Riven

by Dean Murray

  Once the call was done, I confirmed with Donovan that the arrangements for our date were all completed and then went looking for Adri. I found her waiting for me in my room with a copy of Pride and Prejudice resting open on her lap.

  "Happy Valentine's Day, Adri."

  I leaned in and kissed her and then realized as I drew back just how tired she looked.

  "Are you okay, Adri?"

  "Yeah, I'm fine. Having Mom here just took more out of me than I expected it to. Did you know that Russ proposed?"

  I double-checked that my ability wasn't subconsciously draining her and then shook my head in response to her question. "I didn't know—I don't keep a really close eye on her, but I can start doing so if you want me to."

  "No, it's okay. I suspect that Russ is more than capable of doing that all by himself. What do you think of the idea of them getting married?"

  I shrugged. "She's not my mom, Adri. What really matters is how you feel about it."

  "I guess you're right. I'm happy for her, it just feels really, really odd for her to be marrying again already."

  I gently picked the book up off of her knees and set it on the table beside her before pulling her to her feet.

  "For whatever it's worth I didn't turn up any kind of dirt on Russ in any of the checks we did on him. I think he's a very capable, very good guy. Your mom could do a lot worse."

  She leaned into me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. "Russ sounds an awful lot like someone else I know."

  The trip out to the far greenhouse took nearly twenty minutes, but it was all worth it when I got to see the expression on Adri's face as I led her into our own little tropical paradise. Nearly every kind of fruit could be found somewhere inside this particular greenhouse and Adri seemed eager to go explore.

  I laughed and then nudged her towards the raspberries. "They are through that door on the right side. Here's a basket, you go ahead. I'll put out the blanket and then join you in a minute."

  The picnic basket was perfect. With all of the new arrivals we'd had to hire a cook and Donovan had made sure that she'd included plenty of warm, fresh-baked bread and enough butter to slather every piece in yellow goodness and still have half the tin left over. I spread everything out and then picked up an empty container and followed Adri's scent trail. She'd covered the bottom of her bucket with raspberries and then moved on through the various separate sections of the greenhouse collecting tangerines, guava fruit and kiwis. She seemed to be debating over a casaba melon when I finally caught up to her.

  When she wasn't looking I carefully set a grapefruit, which I knew she hated, into her basket and then lifted her up so that she could reach the bottom of an unusually tall peach tree. Our conversation was relaxed and natural for the next twenty minutes while we filled our respective buckets up with fruit.

  Back at the blanket we slowly worked our way through a combination of what Donovan had sent along and the stuff that we'd gathered from inside the greenhouse. Adri cocked her head to the side when I started in on my second loaf of bread. "I thought I was the bread lover."

  "You are, I'm just trying to make sure that I consume enough calories that I'm not hungry sometime in the next two hours."

  She nodded and popped a raspberry into her mouth. "This was perfect, Alec. It reminds me of when we were first together. Simple activities that didn't get in the way of you and I getting to know each other."

  I found myself smiling. "Just wait until you have to mix your own dessert. You'll start singing a different tune then."

  Adri grabbed a container of vanilla yogurt and mixed pieces of tangerine into it. "Nope, I'm still happy. I know that my life is going to be pretty high-profile in some ways after marrying you, but it's memories like this that will keep me going through all of that."

  I used my spoon to sample a bit of her yogurt and gave her a nod. "You should market that stuff, it's really quite good. I think it needs more grapefruit though."

  Adri stuck her tongue out at me and we both laughed for a couple of minutes. Once the laughter died down I reached over and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her left ear. "This has been hard on you, hasn't it?"

  "Honestly? Yes. Not just all the craziness of the wedding prep, although that has been plenty odious. It's all of the other girls too."

  "Adri, you know I'd never..."

  She interrupted me with a quick headshake. "I know you're not responding to any of their advances, but it's still hard to see them throwing themselves at you again and again. It's...well, it's like I get daily evidence that if you ever got the least bit tired of me that you'd have plenty of other options."

  She looked away from me for several seconds and sighed. "I've been wanting to talk to you about how much I hate planning for the wedding, but I haven't. Partly because you warned me that it was going to be like this back when you proposed, but mostly it's because I don't want to seem ungrateful, don't want to make you second-guess your decision to marry me in the first place. Mom told me that I should talk to you about it though."

  I pulled her back around so that I could see her face and then I kissed her forehead. "Adri, I wish you would have said something sooner. Your mom was right, you should always bring these kinds of concerns to me. Do you really think the fact that you prefer not to spend money would make me second-guess marrying you? Half of those girls who are throwing themselves at me would make one exorbitant demand after another if they were in your shoes, just to see what they could get away with."

  She looked up at me with the barest glimmer of hope in her expression and I smiled at her. "I think you're amazing on every level. I'm doing what I can to keep our guests in check, but if it will make you happy I'll send them all home and we can have the simple ceremony that you want."

