Burned (7 page)

I inhaled a
lungful of the scented air, and briefly considered switching forms.
The gardens were an aromatic banquet that could only be appreciated
in wolf form, but doing that would mean that the amazing colors of
all of the vegetation would be washed out in the cool light that all
living organisms gave off in that form.

It was a
familiar conundrum. In the end, I chose to remain in my dominant form
and enjoy the gardens on two legs. I ended up being glad of my choice
a few seconds later when I heard a whisper of movement behind me and
whirled around to find someone who looked like Taggart less than a
dozen feet away from me.

"Hello,
Alec."

"Hello.
How do I know if you're really who you appear to be? Our usual
encounters don't start out—or end—this amiably."

That earned me
a smile. "I'd tell you that it's very unlikely you'll run into
anyone but Adri or me inside the privacy of your dreams, but the
truth is that we ran into someone a little while ago who seemed to be
able to do at least some of what we could do."

The thought
sent chills skittering up and down my spine. "For centuries you
were the only one who could dream walk, and now suddenly there are
three of you. That can't be coincidence."

Taggart—or
at least the man who looked like Taggart—shrugged. "I
don't know. I would have said the same thing, but at this point I'm
hoping very strongly that it is coincidence. The alternative is that
Kaleb and the rest have figured out a way to trigger specific
abilities in people. If that's the case, we're all screwed anyway."

I rubbed my
eyes. This was a dream, I shouldn't have felt tired, but I did. Then
again, it wasn't a physical exhaustion, it was all mental. I was so
tired of trying to keep a hundred balls in the air at once. Worrying
about what Kaleb and the rest of the Coun'hij were doing was beyond a
full-time job.

Taggart didn't
try to get closer, he just stood there with an expression of
understanding on his face. It suddenly struck me that the two of us
were much more alike than we'd ever given ourselves credit for being.

He'd carried
the weight of his sins across his shoulders for centuries as he'd
dedicated himself to trying to atone for the help he'd provided the
Coun'hij back when their evil had been less apparent. That had made
him treat the war as though it was him against the world.

I carried fewer
sins along with me, but that was just because my hand had been forced
at an earlier point than his had been. I was alone simply because
nobody else could do what I could. Even Jaclyn and Heath were in some
ways less powerful than I was. That, combined with the fact that I
was the heir to the monarchy, meant that most of my burdens couldn't
be carried by anyone else.

Taggart
understood me in ways that nobody else could, which told me exactly
the question I should be asking to establish he was really who he
said he was.

"I haven't
been able to stop thinking about one thing, Taggart. Tell me about
the state of your forces. We're going to need them if we're going to
have any shot at winning this war."

Taggart looked
at me for several seconds and then shook his head. "You haven't
been thinking non-stop about our forces, and you aren't dying to ask
me about Isaac and the rest, you've been wondering about Adri."

I closed my
eyes and nodded. "Apparently you really are who you say you are.
How is she doing?"

"Not good.
She's retreated inside of herself in ways that I didn't expect. I
knew that it would be hard for her to cope with the loss of her
parents, but I didn't foresee this. I…I've wanted to call you
a hundred times over the last few weeks."

"I would
have come if you had. I would have dropped everything and driven
straight there."

"I know
you would have. I told myself that I wasn't calling because what you
were doing was important. The intelligence that is being gathered
needs to be analyzed, and you are the only one who has a chance of
uniting all of the disparate pieces of the rebellion, but the truth
was that I was worried seeing you would break her.

"I finally
forced the issue when I heard that something was going down in
Arizona. I knew that you would need both of us at full strength in
order to figure out what Kaleb has planned."

"Was that
smart?"

Taggart shook
his head. "Probably not, but I was at my wits' end. I think that
she's going to be okay though. She agreed to come here tonight with
me, so that's a huge step forward."

My heart
skipped a beat. "She's here now?"

"No, not
yet. She may not even manage to connect with your dreams. She's tried
several times in the past without success, but the fact that she was
willing is promising."

I opened my
mouth to ask him for more details and then I felt something I'd never
felt before. My ability was coming more and more under my conscious
control, but it still sometimes operated at a low level without me
realizing it.

It was
happening again, but I wouldn't have even noticed it if not for the
fact that I could feel odd pinpricks of heat as my ability absorbed
energy from somewhere. It probably wasn't the smartest thing to
suppress my ability while experiencing something that very well could
be some kind of unusual attack, but that never even entered into my
mind.

If there was a
chance that I was going to see Adri then I needed to take advantage
of the opportunity—regardless of the possible risk. I shut down
my ability completely.

It was like
making a fist with an invisible hand that I'd only discovered I had a
short time earlier. It seemed like I was getting better and better at
locking down the absorption field that I naturally generated, but
even now it wasn't something that I could sustain on a constant
basis. Eventually my mental fist got tired and relaxed. Usually it
wasn't enough to make a difference, but apparently whatever Adri was
doing involved such small amounts of energy it was having a hard time
surviving even the most minimal drain from my ability.

As soon as my
ability stopped sucking in the ambient energy from my surroundings, I
felt something snag on a point about an inch below my bellybutton and
half an inch below the surface of the skin. I suddenly felt like a
very big fish that had just been hooked by an expert fisherman. I
felt a tug on my insides, and the urge to take a step forward was
almost overpowering, but I refused to be moved. I dug my heels in as
the line between us continued to strengthen, and then suddenly I got
an impression of movement. It was as if the fisherman had started
reeling in the line, but rather than pulling me towards her she was
pulling herself toward me.

The line
between us vibrated more quickly the closer she got—it felt
like a guitar string that had been improperly tuned, that was under
so much tension it was going to snap at any moment. I turned my head
to ask Taggart if this was normal, and almost missed Adri's arrival.

