Burned

by Dean Murray

  Kaleb felt himself go completely still. It was a lack of reaction that in its own way was nearly as bad as jumping up and down on the table in front of them, but he couldn't help it. Everyone had fears—everyone. Kaleb was no exception to that rule. He was fortunate in that most of his fears revolved around things rather than people, but there was one person he didn't even begin to pretend—at least not to himself—that he wasn't scared of. Puppeteer had just referenced that person, a person Kaleb was working very hard to keep in the dark regarding a large number of things.

  "I think that you're overestimating just how much leeway a revelation like that would buy you. Your past indiscretion is a very serious matter, a matter that I've faithfully kept secret for more than a decade now."

  "You're not leaving me much of a choice, Kaleb. I know how hard it is to sign the death warrant of someone you helped bring into this world."

  "This isn't about that—this is solely about the fact that I can't afford to lose anyone else right now. Participation by the unaligned packs is at an all-time low. It's obvious to me that Alec found out about some of the measures we've been taking to keep a steady flow of new recruits headed down to the border."

  "You think that he told someone before he left?"

  "I'm nearly certain of it. My money would have been on Juan, but he died within hours of the operation that I think Alec stumbled onto. I don't think there was time for Juan to have communicated anything to his contacts—Juan wasn't the kind to act on something until he'd had a chance to confirm it for himself."

  "If not Juan, then who? I thought we had a good line on all of the communications flowing back and forth between the independent packs."

  "We do, but nothing in our business is ever guaranteed. Either Alec has gotten the word out since he left home, or Juan had some kind of failsafe in place that was activated by his death."

  "This could be a very big deal, Kaleb."

  "I know, but there isn't anything more I can do about it until accusations start to surface. I've already taken all of the precautions I can—it's just a matter of waiting now, but that's all the more reason to conserve what people I have left."

  "I've been unwilling to do this up until now because I didn't want to let myself get into range of one of those trackers, but if you have a particularly difficult mission that needs to be carried out, I might be willing to go down and use my…assets…to make sure it's taken care of."

  Kaleb pursed his lips. That was a definite departure from Puppeteer's past stance, and they both knew what that signified.

  "That's a very generous offer—one that I might very well take you up on if the circumstances warrant it—but if we're wrong about the reason that the independents have stopped coming south, that will destroy all possibility of getting the flow started back up. The independents view this as something separate from the Coun'hij in many ways. You joining in will just make them feel like there isn't any need for them to help out."

  "That would make our…sponsor…very unhappy."

  "Indeed. That little war has been the wedge I've used to get through a number of my initiatives that he would otherwise never have agreed to."

  "Yeah. The only thing that can compete with the idea of us killing our cousins and being killed in turn would be the idea of us killing the parasites."

  "Exactly, except we tried that and we had to use your werewolves to make it happen, and it wasn't bloodless where your assets are concerned. I ran the numbers back then—even before he came back ready to tear me to pieces—and it's not a favorable rate of exchange. Are you sure there isn't something you can do to change the equation there?"

  "No, unlike the werewolves, my other assets are oddly unwilling to get involved in those kinds of fights. I can force them to do it, but they are never very effective when compelled like that. The only way to get any kind of real benefit out of them is to manufacture a situation where their interests and mine coincide. We will just have to continue on as we've been up until now."

  Kaleb reached up and rubbed his eyes, and it was only partly an act. He was tired and getting more that way with every passing year. Sleep didn't do anything to cure this kind of exhaustion. It was a fatigue of the soul—assuming he still had one—more than anything else.

  "Can't you give me anything else to go on? It isn't that I'm unwilling to help you, but I'm not going to send my people in blind—there's a limit to how many plates I can keep spinning at one time, and this isn't just about you and me. Some of the junior partners are starting to eye me. I can tell that they are considering the idea that a good push at the right time might be sufficient to eliminate me and claim my spot as their own."

  Puppeteer looked away for several seconds, and Kaleb wondered if the other man was accessing some distant asset. It was possible—it happened much less frequently with that particular strain, and when it did happen it rarely happened when Kaleb was around to see it.

  "Okay, here's what I can do. I want you to have a group in the area awaiting my word. As soon as I have confirmation I'll call you up and you can assume control of that side of the operation. It's got to be a priority for you though, Kaleb. You can't just put this on the back burner like you have with so many of our operations in the past."

  "I have appearances to maintain. I can't just disappear at the drop of a hat. More importantly, you still haven't given me any details about how this is going down. Schedule it in advance and tell me what you've got up your sleeve and we can make this work. Otherwise we'll just have to both make our separate cases to him and hope for the best."

  "I hated you back before you were brought on as a member, Kaleb, and nothing has changed over the years. How did we ever end up on the same team?"

  "I'm not sure. I lived through it, and I'm still not sure how he managed it."

  Kaleb slowed his breathing down a little further and steepled his fingers so that he could look at Puppeteer over top of them. Puppeteer stared back for nearly a minute before finally responding.

