by Dean Murray
"Don't play with me, Eric. You were the one who approached me. In the last five years there hasn't been a single time when you didn't have something to report, some new development or rumor."
"There's nothing—I swear it!"
Taggart grabbed him by the throat. "I can make your life misery incarnate. Imagine going to sleep every night worried about what would be waiting for you here. Do you know how often you have to torture someone to drive them insane? It varies from person to person, but I don't think it would take much to send you over the edge. If you want out then just say so, but don't waste my time, don't try to play me. I won't be mocked."
Eric shifted forms, becoming a hybrid in an explosion of flesh and power that knocked Taggart away. Taggart responded in kind, transforming into a hybrid before he'd even finished rolling back to his feet. My heart shot up to my throat as the two hybrids circled.
"I've wanted out for years now, but you're never going to let me go. If I stop helping you, then in your mind I'm no better than any other Coun'hij enforcer. You'll still come here and spy on my dreams, you'll report everything you learn to Agony, and one day I'll turn around and find him waiting for me. I'm good, but I'm no match for Agony."
Taggart's voice came out low and savage. "We're at war, Eric. You have to choose a side. I'll respect your choice, but that doesn't mean that you get to sit out the fighting."
There was an edge of hysteria to Eric's laugh. "I never had a choice. Once you picked me, once you managed to make contact with me, it was only a matter of time before I was going to end up dead. I've been playing a losing hand ever since then. I tried to convince myself that I was doing something good by helping you, that I was honoring Audrey's memory, but the truth is that I've been scared every moment of every day since you found me."
"You always have a choice, Eric. It's not my fault that you're too craven to make the choice that you wanted to, not now, not five years ago, not twenty years ago. That's on you."
"Yeah, well, the joke's on you. Dream Stealer, the master manipulator, the man who is better than anyone else at turning people and corrupting them. You pushed me too far, the fear got to be too much and I couldn't manage to avoid suspicion anymore. They know."
The fear that I was about to witness a massive fight was replaced by a certainty that Taggart and I had just walked into a trap.
Taggart apparently felt the same way. He dodged to the right a split second before another hybrid appeared out of thin air and tried to rip his heart out of his chest.
Everything happened so quickly that my head spun. I shouldn't have been able to follow it all. Shape shifters fought with such blinding speed that humans had no hope of keeping up with the lightning-fast exchanges, but somehow I was able to see what was going on.
The new hybrid, a hulking, red-furred monstrosity, missed his initial attack, but pivoted on one foot and caught Taggart in the shoulder, scoring what looked like a shallow set of slices in the muscle there. Eric took advantage of Taggart's apparent preoccupation with the newcomer to try and charge him from behind, only to run into a featureless black slab of rock that materialized out of thin air between one heartbeat and the next.
As Eric reeled drunkenly away from the rock wall, it disappeared and Taggart attacked the red hybrid. I'd always thought that Taggart was impossibly huge in his hybrid form, but he gave up an inch or two in height and even more than that in reach to this newcomer.
I was pretty sure that in a purely physical confrontation that Taggart was going to come out second place, but the red hybrid wasn't just up against Taggart, he was up against Dream Stealer, the man who'd spent two centuries inside of people's dreams. The red hybrid dodged to one side, but his attempted evasion was cut short as thick, cable-like plants wrapped themselves around his legs.
That would have sent me crashing to the ground, but the new hybrid not only kept his feet, he managed to get his claws up and deflect most of Taggart's attack away from him. He still ended up with some deep gashes across the side of his chest, but based on his expression it wasn't anything life threatening.
"You're new. I didn't know that the Coun'hij had started another recruiting drive."
Even as Taggart spoke, another set of vines appeared, this time wrapping themselves around Eric's neck, but the new hybrid made no effort to go help his supposed ally.
"They brought me in specially, just to deal with you."
The two hybrids blurred towards each other again and when they staggered back apart they were each bleeding from new wounds. I was pretty sure that Taggart had hardened his skin at the last second to stop one of the attacks from striking home. The plants were gone from around Eric's neck, and the wound across his stomach didn't seem to be bleeding as much as it should have been.
"Should I be flattered? I thought the Coun'hij had finally realized that every time they bring someone new in there is a chance that they are bringing one of my agents into their inner circle. If I've got them nervous enough to start recruiting again, it's only a matter of time before they make an even bigger mistake."
The bigger hybrid bared his fangs in something that couldn't really be called a smile. "Let's just say that other developments necessitated a more proactive stance where you're concerned. Alec Graves' recent rebellion against his father means that the Coun'hij ran out of room on their dance card, so they've decided to eliminate some of their old partners. Your name was towards the top of the list."
More blood spattered the ground as both hybrids tried once again to get past each other's guards. Eric was slowly pulling himself back to his feet, but I was having a hard time concentrating on the fight.
Alec Graves was the biggest remaining point of contention between Taggart and me. The single dream that I'd shared with Alec remained etched in my memory as the one and only time I'd felt truly safe during the weeks leading up to my rescue by Taggart.
