by Dean Murray
"Everybody get the wounded into the SUVs and then I want the entire area doused with vinegar! We don't have much time, people."
I opened my mouth, but two sets of footsteps interrupted whatever it was I'd been about to say. An unfamiliar man stepped out from between two buildings. Jasmin was following him and she looked so uncomfortable that I started towards her only to have Juan pull me up short.
"Is everything okay, Jas?"
"I think so. Jess and I got Alison stabilized and we were in the middle of loading her into the car when this guy showed up. I think he's from the Coun'hij, but he hasn't said a word yet. So far all he's done is gesture for Jess to stay with Alison and for me to follow him."
The Tucson pack had gone almost completely still. There was still a little movement out on the edge of things, mostly people who hadn't seen the Coun'hij's operative yet. Jaclyn looked like she wanted to spit.
"Just for the record, none of you are welcome in our territory ever again. Anyone who arrives in the company of that thing permanently puts themselves in my bad graces."
Juan didn't look particularly happy about Jaclyn's pronouncement, but he didn't seem prepared to argue with her.
"I don't understand. It's not like we had a choice, we were just given a time and a place and told to meet him here."
"Saying you don't have a choice is just a coward's way of rationalizing their cowardice, kid. You guys have until tomorrow morning to finish up whatever work he has to do to wipe all of this under the rug and then you'd better be gone. I can't kill Oblivion without bringing the entire Coun'hij down on me, but I'm willing to see how far your daddy is prepared to go to avenge you if you're not gone by sunrise."
Things were moving too fast and I didn't have any of the background information that I'd need to make sense of them. I wanted to ask what was so bad about this particular operative, but before I could say anything a four-legged shadow detached itself from a wall and threw itself at the operative.
I didn't realize that it was one of the Tucson wolves until after she was airborne. She'd taken me completely by surprise, but the guy from the Coun'hij didn't even blink. He dropped down to one knee so that the wolf sailed over his head and then the operative casually reached up and let his fingers run along her side as she flew past him.
I expected the operative to shift to hybrid form so that he was prepared for the wolf's follow-up lunge, but the operative simply stood back up and watched as she hit the ground and rolled bonelessly for several complete revolutions before coming to a stop.
Every other wolf from the Tucson pack took a step forward as though planning on attacking, but Jaclyn yelled for them to stop. Her control of her pack was absolute and everyone skidded to a stop leaving a strange kind of scene with the operative on one end, Jasmin at his back looking like she wasn't sure she was on the right side of the fight, and more than a dozen moonborn on the other side looking like they wished they could tear the operative to bits.
I'd never seen anything to match what the operative had just done. The ability to kill with a touch when not even shifted to a combat form surely made this shape shifter even more deadly than Brandon or Jaclyn either one.
"What just happened?"
The words slipped out of me of their own accord, but when Jaclyn turned her glare on me I refused to back down. After a couple of heartbeats Jaclyn looked at the operative once more, but he simply smiled and made a gesture that seemed to say that he was waiting for her to explain everything to me.
"That's Oblivion. He's the Coun'hij's top troubleshooter because he doesn't just sweep evidence under the rug and leave people as laughingstocks when they can't back up their fantastical stories, he destroys the memories of anyone who's seen anything the Coun'hij doesn't want to go public. Jane isn't dead, but she might as well be. Everything that made her an individual is gone. She's been wiped clean and the child he's left in her place won't even remember her own name."
"He's been here before."
It was more a statement than a question but Jaclyn nodded in agreement. "Yes, he's been here before. That's why Jane attacked him. Oblivion did the same thing to her sister last year. Most packs don't even suspect that the Coun'hij has someone so insidious at their beck and call, but our pack got called into help after an op down here went sideways and Oblivion lost most of his protection detail. Jane's sister did or said something to piss Oblivion off and he wiped her clean. It was one of the things that pushed me over the edge where the Coun'hij is concerned."
Oblivion returned Jaclyn's glare without any expression on his face and then turned to Jasmin and motioned for her to pick Jane up and carry her to her pack mates. I stepped forward to help her but Oblivion grabbed my wrist. My beast had understood the significance of what had happened to Jane, and tried to break free, but I held onto control of my shape by the slimmest of margins.
It was one of the hardest things I'd ever done, but shifting to a hybrid wouldn't save me if he'd already decided to scoop out everything that made me the person I was. I had a split second to wonder whether or not it would hurt to have all of my memories stripped away, but then he released me and shook his head. Once he was satisfied that I wasn't going to help Jasmin, he waved for me to follow him into the darkness.
Chapter 13
Alec Graves
East Dixon Lane
Hereford, Arizona
Oblivion led me through the darkness until we were back at our SUV. Jess gave me a worried look as we got close enough for her to see us, but I gave her my best reassuring smile and then turned to Oblivion to see what he wanted us to do next.
Still using nothing but gestures, he had me help Jessica unload Alison out of the vehicle and then he climbed into the driver's seat and I sat down in the passenger seat next to him.
