Marked

by Dean Murray

  "I should have known. This whole time you were just hoping that I would fight your battles for you. You're just like everyone else, just in it to see what you can get from me."

  "I'm not going to lie to you, Lori. I do need you, but you need me too. I need you to help me fight off the Coun'hij, but you need me to let you stay close enough to Alec that you'll always have someone around who's capable of stopping you from becoming the monster we both know you're capable of becoming."

  I expected her to go storming off, but she didn't. "You're not talking about just lurking around in the background, are you?"

  "No, not if you need more than that to avoid going off the deep end, Lori. If you prove that you're competent and trustworthy then Alec will move you into his inner circle."

  "You shouldn't make that kind of offer, not to me."

  "Why? Aren't you trustworthy?"

  Lori looked away from me, unwilling to meet my eyes. "Haven't you stopped to wonder how Del Rio ended up with so many female hybrids? As much as you or I might wish things were different, statistically speaking it's a man's world. There are women hybrids, but we're only half as common as male hybrids. In a pack the size of Del Rio we should have had two or three female hybrids tops."

  "Actually, I didn't think about that at all."

  "I guess you have a few blind spots too. Daddy has been actively recruiting female hybrids and wolves into the pack for the last six years. Before that we had roughly the same ratios of females to males that you would have seen anywhere else."

  "Six years ago? Was that when…"

  "Yes, that was when I first manifested my ability. Once my father realized what I was capable of, even he took steps to try and make sure that he could stop me if I ever got out of hand."

  "Maybe there was another reason…"

  "I doubt it. Our lives would have been much easier if all of the main players in the pack were male. The only reason to bring in people I couldn't manipulate was because he needed them to serve as a counterweight to me. You can see how it might be a little hard for me to trust that you have my best interests at heart given that even my own flesh and blood doesn't trust me."

  I shrugged. "Trust is one of those things you have to build up piece by piece, Lori. I'm giving you the opportunity to start winning our trust, I can't make you take it though."

  She sighed. "What I did in Nephi bothered me, but not as much as you think. The Coun'hij enforcers deserved what they got, even if it felt a little wrong to completely take away their free choice like that. Mostly I just felt bad about the innocent wolves who got hurt or killed taking the enforcers down. Next time I won't make that mistake. I'll use the enforcers to kill each other, but not all of them. I'll keep a few around so that I always have resources to throw at whatever else might pop up."

  She looked at me again and cocked her head to one side. "You still want to give me a job now that you know that?"

  "Yes, I do." It wasn't a lie, but I was going to be very careful about who I put in her power. Lori was sounding scarier by the second, but I needed her if I was going to save Alec.

  "Fine, I'm willing to entertain the idea. No more guards, and no more drugs. I go where I want to go when I want to go there."

  I shook my head. "If you're signing on with us then you're signing on under the same terms as everyone else. You take Alec's orders and go where he wants you to go, when he wants you to go there. When Alec isn't available you'll be taking my orders as if they were Alec's. You'll be treated with respect, but you will have an honor guard of females responsible for both protecting you and making sure that you're behaving yourself. I'll give you your own RV and a generous stipend, but you'll be expected to mostly keep to yourself and avoid any interactions with males other than Alec."

  "You offer me a very pretty cage, but it will be a cage nonetheless."

  "Stop and think about the situation from my end of things, Lori. You're not just every leader's biggest fears made flesh, you're every woman's worst nightmare. If I let you just wander around and interact with anybody you please then Alec and I will have half our people up in arms convinced that you're arranging some kind of coup d'état and the other half of our people will be up in arms worried that you're manipulating their boyfriends or husbands.

  "The truth is that there is a very good chance you're going to have somebody come after you the first time their boyfriend breaks up with them because they'll be convinced that he secretly wants to date you. The guards are as much for your protection as anything else."

  Lori looked at me for several seconds. "You only have one thing that I want, Adriana Paige. I've spent a good chunk of my life knowing that I could have any guy I wanted. Once I realized that, they all became completely undesirable. Part of that is the same thrill of the hunt that all women enjoy, but part of it is because as long as I can manufacture a man's feelings for me those feelings are less than worthless. There's only one straight man who has ever resisted my advances."

  It was a good thing that we were standing still or the sinking sensation in my stomach probably would have made me trip.

  "You want Alec."

  "Indeed, I do. He's rich, powerful, considerate, and completely immune to my power. You can hardly blame me for wanting him."

  "No, I completely understand the appeal, but you haven't answered my question. Do we have a deal?"

  "What, no additional restriction that I not interact with Alec either?"

  "You wouldn't honor it even if I tried, but I'm not going to ask because I know Alec is his own person. Either he'll continue to choose me or he won't. I can't stop him if he chooses to leave me, all I can do is try to be the very best fiancée I can be and remind him every day why he chose me in the first place."

  "You're not nearly as confident of that as you're trying to pretend you are."

