Driven

by Dean Murray

  My tremble hadn't disappeared and it redoubled as I listened to Rachel. After everything else we'd been through, after all of the times I'd nearly died, I couldn't believe that she was telling me Ben was going to continue to decay before my eyes while the solution to everything that had been done to him slept less than a dozen yards away from us.

  I wanted to protest but Rachel didn't give me a chance. "I promise, Jas, this is the only way. He'll walk before he'll take us on faith and if he walks there isn't any other way to save Ben. There are others who could do it, but they'd kill you both or turn him against you instead of helping."

  "You swear, Rachel? Because if you're lying to me I will find you and when I kill you it won't be a clean death. You've already put me through hell twice over."

  Part of me knew that I was pushing too hard. This wasn't some bloodsucking vampire I was talking to, it wasn't one of the Coun'hij, it wasn't my archenemy, it was Rachel. In some ways she deserved how I was treating her, but mostly she didn't. I couldn't seem to help myself though. I'd never been the best at keeping my mouth in check and these days I was even worse at it. My beast was just too powerful.

  "I swear it. The road isn't going to be easy but if we all do everything just right, this ends up with you both getting what you want."

  "Fine, we'll do it your way. Melody first and then Ben gets cured."

  Geoffrey nodded, but Rachel wasn't done.

  "That's not the extent of the deal. Ben can't die or the whole deal is off, and I don't just mean that I won't help you find Melody anymore, I mean I'll lead you into a trap that is guaranteed to kill you, Geoffrey."

  "I can live with that. As long as the two of you lead me to Melody I'll do everything within my power to save him."

  There was a new edge to Rachel's voice that I wasn't sure I'd ever heard before. "That's not good enough, not for either side. Melody isn't just sitting in the suburbs somewhere waiting for the two of you to come get her, she's being held captive. The deal is this. Jasmin will help you break into where Melody is being held, and in return you will do everything possible to help Ben, including going into his mind and strengthening whatever needs strengthened to keep him alive if it takes longer than you're expecting to get to Melody. In return I'll do everything I can to move the two of you along towards your goals of saving Melody and saving Ben. That's the deal, take it or leave it."

  Geoffrey's poker face slipped a little and I couldn't blame him. The 'deal' that Rachel had just offered him was actually better than what he'd been after. She'd thrown in me helping him free Melody from who knew what kind of nasty beasties and all that I'd gotten in exchange was slightly different language when it came to him saving Ben. Geoffrey was very satisfied with what he'd been offered, but that didn't mean that I was happy with it.

  "Hold on, Rach, I never agreed to throw myself into any kind of fight to save this Melody chick."

  "Do you trust me, Jasmin?"

  "Honestly? For the last week or two all you've done is throw me from one mess where I've almost died to the next bloody snafu. I'm not sure that you really deserve much trust anymore."

  For the first time in a while Rachel sounded a little hurt. "You've had a rough go of things, but I've kept you alive so far. I'm not going to throw you into anything you can't win, Jasmin. Everything that's happened so far has happened for a reason, you have to believe me."

  I didn't want to agree, but something like fifteen or sixteen years of shared trials pulled an answer out of me.

  "Yeah, I guess I still trust you."

  "Then agree to the deal. It's the best you're going to get out of him. I promise. I've seen it."

  "Okay, I agree, as long as you and Mr. Fangs over there agree to hold up your ends of things."

  Geoffrey nodded, but before I could tell him that he had to actually say yes, Rachel jumped in again. "A nod isn't going to suffice, Geoffrey. Oh, and I agree, or promise or whatever."

  "Very well, I agree too. I have to say though that you're a pretty poor fortune teller. Anyone who could really see the future would have found a way to corner me into agreeing to something more along the lines of what Jasmin wanted just now. After the way you've botched this little negotiation you're lucky I'm agreeing at all. I don't know how you're accomplishing some of these little tricks, maybe you've got some kind of video feed here or something, but it's obvious to me that you can't see the future like you've been implying."

