by Dean Murray
It meant that we left quite a while after everyone else, which was nice, but it also meant that we were more or less cut off from support. If the rest of the teams ran late for any reason and the cats realized we were hanging out back behind their stronghold then we were going to be in for a very long running fight as we tried to get away without all dying.
The roar of the rotors precluded any kind of casual conversation on the flight out, and the things that I wanted to discuss wouldn't have been appropriate for the pilot to listen in on, so I passed the time while we were in the air alone with my thoughts. It was tempting to stew over Juan's revelations, to try to make plans for the future. I needed to have a very blunt conversation with my mother and possibly Donovan as well, but I knew it would be a mistake to think about that right now.
Instead of focusing on the things that I couldn't address, I instead spent the time calming my beast and preparing myself mentally for combat. Mallory had been wrong about what had triggered me gaining more power, but she'd been right about the difference between what I'd faced back in Sanctuary and the world that I was entering now.
Death had been a possibility anytime I'd faced down a challenger, but if it had happened then it would have been an accident, an oversight that happened despite all of Kaleb's efforts to make sure that I lived long enough to realize my potential. The jaguars we were about to go up against would do everything they could to kill me, and unlike the fight with the vampires, I couldn't even count on the fact that everyone on my own side would be trying to keep me alive.
After what seemed like forever, the pilot came back onto the radio to announce that we were within two minutes of our drop point. Juan responded without hesitation.
"Very good. Slow and come down to within twenty to thirty feet of the ground and we'll dismount."
I could hear the alarm in the pilot's voice as he responded to Juan's order. "Hold on, nobody said anything about that. I'm not accepting any kind of liability when you guys break your legs trying to pretend like you're Navy Seals or something."
"You put a large amount of money on deposit with our boss when you accepted this job. If you don't do exactly as I just told you to, you're going to forfeit the entire sum. We're not going to injure ourselves. Trust me, we've trained for exactly this kind of thing."
The pilot looked at Juan and I could tell that he wasn't going to agree, but Juan chose that moment to send a wave of power at the other man that left him shaking and white. I'd considered adding my own pulse of energy into the mix, but was glad that I didn't after I saw the effect that Juan's demonstration had on the poor man.
"Do exactly as I said, and if you can make it look like you're not hovering over the spot to drop people off, that would be even better. We'll need to drop in two waves."
Juan got a shaky nod in response and then the pilot gestured at a low hill. "Right there. The first set can drop out of the left side of the helicopter and then the other half of you can jump from the right side a second or so later."
Juan clapped him on the shoulder, which triggered a bit of a start in the other man, but the helicopter remained rock steady. The pilot really was as good as we'd been told.
James and Alison opened up the back doors on their respective sides and then Juan was climbing out onto the runners. James shed his helmet and then gave me a look that dared me to go out there next. I hadn't been particularly excited about this part of the operation, but part of being a dominant was leading from the front, so I gave him an unconcerned smile and followed Juan outside.
The buffeting of the air driven downwards by the blades was intense even this close into the body of the aircraft. I hunkered down as far as I could to avoid the danger zone above me where the rotors were whirling like razor-edged banshees. As James joined us on the runner Juan reached down to the running light mounted on our side of the helicopter and ripped loose the wire powering it. As the light died I looked through the open doors and saw Alison kill the light on her side as well.
The pilot gave us a nasty look, but the helicopter didn't waver in its approach. Five seconds later our side of the helicopter dipped towards the ground and the pilot hit the glass with his fist to signal us. It was a nice touch, but we'd already let go, flinging ourselves off into thin air.
As my feet lost contact with the runner, I reached out to my beast and shattered the chains I'd carefully bound it with. My transformation ripped through me with even greater force than normal. When I hit the ground a second or so later I didn't hit with the fragile body that I'd been wearing inside of the helicopter and my hybrid body absorbed the force of the impact without even needing to roll to bleed off momentum.
The hardest part of the whole operation turned out to be forcing my beast back down and shifting back to a human so that I could catch Jasmin as she threw herself out of the helicopter in my direction.
Her wolf body wasn't any more suited to a thirty-foot-plus drop than her human body, so she retained her human form and just prayed that I'd make the shift back in time to break her fall without impaling her with a set of semi-retractable claws.
Jasmin's aim was perfect, I hardly had to move at all to get under her. Jasmin was skinny, even for a girl, but after gravity had a chance to accelerate her for slightly more than a second she still hit me with an incredible amount of force. I got my arms underneath her, but the goal was never actually to stop her from hitting the ground. Instead of decelerating her instantly, I simply started slowing her down several feet before the ground would have done it.
We managed to bleed off most of the energy from her fall so that when she did hit the ground a simple roll allowed her to avoid injury. Jasmin let her roll bring her back up to her feet and then started shedding her clothes.
I looked away for a second to confirm that Jessica and Alison had made the drop safely and then looked back to see Jasmin slip out of her jeans so that she was dressed only in the stretchy ha'bit that preserved at least a degree of modesty.
