Bound (Dark Reflections Volume 1) (34 page)

In human form I could sustain speeds in the low twenties and even sprint up into the high twenties or low thirties for a very short period of time. The heavily-loaded train was only moving at a little over twenty miles per hour, so it took less than a minute for me to make it to the caboose and jump onboard.

The door was predictably locked so I started up the side of the car, thinking once again how grateful I was that the sword wasn't even heavier than it was. I could climb with thirty pounds in one hand, but I never would have been able to climb with a hundred pounds dangling from my right hand. I'd somehow expected given the incredible strength that hybrids possessed that the sword would be massively heavy, but it actually made sense that the ancient shape shifters would have wanted a sword that could be carried while they were in human form as well.

I made it to the top of the caboose without any problems and then started working my way up along the train as the engines in the front made it to the top of the grade and the train started picking up speed. It felt like we were doing nearly thirty-five miles per hour now and a sense of relief washed through me as I realized we were safe.

I turned back to check for Brandon and saw him arrowing towards us through the failing light, but he'd been just a minute or two too slow. At our current speed he could keep up as a wolf but not as a human.

A slightly juvenile part of me thought about taunting him, but I squashed the impulse and merely watched as he closed the distance between us until he was running just behind the car I was currently standing on.

I wondered if he was planning on pacing us for the next two hundred miles until the train slowed down again, and then without any warning Brandon planted all four feet and threw himself at the ladder on the back of my car.

I had a split second to hope that he'd miscalculated somehow and would be crushed underneath the train, but then he shifted in midair back to his human form and grabbed the ladder that should have remained safely out of reach.

I'd never seen such a smooth transformation, and frankly I wasn't sure that anyone else could have jumped hard enough to compensate for the sudden increase in air resistance as he changed forms, but Brandon had done it.

I shook the sheet off of Kaleb's sword and charged back in an effort to stab Brandon before he could make it to the top of the car and face me on equal ground, but he dodged my attack by throwing himself backwards, once again shifting in midair so that his hybrid claws buried themselves in the metal of the next car.

Brandon looked up at me with feral yellow eyes and a menacing grin on his face for several seconds before pulling himself up to the top of the car. I faced Brandon across a gap of four feet and even as I let my own beast trigger a transformation to our hybrid shape, I knew that Brandon was going to kill me.

Peripheral concerns tried to demand my attention. Fighting on the top of a train in our hybrid forms was a clear violation of every rule the Coun'hij had ever set down to keep our existence a secret, but that hardly mattered in comparison to the fact that I was about to fight one of the most deadly hybrids who'd ever lived. I had Kaleb's sword, but I didn't really know how to use it, and even if I had, all of the stories I'd ever heard had agreed that a single hybrid, even with a sword, wasn't a match for the strongest of the jaguars.

Brandon was capable of killing a jaguar with nothing more than his claws and fangs. I had no chance whatsoever. I knew resisting him was pointless, but something inside of me refused to go down without a fight. The sense of exhaustion I'd felt after wrecking the bike hadn't gone anywhere, but my sense of calm had started to settle back over me.

I'd accomplished things that I would have said only hours ago were impossible. All I would have needed was a bit more luck. If Brandon had arrived a few minutes later the train would have been moving too fast for even him to board. I was proud of my efforts.

I backed up a few steps and then took a few practice swings with Kaleb's sword,
my
sword. It was incredibly light to my hybrid muscles and it fit my giant hands surprisingly well. Even the long, semi-retractable claws on the end of each finger didn't get in the way of cutting and thrusting with the ancient weapon.

Under other circumstances it might have been easy to lose myself in delight at just how responsive my sword was, but in between one practice slash and the next Brandon rushed me. It was just a feint, just something to allow him to begin getting a feel for how fast and dangerous I was with a weapon in my hand, but I still nearly scored on him.

The next few seconds were more of the same. Brandon probably could have overwhelmed me right at the start with his superior strength and speed, but he was obviously uneasy about fighting someone with a sword.

By the third or fourth exchange he had a pretty good idea of just how much faster he was than me, and I'd started to realize just how much of a benefit six extra feet of reach really was. Brandon was having a hard time compensating for any kind of lunging attack while I quite simply couldn't match his blinding speed.

If we'd been fighting on other terrain my best efforts wouldn't have kept me alive for more than a couple of seconds, but fighting on the top of the train car like we were limited the amount of mobility in the fight. Brandon could only move a few feet side to side, which meant that most of the motion in the battle was either advancing or retreating, which favored me more heavily than I could have ever hoped.

Brandon blurred forward in another attack and I stabbed where I thought he would end up, but he wasn't where I expected him to be. He'd come up along the right side of the car and dodged just far enough to the side that my stab had missed, if only by inches.

His claws raked across my right side, but I dropped the hilt of the sword and hit him as hard as I could on the shoulder with the pointed pommel as I backpedalled away from him. Something cracked as the sword hit him, but he'd already jumped backwards so that my follow-up slash missed him.

Physically he was still far and away my better, but I was realizing that in some ways he'd grown too dependent on outmatching anyone he came up against. He was making mistakes that wouldn't have even been noticeable in a normal fight, but which were keeping me alive longer than I'd ever anticipated lasting.

I charged forward, being careful not to overcommit as I tried to sink the point of my sword into his chest. He should have pressed forward on that last exchange rather than retreating. Once he was up close most of my advantages were negated and he would be able to overwhelm me quickly. I wasn't sure if he'd realized his error yet, but I now knew that I had to keep the offensive or I risked letting him close again.

Brandon sidestepped my lunge and darted forward, but I'd already anticipated the fact that I'd miss and I retreated with a slash that once again hit nothing but air. I was missing, but I was coming close and I got the feeling that Brandon didn't like how close I was coming. Fighting with a sword was a completely new experience for me, but it was proving to be an adjustment for Brandon as well.

