Marked

by Dean Murray

  I heard calls to Rebekka, Louis and Tasha, but I didn't actually pick up on most of what was said because I was so worried about how tired Alec looked. He'd been so vibrant and alive when he'd been talking to our people before we'd left the music festival that it was hard to believe this was the same person.

  I counted six yawns in his two-minute conversation with Tasha and his steps were slowing at a noticeable rate. I looked up and caught Dominic looking at Alec with concern, which only made me more worried because that meant we had one less set of eyes focused outward looking for trouble.

  I couldn't blame Dom for being concerned, but after that I spent as much time watching our surroundings as I did Alec. I wasn't going to lose him to another surprise attack that we could have stopped if we'd been paying a little more attention.

  "That's the last of the calls that I know I need to make."

  Alec's announcement caught me by surprise. I turned back to him and saw big, dark circles under his eyes.

  "Does that mean we can go back and let you get some sleep?"

  "Not quite yet—I need to turn on my phone and check my voicemails."

  "So things are about to get dangerous."

  "I'm afraid so. We should be fine unless the Coun'hij has a team already inside of the city, but things are going to get very hot in St Louis sometime in the next hour or two—we're going to want to be gone by then."

  "I guess this is as good of a place to do it as any. From here we could be down to the car in less than thirty seconds if we ran."

  "Let's hope it doesn't come to that—I'm not sure I've got a thirty-second sprint left inside of me."

  "Are you okay, Alec? I know that Dr…I know that you haven't been getting the kind of sleep that you should have been getting, but I've never seen you this exhausted before."

  "Don't worry, Adri, it's nothing that a little quality rest wouldn't fix."

  Alec checked the time on the burner phone and then sighed. "I didn't think it would catch up to me this fast. I thought I would have another hour or two, but by now Mallory and Donovan should have our people resupplied and the antennae mounted to the top of the RV."

  We'd stopped moving, but it still seemed like it was all Alec could do to keep from tipping over. I looked around the department store we were in, but it wasn't like most stores wasted valuable floor space with chairs anywhere but in the shoe section. After a second I took his arm and led him over to a floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over the city.

  We were only on the second story, but that was still enough to discourage me from taking in the view. My nervousness around heights wasn't bad enough to qualify as a fear, but I wasn't on a first-name basis with heights or anything.

  "Sit here and make your calls and then we'll go back to the RV."

  Alec gave me a smile. "I really don't know what I would have done without you, Adri. Thank you for holding everything together and thank you for coming in after me when…you know."

  We most definitely didn't want word of Dream Stealer's attacks on Alec to get out. Dom and James already knew, but there wasn't any question but that we could count on them to keep our secrets. The new bodyguards were another matter entirely though and the fact that Alec had come so close to slipping up and saying something he shouldn't around them told me that he was even worse off than I'd realized.

  I needed to get him home, preferably as soon as possible. If I could have, I would have stopped him from turning on his phone—he wasn't mentally in a state fit for entering into any more high-stakes negotiations—but I knew he wouldn't stand for that. I was extremely worried about what he might let slip on the next call he made, but by the same measure he was right that we needed to make sure that one of our people wasn't in trouble somewhere waiting on us for help.

  "Turn on your phone and check your messages, Alec. We need to get out of here."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  I rolled my eyes at his subservient expression, but honestly it was reassuring to know that the same old Alec was still there underneath all of the exhaustion. Despite everything that he'd been through, Dream Stealer hadn't managed to break him.

  Alec took a deep breath and then powered on his phone. I knew there was no way the Coun'hij was going to have people in place to come after us for at least a little while, but I still tensed up. Based on how jumpy our bodyguards were acting, I wasn't the only one who was nervous about what might happen next.

  As a general rule Alec didn't skimp on his tools and his phone was a tool—maybe not in the same way that Isaac's phone was a tool, but it was still a necessary tool. I knew that Alec had paid a pretty penny for this particular device, but even top-of-the-line, not-yet-available-to-the-public phones take time to boot up and the seconds that passed by as Alec waited for it to become usable seemed to drag on forever.

  It finally finished powering on and then Alec dialed his voicemail. A few seconds later he frowned and pulled the phone away from his ear so that he could key in some numbers. I pulled myself away from my obsessive scanning of our surroundings long enough to ask him what was wrong.

  "I'm not sure. My voicemail isn't working."

  "What does that mean? Why wouldn't it work?"

  "It could mean that I screwed things up when I tried to clone the sim card, or it could just be some kind of automated security feature that was tripped because it's been so long since I've logged in."

  "But if that was the case you would just be able to re-enter your PIN, right?"

  "Yeah, except I just tried to enter it twice and it's not working."

  "You mean someone changed it?"

  "Maybe, or maybe I don't remember it."

  "Well, we know that isn't the case. You've got the best memory out of anyone I know. You basically never forget anything."

  Alec looked at our new bodyguards for a second before responding. "I…I don't feel like myself. It's like I'm trying to reach through a brown haze to get at my memories. I'm not sure I'm as unscathed after everything that's happened as I would have hoped."

