Bound (Dark Reflections Volume 1) (16 page)

Instead of shifting I simply rolled back onto my belly and then moved back over to her so that I could rest my chin on her shoulders. A little way away but still perfectly visible as ghostly figures of golden-white light to my wolf eyes, I could see that James and Jessica had assumed a similar position as James tried to reassure Jess, who was the worst fighter in our group. James and Jess weren't any more of an item than Jasmin and I were, and although James hadn't ever really talked about their relationship, I got the feeling that they also felt like there was something missing there—that they should be with someone else, but they just didn't know who.

Juan was still up at the crest of the hill, positioned so that he could watch the compound, while Alison was between him and us, pacing back and forth in an effort either to bleed off nervous energy or keep from cooling down.

I watched the way the silver of the moonlight played with the light shining out from just underneath her skin. It was actually a much better visual feast than anything the stars could have hoped to provide. She moved with a sure confidence that was incredibly appealing and I found myself wondering if she could be the one who would be able to fill in the hole in my chest. I'd never really considered her in that way before, but there was a core of strength to her now that hadn't ever been visible before. It was like the harsh sand of near-constant combat had worn away the non-essentials to her personality that she'd always hidden behind back in Sanctuary.

Jasmin had a similar iron center, but for all that it was more readily visible than Alison's had been, hers was relatively untested. Alison's wolf form was undeniably beautiful and her primary form was likewise enchanting. She'd become a wiry masterpiece and even the single lock of red hair looked good on her. I inhaled to take in a bigger than normal lungful of her scent, which caused her to turn and look at me.

Her glare was unmistakable and made me smile inside. She was all angles and fury on the outside, but I got the feeling that she would be worth the effort it would take to get her to open up, only…she wasn't the one for me. I could appreciate her beauty and spunk, but she still didn't move me the way that the blonde from my dreams did.

My musings were interrupted a second later as Juan slipped down from the top of the hill and nudged all of us onto our feet. Apparently he'd seen something to make him think that the rest of the attack force was in position.

I followed Juan up over the top of the hill and then I saw them, more than two dozen glowing figures working their way towards the compound, using every scrap of glowing vegetation possible to mask their presence as they approached.

Juan and I started down the hill, moving quietly, but not making any special effort to remain hidden. The other four stayed hidden and unmoving just out of sight exactly in accordance with Juan's plan. It took the cats' sentries exactly thirty seconds to spot us and raise an alarm. The yelling and sudden explosion of movement down in the compound worked exactly as planned and Brandon's main combat teams killed their first two cats in the confusion before anyone else down there realized that they shouldn't have been focusing all of their attention on Juan and me.

I heard James and the others start down the hill at the same time that Juan and I launched into full sprints. The hope was that our numbers would cause the cats to pause for a critical few seconds as they tried to establish where the real attack was coming from.

We were running fast enough that it only took us a couple of heartbeats to drop down to where we couldn't see over the wall anymore, but it looked like the plan was working. I saw powerfully glowing figures streaming out of various buildings inside the compound and forming up in a loose group that was mostly facing our direction. We were still a hundred yards from the outer wall when a chorus of howls and growls filled the night.

I could hear the crash of bodies and someone from our side yelling commands as our teams inside the compound engaged the cats. Juan slowed to a stop, allowing James and the others to catch up to us as we waited to see if any cats would try to come over the wall. The plan called for one of the teams inside to secure the rear exit first thing, but although the wall was more than twelve feet high, it was mostly there to keep out local predators because it couldn't stop a full-grown southern shape shifter.

Under other circumstances I would have said that it would be impossible for a mere three hybrids with a matching number of wolves to bottle up all of the cats who would be looking to run away once they realized that they were outnumbered and outclassed, but Juan had assured me that only the most desperate would try to go over the wall. Doing that would take them extra precious seconds, during which time they'd be vulnerable to attack from our hybrids.

I'd bought into his explanation so completely that for a split second I refused to believe my eyes when I saw nearly a dozen cats come running towards us. I blinked a couple of times and then realized that they'd exited through the door, which apparently hadn't been sealed off like the plan had said it would be.

Juan shifted into the hulking shape of his hybrid in a sun-bright flare of power and I followed suit without thinking about the change. As hybrids we once again had vocal cords that were roughly analogous to those of a human and I heard James swear as he completed his transformation.

"What's the plan now, oh fearless leader?"

"Don't worry too much about trying to contain them, that's an impossibility given the fact that they now outnumber us. Just try to keep yourselves in one piece and we'll deal with the fallout of so many having escaped afterwards if any of us survive."

Juan's words were calm and unhurried, but I knew we were in serious trouble. The mass of cats racing towards us was shifting around too much for me to tell whether any of them were glowing with the extra light you'd expect from one of the Ancients, but even if the Ancients were both still inside of the compound we were outnumbered and while hybrids tended to outmatch the younger jaguars, even the younger jaguars tended to be more deadly than wolves.

James, Juan and I formed a spearhead with the girls trailing along behind, only just before we clashed with the cats Juan did something completely unexpected. Between one step and the next Juan reached down and picked up a long branch that was the better part of ten feet long and as big around as my leg when I was in human form. Before any of the cats could adjust to the fact that they were facing someone armed with more than just the normal claws, fangs and talons of a hybrid, Juan impaled one of them with the branch and then swept the branch, and the cat he'd stabbed, through the rest of the group springing at us.

It was a masterstroke and it gave us a chance, however slim, of surviving the next few minutes. A cat hurled himself at me, but Juan had obviously rattled him because his timing was off and he wasn't as fast as he should have been. I plucked him out of the air with my right hand, and ignored the way that his claws ripped into my arm. He writhed around with a strength and violence that I wasn't expecting and for a second I almost lost my grip on him. Wolves were capable of flailing about in an attempt to break free, but his claws gave him leverage that exceeded anything I'd ever been up against before.