As my blade sailed over his head Brandon sprang at me again, at which point I caught my next break of the night. He sank his talons into the metal roof of the rail car, but when he threw himself forward he did so with such force that the thin metal tore and gave way rather than letting him apply all of his strength to powering his movements.

Brandon's attack came up a few inches too short because of his lost momentum, and I let my left hand come off of the hilt of my sword and instead used it to rake him across the shoulder just before I backed out of range and brought my weapon around in an attack designed more to make him back off than to actually hurt him.

I'd actually been aiming for the side of his neck with my claws, and if I'd landed my attack the fight would have been over right then, but Brandon had thrown himself to the side at the last second, using his claws as well as his talons so that he could be sure of having enough traction to get his vitals out of the line of fire.

I was disappointed that I'd missed my true target, but I was starting to realize that I couldn't have picked a better arena for our fight if I'd tried. I'd used my full strength for the last several dodges and although the metal had creaked and groaned at the abuse I was putting it through, it had held. It was the football equivalent to me wearing cleats while Brandon wasn't. He was enough faster than me that he could still match my speed, but he wasn't going to be nearly as fast as he otherwise would have been.

I stepped forward and lunged almost to full extension and this time I caught him in the stomach, but he slashed the outside of my arm before I managed to pull the sword out of his body and back away again.

"Did you figure out yet that I was playing with you there at the start of the fight?"

I nodded. "Yeah, that wasn't hard to notice, but it's kind of irrelevant. What matters is that you're not playing around now, but you haven't managed to kill me yet."

"That's what I love about you, Graves. You're so damn overconfident. Of course I'm still playing around with you. Now that I know more or less what you're capable of I can pause and tell you all of the news that I've had saved up for you since I started chasing you across this sandbox of a desert."

I slashed twice in quick succession, but Brandon had assumed a low stance. It gave up some of his mobility, but it let him use his hands to help propel him back and forth at incredible speeds. Neither of my attacks landed and when I tried to follow up with another lunge he simply swatted the point of my sword away with his claws.

"Before I kill you, I wanted to make sure that you knew that Vincent was chasing down James and your girls. He'll probably kill them, but even if he doesn't I can guarantee you that I'll kill them when I get back. I suspect that you had some fancy plan that you thought would shield them if this all went badly, but Kaleb is dancing to my tune now. I'll demand all three of their heads and he won't be able to say no to me."

I swung my sword again, putting more effort into it in the hopes that it would give me enough speed to land a blow on him, but Brandon knocked the blade away again and this time he slashed the inside of my arm.

I recovered before he could get any closer and this time I clipped his shoulder, but mine was the more serious wound and we both knew it. There was a chance that he'd missed the bigger arteries that ran along the inside of my arm, but just judging by the amount of blood pouring out of my arm he'd at least gotten one or two of the smaller ones.

"You were always the one I knew I needed to beat. I'm young enough that I can always just outlast fossils like Kaleb if that's the only way to power, but you were a whole different problem. Mallory must have told me a dozen times a year just how much potential power you had. I think she hoped it would scare me away, but it just made you a bigger target. If I would have known that you'd be stupid enough to throw your future away over your sister, I would have made this happen years ago."

My beast had been strangely quiet since before the fight started, but mention of Rachel brought a roar of power out of me and this time when I stabbed at Brandon I had that little extra bit of speed that I'd been lacking and the sword went into the right side of his chest. I'd been aiming for his heart, but he'd twisted to the side at the last second.

I pulled back, but Brandon moved with me. I tried to use the sword to keep him back but he simply let the blade sink further into him in his quest to reach me. I let go of the sword with my left hand and managed to grab ahold of one of his arms, but his other arm savaged my right leg.

Brandon backed away, pulling himself off of the sword rather than pressing his advantage, but we both knew that the fight was over. I used the sword to help get me back to my feet, but my leg was just too damaged to provide the kind of mobility I needed in order to take advantage of the superior reach my sword gave me.

"In some ways I almost can't blame you, Alec. I've seen what happens to the girls that Vincent takes an interest in and it's not pretty. The shape shifter girls last a little longer, but even they can't take more than a few weeks before they just don't have anything left to bring them back from the edge when he takes them there. Still, you would have been better off just waiting and avenging her once you finally came into your full power. As it is she's still going to become his pet and you're going to be dead."

Brandon liked to gloat, I'd known that for years, but there was something else there this time. As my sword started to shake in hands that were becoming too weak to hold it upright, I tried to figure out what angle he was trying to work.

My mind reached blindly for any explanation and then suddenly I knew why he was stalling. I'd spent nearly half an hour pouring over maps, satellite and otherwise, in an attempt to find the absolute best spot to board the train. My realization almost came too late. I had nothing but instinct and a slight change in the sound of the air hissing around the train to go on, but I was dead either way, so I threw myself forward, stabbing with my sword as I shifted back down to human form.

Unlike me, Brandon had been facing forward and had been able to see the metal girder we were quickly approaching. He'd no doubt been planning on ducking down underneath it just like I'd done, but he hadn't been counting on my sword slicing through the exact volume of space where he'd been planning on taking shelter.

Any other hybrid probably would have been impaled. Brandon had already started moving forward and there was only so much the laws of physics would let you do to change direction once you had that much weight committed to a course of action, but he somehow twisted up just enough that my sword missed him.

It was as though everything was happening in slow motion. I saw Brandon sink his claws in the sheet metal below us and begin pulling himself back down in an effort to dodge the girder that crossed over the tracks, but even he wasn't fast enough to drop the last couple of inches before the train swept him into the beam and he was knocked from the train accompanied by the crunch of broken bones.