Lost

by Dean Murray

  Shifting forms in public went against everything I'd been taught since I'd first found out that I wasn't like other kids, but I didn't even think twice about it. My beast cut loose with a hammer blow of power and between one step and the next my human body exploded out into the hulking form of my hybrid shape.

  The wash of power was unmistakable for one of our kind, and the other shape shifter spun back towards me to honor the greater threat that I represented. He shifted as he moved, and then I crashed into him.

  In this form I was nearly six feet seven inches tall and I was several hundred pounds heavier than I'd been just a few seconds before, but I still gave up more than fifty pounds and nearly a full inch to the new guy.

  I'd hoped to bowl him over with my initial rush, but he dug in and dropped his shoulder. We stumbled back away from each other, rocked by the force of the impact, and then he slashed at me with seven inches of razor-sharp semi-retractable claws that were harder than steel.

  I moved forward, trying to get inside the arc of his attack, but he ducked under my arm and tore a long gash in my side. I reversed direction and checked his next attack, grabbing his left arm a split second before he could sink it into my back.

  I didn't try to hold onto him as he tore his wrist free, he was stronger than me, but I managed to nick a couple of the smaller veins in his arm in exchange. He darted toward me and I slapped his claws away, but he was even faster than I'd realized.

  His other hand came out of nowhere and buried itself in my stomach. Even my hybrid body couldn't continue to take that level of damage for much longer. Every nerve I had lit up in agony, but I ignored that and threw myself backward.

  The Coun'hij guy didn't want to let me go, he tightened his grip and tried to pull me closer, but that just provided me with the leverage that I'd been looking for. I walked up the side of his body, sinking the talons on my feet into his legs and chest as I extended his arm all of the way out.

  His claws pulled free of my gut and then I heaved against his shoulder with every ounce of strength I had. I'd seen Carson do something similar in a sparring session back at the estate before everything had fallen apart. Done right, it dislocated the other guy's shoulder, but either I hadn't managed to execute the technique correctly, or the other hybrid was just too strong for it to work.

  For one long second I thought I had him, but then he started reeling me back in. I would have said that nobody was strong enough to lift me by one arm like that, but this guy didn't just lift me, he whipped me through the air and slammed me into the side of the gas station.

  I initially thought that the popping noise I was hearing was my vertebrae, but as I stumbled away from the wall I realized that the other hybrid hadn't stayed around to finish me off.

  Kristin had screamed to a stop a couple of feet from where Ash had landed and they both had their guns out. The Coun'hij enforcer had disappeared behind the detached car wash in an effort to avoid the hail of bullets that they'd sent his way, but there was too much blood on the pavement for it all to be mine.

  I started after the other hybrid, but Ash yelled at me before I could make it more than a step or two.

  "Get to the car, they wouldn't have been waiting if they didn't have more people coming, and the cops are on their way!"

  Part of me wanted to argue with him, but he was right. I turned and sprinted towards the car, huge hybrid legs devouring the distance. Ash climbed inside the vehicle as soon as I started moving, but Kristin sped up her rate of fire to compensate. It only took her about a second to shoot herself dry, but that was all that Ash needed to get into position behind her and he picked up firing with hardly any break at all.

  Kristin was on the move now, the car was already doing twenty, but Ash managed to space his shots out just enough to keep the enforcer pinned down for the extra second it took me to catch up with the car.

  I managed to shift back to human form on the run without stumbling, and then threw myself into the car just before Kristin cranked it up to forty.

  "How did they find us? My phone wasn't on for long enough to track."

  Kristin didn't look away from the road. "Are you sure of that? It's the logical explanation."

  Ash shook his head as he scanned our surroundings for somewhere we could lose the cops. "No, Isaac is right. Those guys had to be moving into position even before Isaac turned his phone on. One hybrid and a car full of hired muscle—they'd been tracking us before we even stopped for gas, it's the only explanation. It was an opportunistic hit; they knew where we were and happened to have one guy and some contacts in the area where we stopped."

  "That means that they have something other than cell phone tracking in play then. Alec needs to know that, every single one of his people could be walking into traps as we speak."

  Ash didn't look happy, but this time he couldn't argue with me. "Fine. Get your phone powered on. You have one minute before it needs to go back off and this time just pull the battery. It's going to be anyone's guess as to whether or not we're going to be able to lose the police."

  I fished my phone back out of the compartment inside my ha'bit where I stored it and pushed the power button. It was going to take forty-five seconds to boot up, so I reached back into the back seat for the first-aid kit next to Ash. If we ended up on foot at some point over the next hour or two then I needed to not look like I'd just finished fighting for my life.

  I slapped a big square of white gauze over the hole in my stomach and then used half of a roll of tape to hold it in place. I finished right as my phone finished booting up. Alec picked up on the first ring.

  "Isaac, I thought you guys were going to stay dark for the next few days."

  "Yeah, not that anyone bothered to tell me that before we left." I wanted to say more, but I knew it wasn't the time or place for recriminations. "We just got jumped. One hybrid, who was probably hoping not to have to get involved, and a bunch of local thugs. It looked like they had someone else on the way."

