Ambushed (21 page)

My
enemy slashed at me with his right hand, but I knocked his claws down
away from me and then stabbed my own claws into his shoulder. I
probably could have finished the fight right then, but a whisper of
sound brought me around just in time to deny the wolf that had been
trying for a kill shot.

The
angle was bad or I would have killed her while she was still in the
air and unable to change direction. Instead I managed to hit her with
my forearm hard enough to send her crashing into the booths behind
me.

The
hybrid I'd been fighting charged me, and I dug my talons into the
floor, scraping against the concrete foundation as I tried to get out
of his way. I was only partially successful. I got far enough to the
side that he didn't hit me directly, but I couldn't make it far
enough to avoid the wicked slash that ripped through my ribs on the
left side of my chest.

He
was looking for a contest of strength because if he could lock me up
then even if I proved stronger it wouldn't matter once the wolf got
back to her feet. I was younger than him and a lot less experienced,
but I wasn't stupid.

Instead
of resisting his charge, I pivoted in place, a growl ripping free of
my throat as his claws moved around inside of me. I pinned his left
arm in place as best I could to limit the damage, and used his
shoulder as a fulcrum to throw him into the booths.

The
hybrid hit with a titanic crash, but I couldn't follow up because the
wolf threw herself at me. She was fast, not as fast as Jasmin, but
still incredibly quick. She went from motionless to flying through
the air at me without any telegraphing of her attack.

Against
someone else, especially someone who was already bleeding from a
dangerous set of wounds, it probably would have been enough, but I
ducked down, denying her a clean shot at my throat as I reached up
and sank my left-hand set of claws into her side. The easiest thing
to do would have been to simply kill her right then. No wolf could
hope to last long once a hybrid had hold of them, but instead I spun
around and slammed her into the wreckage of the booth next to where
we'd been sitting.

I'd
aimed her at a length of steel that had been bolted horizontally into
the wall and she hit with enough force to drive the rod completely
through her. The metal had missed her heart, but it had gone through
the ribs on her left side. Even a shape shifter wouldn't last for
very long impaled on a piece of steel like that, but it was the best
I could offer her. Either way, she wouldn't be going anywhere before
the fight ended.

I
crashed into the remnants of the booth behind her in an attempt to
put the hybrid down before he could regain his feet, but I was half a
second too slow. The hybrid launched a couple of lightning-fast
swipes at my neck. I blocked the first one and stepped back far
enough to dodge the second one, but that forced me out of the booth.

I
probably should have kept him confined back inside of the debris, but
I'd been able to see Brindi out of the corner of my eye. She was
terrified, huddled up in a ball in an effort to make herself a
smaller target, but if I'd stayed there, forcing the Chicago hybrid
to fight constrained by all of that wreckage, there was just too much
of a chance that she would have been hurt regardless of how small of
a target she'd made of herself.

My
opponent sprang forward, arms out wide to make sure that I couldn't
dodge, so I did the last thing he was expecting and stepped into him.
It was risky, nobody could guarantee who would come out on top of a
collision like that, but I needed to finish him off quickly. We'd
started out outnumbered by fifty percent, which meant that some of my
friends were fighting a desperate, losing battle against two or even
three opponents.

They
needed my help and I couldn't afford to let this fight drag out. I
stepped into him, but I darted slightly to the side at the last
moment and slapped down his right arm.

He
hit me like a wrecking ball, but I'd been prepared for that and my
step to the side meant that at least some of his momentum was spun
around me rather than simply smashing me backwards. I sank my jaws in
the side of his neck while we were still airborne and then did my
best to get a set of talons in each of his legs before we hit the
ground.

I
was only partially successful, his right leg was still free when we
hit, but I managed to keep both of my arms in fairly close to my body
so he was the one that hit first and that was the single most
important thing I could have done. It takes an almost unimaginable
amount of shearing force to break a hybrid's arm, but something
snapped as I came down on top of his left arm.

His
howl of rage was deafening, but I refused to loosen my grip on his
neck. Instead I bit down harder, trying to get my fangs into
something vital as we bounced and rolled out onto the dance floor.
His left arm was useless, but he was much stronger than I'd expected
him to be and I was having a hard time getting enough leverage to
keep his right arm under control.

Our
fight had devolved into a kind of slow-motion tug-of-war. I was
trying to keep him from savaging my back while he was trying to stop
me from snapping his neck.

I
was losing control of his arm and I hadn't managed to get past the
massive muscles of his neck. Rather than finishing him off so that I
could go help my friends, I was locked into a fight I couldn't win.
If someone else didn't break free and come help me it was only a
matter of time before I was a dead man.

My
right arm was pinned underneath the two of us. I tried to roll us
over onto his back, but his legs were just too far apart and I
couldn't budge him.

Footsteps
approached from behind me and I tensed up in anticipation of the blow
that was about to kill me. The fact that they were coming from behind
me instead of from behind him was a bad sign, but then all of a
sudden the pressure against my left hand weakened slightly. The
change was so small that I almost thought I'd imagined it, but it was
there. If he'd been just a hair stronger or if I'd had slightly worse
leverage it wouldn't have made any difference, but it was making a
difference.

We
strained against each other and, with the help of whoever was behind
me, I was able to push his arm up and away from my back. Even better,
the further ahead I got it, the more the angles and forces involved
helped me and hindered him.

He
reversed the direction of his push with a suddenness that was quite
literally preternatural. It was the kind of lightning-fast movement
that no human could have possibly hoped to register let alone avoid,
but I'd been expecting it.

The
hybrid tried to flip both of us around, but I threw myself in the
direction of his pull, and sent us through an extra half revolution.
That put me on top instead of him.

