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  Big Brother,

  2425. Lose everyone else and lie to Jas. If you go help her then everything is lost and we'll never see each other again.

  Rach

  My heart skipped a beat, but Dom spoke before I could manage to say anything. "How did Rachel know we were going to be here at this exact time?"

  "My little sister is full of surprises these days."

  Alec still looked exhausted, but his speech was a little better and he looked like he could have almost stood on his own—he didn't look enough better though for me to wave off either of the guys currently supporting him by his arms.

  "I thought you didn't believe my hypothesis that Rachel could see into the future."

  "I think you're right about the fact that she's seeing time in a different way than the rest of us do. I just wish we could sit her down with Mallory so we could get a definite idea of what's going on. I'm not sure her gift—if she really has one—is the kind of thing I would trust to take care of her out in the world all by herself."

  "But you trusted her and her gift enough to wave us all off."

  "Yeah, enough to lie to Jasmin when she called just now too."

  "How is Jasmin?"

  Alec looked up at me with tortured eyes. "It's not good, Adri. She's got the answer to everything we need. She says that she knows where the Coun'hij is based and she's going in there tonight, with or without me."

  It was an impossible choice, and I was simultaneously glad that Alec was back so that I didn't have to make it, and sorry that he had to carry such a burden. Help the friend who was depending on you to save her or believe your possibly crazy younger sister who had so far shown a remarkable penchant for predicting the future.

  A buzz from Alec's pocket saved me from having to say anything. Alec made a weak attempt to get at his burner phone, but I knew he was going to struggle, so I reached into his pocket and grabbed it. The caller ID was flashing the number of Donovan's current burner phone.

  "Hello?"

  "Mistress, you all need to get back here as soon as possible. Our IT resources have gotten a number of hits on the facial recognition algorithms. The Coun'hij already has at least two kill teams in the city."

  "We're on our way."

  I hung up and shoved the burner phone in my back pocket and then I reached down and grabbed Alec's phone off of the floor.

  "Get moving everyone. We could have company at any moment!"

  I powered Alec's phone down as the other four collapsed in around Alec and half carried him towards the escalators. We made better time than I expected us to; we were even almost fast enough. We made it to the elevators down to the parking garage without any problems other than the fact that Alec seemed weaker and weaker with each step.

  Whatever second wind he'd found about the time our bodyguards had first arrived back at the window to prop him up vanished after just a few steps and it seemed to be all he could do to keep his eyes open.

  I was the first one off of the elevator when the doors opened, which meant that I was the first one to run into the Coun'hij kill team. The lead enforcer did a partial shift on his right arm without even breaking stride and then slashed towards my neck with a kind of lazy power that told me he knew exactly who I was and that there was no possible way a human could avoid even a half-hearted blow from him.

  I should have died in that instant, but I was even less of a normal human than I'd been just a few days ago. I threw myself backwards with everything I had and was once again forced to watch five deadly claws arc towards my unprotected neck in slow motion.

  The blow came so close to ripping my throat out that I felt the air pushed on ahead of the enforcer's claws tickle my bare skin, but I managed to get out of the way of the first attack. I could hear movement behind me as the others carried Alec out of the elevator, but I knew they weren't going to be able to save me—they were too far back there and the enforcer was serious about killing me now.

  The second attack was a backfist that was moving fast enough that I knew the impact from the oversized arm would snap my neck, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. I was already moving backwards as fast as I could, off balance and falling.

  "Adri!"

  Alec's yell sounded only a split second before his ability kicked in. Between one instant and the next the enforcer's arm shrank back down to its normal size and went whistling past my head. The enemy operative dropped to the ground a second later and I realized for the first time that there were three more big, tattooed men behind him.

  Apparently this batch had been fully briefed about what they were going to be up against. Rather than charging forward or staying clustered together like I'd seen their kind do in the past, all three of them pulled out handguns and they were moving with a speed that I wouldn't even have been able to follow without the augmented time sense I'd acquired during the fight with Dream Stealer.

  The barrel of the closest enforcer came up, still moving at something that felt very close to normal speed, and then suddenly I felt the reassuring presence of someone big and muscular just behind me. The barrel of the gun suddenly started dropping as quickly as it had been rising a second before.

