Burned (12 page)

I didn't want
to be in Alec's power, I wanted to be here where I had the most
control. Without thinking twice, I sat down on the ground and
visualized Alec at the same time that I remembered how he made me
feel.

Gone were the
feelings of security and the kind of breathless crush that rarely
survived spending real time with someone. The second part had
probably been inevitable ever since the first time we'd met, but I
was sad about the change in the first emotion. I liked feeling safe,
and the conflicted, guilty dislike that had replaced my feelings of
security was a definite change for the worse.

Despite my lack
of practice recently, the seeking filaments—threads of pure
energy that were spun out of the center of my body—shot out
with an ease and speed that were nothing short of remarkable. I would
have been worried about how quickly my strength was pouring out of
me, but after only a second or two I felt the first of the threads
find what it was looking for.

The thread
snapped as Alec's ability sheared through it, but I reabsorbed what
was left of it, and other threads headed that direction. I lost a few
more, and then suddenly one of them hooked onto him and it was time
to absorb all of the rest of my filaments.

I poured
strength into the line that connected the two of us, and then
anchored myself as I pulled on the thread—now a cable—that
would guide him directly to me. I expected it to be hard—pulling
someone into my dreams was always hard—but this was different.

I'd never
pulled Alec to me before this. The one time that we'd shared our
dreams had been inside of his world, but I'd expected it to be much
the same as pulling anyone else to me.

It wasn't. Alec
felt…heavier…than anyone else I'd ever pulled to me. It
was like uprooting the Empire State Building. It should have been
just as impossible, but here in this place, what I believed was more
important than anything else. I believed—no, I knew—that
I was capable of forcing Alec to come to me, and I poured my strength
out to make that belief a reality.

By the time
Alec hit the invisible wall between our realities, he was moving
impossibly fast. Each time I pulled someone into that barrier it felt
like I was tearing a hole in reality, but this time I half expected
the universe to shatter in protest at what I was trying to do.

It was like
trying to shove an elephant one molecule at a time through the
world's smallest keyhole, but the momentum that he'd built up before
he hit the wall was enough. I once again got the feeling that for one
impossibly brief instant—too short even for a shape shifter to
register—he was in some kind of in-between place, a place that
was nothing more than a sea of light and warm energy.

It happened too
quickly for me to get more than a sliver of an impression, and then
Alec was sliding into my reality and everything went terribly wrong.

At the very end
of him colliding with the wall, I'd felt something that I'd never
experienced before. Alec wasn't just an inanimate object being hauled
from one place to another, he'd reached out to me and added his
strength to mine. I would have welcomed the help but for the fact
that I could feel him somehow sliding up against my soul as he came
into my reality.

It was hard to
explain. I hadn't been really convinced that humans—or shape
shifters—had anything you could term a soul until that instant,
but there was no arguing with what I felt. I wasn't reading Alec's
mind—I didn't get anything as formed as thoughts out of the
experience.

I got something
though. It was like I was experiencing Alec on a much deeper level
than even he realized existed. He felt like a warm, shiny sphere of
light. The beauty of him in that form was even more incredible than
how he looked in the flesh, but that wasn't what stayed with me the
most.

Alec felt good
in the way that very few things had ever felt to me before. Touching
him reminded me of the love of my dad, my mom when she actually
slowed down long enough to remember she was a mother in addition to
being a photographer, Cindi when she wasn't too immersed in sibling
rivalry, and Taggart.

Nearly everyone
was capable of that kind of selfless concern for others, but usually
it was restricted to only those closest to them. With Alec I was
getting that same feeling, but I couldn't tell if that was because he
cared about me or if it was something else entirely.

Part of me was
curious about that feeling, about just how selfless Alec was capable
of being, but mostly I just wanted distance between us. People were
never meant to be that close to each other, to have so many of their
most precious illusions stripped away. I knew that I should be
excited about the chance to get a look at the real Alec, but I was
too busy being worried that he might be getting the same kind of
up-close, no-holds-barred look at me.

I finished
hauling him into my dream with an expenditure of brute force, and
then distanced myself emotionally and mentally as quickly as
possible.

"I thought
that was you, Adri. What happened? You and Taggart were supposed to
come to my dream."

"Change of
plans. Had Taggart arrived there at your dream already before I
pulled you here?"

Alec shook his
head, and for a moment I was nearly overcome by just how amazing he
looked. Already my mind was retreating from the memory of the pulsing
silver light I'd just experienced—it was like I needed to dive
into the physical masterpiece in front of me as a way of forgetting
what I'd just experienced.

Alec was
taller—something over six feet—and his shoulders if
anything had gotten broader since I'd first seen him in his dream so
many weeks ago. He'd been big and muscly before, but the rigors of
fighting for his life so frequently since then had hardened those
muscles in a way that no gym ever could have hoped to.

He was wearing
nothing but his ha'bit—the loose stretchy pants that were
designed to survive the transition from human to hybrid and back
again—which meant that I didn't have to imagine the chiseled
abs or the biceps that were as big around as my thigh. His body was
nothing less than amazing, but it was his eyes that I couldn't seem
to look away from.

I'd always
liked blue eyes, but his were stunning—especially against his
dark hair. It was like looking into two clear pools that went on
forever. I felt a quiver building inside of me as tears started
trying to work their way to the surface.

I wanted to
throw myself at him again, but unlike the last time we'd seen each
other, I wanted to bury my face against his chest and hope that he
would wrap his arms around me. Part of me wanted things to be like
they were before, but the rest of my emotions were too much of a
tangled mess to act on the urge.

Alec would
probably do exactly what I was hoping, but it wouldn't be fair to
him. Right now I wanted to hug him, but in a few moments I might want
to shoot him. The anger and guilt was just too much of a swirling
mess, and for once Alec's innate goodness was a liability.