  There was a second of silence as Alec digested the news. "So they were tracking you. You're positive that you all had your phones off the entire time?"

  "Yeah, I had mine on for about fifteen seconds, but that isn't long enough to run any kind of trace on it."

  He cut me off before I could finish explaining. "Then we don't have proof. Are you guys going to be able to help if another team in the area runs into the same kind of problems?"

  Ash responded before I could. "No, we have to go to ground in the next five minutes or we're going to end up in a jail somewhere. Is there anything you can do to take some heat off of us?"

  "No. The Chicago pack just went silent, and I suspect that all of the rest of our people are in hot water up to their necks. I'll let you know as soon as I can shake someone loose to help out, but for now you guys are on your own."

  Chapter 3

  Isaac Nazir

  I-30

  Eastern Texas

  I pulled on a fresh set of clothes and then we ditched Ash's car inside what I was pretty sure was the oldest, most decrepit parking garage in the city of Dallas. Ash had a lot of history with that particular car, but he walked away from it without looking back.

  From there we headed on foot to a shopping mall. We spent the next four hours ducking in and out of places as we made abrupt changes to our appearances.

  Kristin had a good eye for spotting security cameras, but Ash was even better. It was like he had a sixth sense when it came to anticipating where we were most likely to find blind spots. We moved quickly. We kept it down to a walk whenever there were people around, but it was a deceptively fast walk and we covered a lot of ground.

  I was in so much pain by the end that it was all I could do to keep walking normally. My bandages were starting to soak through by the time that we finally ducked into another parking garage. Ash found a black SUV with a 'for sale' sign in it, and then convinced an early twentysomething to let him borrow her phone for a couple of minutes so that he could dial the number on the
sign.

  Twenty minutes after that we pulled out of the parking garage fifteen thousand dollars poorer, but driving the SUV.

  Ash shook his head when I offered to drive.

  "You need to replace your bandages and get some sleep. Kristin too, that's part of the reason I picked this set of wheels. We need space so we can spread out and rest without having to sleep on top of each other."

  Kristin didn't argue, she just reclined the passenger seat back as she closed her eyes.

  "You took some damage too, you can't be much better off than me."

  Ash shrugged. "Yeah, I've got some broken ribs and a ton of internal bruising, but that isn't anything compared to the amount of blood loss that you've experienced. You're tougher than me, there isn't any disputing that, but you took some nasty blows in that fight."

  My beast bristled a little bit at the implication that I couldn't continue to function despite everything I'd just been through, but Ash had pointed out that I had more staying power than him.

  "Okay, I'll catch some sleep. Can we pull through a drive-through on our way out of town though? We never finished up lunch and I'm going to burn through a lot of reserves healing back from what that enforcer did to me."

  "Sure. Let me keep an eye on our back trail for another five or ten minutes and then if it looks like we made a clean getaway I'll stop somewhere and we can pick up dinner for both of us."

  "What about Kristin?"

  Ash's smile was part proud teacher and part worried boyfriend. "She's out already and she won't be waking up for at least four or five hours. We can stop for something later if she's hungry."

  I started to nod before I realized what was bothering me about the situation. Kristin had fallen asleep far too quickly. Any good soldier deployed to the front lines for an extended period of time learned to get sleep wherever they could find it.

  By that yardstick, it was entirely reasonable for Kristin to have dropped off quickly, but Kristin hadn't spent months in that kind of danger recently. She'd spent a few days on the run with Ash, but the last little while had been spent at the estate with the rest of the pack. It was hard to get much safer than that.

  "How long has she been dropping off instantly like that?"

  "A week or two maybe. I first noticed when I stayed late in her room to watch a movie with her. She fell asleep before the opening credits had even finished rolling."

  He wasn't telling me everything, that went without saying, but this was potentially even more serious than I'd realized. Now that she was asleep, Kristin smelled wrong somehow.

  I didn't figure it out until Ash exited the interstate and pulled up to the drive-through window. Kristin had been stressed out while we'd been running from the cops, but she'd kept it under control. If I hadn't been able to smell the adrenaline coming out of her pores I probably wouldn't have been able to tell that she was rattled at all.

  She was more freaked out now than she'd been then. I'd never seen anything like that; I would have said that it wasn't possible for someone to remain asleep with that much adrenaline in their system. She'd fallen asleep without ever calming down.

  My suspicions were confirmed when she started thrashing around and screaming as we pulled back onto the main road.

  "She's being attacked by Dream Stealer."

  For a second I thought Ash was going to pretend that he hadn't heard me.

  "Yeah. He's got his hooks pretty deep into her. She's not getting any real sleep most nights. She tried to go without sleep, but eventually she got to the point where the exhaustion was stronger than even the terror of what he'd do next."

  "She needs to be locked up! It's only a matter of time before he breaks her, and when that happens there isn't anything that she won't do."

  "No. We aren't locking her up. We'll keep her in the dark so she can't pass anything important on; she's already started cutting herself out of the loop when it comes to operational stuff."

