Ambushed

by Dean Murray

  "How come?"

  "Like I said, I've seen the effects of addiction firsthand. Maybe you getting clean and making something of yourself proves that it's possible and that gives me hope that someone else could make the same change."

  Brindi stared off into space for a moment and I used her distraction to check another quadrant of our surroundings.

  "I told myself that I didn't care that I was hurting people. Nobody had ever taken care of me or given me any kind of break in life, so I shouldn't have to worry about them any more than they'd worried about me."

  "What do you think now?"

  She took a deep breath. "I don't know. No, that's not right, I feel bad about what I did, but it's hard to separate my craving for you out from everything else. You despise the life I used to live and I'm terrified that you're about to leave me here all alone, so I need to be what you want me to be. I need to hate the things you hate and love the things you love because that's the best chance I have of continuing to touch you, of continuing to feel this way."

  "I'm not leaving you here and I won't cut you off, at least not until after you've recovered enough to survive the withdrawal symptoms. Does that help?"

  "Honestly?"

  "Yes, always."

  She shook her head. "It takes the tiniest bit of pressure off, but it's not much compared to the fear that you'll go away tomorrow or next week. I've been on a lot of different drugs and nothing felt like this. It's not just chemical, there's something else to it."

  "Try to fight it, Brindi. I know it's hard, but it's important. You don't belong in my world. I can't protect you, I can barely even protect myself. The entire time we've been here I've been trying to keep an eye on our surroundings because this could all be one huge trap. I never would have brought you here if there'd been any way to leave you behind without killing you."

  "Why are you here then if it's so dangerous?"

  She didn't seem worried about the possibility of dying herself, if anything she was most concerned that something would happen to me.

  "I'm here because there are things more important than whether I live or die. There are a lot of people relying on me to find the help this guy may be able to provide."

  Brindi shivered, but she didn't smell cold. "Do you realize just how badly that rocks my worldview? If you're the real deal, if you really mean what you're saying, then I was terribly wrong to have done most of the things that I've done so far in my life. That's more frightening than anything else you've said so far. It's scary to contemplate having to worry whether people are trustworthy. It's a lot easier to just know that they aren't and go from there."

  "How old are you, Brindi?"

  "I turn eighteen next month. Why, how old are you?"

  "I'm seventeen too."

  She looked at me with astonishment stamped into her expression. "That's not very old to have the weight of the world on your shoulders."

  "That's funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you."

  Whatever response she might have had in mind was cut off by the sound of my phone ringing.

  "Yeah?"

  "I checked with Shawn. It sounds like you've had an eventful week."

  "You could say that, but you might want to reserve judgment until you hear how my vacation went down."

  That earned me a chuckle. The guy on the other end sounded like he was laughing in spite of himself, but he was laughing.

  "There's a trail on the south end of the parking lot; follow it. You can bring the girl."

  He hung up again before I could respond. I pocketed my phone and then stood.

  "It sounds like we've got a hike ahead of us. It's probably best if I just carry you."

  Brindi nodded. "I'm not going to complain about being in your arms, Alec, you know that."

  I picked her up and headed to the other side of the parking lot. The trail wasn't immediately obvious, but once I'd gone a dozen yards or so in, it became more defined and easier to follow.

  Brindi fell asleep within moments, which was good because it meant she was getting the rest she needed, but bad because I had to be even more careful. I couldn't afford to stumble and wake her up, or even worse fall and reopen her stomach wounds.

  It had been ages since I'd gone on a hike in human form. I'd forgotten just how slow it was to navigate through any kind of wilderness on two legs. Normally when I needed to cover any kind of real distance I was either on four legs or in a car.

  I hiked for more than an hour before I got to a spot where I could set Brindi down and stretch out the tired muscles in my back and neck. Brindi started to wake up, but I reached down and rested a hand on the side of her face, which made her smile and go back to sleep.

  If we had to go much further food and water were going to become an issue. Not for me, I could probably get away with drinking the water from one of the streams in the area, but Brindi didn't have the advantages of a shape shifter constitution that could laugh off most of the parasites in a flowing body of water.

  I pulled out my phone and debated calling my contact, but then just shrugged and put the phone back in my pocket. If he'd set this meet up with the idea that I'd be traveling on four feet then I could have hours of walking still ahead of me, but in the interest of keeping whatever goodwill I had garnered so far, I'd give it another hour before calling again.

  I picked Brindi back up and started forward again. We were slowly climbing the mountain we were on. The path was mostly headed north with an imperceptible rise to it, but the air was getting colder as we ascended and I was grateful that we'd purchased Brindi the heavy down coat she was wearing.

  The scenery was breathtaking and I realized that was what I would have missed if I'd been tearing along the trail on four feet. Everything was so incredibly green that it boggled my mind. There was a beauty to the desert around most of Sanctuary, but it was a more subtle beauty than what was before me now.

  The sheer variety to the flora and fauna around me was amazing; I wasn't sure I'd ever seen so many different shades of green in one place before. I could have gladly continued walking for hours more despite the fact that Agony's—and therefore my—time was limited.

