by Dean Murray
Lost
by Dean Murray
Copyright 2014 by Dean Murray
Also by Dean Murray:
The Reflections Series
Broken (free)
Torn (free if you sign up for Dean's Mailing List)
Splintered
Intrusion
Trapped
Forsaken
Riven
The Greater Darkness (Writing as Eldon Murphy) (free)
A Darkness Mirrored (Writing as Eldon Murphy)
Driven
Lost
Marked
The Dark Reflections Series
Bound
Hunted
Ambushed
Shattered
The Guadel Chronicles
Frozen Prospects (free)
Thawed Fortunes (free if you sign up for Dean's Mailing List)
Brittle Bonds
Shattered Ties
Chapter 1
Isaac Nazir
Right-Size Burger and Gas
Outside of Dallas, Texas
Things had been…strained between Ash and I since the attack on the estate. I guess that's the right word, the right English word. I know a few other languages and there are some other words that are a better fit, but they aren't that much better of a fit. No word really captures the true level of tension you get when you lock two shape shifters who don't like each other inside of a car for more than a day.
Under other circumstances I could have probably gotten along just fine with Ash. He was competent and deadly, which are two of the characteristics that most shape shifters think are the most important in any individual. Competent means that you won't have to worry about cleaning up after them. Deadly means that they can protect themselves and maybe even watch your back if you end up against some kind of external threat.
That's good—there are a lot of external threats out there when you're a shape shifter. Vampires, werewolves, even other shape shifter packs, and that's just the more common stuff. The problem is that the external threats have only ever banded us together for a short time. Sooner or later we always ended up turning on each other. Which is exactly what happened again outside of Dallas less than twenty-four hours after we split off from the rest of Alec's people.
"Turn the cell phone off, Isaac."
Kristin had disappeared a minute before having mumbled something about needing a bathroom break while Ash and I ordered food from the cheerily-painted burger joint that was attached to the gas station.
"Back off, Ash. Alec said his guys have things under control. I need to check in and make sure I haven't missed a call from anyone."
"Look, I get it. You're worried about Andrew, Jess, and the rest. Trust me, it can wait until we make it to the safe house that I've got lined up for us. Until then we'd be stupid to rely on Alec's hackers to protect us. We're safer just leaving the phones off."
"He's right. Besides, I can basically guarantee that Jessica isn't going to be calling you anytime soon."
I'd heard Kristin leave the restroom; I should have known that she wouldn't be able to keep her mouth shut.
"This doesn't involve you."
Ash shut her up with a look before she could launch into whatever scathing retort she had on the end of her tongue. Once he was confident she was going to stay silent for at least the next three seconds he turned back to me.
"Actually, it does. I know that you're good with this kind of stuff, but you don't want to go head to head with the best hackers on the Coun'hij payroll, not like this—working off of a shoestring with everything at stake for the three of us as well as Alec, Jess and the others."
"Stop saying Jess' name. There is zero reason for the two of you to keep bringing her up. Alec said that he wanted everyone to stay on comms. If you had a problem with that, you should have brought it up with him before we left."
"Are you mental? We keep mentioning Jess because she's still all you think about. We aren't idiots, this is all about Jess."
Ash didn't look particularly happy at Kristin's decision to jump back in the conversation.
"I did talk to Alec before we left, Isaac. I explained my concerns to him and he agreed that it would be a good idea to have a couple of the groups stay silent for a while in case his hackers couldn't keep a lid on things."
"Why wasn't I informed? I've been with him for longer than the two of you, and this is my area of expertise."
"You were too busy trying to get Jess to give you one more chance before she left with Wyatt."
I spun around and took a step towards Kristin. I was moving fast—not as fast as I could have, not in public, I wasn't that far gone—but I still only made it a single step before I heard a click as Ash pulled the hammer back on the big .45 semi-auto that he always had somewhere close at hand. It wasn't a loud sound, but given just how distinctive that particular sound is—and the sensitivity of my hearing—it froze me in my tracks.
"You wouldn't dare, not in a public place like this."
My words were something less than a whisper. Kristin wouldn't be able to hear them, but she apparently didn't need to know what was being said to know that things had just gotten serious. I could tell by the way that she was standing against the wall that she already had her pistol out, screened behind her body, but ready to go at a second's notice.
"Isaac, don't push me. You'd be surprised what I'd be willing to do right now. The police response time out here is at least three minutes. Kristin and I can easily lose ourselves downtown before the police can tighten a noose around us. Turn the phone off—now—or you'll force my hand. You can possibly beat one of us, but you can't take both of us, not in human form, not when we are standing so far apart."
I tried to stay loose, but my body tensed up as I calculated odds. My beast wanted a piece of Ash and Kristin both. Neither of them was a match for us, and we were tired of being pushed around.
