Driven (10 page)

The
human part of me wanted nothing so much as to give in, to follow the
insistent demands that I drop back off, but my beast roared to life
an instant before I would have closed my eyes again. She recognized
the fact that the influence currently working on us was alien. It had
bothered me, but it infuriated her.

My
beast didn't particularly like the fact that she was subject to me.
If I'd been a little less strong-willed, or if I hadn't been part of
her in some indefinable way, she would have taken over control a long
time ago. She suffered my rule, but she wasn't going to suffer the
rule of anyone else, at least not without fighting, not without
forcing them to prove that they were dominant to her.

The
flare of otherworldly energy from my beast pushed, at least
momentarily, the foreign presence out of my mind. I was out of my
chair and headed towards the door before my conscious mind had
finished the threat assessment that told me that my most likely
adversary was a group of vampires.

I
paused for the barest moment at the door. Even through the white-hot
rage of my beast I knew that I didn't want to leave Ben here alone
and undefended, but the only alternative would be to cower inside of
our room and wait for them to come murder us.

Even
if it had been a smart choice it still wouldn't have been the kind of
thing that I could have forced myself to do. I stripped off my
clothes in quick, smooth motions and then slipped outside, making
sure that I heard the lock click shut behind me.

The
narrow hall was lit by nothing more than safety lights as I ghosted
down it, my ears questing for some clue as to where the vampires
were. I could feel the alien presence lazily pushing against my mind,
but the mental intrusion was still a blanket, undirected kind of
thing. I knew that I'd be in trouble if the mentalist realized I was
awake and coming for them. If he was strong enough to cover an area
as big as the hostel and put everyone inside it to sleep then he was
strong enough to read my mind in the middle of a fight. If the
presence just outside of my mind started to really push it would be a
sign that things were just about to go from bad to worse.

I
was able to smell them after taking only a few steps forward. The air
inside the hostel was too still to guarantee that I was able to scent
all of the vampires involved, but it smelled like there were four
different vampires in the building. It was sometimes hard to identify
different vampires by scent though, the incredible stink of old,
rotting blood is generally strong enough to overpower almost
everything else about them.

I
stepped around a corner and saw the first open door of the night. As
I got closer my nose and a set of soft sucking sounds confirmed what
I'd suspected. The vampires, at least two of them, were inside and
already feeding.

If
I was in luck the strongest vampire, the mentalist who had sent
everyone into a deep slumber, would be in that room and I would be
able to take him by surprise and kill him before he could bring the
full wrath of his powers against me. I couldn't remember whether or
not vampires were capable of sensing the energy bleed of a shift the
way that the moonborn could, so I decided not to take any chances.

I
went through the door at something that was very nearly a full run
and shifted as I went, exploding into my hybrid shape with a surge of
power that preceded me like an angry wave. It was too much, I was
moving too fast as I shifted, and I stumbled as I went across the
threshold.

I
was off balance and in an unfamiliar room. It was a recipe for
disaster, but I'd taken the two vampires inside of the room
completely by surprise. They managed to get their mouths off of the
girls that they'd been feeding on, and one of them even managed to
get his sword halfway out of its sheath, but I killed them both
within milliseconds of each other.

For
several long, painful seconds I stared at the two girls the vampires
had been feeding on. They were both white from blood loss, with their
eyes rolled back up into their skulls. I wanted to save them, wanted
to apply direct pressure on the holes in their wrists, but I forced
myself to turn away.

They
were as good as dead and I couldn't afford to stay in one place. The
drowsy pressure behind my eyes hadn't gone away. There were other
vampires in the hostel and if I didn't keep moving, didn't keep
hunting, then I had no chance of surviving. The two girls had been
dead the moment the vampires had walked into their room, it was just
going to take a few more minutes for nature to run its course.

I
didn't bother shifting back down to human form as I stepped out of
the room. My choice was little more than habit. My hybrid shape was
the most deadly form available to me and shifting back and forth
between forms wouldn't make me any safer, it would just risk a
debilitating set of muscle spasms in the middle of the fight.

It
hadn't been by design, but the fact that I was still wearing my
hulking hybrid body as I took my first step down the hall was the
only thing that saved me when the mentalist realized something was
wrong and brought his full strength to bear against me. Frozen
daggers of ice stabbed into my temples as the vampire pried at my
mind in an effort to find out who and where I was.

If
I'd been in my human shape he would have succeeded, but in my hybrid
shape my beast was closer to the surface of my mind. She had more
leeway in this shape because a small but definite portion of my human
reason was sublimated to her savage instincts. This was a new arena,
one that she wasn't used to fighting in, but she was ready and
willing to fight anywhere and at any time.

The
shards of ice trying to pillage my memories melted away when faced
with the heat of her anger. I could still feel the vampire's mental
fingers trying to pierce my mind, peeling back the outer layers of my
psyche, but my beast met every attack with biting, spitting defiance,
and for now she seemed to be holding her own.

I
took two more steps down the hall and a tremor of something very much
like fear ran through me. The artificial exhaustion hadn't gone
anywhere, I'd only thought I was facing the mentalist's full powers.
I'd been wrong—he was still making sure that the other
residents of the hostel wouldn't wake up and cause him and his
companions any problems.

I
heard hushed voices up ahead.

"…no,
we haven't heard anything…a
presence
?
Can't you be more specific than that? Peters isn't answering his
phone? Bollocks, that means it's got to be nearby. We'll finish up
here in a second and then go hunting."

This
time there were three of them. I could hear them moving around inside
of the suite just ahead of me. This one was designed to sleep four,
and I already knew that all four of the kids who'd been sleeping
there were dead or dying. The vampire wouldn't have been on the phone
otherwise.

