Bound (Dark Reflections Volume 1) (18 page)

"Jasmin, Jess, could you please work your magic?"

Both girls reached over to the portable music players next to them and turned them up. Alison seemed to be dead to the world, but she'd turned her player up before grabbing her iPod and sticking her earbuds in.

"This is a delicate matter, but I just wanted to stop by and let you know that I don't approve of how that last operation went down. I don't have any proof that it was intentional, but despite being a bunch of colossal jerks, Vincent's guys are actually quite good in sticky situations. I've never seen them miss the timing on an op that badly."

I nodded carefully. "My history with Vincent isn't a secret, at least not among the Sanctuary pack. I would be lying if I said that I didn't think about the possibility that he was trying to send me a message."

"That's the thing; Brandon is supposed to be above that. A good third of the people down here don't owe any kind of allegiance to him or Kaleb either one. We came here because we believe in the cause. We want to see the cats pushed back, and Brandon's ability combined with the backing of the Sanctuary pack means that this is our best chance to make a difference without running afoul of the Coun'hij."

I nodded. It made sense. Jaclyn, the leader of the Tucson pack, actually had an ability that let her put individual cats down even faster than Brandon, but her ability didn't work as well against the more powerful cats. She still could have served as the focal point for another coordinated offensive against the southerners but for the fact that she was openly disparaging of the Coun'hij. She wasn't saying anything that a lot of other people weren't thinking, but they weren't saying it out loud and she was, which meant that in her own way she had an even bigger target painted on her back than I had on mine.

Throwing your lot in with Jaclyn would be a really quick way to put yourself into a position where you might end up fighting Puppeteer instead of the cats that you'd signed on to fight.

Abram continued on, oblivious to the thoughts running through my head. "The thing is that this only works as long as we independents know that we're going to be treated at least as well as you guys from Sanctuary, and that you guys from Sanctuary are being treated okay."

"I can understand that. Nobody wants to be sent on suicide missions or used as cannon fodder."

"Right, and the stakes are even higher. There are hundreds of shape shifters north of here who could come help and make a huge difference in this fight, but they don't because they're scared. A bunch of us were hoping that putting up a big win like this last operation would help pull some of those able bodies down here to help, but it actually looks like it had the opposite effect."

This was new. Neither of the others from yesterday had mentioned this particular tidbit.

"What do you mean?"

"People aren't stupid, Alec. All of North America pretty much knows that you and Brandon have bad blood between you. When you get critically injured in the first operation you're on, despite being put in a secondary spot where you shouldn't have been in all that much danger, it's naturally going to make people worried that if they come down here they might get caught in the crossfire."

"I see your point, but I'm not sure what you're proposing."

"Eat a little crow. It seems like you've already started doing that, but keep it up. This war is too important to risk having everything blow up in our faces because Vincent is too stupid to keep the dominance games back here where they belong rather than out there in the field."

I let my face harden. "That's asking a lot. Even assuming I can bring myself not to get into things with Vincent, what's to say that he won't just then use that as an excuse to cause me even more grief?"

Abram shrugged. "You're not stupid either. You know as well as I do that the deck is stacked against you. You can either go down in a blaze of glory and screw this entire war up, or you can swallow your pride a little and hopefully live long enough to be able to go back home. If you choose the second option, then I'd be willing to let Brandon know just how thin the ice he's standing on is getting. If you get hurt under any kind of suspicious circumstances, then he could see a third of his force walk out on him with no further warning."

"What if there was another option? One that gave you a chance to fight the cats, one that gave you a hope of winning rather than just an endless round of bloodletting, one that still kept you out of trouble with the Coun'hij?"

"Unless you've developed magic powers that I haven't heard about then there isn't any other option, kid."

"You're right, there isn't any other option, right now, but what if there was?"

Abram took a deep breath. "If there was another option then you could come talk to me and I'd hear you out. If you were too crazy then it wouldn't buy you anything, but I'd at least listen."

