by Dean Murray
The reaction by the lead car was almost perfect when they saw that the road was blocked ahead of them. They must have had radios, because all five vehicles started to accelerate at the same time. Trying to ram their way through our blockade was risky, but they couldn't reverse course quickly, not without losing the semi-truck and the tens of millions of dollars of drugs it was carrying.
They'd all slowed down to negotiate the final curve in the road, which meant that they were starting from a less than ideal velocity, but they still would have been able to break through if not for the tire shredders which they hit less than a second later. Within a few heartbeats the first two SUVs and the truck were all on bare metal rims and the last two SUVs' tires were smoking as they stopped just short of the shredders.
Four more of our SUVs rolled into place behind the convoy and then Brandon shot off a flare and all around me people were shifting forms in a multi-pointed roar of power. My hybrid legs tore into the hard ground underneath me as I joined everyone else in sprinting down towards the road.
At close range humans with guns simply aren't much of a threat because of how slow the operators are, but we were starting out far enough away that I'd been worried that five or six guards armed with fully automatic weapons might do some damage before we got close enough to neutralize them. Hybrids are generally big enough and our internal systems are redundant enough that we are hard to kill with anything less than large-caliber rifle fire, but a pistol shot to the head could still bring us down and the wolves are much less resilient.
My concerns meant that I was hyper-aware and looking for weapons, which explained how I ended up as the first person to realize it was a trap. People were piling out of the SUVs just as expected, but rather than splitting into two groups, one of which was armed and the other of which dropped down onto all fours as they transformed, every single one of the guards shifted with a lash of power and charged towards the hybrids and wolves attacking them.
"It's a trap!"
My words hadn't even had a chance to begin fading away before Brandon started yelling for everyone to push on and attack.
I'd slowed down slightly when I realized that the cats were prepared for us, but I heeded Brandon's orders and crashed into a large male jaguar a second later. There was nothing of finesse in the exchange of blows. He jumped at me with quickness that I wouldn't have thought I'd be able to match, but I somehow managed to get an arm up between the two of us and I picked him out of the air and plunged my claws into his side.
I'd been lucky and I knew it, but as I dropped his lifeless corpse to the ground the back of the semi-truck opened up and three more men jumped out and suddenly the odds had tilted against us.
With one squad detached to Naco, the security team that had stayed back at the hotel, and a few people like Alison still on light duty, we were down to twenty-three effectives onsite at the ambush. We'd been expecting twelve cats and half a dozen humans, which would have meant that we'd essentially have them outnumbered by about fifty percent, once you factor in the fact that we had some wolves out to catch leakers rather than stationed where they could get right into the fight.
Instead, we were up against twenty-one cats, counting the three that had been hidden inside of the trailer with the drugs. Suddenly we were outnumbered and fighting a holding action until the wolves out on the perimeter could arrive and help tilt things back in our direction.
I ducked another cat and then ripped a smaller female off of James' back, but she writhed out of my grasp before I could kill her. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jess and Jasmin double-team the jaguar that I'd just dodged, but there was still something tickling the back of my mind. In order to have planned this ambush the cats must have had a pretty good idea of how many people we could field. I didn't see any way they could have known that we'd be down a team, so counter-ambushing us with such a small number of shape shifters didn't make any sense.
Another cat tried to attack Jess and drive her off so that she couldn't assist Jasmin, but Juan got ahold of the cat's ribs and slammed it into the ground hard enough that I heard bones break. Before Juan could follow up and finish off his injured opponent, two more cats threw themselves at him. One cat latched onto his leg and the other hit him higher up, gaining a purchase on his chest as its back legs tore into his stomach. He needed help, but another cat was circling me and I knew if I turned my back on it that I'd be dead within seconds.
Down on the south side of the road our forces were even worse off than we were. Whether by accident or design, the cats had sent most of their numbers down there and I could see that they were being pressed badly by the sheer weight of numbers arrayed against them. Vincent and his guys were almost all fighting more than one opponent and bleeding in several places, but the real show was being put on by Brandon.
I'd never seen Brandon go all-out before, which meant that I'd never realized just how much he'd been holding back in all of the fights I'd seen him in before. He wasn't just fast, he seemed to flicker from one place to the next without actually crossing the intervening distance. Brandon killed two cats in three seconds while I was watching out of the corner of my eye and I suddenly realized he was right. He just needed the rest of us to hold on for another minute or so and he'd swing the odds back in our favor all by himself.
My opponent suddenly switched directions and threw himself at James, but I managed to move with him and I got a couple of claws into his feline body. It wasn't much more than a flesh wound, but it threw off his timing and trajectory enough that James was able to spin around and land a couple of blows of his own.
We were in the middle of a total free-for-all. I jumped in and tried to keep the cat James had been fighting up until that point occupied, which positioned me perfectly to see Brandon's plan finally finish unraveling.
The three shape shifters who'd been in the back of the semi with the drugs had been slow to engage, but as I got a decent look at them for the first time I realized that all three were nearly half again as big as any of the other jaguars we were fighting. As Brandon started in on his third kill the three big cats split up with one heading towards us and the other two heading to the south side of the road.
