Bite Back Box Set 2

by Mark Henwick

  I knew that the slightest mistake I made, they’d leap on it.

  Hopefully, Alex and Haz could do all the talking. Stop me from putting my foot in it. And in fact, they were all looking toward Alex. That was fine by me. I wasn’t here to gain their acknowledgment.

  But it was Haz who got us started, and that made twice in the evening I realized I’d underestimated her. The biker gear and snarly voice, the jealousy and phobias, they all disguised a woman who thought and spoke clearly when she needed to.

  Her alpha, Zane, had sent her specifically to do the talking, and that reinforced my opinion that he was smarter than he made out too.

  Great idea. Send someone less outrageous and threatening to start talks with the LA alphas.

  How wrong could I be?

  “We’re looking for a preliminary agreement today,” Haz said clearly. “Just enough to allow us to continue talking. So, first off, we’d need the right for a couple of us, no more than that, to visit here for more detailed discussion. Your choice of place and time, of course.”

  She paused. Redondo and Long Beach were looking at her. Pasadena was looking at Alex. None of them looked happy. Heights was looking at the other three LA alphas, his face unreadable.

  “The purpose behind our discussion would be nothing to do with acquiring territory, but defending it. Details would be developed together over time, but at the lowest level of association, it’s our proposal that we should pledge support for each of the other packs in our association against any attempted—”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Pasadena said.

  It was a deliberate provocation. Even in the same pack, one Were saying that to another was likely to end up in a fight, unless the difference in dominance was huge.

  I could feel Haz struggle with the urge to go to her wolf. As a human and a representative of her pack, she had to weigh things that the wolf didn’t care about.

  But his attention wasn’t on her.

  With a little shiver, I saw he was fixated on Alex, staring at him eye to eye.

  In wolf form, Alex would eat him alive. Possibly literally. A formal challenge between alphas would mean they’d go to their wolves and Alex would win. This wasn’t a formal challenge.

  Pasadena might also be smarter than he looked. The kind of challenge he was trying to provoke was resolved in human form, for the simple, practical reason that if one Were tried to strip off, or went to wolf without stripping first, then for a fatal second or two, they’d be vulnerable.

  And in human form, Pasadena might have the edge. Alex and I sparred. He was good and he was learning quickly, but he simply hadn’t had the years of dirty fighting that I had ingrained into my reflexes.

  And if I had it, Pasadena might have it too.

  Alex’s best strategy was to make it formal.

  The problem with that was the ongoing effect. If he won a formal challenge, Alex would have to take over the Pasadena pack and spend days, if not weeks, fighting challenges.

  Pasadena was taking a huge gamble that we didn’t want that.

  My chosen strategy was for us to crush him with dominance. He and the others together hadn’t been able to cow us. Either Alex or I alone were more dominant than him, and together, because our dominance amplified each other, we’d be strong enough to bring him to his knees.

  I felt my dominance swelling up, boosting off Alex and returning that lift to him.

  Pasadena did too. “Going to hide behind your woman, Deauville?”

  Alex just smiled.

  “Alex! That’s a challenge,” Billie muttered, as if he was missing the point. “You have to respond.”

  “No,” Alex drawled. “I don’t have to.”

  There was an astonished silence from the Weres. I was a rookie werewolf and even I knew an alpha couldn’t turn away from an insult like that.

  The dust dislodged by the band’s bass speakers continued to fall, casting a surreal glitter over the scene.

  Pasadena opened his mouth, but Alex hadn’t finished. “Seems someone tried to insult the pack, partner,” he said to me. “It’s kinda beneath me. You want to take it up?”

  Oh, Alex. Freaking brilliant.

  “Yeah. You’re right. Not worth the time for either of us really, but I missed exercising this evening.” I shook out some kinks in my arms, staring at Pasadena.

  “What the fuck are you trying to pull, Deauville?” Pasadena spat. “You think I won’t hurt her because she’s a woman?”