  Unlike before, Rachel didn't sound hurt, she just sounded tired. "I don't actually care what you believe, Geoffrey. The truth is that there isn't anything important out there that's hidden from me, but that doesn't matter, at least not right now. You still believe me enough that you're going to act. You're going to go after Melody and when the appropriate time comes you'll go inside of Ben's mind and you'll exercise every bit of knowledge and power you have at your fingertips to do what you've just committed to."

  Geoffrey hadn't looked particularly mad before, but he was obviously angry now. "I've had more months than I care to think about listening to that kind of all-powerful garbage from Imastious. I'll help Ben after you two take me to Melody, but don't try to double-cross me, and stop lying to me. It's only a matter of time before I figure out how you're doing this. Nobody is omniscient."

  "I never said that I was omniscient, merely that I see the important stuff. Maybe you're operating from a false premise, maybe this negotiation wasn't important enough for me to see it."

  Geoffrey's laugh was biting. "Maybe, but that isn't the only possible answer."

  "You're right, it's not the only possible answer. The other option is that this negotiation needed to happen just the way that it did."

  Geoffrey just laughed harder, but I could hear Rachel continue over the sound of his amusement.

  "Are you really that ready to dismiss the idea, Geoffrey? Are you really positive that our little discussion just now wasn't the proverbial flapping of the butterfly's wings that creates a hurricane months or even years from now?"

  Geoffrey's laughter cut off instantly, but he didn't seem ready to answer her.

  "Right, I didn't think so. Just do your part, Jasmin will do hers, and you'll both get what you've asked for once you've paid the price."

  I cleared my throat. "So what's the next step?"

  "Go find Melody. Puppeteer has her."

  Chapter 9

  Jasmin Bianchi

  Pinnacle Luxury Hotel

  Manhattan, New York

  Rachel hung up on us before I could ask her where Puppeteer was. I should have gotten my question out sooner, but I'd been so shocked by the revelation that Geoffrey's girl was being held by one of the Coun'hij that I'd just sat there for several seconds.

  "How about you tell me who Puppeteer is and why Rachel just made sure that she wouldn't have to tell us how to find him?"

  Geoffrey looked calm, but I could hear his heart hammering away at his chest and he smelled like his body temperature was elevated. It wasn't until that point that I realized just how controlled he usually was. I should have been getting all kinds of non-verbal clues off of him before then. Scent, heartbeat, respiration, normally all of that combined to tell a shape shifter what another person was feeling.

  Usually I could tell when someone was lying to me, but Geoffrey hadn't been giving off any of the normal cues until right after Rachel hung up on us. Usually you didn't see that kind of thing out of anyone other than a sociopath or another shape shifter, one who'd spent decades training themselves not to betray what they were actually thinking.

  It was a bad sign, not because I really thought that Geoffrey was a sociopath, at least not any more or less than any other vampire, but because I didn't actually know whether he'd been telling the truth when he'd said that he would help Ben. I was depending on Rachel too much and it had happened without me even realizing it.

  "You just realized something, what was it?"

  I looked over at Geoffrey and shook my head. "It doesn't have anything to do with Puppeteer."


  "That doesn't mean that it isn't important though, and you don't expect me to really believe that you were just thinking about something unrelated to what Rachel just told us."

  "I said drop it."

  For a second I thought that I'd gone too far. I wasn't any more prepared to fight him now than I'd been a few minutes ago and this time Rachel wasn't available to keep us from going for each other's throats.

  "I could find out if I really wanted to."

  I shook my head. "If I catch you poking around in my head I will kill you, no questions asked. Don't think you can sneak something in there without me realizing it either, my beast is very good at detecting those kinds of things."

  I dialed Rachel's latest number again, hoping beyond hope that she'd pick up, but it went straight to voicemail. I sighed in frustration and then looked up to find Geoffrey looking at me, but he looked more curious than angry.

