Marked (27 page)

"We
need to get you back to Donovan. Isaac can wait. You can call him
tomorrow or the next day."

Alec
shook his head weakly. "He's left me messages—he thinks
that I'm holding a grudge for how everything went down when Jess lost
her memory. I need to call him and tell him that it's okay, that
there aren't any hard feelings on my end."

Alec
wasn't strong enough to resist me, but I likewise wasn't strong
enough to pick him up and manhandle him back to the car. I started to
turn towards the two new guys to ask them to pick him up, but I saw
Alec's eyes start to flutter so instead I asked him the first
question I could think of in an effort to keep him with us.

"I
thought you couldn't get into your voicemail, Alec."

"I
couldn't but Rachel left me a message telling me how to get in."

"How
would Rachel know? For that matter how could you get her message
telling you how to get into your voicemail without first being able
to get into your voicemail?"

Alec
smiled, but it was a weak movement. "She didn't leave me a
message on my phone. Look out the window, Adri."

He
was sounding weaker by the moment and he was obviously
delusional—just talking to him wasn't going to get him through
whatever was going on.

"You
and you, pick him up and get him back to the car. I think it's his
heart; we don't have any time to waste."

Dom
grabbed my arm. "If it's really his heart then he needs a
hospital—now, not after Donovan has had a chance to look him
over."

"No,
a hospital will just be signing his death warrant in a different way.
The Coun'hij almost certainly has people headed to St Louis right
this instant. They probably already have people running background
checks on every patient in any hospital within sixty miles."

"Then
let me try to heal him."

It
was an infernal choice. My fiancé—the love of my
life—balanced against the life of one of my best friends. Even
worse, if I said yes and let Dom try to heal him again then there was
a really good chance that I would lose them both.

Alec
weakly shook his head. "No, I'm not dying, I'm just tired. Don't
try and heal me, Dom."

His
words were slurred—in fact he looked worse than he had even a
few seconds before. I could see Dom poised to try; her hands were
already resting on his chest. I opened my mouth, but James cut me
off.

"He's
not delusional—look out the window."

The
billboard was so big that I wondered how we'd missed it on our way
in, but that wasn't what was unique about it. It was nothing more
than simple green text across a blue background.

Big
Brother,

2425.
Lose everyone else and lie to Jas. If you go help her then everything
is lost and we'll never see each other again.

Rach

My
heart skipped a beat, but Dom spoke before I could manage to say
anything. "How did Rachel know we were going to be here at this
exact time?"

"My
little sister is full of surprises these days."

Alec
still looked exhausted, but his speech was a little better and he
looked like he could have almost stood on his own—he didn't
look enough better though for me to wave off either of the guys
currently supporting him by his arms.

"I
thought you didn't believe my hypothesis that Rachel could see into
the future."

"I
think you're right about the fact that she's seeing time in a
different way than the rest of us do. I just wish we could sit her
down with Mallory so we could get a definite idea of what's going on.
I'm not sure her gift—if she really has one—is the kind
of thing I would trust to take care of her out in the world all by
herself."

"But
you trusted her and her gift enough to wave us all off."

"Yeah,
enough to lie to Jasmin when she called just now too."

"How
is Jasmin?"

Alec
looked up at me with tortured eyes. "It's not good, Adri. She's
got the answer to everything we need. She says that she knows where
the Coun'hij is based and she's going in there tonight, with or
without me."

It
was an impossible choice, and I was simultaneously glad that Alec was
back so that I didn't have to make it, and sorry that he had to carry
such a burden. Help the friend who was depending on you to save her
or believe your possibly crazy younger sister who had so far shown a
remarkable penchant for predicting the future.

A
buzz from Alec's pocket saved me from having to say anything. Alec
made a weak attempt to get at his burner phone, but I knew he was
going to struggle, so I reached into his pocket and grabbed it. The
caller ID was flashing the number of Donovan's current burner phone.

"Hello?"

"Mistress,
you all need to get back here as soon as possible. Our IT resources
have gotten a number of hits on the facial recognition algorithms.
The Coun'hij already has at least two kill teams in the city."

"We're
on our way."

I
hung up and shoved the burner phone in my back pocket and then I
reached down and grabbed Alec's phone off of the floor.

"Get
moving everyone. We could have company at any moment!"

I
powered Alec's phone down as the other four collapsed in around Alec
and half carried him towards the escalators. We made better time than
I expected us to; we were even almost fast enough. We made it to the
elevators down to the parking garage without any problems other than
the fact that Alec seemed weaker and weaker with each step.

Whatever
second wind he'd found about the time our bodyguards had first
arrived back at the window to prop him up vanished after just a few
steps and it seemed to be all he could do to keep his eyes open.

I
was the first one off of the elevator when the doors opened, which
meant that I was the first one to run into the Coun'hij kill team.
The lead enforcer did a partial shift on his right arm without even
breaking stride and then slashed towards my neck with a kind of lazy
power that told me he knew exactly who I was and that there was no
possible way a human could avoid even a half-hearted blow from him.

I
should have died in that instant, but I was even less of a normal
human than I'd been just a few days ago. I threw myself backwards
with everything I had and was once again forced to watch five deadly
claws arc towards my unprotected neck in slow motion.

The
blow came so close to ripping my throat out that I felt the air
pushed on ahead of the enforcer's claws tickle my bare skin, but I
managed to get out of the way of the first attack. I could hear
movement behind me as the others carried Alec out of the elevator,
but I knew they weren't going to be able to save me—they were
too far back there and the enforcer was serious about killing me now.

The
second attack was a backfist that was moving fast enough that I knew
the impact from the oversized arm would snap my neck, but there
wasn't anything I could do about it. I was already moving backwards
as fast as I could, off balance and falling.

