Burned (3 page)

Kaleb had been
suspecting that Puppeteer was holding out on him, but the look in the
other man's eyes confirmed it. Puppeteer was very good at everything
he did, but he spent too much time off by himself with no other
companionship but his thralls. It made him rusty when it came to
dissembling in person.

"The only
other thing I know is that both your son and Dream Stealer have run
into problems with vampires over the last little while. They managed
to win in both instances, but they lost people—a lot of people.
It doesn't speak very highly for their abilities, which frankly is a
big part of why I haven't been more inclined to bring it to the
attention of our…patron. For them to lose more than a dozen
people in fights with a bunch of piss ant parasites indicates that
they've had a healthy dose of luck in getting this far without being
torn apart by our people."

Kaleb didn't
respond, just continued to stare at Puppeteer, and eventually the
other man shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "That's it, that's
all I know. My asset hasn't told me anything else—in fact it's
been all I could do to pry that much information out of him. Beyond
that, both groups have completely disappeared. It's like they're a
bunch of ghosts—you know that as well as I do."

Kaleb finally
nodded. "Okay, I'm in. Get your asset to start the pieces into
motion and I'll come up with some kind of pretext for dropping out of
sight along with Brandon and a group of my best fighters. It will
have to be something that won't make it back to the other packs or
the cats either one, so it won't be easy, but I'll find a way."

Puppeteer
smiled, but it was a cold expression, the kind of thing you'd expect
from someone who'd just buried their nemesis. Kaleb told himself that
the expression had everything to do with the impending defeat of Alec
and Dream Stealer, and nothing to do with Puppeteer having managed to
back Kaleb into a corner.

It didn't help.

Alec Graves
Club Inferno
Chicago, Illinois

Under other
circumstances I wouldn't have felt comfortable interacting with
Shawn—not without a full retinue of guards at least. The last
time we'd seen each other rogue elements inside of his pack had tried
to kill him. The fact that they hadn't been there specifically to
kill me hadn't been a lot of comfort once blood had started flowing.

This time I
wasn't just dropping in unannounced though, which meant that Shawn
was presumably taking extra precautions when it came to his security.
Especially with regards to forces inside of the Chicago pack who
wanted Shawn's father, Ulrich, to side with the Coun'hij in the
coming war.

That was great
in theory, but it didn't particularly reassure me—not when
there was a decent possibility that the real threat to my safety was
Shawn
. Our mission to save Agony just a few weeks earlier had
every sign of having been compromised by someone in the know.

Whoever was
running things for the Coun'hij had been smart about it. They'd made
it look like Brandon and his people had just been a general security
precaution, but I wasn't buying it, and neither was Taggart. That
meant that feelings were running hot in both of the groups that had
nearly been killed when Brandon had parachuted out of the sky and
then proceeded to tear through our people until Agony, Carson and I
had managed to stand him off for long enough that everyone else had
been able to escape.

If it had been
up to some of my people, I wouldn't have been meeting with Shawn at
all—not without enough bodies to make sure that I could put him
down as a warning to Ulrich for what happened to people who
double-crossed the rebellion. They had a valid point about the risk
inherent in meeting with him, but they were behind the times when it
came to just how much protection I needed.

In fairness,
that wasn't entirely their fault. I'd been working very hard to keep
the full extent of my abilities a secret from everyone but James,
Jasmin, Jess and Carson. So far I seemed to have been successful,
which was especially heartening because it meant that the first time
I used my ability on a group of our enemies they were in for a fatal
surprise.

We were still
exploring the full extent of my capabilities—a hard task given
that I could only practice on the four of them, but the early results
were more than just promising. I'd used my ability to bring groups of
vampires to their knees on three different occasions now, but it had
taken a lot out of me each time.

An ability that
neutralized everyone around you wasn't hugely helpful if it meant
that you also passed out—especially not given that my attack
was only somewhat targetable. I could manipulate the size of the
absorption field my ability created, and I could pick a center point
for the attack, but I couldn't pick between targets inside of the
area of effect.

That meant that
things got tricky once the fight was joined—whoever was on my
side probably wasn't going to appreciate being drained dry of energy
at the same time I was rendering the bad guys immobile—but as
luck would have it, the problems I'd experienced early on with my
ability seemed to have been more the result of the strength of the
vampires we'd been fighting in both instances rather than an inherent
limitation of my powers.

I'd managed to
drop all four of my friends at the same time, forcing them to
collapse bonelessly to the ground as the strength was sucked out of
their limbs, for as long as ten minutes at a time before the exertion
caught up to me and I joined them on the ground. When it was just one
person I seemed to be able to hold the absorption field in place
almost indefinitely, which was cool, but the real kicker was the fact
that
I
could move around inside of my absorption field without
being affected.

That meant that
I could casually kill anyone I'd rendered defenseless, and the only
way for anyone to get at me would be for them to use some kind of
distance attack that allowed them to hurt me from outside of my
absorption field, or to rush me with enough bodies that they
overwhelmed my ability.

Carson had
cautioned me repeatedly against starting to think of myself as being
invulnerable, but it was hard not to get at least a little caught up
in the sheer potential of my ability. I'd taken down a group of
vampires that would have made mincemeat out of just about any other
single hybrid I could think of, and that had been before I'd even had
any real idea what it was that I could do.

I'd noticed a
few other things along the way as well. It was a lot easier to
neutralize Jess than it was to bring down Jasmin. James was a bit
harder to take down than Jasmin was, but he was much less of a strain
on my gift than Carson was. All I could figure was that there was a
limit to how much energy I could absorb at any one time, and there
were significant power differences between each of my friends.

