Burned (11 page)

Alec Graves
I-15
Southern Montana

Brindi made it
into our RV just before the vehicles started forward. She didn't try
to come touch me—she'd had her fix in the SUV earlier—but
I felt a weight lift off of my chest at the knowledge that she was
close enough to get to me if her withdrawal symptoms suddenly took a
turn for the worse.

Rachel followed
me into the bedroom at the back of the RV without saying anything. I
wasn't sure what I was expecting. Rachel was normally like a puppy
that had been given a double dose of lovability. Despite everything
that had happened, despite the betrayal of both of our parents, she
still rarely had any expression other than a smile on her face.

I'd been
dreading having to wipe that joyful look off of her face, but seeing
her like this—somber and serious—was almost worse. It
took a lot to bring Rachel that low—it didn't seem fair to add
to her sorrows.

"Are you
okay, Rach? Nobody has been giving you any grief, have they? James
and Carson both told me that they would keep an eye on you while I
was gone."

"No,
nobody has bullied me. I'm just trying to prepare myself for the fact
that you called me in here to send me away again."

"What? No,
that's not what I wanted to talk to you about at all. Why would you
think that?"

"The right
question is why
wouldn't
I think that? You kept me at arm's
length for weeks while you traveled all over the western hemisphere.
First the Cayman islands, then New Mexico, then LA and Minnesota. I
thought maybe things were going to be better when you let me help out
with the mission to rescue Agony, but that was just a temporary blip.
I don't know why I thought things were going to be better when you
let me rejoin everyone after Minnesota. You've barely spent any time
here at all since I arrived, and now you are here trying to figure
out a way to break the bad news to me again.

"Don't try
to tell me otherwise, Alec. You may have the rest of the world
fooled, but I've known you for my entire life. You get a particular
look when you feel like you have to disappoint someone for their own
good. You have that look right now."

I shook my
head. "I'm not sending you away, Rachel. I mean I probably would
be, but now that I've finally manifested my ability this is actually
the safest place for you. Before I was trying to keep you away
because I knew I couldn't protect you. I'm still not positive that I
can deal with everything headed our way, but I think you have a
better chance of surviving the next few months
with
me than
without
me.

Rachel gave me
a confused look. "I don't understand—if you're not getting
ready to ditch me again, what are you so worried about?"

"It's kind
of complicated. You know what Dream Stealer and Adri do, right?"

"Yeah.
Dream Stealer has been the pack's boogeyman for as long as I can
remember. It's honestly been kind of hard to remember that we're all
on the same side now. You said that Adri is like Dream Stealer—she
can visit people in their dreams too."

"That's
right—only with one key difference. Dream Stealer has never
been able to do anything more than torture people inside of their
dreams. Adri can do more than that, she can actually hold people
inside of her dreams—hold them there until they are dead."

"I don't
understand what this has to do with me, Alec."

Rachel's
expression and scent both gave lie to her words. She knew where I was
going, she just didn't want to believe that her suspicions were
correct.

"For a
long time now Adri hasn't been willing to target people, but that all
changed a little while before she lost her parents. When you combine
that with the fact that my power makes me the next best thing to
unbeatable, we now have a chance to start eliminating the worst of
the Coun'hij without having to cut our way through all of the
enforcers and half of the loyalist packs in order to get to them."

"You're
talking about murder, Alec."

"Are we?
Maybe you're right, but I'm having a hard time seeing the difference
between killing them in their sleep or hunting them down in the real
world. Any human court in the world would have condemned most of the
enforcers and all of the Coun'hij to death for even half of what's
happened in the last fifteen years. Killing them is going to make the
world a better, safer place."

She turned away
from me. "You're going to go after Dad first, aren't you?"

"Yes. He's
a key member of the Coun'hij and his death will throw them into a
state of confusion. We can't even identify half of the members of the
Coun'hij. Anyone who's really high up has kept their identity a
secret, but there is one person who we know has met every single
member of the Coun'hij. Dad is the key to all of this. We can break
him—force him to tell us everything he knows—and then we
can kill him and make sure that the Sanctuary pack is too busy trying
to work out a new dominance chain to bother us. With a little bit of
luck we can remove half of the Coun'hij leadership before the month
is out."

"This is a
bad idea, Alec. You should start with someone else."

"Why is it
a bad idea, Rach? Kaleb tried to sell you to Vincent as a way of
securing Brandon's loyalty for another few months. There isn't any
good in him—maybe there was at one time, but not anymore—not
for years. I don't understand why you keep defending him. Every once
in a while it seems like you're going to finally see the truth, but
somehow you always end up right back here trying to give him the
benefit of the doubt."

She whirled on
me and hit me in the arm. It was like being assaulted by a hamster.
"You're right, you don't get it. It's true, there isn't any
objective reason that I should believe Dad is anything other than
evil, but that doesn't change the way I feel. I think there is still
something else going on that none of us understand, but this isn't
even just about that.

"This is
about you, Alec. Killing Dad isn't going to be something that you can
just blow off after it happens. It's going to change you, and that
scares me more than anything else."

"I've
killed before, Rachel. Vampires, werewolves, jaguars, even other
wolves and hybrids. This isn't going to be anything new."

"That's
where you're wrong, big brother. Before this you've always fought
because your back was against the wall. You killed because you had no
other choice. This is going to be the first time you go after someone
when you don't have to. This is going to be murder and you know it."

Adriana Paige
The Verdant Canopy Motel
Beaumont, Texas

Things between
Taggart and I were back to being strained. He'd been right to yank me
up short when I'd torn into Alec, but that didn't make it any easier
to deal with. I knew that he was just trying to keep me from saying
anything I would end up regretting later, but the truth was that for
months now I'd thought that Taggart had my back no matter what.