The temptation to shift forms and lunge towards Ash was nearly overpowering. I'd had a harder time keeping my cool lately, but this was more than that. Dominance was important. It wasn't just about establishing a pecking order inside of a pack, it was about figuring out who the go-to guys and gals were for when things got dicey. It was about figuring out who called the shots when lives were on the line.
In a bad pack, one that was unhealthy, dominance fights ended up with someone dead more often than not, but it didn't have to be like that. In a good pack, dominance fights were a way of blowing off steam before things heated up to the point that people felt like the only choice left for them was to try and kill someone. It was more about knowing where you fit in. Once you knew that, it was a lot easier to deal with everyone, and if someone started pushing too hard then the two of you beat the tar out of each other until someone came out on top.
That was how it was supposed to work, and if you had a decent alpha who made sure that nobody got too carried away it was a good system, only Ash threw everything off. He didn't have a prayer of standing up to me without his weapons so he didn't even try. There weren't any shades of gray with Ash, everything was binary for him.
Something was either worth fighting over or it wasn't. If it wasn't then you could push him around with an almost reckless abandon, but if it was important, then he'd pull a weapon on you so fast that your head would spin. For Ash, if it was worth fighting over then it was worth dying over.
I'd thought that things were pretty rough when we'd been up against Brandon's pack, but even then there had usually been a kind of underlying honor code to the war. Ash had been trained by people who didn't let anything get in the way of their objective.
"You're out of time, Isaac. Your phone just finished booting up. If someone is looking for you they'll be able to ping it within the next few seconds. I won't ask again."
I looked ove
r at my right hand and realized that I hadn't ever put my phone back in my pocket. Ash was right, it was decision time. If I was right, then he was getting really worked up over nothing, but even if I was right, he'd backed me into a corner. Killing Ash and Kristin wouldn't actually accomplish anything. Best-case scenario I ended up by myself and on the run from the cops, worst-case scenario I'd be dead. Neither option put me in a position to help Jess or anyone else.
I reached over and powered down my phone. "One of these days you're going to push me too far, Ash."
"Yeah, I know. Believe me when I say that I don't look forward to that day any more than you do."
The cute brunette behind the counter put the last of our order on the two trays she'd been assembling and gave the three of us a cheery smile.
"Here you go, have a nice day."
She'd never even suspected that the restaurant had been a hair's breadth from turning into a war zone. I mustered up what I hoped was a convincing smile of my own, and picked up the second tray.
Ash and I sat at separate booths. It wasn't something that either of us had ever discussed; it was just one of those things. You don't chain two pit bulls inside the same cage unless you want them to fight. Keeping a buffer of space between us usually kept things from boiling over as frequently.
Kristin moved like a professional herself these days. She'd always been dangerous, at least she'd been that way for as long as I'd known her, but Ash had honed her to a fine edge during the last few months. She stayed clear of Ash's right hand at all times and she kept hers free too.
"It's days like today that make me wonder how many times back home I was completely oblivious to the fact that people were just about to kill each other. I used to work in a place like this, you know."
I unwrapped my first burger as I considered Kristin's comment. "That must have been nice, a normal life. Do you miss it?"
She looked at me like I was crazy. "Are you kidding? I spent every waking minute trying to find a way out of that place. The last thing I ever wanted to be was ordinary. This isn't quite the way I originally planned on trying to make my mark on the world, but it's a ton better than the life most of the kids from my school will be looking at once they graduate."
Ash didn't seem particularly interested in joining in the conversation. He was paying attention, I'd never seen Ash be anything other than on, but he simply grabbed another handful of fries.
"You can't really mean that, Kristin. The three of us are living on borrowed time. We're probably not going to make it through the year. Even if Alec's war against the Coun'hij ends up going our way, we'll still have targets on our back. There will always be another set of bad guys who need taken down. The vampires or the jaguars will practically be lining up for a shot at toppling Alec from the throne. Anyone in their right mind would choose a normal, safe life in a heartbeat."
That earned me a frown. Kristin took in all of the empty tables and booths around us in one sweeping gesture.
"Safety is an illusion. It's all relative. Someone could walk through those doors tomorrow and gun down a dozen 'normal' people who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. People think that they're safe, but they're just a bunch of sheep. I'd rather know what is going on around me, and die having done the best I could to save myself, than just wander around in a daze hoping that my number hasn't come up on any given day.
"You can romanticize about the joys of a normal life all you want, but the truth is that a normal life is mostly just a lot of drudgery—the soul-crushing monthly mortgage payment kind of drudgery—and ninety-nine out of a hundred people wish that they could be different, that they could be special somehow. You fantasize about normal life because it's something you've never had. It's the most compelling argument you could have made as to the fact that you've always been special."
My beast wanted to lash out at her—verbally would do despite not being as satisfying—but I knew that wasn't the right response. Kristin wasn't trying to be in my face, she just felt strongly about this subject. I brought my beast under control with a shadow of the smoothness that had been my trademark for so many years, but I got it under control.
