by Dean Murray
I let go of the hold I had on his neck with my fangs and stopped pulling away from Vincent. Instead of resisting his efforts to pull me closer, I added my strength to his and slammed my forehead down against his face with every ounce of force I could muster.
The shock of the impact made Vincent loosen his grip and I rolled off of him just in time to block another slash that was aimed at my already-mangled chest.
As I desperately backed away in an attempt to give myself enough room to avoid another clinch, I saw what was probably going to be my last opportunity. Vincent's footwork had continued to deteriorate as a result of the damage I'd inflicted on his legs.
I dropped my arms slightly as though trying to provide extra protection over the places on my body where he'd already done so much damage, and that was all the opening he needed. He sprang forward in an attempt to close and finish the fight off. It was a masterful display of the raw aggression that usually won Vincent fights, but he was a fraction of a second slower than normal and I used that fact to step off to the side, grabbing his arm and using it to pull him off balance so that the force of his spring threw him headfirst into the boulder just behind me.
Vincent hit hard enough that I half expected him to have a broken neck, but I couldn't afford to just wait and see how badly he'd been hurt. I jumped on his back, pinning him to the ground as I stuck my talons in to his legs so that I could control them.
I savaged his sides and back, digging until I'd managed to open up several of the veins that were closer to the surface, and then realized that it was time to make my choice. I'd been serious about my willingness to kill him if he attacked Jasmin, but that didn't necessarily mean that I had to kill him now. There was a lot to be said for getting rid of him once and for all. Vincent was the kind of scum who reveled in other people's misery and the world would be better off with him gone, but there were other considerations.
Kaleb factored in there in a major way. He'd forbidden fights to the death years ago and he'd consistently come down in a spectacular manner on anyone who broke that rule. There was a chance that he'd let me live because of the potential for future power that I represented, but there was no guarantee and if he did kill me then I'd be leaving behind people who currently depended on me for protection.
I knew that the allure of oblivion was a siren call that needed to be resisted, but despite that knowledge I still found myself digging my claws deeper into Vincent as he tried to buck me off. He had his arms underneath him now and he was struggling furiously, but there was a reason that hybrids worked so hard during fights to deny their opponents access to their backs.
I already controlled his legs by virtue of the steel-like talons sunk into the muscles he was trying to contract, but now I repositioned the rest of my body, sinking my fangs deep into the muscle of his left shoulder as my right arm snaked around and latched onto his right arm.
I didn't have to control his arms, all I had to do was just impede his efforts for a few short seconds while I used my left arm to end him. The possibilities were many. I could go for the heart or the neck, or even bleed him out by opening the veins that ran along the inside of his left arm.
The temptation was so strong that I sank the tips of my claws into his arm. I was half convinced that I should just do it, and then I got hit by a figurative wrecking ball and the question of whether or not to kill Vincent was entirely out of my hands. I rolled to my feet and faced off against Brandon, who must have arrived on the scene during the very end of my fight with Vincent.
"What's your dad going to think when I tell him that you were going to kill Vincent?"
"Nothing, because you don't have any proof that I was about to kill him."
I took in the rest of my surroundings as Brandon shook his head mockingly. James and Jessica had arrived too and, unlike Brandon, they hadn't shifted forms yet, but it was obvious that they were only a step away from rushing to my defense if I needed them.
"Alec, you can't really think that you'll get away with lying to your father."
"I'm not lying. I hadn't decided whether or not to kill Vincent yet, and everything I did up to this point was nothing more or less than you'd expect out of a dominant who was trying to discourage a rival from contesting their supremacy in the future."
Brandon gave me a considering look. He could tell that I was telling the truth, but it was obvious to me that he was weighing the odds. Jasmin and Jessica would counter Simon and Nathanial, two wolves to two wolves. Vincent was out of the picture and in fact needed some first aid or he was going to bleed to death sometime in the next few minutes, which just left Brandon, James and me. James was a hybrid too, but like me, he hadn't manifested any kind of special ability, so he wasn't any more of a match for Brandon's unnatural speed and strength than I was. At least not by himself.
Together James and I might have had a shot at beating Brandon, but there was no way to know for sure without actually fighting for real and if that happened, Kaleb would kill both of us for breaking his laws.
It was a moot point anyways. I was barely able to stand, let alone fight. I wouldn't be any kind of significant help for James and that meant that Brandon had the upper hand just like usual. He and his lackeys could kill us if they really wanted to, but unless they could goad us into starting the conflict then that would just mean that they would be the ones who Kaleb would make an example of.
It was a complicated, frustrating dance, but despite consistent rumors otherwise, it was all the two of us had been able to do for years now. We hated each other's guts, but as long as neither side messed up and did something to bring Kaleb down on the other side, there wasn't much we could do other than just insult each other.
"Maybe you're not lying, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get off scot free this time. I think it's time your dad really understood how much trouble you're causing inside of his pack."
I managed to keep my surprise off of my face, but I could tell by the way his grin widened that I hadn't managed to control all of the indications of my emotional state. I'd expected our two groups to posture a little more and then go our separate ways, but instead he was choosing to escalate things in a way he'd never done before.