  "Your beast? You talk like it's a separate entity inside of you."

  "She is. I'm in control almost all of the time, but she's always back there. She's where the power to change shapes comes from, and she doesn't view the world in quite the same way as you or I do."

  Geoffrey nodded, obviously filing that information away for later analysis. "So who is Puppeteer?"

  "I want your word that all of this stays a secret. My people have worked very hard for a very long time to keep our existence a secret from the vampire community."

  "I didn't think that you trusted me to keep any promises."

  "I don't, but I'd be pretty stupid not to swear you to secrecy on the off chance that you really do take your promises seriously."

  Geoffrey looked at me for several long seconds before nodding. "Very well. I don't actually associate with any other vampires and I'll be doing my best to keep things that way, but if things change for some reason I'll keep your secrets as best I can."

  I was going to protest the weak wording he was using, but he stopped me with a gesture. "I'd like to promise that I'd take what you're about to tell me to my grave, but the truth is that I can't guarantee that. I could be recaptured by Imastious at any point, and if that happens it's unlikely that I'll be able to keep anything back from him. It's one of the hazards that come along with being a vampire."

  That shut me up faster than I would have believed possible. When Adri had joined the pack she'd commented more than once that pack life was incredibly intrusive. I'd been a part of that life for as long as I could remember; I'd long since become used to just how much everyone was up in everyone else's business, but that didn't mean she was wrong. Pack life was bad enough. Never being able to lie to a direct question sucked in ways that most people couldn't even begin to understand, but that was nothing compared to what Geoffrey was describing.

  "Okay, thank you for promising. We shape shifters, the wolves at least, are spread out through all of the continental United States and Canada. Mostly we are just a loose assortment of independent packs that range in size from nine or ten wolves all the way up to eighty or ninety wolves."

  "You have a third shape then as well?"

  That threw me for a loop for a moment. "Yes. We actually think of our wolf bodies as our second shape and the hybrid form as the third shape, but you're not wrong. I've got a total of three forms."

  I waited for a second to see if he had any other questions and then continued. "A long time ago the packs were united by a powerful king. Some people thought a new golden age had begun, but his son was deposed by a group of the most fearsome hybrids then living. Ever since then we've been ruled by an unjust group that calls itself the Coun'hij. Puppeteer is one of the members of the Coun'hij."

  "So by stealing Melody away from him we'll be making enemies of your entire people?"

  I shook my head. "There is little love lost between many of the packs and the Coun'hij. Even some of the members of the Coun'hij are said not to care much for each other. Currently large portions of my people are in active rebellion against the Coun'hij."

  "And yet you're still incredibly scared of the Coun'hij."

  I wanted to bristle at the accusation, but the truth was that he was right. I was scared of the Coun'hij and of Puppeteer especially. I was a hybrid, a big, fast, strong hybrid, but I wasn't Alec or Grayson. I hadn't ever manifested one of the unique abilities that would have allowed me to immobilize or kill dozens of people instantly.

  "Yes, I'm scared of them, Puppeteer most of all. Some hybrids manifest special abilities, things that can't be explained by modern physics any more than your mentalist abilities can be. Puppeteer is one of the most powerful of these kinds of hybrids."

  When I closed my eyes at night I could still sometimes see the mass of werewolves coming for us, tearing through the manor house, bigger and faster than any hybrid, lethal in ways that most of us could never even hope to match.

  "You're aware of the existence of creatures that look like my hybrid form only larger and stronger?"

  Geoffrey nodded and for the first time he seemed to share some of my fear. "Yes, there were rumors even before they arrived. Legends among the vampires of things that hunted us, that preyed on us like most of my kind preys on the humans. I suppose, looking back now, that some of those myths might have been due to your kind rather than the werewolves, but even so, some of the other vampires in the city didn't want to believe any of it was really happening when the werewolves started picking us off. There were dozens of them, maybe even hundreds."

