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  My throat tried to close up from emotion, but I forced myself to speak.

  "I'm glad that everyone knows what Kaleb and Brandon tried to do; maybe it will help the cause if people know that Kaleb was willing to trade away his own daughter."

  We sat there in silence until I realized that I hadn't answered Shawn's question. "Yeah, Rachel is okay. I'll tell her that Mom might be the source of the rumors; that will make her feel a little better."

  "But not you?"

  "I just don't know. I'm not sure you can come back from what my mother has done."

  I could practically see the wheels turning inside of Shawn's head. He debated for nearly a minute before pulling out a business card that was blank other than a single phone number on it.

  "This is my number, or it will be again in a day or two once I get a new phone."

  Shawn pulled out a pen and scribbled another number on the other side of the card.

  "This number is one that I think you should call. I can't guarantee anything for myself, let alone for this guy, but call him and tell him that I said the two of you should talk."

  I accepted the card. It was more than I'd been afraid I might get, but it still wasn't what I was after.

  "What is it going to take for you to roll the dice, Shawn? I know there's a risk, but you have to see that Kaleb and the rest are bad news. If nothing else, then what happened with Rachel should be plenty of proof."

  Shawn clapped me on the shoulder as he stood to leave the booth. "Have you manifested a power yet, Alec? People have been talking about your potential ever since you were born, but the rumors have shifted into high gear since you cut ties with dear old Dad."

  "If I told you it had, would that be enough to convince you to join me?"

  "That would all depend on what form your ability takes, Alec. It's going to have to be something really game-changing if you want to have some kind of bloodless revolution."

  Shawn walked away without looking back at me. I stuffed the card he'd given me into my pocket and tried to keep my beast from acting up. It always came down to the same question. Everybody out there was sitting on the sidelines waiting to see what kind of power I was going to manifest.

  The Chicago pack was the big unclaimed marker, but in some ways they didn't matter as much as I did. I'd already picked a side. Now I just needed to manifest an ability the likes of which had never been seen before. Mallory had been convinced for years that it would eventually happen, but I wasn't so sure. If I was going to manifest something it should have happened by now.

  James, Jess and Jasmin were all looking pretty beat up, but they were all mobile. They followed me over to Brindi, who looked like she was losing her fight with death.

  The medic looked up as I approached and grunted at me. "She touched you before she was injured?"

  "Yeah, a couple of times. She caught me by surprise and then there wasn't anything I could do to stop her during the middle of the fight."

  The medic reached up and pulled me down to my knees so that he could move my hand over to Brindi's shoulder. The transformation was almost magical. Her color improved immediately and her breathing strengthened as soon as our skin touched.

  Jess gasped, but I was too busy trying to wrap my mind around the ramifications to look back and reassure her. The medic packed up his gear with a couple of sure, quick motions and then stood to leave.

  "You're going to need to keep in contact with her for a few days if you want her to survive. She's addicted."

  The Ja'tell bond. After everything I'd seen Kaleb put my mother through, I'd sworn I would never addict anyone. In the end, it happened without me even realizing it.

  Chapter 14

  Adriana Paige

  Marauder's Gas Station

  Central Wyoming

  Taggart's color had finally improved and one of his lucid moments had finally coincided with my break from the store.

  "What's our situation, Adri?"

  "Not really that different than when you lapsed into your healing coma. I've kept the store open during the daylight hours for the most part. I scouted the bunker from one end to the other and cleaned up some of the worst of the destruction and dead bodies. We're currently in the penthouse suite which has the benefit of working lights, running water and no corpses."

  "Were you able to make contact with Alec Graves?"

  "No, I tried a couple of times. You've been out for the better part of four days, but I didn't have any luck so I decided to try something else. When I was back in Minnesota I ran into a girl who tried to warn me away from Jackson. Looking back in hindsight, I was pretty sure she was a shape shifter so I decided to reach out to her and see if she could corroborate your stories about the Coun'hij."

  "Did she?"

  "Yeah, for the most part she did. She made it pretty clear that there were more shades of gray than I was going to like, but I guess I should have expected that."

  "Does that mean you're fully onboard in the fight against Kaleb and the rest?"

  I shrugged, but I knew I was going to have to give him a better answer than that.

  "I guess I'm mostly onboard. I'm not willing to start assassinating random Coun'hij flunkies, but I'll do whatever I have to do in order to help you save Agony."

  Taggart was obviously still in pain, but he managed a nod. "I'll do my best not to betray the trust that you're placing in me."

  "So what do we do next? Are you even going to be able to move in time to help Agony?"

  "I think so, but I won't know for sure until I've had a chance to check in with some of my contacts. It all depends on what the Coun'hij has planned for him, but I should only need another day or two of rest before we can at least resume travelling."

  "Are you sure? No offense, but you're still looking pretty bad."

  Taggart snorted. "At least you didn't tell me that I always look pretty bad. No, I'll be okay. I'm past the worst part of it. Once I doused Paulo in oil he didn't dare use an open flame against me, but he still cooked my insides a little bit. That all seems to be healed now, so I should bounce back from the rest of this pretty quickly."