  "That isn't good enough, Ash, and you know it. Even if we can keep her in the dark when it comes to Alec and the others, that won't protect the three of us. It's for her safety as much as it is for ours. For all you know she was the reason that we got jumped earlier today."

  "She wasn't. I've been careful not to tell her where we are headed on any given day."

  "That explains why you've been so evasive lately, but you did tell me and I might have told her."

  "When? The three of us have hardly been out of sight of each other since we left Nevada."

  My beast should have been ready to rip Ash's head off, but I couldn't seem to muster the energy for real anger. Maybe it was all of the blood that I'd lost, that or maybe I was just tired.

  I wasn't mad, I just wanted to go somewhere I wouldn't have to deal with the inherent messiness of pack life. My life had turned into some kind of federal disaster area and I was ready to be done with it.

  "I don't know, Ash. Maybe you're right and I never had a chance to tell her where we were headed, but I can't guarantee that, which means that we may have just broken radio silence for no reason. I can't believe that you've kept this to yourself. You're not usually this reckless."

  "I didn't keep it to myself, at least not completely. Alec knows. That's why he wanted you to come along with Kristin and me. My plan was to just take her away somewhere safe, somewhere she couldn't do any harm if he manages to break her, but Alec ordered me to bring you along."

  "I wish he would have told me the score for a change, but it makes sense. By yourself it would just be a matter of time before you ended up dead. Once Dream Stealer turned her, she'd just have to wait until you fell asleep and then you'd be a sitting duck. This way we can watch each other's backs at least."

  I would have been happy to just leave things there, but Ash was apparently made of sterner stuff even than I'd realized.

  "That isn't the only reason Alec wanted you to come with us."

  "I know, Ash. He's hoping that I'll be able to put her down if she becomes too dangerous to allow for any other option."

  "I'm not just going to stand by and let you kill her, Isaac. I'll fight you if it comes to that."

  Ash had both of his hands on the steering wheel, there wasn't ever going to be a better time to deal with him than right now. The temptation was overwhelming. If I waited, then I was eventually going to have to fight him on his terms, and that was a fight I might not be able to win.

  I sighed and leaned back in my tan leather seat. "Why did you even agree to have me come along then, Ash? I get not wanting to see Kristin get hurt, I would have done almost anything to protect Jess, but you could have just saved both of us a lot of headache and gone off by yourself like you were planning."

  "I wanted you along because I'll need your help if I'm going to have any chance of hunting Dream Stealer down."

  It was too fantastical to believe. A guy like Alec could talk about hunting down and killing someone like Dream Stealer or Puppeteer, but that was because he was in the same league as them. Alec could mow down normal hybrids like pawns on a chessboard simply by unleashing his ability on them and draining them dry.

  These days the only hybrid who could hope to consistently beat Alec was Puppeteer, and even that wasn't guaranteed. Ash and I didn't have those kinds of advantages. Even if we could find Dream Stealer he'd be surrounded by enforcers like the one who had just wiped the floor with me. There was no way that the two of us could hope to bring down a member of the Coun'hij by ourselves. It was something worse than a suicide mission—we would die without any hope of succeeding.

  "That's never going to happen, Ash, and you know it. Maybe if we could find Dream Stealer then Alec could put together a strike force capable of bringing him down, but there is literally zero chance of the two of us finding him. He's got more than two hundred years of practice at staying hidden."

  "I have a plan. It's a long shot, but I think it could work. The only question is whether you're in."

  I rubbed my forehead, trying to buy myself time to think.
"Tell me again why you picked me instead of someone else? There were a lot of hybrids back at the estate you could have asked Alec to send in my place."

  "I picked you because you were the best option. You're no enforcer, but you've got more combat experience than most hybrids four or five times your age. You know your way around the technology side of things, so you can help run a stable of hackers if it comes to that."

  "That kind of talent doesn't come cheap."

  "I know, but money isn't an issue. I made off with plenty when I left home. I can fund any conceivable spend for at least a few months. I just need someone who can talk the talk well enough to keep whatever talent I bring onboard honest. Besides, Alec trusts you, probably even more than you realize. He's not going to be willing to send a strike force of his best and brightest into danger on the word of just anyone."

  "He trusts you too, Ash."

  "Yeah, but I don't know if he trusts me that much. If he sends a force that size into a trap it will be the end of the rebellion. It's a big ask. With the two of us to confirm each other's story he'll be more likely to believe that it's a real opportunity. Alec knows that you aren't particularly fond of Kristin or me. You won't buy off on an attack op unless you believe it's the real deal—not just to save Kristin."

  I couldn't help myself. I laughed, loud enough that it should have woken Kristin up, but she didn't even stir.

  "So I got signed up for a suicide mission because I don't like you. That's karma if I've ever heard of it."

  "That's not the only reason, Isaac. I wanted you because I knew you would understand what I was going through. You may not like us, but you'd do the same thing for Jess if our positions were reversed. More than any of the others, you understand me."

  "Yeah, I guess you're right there. I know what it feels like to worry that you've lost the single most important person in your life."

  Chapter 4

  Isaac Nazir

  I-30

  Western Arkansas