Burned

by Dean Murray

  I looked at the phone for several seconds after he hung up.

  "How did you know that was going to work, Carson?"

  "I didn't. I wasn't sure it was possible, but you said exactly the right things to him. You couldn't have done better if I'd coached you beforehand. I'll text Grayson our location using a cypher that he's familiar with. What do you want me to do after that?"

  "Can you please talk to all of the rest of our people and let them know that they need to be ready to go at a moment's notice? I want people sleeping in shifts, and I want them all well-rested."

  "You're not planning on leaving after your deadline to Jaclyn expires, are you?"

  "No, I'm not. We aren't going to get a better chance than this, Carson. We may not be able to convince Jaclyn that she's about to be attacked, but we can make sure that we're near enough to hit the Coun'hij's forces just minutes after they attack the Tucson pack. There's still no guarantee that we'll be able to save any of her people, but we can make sure that the Coun'hij loses every enforcer it sends after her.

  "We're going to lay a trap, and then once we've killed the Coun'hij, we're going to send photos and video to every single pack in North America. They all need to know that the Coun'hij isn't playing by its own rules anymore, and they need to know that we're the ones who can save them."

  Carson nodded. "I'll talk to our people, and then I'll go find Isaac and get his buy-in as well. What are you going to be doing?"

  I held up my phone. "I'm going to be securing the other half of our trap."

  I waited until Carson was gone and then activated two more privacy boxes before dialing Shawn's latest number.

  "Is this the friend who threatened to rip down my door?"

  "Yes—you should get your electrical system re-inspected so that our next meeting doesn't have to be so adversarial."

  Now that we both knew who we were dealing with despite the masking programs running on our phones, Shawn laughed.

  "I'd say it's good to hear your voice, but under the circumstances that's neither accurate nor appropriate. How are things going down there?"

  "We talked to the target. Nobody saw us arrive or leave, so if there's a leak it has to come from her or her daughter. She doesn't believe that the threat I told her about is real. What can you do to send your evidence her way?"

  Shawn was silent for several seconds. "There are a number of things I could do, but my dad isn't going to agree to any of them. It was all I could do to get him to agree to come out into the open with you. He's never going to agree to blow our cover with our friend from the border."

  I smiled, a cold, humorless expression, because I knew it would help the emotions behind it make it into my voice even despite the masking.

  "I came down here on nothing more than faith. I want to trust you, but you've played your hand as far as it can go without you putting more skin in the game. You say you want to help, but so far all you've done is send me and my people into what could be a gigantic trap. You're going to have to do better than that. Either get that intelligence over to our favorite headstrong female, or give me another sign of your commitment to the cause."

  Shawn was slow to respond, but even so I could tell by his voice that he wasn't surprised by my demand. "What did you have in mind?"

  "I want more bodies down here, but I don't want just any bodies. You said that your dad's best people all report directly to you. Send them—the best of them—down here where they can help out if we run into a group that I can't deal with by myself."

  "Okay, it's a deal. I'll have eight of them down there before tomorrow morning. Believe it or not, I was actually considering suggesting something like that to you already. We're getting reports of…hoover…activity down there."

  Hoover was code for vacuum, which was what we shape shifters called werewolves. Shawn sounded like he thought the negotiations were all over, and we were headed into the closing pleasantries, but I wasn't done.

  "I want your bodyguard on that plane. She comes too, or the deal is off."

  "I can't do that. My father will never agree to leaving me uncovered."

  "Then don't ask him."

  I'd nearly decided that Shawn wasn't going to go for it when he finally responded.

  "How did you find out? We've done everything conceivable to keep her ability a secret."

  "Call it a hunch. The first time we met she reacted even before the lights went out. Add in the fact that your dad wouldn't let anyone but the best serve as your bodyguard, and it was obvious she had to be exceptional in some form or fashion."

  "She's not your equal. She can't wipe out dozens of people all at once."

  "That's okay, I've got plenty of those kinds of weapons. I need something that can go toe-to-toe with any one single foe and come out on top."

  "She's your girl then. She'll be on the plane—just know that my dad is going to make things unpleasant for you at some point down the road as a result."

  "I'd expect nothing less."

  I hung up on Shawn and turned to go back outside, but a knock on the door pulled me up short before I could take more than a step or two.

  Adri looked up at me as the door opened, and I was suddenly incredibly grateful that this meeting wasn't happening inside of a dream. I could smell her here, could hear her heart racing. There was still no guarantee, but out here I at least had a chance of getting through to her—assuming I still wanted to.

  I examined my feelings as she climbed up the stairs, and found that I still wanted to patch things up between us. More than just me, my beast seemed to want it too. With anyone else who had caused us so much grief he would have been a growling, crackling ball of anger, but he was remarkably quiet right then.

  "I can come back if this is a bad time…"

  "No, your timing is fine. I just finished the two most important calls that I'm going to make all week. I was just headed back outside to check on my people, but it's nothing that Carson can't take care of."

