Trapped (12 page)

"Alright,
I suppose it's no crazier than people changing into wolves and
jaguars. Still, my dream wasn't anything like that. It wasn't
really even telling the future."

"I
think you saw the future you were headed towards at the point in time
that you had the dream. Everything that happened differently than
what you saw in your dream was directly because of the dream. The
future isn't a fixed thing and your ability gives you a chance
to sidestep some of the things you see happening."

I
nodded, it was starting to make sense. "So can we use this to
our advantage? Maybe it can help us take down Anton somehow."

Ash
shook his head.

"It's
always a very bad idea to rely on those kinds of things, especially
at first. As time goes on you may be able to call it to heel, but
sometimes gifts never actually behave as you want them to. You might
go a decade without ever having another dream like that, or you may
dream about mundane things every week for the next year and then get
run over by a train and never have any kind of dream warning you
things were about to go bad."

It
wasn't what I wanted to hear. There wasn't much that I
really brought to this partnership. The ability to keep us alive now
and again would have been nice. Without being able to dream of the
future, I was just a liability once again.

"So
what do we do?"

"I've
got someone putting out some feelers. Occasionally a human gets
caught up in our world and manages to survive. They're usually
ex-military or spies. Once that happens they tend to cluster together
with others who've had similar experiences. Most of the very
best mercenaries actually do hits on vampires and the like. If I can
find the right group and offer them enough money, we'll have a
chance at taking Anton down the next time he arrives."

"A
good chance?"

"No,
not a good chance. These types of people are very good, but Anton is
in a league all of his own. Unless he runs up against another, older,
more powerful cat, a couple of vampire elders, or a fairly sizable
pack, he's unlikely to be taken down."

"I
suppose vampires and other southerners are out of the question. What
about rounding up a pack of wolves?"

It
actually felt like the temperature in the Hummer dropped ten degrees.
Ash's knuckles went white on the steering wheel and he took
several breaths before he was able to respond.

"Going
to any of my kind is out of the question. I've been very
careful to stay under the radar where other wolves are concerned."

Ash's
expression was so intense it was all I could do to avoid backing away
from him.

"I'm
sorry, Ash. I didn't mean to say the wrong thing. I just didn't
know it was such a big deal. Please…"

He
shook his head. "No,
I'm the one who should be sorry. It's just that going
back to my kind represents everything I spent years scheming to get
away from. I didn't just stroll away from my pack when I left.
The remnants of my family, the ones who weren't killed by the
vampire attack centuries ago, have spent an incredible amount of time
and energy convincing our new masters that they'd stripped us
of our fortunes. They did manage to extort an obscene amount of money
out of us, but there were hundreds of millions that we managed to
keep safe, hidden through various mechanisms."

Some
of the pieces were starting to drop into place for me.

"But
they never really believed you."

"Nope.
They are continually looking for a weakness, a new member of the
family they might finally manage to break. When I left, I did so in
such a way that everyone was convinced that I was dead. I fled my
family, abandoned the few people who cared about me, who depended on
me, took a healthy chunk of our operating capital and never looked
back."

I
could tell that last part wasn't true. Ash had looked back,
probably more even than he wanted to admit to himself, but now wasn't
the time to bring that up.

"So
your old pack is out. Isn't there another pack though that you
can trust not to say anything? Better yet, one we could just go to
with aliases. Nobody needs to know who we are or just how much money
you've got."

Ash
shook his head.

"Sorry,
Kristin. There's just so much you don't know. A weak
shape shifter is valuable enough all by themselves without throwing
anything else into the mix. Any pack I give even half a chance will
suck me in just to have one more submissive to knock around. I can't
think of anything that would make me willing to go back to that kind
of hell."

I
couldn't get Ash's words out of my head. He hadn't
even flinched when Anton had opened him up with a knife. The one
thing that had hit me from almost the first second I'd known
Ash was the way that he'd single-mindedly gone after his goals.
I couldn't imagine the level of torture required to make him
unwilling to even entertain the possibility of being pulled back into
a pack.

It
was another thing that needed filed away. With Ash there were so many
levels to him that I always felt like my subconscious needed time to
process and fit the pieces together every time I learned something
else about him.

Ash
told me we'd be using pseudonyms and actually made me practice
for a day and a half as we drove to the meet with the mercenaries,
but once I saw just how hard it was not to slip, I realized how smart
he was to force the issue despite my initial efforts to convince him
otherwise. I became Jane and he became Jones.

The
mercenaries were both exactly like I'd pictured them and
nothing at all like I'd expected. We weren't the only
ones using aliases. Some of the handles were obviously not the names
the men had been born with, but I was pretty sure that even the relatively normal-sounding
names were fake.

Hammer,
Shiver, Shadow, Smith, Dieter. They were all waiting for us in a
particularly desolate part of Arizona, and I was sure we were going
to have problems as soon as I stepped out of the Hummer.

"Nobody
said anything about a chick."

Ash
shook his head. "Nobody said anything about a chick because
there was no reason to mention it. Jane's fine. She's a
bit wet behind the ears, but she's smart enough to keep her
head down and take orders."

Hammer,
a gigantic Native American, smiled, but it didn't make it to
his eyes. "I've got some orders I'd really like to
give her."

Something
about the way he said it left no doubt but that he'd been
trying to be obscene. It was completely out of character for me, but
I found my hand going towards my pistol. Ash was there already,
moving so fast I almost couldn't follow the motion.

One
second Ash was next to me, the next he was towering over Hammer who'd
somehow ended up on his knees with Ash's pistol pressed up
against his temple.

"Just
be glad I got here first. I said she was wet behind the ears, I
didn't say she was harmless. You can refund my money and walk
away right now, or you can shut up and do your job. Which is it going
to be?"

