by Dean Murray
Chapter 2
Alec Graves
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah
Brandon ordered Simon and Nathanial into human form so that they could tie scraps of cloth around the worst of Vincent's wounds. As much as I would have liked to just stand there and glare at Brandon the entire time, I knew that I wasn't a whole lot better off than Vincent was.
After a fight where we'd almost died, my beast was subdued enough that it was a small matter to push it back into a corner of my mind so that my form shrank back down. Changing back to human form kick started the healing process and stopped some of the bleeding, but I had a lot less blood to lose in this shape, so Jess started ripping long strips of cloth off of her shirt as I walked back to her, James and Jasmin.
As Jessica's shirt was quickly turned into bandages, the black, stretchy fabric of her ha'bit became visible, which made me look down to make sure that my ha'bit had survived the fight more or less intact enough to cover the important parts.
The ha'bits allowed us to switch forms without worrying about the complications that would have been part and parcel of dealing with casual nudity inside of the pack. They were one of Kaleb's inventions, one of the few good things he'd done for the pack back before he'd thrown in with the Coun'hij, the shape shifter ruling body.
Jasmin changed out of her wolf form with a cool rush of power and then joined us. "James, give me your shirt so I can help Jess."
"It figures. Rachel just bought this one for me and now it's going to be turned into sixty-dollar bandages."
Jasmin shook her head at him as she accepted the shirt from him. "It's not like Rachel won't buy you another next week."
"Yeah, I guess you're right there."
Brandon had shifted into his hybrid form to tear me off of Vincent, but unlike everyone else, he didn't shift back to human form once the immediate chance of confrontation had passed. It was always possible that he'd worn too many different shapes today and was risking a painful set of muscle cramps as a result, but I was pretty sure that Brandon just enjoyed being a hybrid, enjoyed lording over the rest of us that he was nearly untouchable in single combat.
Brandon waved for Simon and Nathanial to pick Vincent up, despite the fact that it would have been much easier for his hybrid body to carry Vincent's bulk, and then we started towards the house. It wasn't until we were nearly home that I realized that there was probably a secondary reason that Brandon had chosen not to resume his normal shape.
With the ever-improving march of technology, it was harder and harder to keep the existence of shape shifters like us a secret from the world at large. Kaleb hadn't gone quite so far as forbidding everyone from wearing anything other than our human shapes outside in broad daylight, but the message had been clear. Short of some kind of dominance fight that arose too quickly for it to be moved inside to the caverns under the manor house, we were all expected to present unremarkable, human faces to the outside world.
Brandon had taken to breaking that guideline on a regular basis lately, but I was pretty sure that he was doing so today as a way of making the point that Kaleb valued him a lot more than me. It wasn't a particularly welcome reminder, which was of course exactly why he was doing it.
As we neared the house I tried to determine whether or not anybody was watching us approach. The house looked just like it always did, a massive block of stone and glass. Most of the manor was a single story, the natural result of building such a large structure back before air conditioning had been invented, but even the single-story sections were nearly as tall as a normal two-story house. The vaulted ceilings meant that during more peaceful times it was possible to open up the windows during the night and cool the house down enough that even July summers in Sanctuary were still bearable.
Kaleb had paid to have air conditioning units installed and piped into a number of key rooms sometime before I'd even been born, but by and large they were redundant. Sometimes the gray rock exterior walls managed to look inviting, but this wasn't one of those times. For all of the luxury and comfort contained inside of the manor house, it wasn't really a home. It was more a prison than anything else.
Mallory met us at the entrance to the suite of rooms that Kaleb used as his command center for all things pack-related. As usual she was dressed in dark colors—jeans, a utilitarian top, and a leather jacket. Mallory didn't need piercings and tattoos to look like she could have belonged to some kind of outlaw motorcycle gang.
"Shift back into something less ominous, Brandon. You're scratching up the stonework on the floor."
"What if I don't want to shift back?"
Mallory looked up at Brandon with a bored expression on her face. "Then you're an even bigger idiot than I thought. You've recently asked for a rather large boon from Kaleb, and I expect you're probably here to try and get Alec into trouble with his father. Do you really think that now is the best time to be trying to flex your muscles?"
Brandon bent down until his huge, hybrid face was only inches from Mallory's human features and when he talked it was in a low growl that humans wouldn't have been able to hear.