  The offer hung in the air between us for several seconds before she shook her head again. "No, I knew what I was getting into and besides, it would be the wrong answer. You need to handle the other packs however you think gives us the best chance of recruiting them to our side. Everything depends on that. Not just my happiness but the survival of everyone who depends on you. I haven't forgotten what Shawn told us and I haven't forgotten that I swore to do everything in my power to support you in your quest to take down the Coun'hij and see your people free once again."

  "Not my people, our people. We are off to a small start but things are starting to come together. They'll start to snowball from here and before you know it we'll be safe, truly safe, again."

  "Our people?"

  "Yes, our people. I couldn't do all of this without you."

  Adri pulled me down into a kiss and for a while nothing else mattered.

  Chapter 14

  Dominic Sanchez

  Abandoned Industrial Park

  Cedar City, Utah

  It was nice to be spending a night away from the house, but I couldn't help but feel guilty at the same time. Rachel was doing worse than ever and there wasn't anything I could do but sit there and watch. I'd tried to exercise my supposed healing talent, but nothing had happened. For a second or two I'd almost felt like I was touching something bigger than just Rachel or me, but then it disappeared and I was left with the same result as the time I'd tried to heal James. In a word, nothing.

  The patrols that Alec had started having people run weren't necessarily the kind of thing that most people wanted to be doing, but it was better than sitting there and watching Rachel talk to people who weren't in the room with us. Sometimes she didn't even seem to be able to hear me when I tried to talk to her.

  Jess reached for the stereo and it was all I could do not to hiss at her. We were the wheels for this particular excursion. That meant that we were supposed to be listening to the handheld radio, not rocking out to whatever new song Wyatt had introduced Jess to.

  I told myself to calm down as I took a right turn so that we'd be able to continue to shadow James and Peter. I didn't particularly like Jess' current choice in crushes, but at least some of that was because I knew
exactly how much she and Isaac had been through before Oblivion had stolen her memories. She didn't remember that, not any more at least, so I needed to cut her a break, at least a little bit of one.

  It would have been easier if she wasn't behaving stupidly in so many other respects. This wasn't a punishment detail for the rest of us, but it definitely was for Jess. Since she'd left Rachel on her own Alec had kept her busy with one mission after another, but she still found time to hang out with Wyatt somehow.

  Alec was pretty shrewd, but I was starting to think that he was getting too clever this time around. The patrol needed to be run—we couldn't let the disappearance of five people in two days go uninvestigated this close to our territory—but she didn't need to be here. Rather than punishing her, he was actually just punishing the rest of us with her presence.

  The two-way radio crackled with static and then James' voice reached out of it and soothed away some of my irritation. "Our nose thinks that he's found the scent of one of our missing people. He's headed north."

  I grabbed the transmitter before Jess could pick it up and say something that would piss James off. "Werewolves don't usually drag their victims this far out to kill them."

  "Yeah, I know. They also don't usually leave them alive for this long. I'm starting to think that we're dealing with something else."

  "Not bloodsuckers?"

  "Nope, the whole town smells wonderfully vampire-free. No, best bet is just some psycho dayborn."

  We'd borrowed the setup for these patrols from the Tucson pack. They had a long history of hunting werewolves despite the Coun'hij's orders not to do so, and Peter was their go-to guy for this kind of thing. Peter had been ranging around on four legs for the last two hours as our 'nose' with James following along behind in his normal shape so that he could provide backup if Peter got jumped.

  Jess and I were supposed to stay close enough for the guys to be able to use us as a getaway car but not so close that we'd get pulled into a trap ourselves.

  The silence after James' last transmission lasted only a few seconds before Jess used her bubblegum to blow a massive bubble. "You're lucky to have James. He doesn't seem nearly as annoying as Isaac."

  I shook my head. "James and I have our share of problems, but we work at it and so far things have worked out. Having a relationship is never easy."

  I must have let a little more of my frustration slip into my voice than I'd realized. Jess sat in silence for several seconds before trying again. "So are you going to swear one of these stupid oaths to Alec?"

  "Yes, I am. I would have done so already but James asked me to wait a few weeks so he could think things over."

  "Why? I know you guys think Alec hung the moon, but all he's done lately is order people around and spend a lot of time behind closed doors."

  "That's kind of a personal thing to be asking me. Besides, I'm not sure you'd understand even if I tried to explain it."

  "I'm sorry if I'm prying. I guess I just don't understand why anyone would voluntarily give up their freedom like that."

  Jess suddenly looked very much like she had just after Oblivion had stolen her memories. She was like a lost child who wasn't quite sure where the world she knew had gone. Maybe her usual flightiness was just an attempt to cover up the fact that she still didn't feel like she had a place with us. I needed to give her the benefit of the doubt.

  "Alec saved my life. You all did, but him most of all. None of the rest of you would have stood up to my father like that if Alec hadn't ordered you to help me. It's more than that though. I spent most of my life in a place where might was the only law. It's not the kind of place anyone should ever have to live in."

  Jess looked over at me with confusion on her face but she waited for me to find the words I needed to go on.