  It seemed silly to say so, even inside the privacy of my own mind, but the cacophony of noise around me, the twittering of the birds I could see and the rustling of other animals that I couldn't, was actually peaceful. As I continued down the snowy path I felt reservoirs inside of me that I hadn't even realized were depleted start to refill.

  No matter what else happened, regardless of whether Shawn's contact ended up helping me, the trip out here had been time well spent. I took another deep breath as the tension continued to melt out of my body and I couldn't help but smile.

  Brindi was deeply enough asleep that her hands finally fell away from my neck despite the magnetic effect that the prospect of touching my skin seemed to have on her. She unconsciously started to thrash around as her body sought out the connection that it knew it needed even if her conscious mind hadn't noticed the lack yet. Rather than letting her wake, I simply adjusted my right hand, sliding it up underneath her coat enough that my palm was resting against the small of her back.

  She was a complication and I knew we would both be better off if we could cure her addiction and send her far, far away from me, but Brindi was more than that. She wasn't the person I would have chosen to fill the hole in my life, but even so it still felt good for the gap I'd been feeling inside of me for so long to be at least partially covered over.

  That was dangerous. I couldn't afford to keep her around just because she made me a little less lonely, but the urge to do so was something I was going to have to fight on a nearly constant basis.

  We rounded a bend in the trail and were suddenly faced with the visual music of a waterfall trickling down from the cliffs above us. It wasn't a particularly tall waterfall and there wasn't all that much water coursing down the rock, but it was still perfect.

  Maybe it was the sheath of ice that had formed on t
he rocks or maybe it was simpler than that, but the ribbon of water somehow turned the clearing into a winter paradise. It was so idyllic that for a second I didn't even seen the man waiting for us a dozen yards further into the clearing.

  "My name is Carson. What do you have to say that's so important Shawn thought it worth introducing the two of us?"

  Brindi moved a little in my arms but didn't wake up. I looked around for somewhere to sit, but it was really just an attempt to buy myself time to think.

  "The Coun'hij has Agony. I went to Shawn hoping that he'd help me break Agony out. I can only assume that he sent me to you because he thinks you might be able to help."

  Carson approached Brindi and me slowly so as not to be a threat, but he obviously wanted to be close enough that there wouldn't be any way for me to sneak a lie past him.

  "Agony's death will be a profound blow for the resistance, but I fail to see what it has to do with me. He's fought a good fight, and lasted much longer than anyone expected him to, but his fate was sealed from the time that he broke away from the Coun'hij and started working against them."

  "The Coun'hij isn't the kind of group to let anyone stand to one side. So far you seem to have managed to stay off of their radar, but eventually they'll find you and you'll either have to ally yourself with them or face the consequences of rebellion."

  "Is that a threat?"

  The words came out low and angry and his voice had changed pitches enough to warn me that he was only a heartbeat away from shifting forms. My beast surged forward in response, and although a part of me would have welcomed a straight-up fight rather than another round of verbal sparring with someone who probably wasn't going to help me, I stomped on my anger, forcing it down to where I controlled it rather than it controlling me.

  It was harder than I expected it to be, and it wasn't just that my beast had gotten behind the emotion and started pushing. The tide of rage rising inside of me was deeper and stronger than anything I'd ever felt before and that was scary.

  I'd felt something similar bubbling under the surface when Kaleb had told me that he was planning on giving Rachel to Vincent, but it hadn't been quite the same. Back then some kind of defensive mechanism had walled me away from my emotions, armoring me in stillness so that I could do what needed to be done. By the time my armor had fallen away, I'd already saved Rachel.

  I reached for a similar measure of protection this time, but it wasn't anywhere to be found. I was furious and even worse, I wanted to be furious. The temptation to give into the rage was nearly more than I could withstand, but a tiny part of me knew that if I let myself be provoked that everything would be stacked against me.

  I was on Carson's home turf and I had Brindi to worry about. I couldn't fight with her in my arms and even if I could, that went against everything that had brought me out here in the first place.

  I started shaking from the effort of controlling my transformation, but unlike most of my kind I had another option besides shifting, an option that was still dangerous but less inflammatory than becoming a hybrid would have been.

  I hugged Brindi tightly against me with my right hand and forced all of the anger and hate coursing through me into my left hand as it fell away from Brindi's body. My left hand exploded and then shrank back down leaving me with the hand and claws of a hybrid.

  "It wasn't a threat. Kaleb and the rest won't learn about you from me, at least not without torturing me first. I was just speaking from personal experience. I thought I could stay in the middle and avoid choosing sides between Kaleb and Brandon, but I was wrong.

  "People like them aren't wired to ever be satisfied. They always want a little more power, a little more influence, one last victory over an already battered enemy. It took almost seeing my sister sold into slavery for me to realize that I had to pick a side."

  "Shawn said that you saved her, your sister Rachel, I mean."