I
crept forward, desperately hoping that vampire hearing was human
dull. I made it almost all of the way to their door before the pacing
steps moved towards me.

The
first vampire came out of the door with a pair of long knives in his
hands, but I grabbed him before he'd made it far enough into the hall
to realize that I was right there next to him. My right hand grabbed
hold of his wrist, controlling the closest weapon, and then I punched
the claws on my left hand into his chest.

He
was a big man, he probably weighed nearly two hundred and twenty
pounds, but that was nothing to my massive hybrid muscles. I picked
him up, using his body as a shield, and charged into the room.

A
woman had been only a few feet behind him, but I hit her hard enough
to knock her over and then threw the first vampire at the one who was
just now returning his phone to his jacket pocket. The female tried
to get back on her feet, tried to get her sword into play, but I
stepped on her sword hand and then sank the talons on my other foot
into her stomach.

A
casual flick of my wrist across her throat ended the threat she
represented and then I was fully inside of the room and facing my
first prepared opponent, a vampire who was old enough that his
telekinetic power had been sufficient to knock aside the body that
I'd just thrown at him.

He
had a sword out, a long, straight duelist's weapon, and he'd
obviously had plenty of years in which to learn how to use it. He
almost got me on the first pass despite my best efforts. I wasn't
used to dealing with a stabbing weapon. Hybrid combat was all about
slashing attacks, and this was something entirely different.

His
weapon darted forward, aimed at my chest, but when I went to slap the
blade away with my claws I instead found that my arm had been encased
by some kind of invisible force. It was as though I had two hundred
pounds of weight dragging at the appendage. I was strong enough still
to move against that kind of force, but even a hybrid as big as me
couldn't move that kind of weight and still be quick enough to block
the lightning-fast strike of the vampire's sword.

I
knew my original plan was futile, so I simply stepped to the side.
His telekinetic gift pushed at me, trying to stop me from moving, but
a mere force of a few hundred pounds wasn't enough to even slow my
bulk by very much. I didn't move enough to avoid the strike
completely, but I'd known that I wouldn't be able to, so I hadn't
even tried.

His
sword entered my chest three inches to the left of where my heart
would have been if hybrids kept their hearts in the same place as
humans did. It hurt with the dull almost-pain of a hybrid's nervous
system, a nervous system designed to transmit information without
allowing pain to stop us from doing what needed to be done. It hurt,
but not enough to stop me from stepping into the blow and shoving the
claws on the end of my left hand into his chest.

He
was dead before he hit the ground and I stepped away wounded and
bleeding, but still more than capable of making sure I took a few
more vampires with me.

The
vampire stink got stronger as I got closer to the front door, but the
blood smell was still too strong to allow me to pick out how many
vampires I was up against. I looked at the door for a couple of
seconds and then grabbed one of the utilitarian steel chairs
scattered about the foyer.

My
claws made short work of the seat and back, and then I tore the frame
apart and wrapped one of the longer pieces around the door handles
where they came together. It was crude, but I'd just locked the door
against anyone who didn't have the strength to bend steel.

I
felt a moment of regret at the action. I'd just locked all of the
humans inside with the vampires. They could still go out the windows,
but that would slow them down and potentially cost lives if I didn't
manage to kill all of the bloodsuckers. It was regrettable, but it
would also help keep the vampires imprisoned with us here as well.

It
was the kind of decision I'd seen Alec forced into, especially when
Agony had made his visit to Sanctuary. I'd hated him at the time for
some of the things he'd made us do back then, but I knew this was the
right decision to make, and for more reasons than just the twin jets
of hate and rage burning inside of me. The only thing that was
holding the vampires back from taking over the heartland of the
United States was the fact that we shape shifters preyed on them like
they preyed on the humans.

They
didn't know we existed, which allowed us to stalk and kill them in
small groups. If that ever changed then the advantage would swing
irrevocably the other way. The vampires could reproduce with a speed
only found in truly parasitic organisms and the mentalists inside of
their ranks would be able to find our packs one by one and destroy us
by bringing overwhelming numbers against us.

I
needed to win tonight for more than just Ben and I.

I
pushed the elevator call button with a knuckle and then waited with
my heart in my chest as it came down. I half expected a dozen
vampires to come streaming out of the car once the doors opened, but
it was thankfully empty. I wedged a chair between the open elevator
doors to make sure that it wouldn't be of any use to the vampires,
stuck my head inside to confirm that they hadn't used it yet, and
then turned for the stairs.

The
mentalist attacked again when I was halfway between the first and
second floors. My beast fought back, but this time the vampire had
let the blanket exhaustion he'd been maintaining drop back to nothing
more than a hint of what it had been. The change freed up resources
that he used to hit me with an attack that had all of the subtlety of
a falling anvil.

I
stumbled on the stairs, dropping to the ground for a second as I
tried to function in a world where I couldn't see or even tell which
way was up. For long moments I couldn't do anything more than just
stay there, crumpled to the ground, and hope that none of the other
vampires would happen upon me.

I
was completely defenseless to physical attack, but that didn't worry
my beast, she was much more concerned with the fact that oily fingers
were rummaging through my mind like it was nothing more than a series
of file folders. My beast attacked with fire and the mental
equivalent of fang and claws.

Exhaustion
pulled at me, real exhaustion, not just the mentalist's working, but
my beast seemed fresh and eager to continue fighting. I could feel a
shining golden line running from her off into a place that was
simultaneously far and close, a place that existed but couldn't
possibly exist. It was the first time I'd ever noticed the slender
thread, but I could tell it was important. Energy rolled down the
line, feeding her an unnatural vitality that I could tap only the
barest fringes of.