"I'll play nice right now, but you'd be smart to stop mouthing off to me. You're no match for me and sooner or later things are going to change around here."
Mallory was either a much better bluffer than anyone else I knew, or she really wasn't bothered by Brandon's threat. He was right, in a dominance fight Mallory couldn't hope to beat him. She was a hybrid, and she'd been around long enough to have the skills that came from dozens, if not hundreds, of challenge matches, but while she had manifested a power, it wasn't one that directly improved her odds if she came to blows with Brandon. With anyone else I would have figured that they were just an incredible liar, but Mallory was closer to my dad than any of his other advisors, so it was possible that she knew something that Brandon should be worried about.
I watched as Brandon followed the same trail of logic and I suppressed a small flash of satisfaction at Brandon's frown as he shifted back to human form. It would have been more satisfying if I'd thought that Mallory was a possible ally, that she wouldn't stick a knife into my back just as casually as she'd stick one into Brandon.
Mallory looked us all over and then grunted at Nathanial and Simon. "You two get Vincent to whoever is on medical duty. By the look of him he's going to be down for a couple of days at least, but at least go see if someone can get him back on his feet in time for his rotation down to the border."
Nathanial and Simon nodded unhappily and then headed down the corridor, at which point Mallory made a shooing gesture at James, Jasmin and Jessica. "It's not like we need any extra witnesses or anything. Go find something useful to do or barring that, at least get out of my sight."
Mallory watched until our respective friends had disappeared and then motioned with her head back towards the rooms she'd just exited. "Whoever was on duty saw the eight of you coming this direction fifteen minutes ago so Kaleb is expecting the two of you. He said to have both of you sent to his office."
I filed the information away and nodded. If she'd told us that he wanted one or both of us incarcerated until the next regularly scheduled public audience then it would have been a definite sign that we were headed towards big trouble. Anytime punishment was dished out in a public venue it was because Kaleb wanted to make an example of the offender. That wasn't to say that he didn't occasionally dish out spectacular beatings, literal or otherwise, in private, just that at least in private there was a chance that you weren't going to end up bleeding and wishing you were dead.
I waited a second to verify that Mallory wasn't planning on accompanying us in and then started towards Kaleb's office with Brandon only a couple of steps behind me. I didn't make it very far before Mallory stuck her head back into the foyer. "I'm well aware that you've been ducking me for the last few days, Alec. If I didn't have somewhere I needed to be, I'd be sitting you down right now for our session. Don't think that you can keep avoiding me forever."
>
Kaleb was leaning back in his chair waiting for us as we stepped into his office. I would have said he looked like a successful businessman in his slacks and dark blue polo, but there was something hard behind his eyes, harder than could be explained by just cutthroat business dealings. "Sit down so we can talk like civilized people."
The chairs were leather which meant that it would be relatively easy to clean my blood off of them once I was gone. I sat down and attempted to give off an air of unconcern. Brandon on the other hand looked like he was trying to come up with a way to remain standing or at least to make sitting down appear as though it had been his idea all along.
"I said sit down, Brandon. Trust me, you don't want to turn this into a pissing match."
Brandon frowned again and then nodded and sat down. I hoped that I was managing to keep my astonishment off of my face. Brandon was usually more of a smooth operator than this. Whatever he'd asked Kaleb for must be something he needed pretty badly in order to be so far off of his game.
Kaleb seemed content to wait for one of us to initiate the conversation, but I'd decided on the way down that I'd be best off acting as though I'd done nothing wrong. I hadn't technically violated any of the pack's rules, unwritten or otherwise, so I wouldn't be served by spouting off a bunch of justifications before Brandon had even had a chance to start making his case.
Brandon took a couple of seconds to gather himself and then launched into his accusations. "It's become apparent to me that Alec is directly working against you. He seems to be trying to create a splinter faction inside of the pack, probably in the hopes that he can set himself up as some kind of tin god out in the middle of nowhere."
I revised my estimates of Brandon's ability to lie upwards slightly. He'd put in plenty of qualifiers to cover himself, but I still would have expected his heart rate at least to go up slightly given that he knew I wasn't actually trying to tear the pack apart. Kaleb leaned back and gave Brandon an appraising look.
"I think that I just heard a whole lot of supposition, none of which justifies me taking time out of my day to see the two of you."
