by Dean Murray
"You're going to have to give me a lot more to go on than that, Jess. A lot depends on Alec being up here with us."
"I can't, Adri."
"What kind of timeline are we working with?"
"Alec needs to be in Florida later today."
"There's no way that is happening, Jess. It's not physically possible to drive that fast and trying to take some kind of flight would just result in a big fight with the Coun'hij."
"You'll be able to fly—we can make it so that the Coun'hij won't be able to track you for the next few hours."
It wasn't much to go on, but I'd spent the last several days getting a crash course in what it took to drop completely out of sight from Dom and Donovan. There was only one possible explanation for her certainty.
"You've got access to someone with an ability, a really powerful ability. That's how you're going to smuggle us aboard a plane."
"Yeah, there's someone here who can make that happen."
It was an answer to a prayer I hadn't consciously voiced. We didn't know how the Coun'hij had managed their recent breakthroughs, but I was pretty sure that if we could fall off of their radar—even for a few hours—that it would make all of the difference in the world.
"Jess, I need you to have your person there mask us for a few hours right now. The Coun'hij is breathing down our necks. If your people can get us clear of this current round of craziness, then in a couple of days you can call me back and we can work out something as far as a trip down to Florida."
"I'm sorry, Adri, it doesn't work that way. I don't have that much pull down here. This is a one-time offer and it's only valid if you're using it to come down here."
"Really, Jess? That's how you want to play things? You do realize that Andrew is here with us, right? Even if you've switched sides and don't care about the rest of us, surely you still care about him…"
"That's not fair, Adri. My hands are tied."
"Well, so are mine. Alec can't drop everything and just fly down to Florida on nothing more than your say-so. Don't bother calling back if this is all you're going to do—you've wasted precious call time that I should have been spending with people who are loyal to Alec."
I looked over at the tablet and saw that it was at eighty-six percent. I'd spent too long on the phone with her already. I started to hang up, but Jess stopped me.
"Please, Adri. Everything depends on Alec being here later today. You have no idea what it took for me to get permission to call you. I wouldn't have done any of this if it wasn't important."
"You're right, I have no idea what it took because you're not telling me. You have a very narrow window in which to explain, but you'd better start talking fast or it will close forever."
"I can't tell you any of that, Adri! I want to, but I can't."
"What can you tell me, Jess?"
"I can tell you that it's wrong for Alec to try and restore the monarchy."
"That's insane, Jess. You of all people know how terrible the Coun'hij is. Oblivion took everything away from you. Alec has to restore the monarchy if there's ever going to be any hope of the shape shifters having normal lives."
"I didn't say it was wrong for Alec to want to stop the Coun'hij, I said it was wrong to try and restore the monarchy, Adri."
There was a pause as someone said something that was too low for me to catch, and then Jess sighed. "I'm sorry, Adri. I really wish I could tell you more, but I can't. If there is any way for you to convince Alec to come down to Florida, then please do it."
She hung up before I could get off any kind of parting shot, and I was left with a monitor that showed an eighty-seven percent risk profile and a bad taste in my mouth. I wondered if it would have made any difference if I'd just come clean with Jess and told her that Alec was currently unconscious and under attack from Dream Stealer.
We'd reached the end of our resources. There hadn't been any word out of Jasmin—not surprising considering the fact that she'd been headed into a fight she couldn't possibly win—and nobody had managed to capture a mentalist vampire yet.
Mallory had us headed east in the hopes that we'd be able to capture a mentalist in one of the higher-population areas along the coast, but we all knew that was a long shot. It had seemed so simple back before the Coun'hij had been hot on our tail, but now all I could think about was the fact that stopping to hunt vampires would probably mean that we would have kill teams in the area hunting us.
Maybe if I'd come clean with Jess then Wyatt's people would have had a solution, but I didn't think so. It had been hard enough to believe that some fringe group that had spent the last hundred years flying under the radar would have two hybrids with major abilities in their ranks. The idea that they might have a third hybrid with a power—a hybrid who could track down Dream Stealer or kill him from a distance—in addition to Grayson and Jess' mystery 'cloaking' hybrid, just boggled the mind.
I felt reasonably comfortable in my decision not to tell her, to control the rumors that would have started spawning as soon as I began admitting that Alec was fading fast, but there was a tiny part of me that was worried I'd been wrong, that I'd just sentenced Alec to death despite my best intentions.
I looked over at Alec and my stomach knotted up the tiniest bit more at how pale he'd gotten. I stood up and crossed over to his bed, taking his left hand in mine as I wished there was something productive I could do.
I couldn't make any calls out to the rest of the world, and the monitor was now showing an eighty-eight percent risk profile despite the fact that I wasn't even on the phone with anyone. Even if someone called in I would probably have to ignore their call—I was completely useless. Donovan, Mallory and the rest all looked to me for direction, but I had no idea how to stop the disaster I could feel us sliding towards.
Lori was a ticking time bomb that could destroy the Coun'hij for me if I could hunt them down before she went off, but the odds of accomplishing that were getting slimmer by the hour.