  She nodded hesitantly, as though unsure if she was happy that I had time to talk rather than just brushing her off. I could feel her nervousness, smell her worry. I wanted to reach out to her, but I didn't know what to say, didn't know what might save her or what might set her off.

  "They went well? Your calls, I mean."

  "Yes. The first one got me exactly what I wanted, without any subterfuge. The second one required asking for something I knew I wouldn't get in order to get what I actually wanted, but in the end I got the assistance we need, and the other party seems happy still."

  "Is it hard to play those kinds of games?"

  I nodded. "I'd give a lot not to have to play them, but right now it's the only way to get us what we need. There are dozens of packs scattered all across North America, and all of them are scared of the Coun'hij, all of them are worried about making the wrong call and giving up their power to someone who will get their people killed. I have no choice but to unite them in any way possible. Maybe once the Coun'hij is gone there will be a chance to destroy the old order and create something that has a chance of letting us trust each other. Right now everyone is too scared."

  "You seem awfully sure of that."

  "I am. I know that they are scared because I'm scared. Being a hybrid—being an alpha—doesn't mean that you're not scared, it just means that you have to find a way to function around the fear."

  "What are you scared of, Alec?"

  "I'm scared of letting everyone down. I'm scared of making the wrong decision and putting us in a position where even my power isn't strong enough to get us out alive. I worry that this fight is one that we can't win, and most of all, I worry that I'll end up becoming my father."

  She shook her head. "That's not possible. From everything I've seen, you're nothing like your dad."

  I shrugged. "From what people have told me, my dad didn't used to be like this. There's no way of telling what will happen to me with the passage of enough time."

  "It's not going to happen, Alec. You're
too good for that."

  She was becoming a better liar than the girl I remembered from my dreams, the girl who had come to me wondering whether it would be safe to trust Dream Stealer with the secret of her identity. If she'd been dealing with someone else she probably could have gotten away with her most recent lie, but I could hear the falsehood in a dozen different ways.

  "Once upon a time I think you probably believed that, Adri. You're not so sure now, are you?"

  For a moment I thought that I'd gone too far. She looked up at me with anger flashing in her eyes, but somehow she brought it back under control.

  "You're right. I'm not as sure as I was once upon a time. I saw you do things to your father that I never expected out of you. The guy I met so many weeks ago couldn't have tortured anyone—not even a monster like Kaleb."

  Part of me wanted to respond with anger. My beast even seemed to be waking up and getting into the game, but I clamped down on him and forced my voice to remain even.

  "I did what had to be done, Adri. I didn't enjoy it, and I would have gladly taken another course if I thought one existed, but I didn't see any other way, so I took the only route that offered me a chance to keep my people safe."

  "I'm not questioning your intentions, Alec, just the results."

  We weren't just talking about me torturing Kaleb anymore, this was about her parents.

  "I'm sorry for how things turned out with your parents, Adri. I've thought about every single choice I made that day. I've reviewed each of them at least a hundred times, and there are a host of things that I would have done differently in hindsight.

  "If I'd known that my power was going to fully manifest that day, I would have taken one or two wolves to watch my back and gone in after your parents while you and everyone else went after Cindi. I could have stopped that vampire from ever raising that piece of machinery above your mom and dad's heads, and you guys would have outnumbered the bad guys holding Cindi by such a big margin that you would have easily been able to free her.

  "If I'd known exactly what we were up against—and known that I could easily neutralize the biggest threat—then everything would have been straightforward, but I didn't and it wasn't. I don't know what to say or do to make things better between us."

  I'd been able to smell Adri's mounting distress as I'd been talking, but I was still surprised to find tears running down her face. Somehow my mental picture of Adri didn't include someone who could cry silently like that. To me she'd always been the tough-as-nails fighter who'd saved me from Brandon.

  "I know that there isn't anything you could have done differently, Alec. You didn't know that we were up against two of the most powerful vampires that any of your people ever remember hearing about. You didn't know that we were going to be frozen in place by her powers, helpless as she started executing us, and you didn't know when you came through that door and neutralized her power that she had twenty tons of machinery dangling above my parents.

  "You saved Cindi, which is more than I had any right to expect, and you saved the rest of us. Nobody else in the world could have managed even one of those feats, and the really amazing part is that you were willing to sacrifice your life to make that happen."

  I opened my mouth to tell her that she didn't have to thank me again, but she talked over the top of me.

  "I'm grateful for what you did, Alec, but you had no right to keep me in the dark like that. If you wanted to offer to risk your life in a single-handed rescue attempt that would have been fine, but you were supposed to offer instead of just making the decision for me.

  "You have no idea how conflicted I am right now. It was my responsibility to choose which members of my family lived and died, but you took that away from me. I understand why you did it, but that doesn't make it right."

  "I was trying to save you from the guilt of having to choose between them, Adri. I've seen that kind of guilt before, and it would have destroyed you."

