Bound: A YA Urban Fantasy Novel (Volume 1 of the Dark Reflections Books)

by Dean Murray

  Chapter 11

  Alec Graves

  Rest Easy Hotel

  Rio Rico, Arizona

  James was back on his feet, but he was obviously not at one hundred percent. He was a little paler than normal and he moved with the slow care of someone who had discovered that it hurt if they moved too fast and pulled at still-healing wounds.

  His wounds actually looked pretty good now, but obviously his injuries had taken a mental toll on him. He didn't look very happy to have to sit and wait with everyone else for Brandon to show up so that the briefing could start.

  Actually, he wasn't the only one who looked unhappy. There was a different feeling to the room than there'd been at the last briefing and I was pretty sure that it had a lot to do with the fact that everyone here knew that Brandon had let Vincent take a shot at us. It was the kind of thing that sent a little thrill of satisfaction through me, but I sternly reminded myself not to let my success so far go to my head. It was always possible if I got to be enough of a problem that Brandon might just decide to have me eliminated despite the risks.

  I took a deep breath and then pushed all of that to one side and let myself think about the last couple of days. I'd had a surprising amount of fun at the pool. It had been nice to just kick back and do nothing for hours at a time. Jasmin, Jess and I had laughed and joked until my face had hurt from smiling so much. Alison had even thawed out a little there by the end, which had been an added reward.

  Lazy summer days by the pool. Given the amount of money behind the Graves name some people might have expected that I'd done little more than sit around like that so far in my life, but the truth was that Kaleb had kept me pretty busy almost as far back as I could remember. I'd always had at least a little time to do with as I'd wanted, but although there was a small pool back home, pack life had never really lent itself to lounging around at a pool so I'd always found other ways to spend my limited free time.

  I wouldn't have expected being down here on the border to change any of that, but it had. Knowing that we could be sent into battle with only a few hours' notice had lent our downtime an odd kind of vividness that I'd never experienced previously.

  It was probably true that I'd get restless if hours spent at the pool was the sole sum of my existence, but resting in the sun with three beautiful women close at hand, even if I couldn't quite see myself with any of them, had been the perfect way to spend the last few days.

  James had come out to join us for a couple of hours yesterday and Juan had even swung by and spent an hour or so with us. It hadn't been planned, at least not that I'd been able to tell, and I hadn't expected such a short time together to make any kind of significant difference to our cohesion as a group, but it had. Instead of being spread out with Juan in one spot, Alison in another and the rest of us in a third, all six of us had chosen to stand together while we waited for the briefing to start.

  My musings were interrupted by Brandon's arrival. He strode into the room like he owned it; he didn't seem to notice the new tension that was present in the room.

  "Thank you all for coming today. I'd planned on simply briefing you all on the latest target that the Brain Box has identified for us, but I'm afraid that something else has come up."

  Brandon pulled his remote out of a pocket and turned off the lights at the same time that he brought the projector online.

  "Just this morning we got word of four deaths in a little town east of here called Hereford. The police and town officials are busy suppressing any mention of the murders because all four people were 'savaged by some kind of large, clawed beast.' The Brain Box has been trying for the last several hours to obtain photos of the wounds in question, but so far they've been spectacularly unsuccessful. Some of the hacks that they've been using lately to compromise target IT systems have been identified by the greater security community and new hotfixes are slowly making their way out to state and local government computer systems. We could be flying blind for several weeks until our intelligence assets manage to find new ways into the systems that we need access to."

  Brandon let that tidbit of news sink in for a moment and then clicked a button which caused the map of Arizona to appear on the screen.

  "As you can see, Hereford is very much inside the territory claimed by the Tucson pack and ideally we'd just leave the investigation to them, but as is their normal practice lately they aren't returning any of my calls."

  It was a weak attempt at a joke, even from Brandon and not just because it highlighted the fundamental rift between the Coun'hij and most of the rest of the wolves in North America.

  "It's traditional to leave the policing of their borders to each individual pack, but given that this particular incident has the potential to cause our existence to become disseminated to the general public, I've been asked to provide a team to help deal with things in Hereford."

  There was a low rumble, not discontent exactly, but at the very least surprise. The Coun'hij had dedicated troubleshooters who dealt with any kind of threat that could cause our secret to be pushed out into the open. It was unheard of for the Coun'hij to require extra help just to deal with a few deaths like this. Not only that, it was the kind of assignment that had the potential to blow up in a person's face.

  If you did a good job and destroyed any and all evidence that would cause people to keep asking questions, then at best you might get a pat on the back. If you screwed things up and missed some critical piece of information then you could pretty much count on your life going to crap.

  Brandon seemed to realize that his presentation wasn't very convincing. "I should clarify. The Coun'hij will be sending in one of their specially-trained troubleshooters to clean up the evidence, they just need one of our teams to go provide some support so that their guy doesn't get ambushed by whatever killed those humans."

  That was a slightly better prospect. We were all a lot more comfortable with a bodyguard role than with any kind of information suppression, but some of the Coun'hij's troubleshooters had a pretty bad reputation. Worst of all was the fact that Brandon hadn't indicated that the group who went on this op would be getting any kind of reprieve from whatever Brandon had in the works before the murders in Hereford hit his radar. Running back-to-back ops without at least a couple of days' downtime between them was a recipe for a mutiny, which was probably why Brandon was essentially asking for volunteers rather than just ordering a team to go take care of things.

  The silence grew to the point where it was obvious nobody was going to say anything and Brandon's frown grew in lockstep to the ticking of the clock.

  "Vincent, I hate to order anyone to do this task given that it shouldn't even be our job and that we'll still be going forward with the operation first thing tomorrow night, but your guys are some of the best we've got."

  I'd seen Vincent at a loss for words on more occasions than I could count, but usually that was because he was mad and his relatively limited vocabulary was failing him. I'd never seen him unable to speak and looking uncomfortable at the same time.

  "I…ah, that is, I think you're forgetting about that matter you wanted me to deal with. I don't see how I could do both, not unless you were okay with postponing that other thing…"

  Brandon looked like he wanted to spit nails and a pulse of power roared through the room before he got himself back under control.

  "No, you're right. Someone else will need to go to Hereford. Finishing the preparations for your other assignment takes precedence."

  I could tell that I wasn't the only one surprised by what Brandon had said. In theory, Brandon was subordinate to the Coun'hij and therefore this secret mission he'd assigned to Vincent shouldn't be superseding the job in Hereford.

  Without really knowing why I was doing so, I leaned forward and whispered to Juan. "I really think we should volunteer for this one."

  Another team leader would have just told me to shut up. Juan did give me an odd look like he was trying to figure out what my angle was, but after a cou
ple of seconds he cleared his throat.

  "We'll go to Hereford."

  Brandon shook his head. "You're down two people right now. In fact, your team is part of the reason that I haven't been pushing for the main op to be put together before now. You're not back up to full strength until just before the op goes live."

  Juan shrugged. "We can leave James here so that he doesn't get set back at all. Alec seems to be raring to help out, so who am I to tell him he has to stay here?"

  His bland tone seemed to indicate just how stupid he thought I was being. It drew a chuckle from a few of the shape shifters who'd been close enough to hear me ask him to volunteer, but apparently Brandon at least hadn't been able to hear my whisper to Juan. A flicker of something that almost looked like confusion crossed Brandon's face and then he nodded.

  "That works for me. Thank you for being willing to help out. You guys should go ahead and get on the road now. We can bring you up to speed on the big op once you are back here tomorrow morning. I'll let my contact on the Coun'hij know that you're the ones he needs to get in touch with."