I
heard a soft gasp and smelled blood, but none of that registered. I
was too caught up in the fight, too caught up in the fact that my
right hand had come free. I killed the hybrid with a single slash to
the neck and rolled to my feet looking for another foe.

A
sudden pulse of light blinded me for a couple of seconds and I
stumbled backwards in an attempt to avoid anyone who might not have
been as affected by the flash.

"Enough!"

I
didn't recognize the voice, but the fighting stopped with a
suddenness that I wouldn't have believed possible.

"Shift
back to your human forms now or I'll have you all killed where you
stand."

I
felt a rapid, many-pointed surge of power as half a dozen people
shifted back to their primary form over the space of just a couple of
seconds.

"Alec,
it's my dad. We're safe now, go ahead and shift back."

My
beast didn't want to obey, didn't view Shawn or Ulrich either one as
being dominant to us, but I knew better. Ulrich wouldn't have left
his compound without bringing at least a dozen hybrids with him, not
if he knew he was coming to this kind of battle.

It
didn't matter who was dominant to whom, the fact of the matter was
that he could have all four of us killed without even raising a
finger of his own. I'd come into his territory without asking
permission, without honoring any of the normal forms, and my life was
forfeit as a result if that was his desire.

I
shifted back to human form. The change cleared my vision enough for
me to take stock of my surroundings. My breath caught as I looked
down and saw Brindi on the floor in a pool of blood.

She
had been the one who'd come to help me when I'd been struggling with
the Chicago hybrid. She'd helped me pull his hand away from my
kidneys, but when he'd flipped us over his claws had gone through her
stomach.

I
dropped down next to her and pushed my hands against her stomach to
keep her life from leaking out.

Adriana Paige
Marauder's Gas Station
Central Wyoming

It turned out that having all of my energy drained away didn't kill me.
At least not that time. Taggart was still alive two days after the
fight that had nearly gotten both of us killed, which was good, but I
still wasn't sure that he was going to make it.

I
spent my days up in the store trying to keep anyone from realizing
that the actual owners of the gas station had been killed in the
supernatural equivalent to a Wild West shootout. I took frequent
breaks to check on Taggart, but mostly he just slept. Occasionally he
woke up enough for me to help him down a thousand calories and a pint
of fluid, but other than that I was by myself.

There
wasn't much in the way of traffic past the gas station, which made it
harder and harder to justify spending my time up there, so after the
first full day I put up a new sign saying we'd reduced our hours and
started spending more time down in the bunker.

The
last thing I'd wanted to do was clean up a bunch of dead bodies, but
once they had started rotting I hadn't had much of a choice. I'd
spent three hours during my second full night dragging them all into
one of the bunk rooms and locking them in there. I left the exterior
door up for an hour or so after that and it had gone a long ways
towards making the air breathable again.

I'd
had to get inventive when it came to moving the bodies, so I put that
same inventiveness to work that same night moving Taggart. I got a
second slick tarp, since the first one was now good for nothing but
being incinerated, and used it to drag Taggart to Paulo's master
suite, after which I'd been too exhausted to do anything more than
shower, change the sheets on Paulo's bed and then crash for the
night.

I
tried to contact Alec again that night, and I'd even stocked up on
extra calories during the day, but I didn't have any more luck than I
had the first night. I once again made
some
kind of connection, but it never got to the point where I could use
it to pull him to me or me to him. I tried to sever the filament
sooner this time, but it was still too elastic.

I
slept in for an extra two hours, almost missing my shortened hours up
at the store, and still felt like I'd been run over by a freight
train. I actually had two whole customers stop for gas and munchies
that second day, but other than that I just spent a lot of time
worrying about Taggart and stressing over the fact that I hadn't been
able to make contact with Alec yet.

I
spent another two hours that evening cleaning. I didn't try to
address all of the blood and fire damage, but I did clean up the
couple short corridors between the master suite and the tunnel to the
store. I also grabbed some replacement batteries from the store and
used the lantern to brave the semi-darkness in the kitchen.

I
couldn't time Taggart's periods of wakefulness enough to make cooking
for him worthwhile, but I at least was able to cook some rice and
beans for myself. It wasn't anything fancy, but after the things I'd
seen in the forty-eight hours prior to that I didn't feel like
anything more adventurous.

I'd
showered again before cooking, so once I finished up the food and
checked on Taggart, who was still on the floor because I wasn't
strong enough to pull him up into Paulo's bed, there wasn't anything
left to do but sleep.

I
wasn't up to trying to talk to Alec again, but luckily I'd had
another idea during the long hours minding the store. I'd been wrong
when I'd said that there was only one other supernatural being I knew
besides Taggart. Alec and Taggart were the two I knew the most about,
but there had been that girl at the away game who I'd saved from
being beaten to death by the other team's cheerleaders.

She
hadn't told me her name, but I didn't actually need a name to make
contact with someone. It was risky, far riskier than reaching out to
Alec, despite what Taggart might have said, but it also felt like the
right answer, so after I fell asleep I sent myself back to the school
where I'd saved her and closed my dream eyes so that I could
concentrate.

Things
went better this time. It didn't take the tendrils anywhere near as
long to make contact with her, and I hardly felt like I'd expended
any energy at all by the time I had a connection strong enough to
use.

I
took a deep breath, mentally grabbed the thick cable between the two
of us, and pulled with all of my might. It was like trying to lift a
house with a cable and a thousand-pulley block and tackle. I was
pulling in the rope and I knew that meant that I was moving her, but
it was so hard and it felt like she was barely traveling any distance
at all. That phase only lasted for a second or two though and then
she was accelerating towards me at impossible speeds.

It
would have been tempting to slack off, but I gritted my teeth and
pulled harder. I knew what came next and I wanted to have all of the
momentum I possibly could generate before she hit the wall I'd
experienced with Taggart.