Brandon leaned forward with a smile on his face. "This piece isn't supposition, it's fact. Alec interfered with a dominance challenge between Jasmin and Vincent, which is the kind of thing that has always been the domain of pack alphas, not a second- or third-tier hybrid who happens to be your son."
"Interesting. Given that Vincent seems to have come off second best in that fight it would appear that the pack's 'second- and third-tier' hybrids are much more dangerous than I realized. Maybe I should be looking to have the pack expand its territory and spend more time down at the border killing those damn cats if the pack's pool of talent really runs so deep."
Some of my anxiety evaporated. I wasn't entirely out of the woods, but it appeared that whatever hold Brandon might have over Kaleb wasn't sufficient for the older hybrid to just roll over and give him whatever he wanted.
"Well, Alec. What do you have to say for yourself? Brandon's accusation, for all that he's more than likely elaborating on the truth, is a serious one."
"I've done nothing to splinter the pack apart." Mostly because it was already coming apart at the seams. "Furthermore, I in no way acted outside bounds of the position in the pack that my skills have won for me. Vincent lost our last several matches and I found that I didn't like his manner today, it wasn't properly respectful towards one who is clearly his better, so I informed him that I planned on challenging him." All of that had been inferred, even if it hadn't been explicitly stated.
"After he'd already challenged Jasmin!" Brandon's outburst was yet another sign that this meeting wasn't going the way he expected it to.
"I gave him a choice, it was entirely his decision to put off his dispute with Jasmin until after he'd dealt with me."
Kaleb gave me a dark look. "You're walking a very fine line there, Alec, but you're right, technically you've done nothing I can censor you for."
Brandon opened his mouth to protest, but Kaleb kept talking. "You've had your chance to file your complaint, Brandon. Your unhappiness has been noted. You can get out of my office now."
I would have just beaten a relieved retreat, but Brandon stood up and let loose a flash of power that made my skin tingle.
"I'm not some nobody to just be dismissed from your presence like that, Kaleb. My unhappiness can have very long-term ramifications for you and everyone else in the pack."
The natural response for any shape shifter when faced with the kind of metaphysical wind that was lashing out from Brandon was to counter with a surge of energy from our own beasts, but Kaleb was too controlled for that.
"You are a valuable member of this pack, Brandon, but don't think that I've failed to notice the way that you've been politicking lately. If anyone is trying to set themselves up with a power bloc it's you. You're unquestionably the best fighter in the pack, but that doesn't mean that you're irreplaceable, and it doesn't mean that I can't have you put down if you get too far above yourself."
Brandon laughed the threat away. "You just said it yourself. You don't have anyone else in the pack who can beat me. The only reason that you're still running the show around here is that I haven't decided to take over."
"No, I still run the show around here because you're too inexperienced to run things yet and you know it. I'm the pack alpha, which means I can kick you out of the pack at any time with the most threadbare of pretexts. If that happens it's the entire pack against you and while you're really quite good, you can't take on the entire pack at once, not by yourself."
"I wouldn't be by myself. There are people in the pack who would support me over you if it came to that."
"Sure there are, but for the most part they are just a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears kids without much real combat experience. Mallory and I are keeping a very close eye on where the wind is blowing and you're still a very, very long way away from having a chance of pulling off some kind of coup d'état."
"I don't have to overthrow you, I could always just take my people and leave."
Kaleb shook his head. "Let me give you a free bit of advice about these kinds of things. You never get all of the people you think you're going to get. There is always a larger contingent than you think who are happy to talk big, but when it actually comes to striking out, leaving home and going off to establish a brand-new pack they end up chickening out. You don't have anywhere near enough people to actually create a viable pack that would have a chance of holding its territory."
I'd expected Kaleb's remarks to put Brandon even further on his back foot, but if anything he seemed more confident than before.
"It's only a matter of time. Eventually I'll have enough, and then I'll either take this place over, or I'll take my people and leave. Eventually you won't be able to stop me."
Kaleb sighed. "This is the last freebie, kid. There isn't anywhere you can go where you'll be safe if you piss me off. I run the Coun'hij. Do you really think that there is a single pack anywhere in North America that would raise even the slightest fuss if I had your entire pack destroyed? If you continue to work with me I can make it very worth your while, but if you cross me I'll bury you."