  "It's just like I said. I have very limited information about your son and his allies. That's not something that my asset is particularly interested in, but it's very clear that they are trying to build a fortress on top of a foundation of cards. It's only going to take a small push at the right time to split them up and it won't be pretty when things start falling apart.

  "You know the breed we're dealing with, Kaleb. They have a kind of sixth sense when it comes to this kind of thing. Based on what I'm getting this time around, the results are going to be spectacular. Some of them will welcome death by the time Brandon and the rest of your people show up and execute them."

  Kaleb could tell that Puppeteer was watching him—looking for any sign that he wasn't as committed as he needed to be. That was one thing that Kaleb knew Puppeteer wasn't going to see—not today, and if their joint plan went the way that Puppeteer seemed to think it would, then not ever.

  "You can't tell me anything else about what's going on with that cell of the rebellion? I'm nervous about getting blindsided again. Neither of us anticipated that Dream Stealer would be able to put together a second force of that size to interfere with the Agony movement. Heck, I even told you that Alec had taken my sword, and we still didn't expect him to use it, let alone find some swordmaster from a school that was supposed to be long dead to train him in its use. If we're wrong about who their allies are and how much help they've managed to drum up, I could lose everything."

  Kaleb had been suspecting that Puppeteer was holding out on him, but the look in the other man's eyes confirmed it. Puppeteer was very good at everything he did, but he spent too much time off by himself with no other companionship but his thralls. It made him rusty when it came to dissembling in person.

  "The only other thing I know is that both your son and Dream Stealer have run into problems with vampires over the last little while. They managed to win in both instances, but they lost people—a lot of people. It doesn't speak very highly for their abilities, which frankly is a b
ig part of why I haven't been more inclined to bring it to the attention of our…patron. For them to lose more than a dozen people in fights with a bunch of piss ant parasites indicates that they've had a healthy dose of luck in getting this far without being torn apart by our people."

  Kaleb didn't respond, just continued to stare at Puppeteer, and eventually the other man shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "That's it, that's all I know. My asset hasn't told me anything else—in fact it's been all I could do to pry that much information out of him. Beyond that, both groups have completely disappeared. It's like they're a bunch of ghosts—you know that as well as I do."

  Kaleb finally nodded. "Okay, I'm in. Get your asset to start the pieces into motion and I'll come up with some kind of pretext for dropping out of sight along with Brandon and a group of my best fighters. It will have to be something that won't make it back to the other packs or the cats either one, so it won't be easy, but I'll find a way."

  Puppeteer smiled, but it was a cold expression, the kind of thing you'd expect from someone who'd just buried their nemesis. Kaleb told himself that the expression had everything to do with the impending defeat of Alec and Dream Stealer, and nothing to do with Puppeteer having managed to back Kaleb into a corner.

  It didn't help.

  Chapter 1

  Alec Graves

  Club Inferno

  Chicago, Illinois

  Under other circumstances I wouldn't have felt comfortable interacting with Shawn—not without a full retinue of guards at least. The last time we'd seen each other rogue elements inside of his pack had tried to kill him. The fact that they hadn't been there specifically to kill me hadn't been a lot of comfort once blood had started flowing.

  This time I wasn't just dropping in unannounced though, which meant that Shawn was presumably taking extra precautions when it came to his security. Especially with regards to forces inside of the Chicago pack who wanted Shawn's father, Ulrich, to side with the Coun'hij in the coming war.

  That was great in theory, but it didn't particularly reassure me—not when there was a decent possibility that the real threat to my safety was Shawn. Our mission to save Agony just a few weeks earlier had every sign of having been compromised by someone in the know.

  Whoever was running things for the Coun'hij had been smart about it. They'd made it look like Brandon and his people had just been a general security precaution, but I wasn't buying it, and neither was Taggart. That meant that feelings were running hot in both of the groups that had nearly been killed when Brandon had parachuted out of the sky and then proceeded to tear through our people until Agony, Carson and I had managed to stand him off for long enough that everyone else had been able to escape.

  If it had been up to some of my people, I wouldn't have been meeting with Shawn at all—not without enough bodies to make sure that I could put him down as a warning to Ulrich for what happened to people who double-crossed the rebellion. They had a valid point about the risk inherent in meeting with him, but they were behind the times when it came to just how much protection I needed.

  In fairness, that wasn't entirely their fault. I'd been working very hard to keep the full extent of my abilities a secret from everyone but James, Jasmin, Jess and Carson. So far I seemed to have been successful, which was especially heartening because it meant that the first time I used my ability on a group of our enemies they were in for a fatal surprise.

  We were still exploring the full extent of my capabilities—a hard task given that I could only practice on the four of them, but the early results were more than just promising. I'd used my ability to bring groups of vampires to their knees on three different occasions now, but it had taken a lot out of me each time.

  An ability that neutralized everyone around you wasn't hugely helpful if it meant that you also passed out—especially not given that my attack was only somewhat targetable. I could manipulate the size of the absorption field my ability created, and I could pick a center point for the attack, but I couldn't pick between targets inside of the area of effect.