  I did a double-take. "How are you even alive? I never would have expected that a vampire could cook your insides without using fire on your outsides."

  "Yeah, they are pretty nasty customers. There's a reason that we don't go after the really old ones unless we've got them outnumbered by a healthy margin, and even then we try to take them by surprise. As for how I'm alive, us shape shifters are a lot tougher than we look."

  I shook my head in astonishment. "All right, so you'll be up and moving around in a day or two; what do we do then?"

  "You're not going to like it, but I'm not sure that there is much else you can do right now. I'm going to be pretty busy trying to pull together the strike force we'll need to rescue Agony. Until that is all squared away, there isn't much I'm going to be able to do as far as training you. I need to pay a visit to Agony too and see what he can tell me about where he was captured and how he thinks they might be planning on transporting him."

  "You're hurt. What if you run into that red hybrid again?"

  "I'll be careful. I've got some contacts I trust a lot more than I trusted Eric."

  "Even so, I'd like to come with you. I can stay invisible and then if things get bad I can surprise them just like I did with Eric."

  Taggart gave me a long look, but I already knew what he was thinking. Taggart could afford to be nice to the girl he'd saved in Minnesota, but the Dream Stealer was another deal altogether. Part of Taggart's effectiveness came from the fact that he was feared. It was possible I was going to see him do something terrible to someone over the next few days as he tried to get the information he needed.

  "Are you sure you're ready for that?"

  I nodded. "We don't have much else in the way of choices right now, not if we're going to save your friend."

  Chapter 15

  Alec Graves

  Roan Mountain State Park

&n
bsp; Tennessee

  The last few days had been difficult and terrifying on several levels. Brindi was still alive, which was a good thing, but that also brought with it a whole different bag of problems that I'd never expected to deal with.

  Kaleb or Brandon would have let her die rather than be virtually chained to her for two days while she recovered enough to be able to sit up in bed and even walk around a little on her own, but that wasn't me. Especially not after she'd saved my life.

  We picked Rachel up from the hotel where we'd left her in Montana, which took basically a full day of driving, and then I called the number that Shawn had left me and told the voice on the other end that I wanted to meet.

  The person on the other end of the line gave me an address and a time two days later that I figured I could just make if we didn't waste any time on our drive. I almost made Rachel stay in Montana, but she begged me to let her come along and, in the end, I agreed to let her come as far as Nebraska.

  We shape shifters don't do well in close quarters for an extended period of time, so I ended up renting another SUV so that we could split up. I spent the entire drive in the very back seat of one of the SUV's with one hand on Brindi at all times. Rachel spent most of the time when she wasn't driving looking back and forth between Brindi and me.

  By the time we hit Nebraska, Brindi was doing well enough that she was awake for as much as a couple of hours at a time, which was astonishing all by itself. Addicting humans wasn't something that good little shape shifters were supposed to do. It happened, but it wasn't usually talked about in polite company, which meant that I didn't know whether Brindi's rapid recovery was normal for a human kept in constant contact with the source of her addiction.

  We dropped Rachel off outside of Omaha and I left her enough cash to make sure that she would be fine even if something happened to the rest of us. At that point, all that was left to do was walk unarmed into a meeting with someone I didn't know who might be planning on trapping me until the Coun'hij could come get me.

  It wasn't the kind of thing designed to make me feel very safe, but I didn't have a lot of options. I needed help. Shawn might still come through for me and show up with a bunch of hybrids and wolves from the Chicago pack, but that was starting to look like a long shot.

  The instructions for the meet had included orders not to bring anyone else, so I left James, Jasmin and Jess in a small town half an hour away from the meeting spot and drove the rest of the way there with just Brindi to keep me company. I would have left her behind as well, for her own safety if for no other reason, but she wasn't up to any kind of prolonged separation from me.

  Even when I left for half an hour to shower she always got listless and her skin took on the pale white of someone who wasn't getting enough oxygen. Given that, there wasn't any option but to bring her along.

  Our path took us up into the Appalachian Mountains and by the time we turned off into the overlook that was our final destination I was glad that I'd rented something with a decent amount of horsepower. I looked around the parking lot, taking in the other three cars present, and then got out of the SUV so that I could walk around and get Brindi's door.

  I got a call a few seconds later.

  "You were supposed to come alone."

  "I did the best I could. She's injured and suffering from a skin addiction. I can't leave her for more than a few minutes without her vitals starting to drop off."

  There was silence for a couple of seconds.

  "You should have told me that when we first talked."

  "I would have if you'd given me half a second to get a word in and if I'd had a chance to think through the fact that I wasn't going to be able to leave her alone. This is a rather recent development. You can call Shawn if you don't believe me, he saw it all happen."

  "Fine, stay where you are."

  The phone went silent before I could ask him how long he was going to be, but that wasn't exactly a surprise, not after the way he'd acted so far. I looked around and then pointed out a bench on the other side of the parking lot.

  "Can you make it that far by yourself or do you need me to carry you?"

