by Dean Murray
Chapter 20
Alec Graves
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah
Rachel was waiting for me in her room exactly as she'd promised. At her invitation, I walked inside and then closed the door behind me.
It had been an incredibly long time since I'd seen Rachel's room. We usually talked in the solarium. Actually, the last time that I'd been here it had been decorated in pinks with cartoon posters scattered over almost every inch of the walls.
It looked like a different room altogether now. The walls had been redone in whites and the furniture had been replaced with simple but elegant pieces made out of rosewood. The wood was fragrant enough that I was pretty sure that it was noticeable even to Rachel, but for me it was like stepping into a candy shop.
I took a deep breath of the sweet scent and then opened my eyes and took in the rest of the room. She'd had it remodeled so that the closets were bigger, which was hardly a surprise, but what did catch me off guard was the sewing mannequin just visible in the mirrors that took up the entire far end of the room.
"I didn't know that you liked to sew, Rachel."
"I don't, I mean not exactly. I like to design. Sewing is just kind of a necessary evil. Everyone thinks that the shopping trips are because I'm a spoiled little girl who likes to spend Kaleb's money, but mostly I just like to go see all those different clothes. Most of what Mom wears lately is stuff that I designed and made."
"How have we lived together all of these years without me realizing that?"
Rachel's smile was sad, but there wasn't any resentment to it. "Because we don't really live together. You live in one world and I live in a different one. You live in the middle of all of the constant machinations that define this place even though you don't realize it. I, on the other hand, just try to keep a low profile and hope that nobody notices me, because I can't protect myself and I hate the price it takes out of you and Mother when you're forced to protect me."
I shook my head. "I've never once begrudged anything I had to do to keep you safe, Rachel. That bit about us living in two different realities is crap. I should have thought to ask you about your hobbies. I should have made more time for the two of us to be together without worrying about all of the craziness inherent in living here."
Rachel walked over and gave me a hug. "You never thought to ask because you've never had any hobbies of your own, Alec. Every time you started to develop an interest in anything other than fighting, Kaleb has done his very best to run you to the ground until you forgot about whatever it was that had caught your interest."
I opened my mouth to disagree with her, but she was right. I'd never seen it before, but Kaleb had stopped me from dabbling in anything that might have interfered with his vision of me as a weapon to be pulled out whenever he needed it and then safely locked back up once he was done with me.
"You're a pretty smart kid, Rach. Maybe we would have all been better off if you'd been born a shape shifter rather than me."
Rachel shook her head and tapped my chest over my heart. "I couldn't have done some of the things you've done already, Alec. There's something about you that draws people to you almost despite themselves. I think it's because you have such a good heart. That's your greatest asset—don't let anyone take it away from you."
"Kaleb thinks it's a weakness. He thinks people who are drawn to me out of loyalty are useless and that I should be creating a coalition out of people who bind themselves to me out of fear or greed."
"That's because Dad lost his heart a long time ago. I've spent a lot of time talking to Donovan about what things used to be like, and I think that Dad used to draw people the same way that you do, but somewhere along the way he let that be taken away and now he doesn't view it as a legitimate tool because it's not one that he can use anymore."
Regret filled me at the prospect of taking away the last little bit of innocence that Rachel had maintained despite having spent her life in this cesspool. The emotion seemed to rise up through my chest and neck bringing the threat of tears with it.
"Rachel, he can't be redeemed."
"I know that you and Mom say that a lot, Alec, but you didn't get to see the same side of him that I did. Maybe it was because I was a daughter instead of a son, or maybe it was because he always suspected that I wouldn't ever manifest a second shape, but he's shown incredible kindness to me at different points of my life."
I guided Rachel over to her bed and pulled her down so that she was sitting next to me.
"He's having Brandon and Vincent kill innocent people and framing the cats for it. He's hoping to create enough outrage among all of the other packs to keep his operations down there staffed with other people so that he can pull our pack out without negatively impacting his war."
Rachel looked like she was going to be sick.
"You're sure?"
"I saw Vincent and his guys kill dozens of people with my own eyes. They didn't know I was there or they would have killed me too to keep their secret, but I know that Brandon ordered them to do it and this whole war with the cats has always been Kaleb's idea."
"You didn't hear Dad order it though? That means that it's possible that he doesn't know about it."
"Mother is convinced that he's the one behind it. That's what she was hiding from us. She'd heard rumors that some of the deaths down on the border weren't actually the result of the cats, but she didn't know for sure until I confirmed it just now."
Rachel stood up like she was going to go find Kaleb and confront him, but I grabbed her hand and refused to let her go.
"Rach, you can't do that. Kaleb will know that you had to have heard it from Mother or me. He'll kill you to keep the word from getting out. This is the kind of thing that could ignite a spark of rebellion in all of the independent packs."
Rachel dropped back down onto her bed, but she was still shaking her head. "There has to be another way, Alec. I know it looks bad, but you don't know for sure. It's still possible that he isn't behind those deaths."
She looked like she was about to burst into tears, which made what I was going to have to say next all the harder. I put my hands on either side of her face and gently forced her to look at me.
"Rach, I just talked to Kaleb and he told me that he's giving you to Vincent. Brandon demanded you as part of continuing to support him and Kaleb agreed. Brandon and Vincent are flying up from Arizona this evening."
It was like I'd just cut the strings that moved Rachel around. She was still sitting upright on the bed next to me, but the liveliness and energy that I'd always associated with her had vanished in the instant that I'd told her the full range of her father's betrayal. When she did finally speak the words came out sounding cold and dead.
"Vincent caught me off by myself a few months ago. He said things, made threats, but I told him if he touched me that Kaleb would kill him. It made him back off, but he said that I wouldn't always have you and Kaleb to hide behind. I thought he was threatening Kaleb. I didn't realize that he was capable of making Dad just hand me over to him without a fight."
"You should have told me when it happened, Rach. I would have killed Vincent back then and none of this would have happened."
She shook her head, but the motion was too listless for the person I was looking at to be my little sister.
"No, Alec. If I'd told you then you would have tried to kill him. Even if you'd have won, you still would have paid too high a price. Everyone thinks that Kaleb goes easy on you, but he doesn't, not when it actually matters. He would have hurt you really, really bad. I couldn't have that on my conscience."
Rachel looked around her room and the first tears finally trickled down her cheeks. Someone else might have thought that she was crying over the things that she was going to be leaving behind, but I knew better. She wasn't crying for the things she would be losing but rather the dreams that she now knew would never be realized. She was mourning a world of possibility that had just been ripped away from her and replaced
with one of the darkest futures imaginable.
I could see that she was already starting to retreat inside of herself, leaving behind everything that she could possibly sacrifice in an effort to preserve the most important bits of her identity for as long as possible. I left the bed and kneeled down in front of her so that she had to look at me.
"I'm not letting this happen, Rach. I have a plan, the beginnings of one at least. I'm going to get you out of here and we're going to go somewhere better than this. We'll find a place where we won't always be in danger of surrendering our humanity just to survive."
"No, Alec. I can't let you do that. It's just too dangerous."
"You don't have a choice, Rachel. I'm going to do whatever I have to do to stop this. You can go along and make it easier on me or you can refuse to help and stack the odds even further against me than they already are, but I'm going to do this."
"You'll die, Alec."
"Maybe, but I'd rather be dead than continue to live knowing that I've become just as guilty in my own way as Kaleb, Brandon and Vincent."
"I won't fight you, but if you change your mind and back out before Vincent comes to collect me I won't hold it against you."
"Okay, wear some sturdy clothes, some good shoes and pack light—really, really light. We'll buy whatever we need once we make it someplace safe."