"What do you want us to do with these?"
Jasmin managed to keep it nothing more than a simple question despite the fact that I knew Alison had to be rubbing her the wrong way. Jess was probably happy to let Alison be dominant to her, but Jasmin's nature wouldn't let her and Alison make it much beyond this current mission without settling the question of who was most dangerous.
Juan shrugged. "Stick them under a rock somewhere. If we carry the day then we'll come back for them. If not, well, welcome to the war, the bad guys will have your scent assuming we survive the rout."
A target painted on our backs indeed. All six of us transformed, one after another in a cool wash of power, and then we set off on four legs. The helicopter had dropped us more than a mile away from the compound, but it would only take us a few minutes to cover the distance between here and there. The hardest part would be avoiding being seen once we got to the top of the hill between us and the compound.
We hadn't discussed a specific formation for the trip between the drop site and the compound, but we fell into a loose double chevron without any scuffles. Alison took point as befitted the wolf with the most time in the trenches, while Jasmin and Jess took the wings. Juan was at the center of the formation with James and I flanking him closely.
Wolves were always able to cover ground faster than hybrids, which dictated our current choice of forms, but no hybrid was completely comfortable fighting as a wolf because we spent most of our time as hybrids.
Combat as a hybrid was all about bleeding your opponent out until you found an opening that would allow you to clinch and end the fight. Combat as a wolf was a completely different animal. Wolves didn't get a chance to bleed an opponent out, and disengaging from a fight usually got you killed. Jasmin was such a good fighter precisely because she didn't second-guess an opening when she saw it. She went for it with every ounce of strength and speed her body possessed and relied on her ability to kill her opponent once her jaws were locked around their throat.
Putting the girls
on the outside of the group would mean that they should trip whatever ambushes might be out there. It had a brutal, sacrificial feel to it, but they were the ones most likely to be able to avoid an attack in this form and positioning the hybrids in the center of the formation meant that we'd be ideally placed to change forms and then come to their aid within seconds of any attack.
Despite the dark tone of my thoughts, we crossed the dry desolation along our route without any problems greater than needing to dodge the occasional creosote bush or cactus. Only a few minutes after we started out we arrived at the hill that had, up until that point, hidden us from the compound. Juan dropped onto his belly and scooted just far enough to look out over the compound. I followed him, and caught a glimpse of two sentries before Juan signaled me back with a low growl.
The inability to communicate complex thoughts was actually one of the biggest drawbacks to this shape, but Juan had been very clear on our orders for this part of the operation back before we'd even left the coffee shop. We were to hold position until Brandon and the others attacked, and then we would start down the mountain, hopefully making enough noise to stop every cat in the compound from bolting straight towards us.
We'd just missed the new moon, so there was a sliver of moonlight dancing across the arid landscape as we waited. I found a flat rock with a large cactus on one side of it and rolled onto my back so that I could look up at the stars.
A couple of seconds later Jasmin padded over and dropped down next to me. We didn't need to talk for me to know that she was worried about the fight that was coming up. Jasmin put on a good show, but in a lot of ways she challenged other wolves simply because she was worried what would happen if she didn't keep clawing her way up the dominance food chain.
We hadn't had a good chance to just sit down and talk since St. Louis, but I knew that the last fight had been hard on her mentally. Having people burst into flame only feet away from you was a pretty good object lesson in all of the ways that things could go wrong.
I almost shifted back to my human shape so that I could wrap a comforting arm around Jasmin, but I'd already shifted three times tonight and I'd have to shift at least two more times before all was said and done. It was foolish to risk a set of cramps that might strike during the middle of the fight, but I was tempted. The cramps usually struck once we were back in our primary form, but occasionally they occurred when we were wolves or hybrids with predictably catastrophic results if it happened during the middle of a fight.
Instead of shifting I simply rolled back onto my belly and then moved back over to her so that I could rest my chin on her shoulders. A little way away but still perfectly visible as ghostly figures of golden-white light to my wolf eyes, I could see that James and Jessica had assumed a similar position as James tried to reassure Jess, who was the worst fighter in our group. James and Jess weren't any more of an item than Jasmin and I were, and although James hadn't ever really talked about their relationship, I got the feeling that they also felt like there was something missing there—that they should be with someone else, but they just didn't know who.
Juan was still up at the crest of the hill, positioned so that he could watch the compound, while Alison was between him and us, pacing back and forth in an effort either to bleed off nervous energy or keep from cooling down.
I watched the way the silver of the moonlight played with the light shining out from just underneath her skin. It was actually a much better visual feast than anything the stars could have hoped to provide. She moved with a sure confidence that was incredibly appealing and I found myself wondering if she could be the one who would be able to fill in the hole in my chest. I'd never really considered her in that way before, but there was a core of strength to her now that hadn't ever been visible before. It was like the harsh sand of near-constant combat had worn away the non-essentials to her personality that she'd always hidden behind back in Sanctuary.
