Marked (7 page)

"I
thought we were expecting someone in a black SUV first, Donovan."

"Indeed,
sir."

The
white car was followed by a red minivan which was in turn followed by
a pair of black SUV's, which would have been good except for the fact
that these SUV's were sporting flecks of red and white paint from
where they'd tried to run our people off of the road.

"They've
learned from the other ambushes so far—they're being more
aggressive. They want to get their people here all at once rather
than letting them come in piecemeal. Why didn't we know this was
developing? This is going to have major strategy implications,
Donovan."

"I'm
not sure, Master Alec. The logical answer is that they must have used
their IT resources to shut down our communications."

"Once
we're clear of this we're going to need to invest in some dedicated
communications equipment. It's not going to be possible to get by
just using the commercial providers like we've been doing up until
now."

The
car and the minivan both screeched to a stop less than a dozen feet
away from the RV's, but rather than following them, the two SUVs
stopped back by the entrance to the amphitheater. I realized what was
going on at the same time that Alec did.

"They're
trying to trap the rest of our people and kill them before we can get
there!"

The
words came from a throat that was no longer human. Alec had thrown
himself forward, shifting to hybrid form mid leap. The rest of our
people—everyone but Donovan—followed less than a second
behind, charging the two SUVs and the six heavily-tattooed men who
were already exiting the vehicles.

Donovan
was the last person I would have expected to lose his nerve, but then
again maybe I wasn't being fair to him. It had been decades since
he'd last fought in anything other than the financial arena, and
there was something to be said for the idea that he was too valuable
to be risked in a grand melee where luck would play just as much a
part in his fate as his rusty combat skills.

I
opened my mouth to call Donovan back, to order him into the other RV
as a way of saving face, when it happened. The sound was a kind of
crack, with an odd kind of vibrating echo that seemed to hang in the
air afterwards. At first I didn't understand what had happened. Even
after I finally registered that what I was hearing was gunfire, I
initially thought the shot had come from Mallory who was limping
along behind everyone else. Only her gun was still pointed down
toward the ground.

By
the time the second shot rang out, Alec was less than a dozen feet
from the Coun'hij enforcers and based on the way that they'd crumpled
to the ground, his power was active. The first shot had taken him in
the left shoulder, but he didn't even slow down.

Afterwards
I would ask myself again and again whether he initially just didn't
realize that he'd been shot or if he knew but threw himself forward
regardless, desperate to neutralize the enforcers who were guarding
the only usable cover in the kill zone that the parking lot had just
become.

Ash
would have told me that the first shot out of a cold barrel is always
the least accurate one. The sniper had missed Alec's heart by inches
with his first shot. The second shot should have taken Alec's head
off, but somehow he managed to twist aside at precisely the right
instant to make the second shot miss him and tear through one of the
SUV's instead.

I
didn't remember starting up the RV, but I started it forward with a
vague idea that I needed to be there with Alec rather than sitting
here uselessly dozens of yards away. I started to veer to the left to
avoid running Donovan over, but the only sign of his presence was
fragments of black and white cloth that hadn't even had a chance to
finish fluttering toward the ground yet.

Some
of our people had figured out what was going on, but they still
weren't fast enough. The third shot took Alec through the chest and
he went down in a spray of blood that I knew was much worse than any
other injury he'd ever sustained.

The
two wolves and the hybrid who had arrived in the white car and the
minivan scattered in an effort to avoid the incoming gunfire. Even
Vik started towards the SUV's as though intent on saving his own
neck. Only Paul acted the way that a bodyguard was supposed to.

Alec
had started falling as a hybrid, but by the time he slammed into the
ground he'd shifted back to his human form. It was a bad sign, he
wouldn't have abandoned the safety of his hybrid body unless he was
forced to. That meant severely injured…or dead.

Paul
scooped Alec up with one hand, barely breaking stride as he charged
towards the SUV's. His massive hybrid claws tore into Alec's flesh,
but there wasn't anything to be done about it. Paul was right—the
first priority had to be getting Alec out of the line of fire.

The
Coun'hij enforcers that Alec had laid out so casually with his power
were starting to stir now that he wasn't actively draining them. We
still had at least a second or two before they would recover enough
to pull themselves up to their feet and be a threat, but our people
were too scattered. We needed them concentrated around the SUV's so
that they could take advantage of the small window of time during
which the enforcers were vulnerable, but if they'd stayed together
they would have been too easy for the sniper to pick off.

All
of that went through my mind in a flash as the RV finally got up to
twenty miles per hour. I was contemplating trying to run the hybrids
over, as unlikely as that was to work considering just how fast they
were, and then I saw Mallory. She hadn't gone over to try and get
Alec out of the line of fire, but then again given how crippled Agony
had left her it was unlikely she could have done anything to save
him.

Instead
she continued limping toward the SUV's with the same determined gait
that she'd used so far. She was less than twenty feet away from the
enforcers when she raised her handgun and sighted in on the first
hybrid.

They
really weren't that far away in the grand scheme of things, but I
couldn't imagine a world where
I
could have hit someone from so far away. Luckily Mallory wasn't me;
her first shot was perfectly placed in the chest of her target and
the next one followed up a split second later.

The
sound of the handgun was nothing more than muted pops in comparison
to the crack of the hypervelocity rounds from the rifle. As another
shot rang out from the sniper I absently wondered how I'd ever
thought that first shot had come from Mallory. This time the sniper
hit Paul. I didn't see where the shot landed, but Paul went down with
a suddenness that initially made me think that he'd just tripped.

Mallory
was still working her way through the enforcers. The third one had
pulled himself to his knees by the time that she started in on him
and it took three shots to put him down. Vik was past the initial
shock of being shot at for the first time and he blurred into motion.
I shouldn't have been able to follow him—maybe I simply
visualized what I thought was happening, since my mind wasn't capable
of following his actual motions—but it looked like he raked his
claws across the throat of one enemy and then put his fist into the
chest of a second enforcer.