Brandon was actually speechless for the first time I'd seen in months. It took nearly a full minute before he shook off the shock. I suspected that he was smart enough to read between the lines and understand that Kaleb was threatening to unleash Puppeteer on him if necessary. Brandon was good, but Puppeteer would swarm him under without even breaking a sweat.
"I understand your position. Does that mean that you're refusing my request from the other day?"
"No, I haven't decided with regards to that yet. I meant it when I said that you'd be rewarded if you work with me, and I understand that on some level rewarding your people is the same as rewarding you, but I'm not entirely sure about this particular reward. There are obviously some…complications with that sort of thing. You're going to have to be patient for a time still."
Brandon shot one last parting comment back over his shoulder as he left. "My patience isn't infinite."
"I'm well aware of that fact."
I started to stand to follow Brandon, but Kaleb waved me back down into my seat and then watched the closed-circuit monitor to verify that Brandon left the suite rather than staying to eavesdrop.
"Close the door, Alec."
While I saw to the door, Kaleb turned on the white noise generator that had sat on his desk for as long as I could remember. I hated the crackle and hum that it created, but it was a necessary evil in a house full of shape shifters if you really wanted privacy.
"What you did today was reckless and I want to be clear that a repeat will be punished very severely."
I opened my mouth to protest but Kaleb talked right over me. "I had someone debrief Simon and Nathanial while they were waiting to see if Vincent would be okay. The report hit my monitor before Brandon left. The long and short of it seems to be that Jasmin shot her mouth off and you got involved rather than just letting her deal with the consequences of her actions."
"Vincent has been riding her for days. She can hardly be blamed for losing her temper."
"Yes, she can. She's got the heart of a fighter, but this isn't the first time that she's written checks with her mouth that she can't cash. If this were a single incident I might have a different view of things, but it's not and she's not going to learn any different if you shield her from the consequences of her actions."
"What exactly is she supposed to learn, Dad? That Vincent is an ass and she just has to put up with whatever he decides to inflict on her?"
I'd meant to just use his name like always, but somehow it had just slipped out. It wasn't like I thought it would buy me anything.
"That's exactly what she needs to learn. It's not fair, but it's the way life works. The pack needs aggressive, strong fighters, and Vincent pulls as much or more time down on the border than anyone else we've got."
"So just because Vincent is a better killer Jasmin has to suffer?"
"Yes, not to put too fine a point on it. I'm fighting a war, Alec, and that means that I need soldiers. Jasmin probably would have adjusted to her lot in life years ago if you'd just let things follow their natural order. Instead, you've covered for her time and time again and the result is that she's constantly getting in over her head and you're getting involved in fights that you can't win."
"I beat Vincent just fine."
"No, Alec, you got lucky. I can see that just by looking at you, but even without the obvious evidence of how close you came to losing, I could still have predicted that Vincent was too much of a handful for you now. He's been in combat at least fifty percent of the time for the last six months. This is the longest stretch of time that he's been back in Sanctuary at once and the only reason he's stayed this long is because I ordered him to take some time off."
"So send him back out there. It's not like anyone around here will miss him."
"No. Vincent needs some downtime. Even the most aggressive warrior will eventually burn out if he's in a hot zone for too long. Besides, things work best when the two of you are kept far apart and it's past time for you to spend some time out on the frontlines yourself. I've tried to give you time to manifest a power out of all that potential that Mallory is convinced that you have, but I can't wait any longer. The cats have pushed back up above the Mexican border and I need more bodies down there."
Kaleb rubbed his eyes and then took in the damage to my chest with another wave. "The other packs have noticed that I've kept you and some of your friends out of the fighting longer than is normal and some of them are starting to complain. The truth is though that even if the war wasn't going against us I'd still be sending you down there. You need more experience. You need to toughen up or the next time Vincent will come out on top and there's no guarantee that he'll be satisfied with just putting you in a bed for a few days."
"If he did that you'd be forced to kill him."
"Don't be so sure of that, Alec. You're creating a lot of resentment in the pack with the way you're acting lately. You're trying to swing above your weight class and everyone knows it. Only the fact that you're my son has kept some of the old guard from putting you in your place before now."
My beast surged up in a flare of power. It wasn't the full heat of a transformation, but it was close. I knew that I wasn't a match for Kaleb, but we'd never actually fought so my beast didn't share my certainty and it didn't like the way that Kaleb had just called us weak.