James had somehow left my new opponent with a limp, which was going a long way to counteract the fact that he was obviously older than any of the cats I'd fought so far. The difference in speed and strength was noticeable, but I juked one direction and then waited until he was committed and threw myself forward with enough force that I managed to get both sets of claws on my cat before he could land and change directions.
We went rolling across the ground from the force of my spring, but I managed to keep superior positioning and as I dropped another lifeless body to the ground I looked up to see a trail of bodies between where the three bigger cats had been a few seconds before and where they were now.
Ancients. It finally made sense. They'd sprung the trap with a smaller number of cats because they'd figured that the sheer deadliness of their three most powerful cats would be more than enough to offset both Brandon's considerable gifts and any quantitative disadvantage they would be suffering under.
It was obvious that the two Ancients on the south side of the road had planned on engaging Brandon simultaneously, but they'd taken too long to identify him. Those precious few seconds had allowed Brandon to cut down the bulk of the cats that had been trying to swarm Vincent's team under and now Vincent and his guys had thrown themselves at one of the Ancients in the hope that they could keep it distracted long enough for Brandon to kill the one he was fighting and then turn around and save them.
There was no question in my mind but that Vincent's guys would need rescuing. They were keeping their opponent on the defensive by sheer weight of numbers, but even while on the defensive he was landing respectable blows that were taking a toll on the hybrids facing him.
The fight between Brandon and the other Ancient was nothing but a blur. I couldn't tell who was winning because I couldn't even follow w
hat was happening in the fight. I had a second to hope that Brandon's supercharged strength and speed was enough to carry the day and then a hammer blow of force hit me between the shoulders.
I'd committed the cardinal sin and allowed myself to become so distracted that I lost track of what was going on in my immediate area. The mere fact that I wasn't dead by the time that I hit the ground told me that I hadn't been knocked over by one of the cats, and I rolled to my feet to see that Jasmin had thrown herself at me to keep the third Ancient from executing me on his way towards Juan.
I thought Juan was a dead man, but he flung himself to the side with speed I hadn't known he possessed, and his evasion was just enough that the Ancient couldn't fully compensate. Instead of a killing slash to the neck Juan took a set of claws to his shoulder, but the massive jaguar probably would have killed him a second later if not for the arrival of two of the wolves who had been out on the perimeter. Both wolves jumped the Ancient at the same time that James finished off his latest opponent and moved in to help them.
Jess and Jasmin were only a leap away and I was only a couple of seconds behind them, but the Ancient killed one of the wolves and savaged another before any of us could arrive to assist. It looked like James got a claw or two into the jaguar as it jumped back out of range of the gang converging on it, but it was hard to tell for sure and if he had, then he'd paid for the blow with a set of deep slashes to his chest.
Somehow we'd finished off all of the other cats who had made it over to engage us, and it looked as though the other team on the south side of the road finally had the upper hand in their fight. A couple of their people were already headed this way to help deal with the Ancient, but it was going to be too little too late.
The second wolf, the one who had been hurt so badly a few seconds ago, was back on her feet, but she was so punch-drunk that she staggered away from the rest of us before anyone could stop her. The Ancient only needed a few feet of separation to make his play to finish her off.
A black-furred glowing streak of light pounced on the injured wolf and the rest of us threw ourselves at the Ancient in an attempt to save her. It was like fighting a wraith. I slashed at the cat, but my claws found nothing but empty air and a second later lines of fire tore their way across my chest.
My ribs held and protected my heart from the vicious attack, but the force of the blow knocked me backwards. I saw Jasmin flung away with blood dripping down her side and Jess knocked into James so that he couldn't interfere with what came next.
There was a frozen heartbeat where I could see the Ancient as it gathered itself and sprang at me. I didn't have to be able to see the arc of its trajectory. I was stumbling and off balance, there was no way that something as deadly as this jaguar had already proved itself to be was going to miss such an easy kill. I got my claws up roughly where I thought it would hit me only it didn't hit me because a massive form had been interposed between the two of us.
The Ancient hit with enough force that it actually managed to knock Juan over. I experienced another of those odd instances when I could see exactly what was happening despite the jaguar's unnatural speed. Blood fountained away as the Ancient opened up multiple arteries all up and down the inside of Juan's arms and then I sank my claws into black fur and made a fist around a set of feline ribs.
After hundreds of years of life, after decades of being all but invincible on the battlefield, having someone bury their claws inside of their flesh like that must have been so inconceivable that the Ancient panicked. Instead of doing the right thing and attacking me, the Ancient jumped away in an effort to break my hold.
The effort was nearly successful. I was pulled off of my feet and it felt like my arm had nearly been dislocated, but I managed to keep ahold of the cat and dragging me like that meant that James was able to time the landing and rake long furrows down the jaguar's other side.
Jess was only a fraction of a second behind him and she managed to lock her jaws around a back leg high enough up that she was mostly safe from the raking attack of the other back leg.