For the
briefest of instants she seemed to exist in three places
simultaneously. She was standing in an open field under a purple sky,
she was floating in an ocean of pure white light, and she was
motionless only inches away from me.

It happened so
quickly that my natural tendency was to dismiss it as nothing more
than my brain's attempt to deal with something completely outside my
normal frame of reference, but it didn't feel like something I'd
never experienced before. That sea of light felt somehow familiar. It
felt like a home that I'd only lived in during dreams, a home that
somehow surrounded my normal existence.

Adri went from
immobile to falling as time resumed moving again, and I reached up
and grabbed her by the shoulders.

"Are you
okay?"

Even as I asked
the question I knew how it sounded. There were layers of meaning
behind those words that I wasn't sure I wanted answered. Did she
still blame me for the death of her parents?

"I…yeah,
I'll be fine. It's just the transition from one state to another.
It's always a little tricky. I handled it worse than normal this
time, but I usually manage not to fall all the way to the ground
before catching myself."

She looked down
at my hands and I realized for the first time that I hadn't let go of
her. I released her shoulders with a pang of loss. There was so much
that I wanted to say to her, but none of it was appropriate so soon
after her parents' death—especially not with Taggart standing
less than a dozen feet away.

I looked into
her eyes hoping for some sign that things would eventually be okay,
but there was a guardedness to her that hadn't been there any of the
times we'd talked before this.

"Adri—I'm
sorry. I never—"

"You don't
have to say anything, Alec. You saved Cindi, which is so much more
than would have happened without you. If you hadn't arrived when you
did, everyone who went to Minnesota to help me would have died. Let's
just put all of that behind us. Taggart said you have information
about some kind of Coun'hij operation that we need to deal with. You
and he don't have an unlimited amount of time here—let's get to
brass tacks."

I looked over
at Taggart and saw a flicker of something that was gone too quickly
for me to be sure, but which looked like disappointment. I just
wished that I knew whether he was disappointed in her reaction or
disappointed that I hadn't managed to break through her guard.

"Right.
There's not a ton I can tell you yet. One of my contacts told me that
the Coun'hij wants to make an example of Jaclyn Annikov. Her pack is
small enough that you can pretty much guarantee they will all be
somewhere between Tucson and the border at any given moment. That
means that they are easy to contain, which is a big plus for Kaleb
and the rest. At the same time, Jaclyn is powerful enough that
killing her makes a powerful statement."

Taggart nodded
as though contemplating what I'd just said, but I knew he'd already
considered all of the angles.

"It's a
risky move. The Coun'hij has tried for the last couple of centuries
to maintain an aura of legitimacy. They are brutal when it comes to
eliminating enemies, but only after they find a violation of the laws
they've created. Jaclyn has proven surprisingly good at not actually
doing anything worthy of death despite all of her complaints.

"Destroying
her pack might scare all of the smaller unaligned packs into the
Coun'hij's shadow, but it could just as easily force them all into
open rebellion. This isn't the kind of move I would have expected out
of Kaleb."

I shrugged.
"You're not wrong. He's usually more subtle than this, but it's
possible that they don't feel like they have any other option. We
didn't manage to save Agony, but we did soundly trounce a fairly
large group of enforcers before being chased off. The Coun'hij may
not know everything that happened before Brandon arrived, but they
must have realized by now that we brought someone with an ability
that they didn't expect."

"I suppose
you're right. It's easy to get caught up with worries over the fact
that Grayson isn't a resource we can count on to help us in the
future, but the Coun'hij is probably concerned about the fact that
Carson's people—and Heath—represent a completely
unanticipated threat."

"Right,
and then when you throw in the fact that they haven't been able to
track us down since then, they're probably feeling the heat. They
don't know that we lost a ton of people in LA. My efforts at
diplomacy haven't been bearing any real fruit, but I've been focused
on the packs that are already only half a step away from joining the
rebellion. Maybe I should have been focused on the independents. If
Kaleb and the rest are getting signals that the smaller packs are
already considering jumping ship, the Coun'hij may not feel like they
have any other choice."

I'd been very
careful not to reference Minnesota again, but Adri flinched slightly
when I talked about our losses in LA. It was, after all, only a small
jump from losing people to super vampires in one place to losing them
to super-vampires in another place.

For a moment I
thought she was going to crack under the memory of her parents being
killed, but she pulled herself together with visible effort.

"Okay, so
what next? I take it we can't just call Jaclyn up and tell her to
pack her bags?"

Taggart smiled.
"No, I'm afraid things are rarely that simple. It is difficult
to stay off of the Coun'hij's radar, but it's even harder falling off
in the first place. You and I were never really on it, and Alec had
the advantage of leaving while most of his father's assets were
focused on the more visible threats, but Jaclyn doesn't have either
of those advantages."

Adri was
putting on a brave front, but I could see her legs starting to
tremble ever so slightly. I forced an ornate black wrought-iron bench
into existence behind her and then gestured for her to take advantage
of it.

"Yeah.
Jaclyn's pack is one of the most heavily watched. My bet is that the
Coun'hij knows where every penny of the pack's money is headed before
it even leaves the bank. They'll have satellites watching the area,
and assets close enough to head her off if she just grabs her people
and jumps in vehicles to make a run for it.

"The only
way they have a chance of getting out is if someone sets up
extraction routes for them and then comes in and wipes out the quick
response force that's been assigned to make sure she doesn't try
anything.

"Once we
know for sure how many people we're dealing with, Jack can probably
set up extraction plans that will suffice to help everyone drop off
of the radar, but that's all for naught if we can't deal with the
enforcers down there."