I'd
meant to stop drawing my gun when Ash moved, but somehow it had still
ended up in my hands and pointed vaguely in the direction of the
other four mercenaries. Things had gone from calm and collected to
imminent, deadly violence in a couple of heartbeats.

Everyone
was suddenly being very careful not to move too quickly. Dieter
stepped forward, hands in the air.

"Hammer
will do his job. Your initial payment came through without any
problems. You hold up your end and we'll hold up ours. If you
don't come through on the completion payment we'll have
problems again, but until then we're all good."

Ash
released Hammer and stepped back. Once he got back to my side he put
his gun away and nodded for me to do the same.

"Any
questions?"

Smith
nodded. "So what are we up against exactly? Vampire?"

"Shape
shifter. He's uncommonly fast and strong."

"I
don't particularly like going after the wolves. It's
always like sticking your hand into a buzz saw. You think you know
what you're up against and then the rest of the pack comes out
of the woodwork and you're suddenly in over your head."

"He's
a cat, and he's always worked alone so far."

"You
sure he can track you here? What if we get a rainstorm sweep through
the area?"

"We
lost him once already and he found us again. All indications are that
he's got the ability to track down his prey through other,
non-physical methods."

"Fine.
The deal was for up to five days. We get to day four and nothing's
happened and we'll need to have a discussion about what happens
on day six."

Ash
nodded, and then the tension floated away almost as if it had never
even existed.

Our
little bit of desert seemed to consist of nothing but featureless
sand as far as the eye could see to the west, but the east had a
little more variety to it. There was a small cabin, little more than
a hut, but the real change was a sheer drop-off that would presumably
protect us from attack in that direction.

I
followed Ash over to the precipice, suppressing a shiver at the
thought of falling all of that distance.

"It
should do. It looks like a pretty difficult climb, even for someone
like Anton."

"As…Jones,
what just happened back there?"

"You
got your first taste of what pack life would be like. Everyone always
jockeying for position, the weakest members having to be constantly
on their guard. Hammer challenged you, tried to prove his dominance
to you, and I intervened."

"So
he'll leave me alone now?"

"Probably.
I just put him on notice that if he screws with you he screws with
me, and that I'm not afraid to kill him. Good job, by the way.
You keeping your calm and getting your weapon out so quickly helped.
It introduced the slightest bit of doubt as far as what you really
are, and how dangerous you'd be even without my protection."

"That
seems like a hard way to live."

"It
is. Luckily we should only have to deal with it for a few days. I
can't imagine that Anton will be slow about tracking us down.
You've now evaded him three times, which will drive him crazy.
With any luck we'll be able to kill him here and then you'd
be free to do whatever you like. You could even return to your family
if you wanted."

I'd
been antsy to move out just a few weeks before, but now the thought
of being with my family again was incredibly alluring. The desire
didn't stand a chance though when stacked against my wish to
stay with Ash. I knew I was a burden, but it still hurt that he was
able to casually mention us splitting up and going our separate ways
like that.

I
did the only thing I could think of and nodded.

"It
would be nice not to be hunted, to have a shot at a normal life once
again if I wanted it."

**

The
next couple of days went by incredibly slowly. The mercenaries all
dug in around the cabin, and Shiver even went so far as to set up a
variety of antipersonnel mines around the perimeter that he and the
others had established.

Ash
and I didn't talk much, not because I didn't want to, but because
living in such close proximity to the mercenaries didn't leave us
much chance to do more than nod at each other in the morning and once
before we headed to our separate sleeping bags.

I
had no desire to get to know Hammer, and had been warned against
getting too close to the others, so I dealt with a kind of forced
solitude which I distracted myself from by watching my companions and
trying to learn as much as possible.

None
of them were particularly communicative, but Shadow seemed the most
willing to let me watch as he went about his routine. We settled into
a slow routine of three watches. Shadow,
Ash and I took the midnight until eight a.m. shift. Ash because he
had the best night vision out of all of us, Shadow because we
expected Anton would probably attack at night and it only made sense
to take advantage of Shadow's night vision goggles and rifle optics
to give ourselves as early of a warning as possible.

The
first false alarm nearly gave me a heart attack. I went from sound
asleep to out in the 'trenches' in about thirty seconds. It turned
out to be nothing more than a coyote which Shadow put down with a
single round from his rifle.

"Couldn't
risk it setting off one of the landmines."

I
nodded at Ash's explanation and then went back to my sleeping bag.
The second false alarm came late the afternoon of the third day. I
was up on the top of the cabin roof with Shadow when he dropped his
spotting scope and scooted over to his rifle.

"You'd
recognize the target?"

"Yes,
I've seen him a couple of times."

"Use
the spotting scope. Start from that bluff that forms the left side of
the 'W'. Come down back this way about a third of the way. There's a
wash that runs north and south. Follow it left and when you see it
jig up you're there. He's wearing a brown jacket and a ball cap."

It
took me a couple of tries to follow Shadow's directions, but then I
finally found the 'jig' he was talking about. I couldn't see the guy
very well, his back was to us, but he was obviously too small to be
Anton.

"No,
that's not the guy. Too skinny, and Anton isn't the kind to just
lollygag around like that. He's just rushed in every time we've dealt
with him."

"OK,
keep an eye on him for the next little while. Could be that this
guy's working for the target. If he gets too much closer we may need
to take him out regardless."

I
watched for a couple of hours until the prospector finally
disappeared. It was one of the longest blocks of time that I could
remember, and I breathed a small, inaudible, sigh of relief when
Shadow finally set his rifle back down and held a hand out for his
spotting scope.