Driven (22 page)

It
wasn't exactly a bluff, but the truth was that I didn't want to
involve the dispossessed any more than the Duluth pack did. The
dispossessed normally didn't take much interest in the comings and
goings of the rest of us, but the one thing guaranteed to make them
coalesce into a ravening horde was news that one of the packs wasn't
living up to the long-established challenge law.

Geoffrey
held up my phone, which already had a rather long, detailed text on
it ready for him to hit the send button.

"I'd
rather not have to send this."

The
butler looked at me with hate in his eyes. There was no guarantee
that the dispossessed would come here in response to a text from me
of all people, but if they did, if my message was convincing enough,
then they'd kill every man, woman and child in the pack and torch
their homes.

"Fine,
it can come, but you're responsible for it."

We
followed Cruthers into the house and to a sitting room less than two
dozen feet from the front door.

"I'll
inform Mr. Stekensbridge of your presence."

"Fine.
You've got twenty minutes. Anyone you can't get here by then can't
face me across the circle."

He
knew the rules as well as I did, possibly even better, but it didn't
hurt to make sure that he knew I wasn't going to cool my heels while
they called in people from two states over.

Less
than fifteen minutes later Cruthers returned and conducted us deeper
into the house. We went down two flights of stairs before arriving at
our destination, a large room nearly two stories tall and half as big
as a football field. It had been carved out of the bedrock that the
house rested on, and obviously served as the place of challenge for
the Duluth pack.

Geoffrey
acted unimpressed as we walked through the house, but I knew him well
enough to realize that he'd been shocked at some of the artifacts
we'd seen before being led downstairs. The Duluth pack was as old as
any. They'd fallen on hard times as of late, but the Stekensbridge
family had led the pack for more than three generations. A thousand
years was a long time to gather up pretty bits of art, but I'd grown
up around better in Sanctuary.

The
Graves family had been in power in one form or another since the
monarchy. Alec could have bought and sold the Stekensbridges out of
little more than petty cash. Not only that, the house itself was less
than two hundred years old while parts of Graves Manor were much,
much older than that.

I
was in the middle of reflecting on the irony that Geoffrey, who
potentially had been alive for longer than any of the rest of us, was
the one most impressed by the ancient air of our surroundings, when
the first of the Duluth pack started trickling in.

What
started as a trickle quickly grew into what felt like a flood and I
had to tell myself over and over again that the Duluth pack was on
the smaller side, that they were my best chance of saving Melody and
thereby saving Ben.

When
all was said and done, there were eleven men and women gathered along
the far wall. There were a few other people as well, young kids who
weren't old enough to have manifested a second shape yet and a single
human spouse, but those eleven were the ones I had to worry about and
I knew it. They gave off an unmistakable aura of power.

Some
were weaker, some were stronger, but all of them were moonborn and
therefore dangerous. I took a deep breath, held it for a three-count
and then stepped forward to the edge of the thin circle that had been
cut into the cold gray stone.

Geoffrey
was a reassuring presence at my back, but ultimately this was all up
to me. I had one card up my sleeve, and one card only. None of the
wolves and hybrids here knew that I was a hybrid.

Every
pack in North America maintained files on every other known moonborn.
The flow of information between packs was far from perfect with packs
routinely withholding information where they thought doing so might
give them an advantage, but the files were still maintained with the
best information available to the pack.

Eventually
word of my manifesting a third shape, long after it should have been
possible, would trickle out along the grapevine and everyone would
know that I was now far more dangerous than I'd been before, but for
now everyone here was underestimating me by a great margin. It was an
advantage, but when stacked up against the possibility of having to
fight my way through ten other wolves and hybrids just to have a shot
at the alpha, it wasn't worth much.

As
I stepped forward to the edge of the circle the moonborn across the
way also stepped forward, forming a partial circle that left the two
members on each end only a few yards away from me. The circle here in
Duluth was smaller than the one back in Sanctuary.

"I'm
here to challenge for the right to lead this pack."

The
man standing directly opposite me shook his head. "What, no
fancy words? I would have expected someone so ready to threaten us
with the wrath of the dispossessed to be more anxious to hold to the
old forms."

I
didn't need to be told that I was looking at Stekensbridge. He was
big, but no bigger than James. With any luck that would mean that his
hybrid body was roughly the same size as James'.

"Very
well, my name is Jasmin Bianchi. That's all you really need to know,
that's all you really wanted."

My
accusation was met with a hint of a smile, and then a
barely-perceptible ripple of calm spread out from the center of the
other pack, working its way out to the submissives. They'd all been
assuming the worst-case scenario. They'd been worried that I was some
hybrid with a powerful ability, one who was virtually guaranteed to
defeat them all. Now they were confident that any of their hybrids
and some of their wolves could defeat me without too much effort.

Stekensbridge
opened his mouth to name his first champion, but before he could get
the words out the man on his left, a big, redheaded brute who had to
be at least six-three, stepped forward.

"A
moment?"

For
a second I thought that Stekensbridge would refuse, but he didn't.
That one fact told me everything I needed to know. I was looking at
Branson, and Stekensbridge and Branson both knew who was truly
dominant between the two of them. Branson allowed Stekensbridge to
remain the pack alpha for some reason known only to himself, but he
was the one who should have been ruling in Duluth.

I
watched as Branson crossed the circle, walking slowly towards me, and
it was obvious just how dangerous an opponent he would be. He moved
well, much better in human shape than most people that big, and there
was a lazy confidence to him that told me he was used to winning
fights, which considering that he'd clawed his way into an honorary
position with the Coun'hij's enforcers said quite a lot about his
skill.