I'd thought James was just undisciplined, but now I wasn't so sure of that. Maybe I'd just been taking credit all of that time for something that had nothing to do with me. I'd thought it was my will and self-control that made me who I was, but those things don't just evaporate between one day and the next.
I'd spent a lot of time recently trying to convince myself that I was still in control, but the truth was that I wasn't, not fully. Everything had changed when Jess had lost her memories. I'd never realized how much Jess and Andrew had grounded me.
I'd thought I was something unique, but once Jess had lost her memories she'd become a different person and I'd lost the cornerstone of my world. Andrew had tried to still be there for me, but we both knew that things couldn't be the same. Maybe they could have been if I hadn't kept pushing Jess, but I had. Andrew had been forced to make a choice between the daughter who'd lost her memory and me.
He'd made the right choice and I respected him for it, but it didn't make things any easier. I was drifting in the middle of a black ocean with no land in sight.
I closed my eyes for a couple of seconds, and when I looked back over at Kristin I felt at least a little bit like my old self.
"Maybe you're right, but since I've never had the benefit of a normal, safe life, you'll just have to pardon me if I continue to long for something different."
I'd meant it as a peace offering. It wasn't perfect, but considering how much friction there had been between the three of us lately, it wasn't a bad attempt. I'd thought I'd get an eye roll, or maybe a smile. I hadn't expected Kristin to go completely white and stop breathing.
"Guys, we need to get out of here right now! I've dreamed this before and what happens next isn't pretty."
Chapter 2
Isaac Nazir
Right-Size Burger and Gas
Outside of Dallas, Texas
Ash started moving while I was still scanning the burger joint for threats. He grabbed all of the food he could hold in his left hand and started towards the door without looking back. Kristin was half a step behind him with a big fountain drink in her free hand, but I caught up with the two of them before they made it outside.
We were almost back to Ash's car when the first bruiser stepped around the corner of the building. That was apparently the signal because other guys started appearing from behind trees and cars.
Ash was in the lead and he never even broke stride. The first guy, a heavily-tattooed Latino, tried to hit him, but Ash checked the blow, stepping into his opponent and driving an elbow into the guy's throat. It was a killing blow against a human, but Ash didn't take any chances. He followed his elbow up by spinning the first guy around and throwing him headfirst into the side of the building.
"Get into the car!"
Kristin didn't look like she was happy about Ash's order, but she already had her keys out and was only two steps from the car. I paced her, half a step behind as my mind finished processing the situation.
Three more guys had almost reached us, but none of them were giving off the characteristic energy surge I would have expected from shape shifters. Ash stepped forward to deal with the guy on his side of the car as Kristin threw herself across the passenger seat, and then it was my turn.
The taller of my two opponents, a skinny white guy with a mohawk, threw a jab at me, but everything about the attack was human-slow. I didn't try to block it. I could have probably absorbed the blow without going down if it had come to that. Being a shape shifter made me strong and let me take a lot more damage than a human, even in this form, but there wasn't any need to take the hit.
I lashed out with my fist, connecting with his strike and shattering his hand and wrist in a move that no trained fighter would have used, but that was okay, I'd never trained to fight as a human. There wasn't any reason to waste time learning to
fight in this form, not when there was still so much to learn about fighting as a hybrid.
A flicker of motion brought me around just in time to intercept an elbow strike from the next guy. I hit his arm with an open palm a split second before he would have connected with my throat and then stepped in and hit him in the ribs with the other hand.
He went down to one knee from the sheer shock of having the entire right side of his chest caved in, and then I spun back around and punched the taller guy in the throat with a blow that was carefully measured so that I wouldn't break his neck.
My side of the exchange had taken less than two seconds. Ash's car roared to life as I looked up just in time to see a new guy step up behind Ash and hit him in the kidney hard enough to shatter Ash's floating ribs.
A normal human would have probably collapsed on the spot, but Ash was a shape shifter. He wasn't particularly strong or fast as a wolf, and he'd never manifested a hybrid form, but he was still one of us. Ash blocked the next blow with his elbow, and then he stuck a knife in the new guy.
It wasn't a very big knife, but Ash knew how to use a knife with the best of them. I expected the new guy to fall to the ground in a spray of blood, but he just backhanded Ash across the parking lot. It was the kind of thing you sometimes saw in a movie, but it was next to impossible for a normal human to hit someone that hard.
The pieces clicked into place. This last guy wasn't just local muscle like the rest—he was a shape shifter, and based off of his tattoos and piercings, he was a Coun'hij enforcer. I'd already started forward to back Ash up. For all I knew getting thrown across the parking lot had been part of Ash's plan all along. It got him far enough away to get his handgun into play, which was his best chance against a hybrid, but it was still a plan born of desperation.
Ash was on the ground, off balance and disoriented from the force of the blow he'd taken. He was fast, but a hybrid was faster. Luckily Ash wasn't by himself, he had me.