  I felt like I'd been punched in the gut, but I knew I had to be strong for Alec's sake. He'd spent years trying to mold himself into the kind of leader who would have a chance of standing off his pack's enemies. He depended on his memory and intellect as much as he depended on his strength and speed when it came to keeping the people around him alive.

  Even after his power had manifested, Alec had spent agonizing hours worried that he might not be capable of beating the Coun'hij and saving all of us. The idea that he might be somehow less than he was before had to be absolutely terrifying for him—even more terrifying than it was for me.

  I shook my head. "You didn't forget it. Somebody changed it. Maybe the Coun'hij hacked into your voicemail because they figured that was a perfect way to spy on us."

  Alec didn't just look tired now, he looked like someone who had just been thrown into a world they didn't understand. "That doesn't make sense, Adri. I can see them trying to hack into my mailbox—that's part of the reason that I change my PIN so often—but if they managed a successful hack like that they wouldn't change my PIN. It's too easy for me to get it reset—all that would do is tip me off to the fact that they were listening in."

  "Fine, I don't know the answer, but I know you aren't forgetting things."

  Alec still looked tired and lost, but he seemed to draw a measure of strength from the fact that I needed him to be strong.

  "Wishing something was a certain way doesn't make it so, Adri. We have to face the reality that is, even if it's not the reality we wish it was."

  Alec squared his shoulders as he spoke and I wondered how many times in his life Alec had wanted to give up but forced himself to go on because he knew someone else was depending on him. In a way that was reassuring because it meant that Alec was still Alec, regardless of what he might have lost, but in other ways it was still terrifying.

  It made me wonder. How would Alec Graves deal with a world where people desperately needed him but he wasn't cap
able of making a difference?

  "Maybe we have to deal in the world as it is, Alec, but that doesn't mean that you're right about this. There's another explanation—you'll feel better once you've had a chance to catch up on your sleep."

  "I wish I had your faith in the world, Adri."

  "It's yours to borrow any time you need it, but it's not faith in the world, it's faith in you."

  Alec turned and looked out the window—almost as though unable to continue to meet my gaze. When he looked back at me something had changed.

  "Can you please have everyone spread out? We're too conspicuous standing this close together."

  He needed a moment, needed some privacy so he could have a chance to try to pull himself back together.

  "Okay, Alec, I can do that. We'd better get moving back to the rest of our group pretty soon though if we want to avoid problems."

  "Thanks, Adri. I'll be along pretty soon."

  I was pretty sure that the other four had already heard everything Alec and I had said, but they all played along and pretended like they didn't know it was coming when I asked them to move further back. A few seconds later we were all back far enough that even the shape shifters couldn't possibly overhear anything Alec might be saying.

  Dominic followed me over to a collection of swimsuits that I pretended to be looking at while keeping an eye on Alec through the intervening racks of clothing.

  "May I examine your arm, Adri?"

  I started to move my right arm in her direction, but stopped as I realized that wasn't what she was asking for.

  "Yeah, go ahead."

  "You really can't feel anything?"

  "Nope, just a big old dead weight out on the end of my shoulder."

  I tried to keep my voice casual, tried to hide the pain of my most recent loss in the fight against the Coun'hij, but I knew I wasn't completely successful based on the sympathetic look Dominic gave me.

  "Do you remember what happened?"

  I looked around to make sure that the two new guys were far enough away that they wouldn't be able to hear us. When I looked back at Alec he had his phone up to his ear.

  "Mostly. Sometimes when my power throws me into someone else's dreams I don't remember everything clearly, but I think I've got all of the high points from last night. Dream Stealer's thumb claw went in about right here and sliced me up pretty good. I guess he must have severed the nerves that used to run down into my arm."

  Dominic shook her head in amazement. "I wouldn't have believed such a thing if I hadn't been able to see it with my own eyes. To think that you could be hurt so cruelly inside of a dream makes me not want to ever close my eyes again."

  "I think you're safe. Dream Stealer did a lot worse to Alec before I ever arrived, but it didn't result in any kind of lasting damage for him. If Dream Stealer was capable of killing people in their dreams, he would have done so a hundred times over already. I must just be uniquely vulnerable because of my ability. It's probably no less than I deserve."

  I fidgeted with a blue and green two-piece while Alec pulled his phone away from his ear and input a number.

  "I don't blame you for what happened to me, Adri. Even if I did, I still wouldn't want something like this to happen to you, but I really don't blame you."

  "I know you don't, Dom, but that's because you're too nice for your own good. That just means that I have to make sure that I blame myself. You nearly died because I was pushing you so hard to heal Alec. That isn't the kind of thing you should casually dismiss."

  Dominic stepped in front of me, momentarily blocking my view of Alec to make sure that she had my full attention. "I'm not being casual about anything right now, Adri. What happened wasn't your fault any more than it was Alec's fault. You were the one who brought me back, but I could have said no at any point along the way. The truth is that I would have eventually tried to heal Alec even if you hadn't asked me to."

  "That's nice of you to say, Dom, but we both know that I pushed you into doing something you weren't ready for and it was only luck and Donovan's skill that kept you here with us."