I
shifted my weight slightly forward, moving more onto the balls of my
feet. The challenge match hadn't officially started, but that didn't
necessarily mean anything. A guy like Branson was more than capable
of attacking without warning and I was determined not to go down from
some cheap shot.

I
didn't make a show, but once you've been in a few dozen fights you
get very good at reading people's body language. Branson could tell
that I was ready for him to attack, and that just made him smile.

You
had to worry about sneak attacks from a hybrid more so than from a
wolf. For a wolf to attack they had to shift, let gravity pull them
down to the floor so that they had something to push off of, and then
lunge upwards and lock their jaws around someone's throat. In a
sense, for wolves the change worked against them.

Hybrids
were exactly the opposite. When a hybrid changed, from human or wolf
form either one, there was a natural upwards motion as their body
grew up to the full measure of a hybrid's stature. That meant there
was not real pause between when the hybrid started transforming and
when an attack could land. All that was required was for the
transforming hybrid to do a kind of modified uppercut as they
transformed and their claws would be driven deep into their enemy.

It
meant that that the only true safety when you were dealing with a
hybrid was to make sure that you were far enough out of reach that
you'd have a chance to react before they could get close enough to
hurt you. Branson was purposefully stepping too close to me,
threatening me with his presence in a way that he thought I couldn't
match.

"Jasmin
Bianchi, of the Sanctuary Bianchis, I presume?"

I
nodded, but I didn't let my eyes look away from his hands. He smiled
even wider.

"I
guess they finally told you then."

"Told
me what?"

He
shook his head in much the same way that Stekensbridge had done a few
seconds earlier, but his gesture was even more mocking.

"Don't
play dumb. This is exactly the kind of grand, juvenile gesture that
I've been expecting from you for years. They finally told you about
the night that Kaleb Graves died."

"You
were there. So were a lot of others. The Sanctuary pack was nearly as
big as the Chicago pack back then and Agony brought enough men to
make sure that he outnumbered the Sanctuary pack by a huge margin.
Are you looking for a medal for having participated in one of the
biggest massacres in recent history?"

His
smile flickered slightly, he hadn't lost his sense of superiority,
but it was obvious that I hadn't provided him with the response he'd
been expecting.

"They
didn't tell you then. You have…anger issues, everyone knows
it. If you really knew what happened back then you wouldn't be so
calm. Why are you here then?"

"I
already told you, I want to take over this pack."

"You
can't possibly hope to win, and you know it."

This
time it was my turn to smile. "You might be surprised."

I
could see the ripple of unease move through the Duluth pack. I hadn't
been lying, which made them all nervous, it even made Branson a
little worried. I'd just told them the truth and they'd been able to
tell it was the truth because my body hadn't given off any of the
normal signs of a lie. My breathing hadn't sped up, my pulse hadn't
changed, my body temperature had remained even, there were a host of
clues telling them that I believed what I'd said.

They
were shape shifters, so they knew that the 'truth' they'd thought
they'd just heard might not be quite the truth I'd been telling them,
but it was still the kind of thing that made people wonder what else
was going on.

"Bold
words for a third-rate wolf from a pack that's been scattered to the
four corners of the continent."

I
cocked my head to one side. "Have you heard reports of the
battle in Sanctuary already up here in Minnesota? I'm betting not.
That's just what your contacts on the Coun'hij told you was going to
happen, isn't it?"

"We've
heard all about it. Graves Manor is a smoking pile of rocks. You all
evaporated like a desert mirage before the might of the Coun'hij."

"That's
an interesting take on events, but I was actually there for the
fight. Puppeteer brought in dozens of werewolves backed up by a
couple dozen worthless bullies like you. By the time the night was
over the house was destroyed, but all of the werewolves were dead and
the enforcers died within seconds of the last werewolf falling."

Again,
they knew I was speaking the truth, but it was a truth that their
minds couldn't accept for many reasons.

"That's
right, Puppeteer brought werewolves in to destroy the massed strength
of four packs. He did what the Coun'hij has threatened to do for
decades. They are so scared of Alec and what he represents that they
risked a mass revolt by every other pack in North America to try and
kill him."

Branson
didn't like that, both my telling his pack mates just how far the
Coun'hij had gone, and the fact that his contacts hadn't bothered to
tell him about our having killed all of the werewolves.

"You
lost people too."

A
collage of faces swam past my vision and I found myself nodding.

"Yes,
too many, but not as many as your side lost."

Branson
had been just barely within striking range before, but now he stepped
in closer, sticking his mouth just inches away from my ear.

"Your
mom died that night when Agony came calling, but he didn't kill her.
I did."

My
beast tore free of the metaphysical chains I'd used to bind her, but
it wasn't like anything I'd ever felt before. I didn't change, at
least not immediately, but Branson's words had hit me with the
strength of a wrecking ball. A verbal blow like that should have
devastated me, but that titanic force bounced off of something in my
core, something that refused to give into the blow that he'd expected
to crush me.

My
inner landscape seemed to be composed of huge walls of ice and my
beast's anger perfectly offset the force of Branson's barb, canceling
it out and leaving me motionless inside. It wasn't an enduring kind
of stillness, it was nothing more than a pale shadow of the peace I'd
found earlier during my meditation, but it was still enough to
channel the power from my beast with brittle walls that still refused
to give way before her.

Branson
had stepped forward and to one side, trying to flank me, and I'd
turned with him. Even while in a state of profound shock, I still
reflexively made sure that the biggest threat was where I could see
him. As I turned my hand moved forward without any conscious decision
on my part, but rather than the impotent blow I'd been expecting to
land on Branson, my hand exploded outwards with the deadly,
semi-retractable claws of my hybrid leading the outermost edge of the
change.