Torn (36 page)

It was an insult to
everything my family had ever stood for, and the chains with which
I'd leashed my beast nearly weren't equal to the task of maintaining
my composure. He looked at me with eyes that had finally began to
show the depravity lurking in what remained of his soul and shook his
head at me.

"While I
appreciate the sentiment, it really is far too late to secure
absolution by bringing me the girl."

I'd only thought his
earlier gestures had tested my willpower. The thought of turning
Adri over to him sparked a fire inside me that consumed the bindings
I'd spent years erecting. Where before my beast had strained at my
will, nearly tearing free, now there was simply nothing left between
my two selves.

Had it been necessary
to override the instincts that were so often anachronistic and
dangerous in the modern world, I would have utterly failed, but there
was no such necessity. Animal and man were utterly unified in
protecting the one thing we both valued at or above anything else.

A ripple of movement
passed through both packs as Brandon's beast called forth a cyclone
of power and there was no answering surge from me despite the obvious
rage coursing through my system. It was a cause for worry.

Brandon had long been
more powerful than me, but a failure to respond, especially coming
after a similar lack earlier, only tilted the balance further in his
favor. Both packs were wondering how I could have even a chance of
succeeding if I didn't have the native savagery of my beast
supporting me.

"Adri is here
solely in the capacity of witness."

He was grinning now at
my perceived lack of power. I mirrored his actions of just a second
before, stepping closer as his pack growled at me.

"Ah, and here
I'd thought you'd once again settled on a course of appeasement."

"No. We've come
for one purpose and one only. No more murdered hikers, no more
convenient accidents. This ends tonight."

Brandon's clap played
to the observers from both packs, but it was a hollow gesture. He
wasn't going to sway anyone tonight. Both sides were far too
entrenched in their positions to change now.

"Always
observing the old forms aren't you, Alec. Well now it's time for a
whole new batch."

His hybrid form
exploded out from the center of his being even as he finished
speaking. He was moving towards me in a further rush of power while
most everyone else was still trying to process the fact he'd shifted.

It was an impressive
display but ultimately nothing more than posturing. He'd started too
far away from me to have any hope of true surprise. I let my own
form shift into something that had a prayer of standing against him
and charged towards him.

I heard a slight gasp
from Adri and then my full attention was on Brandon. He was fast.
It was almost more than I could do to block his attacks. Each blow
landed with the force of a freight train, and my limbs smarted
despite the unnatural vitality coursing through my system.

I was the strongest
I'd ever been. The strength training regime had yielded unexpectedly
large gains, but simple flesh and bone could never hope to match
Brandon's gift.

I reeled away from the
first exchange with blood showing on a number of places. Brandon was
the ultimate bruiser, using his superior size and strength to hammer
away at me like a tireless golem.

A quick faint lured
his leading hand out of position and I raked my claws up his arm but
took a slash to my shoulder in return. He moved out of the way
before I could capitalize and turn the opening into a clinch that
would allow me to inflict true damage.

A low, guttural growl
answered my success and suddenly Brandon was driving me before him.
I reeled away from blow after blow, only just avoiding giving him the
opening he'd need to finish the fight instantly.

Heat lightning lit up
the area, and I used the momentary spots it left in his eyes to
savage his side as I dodged past him back towards the center of the
cleared area.

The fight had already
lasted longer than I'd expected. Most deadly violence wasn't the
endless sparing enacted in movies. He was satisfied to bleed me out
for now, but eventually I'd make a mistake and then it'd be up to the
pack to get Adri out.

The flares were dying
down. The change was almost imperceptible but seemed to march in
time to the increase in tempo Brandon was driving.

I saw my opportunity
as Brandon let one of his blindingly-quick slashes travel too far. I
charged him with all of the momentum of several hundred pounds of
bone and muscle. In a flash I was inside his right arm, and I
managed to grab his left and immobilize it as I slammed into him.

Both feet were already
clawing at his legs, tearing into them as I tried to immobilize his
free hand so it couldn't cut at me. I'd executed the technique
perfectly. It should have born him to the ground, I'd used it on
both Isaac and James in the past, but Brandon absorbed the impact and
freed his left hand after less than a second of struggle.

I found myself flying
through the air, propelled by one hand that sliced all the way down
to my ribs as I sailed away. By all rights he could have gone for a
clench and ended it there, but I'd had superior positioning with my
feet and the win would have left him immobilized while my pack fled.

Those thoughts flickered
across my mind in the fraction of a second my flight lasted, but they
were an insubstantial wraith in the face of what happened next. The
ground reached up and slammed into me with bone-crushing force that
sent bloody droplets flying as Adri screamed.

Something inside me
tore, and then suddenly the entire world seemed to be trying to force
itself inside the void that'd opened up in my being. The amount of
pain was incredible, and I opened my mouth to scream, but the
metaphysical wind crashing into me drowned out any sound.

My beast screamed his
own defiance at what was happening, but all our rage couldn't stop
anything. The wild, bestial power of each of the shape shifters in
the clearing had somehow become focused on me and the hole inside me
gobbled the energy up, channeling it and sending it elsewhere a split
second before it would have consumed me.

Even over the pain I
could feel the different signatures of each of the moon born, and for
the first time I realized how unique each of them felt. I felt the
barest taste of Adri, the power willingly offering itself before
James' energy moved to the fore of the torrent. There was a wariness
there, but it was nothing compared to the hatred that flowed in from
Vincent.

Channeling the power
from my pack mates was relatively easy, it was the others that caused
me to burn up my own strength in ensuring their hatred didn't
consume me. Each pain-etched second seemed to stretch out into infinity
as I waged a war on the unseen plane.

I should have been
worried that Brandon would kill me while I was incapacitated, but I
could feel him, somehow I knew he'd collapsed to the ground only just
after I'd stopped rolling.