  That meant that things got tricky once the fight was joined—whoever was on my side probably wasn't going to appreciate being drained dry of energy at the same time I was rendering the bad guys immobile—but as luck would have it, the problems I'd experienced early on with my ability seemed to have been more the result of the strength of the vampires we'd been fighting in both instances rather than an inherent limitation of my powers.

  I'd managed to drop all four of my friends at the same time, forcing them to collapse bonelessly to the ground as the strength was sucked out of their limbs, for as long as ten minutes at a time before the exertion caught up to me and I joined them on the ground. When it was just one person I seemed to be able to hold the absorption field in place almost indefinitely, which was cool, but the real kicker was the fact that I could move around inside of my absorption field without being affected.

  That meant that I could casually kill anyone I'd rendered defenseless, and the only way for anyone to get at me would be for them to use some kind of distance attack that allowed them to hurt me from outside of my absorption field, or to rush me with enough bodies that they overwhelmed my ability.

  Carson had cautioned me repeatedly against starting to think of myself as being invulnerable, but it was hard not to get at least a little caught up in the sheer potential of my ability. I'd taken down a group of vampires that would have made mincemeat out of just about any other single hybrid I could think of, and that had been before I'd even had any real idea what it was that I could do.

  I'd noticed a few other things along the way as well. It was a lot easier to neutralize Jess than it was to bring down Jasmin. James was a bit harder to take down than Jasmin was, but he was much less of a strain on my gift than Carson was. All I could figure was that there was a limit to how much energy I could absorb at any one time, and there were significant power differences between each of my friends.

  I'd always known that Jasmin was exceptional for a wolf—even a royal wolf—but I'd never appreciated just how close she'd come to making whatever metaphysical cut was required to manifest a hybrid form. It really wasn't fair. Jasmin had busted her butt for years trying to be the most dangerous, capable fighter she could be. If she'd been a hybrid she would have been one of the pack's best fighters.

  James had worked hard to get where he was too, but it wasn't quite the same obsession for him that it was for Jasmin. No matter how hard she'd worked, she hadn't been able to compensate for the tiny bit of extra power that allowed James to manifest his hybrid form. It sucked, but there was a lot about our existence that sucked.

  All of which brought me back to the fact that I'd agreed to meet with Shawn by myself despite all of Jack's protests. I'd considered bringing Carson along—his ability to influence people's emotions would have been invaluable if he'd been willing to use it on Shawn—but I was pretty sure that Carson wouldn't agree to do anything of the kind.

  Carson was perfectly happy to use his gift to its full extent in life-or-death situations, but he'd sworn an oath not to use it to influence people in certain ways, and Carson was nothing if not honorable. If it came to fighting I would be able to drop Shawn and whomever he brought for at least a few seconds, which would be plenty of time for me to dispatch them.

  Most importantly though, by going to the meet by myself, I was sending a powerful message. I was telling Shawn that I wasn't scared of him—or his father. I was announcing that I was more than ready to deal with whatever rogue elements that might show up from his pack, and I might even lull him into showing his hand earlier than he'd planned.

  I wasn't particularly looking forward to Shawn attacking me if that was what he was planning, but I'd rather him betray me in a situation where I could take real, unavoidable vengeance in response. That was the kind of thing that I could deal with much more easily than having him send us into another ambush—if that was what he'd done the last time around—while he was hundreds of miles away.


  It was long past time for me to figure out once and for all which side Shawn was on.

  The meet was taking place in another club, which shouldn't have surprised me—Shawn was big on clubs. The part that did surprise me when I did my due diligence about the club was that Shawn apparently owned this one.

  I gave the alias Shawn had provided me to the bouncer at the door and bypassed the line entirely, which was nice. Unlike last time I'd slipped into a club to meet up with Shawn, I was wearing a black leather jacket. I'd picked it out because it was the kind of thing that I usually didn't wear, and because I wanted to see just how much fuss the bouncer would put up at the door.

  Guns were redundant in most situations we shape shifters found ourselves in—and knives were even more useless—but if Shawn was trying to set me up then the odds were very good that some of his intent had communicated itself to his employees. If I got a lot of flak from the bouncer that would be a pretty good indication that Shawn was particularly concerned about making sure that I wasn't carrying a wire or any kind of weapon.

  Interestingly enough, the bouncer called for someone else to man the door and then took me inside—walking me around the metal detector without even a second glance. Either Shawn was willing to trust me not to double-cross him, or he'd brought such overwhelming backup that he wasn't concerned about anything I might be bringing to the party.

  Too bad I hadn't brought my sword. It would have been an even more interesting test of what the bouncers were willing to let me get away with. I would have brought it in the special bag that Carson had commissioned for it, but that still wasn't the kind of thing any club owner would want inside his establishment. I dismissed the idea as the passing fancy it was as I followed the bouncer to the edge of the dance floor.