Bound (Dark Reflections Volume 1) (15 page)

"If it is so hard to find the cats in the first place, how did we manage to nearly exterminate the cats back during the time of the monarchy?"

"It was a different world back then. There weren't any cars, so people didn't move around like they do now. It meant that your neighbors knew you, it meant that even if a town didn't believe in shape shifters, which most did back then, they still knew when there was something different about a family. From a defensive standpoint, the few travelers to come north were always suspected until we'd observed them during a full moon and confirmed that they didn't have to fight the need to change forms. From the offensive side of things, we just went from village to village and the villagers pretty much identified the jaguars for us."

I could feel my mind chewing on the problem he'd just presented me, but before I could even begin to find a solution Alison broke into the conversation.

"This is all fascinating and I'm glad that you think we'll be able to play nice with each other, but it doesn't change the fact that Alec and his friends have a massive target painted on their backs. How exactly are you planning on dealing with that little problem?"

Juan shrugged. "If the game were easy and safe then everyone would play, Alison. The truth is that I don't have a solution, at least not yet. The first step will be for Alec to evidence a change of heart where Brandon and Vincent are concerned. If you can start pulling as part of the team, then they'll be less likely to try anything. If they did do something like that they would risk losing the independents like me."

"Do you think that Vincent is smart enough to realize that?"

Alison was tapping her lips with a forefinger as she thought about my question even though it had mostly been directed at Juan.

"I think so. If he's not, then Brandon is and Brandon will certainly make the effort required to explain it to Vincent. Slightly more than a third of the wolves and hybrids here are either dispossessed or from small, unaligned packs. If they start feeling like they can't trust Brandon to keep Vincent from playing favorites that might get someone killed, then they'll leave and our ability to go in against the larger groups that the tipster tends to identify for us would be seriously compromised."

I shook my head. "It's not that I'm unwilling. My biggest beef with Brandon and Vincent has always been the way that they bully everyone beyond the requirements even of establishing their dominance. If they play nice with people here because they need them, then that takes away most of the reason, on my side at least, for friction between us. That all works, but I don't think that they are going to buy it if I suddenly become all chummy with them for no reason."

Juan's smile wasn't the least bit reassuring. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. Like Alison said, you've practically got an expiration date printed on your forehead now that you're down here. I suspect that you'll have an extremely good reason to change your behavior towards Brandon and Vincent in very short order."

Alec Graves
Suarez Compound
Northern Mexico

Once we got the tricky parts of our first briefing out of the way, prepping for the mission went by pretty quickly. Juan filled us in on what we needed to know about the operation and then we were bundled into a helicopter.

Most of the attack force was traveling via the ubiquitous black SUVs that seemed to be the mainstay of transportation for the wolves deployed on the border, but our team had been tasked with plugging the backdoor out of the compound and Brandon apparently felt like our chances of sneaking around from the front without being seen weren't very good.

It meant that we left quite a while after everyone else, which was nice, but it also meant that we were more or less cut off from support. If the rest of the teams ran late for any reason and the cats realized we were hanging out back behind their stronghold then we were going to be in for a very long running fight as we tried to get away without all dying.

The roar of the rotors precluded any kind of casual conversation on the flight out, and the things that I wanted to discuss wouldn't have been appropriate for the pilot to listen in on, so I passed the time while we were in the air alone with my thoughts. It was tempting to stew over Juan's revelations, to try to make plans for the future. I needed to have a very blunt conversation with my mother and possibly Donovan as well, but I knew it would be a mistake to think about that right now.

Instead of focusing on the things that I couldn't address, I instead spent the time calming my beast and preparing myself mentally for combat. Mallory had been wrong about what had triggered me gaining more power, but she'd been right about the difference between what I'd faced back in Sanctuary and the world that I was entering now.

Death had been a possibility anytime I'd faced down a challenger, but if it had happened then it would have been an accident, an oversight that happened despite all of Kaleb's efforts to make sure that I lived long enough to realize my potential. The jaguars we were about to go up against would do everything they could to kill me, and unlike the fight with the vampires, I couldn't even count on the fact that everyone on my own side would be trying to keep me alive.

After what seemed like forever, the pilot came back onto the radio to announce that we were within two minutes of our drop point. Juan responded without hesitation.

"Very good. Slow and come down to within twenty to thirty feet of the ground and we'll dismount."

I could hear the alarm in the pilot's voice as he responded to Juan's order. "Hold on, nobody said anything about that. I'm not accepting any kind of liability when you guys break your legs trying to pretend like you're Navy Seals or something."

"You put a large amount of money on deposit with our boss when you accepted this job. If you don't do exactly as I just told you to, you're going to forfeit the entire sum. We're not going to injure ourselves. Trust me, we've trained for exactly this kind of thing."

The pilot looked at Juan and I could tell that he wasn't going to agree, but Juan chose that moment to send a wave of power at the other man that left him shaking and white. I'd considered adding my own pulse of energy into the mix, but was glad that I didn't after I saw the effect that Juan's demonstration had on the poor man.

"Do exactly as I said, and if you can make it look like you're not hovering over the spot to drop people off, that would be even better. We'll need to drop in two waves."

Juan got a shaky nod in response and then the pilot gestured at a low hill. "Right there. The first set can drop out of the left side of the helicopter and then the other half of you can jump from the right side a second or so later."

Juan clapped him on the shoulder, which triggered a bit of a start in the other man, but the helicopter remained rock steady. The pilot really was as good as we'd been told.

James and Alison opened up the back doors on their respective sides and then Juan was climbing out onto the runners. James shed his helmet and then gave me a look that dared me to go out there next. I hadn't been particularly excited about this part of the operation, but part of being a dominant was leading from the front, so I gave him an unconcerned smile and followed Juan outside.