I
felt a tiny thrill of hope that we might be able to salvage the
situation and then the sniper fired again and Vik rocked backwards as
his shoulder turned into a mess of red. Mallory swapped magazines and
resumed firing, scoring a shot on the last enforcer as he lunged
toward her.

Mallory
was as good as dead. In her human form she was faster than I was, but
even if she hadn't been crippled she still wouldn't have been a match
for a hybrid.

I
had a fraction of a second to begin mourning her and then Vik was
there. His left arm wasn't working, but that didn't stop him from
tackling the other hybrid like an NFL lineman. The two of them hadn't
even come down from their first bounce before Mallory put another
bullet into the enforcer's head.

It
was the kind of risky shot that meant she and Vik were going to have
words later, but I didn't have time for worrying about that. After
what felt like forever, I was finally pulling up next to Alec and
Paul.

I
angled the RV so that the right side was facing the sniper's
position, and then bailed out of the driver's seat into the tiny
sliver of ground that was hidden from the sniper's view. I wasn't
under any illusion that the RV was actually going to stop a bullet;
the best I could hope for was that he wouldn't hit anybody if he
couldn't see us.

A
second later another shot rang out, punching a hole in the aluminum
skin of the RV that was bigger than both of my fists put together. I
ducked despite knowing that it wasn't going to make any kind of
difference. If the next shot had my name on it then nothing I did was
going to change the outcome.

Somehow
Mallory had made it over to my side. I looked at Paul and my mind
blanked out. I'd registered that Paul had gone back to human form,
but that was all my mind was willing to let me see. It wasn't the
first time I'd seen a dead person, but it was the first time I'd seen
someone killed by a high-powered rifle round.

"Get
him off of Alec!"

Mallory's
voice was loud in my ear. I started to comply, but she grabbed onto
my arm. "Not you, him."

Vik
was standing in front of me as if by magic. He'd shifted back to
human form and his arm still hung limply at his side, but he was
moving, which put him in better shape than Alec or Paul.

Another
bullet tore through the side of the RV and then a scream cut through
the echo of the most recent shot. After all of the shooting I
shouldn't have been able to hear anything, but somehow my ears were
still working well enough that I was able to register the fact that
the scream had ended with an abruptness that wasn't natural.

A
second later Donovan's voice drifted down to us. "The shooter
has been neutralized. Get Master Alec inside before the next group of
enforcers arrives."

Adriana Paige
Interstate 15
Southern Idaho

We didn't make it away before the next two carloads of our people
arrived, Coun'hij enforcers in hot pursuit. Actually, we didn't even
come close. Our people were still running back to the RV after having
scattered six ways from Sunday.

I
thought we were all dead. Realistically we should have been. We had a
slight edge in numbers, but not enough of an edge to make up for the
fact that we would be pitting wolves up against hybrids. We were
obviously in a state of disarray when the enforcers arrived, so they
didn't seem to be in much of a hurry, at least not until the first of
Donovan's shots slammed into the big hybrid at the center of their
formation.

Up
until that moment I hadn't even realized that Donovan even knew how
to use a firearm, let alone that he was a crack shot capable of
bringing down moving targets from a couple hundred yards away with an
unfamiliar weapon.

I
watched in awe as Donovan dropped three of the new enforcers in the
couple of seconds between when the new arrivals stepped out of their
vehicles and when both sides crashed into each other in a whirling
frenzy of fangs and claws.

I'd
been standing next to the driver's seat of the RV, paralyzed by a
combination of shock and fear as our remaining wolves and hybrids
tore into the last three enforcers, but Mallory's yell got me moving
again.

"Where
is Donovan? He's the best doctor the pack's ever had, but if he
doesn't get here soon even he isn't going to be able to save Alec!"

I
threw open the door and hung out of the RV, heedless of the fact that
I was probably making our vehicle a priority target.

"Donovan,
we need you down here right now!"

A
second later something big knocked me completely away from the RV. My
world rotated a couple of times as I went sailing through the air,
and only the fact that I landed looking back towards the fight
allowed me to piece together what had happened.

One
of the Coun'hij hybrids had managed to break away from the fight and
charge the RV. Vik had knocked me out of the way and then shifted
forms as he leapt out of the RV and intercepted the enforcer.

It
wasn't a fair fight, not with Vik unable to use one of his arms, but
a pair of wolves had been nipping at the heels of the enforcer and
once he and Vik finished skipping across the concrete they made short
work of the outnumbered hybrid.

Donovan
appeared at my side, as if by magic, and helped me to my feet. I
turned to thank him and almost tripped over my own feet as I
registered his appearance. He was wearing a standard, pack-issue
ha'bit which meant that for the first time I was able to see the wiry
musculature that his butler's uniform had always concealed before
now.

Donovan
wasn't going to be featured on any swimsuit calendars in the near
future—he was still obviously an old man—but there was a
solidness to him that I'd never noticed before. He looked like a
sixty-year-old, but he looked like a sixty-year-old who worked out.

All
by itself that would have been enough to give me pause, but it was
the blood smeared across his face that really threw me for a loop.
The sight of Donovan with his hair in disarray and a massive rifle in
his left hand was nothing in comparison to visible proof that he'd
just killed the sniper using nothing more than his fangs.

I
tried not to be obvious about my shock, but Donovan noticed my
lingering gaze and bowed his head slightly in apology.

"I
profoundly regret my appearance, Miss Paige, but I'm afraid there
simply isn't time for me to do anything about it. Please, we must
hurry back into the RV if I'm going to be able to save Master Alec."