There hadn't been much to the dream—a few minutes' worth of talking followed up by an epic kiss. Alec hadn't even been able to offer me any protection, but his advice had been what had ultimately caused me to trust Taggart enough to call on him for help.
Even so, interacting with Alec had changed me in ways that I couldn't really explain. It was like I'd spent my entire life in darkness. I hadn't known what I'd been missing, but I'd still been unable to escape the nagging suspicion that there was something more to the world.
Meeting Alec had flipped on a light. I couldn't go back to a life of blindness after that. Taggart didn't trust Alec because he thought anyone related to Kaleb Graves had to be a worthless snake, but I knew that Alec and I were meant to be together. It didn't make any sense, especially for someone who didn't believe in soul mates, but that didn't change the fact that I knew it was true. If Alec had really run away from home and was working against his father then Taggart would eventually relax his prohibition against me trying to make contact with Alec again.
In the grand scheme of things maybe it wasn't that important, especially not with the fight that was currently raging just a few yards away from me, but it was incredibly important to me.
As much as I wanted to dwell on the possibilities that being able to talk to Alec again raised, I forced my attention back to what was going on around me as Taggart slapped the other hybrid's hand out wide to one side and raked his own claws down the inside of the other man's arm.
The red hybrid seemed to be bleeding from more places than Taggart now, but Eric was creeping stealthily forward in an effort to surprise Taggart and end the fight in one fell swoop. I couldn't afford to continue to just sit the fight out, not if I wanted Taggart to have a chance of surviving.
Shape shifter hearing was acute, but I changed my features, invisible though they were, and visualized myself as being nearly weightless. I pushed that change into effect as I started running towards Eric. He was moving slowly enough that it took only a couple of seconds to make it over to him and then I was left with the question of how to go about disabling the tower of muscle and bone
that was a hybrid.
I didn't realize that I'd made a conscious decision until a shiny aluminum bat materialized in my right hand. It was exactly the same as the bat that Tristan had used to try and stop Jackson. There were probably better choices as far as possible weapons went, but it had materialized without the invisibility that had been protecting me, so my cover had just been blown. I didn't have time to mess around. Besides, the bat felt good in my hand.
The red hybrid yelled out a warning as I wound up for a swing at Eric's leg. Whatever change I'd gone through that allowed me to follow the blindingly fast motions of a hybrid fight hadn't done anything to actually speed up my muscles and bones.
I could tell that I wasn't going to be fast enough. Eric was already spinning around, and my arms were taking too long to accelerate the heavy aluminum bat. Only it didn't have to be heavy. I'd never had much luck changing my own strength inside of the dream, but the weight of the bat was another matter entirely.
A concentrated burst of thought was all that was needed to make the bat nearly feather-light. I nearly overbalanced as muscles that had been straining against the momentum of a nearly motionless bat suddenly whipped the length of aluminum through an arc faster than any major league player had ever managed.
Just before the bat connected with Eric's knee I realized that the blow wouldn't actually hurt unless the bat was heavy. Even with my enhanced reflexes and time sense, I almost didn't have enough time to make the needed change. I imagined the bat regaining its former mass, but I was more focused on the concept of heavy than an actual defined amount of weight.
I over-compensated. The bat went from weighing less than three pounds to something in the neighborhood of a hundred and fifty pounds. I had no prayer of holding onto it at that point, but it didn't matter because the bat retained its original velocity.
It crunched into Eric's knee with enough force to shatter the spine of a rhinoceros. The bat tore itself free of my hands and nearly knocked me down in the process, but it laid Eric out flat. I stumbled backwards, trying to make sure I was out of range of the deadly claws that flailed towards me.
I wanted to be sick. I'd helped kill Pamela, but I hadn't been the one doing the damage to her, that had been Taggart. I told myself that it wasn't real, that Eric would wake up in a few hours with nothing more than a dull pain in his knee, and forced myself not to throw up. I didn't have time to be squeamish.
The red hybrid darted towards me, no doubt intending on killing me quickly so that he could return his attention to Taggart, but he made it less than a full step before Taggart grabbed his arm and swung him around, hurling him headfirst into another pillar of stone that appeared between one heartbeat and the next.
"Hold them here!"
Taggart was fearsome in his hybrid form, blood dripping from his wounds, his claws painted the same gory red, but I found myself shaking my head.
"I'm sorry, I can't do it."
An invisible, metaphysical wind tore across the white plain where we were standing. It would have scared me, but I'd felt it before. Taggart was holding both Eric and the other hybrid here in the dream, but he couldn't keep them here indefinitely. The best he could do was prolong their stay, only I could pull them into the dream completely enough for him to kill them.
He apparently misunderstood my refusal.
"Fine, just hold the red one here. We can always come back and deal with Eric later, the red one is more dangerous anyway."
I shook my head as I slowly backed away from all three of them. He thought I just couldn't hold two of them there at one time. If I'd been able to get away with lying to him maybe I would have claimed that I couldn't hold someone inside of their own dream, that it only worked inside of my dream, but he would have known immediately that it was a lie.
Besides, it wouldn't have changed anything in the long run, it just would have meant that he'd have wanted me to pull them into my dreams, one at a time, and kill them tomorrow or next week, or next month.