It looked like I was about to find out whether or not the rumors were true. I was about to see just how much Kaleb was prepared to give Brandon in order to keep him happy.
Chapter 2
Alec Graves
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah
Brandon ordered Simon and Nathanial into human form so that they could tie scraps of cloth around the worst of Vincent's wounds. As much as I would have liked to just stand there and glare at Brandon the entire time, I knew that I wasn't a whole lot better off than Vincent was.
After a fight where we'd almost died, my beast was subdued enough that it was a small matter to push it back into a corner of my mind so that my form shrank back down. Changing back to human form kick started the healing process and stopped some of the bleeding, but I had a lot less blood to lose in this shape, so Jess started ripping long strips of cloth off of her shirt as I walked back to her, James and Jasmin.
As Jessica's shirt was quickly turned into bandages, the black, stretchy fabric of her ha'bit became visible, which made me look down to make sure that my ha'bit had survived the fight more or less intact enough to cover the important parts.
The ha'bits allowed us to switch forms without worrying about the complications that would have been part and parcel of dealing with casual nudity inside of the pack. They were one of Kaleb's inventions, one of the few good things he'd done for the pack back before he'd thrown in with the Coun'hij, the shape shifter ruling body.
Jasmin changed out of her wolf form with a cool rush of power and then joined us. "James, give me your shirt so I can help Jess."
"It figures. Rachel just bought this one for me and now it's going to be turned into sixty-dollar bandages."
Jasmin shook her head at him as she accepted the shirt
from him. "It's not like Rachel won't buy you another next week."
"Yeah, I guess you're right there."
Brandon had shifted into his hybrid form to tear me off of Vincent, but unlike everyone else, he didn't shift back to human form once the immediate chance of confrontation had passed. It was always possible that he'd worn too many different shapes today and was risking a painful set of muscle cramps as a result, but I was pretty sure that Brandon just enjoyed being a hybrid, enjoyed lording over the rest of us that he was nearly untouchable in single combat.
Brandon waved for Simon and Nathanial to pick Vincent up, despite the fact that it would have been much easier for his hybrid body to carry Vincent's bulk, and then we started towards the house. It wasn't until we were nearly home that I realized that there was probably a secondary reason that Brandon had chosen not to resume his normal shape.
With the ever-improving march of technology, it was harder and harder to keep the existence of shape shifters like us a secret from the world at large. Kaleb hadn't gone quite so far as forbidding everyone from wearing anything other than our human shapes outside in broad daylight, but the message had been clear. Short of some kind of dominance fight that arose too quickly for it to be moved inside to the caverns under the manor house, we were all expected to present unremarkable, human faces to the outside world.
Brandon had taken to breaking that guideline on a regular basis lately, but I was pretty sure that he was doing so today as a way of making the point that Kaleb valued him a lot more than me. It wasn't a particularly welcome reminder, which was of course exactly why he was doing it.
As we neared the house I tried to determine whether or not anybody was watching us approach. The house looked just like it always did, a massive block of stone and glass. Most of the manor was a single story, the natural result of building such a large structure back before air conditioning had been invented, but even the single-story sections were nearly as tall as a normal two-story house. The vaulted ceilings meant that during more peaceful times it was possible to open up the windows during the night and cool the house down enough that even July summers in Sanctuary were still bearable.
Kaleb had paid to have air conditioning units installed and piped into a number of key rooms sometime before I'd even been born, but by and large they were redundant. Sometimes the gray rock exterior walls managed to look inviting, but this wasn't one of those times. For all of the luxury and comfort contained inside of the manor house, it wasn't really a home. It was more a prison than anything else.
Mallory met us at the entrance to the suite of rooms that Kaleb used as his command center for all things pack-related. As usual she was dressed in dark colors—jeans, a utilitarian top, and a leather jacket. Mallory didn't need piercings and tattoos to look like she could have belonged to some kind of outlaw motorcycle gang.
"Shift back into something less ominous, Brandon. You're scratching up the stonework on the floor."
"What if I don't want to shift back?"
Mallory looked up at Brandon with a bored expression on her face. "Then you're an even bigger idiot than I thought. You've recently asked for a rather large boon from Kaleb, and I expect you're probably here to try and get Alec into trouble with his father. Do you really think that now is the best time to be trying to flex your muscles?"
Brandon bent down until his huge, hybrid face was only inches from Mallory's human features and when he talked it was in a low growl that humans wouldn't have been able to hear.
"I'll play nice right now, but you'd be smart to stop mouthing off to me. You're no match for me and sooner or later things are going to change around here."
Mallory was either a much better bluffer than anyone else I knew, or she really wasn't bothered by Brandon's threat. He was right, in a dominance fight Mallory couldn't hope to beat him. She was a hybrid, and she'd been around long enough to have the skills that came from dozens, if not hundreds, of challenge matches, but while she had manifested a power, it wasn't one that directly improved her odds if she came to blows with Brandon. With anyone else I would have figured that they were just an incredible liar, but Mallory was closer to my dad than any of his other advisors, so it was possible that she knew something that Brandon should be worried about.