The claws on my right hand started to lose their grip on him, but I'd held him relatively immobile for just long enough and my left hand joined my right, sinking claws into his flesh and ending his life with a couple of carefully-aimed slashes.

I'd taken too long to kill my opponent. Juan was streaming blood down his right side, but he'd killed another cat and was holding a third one at arm's length already. The disarray triggered by Juan's opening attack had evaporated and it seemed like a solid wall of cats was coming towards us now.

A particularly large cat looked like he was going to attack Juan, but at the last second he executed a lightning-fast change in direction and threw himself at me instead. I was focused on a different cat who was obviously lining up to attack James, so I was out of position. I knew that there wasn't any way I was going to manage to get my hands between me and my attacker, so I dodged left and winced slightly as his claws tore through the top of my right shoulder.

If I'd been a hair slower he would have had a shot at my neck and I probably would have been dead, but there wasn't time to dwell on that. My evasion had brought me around to where I could see James, who had a jaguar fastened to his front tearing at his stomach and chest while he used one hand to hold its fangs away from his neck and the other to try to get to something vital before it bled him out.

It wasn't a good position for James to be in, but it was a lot less concerning than the two cats who had circled around behind him so that they could attack from the one direction hybrids were least equipped to defend.

I yelled, but I already knew that he wouldn't be able to respond in time, not with the first cat savaging him like it was and a fourth cat approaching attack range from the front as well. The cat who had gone sailing past me a split second before was probably angling for a killing grip on my back as well, but I threw myself towards James anyway.

The cats were too focused on their target and the distance between us was blessedly short, so I managed to catch both jaguars by surprise. The bigger cat had already left the ground and was arrowing towards James, but I snatched him out of the air with both hands settling for a bad hold on him rather than no hold at all.

The smaller cat spun around as I grabbed her partner, but I just sank the talons on my right foot into her side just behind her shoulder and hoped that I'd get lucky and hit her heart. Stabbing the female threw off my stride, which was probably the only thing that saved me. A split second after my talons skewered the smallest cat I got hit by a hammer blow of force from behind that sent me sprawling.

I tried to lead with the cat in my claws, driving him into the ground and using him to cushion my landing. I let my fall convert into a roll, hoping to crush the cat that was furiously clawing at my back. I misjudged my momentum and rolled all the way back onto my feet only to feel another impact as someone else crashed into me.

I caught bits and pieces of the fight going on around me as I went flying head over heels yet again. James was bleeding from dozens of wounds large and small and he'd dropped to one knee, but he had his one remaining opponent immobilized and looked to be only seconds away from ending that portion of the fight.

As I landed on my side something grabbed hold of my left hand, tearing it free of the cat it had been buried in and rolling me over onto my stomach. It was a dangerous position to be in because it left my back exposed and vulnerable, but someone else had hold of my right leg and they were stretching me out in an effort to keep me from being able to free myself.

I looked to the side and saw that the small female who had been focused on James had been knocked free of my talons and was circling, looking for an opportunity to grab hold of another of my appendages so that she could help immobilize me while the big cat on my back finished me off.

I realized that this was the end, that I only had a few seconds left, but rather than just giving up I unleashed the full measure of my beast's power and pulled with every ounce of force my massive hybrid body could generate.

The jaguar in my right hand convulsed once before I let him drop away, and then I focused all of my efforts on pulling my arms and legs in close enough that I'd at least be able to meet death on my feet. The cats pulled with everything they had, but I felt my left hand and right leg slowly inching back underneath me. I looked to the side to see how long I had before the female latched onto my right hand, and saw a bright blur crash into her. Jasmin had hold of the back of her neck and she planted and started whipping the cat back and forth with everything she had.

Juan suddenly appeared and tore away the cat who had been tearing at my right leg. I surged to my feet, using my right hand to help lift the cat dangling from my arm up to where my fangs could latch onto its neck. A second later there was another dead jaguar at my feet and only then did I realize that there wasn't anything on my back. I turned around just in time to see Alison finish off the huge cat who had come within inches of killing me.

I opened my mouth to thank her for saving my life, but my knees buckled and blackness claimed me before I could get a single word out.

Alec Graves
Rest Easy Hotel
Rio Rico, Arizona

Apparently I'd been injured even worse than I'd realized when I'd passed out at the compound. Judging by how relieved Jasmin had looked yesterday when I'd finally opened my eyes back at the hotel, it had very much been touch and go as to whether or not I was going to make it.

Even with my newly-accelerated healing abilities I'd still been down for nearly forty-eight hours before I finally rolled out of bed without assistance. I was feeling pretty good now—twenty-four hours later—but our medic, a tiny woman named Francesca, seemed almost as rattled by how close I'd come to death as Jasmin had been. I'd been ordered not to participate in any kind of combat operations for at least another two days.

I was pretty sure that she'd underestimated my recuperative abilities by a significant margin, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I needed every edge I could get down here on the border and if she was underestimating me then everyone else would be too. Besides, she had a point in that replacing the amount of blood that I'd apparently lost didn't happen overnight, even for one of the moonborn. The last thing I wanted right now was to end up in another fight for my life only to find out that I was a half-step slower and weaker than normal.

I'd gone to the hotel's outdoor pool yesterday out of desperation. I'd spent too much time lying around in my bed and I'd needed an activity that would get me outside but also avoid running me into the ground in case I wasn't fully recovered.

I'd expected to get some sun and take a long nap, and gotten something completely unexpected instead. I was headed to the pool even earlier today than yesterday, partially because I was feeling better than I had yesterday, but also because I was eager to see if the steady trickle of people who had come to visit me would repeat itself.