"Thanks, Abram. That means a lot. I'll do my best not to make any more waves with Brandon or Vincent, and I'd appreciate anything you could do to help make sure that there aren't any additional…accidents while we're out on the field."

Abram gave me a tight nod and then stood and left. Jasmin watched him go and then looked over at me. "You're playing a dangerous game, Alec."

"I know, but I don't feel like I have much of a choice. Maybe you're right, maybe I can't save everyone, but if we don't do something then everything is going to keep getting worse and worse."

"Have you ever considered the possibility that maybe there isn't anything that can be done to fix the world? There are just too many people trying to ruin it."

"If I don't try, then I'm no better than the ones causing all of the problems."

I got a shrug in response, but any further response I might have offered up was preempted by Juan's arrival.

"I'm glad to see that the girls showed up to give you cover like I asked them to."

"Yes, thank you. It made my most recent conversation a little more straightforward than the first two."

"I thought it might."

I waited to see if Juan was going to pry, but he seemed happy to leave me with my secrets. It was possible that he just expected that he'd be able to pump Alison for information later, but I didn't think so. He seemed genuinely to only care about his war against the cats. He'd sent the girls to act as a screen just because I was a part of his team and he wanted to keep his team out of trouble, but he was happy to otherwise leave me to my scheming.

After a few seconds of silence Juan looked over at me again and sighed. "I've been doing some more poking around. It was definitely Vincent who was responsible for the back door."

"Yeah, I just had someone else confirm that for me as well today. That definitely means that he was out to get me."

Juan nodded. "Yeah, but I'll go you one better. Brandon doesn't always tell even the team leaders who is going to cover which role. I'm not sure why, it's one of his worst failings as a leader, but I think it's because he doesn't completely trust us. I finally ferreted out who originally had the back door assignment and it wasn't Vincent. The team leader who originally was supposed to cover the exit said that Vincent showed up partway through Brandon's briefing and demanded that the roles be swapped."

I resisted the urge to rub my temples. "So it was all Vincent's idea then, which means that Brandon may not have it in for me as bad as I thought."

"Yeah, but that's a big maybe. It could have been that Brandon just didn't see the opportunity to put us in the crosshairs until after Vincent pointed it out to him, or it could even mean that Brandon's playing a much longer, much more devious game than we're giving him credit for. It's always possible that he saw a way to put us in danger, but that he orchestrated everything so that it would look like Vincent had been behind it."

"I really hate this kind of double-and triple-think."

"Yeah, me too, but unfortunately that's the way the world works in the big leagues."

Alec Graves
Rest Easy Hotel
Rio Rico, Arizona

James was back on his feet, but he was obviously not at one hundred percent. He was a little paler than normal and he moved with the slow care of someone who had discovered that it hurt if they moved too fast and pulled at still-healing wounds.

His wounds actually looked pretty good now, but obviously his injuries had taken a mental toll on him. He didn't look very happy to have to sit and wait with everyone else for Brandon to show up so that the briefing could start.

Actually, he wasn't the only one who looked unhappy. There was a different feeling to the room than there'd been at the last briefing and I was pretty sure that it had a lot to do with the fact that everyone here knew that Brandon had let Vincent take a shot at us. It was the kind of thing that sent a little thrill of satisfaction through me, but I sternly reminded myself not to let my success so far go to my head. It was always possible if I got to be enough of a problem that Brandon might just decide to have me eliminated despite the risks.

I took a deep breath and then pushed all of that to one side and let myself think about the last couple of days. I'd had a surprising amount of fun at the pool. It had been nice to just kick back and do nothing for hours at a time. Jasmin, Jess and I had laughed and joked until my face had hurt from smiling so much. Alison had even thawed out a little there by the end, which had been an added reward.