  She was right. Looking at her, still drop-dead gorgeous despite the fact that she needed a shower and didn't have any makeup on, it was hard to see a future where Alec didn't eventually choose her over me. In the end though, it didn't matter. I would rather see Alec alive and with her than lose him to Dream Stealer. I needed her if I was going to save Alec, the only question was whether I could keep her under control for long enough to aim her at the Coun'hij before she turned on me.

  We shook on our agreement and I tried to ignore the little part of me that died in the process.

  Chapter 17

  Adriana Paige

  East Side

  Kansas City, Missouri

  Now that we were theoretically on the same side, Lori gave me back my burner phone and I called Donovan on his latest prepaid phone. He promised to procure another RV as well as sending a car filled with capable female shape shifters to pick us up at a prearranged location in an hour.

  Lori gave me a curious look at the timing, but I wasn't going to get into the habit of explaining my every move to her. I asked her to dismiss her bodyguards with a request that they not talk about their time with us, and then we set off on foot towards downtown Kansas City.

  It took us forty minutes to get to the section of town that I wanted, and by then it was much too late for two young ladies to be out on foot by themselves, but I knew Lori would be able to handle almost any conceivable threat we might run into so I just focused on putting one foot in front of another and not falling asleep mid stride.

  "You do know that without me here to manipulate people's emotions you would have been raped three times already tonight, right?"

  "I suspected as much—thanks for doing your job."

  "You don't like me very much, do you?"

  "Are we really having this conversation? You just told me that you were going to try to steal my fiancé."

  "Yeah, I don't expect you to like me—most girls don't—but I'm still trying to understand why you gave me a job anyway."

  I rubbed my eyes and wished that I was safely back in my bunk, a bunk that could very well be hosting one of Tiffany's people as we spoke. That was a depressing thought. Oh
well, I could always just go into the bedroom with Alec and sleep there, even if that never seemed as restful as the nights where I slept in my own bed.

  "Look, I don't have to like you to give you a job. The fact of the matter is if it were completely up to me, I probably would have kicked you to the curb, but this is bigger than just Alec and me. A lot of people are going to die if we can't overthrow the Coun'hij."

  "I would venture a guess that a lot of people are still going to die even if you do manage to overthrow the Coun'hij."

  "The proper statement is that a lot of people are going to die even if we manage to overthrow the Coun'hij—you're on my side now, remember?"

  "Fine, people are still going to die even if we succeed in bringing down the Coun'hij."

  "Yeah, but in that case it will be their people dying rather than our people."

  "So it's just a question of us or them?"

  I suppressed the urge to tell her that she was being childish. "Lori, you yourself said that you felt worse about the innocents that got killed during the fight in Nephi than you did about the enforcers. This is just that same thing on a larger scale. The Coun'hij has been taking away people's rights for centuries. We aren't fighting for money or power, we're fighting to give our kids a chance to grow up in a world where they don't have to worry about being killed by someone like Agony because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

  "You sound like that's not just hypothetical…"

  "It's not."

  "Who was it and what happened?"

  "Her name was Alison. There were others who died at the same time, and Jess lost her memories, but Alison got the rawest end of the deal because unlike the boys, she never did anything to hurt anyone. Agony came through a little while after I moved into Sanctuary, and when he didn't manage to force Alec into a fight, that was his last big play. He murdered our friends and dared us to do something about it."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Are you really, Lori? Because so far you don't seem like you really get it. I'm not going to go back on my offer of a place to live and access to Alec, but if you really want to be pulled into the inner circle you're going to have to gain some real empathy. Alec will be able to use you either way, but you're not going to impress him talking like you are now."

  "I think you're actually serious…"

  "You know I am—you'd be able to tell if I was lying."

  "Why would you help me in my quest to steal Alec away from you?"

  "I'm not, I'm trying to help you become a better person. Now be quiet. I need to make some phone calls and we don't have very long before Donovan's team picks us up."

  I dialed Jaclyn's number first because I hadn't heard from her since the day Alec had been shot, and because, right about now, I couldn't think of anyone better suited for keeping Lori in check. Unfortunately Jaclyn didn't pick up, which meant I was back to square one when it came to how to keep Lori safely contained.

  "Jaclyn, it's Adriana Paige. We need to talk—preferably sooner rather than later. There have been some developments and I'm not entirely sure that your mission is necessary anymore. We've got another way and your ability would be especially useful back here right about now. This is a burner phone, so don't bother calling me back on this number. You can reach Alec and me on his normal number—we've got a communications system up and working for inbound calls again."

  "Jaclyn Annikov?"

  I nodded as I dialed Tasha's number. I was surprised when a man answered her phone. "What?"

  "I need to talk to Tasha."

  "She's not here." The voice was familiar sounding, but I didn't know anyone who could manage to sound that emotionless.

  "Grayson, is that you?"

  "Yeah, Adri, it's me. What do you want?"

  "What's going on? Why do you sound so different?"

  I half expected him to get angry with me. A hybrid as dominant as Grayson wasn't usually very willing to sit and play Twenty Questions. In a way, I almost hoped that he would get angry with me. The dead, monotone voice he was currently using was unnerving.

