by Dean Murray
"The cook needs more ice cream for dinner tonight. Cassie was supposed to go, but we all were feeling like getting off of the estate and stretching our legs a little so we volunteered to go instead."
Scott made a show of making a note on his clipboard. "Can you please roll the rest of the windows down, Jasmin? I need to log everyone in the vehicle. Sorry, but it's procedure."
I willed my heartbeat not to speed up as the windows came down and Scott looked back at Jessica, Alec and Rachel. Scott's eyes stayed on Rachel for an extra second and I knew we were in trouble. There wasn't any way to know for sure if he'd been specifically instructed regarding Rachel or if he'd just noticed how nervous she was, but he could obviously tell that something was up.
"How long did you say you were going to be gone?"
I heard Alec shift forward in his seat. "We're only going to be gone for a few minutes, Scott. We'll be back before you even know it."
It was the most egregious lie I'd ever heard, and I knew for a fact that Alec wasn't a very good liar, but everything pointed towards the idea that Alec had just told Scott the absolute truth. Alec's heart didn't speed up in the slightest, he wasn't sweating, his voice didn't even change.
Scott was a great guard, but he was a terrible actor. I could see him relax as he realized that he didn't have some kind of prison break on his hands. Any question as to whether or not he'd been told to keep Rachel at the estate was answered as he reached for his radio.
"I can understand getting a little stir crazy. I just need to make a quick radio call and then you can all be on your way."
Scott stepped back into the guard shack, which had been soundproofed well enough that I couldn't hear what he was saying, but I could see that he was nodding a lot and seemed pretty emphatic about whatever he was telling Kaleb.
It was the longest two minutes of my life, but then he came out with a smile.
"You're just going to town then? No need to go further than that for your errands?"
I looked back at Alec, which probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but he was the dominant, so it wasn't entirely unusual. Alec's smile was the most natural thing I'd ever seen cross his face.
"You don't have anything to worry about, Scott. Given the way that Rachel is feeling, we might not even make it to town before we have to come back home."
Scott nodded. It was obvious that he knew at least something bad was in store for Rachel because he gave her a bracing smile and then waved us on through.
Jasmin rolled the windows back up as she waited for the gate to finish opening. As soon as we were moving and there was no way that Scott could overhear us, I turned back to Alec.
"How did you manage to pull off a lie like that?"
Alec shook his head. "I didn't lie. As soon as we pull onto the main road so that we're not visible from the house I want you to slow down and then Rachel and I are going to jump out and go back to the house. Everything I told Scott was true, I just didn't tell him that we'd be leaving again as soon as we got back home."
Alec had just blown my mind. I couldn't even begin to imagine how hard it had been for him to think on his feet so well that he'd been able to outsmart Scott like that, but it was all worthless if it meant that he had to go back to the estate.
"Alec, don't go back there. We can't circle back around and get you, we're already pretty much out of time. Kaleb could come driving back from the airport any minute. You pulled the wool over their eyes, and I know that you meant it when you were back there, but now is no time to be deviating from the plan."
Some of the calm seemed to be back, or maybe it hadn't ever really left and I'd just mistaken his earlier briskness for something that it wasn't.
"We're still on plan, James. The plan was never for Rachel and me to go more than a few yards down the road with you guys. I'm sorry to put you three in this position, but you're the bait. Go to town and shop for the ice cream just like you said you would. If someone comes out to get you tell them that we went back to the estate. It's the truth, and it's all that you know. Either way, regardless of whether Vincent shows up looking for Rachel or not, you need to be back on the road headed north no later than an hour from now. If Rachel and I survive we'll give you a call and I'll tell you how to get out of the state without Kaleb being able to track you down."
"And if you guys don't make it out?"
"Then you should head to a big city. Stop somewhere along the way and steal some plates to throw the cops off, but either way you don't want to drive for very long before you bail out and find some other mode of transportation."
My throat was tight. Somehow I'd never expected for this to affect me like this. Alec and I had been through a lot, and I was fonder of Rachel than I'd ever realized. It was hard to say goodbye.
Jasmin was completely focused on the road, but she was blinking more than normal, and Jess looked like she was about ready to break into tears. Alec grabbed my arm and then patted Jasmin on the shoulder before turning back and giving Jess a smile.
"I'm sorry that we didn't have more time to say our goodbyes properly, you guys, but I really do appreciate everything. Not just you all being willing to do this for Rachel and me, but everything you've done over the years."
"It's mutual, man."
I hadn't imagined it this time, Alec's cool had cracked just the slightest bit, but I could see him gathering it back around him like a blanket and then Jasmin was slowing down and Alec threw the door of the SUV open. Before I could say anything else he grabbed his father's sword and threw himself out of the car. He hit the ground with more force and less control than usual because of the sword and for a second I worried that he'd seriously hurt himself.
A second later Alec came up bloody but not seriously injured and sprinted alongside of the SUV for the couple of seconds it took for Rachel to make her way over to the open door and jump. It wasn't the most graceful exit from a vehicle that I'd ever seen, but she was only human and it did the trick. She got just enough hang time for Alec to grab her out of the air before she hit the ground.
