Authors: Dean Murray
"Okay,
best of luck to you all. I couldn't have done this without you guys."
"That's
the understatement of the year, but it's worth it if only because it
means Kaleb will get knocked down another peg or two. We need to talk
as soon as you can meet up with us. There were some interesting
developments up here."
Part
of me was dying to know what he was talking about. He sounded a
little rattled, which was unusual to say the least. Jack was usually
a pretty cool customer; most older dominants tended to be that way.
Jack was more than a hundred and fifty years old. He knew his
capabilities and it took a lot to rattle him, but this was obviously
something he felt needed to be shared in person.
"Understood,
we'll see you all shortly."
I
hung up and turned to James who was sitting in the driver's seat.
"Any word from the girls?"
"Yeah,
the target is following her usual route and she's right on schedule.
You've got about sixty seconds before she'll be running right past
us."
"Thanks,
James. Tell Jasmin and Jess to get out of there, things could get
awful hot in this town in the next few minutes."
I
looked over at Brindi and sighed. She seemed to be mostly healed. It
was hard to be sure without access to the advanced diagnostic
equipment you'd find in a hospital, but she moved around without
flinching now and she wasn't sleeping all of the time anymore.
Unfortunately she still deteriorated quickly when she wasn't with me.
She could make it an hour now before she started showing the outward
signs of withdrawal, but that still wasn't much time to work with.
"I
need to go outside for a few minutes and it's best if you stay here."
Brindi
nodded. "Is what you're about to do dangerous?"
"Yes,
but no more so than anything else we've done over the last few days."
I
could see how badly she wanted to argue with me, to plead for me not
to put myself in harm's way, but we'd already had that argument
today. I owed Brindi a debt for saving my life, but I couldn't let my
debt to her stop me from paying down the other people I owed.
Brindi
nodded again and then I was opening the door of our SUV and stepping
out into the harsh Arizona sun. James' estimate was spot on. Alison
came jogging past the alley where we were parked right on schedule.
"Alison,
we need to talk."
She
turned towards me with the inhuman quickness and poise that we
usually tried not to display in public.
"Alec?
Are you insane? This is the last place you should be. We've got an op
tonight. Brandon has pulled in everyone he can get his hands on for
this one."
"I
know, that's part of why we decided to come today. Brandon's going to
be faced with choosing between going forward with the operation or
trying to catch us."
She
looked like she wanted to hit me, but that wasn't much of a change
from how she'd acted when I'd been here the last time. She was
skinnier now than she'd been when I'd last seen her and she hadn't
much, if any, excess body fat on her then.
The
red streak in her hair, a symbol of defiance that she'd sported for
as long as she'd been down here, hadn't changed, but her black
running shorts hung lower on her hips than I remembered from before
and her white tank top revealed arms and shoulders that looked like
they'd been carved out of rock. She was all hard planes and angles
and looked like nothing more than willpower was keeping her from
giving up. None of it pointed to anything good. Juan had been a great
team leader, maybe the best, and in a lot of ways he'd been the glue
holding Alison together.
He
was dead now and that was one more reason for Alison to hate me. Juan
had died protecting me from the Ancient that had been part of a trap
designed to kill all of Brandon's people. Juan had died and then I'd
been whisked away to Sanctuary to recover from my wounds in safety
while Alison had been left here to be fed back into the blender.
"You
just can't leave well enough alone, can you? You made it out, free
and clear, but you have to come back here and drag me into some kind
of asinine plan that is almost guaranteed to get me killed."
"It's
not like that…"
She
cut me off before I could get another word out. "I'm not going
to help you, Alec. I'm done with all of that crap. It's past time for
me to just keep my head down and try to last as long as I can. You
may have inspired Juan, but that won't work on me."
"Your
mom left Sanctuary a few minutes ago, Alison. Kaleb probably knows
she's gone by now, but the people with her have been planning their
escape route for the last week. They've got fallbacks for their
fallbacks. It might take a day or two, but eventually she'll
disappear and Kaleb will never find her. She's not important enough
for him to dedicate the kind of time and effort that he spent looking
for Agony."
"So
that's your play? You came down here to tell me that you're going to
use her to blackmail me? You really are just like your damn dad."
James
turned on the SUV. It was a signal indicating that we didn't have
much time.
"I'm
here to give you a chance to get out. Some of my friends risked a lot
to get your mom and Chloe's parents out of Sanctuary. There isn't
anything holding you here now. Come get into the car with me. We'll
leave and you don't ever have to come back. No tricks, no threats.
I'd love to have you help me, I can always use another good fighter,
but if you want to walk away I'll tell you where your mom is, give
you a hundred thousand dollars and let you go to her."
She
knew I was telling her the truth, but she was still having a hard
time believing it. Alison was roughly my age, but she'd been down on
the border fighting jaguars in one desperate battle after another for
months. I'd always thought my life was pretty rough, but in some ways
Alison had been through even more.
"You
swear to me that it's not a trick?"
"I
swear, Alison. I can't guarantee that we'll get away and every second
we stand here talking reduces our odds, but we've got a plan. It may
fall apart and we may all be caught and executed, but I'm going to do
everything in my power to get us all out and then you can start
making your own choices again."
She
nodded jerkily and started towards me, but she only made it a couple
of steps before her legs gave out. I caught her before she could hit
the ground. She'd never been very heavy, but as I picked her up and
carried her to the SUV it felt like there wasn't anything left of
her.
I
was still hoping to get Agony out and eventually overthrow Kaleb, but
I'd already accomplished more than I'd been worried I might. Saving
Alison might have seemed like a small thing to some, but it had been
important to me and it would make all the difference in the world to
her, her mother, and the parents of her best friend, a girl who
hadn't lasted for even two weeks in the hell that Alison had been
facing for months.
