Marked (13 page)

I
pulled the door to the room shut behind me and then paused in
confusion. I'd expected Mallory at least to run to Alec's bedside,
and there was every reason to think that Donovan would want to take
the chance for one last check on Alec's condition before he went to
catch up on the sleep he needed so badly.

That
was what I'd been expecting, but instead the pair of them had stopped
only one step into the room. It was like they were too stunned to
move and I could only think of one reason for them to be shocked like
that.

I
pushed between the two of them, my heart in my throat, and then fell
to my knees as soon as I was able to see Alec.

He
wasn't dead, not yet at least, but that didn't mean he was okay.
Every single muscle in his body was clenched tight as though he was
fighting for his life, but it was his eyelids that gave things away.

I
couldn't smell his terror, but I didn't need to when I could see his
eyes moving around underneath his eyelids. It was obvious he was
dreaming and based on Donovan's and Mallory's responses it wasn't a
normal dream.

At
that very moment Alec was fighting against Dream Stealer. His power
wasn't going to be able to save him this time any more than it had
been able to save Kristin.

Adriana Paige
Interstate 70
Western Colorado

It had seemed like I was just starting to get my feet underneath me.
Finding out that Dream Stealer was targeting Alec was like getting
blindsided by a semi-truck. I didn't know if that meant Kristin was
dead or if Dream Stealer really was able to break two people at once,
but I was certain that we were in even more trouble than I'd
realized.

Alec
was strong and determined, but nobody could last forever against the
kind of torture Dream Stealer was said to employ. Donovan, Mallory
and I spent several minutes staring at Alec in shock before something
brought me out of the haze of despair that I'd been wallowing in. I
stood and turned so I could face Donovan and Mallory.

"This
isn't the end of the world. It's a complication, but it's one that
we'll deal with. Mallory, you need to pull yourself together and get
back out there and keep our people from falling apart. We need to
make the meet with James, Dom and the rest. I need a bodyguard I can
trust fully and we need to see if Dominic has gotten her ability in
hand well enough to be able to heal Alec and then hopefully you too."

"What
good will it do to heal his body if his mind is shattered beyond
repair?"

Donovan
sounded so crushed that I reached out and placed a hand on his
shoulder. "This isn't over. Dream Stealer never breaks someone
overnight. We have a window of opportunity in which to find him and
kill him. If we can do that quickly enough then we can save Alec."

Mallory
looked at me in astonishment. "You're talking about finding the
Coun'hij's base as though it's not something that people have been
trying to do for hundreds of years. Even once we find them that
doesn't guarantee anything. Nobody was quite sure that we'd be able
to take down the Coun'hij even
with
Alec. Without him we don't stand a chance."

I
resisted the urge to shake her. She'd promised fealty, but that was
much the same as promising obedience. I needed more than that, I
needed loyalty and that was a living, breathing thing that I was
going to have to nurture over a long period of time.

"You
don't know everything that's happened, Mallory. I'm going to try to
bring you further into the loop, but that's going to take some time,
time that we don't have right now. Even once we have a few quiet
minutes you're never going to know quite as much simply because your
role is going to be different than Donovan's role."

"What
is my role going to be exactly?"

"You're
going to be my strong right hand where the rest of the shape shifters
are concerned. Everyone knows that you have been Alec's secret
counselor ever since he first manifested an alternate shape. You will
keep our low-level people in line and working towards our goals."

"It
won't work. A broken-down wreck of an old woman will never be able to
accomplish that."

"Dominic
is going to heal you. Weeks ago Alec told me that need was what
finally triggered his power. We
desperately
need Dominic to heal Alec and we need her to heal you. It's going to
work this time."

"You
can't make plans like that. It's like trying to build a house of
cards on top of a beach ball. Besides, even if I could whip the rank
and file into shape, that still wouldn't solve our problems. We need
someone with a game-changing ability if we're going to have any
chance of taking down Dream Stealer. He's going to be protected by
dozens of hybrids at the very least."

"We
already have top-tier ability available to us."

"Grayson
isn't going to be enough, not when Puppeteer can throw an endless
stream of werewolves at us."

"I'm
not talking about Grayson; I'm talking about Lori from the Del Rio
pack. She can force the Coun'hij enforcers to turn on each other, can
force them to fight Puppeteer's werewolves for us. She just
neutralized the entire group of enforcers down in Nephi."

"Careful,
or you're going to actually convince me that you're out of your mind,
Adri. Lori can't be controlled by anyone, let alone me. Her, Grayson,
Jaclyn, none of them can be controlled by anyone other than Alec. I
can't make them toe the line for you."

"I
don't need you to
make
them do anything, Mallory. You just worry about the people we've got
here for now. They are already taking your orders and the passage of
time is just going to make it more and more natural for them to keep
doing so. Once Dominic gets here we'll see about getting you back to
one hundred percent physically and then you can worry about the rest
of our people. Leave Lori, Jaclyn, Grayson—and whoever else we
manage to turn up—to me."

"This
is never going to work, you know that, right?"

I
started to respond to Mallory's question, but Donovan beat me to it.
"No, Mistress Paige is right. This is the only way. It's by no
means guaranteed, but it does have a possibility of being successful.
We need to do exactly as she says and pursue the war against the
Coun'hij with every resource at our disposal."

I
rewarded Donovan with a smile. "I know you're exhausted,
Donovan, but while Mallory gets everyone back on the road, I need you
to take a look at the communications equipment. Once that is done,
you can go take a nap."

"Is
there a problem, Mistress Paige?"

"I'm
not sure, but Jaclyn said that she had to call my phone because she
couldn't get ahold of Alec's phone and Mallory had to flag Ruby down just now."