  “You won’t hurt her because you won’t be able to, asshole.” Alex stung him, and Billie laughed abruptly, brightly in the tension.

  That sealed it; Pasadena lurched forward. He roared, seeming unable to speak, and that told me he was a rage fighter, a berserker. The kind that was dangerous if he succeeded in breaking through my defenses. If he did that, he’d be blind to everything other than the need to inflict damage and pain until I wasn’t able to feel any more.

  His rage would give him some physical immunity—he’d be difficult to hurt with body blows. I’d seen a man like him fighting on with a knife blade lodged in his arm, caught between bones.

  Still, there would be ways of getting through to him, breaking that berserker shell.

  I’d need to be careful. He was stronger and heavier than me. Unpredictable. Fast.

  Phantom pains from old fights flitted over my body, warning me.

  By style he was more of a boxer or wrestler; he lowered his head like a bull and lifted his shoulders as his hands came up in front of him.

  He was already rushing onto me, trying to overwhelm me. A good tactic when he massed so much more, and any successful blow that he landed was going to do damage.

  I danced close and let him swing a couple of times. He missed. He was still in control at the moment; he was attempting to strike within his strength, not putting all his weight behind any one blow.

  The real berserker rage, the loss of control, the pummeling, would come once he got the first couple of disabling hits in.

  I wasn’t going to let him. Meanwhile, I was learning about him, and he wasn’t learning about me. I wasn’t complaining.

  But he was faster than I thought. A fist caught me. I rode it, kept my weight balanced and ghosted aside when he came in to follow up.

  Wake up! His obsession with bodybuilding doesn’t make him stupid, or a bad fighter.

  He pressed in, managed to hit me with another combination. The blows hurt. I was going to be wearing bruises and I hadn’t tried to hit him yet. I was waiting; I wanted my first strike to be my last.

  The man had some skill. With no warning, he changed tactics. He switched stances and jabbed with his left. But that was the opening I’d been looking for.

  It was a straight jab; all I needed to do was sway for it to miss.

  He came forward and hurled that powerhouse right fist at my body. A blow like that would hurt, but more importantly, with his weight advantage, it would knock me off balance. That was what he was going for.

  His problem was that I’d moved. Forward. I’d slipped inside his guard, with my left arm raised. That let his blow get through, but he was too close. He struck me on the ribs with his wrist and forearm. He was strong and it still hurt, but nothing like what I was going to do to him.

  His mouth was open in surprise. I did two things at once: I whipped my arm down, trapping his against my ribs, and I head-butted him in the nose.

  Forehead bone is like concrete, especially mine. A nose is a delicate little flower, and I mashed his like I’d flattened a bug.

  Even a fighter who can absorb dozens of painful blows to the body finds it difficult to ignore something literally in his face.

  And while he was just discovering how stunningly painful a broken nose could be, I twisted his arm, forcing his trapped elbow across his body. And then up. His body went into reflex action and he was up on tiptoe. His balance was all wrong when I pushed from my firmer base.

  Over he went.

  He wasn’t a bad fighter; no alp
ha could be. He tried to cushion his fall with his free arm, but all I needed to do was nudge his hip and kick his legs. His spinning body rotated and he landed with all the force of the impact on his shoulders and the back of his head. Just in case that wasn’t enough, I landed on top of him with my knees in his stomach.

  Then, with my leg muscles providing the power, I straightened, still holding his bent arm across his body. The quiet pop of his shoulder dislocating was almost anticlimactic, except for him. A savage twist and the defenseless muscles and tendons tore, rendering his arm useless as well as excruciating.

  He wasn’t getting back up. My wolf had been a good girl during the fight, so I let her up and I snarled at his lieutenant, my face flickering between human and wolf. That was a trick that usually only older Were could manage. It’d give them all pause for thought.

  Not necessary for this lieutenant. The guy couldn’t meet my eyes; he was staring down at the groaning mess that was his alpha. Head lowered, shoulders down. No contest there.