  Alec stepped around me as I heard the sound of someone hitting the enforcer who had tried to take my head off. The last two guns hit the ground and I suddenly felt like I was standing in the eye of a hurricane.

  All three of the enforcers in front of us tried to shift forms at the same time. I felt the characteristic flare of power from all three of them, but this time it was over before it even had a chance to get started. Their bodies flickered and then returned to human form now bereft of their tattoos and piercings. Through it all I could feel a metaphysical vortex of power circling Alec and me.

  "I thought it took everything you had to force Jaclyn back into her human form."

  "It did."

  "How have you gotten so much stronger in such a short time?"

  Alec looked back at me, confident that his ability would keep the enforcers down and immobile. "I don't know—I'm not even really sure that I have. The black hole on the other side of the conduit seems to be stronger than it was before."

  "Weren't you worried at one point that it was going to fill up and your power would become useless?"

  It was the kind of thing I probably shouldn't be talking about around Dom and James, let alone our new bodyguards, but I was in such a state of shock that I couldn't help myself. Alec didn't seem to mind though.

  "Yes, I was. That doesn't seem like it's going to be a problem though."

  "That's good then, right?"

  "I'm not sure. I want to say yes, but I honestly don't know. I suppose it all depends on where all of the energy I drain away actually goes."

  Alec stepped forward and ended the life of the closest enforcer with a single, surgical strike from his newly-transformed hand. It was like watching a completely different person. A few seconds before this, Alec had looked like he was on death's doorstep. It didn't seem possible for him to now be all but running across the parking garage to kill the last two enforcers.

  "Alec, how are you doing this? You should be exhausted."

  "I am exhausted. I can feel it pulling at my every movement, but right now there is something stronger that is keeping me awake and alert through sheer force. I've pushed myself too far—I can see that now. It was for a good cause, but it was still a risk I shouldn't have taken. My beast should have taken control by now and created nine different kinds of havoc. Only he's been so weak lately that at times I've started to worry that he had somehow disappeared."

  "I didn't think that was even possible. I thought your beasts were a part of you, I thought that once they awoke during your first transformation that they couldn't leave."

  "I don't think they can, not really."

  "But you just said…"

  The next enforcer was dead now and Alec started towards the last one. "I know; I said I was worried that he had disappeared, but I'm not worried about that now.
He's back, he's what's keeping me awake right now, but everything feels wrong. My beast shouldn't be so subservient. I'm worried that something is changing him, which means that there is some external force that is changing me."

  Chapter 15

  Adriana Paige

  Downtown

  St. Louis, Missouri

  Our trip back to meet up with the rest of the convoy took longer than the trip out to the mall because Dominic was in full paranoia mode, but I couldn't bring myself to complain. As worried as I was about Alec, it was vital that we make sure a Coun'hij kill squad didn't follow us back to the convoy.

  After fifteen minutes of driving Dominic finally gave us the go-ahead to send Donovan a text letting him know what had happened.

  Alec pulled out a fresh burner phone and typed in a message while I watched.

  Incident at the mall—needs virtual cleanup. Go ahead and get everyone on the road, we'll meet you at the first location.

  We made the rest of the trip without saying anything else despite the fact that there were about a million questions I wanted to ask Alec. All of the things we needed to talk about were the kinds of things that we couldn't risk getting out to the rest of our people.

  It was hard, but I kept my questions to myself and just held onto Alec's hand like it was the only thing stopping me from drowning. Actually, in a way it was.

  Alec didn't seem to be fading as fast this time around, but I could still see signs of exhaustion in the way he stared off into the distance for such long periods of time. It reminded me of the time I'd stayed up for thirty-six hours straight. I'd been prone to losing track of what I'd been doing and had ended up just sitting there with my mind wandering aimlessly for minutes at a time.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I finally saw our RV, sporting three new aerodynamic antennae on its top, parked in a rest stop an hour outside of St Louis. Donovan met us at the door to the RV.

  "Our IT assets are confident that they've managed to delete all of the video feeds for the mall during the time that the six of you were there. The local police were alerted to the bodies—probably by the other kill team—within a couple of minutes of your departure from the parking garage, but so far don't seem to have any significant leads."