Finding out
that he was as concerned about Alec as he was about me was a slap to
the face, one that I hadn't been ready for. It was enough to send me
to Nellie in tears, but at least I managed not to break down in front
of Taggart.

I was all about
small victories these days—they seemed to be the only kind of
victories I could manage as of late.

His request
that I help him with the attack he and Alec were going to carry out
against Kaleb was another bitter pill. It shouldn't have been—I
was the one who'd told him I was ready to do whatever was necessary
to bring down the Coun'hij—but it was. After spending so long
telling me that he didn't want to turn me into a weapon for other
people to use, he'd jumped on my first moment of weakness to do
exactly that.

I knew that
there was a good reason to do what we were going to do—lots of
people were going to die if we didn't stop the Coun'hij—but I
was still having a hard time with how fast everything was moving.

We'd spent the
entire day driving to meet up with Isaac and the rest, which meant
that I'd been cooped up in a small space with Cindi and Nellie for
hours. Nellie wasn't so bad—she seemed content to let me work
things out on my own—but Cindi kept asking me if something was
wrong. I was just glad that Taggart had finally agreed to buy a
second vehicle. Things would have been really horrific if we'd been
all crammed into one vehicle—especially one as small as the
ones that Taggart seemed to favor.

I ended up
putting in my earbuds and pretending to sleep. I didn't actually
sleep though. Either my training had decided to kick in so that I
wouldn't get off of my normal sleep schedule, or I was just still
freaked out about what I would see if I closed my eyes. I hadn't seen
the older, more judgmental version of Alec the night before after I'd
left his dream, but it was too soon to be chalking those dreams up to
a phase that was dead and gone.

Still, even
without sleeping I managed to zone out enough that I lost track of a
few hours in there somewhere. I opened my eyes as the car slowed down
and I realized that it was getting dark outside.

"What's
going on?"

Nellie looked
back at me. "I'm getting tired, and we're basically out of gas.
Taggart took the last exit and seems to be headed into town looking
for a place to spend the night. I'm guessing he's got some kind of
dream meetup that he doesn't want to miss out on."

I grimaced, but
didn't say anything. I would have told Nellie exactly what we were
planning on doing once we fell asleep—talking to her would have
helped me work through my feelings—but Taggart had knocked on
my door only moments after I woke up and made me promise not to talk
about our plans with anyone.

He was probably
just being paranoid, but he did have a point about the fact that he
and I were going to move to the very top of the Coun'hij's list of
enemies once they realized that we were helping Alec take them out
one by one in their sleep. It was unlikely that they would be able to
track us down—Taggart was very good at staying off the grid—but
there was no reason to move forward the time when they figured out
that their fellow despots weren't just dying in their sleep from
natural causes.

Nellie wasn't a
traitor, but if we told her then Cindi and Tristan would know too,
and one of them was almost guaranteed to let our secret drop by
accident once we got back together with Isaac and the rest. Hopefully
Alec was being just as cagey about what was going on with his people.

Nellie yawned
and I shook my head at her, but I didn't say anything. Shape shifters
didn't generally need as much sleep as us humans, but there were
exceptions to every rule, and Nellie seemed to be one of those
exceptions. I'd thought about asking her exactly how much sleep she
needed every night, but with my luck her need for extra sleep was
tied to the fact that she was weaker than most other wolves, and then
I'd have offended her over something that didn't matter.

Taggart had
agreed to have her along because he'd wanted help defending Tristan,
Cindi and me, but Nellie had become way more than just a bodyguard in
the last couple of weeks. It wouldn't have mattered to me if she'd
been the weakest wolf in the world, she was still the one person
other than Taggart that I wasn't sure I could have lived without.

It took us less
than an hour to find a hotel and get ourselves situated in our rooms.
Taggart and Tristan shared a room—Taggart was too cheap to pay
for any more rooms than we absolutely had to have—but Tristan
had taken to spending the first few hours in Cindi and Nellie's room.
Usually by the time he went to bed, Taggart was already done sleeping
for the night.

Nellie
supposedly shared a room with Cindi because Cindi knew even less
about defending herself than I did, but we all knew it had more to do
with the fact that I was a freak who was only half a step away from
falling apart at any given minute. We were an odd number, so it
wasn't likely that we'd cram down to just two bedrooms anytime soon,
but maybe now that I was supposed to be pulling myself together
Taggart would suggest different sleeping arrangements.

Cindi would
love that idea. She was desperate to share a room with Tristan, but
Taggart was pretty old-fashioned when it came to stuff like that. My
bet was that Cindi would end up with her own room and Nellie would
bunk with me because even a weak wolf was better protection than no
wolf at all.

For now though,
I was still sleeping by myself because Taggart didn't want to risk
anything getting in the way of our mission. I showered in the hopes
that it would help me unwind and then pulled on shorts and a tank top
before double-checking the lock on the door and setting my pistol on
the nightstand next to me.

In the long
weeks since my parents had been killed I'd completely stopped wearing
it. Maybe that was because I'd associated it with the violence that
had killed them, or maybe I'd just been trying to deny the world I
now lived in.

I wasn't ready
to wear it again—not really—but there wasn't any other
choice. The world I shared with Taggart and the rest of the shape
shifters was simply too dangerous for me to be walking around
unarmed. Like it or not, that gun was a part of my new existence.

I dropped down
onto the bed, and was asleep within seconds, and dreaming sooner than
I would have liked. The plan was to remain in my normal dreams for a
few minutes and then hunt down Alec's dreams so that I could join him
there.

It was a valid
plan—Alec's dreams were the place where he would have the most
control and be most likely able to use his power to immobilize
Kaleb—but I suddenly decided that I wasn't going to follow it.