by Dean Murray
"Just follow my lead then and try not to look surprised."
I turned towards the closest of Onyx's men and tossed him the free end of the mooring rope. "Tie that off and then take us to see Onyx."
He let the rope fall to the wooden dock at his feet. "I don't take orders from you."
I was wearing the jeans and t-shirt that I'd gone into the swamp wearing, which made me happy. I wasn't going to get a chance to wear them again, but I would have hated destroying any of the clothes Set had given me.
I could pick up new jeans anywhere, but the clothes that the lamias had made were one of a kind.
I flashed an easy smile at Onyx's man as I stepped out of the boat and onto the deck. He shot me a frown in return, but even so he wasn't expecting what came next.
I shifted to hybrid form in a roar of power and shoved my hand into his chest.
Most people, even shape shifters have to work themselves up to a fight. There is a predictable series of steps that anyone other than a psychopath or someone expecting trouble has to go through in order to commit real, bone-shattering violence. There are even more steps that most people have to go through in order to actually kill someone.
That's why normal people are usually so shocked when things turn deadly. If you're not in a frame of mind that would allow you to hurt someone, then on some level it's hard to believe that anyone else is in that state of mind.
I'd moved through all of those steps on the trip to Celeste's house. I didn't have to dehumanize Onyx and his men, I just had to accept the fact that they were evil and the only way to save Celeste and her people was to kill the New Orleans hybrids at the slightest provocation.
My attack caught Onyx's man off guard. He'd only just started shifting when my claws pierced his flesh. I let his body drop down onto the dock and took a step towards the second guy, who'd just finished transforming.
"Are you insane? You're a dead man. Even if Onyx wasn't planning on killing you before he'll make an example of you now. The Coun'hij has forbidden fights out in the open."
"I don't care about the Coun'hij, they're a petty bunch of children who are about to be swept aside and replaced with a new order. I asked to be conducted to Onyx and your fellow refused me. Will you at least deliver a message for me, or must I kill you as well and go looking for your master myself?"
"Stay here. I'll go get him."
"Really? I care little for such things myself these days, but you seemed alarmed at the fact that I was in this form. Would you not rather I wait inside of your hovel?"
I waved for Celeste and Jax to follow me and set off towards Celeste's ancestral home, driving Onyx's man ahead of me the way a wolf drives a calf along before it.
Jax tied the boat off and then grabbed my bag before hurrying after Celeste, but I registered all of that based on the sounds coming from behind me. My eyes never left the enemy hybrid, who was still backing away from me so quickly that it was all he could do to avoid tripping over his own feet.
Once we arrived at the massive plantation-style house, the hybrid once again ordered us to stay put as he ran deeper inside to find someone else to help him deal with us.
"Celeste, where am I most likely to find Onyx?"
"He spends most of his time in my father's study."
"Lead the way."
She set off at a pace that was fast enough that I figured we had a chance of making it to the study before more of Onyx's people showed up, but she was careful not to break into a run. That was good, appearances were everything right now.
It turned out that Onyx wasn't in his study when we arrived, so I went in and sat down at his desk, a massive oak number that was the equal of anything I'd seen back at Graves Manor. Celeste's eyes got big, but she didn't say anything. Jax looked like he was about to have a coronary.
Onyx stormed into the room less than two minutes later, eyes flashing.
"Who the hell… Seriously? A piss-ant two-bit hybrid like you is all that I get? My guy was talking like the reincarnation of Jaldul himself had just stormed into the house. I should have known that it was just another stupid poser."
I could see his eyes start to tighten up in a signal that he was about to use his ability on me, but I held up one hand.
"You're going to want to hear what I have to say."
"Why, have you decided to beg for your sorry life?"
"Hardly. I'm here for two reasons. The first is to tell you that Celeste, her brother Ash, Jax and the rest of the submissives in this pack are under the protection of his royal highness, Alec Graves. Any mistreatment of them will bring down judgment upon your head and the heads of your men."
"Surely you're joking. I could kill you all and there wouldn't be a single thing Graves could do to stop me."
"He doesn't need to stop you, he's more than happy to give you the freedom to choose your actions, but if you harm any of us then you'll wish for death when he finally comes for you."
"Torture hardly sounds like something a Graves would do."
"King Alec isn't just any Graves, he's someone whose father was killed by your allies, he's someone whose home was just burned to the ground in a failed attack on him by Puppeteer."
"He doesn't sound like much of a king to me. I wouldn't have lost my house if it had been me."
A trickle of guys had joined the two who had arrived with Onyx. I let my eyes scan past each of them, and then gave Onyx a cold smile.
"I understand that you feel a need to posture in front of your men, but every person here knows that a force of nearly two dozen werewolves accompanied by the same number of Coun'hij enforcers would have torn through your entire pack in minutes. Rather than preen, you should be thinking of the fact that after the initial surprise, King Alec destroyed all of the hybrids and all of the remaining werewolves without losing a single man. Your abilities are considerable, but you're just as powerless against werewolves as any of your men."
I looked around the office and shook my head. "You know, I think if you were to just surrender to him there is even a chance that he'll allow you to keep this house rather than just burning it to the ground."