I'd always
known that Jasmin was exceptional for a wolf—even a royal
wolf—but I'd never appreciated just how close she'd come to
making whatever metaphysical cut was required to manifest a hybrid
form. It really wasn't fair. Jasmin had busted her butt for years
trying to be the most dangerous, capable fighter she could be. If
she'd been a hybrid she would have been one of the pack's best
fighters.

James had
worked hard to get where he was too, but it wasn't quite the same
obsession for him that it was for Jasmin. No matter how hard she'd
worked, she hadn't been able to compensate for the tiny bit of extra
power that allowed James to manifest his hybrid form. It sucked, but
there was a lot about our existence that sucked.

All of which
brought me back to the fact that I'd agreed to meet with Shawn by
myself despite all of Jack's protests. I'd considered bringing Carson
along—his ability to influence people's emotions would have
been invaluable if he'd been willing to use it on Shawn—but I
was pretty sure that Carson wouldn't agree to do anything of the
kind.

Carson was
perfectly happy to use his gift to its full extent in life-or-death
situations, but he'd sworn an oath not to use it to influence people
in certain ways, and Carson was nothing if not honorable. If it came
to fighting I would be able to drop Shawn and whomever he brought for
at least a few seconds, which would be plenty of time for me to
dispatch them.

Most
importantly though, by going to the meet by myself, I was sending a
powerful message. I was telling Shawn that I wasn't scared of him—or
his father. I was announcing that I was more than ready to deal with
whatever rogue elements that might show up from his pack, and I might
even lull him into showing his hand earlier than he'd planned.

I wasn't
particularly looking forward to Shawn attacking me if that was what
he was planning, but I'd rather him betray me in a situation where I
could take real, unavoidable vengeance in response. That was the kind
of thing that I could deal with much more easily than having him send
us into another ambush—if that was what he'd done the last time
around—while he was hundreds of miles away.

It was long
past time for me to figure out once and for all which side Shawn was
on.

The meet was
taking place in another club, which shouldn't have surprised me—Shawn
was big on clubs. The part that did surprise me when I did my due
diligence about the club was that Shawn apparently owned this one.

I gave the
alias Shawn had provided me to the bouncer at the door and bypassed
the line entirely, which was nice. Unlike last time I'd slipped into
a club to meet up with Shawn, I was wearing a black leather jacket.
I'd picked it out because it was the kind of thing that I usually
didn't wear, and because I wanted to see just how much fuss the
bouncer would put up at the door.

Guns were
redundant in most situations we shape shifters found ourselves in—and
knives were even more useless—but if Shawn was trying to set me
up then the odds were very good that some of his intent had
communicated itself to his employees. If I got a lot of flak from the
bouncer that would be a pretty good indication that Shawn was
particularly concerned about making sure that I wasn't carrying a
wire or any kind of weapon.

Interestingly
enough, the bouncer called for someone else to man the door and then
took me inside—walking me around the metal detector without
even a second glance. Either Shawn was willing to trust me not to
double-cross him, or he'd brought such overwhelming backup that he
wasn't concerned about anything I might be bringing to the party.

Too bad I
hadn't brought my sword. It would have been an even more interesting
test of what the bouncers were willing to let me get away with. I
would have brought it in the special bag that Carson had commissioned
for it, but that still wasn't the kind of thing any club owner would
want inside his establishment. I dismissed the idea as the passing
fancy it was as I followed the bouncer to the edge of the dance
floor.

It was late
enough that the party was in full swing. The local celebrities were
probably only minutes away from starting their appearances and people
had imbibed enough alcohol to have abandoned most of their
inhibitions, but not so much that they were falling down drunk yet.

I was led past
a velvet rope guarded by two bouncers in expensive suits who looked
like they'd seen serious action at some point in their lives. I
reached down to my beast and coaxed him close enough to the surface
to send out a flare of energy. It was an unmistakable show of
dominance, but neither of the bouncers at the rope responded to the
challenge.

Interesting—I'd
been expecting Shawn to have augmented his normal security with
members of his pack. Either he was working extra hard to keep me from
suspecting this was a trap, or he had an incredible amount of faith
in the humans who staffed his normal security force.

My escort led
me to the bar in the more exclusive area of the club and then nodded
at a door in the back wall. He leaned close even though it wasn't
necessary given how keen my hearing was.

"That's
the entrance to the owner's suite. There is going to be a distraction
four minutes from the time you entered this area. Grab a drink so
that you blend in and then work your way back to that wall. When the
distraction happens go inside—the door is unlocked."

I nodded my
understanding and turned to the bartender and slid him a fifty-dollar
bill. "Your best vodka—I don't care what it is."

I followed my
instructions—drink in hand—and was less than five feet
away from the door, casually leaning against the wall, when the
lights went out. My beast had been oddly docile lately, but neither
of us had been expecting complete darkness and he sent out a surge of
power that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Some people
would have dismissed it as useless dominance posturing, but I was in
tune enough with my beast to know that there was a definite purpose
behind the flare of energy. He wanted to know if there was anyone
dangerous around us. Shape shifters—even in human form—have
great low-light vision, but that's not quite the same thing as being
able to see without any light at all.

An odd hissing
sound had started a couple of seconds before the lights had died and
I picked up a new scent as my beast roared to the surface. For a
split second I worried that Shawn knew about my ability, that he'd
chosen to poison an entire club full of people to get to me, but I
was familiar with most of the commonly-used poisons and this wasn't
one of them. It didn't burn my nose, and it wasn't leaving me feeling
sluggish or sleepy.

Several surges
of power crashed into me as I started moving toward the door to
Shawn's suite, but they were all weaker than I would have expected
from someone willing to take issue with my show of dominance. That
meant they were all a ways away from me.