  Brindi studied the bench for a second before nodding. "I think I can make it, it will probably do me some good to get a little bit of exercise in."

  Now that she'd shed the club wear and heavy makeup, she looked a lot younger. I was betting that she was closer to my age than I'd originally thought. I should have asked already, but I'd been so busy trying to get the flow of money started out of the Caymans and into the U.S. that we hadn't actually talked much.

  "I'm sorry we haven't had a chance to talk before this, Brindi. I've been neglecting you."

  She didn't look up. Apparently just putting one foot in front of the other was more work than I'd realized, that or she wasn't ready to let me see how she felt.

  "It's okay. I've been sleeping a lot, and you've been busy. I kind of feel like I should resent whatever you're working on, but I don't. It's a pretty odd feeling."

  "Jasmin said you asked her about the skin addiction yesterday while I was in the shower?"

  Brindi nodded. She was starting to breathe hard now, so I stopped and picked her up.

  "Thanks, I guess I'm not up to moving and carrying on a conversation at the same time yet. Yeah, that was the first time that I realized your absence was the reason I felt so crappy."

  "Do you have any questions for me?"

  "So how exactly did this happen?"

  That was the same question I'd been asking myself. I knew the answer, but I couldn't figure out where I could have legitimately taken a different action than I had.

  "My friends and I aren't normal humans, we're shape shifters. I guess you figured that out the night that you were injured though. We give off a kind of constant low-level energy that is intensified when a human touches us.

  "Usually it's not a big deal because for most people it takes quite a bit of exposure before they start craving that contact, but occasionally someone will be more susceptible or the sensation will be paired with some kind of traumatic experience, and addiction will happen much more quickly than normal."

  We reached the bench and I gently set her down and then sat down next to her. She reached for my hand, apparently without any conscious decision on her part. I interlaced our fingers together and tried not to think about how odd it felt to be holding hands with someone I didn't know. I'd spent my entire life never being anything more than friends with anyone and now Brindi and I were essentially a couple.

  "So when I got hurt I also got addicted to you."

  "Yes, once again, I'm really sorry about that. I wouldn't have chosen to have that happen to you, but I appreciate your saving my life. How did you find me in the middle of all of that craziness, especially when it was so dark?"

  Brindi started to shrug and then grimaced as the motion pulled on her stomach wounds. "It's kind of hard to explain. I could feel you out there fighting. Not at first, but once you changed to your hybrid form I could sense you. Everyone else was more…fuzzy…but I could feel them too. I was scared out of my mind, especially when that other guy crashed into the booth next to me, but then all of a sudden that didn't matter. All that mattered was that you were in danger. Is that normal for these kinds of things?"

  I cleared my throat and then shrugged. "Honestly, I'm not sure. I've never had this kind of bond with anyone else before now and most shape shifters don't talk much about skin addiction. It usually puts a lot of strain on both sides of the bond."

  "So now I'm your dirty little secret?"

  The words should have been caustic, but there wasn't any heat behind them. Her tone had every indication of someone simply seeking clarification on their status.

  "No, I'm not going to force you into that kind of an existence, but there are complications. I'm not a very safe person to be around right now. The best thing would be for us to get you healed back up and then help you break the addiction."

  "What if I don't want to
get clean?"

  Once again her voice had the dead, emotionless quality of someone who didn't feel like they had any real input on the decision.

  "Do you?"

  "No, I don't."

  "You don't sound very emphatic about that."

  She looked up at me and for the first time I saw a hint of the fire that must have sustained her through everything else she'd gone through up until now.

  "It's hard to get worked up about something I can't influence, but if you want me to display more emotion I can do that."

  I resisted the impulse to rub my temples. Nobody had done anything overtly aggressive yet, but that didn't mean that we were really safe. I looked away from her, pretending to just be buying myself time to think, but in actuality using it as an excuse to try and unobtrusively scan our surroundings.

  "I don't want you to feel a certain way just because it's what you think I want. Honestly, the thing that would make me the most happy would be if you could distance yourself enough from the addiction to make your own decision."

  "You almost sound like you really mean that."

  "I sound like I mean it because I do mean it. If I was the kind of person who wanted to have some kind of twisted subservient relationship I could have had it anytime in the last three or four years. If you remember, I did everything I could to stop you from touching me."

  She gripped my hand even tighter, like she was worried that I was about to pull away, but there was a mixture of surprise and hope on her face.

  "I've never met someone who wouldn't try to take advantage of an addiction. My suppliers, my competition, even me, we all did everything we could to get people hooked on our product so that we could suck them dry."

  My free hand formed a fist, but I forced myself not to squeeze her hand. If I lost control even a little bit it would be almost impossible not to hurt her.

  "That's not who I am. I've seen the effects of this kind of addiction firsthand. I don't need to take advantage of you."

  "You don't like that I was a drug dealer, do you?"

  "No, I honestly don't like it, but I was willing to pay to get you free of your suppliers before you became addicted to me. I'd like to see you get a fresh start; none of this changes that."