We passed the drive into the center of town in silence and I was left wondering why I was even along for the ride. The werewolves were dead, so Oblivion didn't need protection from them, and Oblivion didn't seem to have any reason to fear the Tucson pack, not given the sheer power of his ability.
Oblivion had punched an address into the GPS before leaving the industrial park, and following the device's directions led us to a quiet little neighborhood that wouldn't have looked out of place anywhere in the Southeastern United States. Oblivion parked us on the street and then after double-checking the address one last time, he motioned for me to follow him as he left the SUV.
Oblivion knocked on the door to a white-brick house and then waited until a tired, middle-aged Caucasian man answered it.
"What do you guys want…?"
The homeowner trailed off as he got a chance to take in the tattered, bloody state of my ha'bit. He stepped back and made as if to slam the door in our faces, but his human reflexes were no match for Oblivion's moonborn speed.
Oblivion grabbed ahold of the man's arm with one hand as he pushed his way inside of the house and then put his other hand over the man's mouth to make sure that he couldn't cry out. Feeling more like a villain than I ever had at any time before in my life, I followed Oblivion into the house and watched as the man in Oblivion's arms started shaking.
At first I thought it was the natural result of being terrified for his safety and that of his family, but then I noticed that his eyes had rolled back up inside of his head. After a few moments Oblivion took his hand off of the man's mouth and moved it up to the man's forehead.
The convulsions gradually died down until the man was motionless, at which point Oblivion gently lowered the man to the ground and then turned and looked at me. I got a frown as though Oblivion was noticing my appearance for the first time. Oblivion ordered me back to the SUV to put street clothes back on over my ha'bit, which I did and then I returned to find that neither Oblivion nor the man had moved while I was gone.
"Who is he?"
Oblivion looked around and then pointed at a frame on the wall. I got close enough to read it and found that it was a medical diploma.
"The coroner?"
The coroner's wife was apparently a sound sleeper because she didn't even stir until I set her husband down into the bed next to her. Oblivion was already on her side of the bed by the time I put her husband down, but he didn't touch her until after her eyes fluttered open and she looked up at him.
The process of draining her was eerily similar to what had happened to her husband and after only a short time Oblivion released her and motioned for me to follow him once again.
I almost couldn't believe my eyes when Oblivion opened the door to a child's room. When he took a step towards the bed of a girl who couldn't have been any older than ten I grabbed his arm, forgetting for a moment just how dangerous he was.
Oblivion just looked at me, but the expression on his face was enough to bring me back to myself, to remind me of the fact that right now I existed on his sufferance.
"There isn't any reason to drain her dry."
Oblivion shook his head and held his hand up with his fingers spaced far apart. He slowly brought his fingers together until they were nearly touching and then nodded.
"You're not destroying everything? Just the memories that have to do with the werewolf kills?"
I got another nod, which caused me to release him. I had no real reason to believe him—anyone who worked for the Coun'hij directly wasn't exactly trustworthy—but the simple fact of the matter was that there wasn't anything I could do to stop him.
Destroying the little girl's memories went much more quickly than the process had gone with her parents and she didn't convulse nearly as badly as they had. I wondered how much of that was because he wasn't destroying as many memories or if it was some function of the fact that she didn't have as many memories to search through and her memories were somehow less solidly fixed inside of her mind.
Oblivion motioned me out of the room and then quietly pulled the door shut behind him. A couple of minutes later we were back inside the SUV and pulling away from the curb. Oblivion didn't bother with the GPS unit at any point after that during the night. Apparently he got the directions to his next victim's house directly out of the minds of his previous victims.
Over the next couple of hours we visited the chief of police, a detective and a news reporter. Surprisingly it was the news reporter who was the most paranoid. It was hard to know whether that was because of her profession or because she was a woman, but she was the only one to check out the window before opening the door and even when she opened the door she left the chain on. It didn't save her though. She was in the middle of asking Oblivion who we were and what we wanted when he straight-armed the door with enough force to rip the chain free of the door jamb and knock her unconscious from the force of the door hitting her forehead.
I noticed that Oblivion was much more careful during our time in the reporter's house. He used his sleeve to avoid leaving fingerprints on her bedroom door and when my phone started to ring he forbade me from answering it with a stern headshake.
Apparently he could erase any mental evidence that we'd been there, but there wasn't anything he could do to explain away the broken chain or the spectacular bruise she was going to have on her forehead.
Once we were back in the SUV he motioned for me to go ahead and check my phone. As he got the car moving towards the next victim I got my phone out of my pocket and saw that I'd missed a call from Juan. He picked up after only the second ring.
"You're still alive then?"
"Yeah. I even seem to have all of my memories too."
"How would you really know if that was the case or not, Alec?"
I reviewed the night and couldn't find any blank spots, but when I looked over at Oblivion he just smiled.
"I guess I'll never really know."