Adriana Paige
Downtown Parking Emporium
Houston, Texas
Things between Taggart and I were strained. It wasn't because I didn't
believe him, and I didn't blame him for telling me about what he'd
seen with Alec. He hadn't done anything wrong, but it was hard to
know what to say or how to act around someone who had seen me
humiliated so badly. I was pretty sure that most of the awkwardness
would eventually disappear, but that wasn't particularly helpful
right now.
I'd
made contact with Dominic the night that Taggart had told me about
Alec. Talking to Dominic had been odd on several levels. I kept
wanting to like her but I knew that was dangerous in the world I
lived in now. If we'd met back in Minnesota as two normal girls then
things would have been different, but as they were now I couldn't
afford to trust anyone.
If
Alec had managed to pull the wool over my eyes this badly, then I
wasn't a good enough judge of character to be selecting my own
friends. Dominic seemed to be struggling with something as well, but
I couldn't tell for sure what it was that was bothering her.
She
was very coy when it came to providing details about where she was
and who she was living with, but after I explained that I was trying
to find people to help Dream Stealer and I free Agony, she finally
agreed to take my plea to 'the rest of the group.' It wasn't a lot to
go on, but it was better than nothing.
The
next morning Taggart suggested that I spend some time inside the
underground shooting range. I wouldn't have trusted me with a handgun
if our positions had been reversed, but if he was worried he didn't
show it.
He
took me by the armory to grab some more ammunition and a selection of
guns, and then once we arrived at the range he showed me how to load
the gun, chamber a round, and get the bullets to hit roughly where I
was aiming. All of that took a bit less than fifteen minutes
including the mandatory gun safety talk, and then I was on my own.
I
expected to hate it. The only exposure I'd ever had to firearms was
when Benito and Pete had taken turns holding one up to my head. It
was something designed for one purpose and one purpose only, and I
still wasn't excited about killing someone in the dream world let
alone in the real world.
All
of that changed as I sent my first hundred shots down the range.
There was something addictive about seeing my skill improve in real
time, about blowing the center out of a target, but it was more than
that.
I'd
read somewhere in a history book that one of the early pistols had
been called the great equalizer. That might have been true for fights
between normal humans, but it wasn't true when the person with the
gun was a human who was up against a hybrid. Even with a gun I'd
still be out of my league when faced with a vampire or a shape
shifter, but things would be a lot closer to even.
For
the first time since my ability to dream walk had completely screwed
up my life, I felt a degree of safety that didn't depend on Taggart,
a degree of control over where I went and what happened to me. That
was the most addictive thing of all.
I
knew I wasn't going to turn myself into an expert over the course of
one or two days, but I did the best I could. It took Dominic two more
nights to get some of the others in her group to agree to a meeting.
I spent a significant amount of time each day until then down in the
range running exercises that I hoped would make me more competent and
deadly with the pistol that I eventually settled on as my weapon of
choice.
It
helped that the range was built with tactical exercises in mind. It
took some doing to figure out which buttons back by the shooting
station did what, but once I got the hang of that I started running
through shooting at moving targets that popped up seemingly at
random. Things were so easy that I was worried at first that I was
doing something wrong.
That
only lasted until I remembered that I didn't function quite like a
normal human anymore. Something about my fight with Pamela had souped
up my time sense to the point where it was nearly the match of
Taggart's. In an emergency I still couldn't move as fast as a shape
shifter, but I thought as fast as one of them, which meant that I had
all the time in the world to put rounds through each of the pop-up
targets.
I
was pretty sure that Dominic was going to tell me that she'd worked
out some kind of meeting on that second night, so I knew that
afternoon that I was going through my last round of practice. Once my
slide had locked back and the last heavy steel plate had been knocked
free on the last moving target, I set my now-familiar pistol down and
walked downrange to collect all of the steel discs and remount them
into their bases.
There
wasn't any real need to clean up after myself, but I did anyway.
Maybe someday this range would host another scared teenager who
needed the empowerment provided by a gun, who needed a way to defend
herself in a world that was infinitely more dangerous and deadly than
she'd ever suspected. It wasn't likely, but if it did happen I didn't
want to make her job any harder than it was already going to be.
I
turned off the lights and then headed towards the tunnel up to the
store so that Taggart could teach me how to clean my new gun.
That
night I found out that Dominic had indeed come through for me. I had
a location and a time, but just as I'd known she would, she told me
that if I didn't come along with Taggart the meeting was off.
We
piled some boxes in front of the secret door down to the bunker to
help keep it hidden, locked up the gas station, and then started
towards Texas the next morning. I brought my new gun, a backup weapon
of the same size and caliber, and two hundred rounds of ammunition.
If
Taggart thought that was overkill he didn't say anything and I didn't
ask. I also didn't tell him that half of the ammunition was
'penetrator' rounds. I hadn't known what to expect when I'd tried out
the first round of the color-coded ammunition back in the bunker, so
it had taken me completely by surprise when I blew a hole through the
metal plates that had so far laughed off everything else I'd shot at
them.
I
figured if we ran into trouble that the penetrators would be useful.
Even a hybrid wouldn't easily laugh off a round designed to go
through a metal plate.
I'd
stocked up on guns and ammo because that was what I was most
concerned about. Taggart had swiped all of the money from the cash
register and three-quarters of the gold from Paulo's vault.
We'd
made a single extended stop on our way out to Houston so that Taggart
could stash the gold in a safe deposit box under both of our names.
He kept a single bar, which he sold at a pawn shop in the same town.
That one bar sold for more money than my dad made in several years.
It felt almost obscene that something so small could be worth so much
money, but Taggart didn't share my feeling.