They were both off balance and they hit the ground again and went tumbling, but I saw the two of them get up and dust themselves off as we drove off towards town.
Chapter 24
James Wright
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah
We'd been driving less than five minutes before we saw Kaleb's caravan come down the road towards us. The lead car flashed its lights at us as though trying to tell us to pull over, but Jasmin just flashed hers back as if in a friendly hello and pretended like she didn't understand the signal as we went past them at exactly the speed limit.
"Make sure your phones are all off. We need to be able to play dumb as long as possible."
I double-checked that my phone was powered off and then checked the speedometer.
"Don't speed, Jas. We don't want to tell them that we know the jig is up. With any luck Vincent and Brandon are both riding with Kaleb and he'll refuse to come after us."
"I know, I'm just adding up numbers in my head. We dropped Alec off five minutes ago which means that he's got roughly ten minutes between when he gets back to the house and when Kaleb and the others arrive. What can he possibly do in ten minutes?"
"I don't know, but I hope that whatever he's got planned works."
We'd only been driving for a couple more minutes before I looked up and saw a single black SUV overtaking us from behind. Jasmin waited as long as possible before pulling over, but once they were within a few feet of us they started flashing their lights at her again, so she slowed down and pulled off to the side of the road.
Vincent was out of the other car and up to Jasmin's window before I even managed to unbuckle my seatbelt.
"Where are they?"
"Where are who?"
I tried for confused, but I was pretty sure that my tone came out sounding smug. Vincent came around the SUV as I opened my door and got out.
"Alec and Rachel, you idiot. Scott saw th
em leave with you. What did you do with them?"
"We didn't do anything with them."
He hit me with a left jab to the side of my head. My beast awoke with a flare of power as it tried to force a transformation. I managed to stop myself from losing my shape, but it was a close thing.
Vincent tried to hit me again, but I blocked his swing this time and hit him with an elbow to the jaw. He stumbled backwards and I saw his shape expand and then contract slightly as he overrode his beast's natural instinct to shift and take the fight to me with everything he had.
"News flash, Vincent, but you aren't dominant to me so I don't have to tell you crap."
"Brave words from a guy who's submissive to someone I almost killed the last time we fought. You're lucky that there's nowhere around here where we can transform without being seen. If we were back at the estate I would have ripped your heart out of your chest by now."
I needed to buy Alec more time so I did the only thing I could think of. I stepped forward and hit Vincent in the nose with everything I had.
"You talk big, but the fact that you may be able to kill me when we're fighting as hybrids isn't going to save you if I beat you to death with my bare hands out here."
Vincent's response was a wordless howl that was accompanied by such a burst of energy that I almost thought he was going to ignore the rules and transform. He stayed in his primary form though and hit me in the stomach with an uppercut that rocked me backwards.
I didn't actually expect to win. Alec had studied three or four different kinds of unarmed combat over the years in an effort to find something that he could adapt to fights between hybrids, but I'd never been interested in that kind of stuff. I'd always figured that all learning martial arts would do was wire the wrong set of reflexes and get me killed in a hybrid fight.
It looked like I was about regret my lack of interest in anything over and above basic boxing.
Vincent came in again with a blow to the body but I managed to absorb most of the force of the strike against my arm rather than my stomach. I threw a wild haymaker that he ducked and then he hit me with another jab to the nose.
I heard a crack as my nose broke, but although I hadn't been able to dodge his attack it had given me time to set up a response of my own. I saw stars from the force of his blow, but I managed to get a knee into his crotch and I had the distinct pleasure of watching him hit the ground as he curled up in pain.
I stepped forward to kick him in the ribs, but someone hit me from behind in the kidney before I could reach Vincent. I tried to turn around so that I could deal with my new attacker, but all I ended up doing was turning into the hardest punch anyone had ever hit me with.
I lost a couple of seconds because the next thing I knew I was on the ground and two of Vincent's guys were kicking me in the stomach and ribs. One of the kicks landed hard enough to puncture my lung and I blacked out again. When I regained consciousness it was hard to breathe and someone had propped me up against a rock on the side of the road.
"I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did, James. I'm only going to ask you this one more time before I just kill you and start in on the girls. Where are Alec and Rachel?"
It was incredibly tempting to smart off again, but I could see it in Vincent's eyes. He was actually hoping that I would give him a reason to kill me.
"I don't know. They jumped out of the car as soon as we were out of sight of the house. He said he was going back to the house and that we should just go get ice cream like we'd told Cassie we were going to."
Vincent stepped on my hand and another wave of pain threatened to tear me away from reality. I had a moment to be amazed at how much more everything hurt when I didn't have the weaker pain receptors of my hybrid body and then Vincent pulled my face up so that I had to meet his eyes.
"What else do you know?"
"Nothing that will help you catch them, you child-raping monster. By the time you make it back to the estate Alec will be long gone."