I watched as Brandon followed the same trail of logic and I suppressed a small flash of satisfaction at Brandon's frown as he shifted back to human form. It would have been more satisfying if I'd thought that Mallory was a possible ally, that she wouldn't stick a knife into my back just as casually as she'd stick one into Brandon.
Mallory looked us all over and then grunted at Nathanial and Simon. "You two get Vincent to whoever is on medical duty. By the look of him he's going to be down for a couple of days at least, but at least go see if someone can get him back on his feet in time for his rotation down to the border."
Nathanial and Simon nodded unhappily and then headed down the corridor, at which point Mallory made a shooing gesture at James, Jasmin and Jessica. "It's not like we need any extra witnesses or anything. Go find something useful to do or barring that, at least get out of my sight."
Mallory watched until our respective friends had disappeared and then motioned with her head back towards the rooms she'd just exited. "Whoever was on duty saw the eight of you coming this direction fifteen minutes ago so Kaleb is expecting the two of you. He said to have both of you sent to his office."
I filed the information away and nodded. If she'd told us that he wanted one or both of us incarcerated until the next regularly scheduled public audience then it would have been a definite sign that we were headed towards big trouble. Anytime punishment was dished out in a public venue it was because Kaleb wanted to make an example of the offender. That wasn't to say that he didn't occasionally dish out spectacular beatings, literal or otherwise, in private, just that at least in private there was a chance that you weren't going to end up bleeding and wishing you were dead.
I waited a second to verify that Mallory wasn't planning on accompanying us in and then started towards Kaleb's office with Brandon only a couple of steps behind me. I didn't make it very far before Mallory stuck her head back into the foyer. "I'm well aware that you've been ducking me for the last few days, Alec. If I didn't have somewhere I needed to be, I'd be sitting you down right now for our session. Don't think that you can keep avoiding me forever."
Kaleb was leaning back in his chair waiting for us as we stepped into his office. I would have said he looked like a successful businessman in his slacks and dark blue polo, but there was something hard behind his eyes, harder than could be explained by just cutthroat business dealings. "Sit down so we can talk like civilized people."
The chairs were leather which meant that it would be relatively easy to clean my blood off of them once I was gone. I sat down and attempted to give off an air of unconcern. Brandon on the other hand looked like he was trying to come up with a way to remain standing or at least to make sitting down appear as though it had been his idea all along.
"I said sit down, Brandon. Trust me, you don't want to turn this into a pissing match."
Brandon frowned again and then nodded and sat down. I hoped that I was managing to keep my astonishment off of my face. Brandon was usually more of a smooth operator than this. Whatever he'd asked Kaleb for must be something he needed pretty badly in order to be so far off of his game.
Kaleb seemed content to wait for one of us to initiate the conversation, but I'd decided on the way down that I'd be best off acting as though I'd done nothing wrong. I hadn't technically violated any of the pack's rules, unwritten or otherwise, so I wouldn't be served by spouting off a bunch of justifications before Brandon had even had a chance to start making his case.
Brandon took a couple of seconds to gather himself and then launched into his accusations. "It's become apparent to me that Alec is directly working against you. He seems to be trying to create a splinter faction inside of the pack, probably in the hopes that he can set himself up
as some kind of tin god out in the middle of nowhere."
I revised my estimates of Brandon's ability to lie upwards slightly. He'd put in plenty of qualifiers to cover himself, but I still would have expected his heart rate at least to go up slightly given that he knew I wasn't actually trying to tear the pack apart. Kaleb leaned back and gave Brandon an appraising look.
"I think that I just heard a whole lot of supposition, none of which justifies me taking time out of my day to see the two of you."
Brandon leaned forward with a smile on his face. "This piece isn't supposition, it's fact. Alec interfered with a dominance challenge between Jasmin and Vincent, which is the kind of thing that has always been the domain of pack alphas, not a second- or third-tier hybrid who happens to be your son."
"Interesting. Given that Vincent seems to have come off second best in that fight it would appear that the pack's 'second- and third-tier' hybrids are much more dangerous than I realized. Maybe I should be looking to have the pack expand its territory and spend more time down at the border killing those damn cats if the pack's pool of talent really runs so deep."
Some of my anxiety evaporated. I wasn't entirely out of the woods, but it appeared that whatever hold Brandon might have over Kaleb wasn't sufficient for the older hybrid to just roll over and give him whatever he wanted.
"Well, Alec. What do you have to say for yourself? Brandon's accusation, for all that he's more than likely elaborating on the truth, is a serious one."
"I've done nothing to splinter the pack apart." Mostly because it was already coming apart at the seams. "Furthermore, I in no way acted outside bounds of the position in the pack that my skills have won for me. Vincent lost our last several matches and I found that I didn't like his manner today, it wasn't properly respectful towards one who is clearly his better, so I informed him that I planned on challenging him." All of that had been inferred, even if it hadn't been explicitly stated.