Jasmin had a similar iron center, but for all that it was more readily visible than Alison's had been, hers was relatively untested. Alison's wolf form was undeniably beautiful and her primary form was likewise enchanting. She'd become a wiry masterpiece and even the single lock of red hair looked good on her. I inhaled to take in a bigger than normal lungful of her scent, which caused her to turn and look at me.
Her glare was unmistakable and made me smile inside. She was all angles and fury on the outside, but I got the feeling that she would be worth the effort it would take to get her to open up, only…she wasn't the one for me. I could appreciate her beauty and spunk, but she still didn't move me the way that the blonde from my dreams did.
My musings were interrupted a second later as Juan slipped down from the top of the hill and nudged all of us onto our feet. Apparently he'd seen something to make him think that the rest of the attack force was in position.
I followed Juan up over the top of the hill and then I saw them, more than two dozen glowing figures working their way towards the compound, using every scrap of glowing vegetation possible to mask their presence as they approached.
Juan and I started down the hill, moving quietly, but not making any special effort to remain hidden. The other four stayed hidden and unmoving just out of sight exactly in accordance with Juan's plan. It took the cats' sentries exactly thirty seconds to spot us and raise an alarm. The yelling and sudden explosion of movement down in the compound worked exactly as planned and Brandon's main combat teams killed their first two cats in the confusion before anyone else down there realized that they shouldn't have been focusing all of their attention on Juan and me.
I heard James and the others start down the hill at the same time that Juan and I launched into full sprints. The hope was that our numbers would cause the cats to pause for a critical few seconds as they tried to establish where the real attack was coming from.
We were running fast enough that it only took us a couple of heartbeats to drop down to where we couldn't see over the wall anymore, but it looked like the plan was working. I saw powerfully glowing figures streaming out of various buildings inside the compound and forming up in a loose group that was mostly facing our direction. We were still a hundred yards from the outer wall when a chorus of howls and growls filled the night.
I could hear the crash of bodies and someone from our side yelling commands as our teams inside the compound engaged the cats. Juan slowed to a stop, allowing James and the others to catch up to us as we waited to see if any cats would try to come over the wall. The plan called for one of the teams inside to secure the rear exit first thing, but although the wall was more than twelve feet high, it was mostly there to keep out local predators because it couldn't stop a full-grown southern shape shifter.
Under other circumstances I would have said that it would be impossible for a mere three hybrids with a matching number of wolves to bottle up all of the cats who would be looking to run away once they realized that they were outnumbered and outclassed, but Juan had assured me that only the most desperate would try to go over the wall. Doing that would take them extra precious seconds, during which time they'd be vulnerable to attack from our hybrids.
I'd bought into his explanation so completely that for a split second I refused to believe my eyes when I saw nearly a dozen cats come running towards us. I blinked a couple of times and then realized that they'd exited through the door, which apparently hadn't been sealed off like the plan had said it would be.
Juan shifted into the hulking shape of his hybrid in a sun-bright flare of power and I followed suit without thinking about the change. As hybrids we once again had vocal cords that were roughly analogous to those of a human and I heard James swear as he completed his transformation.
"What's the plan now, oh fearless leader?"
"Don't worry too much about trying to contain them, that's an impossibility given the fact that they now outnumber us. Just try to keep yourselves in one piece and we'll deal with the fallout of so many having escaped afterwards if any of us survive."
<
br /> Juan's words were calm and unhurried, but I knew we were in serious trouble. The mass of cats racing towards us was shifting around too much for me to tell whether any of them were glowing with the extra light you'd expect from one of the Ancients, but even if the Ancients were both still inside of the compound we were outnumbered and while hybrids tended to outmatch the younger jaguars, even the younger jaguars tended to be more deadly than wolves.
James, Juan and I formed a spearhead with the girls trailing along behind, only just before we clashed with the cats Juan did something completely unexpected. Between one step and the next Juan reached down and picked up a long branch that was the better part of ten feet long and as big around as my leg when I was in human form. Before any of the cats could adjust to the fact that they were facing someone armed with more than just the normal claws, fangs and talons of a hybrid, Juan impaled one of them with the branch and then swept the branch, and the cat he'd stabbed, through the rest of the group springing at us.
It was a masterstroke and it gave us a chance, however slim, of surviving the next few minutes. A cat hurled himself at me, but Juan had obviously rattled him because his timing was off and he wasn't as fast as he should have been. I plucked him out of the air with my right hand, and ignored the way that his claws ripped into my arm. He writhed around with a strength and violence that I wasn't expecting and for a second I almost lost my grip on him. Wolves were capable of flailing about in an attempt to break free, but his claws gave him leverage that exceeded anything I'd ever been up against before.
The claws on my right hand started to lose their grip on him, but I'd held him relatively immobile for just long enough and my left hand joined my right, sinking claws into his flesh and ending his life with a couple of carefully-aimed slashes.