Lazy summer days by the pool. Given the amount of money behind the Graves name some people might have expected that I'd done little more than sit around like that so far in my life, but the truth was that Kaleb had kept me pretty busy almost as far back as I could remember. I'd always had at least a little time to do with as I'd wanted, but although there was a small pool back home, pack life had never really lent itself to lounging around at a pool so I'd always found other ways to spend my limited free time.

I wouldn't have expected being down here on the border to change any of that, but it had. Knowing that we could be sent into battle with only a few hours' notice had lent our downtime an odd kind of vividness that I'd never experienced previously.

It was probably true that I'd get restless if hours spent at the pool was the sole sum of my existence, but resting in the sun with three beautiful women close at hand, even if I couldn't quite see myself with any of them, had been the perfect way to spend the last few days.

James had come out to join us for a couple of hours yesterday and Juan had even swung by and spent an hour or so with us. It hadn't been planned, at least not that I'd been able to tell, and I hadn't expected such a short time together to make any kind of significant difference to our cohesion as a group, but it had. Instead of being spread out with Juan in one spot, Alison in another and the rest of us in a third, all six of us had chosen to stand together while we waited for the briefing to start.

My musings were interrupted by Brandon's arrival. He strode into the room like he owned it; he didn't seem to notice the new tension that was present in the room.

"Thank you all for coming today. I'd planned on simply briefing you all on the latest target that the Brain Box has identified for us, but I'm afraid that something else has come up."

Brandon pulled his remote out of a pocket and turned off the lights at the same time that he brought the projector online.

"Just this morning we got word of four deaths in a little town east of here called Hereford. The police and town officials are busy suppressing any mention of the murders because all four people were 'savaged by some kind of large, clawed beast.' The Brain Box has been trying for the last several hours to obtain photos of the wounds in question, but so far they've been spectacularly unsuccessful. Some of the hacks that they've been using lately to compromise target IT systems have been identified by the greater security community and new hotfixes are slowly making their way out to state and local government computer systems. We could be flying blind for several weeks until our intelligence assets manage to find new ways into the systems that we need access to."

Brandon let that tidbit of news sink in for a moment and then clicked a button which caused the map of Arizona to appear on the screen.

"As you can see, Hereford is very much inside the territory claimed by the Tucson pack and ideally we'd just leave the investigation to them, but as is their normal practice lately they aren't returning any of my calls."

It was a weak attempt at a joke, even from Brandon and not just because it highlighted the fundamental rift between the Coun'hij and most of the rest of the wolves in North America.

"It's traditional to leave the policing of their borders to each individual pack, but given that this particular incident has the potential to cause our existence to become disseminated to the general public, I've been asked to provide a team to help deal with things in Hereford."

There was a low rumble, not discontent exactly, but at the very least surprise. The Coun'hij had dedicated troubleshooters who dealt with any kind of threat that could cause our secret to be pushed out into the open. It was unheard of for the Coun'hij to require extra help just to deal with a few deaths like this. Not only that, it was the kind of assignment that had the potential to blow up in a person's face.

If you did a good job and destroyed any and all evidence that would cause people to keep asking questions, then at best you might get a pat on the back. If you screwed things up and missed some critical piece of information then you could pretty much count on your life going to crap.

Brandon seemed to realize that his presentation wasn't very convincing. "I should clarify. The Coun'hij will be sending in one of their specially-trained troubleshooters to clean up the evidence, they just need one of our teams to go provide some support so that their guy doesn't get ambushed by whatever killed those humans."

That was a slightly better prospect. We were all a lot more comfortable with a bodyguard role than with any kind of information suppression, but some of the Coun'hij's troubleshooters had a pretty bad reputation. Worst of all was the fact that Brandon hadn't indicated that the group who went on this op would be getting any kind of reprieve from whatever Brandon had in the works before the murders in Hereford hit his radar. Running back-to-back ops without at least a couple of days' downtime between them was a recipe for a mutiny, which was probably why Brandon was essentially asking for volunteers rather than just ordering a team to go take care of things.