Forsaken

Copyright 2012 by Dean Murray

Alec Graves
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah

The
blank canvas staring at me hadn't changed in weeks. I still went
through the motions, still came here regularly and mixed up paints,
but I hadn't managed to actually paint anything since she'd left.

I
was going to have to order another set of blank canvases before too
much longer. It was ludicrous in so many ways, but it was the only
way to keep up appearances. The pack was hanging together mostly out
of sheer inertia these days. I, for one, wasn't eager to do anything
to upset the status quo. As long as I kept retiring into my studio on
a regular basis, there was still a chance that nobody would think to
ask if I was still painting.

Once
they asked, I wouldn't be able to lie. I'd have been willing to
lie—it seemed that there wasn't much I wasn't willing to do
anymore—but they'd smell the deception immediately. When you
lived with people who could hear your heartbeat change and smell your
body start to perspire, misdirection became the best way to avoid
having to face up to truths that you didn't particularly want to
share with everyone.

I
heard Jasmin coming while she was still several seconds away. It gave
me plenty of time to make sure I looked convincing when she arrived.

"Alec,
we've got a problem. The first of the dispossessed just arrived."

I
nodded, looked at my brush and palette, and then just mentally
shrugged as I dropped them both into a wastebasket. It was probably
time to get another set of supplies ordered anyway.

Pack
life wasn't a very simple thing, and it wasn't even always very
desirable. True submissives tended to stay with a pack because of the
protection that packs offered, but dominants were another matter.
There were occasionally dominants like Ash who were happy to lead a
solitary life, but for the most part, wolves were social beings.

Most
dominants wanted to belong to a pack, but more importantly, they
wanted to rule a pack. When their abilities fell short of their
aspirations, they often found themselves run out of the pack that
they'd failed to take over. Some of them ended up joining up with the
Coun'hij, the shape shifter ruling body, as one of their bully boys,
but most of them were too rebellious for even the Coun'hij to put up
with them.

They
weren't any real danger to a healthy pack, but they posed a
potentially fatal problem for a weakened pack.

Our
pack was the definition of unhealthy right now, and it was small
enough that it would draw challengers sooner rather than later. I'd
actually been expecting the first challenger to arrive a week
earlier.

I
gestured for Jasmin to lead the way and then followed her out of my
studio.

"Has
Ash returned from Vegas yet?"

Jasmin
shook her head, and the motion spoke volumes about our situation.

"No,
he's still gone, and Dominic is still not doing well. I saw her and
James earlier today, and she looked like she'd been run over by a
truck."

It
was another concern. Jasmin was putting on a good front, but I knew
she wasn't in a whole lot better shape than Dom was. In a human it
would have been the kind of thing that I'd have just chalked up to a
virus, but shape shifters were supposed to be immune to pretty much
every pathogen there was.

There
were exceptions to every rule, but Rachel seemed to have whatever it
was too, and that was even harder to explain away. I'd had Donovan
cart Rachel into town so Dr. Samuels could run a bunch of different
blood work on her, but he'd found nothing that explained how tired
she was all of the time.

I
couldn't send Jas or Dominic in for the same kind of tests, not
without blowing some poor lab tech's mind with the fact that neither
of them was quite human, but the fact that Rachel's results had come
back clean was a pretty good bit of evidence that whatever it was
couldn't be explained by purely physical means.

I
hadn't said anything to the rest of the pack, not even to Donovan,
but I was pretty sure the Coun'hij were somehow responsible. It still
wasn't a very likely explanation. None of the Coun'hij were rumored
to have anything at all like the ability to inflict the kind of
general malaise that we were seeing, but I hadn't missed out on the
fact that it was bringing down the three people who were the most
loyal to me. I kept thinking that if the Coun'hij really did have a
secret weapon, then pulling Dom, Rachel and Jasmin out of the power
structure was pretty much guaranteed to cause our pack problems.

Despite
the fact that Jasmin was moving a bit more slowly than normal, we
were still making good time. We only had a few seconds before we'd be
within earshot of the front door.

"What's
this guy like?"

"About
James' size, and he gives off enough power that I'm pretty sure he's
a hybrid. I've never heard of him, though, so I don't think he's got
any kind of extra ability over and above the normal."

I
nodded. It was a reasonable assumption on more levels than one. Most
of the hybrids who developed any kind of useful power tended to end
up ruling a pack, but you never knew when someone who had been a
plain-Jane hybrid would manifest a power that was sufficient to shake
things up. It didn't happen often, but it did happen. More telling
was the fact that this guy was the first challenger we'd seen.

Any
of the really powerful dispossessed would wait to make their move
until they had a better idea of what they'd be up against. The weaker
hybrids would move first either because they were hoping for a lucky
break or because they were pushed into doing it by someone higher up
on the food chain.

"Who's
with him?"

"Isaac
and Donovan. I called James on my way, so he'll be bringing Dom. Jess
is still gone."

I
grunted. Jess wouldn't have made much difference even if she'd been
here. She'd been our weakest fighter even before she'd lost her
memories. Now that she was missing all of the experience she'd racked
up fighting Brandon's pack for all of those years, she was even more
useless in a fight.

