was only a split second behind them as Shawn and I both started moving too.
"That means that your pack is responsible for this?"
"It's not my pack, it's my dad's pack. Besides, it's not the whole pack or my people would have warned me, this is just the bootlickers."
"The bootlickers?"
"Yeah, the faction that wants my dad to cement our relations with the Coun'hij. We call them bootlickers, they call us traitors."
James and the two bodyguards Shawn had left at the doorway to the booth must have been able to hear enough to understand that Shawn and I weren't at each other's throats. All three of them had stepped a few feet away from the booth in an attempt to establish a perimeter.
My beast didn't want to take second place to anyone, but this was Shawn's hometown, so I let him exit before me and then it was my turn. I stepped out into what looked like a snapshot of hell.
It was still too dark to see anything inanimate, and the people who were stampeding towards the exit were just humans so they didn't give off as strong of a glow to my otherworld sight, but I could still make out enough to see that people had been trampled already. I took a step towards the dance floor and the worst of the injured, but Shawn grabbed my arm.
"They're here, I can smell them."
He pointed at more than a dozen figures approaching in three separate groups from both sides and the front. I bit back a curse as I realized that I should have noticed them myself. Their glow was much too bright for them to be humans.
"They're from your pack, what are the rules of engagement?"
"Would you just roll over and let them kill you if I told you to only use non-lethal strikes?"
"No, probably not."
Shawn gave me a sad smile that wasn't at all in keeping with his image as a revolutionary who was only moments away at any given time from shattering his father's pack into pieces.
"Do what you have to do. If you can disable them that would be great, but don't hesitate if it's you or them."
I felt a pair of trembling hands on my arm. Brindi had glued herself to my side.
"What's going on? Why are you guys all whispering?"
I reached over and pulled her hands off of me as I placed my other hand on the warm skin of her back and guided her into the booth.
"Stay here, Brindi. Go all of the way to the back of the booth and stay there until the lights either come on or I come get you. It's really important that you not see what happens next."
She tried to resist my gentle shove, but it was a passive kind of resistance which meant that she had no chance against my superior strength. I watched her disappear into the back of the booth and then turned around just in time to see the first set of transformations ripple through Shawn's people and my friends.
I threw open the cage where my beast spent most of his time and a blast of power ripped through me. There wasn't any reason to hold
back, so I cut loose with the most intense blast of energy I was capable of.
It was…impressive…even to me. For a split second I almost thought I'd bluffed the other side into backing down. A couple of them took involuntary steps backwards, and even the boldest of them started moving with less confidence, but the four or five biggest guys stepped forward and the rest of them followed.
"Don't say you weren't warned."
The words rumbled up from my chest, deeper and harsher than my normal voice, and then I threw myself forward at the hybrid who had just replaced one of the closest men.
It was a confusing melee of fang and claw.
The Chicago shape shifters knew who was on each side of the fight, but the four of us from Sanctuary weren't as sure. It was still pitch black, and the lights each wolf and hybrid gave off weren't enough to identify someone. That meant my sense of smell was my best way to determine which guys were with Shawn. I hadn't gotten as good of a read on the two bodyguards and now it was too late. I simply concentrated on the hybrid I'd picked out before the lines merged and hoped for the best.
My enemy slashed at me with his right hand, but I knocked his claws down away from me and then stabbed my own claws into his shoulder. I probably could have finished the fight right then, but a whisper of sound brought me around just in time to deny the wolf that had been trying for a kill shot.
The angle was bad or I would have killed her while she was still in the air and unable to change direction. Instead I managed to hit her with my forearm hard enough to send her crashing into the booths behind me.
The hybrid I'd been fighting charged me, and I dug my talons into the floor, scraping against the concrete foundation as I tried to get out of his way. I was only partially successful. I got far enough to the side that he didn't hit me directly, but I couldn't make it far enough to avoid the wicked slash that ripped through my ribs on the left side of my chest.
He was looking for a contest of strength because if he could lock me up then even if I proved stronger it wouldn't matter once the wolf got back to her feet. I was younger than him and a lot less experienced, but I wasn't stupid.
Instead of resisting his charge, I pivoted in place, a growl ripping free of my throat as his claws moved around inside of me. I pinned his left arm in place as best I could to limit the damage, and used his shoulder as a fulcrum to throw him into the booths.
The hybrid hit with a titanic crash, but I couldn't follow up because the wolf threw herself at me. She was fast, not as fast as Jasmin, but still incredibly quick. She went from motionless to flying through the air at me without any telegraphing of her attack.
Against someone else, especially someone who was already bleeding from a dangerous set of wounds, it probably would have been enough, but I ducked down, denying her a clean shot at my throat as I reached up and sank my left-hand set of claws into her side. The easiest thing to do would have been to simply kill her right then. No wolf could hope to last long once a hybrid had hold of them, but instead I spun around and slammed her into the wreckage of the booth next to where we'd been sitting.
I'd aimed her at a length of steel that had been bolted horizontally into the wall and she hit with enough force to drive the rod completely through her. The metal had missed her heart, but it had gone through the ribs on her left side. Even a shape shifter wouldn't last for very long impaled on a piece of steel like that, but it was the best I could offer her. Either way, she wouldn't be going anywhere before the fight ended.