"Adri!"

Alec's
yell sounded only a split second before his ability kicked in.
Between one instant and the next the enforcer's arm shrank back down
to its normal size and went whistling past my head. The enemy
operative dropped to the ground a second later and I realized for the
first time that there were three more big, tattooed men behind him.

Apparently
this batch had been fully briefed about what they were going to be up
against. Rather than charging forward or staying clustered together
like I'd seen their kind do in the past, all three of them pulled out
handguns and they were moving with a speed that I wouldn't even have
been able to follow without the augmented time sense I'd acquired
during the fight with Dream Stealer.

The
barrel of the closest enforcer came up, still moving at something
that felt very close to normal speed, and then suddenly I felt the
reassuring presence of someone big and muscular just behind me. The
barrel of the gun suddenly started dropping as quickly as it had been
rising a second before.

Alec
stepped around me as I heard the sound of someone hitting the
enforcer who had tried to take my head off. The last two guns hit the
ground and I suddenly felt like I was standing in the eye of a
hurricane.

All
three of the enforcers in front of us tried to shift forms at the
same time. I felt the characteristic flare of power from all three of
them, but this time it was over before it even had a chance to get
started. Their bodies flickered and then returned to human form now
bereft of their tattoos and piercings. Through it all I could feel a
metaphysical vortex of power circling Alec and me.

"I
thought it took everything you had to force Jaclyn back into her
human form."

"It
did."

"How
have you gotten so much stronger in such a short time?"

Alec
looked back at me, confident that his ability would keep the
enforcers down and immobile. "I don't know—I'm not even
really sure that I have. The black hole on the other side of the
conduit seems to be stronger than it was before."

"Weren't
you worried at one point that it was going to fill up and your power
would become useless?"

It
was the kind of thing I probably shouldn't be talking about around
Dom and James, let alone our new bodyguards, but I was in such a
state of shock that I couldn't help myself. Alec didn't seem to mind
though.

"Yes,
I was. That doesn't seem like it's going to be a problem though."

"That's
good then, right?"

"I'm
not sure. I want to say yes, but I honestly don't know. I suppose it
all depends on where all of the energy I drain away actually goes."

Alec
stepped forward and ended the life of the closest enforcer with a
single, surgical strike from his newly-transformed hand. It was like
watching a completely different person. A few seconds before this,
Alec had looked like he was on death's doorstep. It didn't seem
possible for him to now be all but running across the parking garage
to kill the last two enforcers.

"Alec,
how are you doing this? You should be exhausted."

"I
am exhausted. I can feel it pulling at my every movement, but right
now there is something stronger that is keeping me awake and alert
through sheer force. I've pushed myself too far—I can see that
now. It was for a good cause, but it was still a risk I shouldn't
have taken. My beast should have taken control by now and created
nine different kinds of havoc. Only he's been so weak lately that at
times I've started to worry that he had somehow disappeared."

"I
didn't think that was even possible. I thought your beasts were a
part of you, I thought that once they awoke during your first
transformation that they
couldn't
leave."

"I
don't think they can, not really."

"But
you just said…"

The
next enforcer was dead now and Alec started towards the last one. "I
know; I said I was worried that he had disappeared, but I'm not
worried about that now. He's back, he's what's keeping me awake right
now, but everything feels wrong. My beast shouldn't be so
subservient. I'm worried that something is changing him, which means
that there is some external force that is changing me."

Adriana Paige
Downtown
St. Louis, Missouri

Our
trip back to meet up with the rest of the convoy took longer than the
trip out to the mall because Dominic was in full paranoia mode, but I
couldn't bring myself to complain. As worried as I was about Alec, it
was vital that we make sure a Coun'hij kill squad didn't follow us
back to the convoy.

After
fifteen minutes of driving Dominic finally gave us the go-ahead to
send Donovan a text letting him know what had happened.

Alec
pulled out a fresh burner phone and typed in a message while I
watched.

Incident
at the mall—needs virtual cleanup. Go ahead and get everyone on
the road, we'll meet you at the first location.

We
made the rest of the trip without saying anything else despite the
fact that there were about a million questions I wanted to ask Alec.
All of the things we needed to talk about were the kinds of things
that we couldn't risk getting out to the rest of our people.

It
was hard, but I kept my questions to myself and just held onto Alec's
hand like it was the only thing stopping me from drowning. Actually,
in a way it was.

Alec
didn't seem to be fading as fast this time around, but I could still
see signs of exhaustion in the way he stared off into the distance
for such long periods of time. It reminded me of the time I'd stayed
up for thirty-six hours straight. I'd been prone to losing track of
what I'd been doing and had ended up just sitting there with my mind
wandering aimlessly for minutes at a time.

I
breathed a sigh of relief when I finally saw our RV, sporting three
new aerodynamic antennae on its top, parked in a rest stop an hour
outside of St Louis. Donovan met us at the door to the RV.

"Our
IT assets are confident that they've managed to delete all of the
video feeds for the mall during the time that the six of you were
there. The local police were alerted to the bodies—probably by
the other kill team—within a couple of minutes of your
departure from the parking garage, but so far don't seem to have any
significant leads."

Alec
nodded tiredly. "Thank you, Donovan, that at least is a relief.
What's the status of the hunt for new communications equipment?"

"Frankly,
the technical aspects of what I'm being told are still somewhat
beyond me, but when I escalated the issue of the communications suite
being damaged to the wider group, one of the hackers indicated that
he would be able to write a program that would let a more
conventional set of hardware accomplish most of the functionality we
enjoyed with the specialized hardware."