"I've heard enough."
"Very well, then I challenge you for control of this pack."
That caught him off guard. He'd thought that I was trying to run some kind of colossal bluff in the hopes that he would be scared enough to let me, Celeste and the others go.
I smiled. "I've surprised you. What you fail to understand is that King Alec is my liege. He ordered me to deliver my message in such a way as to make sure that you understood what you are up against."
"How is me effortlessly killing you going to show me anything of importance?"
"I am one of the least of those in the King's court, surely you know this. And yet I am willing to lay my life down simply to deliver a message for him. Surely even you have an idea of the kind of loyalty required to do something like that. If you fail to heed my words then the best-case scenario is that the King is too busy to see to you himself. If that is the case then you will simply be faced with a never-ending stream of steadily more powerful hybrids who are happy to sacrifice themselves if necessary to see the King's justice done."
Something flickered in the back of Onyx's eyes. He didn't understand what was going on, but he could tell that I wasn't lying, and that was frightening to him. He knew how he motivated his men, but he wasn't familiar with anything that would have made his guys willing to die for him in a fight they knew they couldn't win.
That was baffling enough, but I'd just told them that Alec would bring exactly that kind of fight to their doorsteps if they harmed any of us.
I could hear the hybrids in the back of the crowd shifting from one foot to the other. I had them worried. I even thought that maybe I'd managed to succeed in bluffing Onyx right up until Nicolas pushed his way into the room.
"I couldn't care less about his tiny little king, but if you're going to let this one challenge you then I want to have the pleasure of killing him."
It was over. The fear that I'd felt spreading through the rank and file evaporated. As dangerous as Nicolas was, everyone in the room knew that he was nothing compared to Onyx. If Nicolas wasn't scared then there was no reason for Onyx to be scared. As long as they were serving Onyx they were untouchable.
The one remaining hope was that I could manage to beat Nicolas. I knew I couldn't beat Onyx, but if I—self-admittedly the weakest of Alec's hybrids—took Nicolas down then it would put some fear back in them. It might even be enough.
I hadn't risen from my place behind Onyx's desk. Now I looked up at Nicolas and smiled. "You have no idea how glad I am to be able to kill you in the service of my king."
Another rumble of astonishment crept through the room. They'd probably never seen anyone so unworried at the prospect of fighting Nicolas. In the tiny pond that was New Orleans, he was the man to beat, the guy that was second only to Onyx.
I'd managed to orchestrate nearly everything about our confrontation so far and Onyx knew that he needed to regain a measure of control.
"We have a challenge ring in the center of the house. Follow us there if you're really ready to die."
The tiniest part of me wanted to scream out that I didn't want to die, but it was surprisingly easy to silence those screams. I was going to die no matter what happened at this point. The only remaining question was how. I was resolved to die in the way that would do the most good.
I was going to give Celeste and her people whatever measure of protection I could, and maybe in the process I could create a stronger legend for Alec, a legend that might mean at some point people would surrender to him rather than fighting until the bitter end.
I stood with a faint grin and gestured for Onyx and Nicolas to precede me. "By all means. You will have to lead the way. I couldn't be bothered to memorize the floor plan of a house that will be a charred ruin in just a few days or weeks."
The challenge ring turned out to be a large auditorium set on a massive slab of concrete. Most of the furnishings were of a utilitarian nature, bench seats for the spectators and industrial fixtures for lighting, but there was a raised dais at one end of the room that didn't look like it had been poured at the same time as the floor. The dais and the throne on it were proof that Onyx had grander designs than just ruling a single pack in New Orleans.
He'd probably figured that he could move into town and suck what was left of the Hunt family dry over the course of just a year or two before moving on to establish himself as a major power on the Coun'hij. Instead, Celeste and her mom had held him off for decades. A few decades didn't mean much to a hybrid like Onyx, but the Hunts had bought the rest of us something more precious than money.
They'd bought us time of comparative freedom, a world in which the Coun'hij had one less weapon to hold to our heads.
I'd never shifted back after killing Onyx's man at the dock, but now Nicolas and Onyx both changed forms as well. A few more people trickled in, and I realized that Onyx had ordered the whole pack gathered to see my death.
The collection of people who formed a tiny ball around Celeste and Jax looked battered and scared, but I gave them all a reassuring smile.
"Your king is aware of your situation. If I fall here it will be only a temporary setback. He will free you. Today, tomorrow, next week, it matters not. His arm is mighty and his reach unending. Even tyrants like Onyx can't hope to escape his justice forever."
Onyx clapped sarcastically. "Ah, yes. More empty promises, more worthless grandstanding. The truth is that Celeste has been a very bad girl. She has been conspiring with our pack's enemies in the hopes of overthrowing me. Unfortunately her would-be allies are so weak that they couldn't send the army she asked for. They sent one hybrid, little more than a child really, as a salve to their conscience so that they can say that they tried to free you.
"The truth is that nobody wants you. You're a group that the rest of the world would simply let starve. I protect you. I keep you safe from the threats out there in the wider world. I am your king, and as your king I've invited you all here to see the pretender's pawn fall to our very own Nicolas."