  "She's alive and I'll do whatever is needed to keep her safe, including letting you insult me, but don't mistake my willpower for submissiveness. If you were someone else, someone I didn't need, someone who knew me well enough to realize what I've done already to try and stop Kaleb and the rest, I might not have been able to avoid responding with the kind of escalation you would have gotten out of most other hybrids."

  Carson nodded slightly, not necessarily in response to my words, but rather because of something else, some other question he'd been waiting to see the answer to. He gestured with his hand and suddenly my rage, which had been still on the edge of getting away from me, dissipated as though it had never existed.

  "So you do have an ability."

  Carson's smile was remarkably boyish and disarming. "Yes, and although it's not as overtly powerful as the kind of stuff the Coun'hij typically looks for, it's proven very useful over the years."

  "Useful how?"

  "Well, for one thing it allowed me to test your mettle in ways that otherwise would have taken months or even years' worth of time spent with you. I never would have guessed that you'd be possessed of such strength of will, not at such a young age."

  I was suddenly tired and the only possible explanation was the emotional rollercoaster I'd just been put through. The emotions that Carson had pushed into me hadn't just been strong, they'd had a crushing weight to them that had taken everything I'd had to resist.

  "So now that I've passed your test will you help me?"

  Carson studied me for several seconds before nodding hesitantly. "I think I probably will at that, but it will take more than strength of will to buy my assistance."

  He pointed at Brindi. "You saved her a few days ago."

  He obviously already knew the answer from his conversation with Shawn, but I nodded anyway.

  "Yes, but she saved me first. She stepped into the middle of a hybrid fight to help me kill one of the hybrids who attacked Shawn."

  "And was injured as a result. What will you do with her once she's healed and doesn't need your touch to keep her from dying?"

  "I'm not sure. We've only just begun discussing options."

  "You and your friends?"

  "No, her and I."

  That earned me another odd look from Carson. "You love her then?"

  There was an edge to his voice that should have awoken a surge of anger from my beast, but I felt none of that now.

  "You're soothing my emotions right now, aren't you?"

  "Indeed, I am. It's quicker this way because I can ask you questions without you getting up in arms at some perceived slight."

  "And if I don't agree with you then you can just manipulate me into feeling like you're right?"

  Carson frowned and shook his head. "That's not something I'd do. Right now there isn't anything for you to agree to. Whether we proceed as allies is entirely up to me and therefore I'm not manipulating you into doing anything. If we come to a point where you need to make a decision I'll release your emotions and let you get back to an equilibrium point before pressing you for a response."

  "That's asking for a lot of trust for someone I met all of five minutes ago."

  "Possibly, but I'd say that it's commensurate with the level of trust involved in agreeing to join a doomed rebellion against the Coun'hij."

  "I guess you've got a point there. In answer to your question, I don't love her, but I don't have to love someone to realize that they have rights. I don't expect it to be easy, but we'll talk things through and try to figure out some kind of route forward that works for both of us."

  "And if you can't find something that works for both of you?"

  "I don't know. I guess if push comes to shove then I'll have to help her through withdrawal."

  "Because that's the easiest option from your point of view?"

  This time the rage bubbled up even past the calm he was projecting into my mind, but it was just the tiniest sliver of anger. I managed to respond to him without letting what I was feeling bleed through into my voice.

  "No, because I have the right to my own
body just like she has the right to hers. I'm not going to turn her into some kind of human chattel subservient to my every whim, but by the same measure I deserve not to be turned into a slave for her addiction."

  I'd done my best to conceal the fact that I'd realized Carson had a limit to how much he could influence my emotions, but something must have slipped past because he held up a calming hand.

  "That's fair. The best you can do in the really difficult situations is start from your rights as an individual and work from there. What's your plan?"

  "I don't have one, not yet, not really. It's too soon. I don't know enough about where Agony is being held or how they are planning on moving him, and I'm still trying to gather enough fighters to have a chance at beating the Coun'hij's security detail. Even if they don't have someone like Brandon or Puppeteer down there we're still probably going to be up against a dozen or more hybrids."

  "I guess it won't be the first time that I signed up for an impossible task because of an ideal. I won't betray you. How many people do you have so far?"

  There it was. He'd just made an explicit statement, something that was firm enough that there couldn't be any gray area with regards to what he'd meant. I'd heard it and I'd been paying enough attention to detect any of the usual signs of a falsehood.

  His pulse hadn't changed, his respiration hadn't wavered in the slightest, and his body temperature didn't seem to be moving around at all. Carson was either a masterful liar, the kind of psychopath who didn't actually feel things the way that the rest of us do, or he was telling the truth.

  There wasn't any way to be positive which it was. I had to make a judgment call and if I was wrong then my friends, Rachel, Jack and every other person currently depending on me was probably going to die.

  "So far I've got three hybrids and eight wolves in total. All of us have some fairly recent combat experience. We killed a group of five hybrids a little while ago and have mixed it up with vampires and werewolves as well not too long ago."