Torn (29 page)

"No. If you're
really worried about it just make sure that one of the others are in
the room at the same time with you."

"Now that has
some real possibilities."

I found myself pulling
her to her feet as the bell rang, and mentally castigated myself for
indulging in physical contact. Dom had promised to meet us at Mrs.
Tiggs class, so we stopped by our lockers and then I escorted Adri to
Spanish. We were halfway there when Brandon and Vincent sauntered
into view.

I casually shifted
Adri around so I shielded her, but they split up as they drew nearer.
It was a classic flanking maneuver, but that didn't make it any less
effective. Brandon's arrogant smirk said that he knew exactly how
limited my options were.

Vincent exuded
anticipation, which only increased as Adri's pulse wound up. I held
her up with one hand as we closed the rest of the distance between us
and them. I could feel that she wanted to lag back, wanted to turn
and run even, but the moment we showed that level of fear we'd be
lost.

I angled towards
Vincent as the hall all but emptied of other students. Predictably
Vincent stationed himself exactly in our way. He stuck his hand out
and placed it against my chest to stop our progress. He followed the
contact up with a burst of energy.

"You're in our
way half-breed."

Reference to my mother
was probably an implied threat to what they wanted to do to her once
I was out of the way. It was all I could do to keep my hands from
balling into crushing fists. The course I did pick wasn't the most
prudent, but anger overwhelmed my normal decision making ability.

I let my right hand
manifest a half-hybrid shape that was achievable by only a few shape
shifters. The long, semi-retractable claws sunk into Vincent's chest
just far enough to draw blood. It was still a calculated risk, but
someone would have to come by in exactly the right spot to be able to
see anything out of the ordinary around Vincent's sizable form.

I joined the physical
threat with an unseen menace, letting a spike of power free itself
from my being. It was nothing in comparison to what Brandon was
capable of, but I didn't have to scare Brandon, and Vincent's
expression indicated he was suddenly remembering just how mortal he
was.

"You forget
yourself, mutt. As the leader of another pack, I'm due more respect
than that. Should you or your dominant wish to push things further,
I guarantee that your heart will decorate the floor before he can
come to your aid."

The calm words carried
just far enough for Brandon to hear them, and he stopped moving as he
began calculating the odds. He could kill me, but if I was really
willing to take Vincent with me then the packs would once again be
evenly matched.

Before Brandon could
make his final decision Dominic came rushing around the corner. She
wasn't Jasmin, but apparently she tilted the balance far enough in
our direction.

I returned Brandon's
lazy grin with a tight smile of my own as I returned my hand to
normal and shoved Vincent back into his alpha.

"Now why would
we do a thing like that when we all know you're a dead man?"

Brandon's smile had
turned into something more threatening, but he wasn't about to act on
the implied threat. Dominic stopped just outside of attack range of
Brandon and gathered herself, but I waved her back.

"If I ever
really decide that the outcome is a forgone conclusion, you'd better
start watching out for your people. You'd be surprised just how many
of them could disappear if I no longer worried about the consequences
of my actions."

**

Everyone greeted my
announcement that the harassment was going to stop with relief, but
they'd taken too much abuse during the course of the day to get very
excited about it. As expected, Jess had taken some of the worst of
it, which meant she was shooting both Adri and I nasty looks the
entire way home.

By the time we finally
pulled up to the house, it was all I could do to keep my shape in
place. Donovan felt the tension arcing between the various members
of the pack and offered to push dinner back, but I told him to
proceed with plans as normal. I turned to leave and then paused and
asked Adri if she'd accompany me out to the garden.

The invitation hadn't
been something I'd been contemplating, but the craving for her
company continued to grow the more time I spent with her. She
followed me out to the northwest corner of the carefully-tended
refuge and took a seat next to one of the reflecting pools.

I'd expected her to
ask what was wrong. That was the usual girl response, but she just
sat quietly for almost thirty minutes until I finally calmed down
enough to put a true leash on my beast.

I looked over at her,
absently toying with a stalk of grass, and felt something inside me
push unplanned words out of my mouth.

"Will you do me
the honor of allowing me to escort you to the Ashure Day
festivities?"

Several minutes passed
before she responded. I was half convinced that she was going to
refuse me when she did finally turn back to me.

"Is this because
of earlier? Because I told you I don't expect you to stay with me?"

I opened my mouth to
respond to her and found a truth I hadn't realized before.

"I've actually
wanted to ask you for quite a while. Hearing that Brandon was taking
you was harder for me to accept than you might imagine. My asking
you now has nothing to do with our conversation from earlier today."

"Why are you
doing it now then? I half expected you to try and send me out of the
country again. An invitation to the local equivalent to Prom was the
last thing on my mind."

"My taking you
to the dance is one of the more selfish things I could be doing. It
represents so much of what I want, but is wrong for you on almost
every level. I guess I've just decided I'm tired of trying to be
good when I have so little time left."

"Why is that
selfish? I imagine that there are more than a few people who'd think
you were being quite charitable taking the new girl to the big dance
when you could have your pick of anyone in the school and half the
females in the state."

She was so focused on
everyone else she couldn't see how amazing she was, but it wouldn't
do any good to try yet again to convince her. More important was
ensuring that she understood what exactly was at stake. I reached
over and took her hand, purposefully exposing her to the addictive
sensation of my touch.

"Can you feel
that? I mean, it feels good doesn't it?"

She looked like she
was going to giggle, but managed to keep a straight face as she
stroked my hand.

"I think it's
supposed to feel good, silly."

"Have you ever
wondered about my mom? I mean why she's the way she is?"

She was obviously
confused; I waited as she looked for a way to respond.