"Yeah, well, life is just full of those kinds of mysteries. How much longer are you guys going to be? Jaclyn and the rest of her pack are getting restless."
I turned back to Oblivion. "How many more people do we need to pay a visit to?"
Oblivion held up three fingers but then he shrugged.
"So three you know about but you may find out about others from these three?"
I got a nod. We'd managed to communicate fairly well despite Oblivion's inability or refusal to talk.
"It sounds like we've got at least another hour and a half, Juan. How is Alison doing?"
"She'll live. Jess and Jasmin got her pretty much stabilized, but it turns out that the Tucson pack carries whole blood with them when they go on these little excursions. Once Jaclyn was satisfied that all of her people were stabilized she grudgingly allowed one of her medics to transfuse a unit of blood to Alison, which has her all of the way out of the woods."
"That's good news."
There was a pause and then Juan cleared his throat. "Have you talked to Oblivion about the fact that we were fighting werewolves when he arrived?"
"No, it hasn't come up yet."
"Bring it up. You need to make sure that he understands that we got into that fight because we were worried that he had already made it to the meet before us and been drawn into a fight with them."
"Okay, I'll talk to him about it."
"Thanks. There are a couple of people here who are very nervous about what's going to happen. Killing werewolves is still very much proscribed by the Coun'hij."
After I hung up I caught Oblivion looking at me.
"You heard Juan?"
I got another nod.
"Do you agree that we had a valid reason to engage the werewolves?"
Oblivion pursed his lips and then nodded. Apparently he was telling me that he knew saving him hadn't been our primary concern, but that he was willing to let our sin go without reporting it up to Puppeteer.
"What about Jaclyn and her people? Are you going to cause them problems?"
There was more of a pause now. Oblivion let me stew in silence for a couple of minutes before he shook his head.
It was a clear break with the rules that the Coun'hij had established, but for some reason I believed him. I'd taken a risk by asking about the Tucson pack separately because it had acknowledged the fact that they hadn't been fighting under the same pretext we had, but it seemed to have paid off.
There was something about the way that he'd answered that had my mental antennae tingling. I knew I should leave it alone, but I just couldn't seem to bring myself to do so.
"You didn't want to hurt Jane, did you?"
Oblivion refused to meet my eyes. He stared out at the road for nearly five minutes without providing any kind of response. Finally as we pulled to a stop in front of our next target he shook his head minutely. The movement was so slight that I almost could have believed that I'd imagined it, but it had happened.
Oblivion was possibly the coldest single individual I'd ever met, but he didn't seem to take any joy in what he was forced to do as a result of his service to the Coun'hij. As we walked up the steps to steal the memories of yet another person, I wondered what could make someone agree to serve the Coun'hij in such a terrible role.
Chapter 14
Alec Graves
Sierra Vista Municipal Airport
Sierra Vista, Arizona
By the time that Oblivion and I had scrubbed the memories of the inhabitants of Hereford to his satisfaction it was nearly sunrise. Jaclyn and her people had helped Juan and the others relocate up to Sierra Vista, so Oblivion rerouted his helicopter pilot up there while I drove us to the Sierra Vista Airport.
Juan and the others had destroyed all of the evidence of the fight in the industrial park, and Oblivion's last stop before we left had been to break into
the morgue and torch the bodies that had originally caused people to start asking questions.
I was worn out and hoping that Jess or Jasmin had managed to grab an hour or two of sleep so that I'd be able to sleep on the way back, but the sight of the group waiting for us at the airport washed away my exhaustion with a shot of adrenaline.
It wasn't just Juan, Jess and Jasmin waiting for us like I'd expected. Jaclyn was there too and she'd brought along four of the biggest, meanest-looking guys I'd seen in a long time. Oblivion was menacing, but it was an understated menace. These guys on the other hand looked like they ate small children for breakfast.
Juan didn't look particularly happy, but he and the girls were a couple dozen feet away from Jaclyn and her people, so I assumed that we weren't in immediate danger. Still, I parked the SUV a ways away from everyone.
Oblivion gave me an approving nod and then checked his phone and left the SUV. I half expected some kind of heated confrontation between Jaclyn and Oblivion, but he simply ignored everyone and headed towards a helicopter that was sitting on the tarmac fifty yards away.
I waited to see whether Oblivion would look back, but he disappeared into the helicopter without ever acknowledging my presence, or anyone else's for that matter. A couple of minutes later the helicopter was airborne and rapidly heading north.
Juan waved me over as soon as the helicopter had disappeared in the distance. I put the SUV back in motion and followed him over to a pair of white SUVs. As soon as I put my vehicle into park one of Jaclyn's guys opened the back of one of their SUVs and a big sigh of relief made its way through my tired body.
Alison was looking like she'd been beaten to within an inch of her life, but she was sitting up unassisted and looked like she was going to be okay once she got some rest and time to heal.
I bailed out of my car and gently picked her up.
"I can walk, you big oaf."
I shook my head. "You can't even stand right now."