"This isn't about your friends from back in the day, Kaleb, this is about the fact that you would let Brandon protect Vincent despite yelling at me for protecting Jasmin."
"You still don't get it, Alec. Brandon is becoming a force in this pack. I wasn't lying earlier when I said that I could still deal with him if I had to, but I don't want to resort to calling on Puppeteer to wipe out a third of the pack. I need the people he's so busy trying to splinter away from me. Things with the rest of the Coun'hij are balanced on a razor's edge right now. I'm holding onto control of the Coun'hij by a margin that is so slim that you'd have to be directly involved with our meetings to appreciate it. If I lose control of the Coun'hij things will get a lot worse."
"Yeah, a lot worse for you."
"No, a lot worse for this entire pack, and a lot worse for the rest of the shape shifters out there. Puppeteer likes to exercise his control over the werewolves and he's not particularly picky about who he uses when he feels like it's time for an object lesson. I know you've never been involved in any real fighting, but try to imagine for just a second what the estate would look like if two dozen werewolves came through on a rampage. Your mother, your sister, everyone who wasn't fast enough to get out before the house was surrounded, would be killed."
"Even if you lost control of the Coun'hij, Puppeteer wouldn't dare attack us like that. We're the largest pack in all of North America. The rest of the packs would band together and destroy the Coun'hij if they tried anything like that."
"Don't be so sure, Alec. Nobody banded together when the Coun'hij took down the monarchy however many thousands of years ago. There have been plenty of other packs that Puppeteer has wanted to take a hardline position with recently. Jaclyn and her people down in Arizona have been especially difficult lately, and while Jaclyn's power makes her more than a match for any normal hybrid, her pack wouldn't have a prayer even against just a dozen werewolves. I'm the only thing holding him in check right now."
Kaleb suddenly looked tired and a part of me wanted to forget all of the times he'd screwed me over during my life and not be quite such a jerk towards him. It was a tempting prospect to imagine that we could still be one big happy family, but experience had shown me that Kaleb always had some kind of ulterior motive when he was acting the most reasonable.
"The truth is that our pack has simply gotten too big, Alec. We're ten percent bigger than the Chicago pack now and given all of the kids running around here we'll probably see as many as two dozen more shape shifters join our ranks in the next four or five years."
"So let Brandon split off. He'll take most of the undesirables with him and life will get a lot easier."
"Undesirable to you maybe, but Vincent and the others are some of our most promising young fighters. I need them, I need every person we've got if I'm going to keep control of the Coun'hij. You're at least partially right, the sheer size of our pack serves as an incredible deterrent for everyone from the dispossessed all the way up to guys like Puppeteer. I'm going to eventually have to let the pack fragment into smaller units, but that needs to happen in the right way and at the right time. I've got to hold things together until the pack can split into three parts rather than just two."
Kaleb pointed at the door that Brandon had used to leave and then pointed at me. "I'm hoping that Brandon will take part of the pack and that you will do the same. If we split the pack three ways then you'll be able to help me make sure that Brandon doesn't get out of control. It w
ill get rid of a lot of the internal pressure that we're experiencing right now, but as long as the two of you base your packs somewhere close then it goes a long way towards preserving the deterrent that we've built up right now."
It was the best bait that Kaleb could have possibly trolled out in front of me and he knew it. I'd wanted a way out for years now, but this represented something even better—a way out not just for me, but for the people who were important to me as well.
"That's right, son. That's the reason that I haven't made any kind of fuss about the way that you're starting to create your own little power bloc. Ultimately that's exactly what I want you to do. I would have let Brandon split off already but I'm trying to hold things together for long enough that your power can manifest and give you the most important tool you'll need as a pack alpha."
It was a tempting vision of the future, but I knew it was nothing more than a mirage. I tried to conceal my disbelief behind a well-worn bitterness regarding my situation. "It appears that you're going to be waiting for a long time. Maybe it's time to start developing some contingency plans."
"Your power will manifest eventually, Mallory is sure of it. She's never seen someone with your sheer level of potential fail to manifest a power and she's seen a lot of hybrids come and go, both inside the pack and outside of it, in the last few decades. Don't lose heart, Alec. This is bigger than just you or me. There are a lot of people, more than you can imagine, depending on us getting this right."