I crashed into the remnants of the booth behind her in an attempt to put the hybrid down before he could regain his feet, but I was half a second too slow. The hybrid launched a couple of lightning-fast swipes at my neck. I blocked the first one and stepped back far enough to dodge the second one, but that forced me out of the booth.
I probably should have kept him confined back inside of the debris, but I'd been able to see Brindi out of the corner of my eye. She was terrified, huddled up in a ball in an effort to make herself a smaller target, but if I'd stayed there, forcing the Chicago hybrid to fight constrained by all of that wreckage, there was just too much of a chance that she would have been hurt regardless of how small of a target she'd made of herself.
My opponent sprang forward, arms out wide to make sure that I couldn't dodge, so I did the last thing he was expecting and stepped into him. It was risky, nobody could guarantee who would come out on top of a collision like that, but I needed to finish him off quickly. We'd started out outnumbered by fifty percent, which meant that some of my friends were fighting a desperate, losing battle against two or even three opponents.
They needed my help and I couldn't afford to let this fight drag out. I stepped into him, but I darted slightly to the side at the last moment and slapped down his right arm.
He hit me like a wrecking ball, but I'd been prepared for that and my step to the side meant that at least some of his momentum was spun around me rather than simply smashing me backwards. I sank my jaws in the side of his neck while we were still airborne and then did my best to get a set of talons in each of his legs before we hit the ground.
I was only partially successful, his right leg was still free when we hit, but I managed to keep both of my arms in fairly close to my body so he was the one that hit first and that was the single most important thing I could have done. It takes an almost unimaginable amount of shearing force to break a hybrid's arm, but something snapped as I came down on top of his left arm.
His howl of rage was deafening, but I refused to loosen my grip on his neck. Instead I bit down harder, trying to get my fangs into something vital as we bounced and rolled out onto the dance floor. His left arm was useless, but he was much stronger than I'd expected him to be and I was having a hard time getting enough leverage to keep his right arm under control.
Our fight had devolved into a kind of slow-motion tug-of-war. I was trying to keep him from savaging my back while he was trying to stop me from snapping his neck.
I was losing control of his arm and I hadn't managed to get past the massive muscles of his neck. Rather than finishing him off so that I could go help my friends, I was locked into a fight I couldn't win. If someone else didn't break free and come help me it was only a matter of time before I was a dead man.
My right arm was pinned underneath the two of us. I tried to roll us over onto his back, but his legs were just too far apart and I couldn't budge him.
Footsteps approached from behind me and I tensed up in anticipation of the blow that was about to kill me. The fact that they were coming from behind me instead of from behind him was a bad sign, but then all of a sudden the pressure against my left hand weakened slightly. The change was so small that I almost thought I'd imagined it, but it was there. If he'd been just a hair stronger or if I'd had slightly worse leverage it wouldn't have made any difference, but it was making a difference.
We strained against each other and, with the help of whoever was behind me, I was able to push his arm up and away from my back. Even better, the further ahead I got it, the more the angles and forces involved helped me and hindered him.
He reversed the direction of his push with a suddenness that was quite literally preternatural. It was the kind of lightning-fast movement that no human could have possibly hoped to register let alone avoid, but I'd been expecting it.
The hybrid tried to flip both of us around, but I threw myself in the direction of his pull, and sent us through an extra half revolution. That put me on top instead of him.
I heard a soft gasp and smelled blood, but none of that registered. I was too caught up in the fight, too caught up in the fact that my right hand had come free. I killed the hybrid with a single slash to the neck and rolled to my feet looking for another foe.
A sudden pulse of light blinded me for a couple of seconds and I stumbled backwards in an attempt to avoid anyone who might not have been as affected by the flash.
"Enough!"
I didn't recognize the voice, but the fighting s
topped with a suddenness that I wouldn't have believed possible.
"Shift back to your human forms now or I'll have you all killed where you stand."
I felt a rapid, many-pointed surge of power as half a dozen people shifted back to their primary form over the space of just a couple of seconds.
"Alec, it's my dad. We're safe now, go ahead and shift back."
My beast didn't want to obey, didn't view Shawn or Ulrich either one as being dominant to us, but I knew better. Ulrich wouldn't have left his compound without bringing at least a dozen hybrids with him, not if he knew he was coming to this kind of battle.
It didn't matter who was dominant to whom, the fact of the matter was that he could have all four of us killed without even raising a finger of his own. I'd come into his territory without asking permission, without honoring any of the normal forms, and my life was forfeit as a result if that was his desire.
I shifted back to human form. The change cleared my vision enough for me to take stock of my surroundings. My breath caught as I looked down and saw Brindi on the floor in a pool of blood.
She had been the one who'd come to help me when I'd been struggling with the Chicago hybrid. She'd helped me pull his hand away from my kidneys, but when he'd flipped us over his claws had gone through her stomach.
I dropped down next to her and pushed my hands against her stomach to keep her life from leaking out.
Chapter 12
Adriana Paige
Marauder's Gas Station
Central Wyoming
It turned out that having all of my energy drained away didn't kill me. At least not that time. Taggart was still alive two days after the fight that had nearly gotten both of us killed, which was good, but I still wasn't sure that he was going to make it.
I spent my days up in the store trying to keep anyone from realizing that the actual owners of the gas station had been killed in the supernatural equivalent to a Wild West shootout. I took frequent breaks to check on Taggart, but mostly he just slept. Occasionally he woke up enough for me to help him down a thousand calories and a pint of fluid, but other than that I was by myself.