The Ancient tried to make up for the lapse earlier and attacked me with a level of brutality that exceeded anything I'd ever experienced before. I tried to use my grip on its ribs to keep it away from me, but I simply wasn't strong enough. Despite my best efforts, incredibly powerful jaws closed on my upper arm and I felt the huge bone that was the next best thing to indestructible shatter from the pressure even as my inner arm was shredded by two sets of deadly claws.
I willed my fist not to relax, but it seemed somehow disconnected from my will and a fraction of a second later the Ancient was free and turning on Jess. The blood loss had created a sense of exhaustion inside of me and I wanted so badly to just close my eyes and go to sleep, but I forced them open long enough to see that the Ancient got only a single slash to the side of Jessica's face, thankfully missing her eye, before the two wolves from the other team arrived and helped James pin the jaguar down just in time for Brandon to show up and kill it with a single blow.
I looked down and realized that I'd transformed back to human form without intending to. It was a bad sign, but it was hard to be too worried considering that I should have been dead several minutes ago, that I would have certainly been dead if Juan hadn't thrown himself in front of me. I rolled over and found Juan. When the Ancient had leaped at me there at the end so that it could break my arm it must have pushed me back toward him because we were surprisingly close.
"Did we get it, Alec?"
"Yeah, it's dead. All three of them are."
Juan smiled. I'd never seen anyone look as pale as he did at that moment. It was obvious that his shift back to human form hadn't slowed the bleeding enough. I was probably going to die and I was only losing blood from one arm not two like he was.
"Why, Juan? You should have let him have me. I'm dead anyways."
"No, Alec. You're important. We aren't going to get very many more chances to save our people before the storm breaks over us."
I wanted to ask him what he'd meant, but it was no use. Juan was dead and I would be joining him in the next few seconds.
Chapter 18
Alec Graves
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah
I'm not sure how I survived. I've tried to put together some of the pieces, but James, Jasmin and Jessica have all been extremely reluctant to talk about what happened and I haven't had any opportunity to talk to any of the independents down in Arizona.
The bits and pieces that I managed to tease out of my three friends didn't make me feel any better. One of our SUVs had been stocked with several units of blood, but there hadn't been enough blood to go around to everyone who needed it. The fact that I was alive almost certainly meant that someone else was dead who otherwise would have been saved. Considering the sheer amount of blood that I'd lost it was possible that saving me had cost more than one life.
James and the others were less reticent when it came to questions about what had happened once everyone got back to Rico Rio. Kaleb and Brandon were trying very hard to spin the operation as a smashing victory, both internally to everyone in Sanctuary and to the rest of the packs, but it had apparently been obvious to all three of my friends that the few independents who'd survived and even most of the Sanctuary people had felt like we'd had our heads handed to us.
I tended to agree. Killing twenty-one cats, three of which had been Ancients was an impressive feat, but it hadn't been worth losing nearly that many of our own people. The Brain Box and Brandon had been suckered and we'd committed to the wrong operation instead of biding our time and killing that many cats over the course of a few engagements where the odds were on our side and we could engage without losing most of our force.
Juan hadn't made it. When I'd first woken up in my bed in Sanctuary I'd thought that maybe his death had been some kind of terrible nightmare, but Jessica's face had told me otherwise. The scars were already fading, but I could clearly see where she'd taken a set of claw
s while trying to keep the Ancient pinned down enough for everyone else to pile on.
Jess had mistaken my expression for concern over her appearance and had hastened to reassure me that she was fine and that the scars would be gone within a few weeks, but she was trying to bandage the wrong metaphorical wound. Even her joke about not being able to wear a swimsuit at the pool now that we were back didn't tease much of a smile out of me.
Even back then, before I knew the full toll we'd paid to bring down the Ancients, I'd still known that it had been heavy and that Juan hadn't survived. I'd been sad, but I hadn't understood the full weight of that particular loss yet. That understanding didn't come until later when James and Jasmin arrived to check up on me.
Juan had been my connection to the independent packs. He'd had credibility with them that I didn't have, and might not ever have now that he was gone. Not only that, I'd doubtlessly alienated some of his friends when I'd made the scene at the briefing and refused to go on the assignment to Naco.
It had been James who had asked what we were going to do about the people Brandon had ordered killed in Naco. The four of us had decided to go on a short walk as a way of getting out of the house. Only seconds after we'd gone far enough that the house was no longer visible he'd brought up the single biggest unanswered question and I had been forced to tell him and the girls that I didn't know how to proceed.
Vincent had apparently survived as had more than half of his team, so one way or another it was virtually guaranteed that we'd be hearing about more incidents from the border where humans were killed by the southerners.
Despite his efforts to convince everyone that the operation had been a success, Kaleb had issued a slew of orders as soon as he received word of Brandon's losses. Several of the pack who'd been scheduled for downtime were ordered back down to Arizona along with a few members of the pack who had never been considered particularly suitable for pitched combat.
