Bound (Dark Reflections Volume 1) (24 page)

Something similar might make sense for a human as it would transform their hands into claw-tipped weapons, but hybrids already had claws.

One by one Vincent's men all shifted into their hybrid forms and then were equipped with the gloves from the crate. Finally there were just two guys left who walked over to one of the houses and kicked the door in.

It took only seconds for the screams to start, at which point I shifted back to human form and grabbed ahold of James to stop him from rushing down there. It wasn't what I wanted to do. I wanted to change over to a hybrid and run down and start killing Vincent's guys, but the only thing that would accomplish would be to add James and me to the body count.

The screams as the two guys still in human form pulled people out of the first house caused the rest of the neighborhood to look out their windows. Once people realized that their phones weren't working and saw that they wouldn't be safe inside of their homes, there was an exodus as people rushed outside in an effort to either get away or to go help the first few victims. They were being killed by hybrids wearing the weapons that I now realized were solely to make the kills look like they'd been done with the curved claws of a jaguar rather than with the straight claws of a hybrid.

Brandon had hoped that a victory would bring down more recruits, but when that hadn't worked he'd set about creating an atrocity to see if that would serve as a better motivator for the wolves and hybrids in the unaligned packs.

None of the humans ever had even the slightest chance. Once the people were outside of the protection of their houses, Vincent and the other hybrids tore through them like they were nothing more than paper dolls.

Some of the residents brought out guns, but they were simply outmatched. Vincent's guys could smell the gun oil and powder residue on the weapons as soon as they exited the house and no mere human was the equal to the speed of a hybrid.

Several of the gun owners were cut down before they could even get their guns in play and, for the rest, the hybrids simply ducked behind buildings and continued their rampage while one or two of their number stalked the gun owners. As long as the gunmen didn't move they didn't have any targets, but as soon as they started moving around they were taken out by enemies who could smell them and hear their heartbeat from a dozen feet away.

It was the most one-sided battle I'd ever seen, but my heart went out to those who were trying to fight back. They were in a bad situation, but at least they were trying and that was more than I was doing.

A few people made it into their cars and partway down the road, but instead of trying to ram the SUV blocking the road they tried to go around it which slowed them down. Even worse, they were then faced with two more hybrids who were more than capable of driving a fist through the driver's-side window and breaking their necks as they went flying by.

Some of the fleeing humans had made it to the base of the hills by that point, but the two shape shifters who'd been going door to door and pulling people out into the street simply shifted to wolf form and chased them down.

The tiny sliver of my mind that wasn't paralyzed by a roiling combination of anger and outrage wondered whether jaguar and wolf fangs were similar enough that those last few kills wouldn't break the illusion that this had been done by a group of cats.

It felt like the attack lasted hours, but I made myself sit there and watch the entire thing. By the end the humans who remained had realized that fighting and fleeing were both equally futile and some of them simply dropped to the ground and waited for one of the monsters down there to come by and kill them.

Once there wasn't anyone living visible anywhere in the neighborhood, Vincent ordered some of his guys to begin gathering up the corpses that had been killed by the wolves while others went door to door, looking for survivors, no doubt simply by listening for heartbeats.

I tore my eyes away from the carnage below and checked the watch that I'd carried in my mouth the entire way from the grocery store. It seemed like hours had passed but the whole thing had taken less than half an hour.

James tried to protest when I ordered him to follow me back to the car, but he knew as well as I did that there wasn't anything we could do here to make a difference.

We slipped over the top of the hill and raced back towards the grocery store where we'd left the car. As I ran I wondered how long it would be before the cold, numb feeling inside of me would disappear. A part of me thought that if it ever disappeared I'd have somehow failed a basic test of humanity. The people who had just been murdered back in Naco deserved more than for me to just go back to my life and pretend that nothing had happened.

Alec Graves
Rest Easy Hotel
Rio Rico, Arizona

We made it back to the car and then to the airport without any problems, but I could tell that James was angry at me. He was practically leaking power the entire helicopter ride back west, but he managed to keep himself under control with what was probably a herculean act of will. I was especially grateful for that considering that if he'd said all of the things he'd wanted to say then the pilot would have overheard and we would have had even bigger problems.

I'd had a couple of over-complicated plans that might have offered a chance for us to get back into the hotel without being seen, but in the end I discarded them all and James and I just dropped off the car and jogged back the last mile or two between the dealership and the Rest Easy.

It was foolish to take chances, especially given what James and I now knew, but I felt like I was going to explode. I wanted to do something completely reckless like publically denounce Brandon at the next big briefing, but I knew that would just result in the death of me and my friends as well as all of the independents down here. Brandon would just stage another battlefield and tell the rest of the world that he'd been attacked by a numerically superior group of cats and some losses had been unfortunate but unavoidable.

I couldn't do that, but it felt like I had to do something at least a little risky so I settled for us jogging back to the hotel rather than sneaking in as I knew we should.

Juan intercepted us at the side entryway. "Where have you guys been? I've been putting Brandon off all day. If you'd been five minutes later you'd be in some serious hot water. Brandon has called an emergency briefing. Come on."

I practically saw red, but I let Juan all but drag me through the hotel to the conference room reserved for our use. We were the last ones to arrive. Brandon was even there already, and we got a frown in response to our tardiness. Jasmin and Jess both looked at James and me with concerned expressions so I managed a smile to try and reassure them. The expression felt wrong on my face, but I knew the girls needed to calm down or we'd be giving Brandon one more reason to suspect that something was wrong.

Brandon surveyed the group one more time as though confirming that everyone he was expecting had arrived, and then cleared his throat. "I'm afraid that a complication has come up. The Brain Box has just informed me that there has been some kind of incident on the southern end of the Tucson pack's territory. Jaclyn is still not taking my calls, so it's looking like we're going to be forced to send another team down to investigate."