  "Maybe it would have, but at least then it would have been my choice. I would have felt the guilt, and it would have been on me to deal with it, just like it had been on me to make the choice in the first place. Instead you made that choice and I'm left with an impossible mixture of anger at you for doing so—and getting my parents killed—at the same time that I'm trying to sort out the gratitude I'm feeling for you at having saved Cindi and guilt over the fact that you went into that building fully intending on dying. How am I supposed to process all of that, Alec? You were ready to lay your life down for me. Not even to save my life, just to spare me from making a hard decision."

  "I'm sorry, I never meant to add to your difficulties."

  "Didn't you? If everything had been different and you died failing to save Cindi while the rest of us succeeded in saving my parents, it wouldn't have changed any of my feelings. I would still be tangled up in gratitude and guilt. The only difference is that you wouldn't be around to watch me try to work through it all."

  "I'm sorry, Adri. You're right, I never thought about the other side of the coin, never considered just how hard it would be for you to be whipsawed back and forth between those particular feelings."

  It pained me to make that admission, but I made it because it was the truth and because it was what I thought Adri needed to hear, but she wasn't done.

  "You didn't respect me, Alec. You probably still don't, but I know for certain that you didn't in that moment when you decided to take away my choices. If you'd really respected me then you would have let me choose. It's what everyone else does. Taggart, Isaac, Heath, they all trust me to recognize when I need to lean on them for help making a decision. You, on the other hand, didn't.

  "I don't know where things are headed between us right now. I don't know if I'll ever be able to work through everything I'm feeling right now, but I do know that I can't see myself ever being with someone who doesn't look at me as an equal partner."

  She turned to go, but I captured her wrist. "You don't get to yell at me like that and then run off without hearing my response—not if you want to be treated like a strong individual who can make her own decisions."

  I hadn't grabbed her with a strong enough grip that she couldn't break free if she'd wanted to, and for a second that was exactly what I thought she was going to do, but then my words sank in and she nodded.

  "Fine. If you want to have a chance to respond then you can."

  "You're right, I didn't treat you like you were capable of making your own decision, and now that you've pointed that out to me I'm even angrier at myself for how things went down. What I did to you was exactly the kind of thing that everyone else in my life did for years until I took Rachel and ran away from home. That wasn't fair to you, any more than it was fair to me. You're the one who was going to have to bear the cost of whatever we decided to do about your parents, and it was only fair that you pick what we did there."

  Her eyes started to soften, and I took hope that my admission would gain me enough credit with her to get me through the rest of what needed to be said.

  "What I did was wrong, but I did it because, at the time, I thought it was a way of taking the worst of those consequences and putting them on me. I understand now that it wasn't my place to do that, but I'm not working in a vacuum, Adri. I make decisions every day that have the potential to cost people their lives, and that is only going to get worse now that I've manifested my ability.

  "I don't have any equals outside of that door—not with regards to raw power, not now. Even before, true equals were very few and far between. I respected Carson and Isaac, just like I respected many of the rest of my friends, but for weeks now I've been the alpha of my pack and one of the key players in our alliance. Respecting those people doesn't mean that I don't keep secrets from them. I have to keep secrets or even more people would die."

  She frowned, eyes flashing. "I wasn't just an associate, Alec. I was…"

  "What you were to me is exactly the question. I cared about you, but that is true of many people. We never defi
ned what we were to each other—every time we tried something came along and upended everything. As my girlfriend you would have had the right to know things that the rest of my people didn't know, but I haven't been sure of your feelings toward me for weeks now. For every step forward we take, we take at least two more either to the side or backwards."

  She ripped her arm away, but she didn't turn to go. "This is a lousy time to be pressing me to make a stronger commitment to you, Alec."

  "That's not what I'm trying to do. I've acknowledged the validity of your position, and now I want you to understand where I'm coming from. My emotions going into the decision to save Cindi were a snarled mess too. It's a lot harder to separate our relationship as 'coworkers' from all of the personal stuff. I'm sorry for not giving you all of the relevant information before you had to decide what to do with Cindi, and I'm trying to meet you halfway."

  "I understand, Alec. Like I said, I've never doubted your intentions, just how things end up as a result."

  "I know that now is a bad time for you, Adri, but it's bad for me too. I've got a lot going on, and if I make the wrong choices none of us are going to survive to learn from my mistakes. If you know right now that you're never going to be able to forgive me, then just say so and release me from having to constantly worry about trying to make things right between us."

  She took a deep breath and stepped into me and wrapped her arms around me.

  "I don't know for sure either way, Alec. I wish I did, but all I can do is continue to try to work through things. Thank you for bringing Cindi back to me."

  I returned her hug like she was a porcelain doll. It wasn't the same kind of hug as what we'd shared in Minnesota, but it was a start.

  Interlude

  Coun'hij Agent

  Caravan RV Park

  Tucson, Arizona

  The being was walking across a parking lot when it happened. Puppeteer's presence had been a near-constant distraction in the back of the being's head for decades now, but every so often the jumped-up mongrel tried to take more direct control over the reins.