  I stepped to one side so I could see Alec and this time Dom didn't get in my way. Instead she just sighed as she looked back down at my paralyzed hand and arm.

  "I think I learned something from the experience, Adri. I've been trying to heal things in the same manner as Mrs. Valencia got me to heal the scar on my face. I've been trying to relax, but with Alec that wasn't what I did. I tried to find the same peaceful, calm feeling that I felt in New York, but this time there was so much riding on my ability that when it wasn't working I got mad. I got so very mad that something changed."

  "What do you mean, Dom?"

  "I mean I felt something inside of me. Maybe Mrs. Valencia wasn't all the way wrong. It was like there was a still, cool pool of energy inside of me, but I couldn't access it until I was feeling a strong emotion, something powerful enough to make me move the boulder that normally keeps it hidden out of the way."

  I tore my eyes away from Alec, who was running one of his hands through his hair while talking into his phone, and finally saw the glimmer of excitement that had been lurking in the back of Dom's eyes.

  "I know it sounds crazy, like I'm supposed to do two opposite things at the same time, but in some ways it actually makes a lot of sense—it's a better fit for when I healed everyone back at the estate at least. I wasn't calm that time—maybe I seemed calm on the outside, but I was so incredibly angry with the Coun'hij for sending people to attack us, to burn down our home and kill our friends. I wanted to do something to stop them."

  "And you did."

  "But that was the thing, Adri. I didn't think I could. I knew that I wasn't fast or strong enough to fight them. I wanted to do something, but I was at peace with the fact that I couldn't actually make a difference."

  "You're right, that sounds pretty crazy."

  "Sí, but it worked and what I felt when I tried to heal Alec was very similar to that, only…"

  "Only what, Dom?"

  "Only this time I can still feel the pool of energy inside of me. It was gone when I first woke up and was so muddled, but it's been slowly filling back up, drop by drop, and now I want to try and heal your arm."

  I pulled away from her in shock. "No."

  "Think of it, Adri. You could have the use of your arm back. I know it hasn't been very long yet, but surely you're already noticing how much harder things are."

  "Of course I've noticed. If I let myself stop and think about anything other than trying to stop the Coun'hij I would break down and cry. Trust me, I've thought about how much my life is going to suck because of this, but I'm not going to let you risk your life just so I can tie my shoes without help."

  "Adri…"

  "No, I'm not going to do it, Dom."

  "Then I will risk my life to remove Mallory, Addison and Andrew's scars. My gift is too valuable to leave untapped and you can't forbid me from trying to master it."

  She was right. There wasn't any way for me to compel her to never put her life in jeopardy like that again, but I would have said it anyway and risked ruining our friendship if Alec hadn't collapsed to the ground right then.

  I hadn't been born with shape shifter strength and speed, but I'd been watching Alec rather than looking outward, so I still made it to Alec's side before anyone else.

  "I need to call Isaac."

  Alec was slumped against the wall, phone on the floor, apparently having dropped out of fingers that no longer had the strength to hold it. All I could think was that he was having complications with his heart, that he hadn't healed as completely as he'd thought he had.

  "We need to get you back to Donovan. Isaac can wait. You can call him tomorrow or the next day."

  Alec shook his head weakly. "He's left me messages—he thinks that I'm holding a grudge for how everything went down when Jess lost her memory. I need to call him and tell him that it's okay, that there aren't any hard feelings on my end."

  Alec wa
sn't strong enough to resist me, but I likewise wasn't strong enough to pick him up and manhandle him back to the car. I started to turn towards the two new guys to ask them to pick him up, but I saw Alec's eyes start to flutter so instead I asked him the first question I could think of in an effort to keep him with us.

  "I thought you couldn't get into your voicemail, Alec."

  "I couldn't but Rachel left me a message telling me how to get in."

  "How would Rachel know? For that matter how could you get her message telling you how to get into your voicemail without first being able to get into your voicemail?"

  Alec smiled, but it was a weak movement. "She didn't leave me a message on my phone. Look out the window, Adri."

  He was sounding weaker by the moment and he was obviously delusional—just talking to him wasn't going to get him through whatever was going on.

  "You and you, pick him up and get him back to the car. I think it's his heart; we don't have any time to waste."

  Dom grabbed my arm. "If it's really his heart then he needs a hospital—now, not after Donovan has had a chance to look him over."

  "No, a hospital will just be signing his death warrant in a different way. The Coun'hij almost certainly has people headed to St Louis right this instant. They probably already have people running background checks on every patient in any hospital within sixty miles."

  "Then let me try to heal him."

  It was an infernal choice. My fiancé—the love of my life—balanced against the life of one of my best friends. Even worse, if I said yes and let Dom try to heal him again then there was a really good chance that I would lose them both.

  Alec weakly shook his head. "No, I'm not dying, I'm just tired. Don't try and heal me, Dom."

  His words were slurred—in fact he looked worse than he had even a few seconds before. I could see Dom poised to try; her hands were already resting on his chest. I opened my mouth, but James cut me off.

  "He's not delusional—look out the window."

  The billboard was so big that I wondered how we'd missed it on our way in, but that wasn't what was unique about it. It was nothing more than simple green text across a blue background.