"It's not that I'm unable, Ta…Dream Stealer. It's that I won't do it. Not now, not like this."
I threw myself out of the dream. I'd half expected Taggart to keep me there too, but he let me leave. It didn't matter though. I'd saved myself from watching him torture them, but that wouldn't protect me from his rage once he woke back up.
Chapter 6
Jasmin Bianchi
Two Pines Private Airport
Atlanta, Georgia
Alec hadn't confronted me about the fact that I was losing my nerve yet, but it was only a matter of time. After the fight with the vampire mentalist I'd managed to keep the shakes from setting in until we made it back to the hotel and I was safely alone in my room, but it had been a close thing.
I'd been scared a lot lately, but having that thing wear my body like a glove had been the worst yet. I'd been fine, fighting as best as I could against an enemy that could read my plans as fast as I could come up with them, and then between one instant and the next I'd been nothing more than a passenger inside of my own head.
Alec and James had both indicated that for them the mental contact had gone both ways. They'd gotten bits and pieces, memories and thoughts from the vampire, but it hadn't been like that for me. All I'd gotten from the vampire was an incredible sense of wrongness, a dark decay that could only be described as evil.
I pulled my crap together enough to go back out with everyone the next day, but it was a good thing that we didn't run into any problems with the second delivery. James, Jess and I once again waited in the swanky bank lobby while Alec went down to the vault and took delivery of an obscene amount of wealth.
This time at least we got to listen to a new round of rumors while we cooled our heels. Being a shape shifter meant that we could hear whispered conversations from a lot further away than a human, and every person I could hear had been talking about the sheer number of armored cars that had visited the bank that morning.
The line employees hadn't known what was inside the cars, but everyone had known that something was up. Apparently the VP Alec was working with was worth whatever the bank was paying him though, because by the time we'd arrived he'd already taken four other people down to the vault.
Decoys, brought in for the express purpose of making sure that nobody could say for certain that Alec was the recipient of the dragon's hoard that had been shipped in from the rest of the banks on the island.
I'd actually been more than a little surprised that there had been enough bearer bonds on the entire island to cash Alec out, but then again maybe there hadn't been. Maybe one or more of the banks had issued an entirely new round of debt just to make sure that they got in on the fees Alec was ponying up to break the electronic trail of what had happened to Kaleb's money.
I thought I was going to lose it again between when we left Deutsche Bank and when we arrived at the Cayman National Bank. I probably would have if we'd been jumped again, but we weren't and I didn't.
I expected Alec to order us back onto a charter plane as soon as we finished up at the second bank, but he led us back to the hotel and left us twiddling our thumbs there for two more days. You would have thought that two days of downtime would have helped me put myself back together a little, but the waiting was almost as bad as the fighting had been, and it wasn't just that way for me. I was pretty sure I was seeing the same signs of stress in James and Jess.
None of us came right out and said it, but we all knew that Kaleb was looking for us and there were only so many places you could go if you wanted to launder billions of dollars' worth of stolen money. When you threw in the fact that we'd been involved in not just one, but two, sets of homicides since we'd arrived on the island, it felt like we were running on borrowed time.
When Alec finally showed up and told us that he'd arranged a charter flight back to the States, I hoped my stress level would start going down, but I spent the whole flight fidgeting in my seat. I probably would have given Alec a piece of my mind, but he'd found four more people fro
m the island and lured them onto the plane on the pretext of them having won some kind of trip to the mainland.
It didn't seem very wise to air all of our dirty laundry in front of a bunch of humans, so I refrained. That and the plane wasn't big enough to deal with Alec in hybrid form, which is what might have happened if I'd unloaded on him.
Exiting a chartered flight is pretty much just like arriving on a private jet. You walk down the stairs onto the tarmac, grab the luggage that is lined up waiting for you, and walk to your car.
Depending on how rich you are and the size of the airport in question, your vehicle might be less than twenty yards away or it might be a five- or six-minute walk away, but either way you could be on your way while the commercial passengers were still waiting for the fasten seatbelts light to turn off.
Usually it's the best possible way to travel, but my spider sense started tingling as soon as we got out of the plane. Alec had a white SUV waiting for us, but there was another SUV, a black one, idling just outside of the gate onto the tarmac.
Alec didn't seem to notice. He was busy shaking hands with the four shills who'd shared the flight with us. I grabbed his arm to get his attention, but he reached down and removed my hand without looking at me.
"Act natural, Jas. Trust me, you do not want to blow things right now."
"Are you out of your frickin' mind, Alec? We got lucky with that mentalist, hell, we got lucky with his minions earlier that day too. That SUV could be chock full of hybrids who are waiting to follow us to whatever hotel you've got lined up for us. Even the best case scenario, that there are only one or two guys watching us right now, is still bad because now they know where we are and it's going to be that much harder to disappear again."
Alec finally looked at me. He had a casual-looking smile on his face, but I could feel his anger bubbling just beneath the surface. He was wearing sunglasses, but I would have bet any amount of money that his eyes had turned a paler shade of blue, the color of his beast rather than the color of the human that was normally in the driver seat inside his head.