I must have closed my eyes and started to nod off sitting up, because the sound of my phone ringing made me jump. For a second there it had felt like something had been pulling me down a long dark tube. I'd been terrified of what was happening, but at the same time it had felt oddly right to be headed wherever I was headed.
I went to hit the 'ignore' button on my phone, and then realized that it was Isaac who was calling. The monitor had dropped back down to eighty-six percent—still too high to risk a call of any length, but I hit accept regardless. I'd promised Alec.
"Isaac, is that you?"
"Adri? Where is Alec? I'm sorry, but I don't have much time and I really need to talk to him."
Isaac sounded worried and stressed, but he also sounded like home. Isaac had been different lately, more angry and unbalanced, but in my heart he was still the same guy who had accepted me into the pack over Jess' objections. He was still the guy who had risked death to come watch out for me while I'd been in New York.
"I'm sorry, Isaac. Alec isn't available, but he made me promise that I'd pick up no matter what the next time you called."
I'd been trying to sound as normal as possible, but apparently I hadn't succeeded, because there was a change in Isaac's voice when he responded.
"How long will it be before Alec can call me himself and talk to me?"
Maybe someone else would have started to resent the fact that everyone wanted to talk to Alec, that I wasn't good enough to solve their problems, but not me. Nobody was more conscious than me of just how poorly I was doing when it came to filling his shoes.
"I don't have an answer for you on that one, Isaac. Why don't you just tell me what you need and we'll see what we can pull together for you?"
Even I heard my voice catch on that response, there was no way that Isaac could miss it.
"What's going on, Adri?"
I suddenly wanted to just start crying. Part of me wanted desperately to just hand all of these problems off to someone else. Isaac had always felt so solid and strong. He
wasn't strong enough to take over and do everything that Alec was supposed to be doing, but surely he couldn't do any worse than I was already doing.
"The Chicago pack is in ruins. Nobody has heard from Shawn or Ulrich in days. The Coun'hij has kill teams scouring the country for our people and they are scary good at finding people they shouldn't be able to find. My two best weapons are Jaclyn who refuses to pick up her phone, and Grayson who told me directly the last time I called him that he can't help me with any of my problems."
"That's not what I was talking about and you know it."
I don't know what I expected out of Isaac after listing my problems off like that, but that wasn't it. I'd just been more honest with him than I'd been with anyone else for days, and he was acting like I was trying to jerk him around.
"Sorry, Isaac, that's all you're going to get unless you're ready to come meet up with us so that I can tell you in person. I'm not saying any more over a phone line regardless of how secure you or anyone else tell me it is."
"Where is Alec?"
There was something to his tone that put my back up even further than it had been, but that was okay, it was better for me to be angry. Anger had its own set of dangers, but at least anger made me want to keep fighting rather than just giving up and waiting for the end to come.
"Not another word, Isaac, or I'll hang up on you right now and Alec can just deal with the fact that I broke my promise to him."
"He's not dead." There was an element of concern to Isaac's voice despite his certainty. It was reassuring, like maybe the old Isaac was still there underneath everything. All of the warm, fuzzy feelings in the world couldn't change the fact that the monitor had just crept up to eighty-nine percent though. I needed to get Isaac off of the phone.
"No, he's not dead. What do you need? I've got problems here that need to be dealt with."
"I'm in Louisiana. Those kill teams chased us here and then Onyx backed us into a corner. I'm about to go fight Onyx, but I know that I can't win. I was hoping that Alec could come put him down for me."
The monitor hit ninety percent and started flashing a warning that the call would be dropped in the next few seconds in order to stop the Coun'hij from locking in our position. I closed my eyes for half a second and then cradled my phone against my shoulder so that I could hit the override button on the monitor. It was risky, but this was Isaac and he'd just told me he was up against a fight that he couldn't win. I had to try and do something to help him. I desperately ran through a list of the people still calling in on a regular basis, people who might be located close enough to Ash's old home to get there in time.
"That's not going to happen, not with everything else that's going on right now, but I might be able to get some hybrids down there to help you out. I think that there are two from the Tucson pack I could shake loose along with four or five wolves."
My override had spurred Donovan's beleaguered hackers into a frenzy of activity. The risk profile was still holding steady at ninety percent, but I knew they wouldn't be able to protect us for much longer. I needed Isaac to say yes and then give me an address and a time.
Isaac sounded frustrated. "No, that isn't going to do the trick. You can't just throw bodies at this guy. He's got an ability that drops people from a dozen yards away. Sending a dozen hybrids wouldn't be enough, you'd just end up with more corpses on our side when all was said and done. I need Alec, he's the only one who can definitely neutralize Onyx."
I felt like I'd just been punched in the gut. Alec couldn't help Isaac out, but there was another option if I was willing to use it. Lori would be just as effective against Onyx as she would be against any other male. The question wasn't whether Lori could save Isaac, the question was whether she would keep Onyx alive and use him as her own personal weapon.
I opened my mouth to tell him that help was on the way, but that wasn't what came out. "I'm sorry, Isaac, I really wish there was more that we could do, but there isn't. Are you sure that there isn't some way to get the three of you out of there?"