One of the other team leaders raised a hand and Brandon nodded for him to ask his question.

"Does this mean that we're going to reschedule the op that was supposed to go down tonight? Vincent's team has been gone all day, so we could be as much as two teams down."

Brandon shook his head. "You're correct that Vincent's guys have been gone all day. I dispatched them to the west on a critical mission this morning myself, but I got off of the phone with Vincent a few minutes ago and he's confirmed that he'll be back in plenty of time to still hit our original timetable for the deployment."

I wanted to scream out that Brandon was a liar, but he'd picked his words carefully. He probably had sent Vincent west this morning, but driving west for an hour before looping around back to the east to kill a bunch of innocents wasn't quite the same as being sent on a mission to the west. Brandon's pulse hadn't ever even hiccupped and every other person in the room would leave thinking that Brandon had just told them that Vincent's mission was to the west.

Brandon continued without missing a beat. "Given that we'll only be down by one team, I'd like to proceed with the original op. I have, however, given some thought to who best to send east and I think that since this recent incident has all the earmarks of a low-risk assignment I'd like to send Juan's team. You guys just finished a rather brutal deployment less than twenty-four hours ago and it just makes sense to give you the easier mission rather than sending you into the fire again already."

Juan was nodding in appreciation, but I found myself interrupting.

"No. I mean thank you, sir, but we'd really rather help with the main operation. Alison is obviously going to have to sit things out no matter what else happens, but the rest of us are in fighting shape and raring to go."

Juan turned towards me with a surge of power. I'd just effectively challenged his authority in front of every single person in the briefing, and neither he nor his beast appreciated my brashness. Maybe it was more of the substitute recklessness that I'd shown earlier, but I responded back with a wave of power that was greater than anything else Juan had ever felt out of me. It wasn't quite my full strength, but it was enough to make everyone around us step backwards a couple of feet. In another time and place we would have been at each other's throats already, but Brandon's prohibition against fighting in public was still in effect, and James had stepped up to my side with his own flare of power as Jasmin and Jessica had moved around so that they were at my back.

It was a clear vote of no confidence in Juan as the leader of our team and it had probably just burned up a ton of the goodwill I'd garnered so far among the independents, but I was not going to be put in a position where I had to come back and tell everyone that cats had massacred those people. I couldn't because I'd know that it was a lie and everyone would be able to tell that I was lying even if I tried.

Brandon sent out a blow of power that exceeded anything Juan or I were capable of generating. "That's enough! There will be no challenge match right now. Alec, I know you're new here, but even if you somehow managed to beat Juan you wouldn't become the team leader, it would just mean that you'd be assigned to a new team."

I shook my head, but my eyes never left Juan's face. "I don't want to challenge Juan. I think he's a great leader and I'd vastly prefer to stay in his team. I just really want to be involved in the main operation tonight."

Like so much of the communication between our kind, every word I'd just said was the truth, just not the truth in its entirety. Even so, everyone nearby could tell that I was sincere in my admiration for Juan and I could see that my comments had even put Juan off balance a little bit.

"We're going to have words later on, Alec, but I'm not necessarily against helping with the main operation if Brandon has a spot that only needs five of us, since Alison is out."

Juan's words seemed to satisfy Brandon, and this time when he asked for volunteers he had several teams offer to take the job that everyone was sure would be a milk run. Brandon quickly reviewed the main op and then dismissed us all to meet with our individual teams.

Juan didn't even wait for the conference room to clear out before getting in my face. "What do you think you're doing, Graves?"

"I'm sorry, Juan. I can explain, but do you have somewhere private we can go first?"

He'd hit me with a lash of power, but my complete lack of response on the metaphysical plane seemed to be puzzling him. After a couple of seconds he nodded and led the way out of the conference room and down the hall. We detoured to pick up a wheelchair for Alison, who started to protest that she could walk just fine on her own right up until she noticed the tenseness between Juan and me.

By the time we arrived at Reina's shop and were conducted up to the solarium, twilight had fallen. Juan kicked on the swamp cooler while the rest of us opened up a couple of windows and arranged a couple of anti-snooping devices.

"Okay, Alec, spill it."

"James and I snuck out of town today. You'd probably already figured that out, but what you didn't know is that when Jaclyn shook my hand this morning she slipped a note into it. It had a time and a place on it along with today's date. That's where we went."

Juan threw his hands in the air. "Do you have any idea how much danger you put yourselves in? Jaclyn can get away with flipping off the entire Coun'hij, but neither of you have anywhere near that level of power. I know I put your feet on this path by telling you that your mother and Donovan were keeping stuff from you, but you've gone too far the other way now. You're going to get yourselves killed."

I nodded. "You may very well be right, but I can't change what I saw this afternoon."

Something in my tone must have given away more than I'd realized. Juan looked back and forth between James and me with an odd expression on his face.

"What are you talking about? What did you see at the meet with Jaclyn?"

"Brandon's having humans killed and staging it to look like it was some kind of raid from south of the border."

James' words came out sounding dead and monotone, but they still put a charge into the air that was all beyond anything I'd ever experienced previously. All three of the girls looked like they wanted to ask questions, but the dominance chain was simply too strong for them to interject a comment into a discussion between two dominants when the matter was as serious as this one was.

"You're crazy!"

I shook my head. "No, Juan, we both saw it. That's where Vincent and his guys have been all day and that's why Brandon is sending a team to Naco. Vincent's guys strapped some kind of clawed weapons onto their hands so that the wounds they inflicted would look like they were done by jaguars and then they killed dozens of people."