They were all arrayed
motionless around me, and a detached portion of my mind spent an
eternity contemplating the scene. I was drinking down a painful
collage of each of them. Each was familiar and yet new at the same
time. I was surprised to find the depth of Jasmin's feelings, the
range of James' suffering over his torn loyalties, and the utter
profundity of Isaac's calm control.

The need inside me was
far too powerful to ever be satisfied, but with an abruptness that
was all the more amazing in contrast to the frozen eternity of my
pain, suddenly there was nothing left to feed it.

Left with nothing else
to draw inside me, the splintered pieces of my soul snapped back into
place over the lack.

I didn't want to move,
feared in fact that I wasn't capable of motion. It seemed impossible
that what I'd just been through could have left anything but a
charred wreck in place of my body, but I felt compelled to do
something. In the sudden silence I could hear the heartbeats of all those
gathered around me, and there was something subtly wrong with one of
them, a pulse that was oddly more important to me than even the pain
I would doubtless endure on its behalf.

I opened my eyes, took
in the last of the harsh light of the flares, and was surprised to
find that I could still see.

I was too weak to
stand, but I began crawling. Movement hurt nearly as bad as I'd
feared, but I couldn't remain still. The acrid tang of the flares
permeated everything, but under that cacophony was a sickly melody of
blood. Mostly mine although Brandon's was nearly as pervasive, but
neither of those was what compelled me to move.

I could have happily
stayed in one spot and bled to death, but the smell of Adri's blood
was as unmistakable as it was alarming, and my whole world narrowed
down to the pale, only barely breathing, mound.

More than once I'd
thought we were going to lose Adri, but as impossible as it seemed,
we all survived.

I'd planned on
bypassing Brandon, utterly focused on getting Adri's bleeding
stopped, but as I'd neared him he'd began moving again, and my beast
had suddenly roared back to life. We still shared a common purpose,
but once again we had different priorities when it came to carrying
that purpose out.

The thought of Adri
bleeding out while I was busy ensuring Brandon never threatened her
again, should have compelled me to leave him until after I'd tended
to her, but in this my beast refused to be tamed. I struggled to
bring my limbs back under my control, but the efforts bounced off a
will that at least for that moment was stronger than even my need to
save Adri.

Only after Brandon was
finally still, was I able to tear my clumsy limbs away from what was
left of him and totter the rest of the way to Adri.

My discarded shirt
served as a barely adequate pressure bandage, and I'd packed it into
her wound as I prayed that we'd be able to get her to safety.

Brandon's wolves had
streamed away in ones and twos as soon as they were able to move, and
I'd ordered Isaac and James not to give pursuit when they'd finally
been capable of standing and fighting.

We had them
outnumbered, but saving Adri was the first priority and there was
nothing to stop Vincent from reassembling them and swinging back to
kill us in detail if we split up. Even days later I remained
convinced he would've pressed the attack when he regained
consciousness if not for the fact that most of his fellows had
already disappeared into the darkness.

Adri's makeshift
bandage had been completely soaked through by the time we made it
back to the cars. Jasmin had piled into the back seat where she
could keep pressure on the wound. Isaac threw me his spare key as I
tore around the side of the Hummer and then we were off in a spray of
gravel.

I flogged the powerful
engine the entire way back and pushed the tires to the very limit of
their capabilities as I threw the massive vehicle around turns at
speeds that would have made Adri shriek if she'd been aware of her
surroundings.

Donovan was waiting
for us at the house, already scrubbed and ready with a blood
transfusion prepped.

Dom scrubbed and then
pushed me out of the way so she could help our resident doctor stitch
Adri up. I paced anxiously around the operating room until Donovan
finally ordered Isaac and James to move me somewhere else.

It was a dangerous
move considering just how frayed my control was, but apparently both
parts of me realized that distracting Donovan would just result in
Adri bleeding to death. A half hour after I was ushered outside to
the garden, Dom came out and reassured me that Adri would be ok.

"The branch she
fell on just barely nicked one of the veins near her kidney. She wasn't
bleeding that fast, but in the time it took us to get back she lost a
lot of blood."

I thanked Dom for the
update, and then feigned enough composure to convince her to leave,
but I didn't truly calm down until Adri was safely resting on my bed.

Isaac, James and
Jasmin started asking for permission to go out hunting the remnants
of Brandon's pack almost as soon as it was confirmed that Adri was
going to survive. I finally agreed provided that they took Jess
and Dom with them.

Under normal
circumstances it would've been foolish to leave the house so
uncovered. It would be all too easy for Vincent to circle around
with a couple of wolves and kill our dependents while everyone but me
was away, but faced with my newly-awakened power, nobody seemed to
doubt but that I could lay out an entire pack all by myself.

The others weren't any
more sure of what it was I could do than I was, but it'd sufficed to
bring Brandon and the others down, and the dominants were anxious to
do something to ensure that we wouldn't continue to have to worry
about attacks.

It was a relief when
they all finally left and let me turn my attention back to Adri. I
was careful not to touch her, but I stayed by her bedside for nearly
the entire twenty-four hours it took her to regain consciousness.

I'd erred drastically
by allowing the Ja'tell bond to deepen as much as it had. I'd given
up fighting my selfish desires because I'd been so convinced I was
going to die, but maybe it wasn't too late to reverse the damage.
Maybe long months from now she'd make up her mind to be with me of
her own free will. Maybe she wouldn't. It wouldn't be the first
time that someone thought themselves in love while exposed to extreme
danger, and it wasn't likely to be the last.

The thought of her
turning away from me, of her choosing another was nearly more than I
could stand, but my course was fixed. Whatever she decided where I
was concerned, I knew I loved her. No matter how bad things might
get, the thought of sending her away would never cross my mind again.