  “Are we good here?” Alex said calmly to him, putting a hand on my shoulder.

  The lieutenant put his hands up and backed away.

  “No formal challenge,” Alex went on. “No interest in the Pasadena pack.”

  The rest of the LA alphas and their lieutenants were open-mouthed in shock. The fight had felt longer to me, but it had taken no more than a minute.

  “Despite that,” Alex pointed at the Pasadena alpha, “we’re here to talk.”

  “Impressive,” the Heights alpha said. “Let’s talk, then.”

  Too calm. This one is dangerous.

  I managed not to snarl at him.

  Pasadena would always be a problem if this alpha kept his position, but an obvious one. Long Beach wasn’t much better. My gut told me that both of them would feel tricked rather than beaten. And having let my wolf up, she wanted to kill them.

  Down, girl.

  Redondo might be all right and Billie was gold.

  That left the Heights with more power than he warranted.

  Of course we could challenge them all, but as with Pasadena, that wasn’t going to get long-term cooperation, and we couldn’t go on like that. If news got out that we were doing that, it would make it that much harder to approach the next pack.

  Alex understood.

  “Good. As Haz was saying, this isn’t a meeting to make full alliances. What I want today is your agreement on a couple of items.”

  He counted off on his fingers.

  “Pack Deauville can remain in Los Angeles. We give you our word that what we’re doing here is Athanate business, and we’ll be leaving as soon as we can after that’s completed.”

  He waited until he got reluctant nods from the alphas and the Pasadena lieutenant.

  “You’ll agree, with no pre-conditions, to discuss an association with House Tarez, the Altau House in LA, within the next couple of weeks. Same with the Albuquerque pack.”

  “What are we getting in return?” Redondo asked. His eyes flicked. He couldn’t hold my eye.

  “Association is a return,” Alex said. “If you’re threatened, you can call on associated packs.”

  “Of course, that means peace between associates,” I put in. “No more need to hide vulnerable members.”

  Billie snorted.

  “There’s another major objective we have,” I said. “If the Were form a representative body, then they’ll be on the Assembly. If we do it quick enough, we might have a say in forming the Assembly itself.”

  Now I had Heights’ attention. They knew all about the Athanate Assembly, of course. This syndesmon thing might be useful in ways I hadn’t expected.

  “What about help with halfies?” Long Beach asked. “That’s what the Belles used to get us here. You do this ritual thing for us, or was it just a ploy?”

  “Not in LA,” I said. “Make sure the halfies are ready to travel and wait for a call.”

  “You mean, if we sign up to these associations,” Heights said.

  My damned gut. I could feel Alex and Yelena and Haz dragging their heels. Billie too, for that matter.

  “No,” I said. “However I manage it, this is not something I’m gonna let others use to make packs get in line. If I can do it, as long as I can do it, it’s open for every halfy.”

  Second time I’d shocked them that night.

  We broke up after that.

  The Pasadena pack came and collected their alpha. I wondered if he’d stay in that position.

  The other alphas and their lieutenants disappeared into the crowd watching the band. I could see the news of what had gone down rippling through the Were. Groups stopped dancing and talked to each other.

  Even the band noticed. They redoubled their efforts. The beer stall made a decision and gave away the beer. It worked. The throng started thrashing again.

  We listened to the band, drank a little beer. Alex and Haz got dragged in to dance with the Belles.

  “You don’t want to dance, Dancing Girl?” I teased Yelena.

  “I’m watching you,” she said.

  “I need it?”

  “Yes. You got careless with that wolf, let him hit you. I think more time in the gym with me.”

  I winced. She was an excellent martial arts teacher, but lessons tended to be painful.

  “I don’t trust the other alphas,” she said, trying to pick them out of the dancing crowd.

  “Neither do I, apart from Billie. But that’s going to be Alex’s job.”