  This was something new. Werewolves had always preferred killing vampires and shape shifters over humans, but it didn't seem possible for fighting on that scale to take place without the humans finding out about it.

  "When did that happen and how did you beat them? Your powers don't work on them so you would have had to kill them with steel."

  "You're right to a point. They absorb our powers, but they can only absorb so much. If enough vampires, especially vampire Elders, focus their gifts on a single werewolf they can overcome its absorption abilities and kill it, usually by setting it on fire."

  Geoffrey was silent for nearly a minute, but I didn't disturb him. Someone who hadn't been through the hell of battle might have pushed for answers right then, but I didn't. I'd survived the same kind of flickering nightmare and I was more than willing to let him relive those moments if that was what he needed right then.

  "As to when it happened, it was just a few weeks ago here in New York. You remember the riots that happened towards the end of the year?"

  "Yes. Now that you mention it, I remember that there were reports of widespread blackouts in large sections of the city, but everyone said that some of the city's power distribution infrastructure had been destroyed during the riots."

  "No, that was the werewolves. They were hunting us. It seemed like they outmatched us at every turn. They could sense us and they only attacked when they had us outnumbered. We lucked out and killed a few, but it all culminated in a huge fight involving nearly every vampire in the city."

  "You guys won?"

  "Yes. The individual werewolves were nothing more than cunning beasts, but sometimes it seemed like there was a larger intelligence at work. I outsmarted it by virtue of using humans to help us win. We equipped them with crossbows and they killed enough werewolves for the vampires not to be swept away in the initial rush."

  The answer had been there all along, he just hadn't known about the Coun'hij, hadn't known enough to put the pieces together and neither had I.

  "The larger intelligence you just spoke of was almost certainly Puppeteer. His power is the ability to control werewolves, vast numbers of werewolves."

  The silence between us stretched out again. Geoffrey finally sighed and rubbed his temples. "It all makes more sense now. I wouldn't have thought something like that to be possible, but it explains a lot. He's the one who brought the werewolves out of hiding in such large numbers after so long.

  "It doesn't explain why he came after us like that, or why he wanted Melody, but it makes sense
that Melody would still be with him. The werewolf that took…I couldn't ever explain it before now, but it all fits together too perfectly to be anything but the truth."

  My beast still didn't trust him. She would have happily ripped his throat out, and I couldn't blame her. He was a vampire. Regardless of what he'd been before the transformation, regardless of the code he might be trying to cling to now, he was a parasite. It was a biological imperative and nothing he did could change that. He killed people in order to survive.

  Still, I felt the slightest bit of kinship with him. "I'm sorry, Geoffrey. I know what it's like to lose someone you care about. My friends and family have suffered at the hands of Puppeteer and the rest of the Coun'hij for centuries. He's a monster and I wish someone had been able to put him down ages ago."

  Geoffrey shrugged. "It sounds to me like that would have been impossible. Surely he's the most dangerous individual in the entire world. He must have a constant guard of werewolves, big, strong and impervious to any supernatural ability regardless of whether it is wielded by your people or mine. Where is he?"

  "Nobody is sure. The Coun'hij is powerful, but they could never stand up to the full might of the rest of the shape shifters in North America. Their greatest shield is the fact that they have kept their location a secret ever since they came to power. I'm sure that they've been tracked back to their base at some point or another, but they've always been able to seal the leak, kill whomever they needed to kill, and then move to a new location."

  "So we're faced with an impossible task then. First we have to find Puppeteer and the rest, and then once we manage that we'll be up against what I can only assume are dozens of your kind and dozens or possibly hundreds of werewolves as well."

  My breathing had slowed down the way it sometimes did when I was faced with an especially difficult decision. Apparently all of those years of yoga and breath control meditation had left more of an impact on me than I'd thought when I stopped practicing them.