Onyx dropped his hand and Nicolas blurred towards me. He was every bit as fast as I remembered, but I'd seen this very same attack a thousand times inside my dreams. I acted without thinking, ducking to the right and then reversing back to the left at the last second and raking my claws through his stomach and side as he tried to compensate for my abrupt shift in location.
My claws scraped against a sheath of bone where there shouldn't have been anything other than muscles and organs, but the wound was still surprisingly deep, all things considered.
"That was for my friend Ash. Too bad he doesn't have your…advantages."
Nicolas' eyes narrowed, probably partially because I'd referenced—however obliquely—the fact that he shared a common heritage with Alec and Jasmin, and partially because it had been a very long time since anyone had managed to bleed him like that in a fight without help.
"Apparently Carson taught you more than I gave you credit for. That's good; I've grown weary of fighting incompetents."
He came back towards me, moving with more caution, and we swapped feints for a couple of seconds before he stepped in with the hybrid equivalent to a straight jab. I should have stepped back and tried to slash his arm. That was my normal reaction to those kinds of attacks, but this time I stepped into him, blocking his claw-tipped jab with the side of my arm, and then slamming my right fist into his stomach.
His other arm came at me from my right, but I stepped to the side and slammed his arm with my right elbow before slicing him across the chest and backing away.
Fighting a hybrid was liberating after so long fighting lamias. Nicolas didn't have scales capable of at least partially turning my blows and I'd done such a large amount of damage to him in such a short amount of time that I could scarcely believe it.
He wasn't going to bleed out in the next two minutes, but losing so much blood was going to eventually have an impact even on a hybrid. If I could avoid clinching with him for a minute or two, he would start to slow down slightly and I would have more options. Even better, if I could manage another strike or two like the last two, then he'd start feeling pressure to finish the fight more quickly, which would mean that he would be more likely to make mistakes.
It was too early to start celebrating though. Two minutes was still a lot of time and if he managed to get close enough to put me in one of the holds that Carson had favored, I would still lose.
We circled, gauging each other's reaction times and technique. Even wounded like he was, he was still the slightest bit faster than me, which was extremely bad. He was bigger than me too, which meant that he had the advantage when we were fighting further apart.
His claws licked out once, twice, and then a third time. I was bleeding from three different spots on my arms, and I'd only managed to land one blow on him in return. He was still bleeding faster that I was, but he'd just proved that he was going to win if I tried to wait him out.
His advantages at long range meant that I couldn't afford to keep fighting him out at the distances we'd been fighting at, but by the same measure, I couldn't afford to let him get in close where he could turn this into a grappling match. There was an extremely narrow band of distance where I seemed to have the advantage, but if I erred even by just a couple of inches too close or too far away, then he would make me pay in blood and pain.
I was like an amateur with one trick going up against a seasoned pro with a whole arsenal of techniques, but there wasn't anything to do but try to force the kind of fight that I had at least some chance of winning.
We exchanged a couple of more jabs before I saw my chance. As his fist came towards me I knocked it high and to my left so that his body was uncovered as I stepped in. My right fist shot forward with the speed and force of a piston, but it was too similar to what I'd already done.
As I moved forward in an attempt to get inside of his
reach, he'd already turned slightly so that my claws only managed a glancing blow, and then he hit me with way more force than anyone should have been able to generate from such a short charge. None of my normal techniques were going to be able to get me out of this bind. I couldn't move forward without guaranteeing him exactly the kind of clinch he was after, and I wasn't fast enough to get out of his reach, not as fast as he'd come at me. The fight was over at that moment, and I knew it, but some part of my subconscious apparently didn't agree.
Instead of dodging or stepping into him, I threw myself backwards with every ounce of speed and force I could muster. Even my best effort wasn't enough to avoid him completely, but I hadn't expected it to be.
His claws closed on the outside of my arms, tearing into my muscles as my feet came off of the ground and I pulled them up against my chest. His fangs were headed towards my neck, but I managed to get my hands up just high enough to push him back away from my vitals.
We were moving in slow motion now and it seemed as though I could read his mind. He didn't care that I'd stopped him from ripping my throat out because every rule of physics was now working in his favor. We were going to hit the concrete more than hard enough to drive him past my ineffectively scrabbling claws and let him end me.
Our fall stretched out for what felt like hours, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get my claws into anything important. His control of my upper arms was giving him too much leverage, and then there wasn't any time left to continue trying.
We hit with enough force to knock a human being out cold, but hybrid bodies are made out of much sterner stuff and rather than having Nicolas crush me into the ground, my legs had somehow contorted enough to put my feet between the two of us. I converted all of that energy into a throw that launched Nicolas into a row of empty bleachers.
I rolled to my feet at the same time that Nicolas disentangled himself from the wreckage and stumbled down to the circle.
Neither of us was in very good shape by then. My arms were still functioning despite all odds, but I was losing a lot of blood and I was starting to feel the faintest bit lightheaded. Nicolas' wounds from earlier on in the fight had now been joined by two sets of deep punctures in his chest. I'd missed sticking a talon through his heart out of nothing more than sheer dumb luck, but he was obviously approaching the end of his endurance.