  “In between patrols.” She frowned. It was a tough call for Alex. “What are you and I doing?”

  “Going to Denver.” I ran hands through my hair. “I aim to keep doing what they need me to do, but not the way any of them want me to do it. That means we leave tomorrow, before they can stop us. Before they even get up.”

  Denver.

  Where Forsythe spent a couple of weekends a month.

  Yelena nodded and looked at her watch. “Is tomorrow already,” she said.

  We weren’t going to use scheduled airlines. That would leave too much of a trail.

  Luckily, part of Kingslund Group’s assets included a Pilatus turbojet, and Yelena flew it.

  Chapter 32

  I’d thought I would be sitting on the plane with nothing to do, but as soon as Yelena cleared the complex Los Angeles airspace, she talked me through patching my laptop into the internet through the plane’s system.

  Matt’s untraceable comms software really didn’t like working through one dedicated connection. The program’s animated octopus sulked in the corner of the screen, waving a pink tentacle at me.

  Tough. I’d looked up how Matt had done it, in general terms, and the really unbreakable part was at the other end of the link. I’d make do.

  Ben-Haim would be appalled.

  Of course the ritzy noise canceling headphones I was wearing didn’t plug into the laptop, but there was an adaptor. After another fifteen minutes of messing around, I had the system ready.

  Who first?

  Even with the delay getting ready, I had another couple of hours before we touched down in Denver. Who did I need to call?

  Felix. It hadn’t been possible to prevent the story of the ritual down in New Mexico from getting out. The Denver pack were sitting on an unexploded bomb of expectations that I could change halfies. I had to talk to Felix.

  Naryn. Athanate protocol dictated I had to call him to alert him to the fact I was entering his domain, even if it was my domain as well. But talking to him would only allow him the opportunity to give me orders I couldn’t refuse, and would mean I ended up doing only what he wanted me to do.

  Agent Ingram. The FBI was another unexploded bomb. I’d promised Ingram when I was in New Mexico that I would talk to him right after I got back. That was a month ago. In the interim, I’d gone rogue and been through a healing process, but Ingram wouldn’t know any of that. He’d given me leeway, and all he’d seen was that I hadn’t kept my end of the bargain.

  He was
the lead agent on Project Anthracite, an FBI mission with a wide brief to uncover hidden organizations in the US. The Athanate certainly qualified. I’d managed to distract him with the army’s Ops group, which also qualified, but in the end that only served to give him more clues about the Athanate.

  The only viable way forward was to control the flow of information and the people receiving it, explaining as we went the danger of allowing that information out too quickly. Complex social and economic models had proved that it was a danger not just to the paranormals, but to society as a whole.

  When I’d first met Diana, she’d wanted to use my connections with Colonel Laine to create that controlled flow of information, going through the Department of Defense. Since part of the takedown of the Ops group had ruined that, it seemed appropriate that we switch to the FBI, especially as they were already sniffing the trail.

  But all of that depended on maintaining the trust of the people we connected with. Starting with Agent Ingram.

  It wasn’t as if I could pass him to Diana. Would he be happy to wait until she was recovered? I couldn’t even guess at how long that would be.

  Why does no one seem to know what’s going on with her?

  Focus. Ingram.

  Only way to tell if I still had his trust was to talk to him.

  All the other people that I wanted to talk to: Jen, Alex, Bian, David, Pia, Tullah, Mom—all of them—I’d have to manage when I could.

  And screw Athanate protocol. I’d text Naryn at the last moment.

  Ingram first. Then Felix.

  Both needed extreme care.

  I got three rings on Agent Ingram’s cell number before he answered. “Well now, there’s a person who used to call me on this number from a phone I never could trace, just like this one, but she’s gone to ground. So you won’t mind my asking who this is.”

  I tried to hear past the lazy Texan drawl and the half-humorous opening, neither of which was evidence of what Ingram was thinking. How badly had I damaged his trust? And how dangerous was that for the Athanate?