"Very
good, I'll check up on Master Alec and then I'll look into the
communications suite right after that."

"I'll
go ahead and check him, if you don't mind, Donovan. That way if I
have any questions I can ask them before you go to sleep."

Donovan
turned to go, Mallory half a step behind him, but I stopped her with
a word. "Mallory, as soon as things calm down I need you to
spend some time examining all of our surviving hybrids. I want to
know if anyone is hiding an ability like Lori has been doing for the
last few years."

"It's
very unlikely. I've interacted with nearly everyone at this point. If
they had an ability of any real power I would have seen it already. I
only need to really examine someone if I'm looking for potential or
if their ability is very weak."

"I
know, Alec indicated as much, but I want you to look all the same.
Just because someone's ability doesn't have a lot of raw power
doesn't mean it can't be useful to us. Given the way that things are
stacking up, I want to know about every potential weapon in our
inventory."

"Understood,
I'll get started on it as quickly as I can. What do you want me to
tell everyone about Alec? They are going to ask now that they know
I've been in to see him."

"Tell
them the truth. Tell them that you've been in to see him and that
while his injuries are severe, he is in stable condition and based on
the inherent advantages of being a shape shifter, only a fool would
expect anything other than that he would recover from any wound which
hadn't killed him already."

"The
truth?"

"Yes,
the truth. A certain version of it at least. You're going to have to
sell it, Mallory, or they are going to start asking questions and if
that happens it's only a matter of time before they trip you up."

For
the first time since the ambush had gone south, Mallory smiled. "I've
been dancing rings around the truth since before you were born, Adri.
I'll make it work—I just needed to know what the official party
line was going to be."

Once
both of them were gone I turned down the privacy box so I could hear
Donovan working in the computer closet just through the wall, and
then I began examining Alec. It was eerie to be next to him while he
was so stiff that I could occasionally hear his muscles creaking from
the strain he was putting on them. Alec would never knowingly hurt
me, but all bets were off if he started thrashing around in the
throes of some nightmare.

As
much as it pained me to consider tying Alec down, we needed
restraints. It was the only way to make sure that he didn't
accidentally hurt Donovan or me. Not only that, it might actually
help him. If he started thrashing around he might re-open his wounds.
I added it to the list of things that needed to be done as I put the
stethoscope in my ears and warmed the metal against my arm.

His
heartbeat sounded fast to me, and he felt feverish, but his color
looked good and he seemed to be breathing as normally as you could
expect for someone locked inside of a supernatural nightmare.

I
left my hand resting lightly against the bare skin of his uninjured
shoulder and wished that I had time for tears. Maybe if I'd had a few
more minutes I would have convinced myself there was time to break
down and cry, but a second later Donovan stepped back inside of the
room and turned the privacy generator back up.

"I
have bad news, Mistress Paige. The communications array has been
rendered inoperable."

"How
is that possible? It's been working for the last several hours.
Things don't just stop working."

"Indeed,
that was my thought as well. I've examined it in detail and it
appears that one of the shots that punched through the skin of the RV
caused ancillary damage to the communications equipment, damage that
didn't manifest itself until recently when a jolt in the road caused
some of the wiring to finish pulling loose."

"Appears?"

"Yes…appears.
The odds of something like this happening seem very slim. I worry
that we might have a saboteur amongst our number."

I
could feel a headache starting to build. It was bad enough that we
had the entire might of the Coun'hij trying to hunt us down. The
possibility that we had been infiltrated, that someone had made it
past all of our precautions, that they had managed to swear fealty
during one of the windows when Shawn hadn't been around to measure
their intent, that they were such a good liar that nobody had picked
up any unusual vibes from them, was enough to make me want to scream.

"I'm
out of my depth, Donovan. I don't know the first thing about running
some kind of counter-intelligence operation. What do we do now?"

"We
need to confirm who has been inside of our vehicle since the ambush
and then we need to keep those individuals away from each other.
Given just how good a liar we must be dealing with if this really was
sabotage, there is little chance that we'll be able to catch them by
way of casual questioning and it would be wrong to use harsher
methods on people who haven't done anything wrong. Our best bet is to
make sure that their access to our operations is limited enough that
if they strike again it will be obvious which of them is our
culprit."

"Okay,
that makes sense. Anything else? Can we get the equipment working
again?"

Donovan
hesitated before finally shaking his head. "I'm afraid not. Even
if it was a possibility, the chance that it's been tampered with
would preclude our using it. I'm simply not expert enough to
guarantee that it hasn't been modified somehow to serve as some kind
of tracking beacon."

"Is
it even going to be possible for us to remain untraceable without
that equipment?"

"No.
Our IT assets can do quite a bit in that area, but much of our
current security protocols are designed around the capabilities of
this particular equipment. I simply don't think there is a reliable
way to mask and scramble our signal while using stock cell phones."

"You
realize that means all our saboteur would need to do if they wanted
to lead the Coun'hij to us is leave their cell phone on?"

"Assuming
we really do have a saboteur…then you are completely correct.
We need to collect the cell phones of all of our people and turn them
off. Also, we need to take measures in case we've already been found
on a satellite feed. We're not going to be safe until we've changed
vehicles somewhere that would preclude any kind of remote
surveillance."

"
If
we have a spy in our midst. We're going to have to assume that we
have one because to do otherwise would be like committing suicide.
Even though taking people's phones away is going to cause a lot of
ill will. I really hate this kind of double- and triple-think,
Donovan. Well, a deal is a deal. Go get some sleep. I'll get Mallory
started collecting everyone's phones."

"If
we simply drop off of the radar we're going to end up causing an
incredible amount of concern among the rest of our people, many of
whom have just escaped from enforcer kill teams."