If he'd been
the terrible person I kept wanting him to be, then I would be free to
hate him and start moving on. Eventually I probably would have even
gotten to the point where I realized that what happened with my
parents wasn't his fault.

That couldn't
happen though because part of me knew that he was one of the best
guys I'd ever met. I kept wanting to hate him, but I knew it wasn't
fair, which meant that the only person I could hate was me.

My feelings
were all screwed up, but I couldn't just cast them aside. I'd tried,
but they were with me for better or worse. Until I figured out a way
to work through them I was going to have to accept that there wasn't
some kind of easy answer that would allow me to just flip a switch
and go back to feeling nothing but love for Alec.

"Why did
the plan change?"

Alec's question
brought me back to the present, and I responded without thinking.
"Because I don't want to be alone with you inside of your
dreams. If I have to be with you I want it to be here where I have
the most control."

He recoiled
like I'd slapped him. It was more than just a mistake, it was
deliberately hurtful. Alec had never done anything to intentionally
harm me. He didn't deserve the venom in my voice, but the fact was
that he had hurt me whether he'd meant to or not.

His face went
distant and cold. Even Alec wouldn't accept an unending stream of
abuse. He was a shape shifter—his beast's anger at how he was
being treated would eventually bleed over into all of our
interactions and once that happened there wouldn't be any going back.

Maybe that was
what I wanted. Maybe I would feel better if he was hurting as badly
as I was.

There was no
way of knowing what would have happened next if Taggart hadn't shown
up right then. He looked back and forth between the two of us, and I
could tell that he sensed the tension. I checked my scent,
respiration and pulse, but they were all non-existent. Either he was
being cued in by something else I was doing or Alec wasn't doing as
good a job hiding his unhappiness.

"I guess
Adri changed the plan. Are you ready to go, Alec?"

Alec nodded.
"Let's get this over with. You still want to try to get the
names of the rest of the Coun'hij before we kill him, right?"

"Yes, but
only if it doesn't threaten our ability to end his life. That is the
most important thing. Killing him will eventually force the others
out into the light. Without him to interact with the packs, the
Coun'hij won't have any choice but to appoint another of their
members to be a spokesperson for them."

"Okay,
let's get him here so we can get started."

"Don't you
want to double-check that you're still able to use your ability here
inside of Adri's dream?"

Alec looked
over at me and a wave of weakness suddenly crashed through me. A
second later my knees hit the featureless off-white ground of the
plain we were standing on.

"It looks
like it still works. Let's get started."

I knew I
probably deserved that after everything I'd said in the last few
minutes, but that didn't stop me from being mad. I bit back half a
dozen nasty comebacks, and just closed my eyes to focus on finding
Kaleb.

"Are you
sure you can do this, Adri? You must have used a lot of energy
bringing Alec here…"

"I'll be
fine—assuming that the two of you can be quiet for more than
twenty seconds at a time."

Taggart
probably should have taken me over his knee like the spoiled brat I
was acting like, but he just went quiet and a few seconds later I
didn't have any other excuses to delay what I knew was going to be an
exhausting undertaking.

I took a couple
of deep breaths and then focused on the anger I always felt these
days when I thought of Alec's dad. To hear Taggart tell it, Kaleb had
been the rebellion's greatest hope for several decades. He'd been too
cagey to do anything that the Coun'hij could use as an excuse for
execution, but all of the smart money had been convinced that he was
quietly building a coalition that had a chance of giving the powers
that be a run for their money.

He could have
created an entirely different world, one where the Coun'hij was
overthrown before I entered kindergarten, one where vampires like
Jackson were executed by roving bands of wolves, one where the entire
continent had been freed of the bloodsucking scourge that cost so
many lives each year.

He'd gone
against everything good and right in order to expand his personal
power. Even with my feelings for Alec being so muddled, it was still
easy to grab onto the white-hot anger that I'd used the last time I'd
needed to stalk Kaleb inside of his own dreams. He was just that
evil.

My seeking
tendrils went out and found him without any problems. They drained my
strength to the point where it was difficult for me to maintain the
initial connection, but I managed to hold onto it until I was able to
start reabsorbing the energy from the other tendrils.

Part of me
wanted to call the whole thing off. The smart thing would be to tell
Taggart and Alec that I'd made a mistake, that we would have to wait
until tomorrow, but I was too stubborn for that. I grabbed hold of
the invisible link between Kaleb and me, and started pulling on it
with everything I had.

It was worse
than pulling myself to someone else, worse even than when I'd pulled
Taggart into my dreams, but it wasn't as bad as what I'd just
experienced with Alec. I got Kaleb up to an unimaginable speed and
then just as I felt like I couldn't pull any harder he slammed into
the wall between our two realities.

The immovable
object and the irresistible force had met yet again, and somehow I
managed to find the energy to give one last tug on the cable between
us. The universe quivered from the strain of resisting Kaleb's
transition, and then the barrier tore and I felt Kaleb go through the
in-between space. Unlike Alec, there wasn't any sensation of tugging
there with Kaleb. He sailed through the in-between and popped into
existence ten feet in front of me.

He was fast.
He'd never been pulled into someone else's dream before—it
wasn't something that Taggart was capable of—but you wouldn't
have been able to tell that based on his response. He spun around and
threw himself at me, in a ruthless bid to eliminate the one person
capable of keeping him in the dream.

If I'd been
nothing more than the human girl I appeared to be I would have died
right then. Luckily I now thought and reacted with the suddenness of
a shape shifter. Even better, here inside of my own dreams, I could
move with the same speed as well.

I threw myself
to one side, fighting to get far enough away that he wouldn't be able
to reach me with his claws, and then two things happened at once.