  "I'm not going to answer that question. What do you want?"

  "I want you and Tasha to gather everyone up and come meet us. We have good intel with regards to where the Coun'hij is based and I want to reassemble our strike teams. How soon can you all be on the road?"

  "I can't help you, Adri. You'll have to find someone else to do your dirty work."

  "Can't or won't?"

  "I suppose you're right, I could help you, but I'm not going to."

  "I don't understand what's going on, Grayson. Tell me why you're acting so weird and where Tasha is!"

  "You're right, you don't understand what's going on. Don't bother calling this phone number again, Adri, nobody will be around to answer it."

  I threw my phone into the side of a building with enough force that it looked like it exploded when it hit.

  Chapter 18

  Adriana Paige

  Interstate 64

  Western Kentucky

  My hand had started shaking whenever I didn't have anything in it. I'd had Donovan give me his professional opinion, but all he could recommend was a vitamin supplement, meditation for my nerves and more sleep. I followed his advice on the vitamin supplements, but the other two items were just not going to happen while everything around us was one ill-timed sneeze from blowing up in our faces.

  Lori had caused an even bigger stir than I'd been afraid of—it had been all Mallory could do to find enough women to fill out a guard schedule for the fourth RV. At one point it had looked like we were going to lose our few volunteers simply because there weren't going to be enough of them to take her down if it became necessary to do so.

  In the end, Dominic had to take a ten-hour shift each day and Mallory had to sign on for a six-hour shift to make everything work. Even that wasn't going to be sustainable long-term. We needed to convince some of our remaining females to help out with guard duty, that or meet up with more of our people. I figured that Rebekka and her daughter would be tough-minded enough to stand guard over Lori, but unfortunately they hadn't called to check in for quite a while.

  Throwing my phone against the wall after talking to Grayson had been foolish. I should have thought to call Rebekka and ask her to meet back up with us, but at the time I'd just been too frustrated by the fact that Jaclyn had refused to pick up and Grayson had refused to even talk to me.

  Part of me wanted to stop somewhere and call them now, but that would have been a major mistake. The Coun'hij was getting closer and closer to tracking us down, and Donovan was fairly certain that any outbound calls with encryption would lead them right to us.

  We could still take inbound calls, but even that was getting more spotty and dangerous. None of our hackers were quite sure what had happened, but the Coun'hij hackers seemed to have found a way to strip away much of the benefit of our communication suite. The risk monitor running on the tablet in Alec's room rarely ever dropped below sixty percent lately, even when I wasn't actually on a call, and occasionally spiked up above ninety percent for no discernable reason. When that happened the equipment went into a low-power standby mode until our hackers could implement more of their techno-wizardry and throw the Coun'hij a little further off of our trail.

  That meant that our communications capabilities had become so intermittent that I was losing any real feel for how the war was going. Some of my people seemed to have given up trying to check in and now I was having to try and keep track of them through rumors.

  I was pretty sure that we'd lost a group sometime the day before. There had been some kind of massive explosion in a small town in Colorado that the media had been covering for almost fourteen hours straight. Almost three hundred people had been killed and nobody seemed to have any real idea what had caused it.

  Donovan was convinced that it was the Coun'hij covering up a massive fight between our people and theirs. I had a hard time believing that any of our teams could have put up that much of
a fight, but I wasn't going to second-guess him. All I could do at this point was try and figure out who we'd lost.

  All that would have been enough to bring me to my knees, but when you threw in the fact that Alec's condition seemed to be decaying much faster than last time around, it was all I could do to pull myself out of bed in the mornings.

  Alec's phone—my phone now—started ringing, and I reflexively looked over at the tablet. We were a little above eighty percent risk—it would have to be a quick call.

  "This is Adri—what do you need?"

  "Adri? Where is Alec?"

  "Jess, is that you?"

  "Yeah, it's me. Where is Alec? I really need to talk to him."

  "He can't come to the phone right now—tell me what you need and I'll pass the message along. Unless it's something I can take care of myself. In that case, I'll just make it happen."

  Jess suddenly sounded uncertain. "How have you been, Adri?"

  "Honestly? Not great. We've had a series of reverses that none of us saw coming. Things are pretty stressful right now. I'd love to catch up and find out how your trip with Wyatt has been so far, but I'm afraid I just can't—not today."

  "I really don't think this is something you can help me with, Adri. How long will it be until Alec can call me back?"

  "Jess, right now we don't have the capability to make outbound calls without alerting the Coun'hij as to where we are. You're going to just have to trust me to pass the message on."

  "I could call back…"

  "You could, but the odds of you catching Alec are so close to nonexistent that you would be wasting your time. Just tell me what you need. Please."

  "I've…well, there are a lot of things I've learned since I arrived here. Alec needs to know this stuff, but I've promised not to say anything to anyone other than Alec. He needs to be down here—he really needs to be down here. A lot depends on it."