Riven (24 page)

"We
didn't lose anyone, but it was a close thing. Almost everyone took at
least one serious wound and I nearly didn't make it out of there
alive."

This
was what was bothering her, but I knew Jasmin well enough to be
certain that she wasn't pissed about something as trivial as a fight
that just hadn't gone as well as she would have liked.

"What
happened, Jas?"

"I
reached out for my beast and tried to transform and she didn't react.
I jumped away, still on two legs, and took almost enough damage to
kill me. It wasn't until I was bleeding on the floor that my beast
finally responded and transformed."

"I'm
glad you survived the fight, Jasmin, but those wounds don't look as
bad as you're indicating that they were."

"They
healed when I transformed. Not the normal amount either, they healed
a lot."

"Interesting,
that doesn't seem to gel with your problem transforming."

"No,
no, it doesn't. I don't know what's going on, Alec, but I suspect
that you're the cause of all of this and I don't appreciate it."

She'd
gone from calm and rational to angry and moving into my personal
space like someone had flipped a switch inside of her. I put a hand
up and stopped her from getting any closer.

"Is
that your beast driving things now, Jas?"

She
suddenly looked lost. "Yes, she just surged up when I thought
about the fact that you're sucking me dry, that this is all your
fault and you don't even seem sorry."

My
beast didn't like how aggressive she was being but I forced him down
and gave her a sad smile.

"I'm
sorry that you're suffering. I'll keep you out of combat ops until we
figure all of this out. I'm keeping a tight leash on my ability right
now, I have been keeping it under control for weeks now, but you're
right. Anything odd with your beast right now is probably a side
effect from before when I was unconsciously draining you. I'm sorry,
Jas. I wish I could go back and do a lot of things differently."

She'd
been expecting a fight and she didn't know how to handle an apology.
I breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn't going to have to beat
Jasmin down while Adri watched. My sigh made Jasmin cock her head
slightly to the side in puzzlement, but before she could say anything
a series of loud beeps sounded from underneath my bed.

It
was a digital recorder of some kind and it clicked over to Rachel's
voice as I was still fishing it out from under my bed.

"I'm
glad that I get one more chance to speak to the three of you. You're
three of the most important people in my life and it's only fitting
that you're all in one place right now. Your attack on his werewolves
in Salt Lake forced Puppeteer's hand. He originally had two forces,
which would have been more than enough to kill us all, but you have a
chance against what is left. They'll hit the estate sometime in the
next few seconds and they'll start with the corner nearest to Ben's
room."

I
looked up, but Jasmin was already disappearing into the hall. I
grabbed the radio sitting on the desk with my computer and depressed
the transmit button.

"We're
about to be attacked. I want everyone at the garages right now."

My
order was just short enough to fit perfectly in the pause that Rachel
had left in the recording.

"You're
not ready to go head to head with Puppeteer, Alec. You're going to
need to split up your people, whoever survives this attack. Jasmin,
Jess, Ash, they all have things that they need to go do. The three
will go their separate ways, two by their own decision, one because
he no longer has a choice."

There
was a pause for several seconds. I half thought that Rachel's message
was over, but there was a quiet hum in the background of the
recording that told me she had something else to say.

"I'm
really going to miss the two of you. The light burns my eyes, but the
darkness is growing."

There
was a sing-song quality to the last bit of what she'd said. I turned
to ask Adri what she thought when the first werewolf came crashing
through my window.

Jasmin Bianchi
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah

I raced through the house with every ounce of speed I could muster
until I reached the other wing, at which point I was forced to dodge
the flow of people headed the other direction. I was only a dozen
feet from Ben's room when I heard the first impact as a werewolf
crashed through one of the huge, floor-to-ceiling windows that almost
every room in this wing sported.

I
made it into Ben's room as a second werewolf crashed into the house,
this one taking out another window and part of the wall less than
twenty feet away from Ben. The lights went out and the machinery
around Ben's bed instantly started beeping to alert whoever was
listening to the fact that they'd lost power.

Adrenaline
already had my heart racing, but I felt another wave hit as I
realized how hopeless our situation was. There was a chance that I
could outrun the creature, but I wasn't going to abandon Ben to it,
which meant that I wasn't going to make it out of the room alive.

A
part of me wanted to despair, but mostly I was just mad. I'd spent
years trying to get Ben to open up to me. I'd been thwarted at every
turn, but up until now I'd always felt like there was still a chance
for things to work out.

It
was a minor thing compared to everything else the Coun'hij had done,
but I was about to lose everything on the altar of their ambition.

It
didn't much matter whether I fought the werewolf on two legs or four.
I'd die just the same in either form, but I didn't have it in me to
just passively wait for it to kill me. Mindful of my difficulties
transforming earlier that evening, I reached for my beast with all of
the rage I could muster and felt the change rip through me with a
level of violence and power that I hadn't realized was possible.

For
a split second that seemed to last forever I felt sharp stabs of pain
as my bones were forced into new shapes, shapes that they'd never
been meant to hold. It was just like the first few times I'd
transformed, back before habit and exposure had desensitized me to
the agony. I stumbled slightly and then shook my head as I stepped
forward.

I
was on my second step before I realized that I was still on two legs
rather than four. Everything was wrong, my point of view was too high
to be a wolf and my nose wasn't sensitive enough. Alec had caused my
body to fail me again. I opened my mouth and the scream of rage that
escaped was wrong too. My voice was deeper, almost alien in timber.

I
was between Ben and the werewolf so I looked down for a split second
and took in the massive,
hybrid
body that had replaced my normal form.

A
flicker of movement was the only warning I got. I threw myself
forward, desperate to intercept the werewolf before it got to Ben.

I
was fast, much faster than I'd been as a wolf lately, but the
werewolf was even faster and I didn't have any of the right kind of
reflexes for this fight.