  "People sometimes think that what you all live in here is the normal state of things, but it isn't. Civilization is an aberration. It's the best arrangement, but it only takes place when the strongest, the most dangerous among us choose to put aside their self-interest and create a new order, one where the weak are protected. That is what Alec represents. The Coun'hij is nothing more than a bunch of thugs who meddle less than they could, but who ultimately are just in it for themselves."

  "You think that Alec will create a new era for our people."

  "I don't know. Nearly everything imaginable is arrayed against him, but I hope so. I hope that he'll create a new era for your people and then that he'll turn his eyes south and save my people too."

  "Is that even possible?"

  "I don't know. You remember how deadly Anton was? There will be dozens, maybe hundreds more like him in South America, each of them living like a tiny despot and completely unwilling to see a new order put into place."

  I seemed to have finally gotten through to Jess and she sat in silence for several seconds as she considered what I'd told her. "Do you think that we'd be able to recruit some of your people to our side?"

  "I don't know. I never met anyone down there that I really trusted, at least not anyone who is still alive, but Alec is considering the possibility already. He asked me the other day if I knew anyone from back home who might be sympathetic to our cause. I think he would really like to recruit someone who can track like Anton could, but Alec didn't get into any specifics beyond that."

  Whatever Jess would have said was cut off by James' voice coming through the radio. "Girls, I need you both out here right now. The nose thinks he's found all five of the missing people but we're not going in there by ourselves."

  Five minutes later Jess and I were standing outside the door to a massive old building as James and Peter finished circling the building to make sure that the missing people hadn't left out another door.

  James took a deep breath and then pointed at the door. "Okay, it's not vampires and it doesn't feel like werewolves but that doesn't mean that whoever kidnapped these people isn't dangerous so we go in together, Peter in the front, then me, with Dom bringing up the rear. Keep your eyes open and don't forget the rest of your senses."

  Jess and I both nodded and then stripped down to our ha'bits and changed into four legs with a ripple of power. James tested the door and found it locked but his claws punched right through the sheet metal and once he had a decent-sized hole it was a simple matter to reach through and unbar the door.

  Peter ghosted into the darkness without any hesitation, which spoke volumes to the amount of trust he had in James specifically and the rest of us generally. Nobody liked being point in a dangerous situation, but he was the best choice given just how sensitive his nose was.

  A low whine made its way back to us as Jess entered the building, but I didn't understand what was bothering Peter until I was several feet in myself. The entire building had been sprayed with a combination of vinegar and something else that burned my nose with surprising intensity.

  It was a bad sign, but James seemed determined to investigate and I didn't have a good way of speaking out in this form, even assuming that I wanted to get into an argument with him in the middle of an operation.

  It almost seemed like we were in an old slaughterhouse. There was a maze of steel panels crisscrossing the open space that looked like they would be overkill for containing cows. I couldn't smell anything over the vinegar but Peter seemed to be getting a whiff of something that was leading him deeper and deeper into the building.

  It smelled like a trap and I didn't like all of the dead metal, but other than the four of us there wasn't anything else showing the glow of a living organism. I could tell that James was getting jittery too, but Peter was single-mindedly moving deeper into the darkness.

  James took a step forward to call Peter back to us, Jess tight against his flank, when it happened. Massive sheets of steel dropped down from above locking the three of them inside the maze of stock panels. James might have made it out but Jess was too close and she didn't react quickly enough.

  James hit the barrier with his shoulder, but although he managed to
shake the massive improvised cage nothing gave way. I heard Peter moving forward, cautiously looking for a way out, but I had other worries.

  A dimly glowing figure had just stepped out from behind a screen of some kind and he was approaching me slowly with a sword gripped loosely in one hand. He stopped well outside of striking range, fiddled momentarily with something in his hand and then the lights inside the building came on.

  I blinked away spots as I backed up to put more space between us, but he didn't move forward to capitalize on his advantage and as my vision started to clear I noticed just how familiar my opponent looked.

  He was a middle-aged Asian man with a nondescript build, but it was the eyes that finally made things click into place for me. I'd seen those cold eyes once before when I was little more than a child after days of being stalked by a myth that I'd been so sure didn't really exist.

  The Hunter had found me a second time.

  I heard James yelling for me to get them out, but the opponent between them and me was one I knew I couldn't beat. The Hunter took a few steps forward, his sword gleaming darkly in his hand, and then threw a packet of papers at my feet.

  "Vanessa sends her regards. You're going to want to give everything else in there to your alpha. He's going to need to take care of a couple of problems or they'll come back to bite him in unexpected ways."

  Old terror tried to overwhelm me, but my beast provided me with surprising strength and instead of retreating further I found myself slowly advancing. The Hunter smiled slightly like an adult who was amused at the antics of a child and then brought his weapon up into a guard position.

  "You've done well for yourself since I last saw you. You've vindicated my decision to allow his grand experiment to proceed, but never forget that I'm watching from the shadows. He's been wrong before."

  A slight movement of his fingers was the only warning I got. One second the entire building was bathed in light, the next harsh strobes flashed with blinding intensity.