"It's
going to have to be you who leads off, Jas. I don't particularly
like it, but if Dom is still as bad off as you're saying, then
sending her in against a hybrid is just too risky."

It
was the truth, but it wasn't the whole truth. I hated the state we'd
come to. Jasmin knew exactly the kinds of games I was forced to play.
If I sent Dominic in first, James would be even more pissed at me
than normal, and he'd have a decent reason to be mad. Dom was
seriously off her game right now. I could lead with her anyway and
tell Jasmin to sit the fight out. It would be a way to guarantee that
James entered the fight as soon as things started going bad for Dom,
but that wasn't the way that I wanted to run the pack.

Instead
I was going to send Jasmin in, knowing that she wasn't at the top of
her game, and hope that James appreciated the gesture enough to jump
in before things got too dire for her. It wasn't the kind of thing I
wanted to do, but it was my best chance of earning some brownie
points with James, and I needed to get the pack working together
again.

Jasmin
looked at me for several seconds and then finally nodded. "I'll
do my best, but I'm not going to be able to bring this guy down by
myself. You'll have to get James in the mix pretty fast or I'm going
to be out of commission for a while."

We
crossed into the range of the white noise generator that Isaac or
Donovan had turned on when the challenger had arrived. It wasn't safe
to talk anymore so I was left with nothing to distract me from my
thoughts.

My
asking Jasmin to lead was also telling as far as the status of my
on-again, off-again ability went. I'd been told since I was little
that I had the potential of developing an incredibly powerful 'extra'
ability, but it had steadfastly refused to materialize until the
night I'd faced off against a rival pack leader in a fight to the
death that everyone knew I couldn't win. I'd been well on my way to
losing the battle, and then all of a sudden, it had been like a rift
opened up inside of me and sucked in power from everyone around me.

I'd
brought two whole packs to their knees before the rift closed, but
luckily I'd been the one to recover from the experience the fastest,
which had allowed me to kill the rival pack leader. Since then, there
had been a number of times when it would have been really useful to
uncork my ability and bring people to their knees. Unfortunately,
each time I'd reached for my power I'd come away with nothing.

When
we'd gone up against a rogue cat from south of the border, there'd
been the hint of something there as I'd tried to drain him of power
and energy, but it hadn't been nearly as effective as the night I'd
killed Brandon. I managed to slow him down a little, but I'd slowed
the rest of my pack down nearly as badly, so the net effect had only
been slightly positive.

The
surest way for us to shut down the stream of dispossessed challengers
we no doubt had coming our way would be for me to use my power to
instantly level the first couple who came up against us.
Unfortunately, it was looking more and more like my power was going
to refuse to come when called.

Barring
me being able to pull the equivalent of a tactical nuke out of my
pocket, our next best bet was to demonstrate that we had a string of
capable pack members that any challenger would have to go through
before they'd get a shot at me. Six months ago, I would have said
that everyone in the pack would have stepped forward at need to help
send the right message to the rest of the shape shifter world at
large. Now I wasn't so sure.

Jasmin
would do her best, and her lineage granted her an extra degree of
deadliness that most normal wolves couldn't hope to match, but given
her current state, the best I could hope for was that she'd tire him
out a little and bleed him enough to slow him down. Dom was out of
the question unless I was prepared to run a much higher likelihood
than normal that she wouldn't survive even long enough for Jasmin or
one of the others to tap in, and Isaac was probably still pissed off
at me for refusing to let him go camping with Jessica and Andrew.

That
meant that things depended entirely on James. If he jumped in to
relieve Jasmin and then managed to conclude the fight, we'd send a
strong message that any other challengers would have to go through
Jasmin and James just to get to Isaac. If James couldn't bring the
fight to a resolution, then there was a chance I'd be pulled in to
save James and we'd be telling everyone that all they needed
to do to take our pack over was beat Jasmin, James and me.

Jasmin
and I came around the last corner before the front reception area,
and I got my first look at the shape shifter who was going to do his
best to kill us over the next few minutes. He was a tall redhead,
maybe even a little bigger than James, and he looked old enough that
I suspected he was more dangerous than Jasmin had initially thought.
Nobody made it into middle age as one of the dispossessed without
being a very good fighter.

James
and Dom were both there, which I'd expected, but I hadn't anticipated
James' mother would accompany them. Addison was usually the last person
to take an interest in a fight, but whenever she did show up for
something, it invariably spelled trouble. I noted her presence and
then confirmed that Donovan and Isaac were also there before
acknowledging the challenger.

"What
brings you to our territory uninvited, unwelcome?"

The
challenger smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "My name is
Derrick, and I come here to challenge your right to rule your pack."

I
nodded as though it wasn't something everyone present had known since
the second Derrick had set foot in our territory.

"That
is your right, but we won't do that here. There is a space out back
that is more appropriate for a challenge."

Derrick
nodded, obviously trying to look unshaken, but still unable to fully
mask the flash of relief that went through him at my implicit
confirmation that the Sanctuary pack would be honoring his challenge
right. It was rare, but some packs had been known to attack a
challenger en masse, killing them rather than granting the challenge.