I
hit the werewolf with all of the force I could muster, clipping it on
the left side as I drove the talons on my right hand into its chest.
The answering blow from the werewolf opened up the right side of my
back but I succeeded, against all odds, in knocking it to the ground.

I
latched onto its arm with my fangs and left arm, and then tried to
use my grip on its chest to control it, but it seemed unfazed by the
pain and it was simply too strong for me to control by brute force.

I
felt bright ribbons of pain tear through me as its fangs latched onto
my shoulder and then our positions were reversed and it was on top of
me. There was noise from out in the hall, but I was too concentrated
on the wicked, double-edged claws slowly descending towards my throat
to worry about anything that far away. I got both legs up so that
they were between the werewolf and me, but it wasn't enough to do
more than just slightly slow its progress. I was still only seconds
from having my throat ripped out.

James
came out of nowhere, hitting the werewolf in a blur of motion that
pulled its claws back away from me without actually managing to bowl
it over.

The
werewolf used the force of James' attack to rock back on its feet,
lifting me with one hand in an almost unimaginable display of
strength as James fought to keep its left arm immobilized. With my
right shoulder still being ground to pieces by the creature's fangs,
I wasn't in any position to use my right arm, but I sank my feet
talons in even deeper and pushed in an effort to keep it from
bringing its right arm around to savage James.

It
was a poor kind of stalemate, one that could only last a few seconds
until blood loss weakened me too much to continue the fight, but
Dominic hit the werewolf a second later as it spun around to drive
James into a wall.

Dom
was incredibly small against the vast bulk of the werewolf, but she
clawed her way up its back nearly to its neck before it threw itself
backwards, impaling her on a broken two-by-four from where it had
come through the exterior wall.

We
hit so hard that the sliver of wood was pushed all the way through
Dominic and into the werewolf.

Dominic
let out a low hiss of pain as the werewolf started to pull itself off
of the improvised spear, and then suddenly a slender figure stepped
into my view and put a pistol up against the werewolf's head.

Three
shots rang out in less than a second and then we all collapsed into a
bloody heap as the werewolf's jaws finally relaxed and released my
shoulder. A second later Kristin was trying to pull me back to my
feet.

"We've
got to get it off of Dom or she'll suffocate."

James
had taken a pretty good beating too, but he was in better shape than
I was, so once I'd managed to roll out of the way, he and Kristin
pushed the dead werewolf off of Dom. As James pulled Dom off of the
two-by-four she convulsed and then melted back into her normal shape.

The
change slowed the bleeding, but we needed to get her to Donovan soon
or she wouldn't make it. Kristin didn't waste any time unhooking
Ben's IV.

"I
don't know where Jasmin is, but we need to get Ben out of here right
now or she'll never see him again."

I
found that my voice was working again. "How did you know to come
help us?"

"I've
spent the last hour or so reliving this attack again and again. Dream
Stealer shoved me into some kind of endless loop and kept me there
until after the attack started so that I couldn't warn anyone."

Kristin
finished disconnecting Ben from the machinery around his bed and then
motioned me over. "Look, I don't know who you are, but can you
at least pick him up and help carrying him out? If Jasmin's not here
then she's either dead or hurt somewhere and we don't have very long
to find her."

James'
chuckle was darkly humorous. "Let me make introductions.
Kristin, this is the new and improved Jasmin. Don't piss her off; her
bite just got a whole lot worse than her bark."

Jessica Engel
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah

Wyatt had just returned from Salt Lake and the attack interrupted a truly
spectacular fight. One second Wyatt and I were yelling at each other
in a way that we both knew would lead to an equally amazing make out
session and the next thing I knew Carson had charged into Wyatt's
room.

"Alec
just announced that an attack is imminent, we need to get you both to
the garage!"

Somehow
I hadn't believed that we could really be attacked, not now that Alec
had so many shape shifters here at the estate. I was so shocked that
I followed Wyatt and Carson nearly a dozen steps down the hall before
I remembered Andrew.

"Wait,
I need to get my dad! He probably doesn't even know that we're under
attack."

Wyatt
didn't hesitate, turning back towards me, but Carson grabbed his
shoulder.

"We
can't risk it. I'll send Grayson to get him, but you're too important
to be running around like this. If Puppeteer has sent a couple dozen
werewolves they'll kill almost everyone here before Alec even gets
his people organized."

For
all that I'd been thinking just a moment before that an attack was
impossible, there was something about Carson's statement that rang
true. He was right; anyone not at the garage by the time the attack
got here was probably going to die.

For
a split second I almost started back down the hall towards them.
Andrew was my father, but he was also the next best thing to a
stranger. A few months of awkward conversations wasn't enough to
create a real family bond and I was the most scared I'd been since
the last werewolf fight I'd been in.

The
fear was incredibly real, it had me shaking, but I set all of that
aside and shook my head. "I'm not leaving it to Grayson, who
knows if he's even as close as we are to my dad's room. I'm going."

As
I turned and headed the other direction, I saw Wyatt remove Carson's
hand from his shoulder and start towards me.

The
house was a complete zoo. People I barely knew were running
everywhere, some trying to get to the garage, some trying to make
sure a loved one was safe. We were still thirty seconds away from
Andrew's room when I heard the first few werewolves enter the house.
Between the sound of walls buckling and the screams from people who
hadn't made it far enough away in time, it was impossible to miss the
arrival of the creatures that'd been sent to kill us.

This
wing of the house had a series of large open rooms that each of the
bedrooms opened off of. Andrew met us just outside his room in the
open area where he and I had spent so many hours over the last few
months trying to get reacquainted. His face was white and I suddenly
realized that he was more worried about me than he was himself. I got
only a glimpse of his expression before the lights went out, plunging
the entire room into darkness.