"Not one that would let me live with myself afterwards. What about if I stall for a day or two?"
The shakes were back, but this wasn't stress or malnutrition. It was just the natural result of abandoning my friend. A tiny part of me had been trying to convince myself that we couldn't have gotten Lori down to New Orleans quickly enough, but that excuse was gone now that he'd offered to stall.
"It wouldn't make any difference. I wish it would, but there's just no way. Can you think of anything else that we could do from here that would give you a chance of getting out of there?"
"Crap. No, there isn't any other way."
"Are you sure, Isaac? I…we could really use your help back here. There aren't very many people I can trust right now."
I tried to put all of my need into the words, tried to convince Isaac to save himself since I was unwilling to risk everything to save him. It seemed like I'd almost reached him—his voice changed slightly, got a little softer—but that hope lasted only until he responded again.
"No, Adri, I just can't do that. I'm sorry, but you'll be okay. You seem like you're keeping the wheels on, just don't let on to anyone else the true extent of our problems. I'm not going to tell anyone, but if word gets out we're all going to find ourselves pretty much screwed."
"Go teach your grandma to suck eggs, Isaac. You caught me in a weak moment or I wouldn't have even told you as much as I did."
"Just make sure that you tell Alec that I'm sorry. Oh, and if Ash doesn't manage to bring Onyx down, promise me that you guys will find a way to take him down soon. He needs to be stopped before he can do more damage down here."
There were tiny dark spots on my jeans. Somehow I'd started crying without realizing it. At least I could make sure that Isaac knew that Alec didn't hate him. It was a terribly small thing to give someone headed off to die.
"Alec already knows. He wanted me to tell you that he's already forgiven anything that needed forgiving. He hopes that you know how sorry he was that he couldn't have done more to save Jess. He still considers you one of his closest friends."
"I feel the same way. Do I have your promise that you'll see to Onyx?"
"Yeah, even if I have to pull the trigger myself. We're going to bring the Coun'hij and everyone who's been supporting them down or we'll die trying."
I didn't even have to think twice about my response, but that didn't surprise me as much as it should have. I'd been willing to do a lot worse in my quest to save Alec; it didn't seem fair to deny Isaac this one last request. Not when Donovan had the cash and the contacts to arrange it.
"The old Adri wouldn't have approved of assassination."
He was right, but that didn't matter. For a split second my mind was pulled down a different path, one where Alec's principles hadn't stopped us from taking full advantage of all of our resources. Onyx could have been killed years ago, shot from a mile away. Agony could have been assassinated as he was leaving the estate the first time he and Oblivion paid us a visit. We could have killed pack leaders all over the country who supported the Coun'hij and instituted a reign of terror that would have eclipsed anything the Coun'hij had done so far.
It was surprisingly seductive. It wouldn't have saved Alison, Jack and Sam—it wouldn't have even saved Jess' memories, but it might have saved Jasmin and Ben. If Agony's visit had been cut short then maybe Jasmin would have been able to convince Ben not to run off to New York.
I wondered how often Alec had sat alone in the darkness considering the very course I was considering in that moment. It would be so easy to remove the obstacles in the path he'd chosen, but despite the allure, I knew—just as he must have—that becoming the Coun'hij wasn't the answer. It might result in our beating them, but we'd never be able to replace them with something better if we went down that path.
It was odd, but in that instant I felt closer to Alec than I ever had before. There were very few people who could understand the temptation that was calling out
for me, but he was one of them. Maybe it was true that there was a silver lining in every storm cloud. As terrible as having Dream Stealer attack Alec had been, without it I never would have really understood what it was to have the power to save someone you loved and yet still not use it because to do so would be wrong. I understood Alec in ways now that I'd never understood before.
I also understood some of what made us different. I would fight Alec's war for as long as I could, but if I ever truly became convinced that our war was hopeless then I would choose an option that would have been anathema to Alec. I would go to ground with as much cash as I could scrape together and then I would fulfill my promise to Isaac.
I'd hire it out if I could, but if that didn't work then I would learn how to shoot. I would kill Onyx and then I would work my way through as many of the sympathizer packs as I could before they finally caught up with me and I went to join Alec in the oblivion that waited for us when we died.
"Yeah, well, I swore a promise back in Chicago. Besides, it's been a rough couple of weeks. There are worse things than putting a bullet in the head of the kind of people we are fighting. Take care of yourself, Isaac. I'll pass on your message."
"You too, Adri."
The monitor was flashing at me as I hung up. Ninety-eight percent. I'd fulfilled what I was starting to believe would be Alec's last request. The only question was what that was going to end up costing us.
Chapter 19
Adriana Paige
Interstate 64
Western Kentucky
"You simply spent too much time on the phone, Mistress Paige. The communications suite is of no use to us now. The Coun'hij has localized us. They know where we are to within twenty or thirty miles."
"I'm sorry, Donovan, it was Isaac; I was trying to fulfill Alec's last wish."
It was like I'd slapped him. "I refuse to accept that."
"I'm not going to pretend that I've known Alec for as long as you, Donovan, but this isn't easy for me either. Look at him! Really look at him and tell me that you think he's going to make it another week."