Vincent kicked me in the stomach and for several seconds I couldn't focus on anything other than a desperate need to get oxygen into my lungs as my diaphragm went into spasms. Vincent had only hit me with a fraction of the force he could have used, but it still was nearly more than I could withstand. When I finally sucked enough air into my chest to be able to notice anything other than the pain, I saw that Vincent was on his phone.
"…jumped from the car a little ways out from the house. You should be able to scent track them if you hurry. Oh, that's even better news than I expected."
Vincent dropped his phone back in his pocket with a satisfied look on his face.
"Congratulations, loser. You just got the crap kicked out of you for no reason. I called back to the house to get them looking for Alec and Rachel, but it turns out that Brandon took off after them nearly ten minutes ago."
Vincent turned back to the two bruisers standing behind him and pointed at me. "Keep him and the girls here. I'd say bring them back to the house but I want to leave our options open. It might work out best just to kill them out here and say it was an accident. Don't kill James without orders from Brandon or me, but if he happens to bleed out that's fine. I never have liked him."
Vincent started back towards his SUV with a smile on his face. "Tonight is actually turning out much better even than I expected it to. James is as good as dead, and Brandon will run Alec down and kill him too. By sundown my two biggest rivals will be dead and Alec will get the satisfaction of knowing that he didn't manage to save his sister from me. It's only a matter of time now."
Chapter 25
Alec Graves
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah
I messed up catching Rachel and she hit harder than I meant for her to. She managed to avoid yelling and potentially alerting Scott to the fact that we hadn't stayed in the car with everyone else, but she let out a hiss of pain when she tried to put weight on her ankle.
"I think it's just sprained, Alec."
"I'm sorry, Rach. I'll carry you back to the garage. Once we get there you won't have to do much of any walking."
As I handed her the backpack that I'd stolen from Kaleb's office, I had a brief moment to hope that I hadn't broken the tablet when I'd exited the car, and then I lifted her up onto my back with one hand and picked the sword back up with the other.
We had to go the long way around in order to make sure that Scott couldn't see us, and I was in my primary form, but we still managed to cover the distance to the garage in a little less than three minutes. I set Rachel carefully down and then went and backed up the 450cc dirt bike that had taken up one corner of the smaller garage where Kaleb stored his toys.
I was pretty sure that Kaleb had forgotten about the bike years ago. There wasn't much reason to keep a motorcycle around when you could just shift to four legs and cover most uneven ground even more quickly than most dirt bikes, but the bike was one half of a matching pair that Kaleb had purchased back before things had gotten so bad between him and Mother.
They'd only ridden the bikes together a few times and Mother's had been scrapped a long time ago, but I happened to know that Donovan had seen to the care of this particular machine and that it was in perfect working order.
I checked to make sure it still had a full tank of gas and then wheeled it out through the side door before going back for Rachel. A few seconds later the bike roared to life and we set off towards a shallow wash that I figured would let us cover the first five or six miles while remaining safely out of sight of the house.
The noise was a concern, but we occasionally had people from Sanctuary come joyriding along the outer edges of the estate on similar bikes. I was hoping that, along with the fact that the bike had been stored in the smaller garage on the far side of the house from the main motor pool, would let us get away cleanly, but I knew it wasn't much more than a hope and a prayer. The fact of the matter was that I hadn't been able to come up with a better plan, at least not one that dealt with all of the
other problems that became more important once we were a little ways away from the house.
I'd never spent any time on a motorcycle before now, but I'd spent a few minutes reading up on the relevant concepts before I went to Kaleb's office. I'd come away feeling fairly comfortable with the mechanics involved, but I still tried to start out cautiously. It was a good thing I did because I leaned too far to one side as I brought it around a corner and the back tire spun out.
I managed to get my foot down and stop from laying the bike down, but with Rachel's added weight on the back it was a close thing and I suspected that if I'd had merely human reflexes that I wouldn't have been able to save us.
We dropped down into the wash and I opened the throttle up a little more. I could feel the minutes ticking away and I knew that Kaleb and Brandon wouldn't be fooled by my sleight of hand with James and the others for very long.
As the bike hit forty-five miles per hour the wind started to become an issue. I squinted my eyes and cursed myself for not thinking to bring some sunglasses at least. A helmet would have been better, but I'd had no idea whether or not Kaleb had even purchased any safety gear with the bike let alone where he might have it stored away.
I tried to speed up a little more, but between the wind and my lack of skill I was already at the ragged edge of what could be considered safe when driving over terrain that I'd only ever crossed on four legs. I could probably survive any conceivable crash I might get into as long as I transformed into a hybrid quickly enough, but Rachel didn't have my inborn advantages and she probably wouldn't escape serious hurt if I were to lose control of the bike.
Kaleb's sword slapped against the tank as I came up out of the wash and we started across country. For a second I worried that the sword was going to drop away from the bike, but the bungees that I'd used to strap it down held, which meant that I could return my attention to driving.
It was slower going now that we were out of the wash and dealing with more broken ground than we'd been driving on. My shoulders tensed up as I realized that we'd slowed to the point where we were only a couple of miles an hour faster than a wolf could run. We'd gained a little ground on any potential pursuit up until now, but I somehow knew that it wasn't enough.