"What do you
mean? I've only met her the one time. She seemed normal enough. I
guess a little distracted..."

I found myself
laughing at her answer. It wasn't a happy sound, but I couldn't help
myself.

"She's
definitely distracted. You could even say utterly disconnected from
the world. Completely free from the present, always living in the
past."

"I don't
understand how any of this ties together."

It seemed utterly
cruel to come right out and say it, but she wasn't leaving me any
other choice.

"It's all the
same thing. Our touch, my touch, it's like a drug. It's addictive,
subtly, so subtly most humans never even realize what is happening to
them. I've seen what it's done to my mother. How can I say I love
you if I turn around and do the same thing to you?"

Apparently I'd finally
managed to break through the distraction of being so close to me.
She looked like she'd been struck. I waited once again for her to
say something, but this time it seemed as though she wasn't going to
find the words she was searching for. I could see the condemnation
and mixed horror growing in her expression as she realized exactly
what'd been done to my mother, what I'd been doing to her.

"We're where the
legends of succubi originated. Irresistible demons who drain their
victims dry, who leave their lovers a hollow shell of what they were
before. Do you understand now? My getting closer to you is the
ultimate form of self-gratification. It's the worst possible thing I
could do to you. If you somehow survive everything that's about to
happen, it would leave you forever hungering for another touch, but
never able to fulfill that desire."

She shook herself as
though awaking from a nap and placed a hand on my lips.

"None of that
matters. All I want is to be with you, and if we're as likely to all
die as you seem to think we are, then the state of my mind after
you're gone is hardly something worth wasting worry on. I accept
your invitation. As much as I hate the very thought of going to any
formal dance, I can think of nothing better than going with you."

"That's the
addiction, the Ja'tell bond talking."

She sighed in regret,
or possibly frustration, as she released me and moved back several
inches.

"There, I'm not
touching you, and I still want to go to the dance with you. Want it
more than anything else."

I knew I should tell
her no, but I'd been willing, wanted even, to go when she hadn't
known. Now that she understood and still wanted to go with me how
could I do otherwise than take her? Only she didn't really
understand, couldn't understand until it was too late.

"This is a
mistake. The worst kind of mistake because we both know it's wrong
and we don't care."

"I don't think
it's a mistake. I don't even think it is wrong."

"But if you did
would you care?"

"Probably not,
but that doesn't change the fact that this is what I want to do."

I should have said no,
but we both knew I wouldn't, that I wasn't strong enough to do the
right thing. I wouldn't have felt as guilty if I'd had a plan to get
her away to safety. Instead all I could think about was just how
little time we had left together.

Rachel found me a
short time after I asked Adri to the dance.

"Did you finally
do it?"

"What are you
talking about?"

She grinned up at me
with a mischievous glimmer in her eyes.

"If you haven't
done it already, you need to get a move on and ask Adri to the
dance."

Rachel laughed at my
shocked expression, waiting as I scrambled for an answer.

"How did you
know I was going to do that?"

"That's easy,
Alec. You needed to ask her. I could see it in a dozen different
ways, but they all boiled down to the fact you couldn't be you and
not go to the dance with her. We need to start making plans
immediately. I bought a dress for her while we were down in Vegas,
but we need a ton of other stuff. Oh my gosh, I forgot to get her
shoes!"

I stopped Rachel
before she could run away in a panic.

"I think I can
take care of the shoes, sis. Just don't say anything to her."

She looked for a
minute like she thought I was coming down with something, but instead
of reaching up to take my temperature she shrugged and skipped away
to find Adri.

Donovan was my next
stop. He wasn't exactly ecstatic about the implications of the
fairly large donation I'd asked him to make to the community
committee tasked with organizing the Ashure Day festivities, but it
hadn't been the amount that'd bothered him.

The family assets had
long since grown past the point where a mere forty-thousand dollars
really meant anything. The sum wouldn't even dent the interest we'd
receive this quarter off the main operating bank account.

The donation wasn't
even entirely out of character. The family had been making donations
to fund the Ashure Day festivities for as long as there'd been a
Sanctuary, but the size was more than enough to tip him off as to
what I'd done.

In the end though
Donovan was loyal to the family, and he'd see that the arrangements
were made. I left him muttering something about ensuring proper
dancing, and then went to find Adri.

The next few days
passed with a blur only matched by the joy of spending so much time
with Adri. Left up to her, we'd have completely skipped school, but
I hadn't entirely resigned myself to causing her death. If she
somehow survived what was coming, I wanted to leave her with
something more than failing grades and bitter memories.

In our down time I
drilled her mercilessly on Biology. Dominic was doing much the same,
although taking a gentler approach, with Spanish. Any time we
weren't studying, or otherwise spending time with each other, I was
with the rest of the pack sparring, or by myself lifting weights.

I searched desperately
for something that might give me an edge in the fight against
Brandon, but in the short amount of time we had left there was
nothing that promised to serve as a true equalizer.

I'd studied with a
number of different martial arts instructors over the years, but most
of them weren't capable of anything more than parroting the exact
things they'd learned from their teachers. I needed someone who
truly understood the underlying principles to fighting, but even that
wouldn't help very much. The joints and reach of a hybrid were just
too alien to the human body and the fighting systems developed for
it. I'd already seen that creating new reflexes optimized for my
human body wouldn't serve me well when in my other forms.

It was part of why
Jasmin was able to mop the floor with anyone else in the pack in a
fight involving our wolf form. She worked exclusively in that form
and was able to react without thinking with exactly the right
response to almost any situation. James, Isaac and I on the other
hand invariably didn't commit strongly enough when on four legs.