The buffeting of the air driven downwards by the blades was intense even this close into the body of the aircraft. I hunkered down as far as I could to avoid the danger zone above me where the rotors were whirling like razor-edged banshees. As James joined us on the runner Juan reached down to the running light mounted on our side of the helicopter and ripped loose the wire powering it. As the light died I looked through the open doors and saw Alison kill the light on her side as well.

The pilot gave us a nasty look, but the helicopter didn't waver in its approach. Five seconds later our side of the helicopter dipped towards the ground and the pilot hit the glass with his fist to signal us. It was a nice touch, but we'd already let go, flinging ourselves off into thin air.

As my feet lost contact with the runner, I reached out to my beast and shattered the chains I'd carefully bound it with. My transformation ripped through me with even greater force than normal. When I hit the ground a second or so later I didn't hit with the fragile body that I'd been wearing inside of the helicopter and my hybrid body absorbed the force of the impact without even needing to roll to bleed off momentum.

The hardest part of the whole operation turned out to be forcing my beast back down and shifting back to a human so that I could catch Jasmin as she threw herself out of the helicopter in my direction.

Her wolf body wasn't any more suited to a thirty-foot-plus drop than her human body, so she retained her human form and just prayed that I'd make the shift back in time to break her fall without impaling her with a set of semi-retractable claws.

Jasmin's aim was perfect, I hardly had to move at all to get under her. Jasmin was skinny, even for a girl, but after gravity had a chance to accelerate her for slightly more than a second she still hit me with an incredible amount of force. I got my arms underneath her, but the goal was never actually to stop her from hitting the ground. Instead of decelerating her instantly, I simply started slowing her down several feet before the ground would have done it.

We managed to bleed off most of the energy from her fall so that when she did hit the ground a simple roll allowed her to avoid injury. Jasmin let her roll bring her back up to her feet and then started shedding her clothes.

I looked away for a second to confirm that Jessica and Alison had made the drop safely and then looked back to see Jasmin slip out of her jeans so that she was dressed only in the stretchy ha'bit that preserved at least a degree of modesty.

"What do you want us to do with these?"

Jasmin managed to keep it nothing more than a simple question despite the fact that I knew Alison had to be rubbing her the wrong way. Jess was probably happy to let Alison be dominant to her, but Jasmin's nature wouldn't let her and Alison make it much beyond this current mission without settling the question of who was most dangerous.

Juan shrugged. "Stick them under a rock somewhere. If we carry the day then we'll come back for them. If not, well, welcome to the war, the bad guys will have your scent assuming we survive the rout."

A target painted on our backs indeed. All six of us transformed, one after another in a cool wash of power, and then we set off on four legs. The helicopter had dropped us more than a mile away from the compound, but it would only take us a few minutes to cover the distance between here and there. The hardest part would be avoiding being seen once we got to the top of the hill between us and the compound.

We hadn't discussed a specific formation for the trip between the drop site and the compound, but we fell into a loose double chevron without any scuffles. Alison took point as befitted the wolf with the most time in the trenches, while Jasmin and Jess took the wings. Juan was at the center of the formation with James and I flanking him closely.

Wolves were always able to cover ground faster than hybrids, which dictated our current choice of forms, but no hybrid was completely comfortable fighting as a wolf because we spent most of our time as hybrids.

Combat as a hybrid was all about bleeding your opponent out until you found an opening that would allow you to clinch and end the fight. Combat as a wolf was a completely different animal. Wolves didn't get a chance to bleed an opponent out, and disengaging from a fight usually got you killed. Jasmin was such a good fighter precisely because she didn't second-guess an opening when she saw it. She went for it with every ounce of strength and speed her body possessed and relied on her ability to kill her opponent once her jaws were locked around their throat.

Putting the girls on the outside of the group would mean that they should trip whatever ambushes might be out there. It had a brutal, sacrificial feel to it, but they were the ones most likely to be able to avoid an attack in this form and positioning the hybrids in the center of the formation meant that we'd be ideally placed to change forms and then come to their aid within seconds of any attack.

Despite the dark tone of my thoughts, we crossed the dry desolation along our route without any problems greater than needing to dodge the occasional creosote bush or cactus. Only a few minutes after we started out we arrived at the hill that had, up until that point, hidden us from the compound. Juan dropped onto his belly and scooted just far enough to look out over the compound. I followed him, and caught a glimpse of two sentries before Juan signaled me back with a low growl.

The inability to communicate complex thoughts was actually one of the biggest drawbacks to this shape, but Juan had been very clear on our orders for this part of the operation back before we'd even left the coffee shop. We were to hold position until Brandon and the others attacked, and then we would start down the mountain, hopefully making enough noise to stop every cat in the compound from bolting straight towards us.

We'd just missed the new moon, so there was a sliver of moonlight dancing across the arid landscape as we waited. I found a flat rock with a large cactus on one side of it and rolled onto my back so that I could look up at the stars.

A couple of seconds later Jasmin padded over and dropped down next to me. We didn't need to talk for me to know that she was worried about the fight that was coming up. Jasmin put on a good show, but in a lot of ways she challenged other wolves simply because she was worried what would happen if she didn't keep clawing her way up the dominance food chain.

We hadn't had a good chance to just sit down and talk since St. Louis, but I knew that the last fight had been hard on her mentally. Having people burst into flame only feet away from you was a pretty good object lesson in all of the ways that things could go wrong.

I almost shifted back to my human shape so that I could wrap a comforting arm around Jasmin, but I'd already shifted three times tonight and I'd have to shift at least two more times before all was said and done. It was foolish to risk a set of cramps that might strike during the middle of the fight, but I was tempted. The cramps usually struck once we were back in our primary form, but occasionally they occurred when we were wolves or hybrids with predictably catastrophic results if it happened during the middle of a fight.