  Alec nodded tiredly. "Thank you, Donovan, that at least is a relief. What's the status of the hunt for new communications equipment?"

  "Frankly, the technical aspects of what I'm being told are still somewhat beyond me, but when I escalated the issue of the communications suite being damaged to the wider group, one of the hackers indicated that he would be able to write a program that would let a more conventional set of hardware accomplish most of the functionality we enjoyed with the specialized hardware."

  "What is entailed in 'most' of the functionality?"

  "We'll be able to scramble our location for incoming calls, but not for outgoing ones."

  Alec sighed. "That's not ideal, but it's better than nothing. It will take some doing to set up a call schedule so that we get regular incoming calls, but it's doable."

  "Indeed, Master Alec. It will also make us less nimble when responding to unexpected events, but I should have pushed for something like this days ago."

  Alec gently patted Donovan on the shoulder. "Don't beat yourself up about it, Donovan. This solution isn't going to be as bulletproof as you're being told it is. Software solutions are never as reliable as hardware solutions. Besides, there was an element of risk in pushing the issue like this. I rather expect that we're going to see a decrease in the responsiveness of our hacker who specializes in communications hardware. Hackers tend to be difficult to work with at the best of times and he'll be feeling like we crashed his party. Hopefully we can salvage the relationship enough to get him to write the revised drivers when we've managed to get our hands on a proper set of hardware."

  Addison was driving again and she got the RV moving forward at the precise time that Alec turned towards his bedroom. Under normal circumstances I would have expected Alec to seamlessly compensate for the change, but this time he actually tripped and fell, and he didn't just get right back up, it took the combined efforts of Donovan and I to get him back up to his knees.

  "We don't have very much longer. I've been awake for too long. Can the two of you please help me back to the bedroom so we can review the last few things I have to tell you?"

  Once we made it back to the bedroom Alec motioned towards the white noise generator. "Adri, can you please turn that on."

  "There's no need. Get some sleep. None of this is so critical that it can't wait until you've had a chance to catch up on your rest."

  "Donovan, please turn it on, there are things I need to say that shouldn't be overheard."

  Donovan looked back and forth between Alec and me for nearly a full second before stepping around me and turning on the privacy generator. Once it was on, Alec turned back to me.

  "I'm afraid this stuff can't wait, Adri. Today has been a godsend. It gave me a chance to still some of the rumors that were probably starting to circulate even beyond our group and it let me reinforce your position as my heir, but today was nothing more than a temporary reprieve. Once I fall back asleep Dream Stealer is going to pull me back into his realm and this time I won't be coming back unless you manage to find him and kill him out here in the real world."

  I could feel tears starting to pool in the corners of my eyes, but I blinked them away. It had been there the whole time but I'd refused to see it. Even now I was still mostly in denial.

  "That's not true, Alec. We beat him."

  "Beat him, yes, killed him, no. He'll be back for me, I can feel it. I'm sorry I didn't say something earlier, but it seemed cruel. I wanted us to be able to spend today together as much as possible without him hanging over us."

  "I beat him once, I can do it again. I'll go with you and we'll fight him together. This time we'll kill him and you'll never have to worry about him ever again."

  Alec grabbed my hand and pulled me down so I was sitting on the bed next to him. "You don't have good enough control over your ability yet, Adri. You can't guarantee that you'll be able to make it back into my dream, and even if you did, you can't guarantee that you'll be able to time it so that you arrive when I'm fresh and able to help you. We got lucky last time and it still cost you the use of your arm. I don't want you to come back in after me."

  "You won't be able to stop me."

  "It's true, which is why I want you to promise me that you won't try. Go after Dream Stealer in the real world. We can't win these fights by going up against the Coun'hij where they are strong, we need to go after them where they are weak. Jasmin's idea is brilliant. If Jaclyn doesn't get anywhere when it comes to looking for the ghost pack then I want you to put our people to work capturing a vampire mentalist. You'll have to find one who's strong enough to get the job done, but not so strong that we can't keep him imprisoned."

  Donovan hadn't heard the summary of Alec's call with Jasmin yet; he looked positively poleaxed. "Master Alec, that's brilliant. Why didn't she say something before now? Once we have a mentalist under our control then all we'll need to do is capture one of the enforcers and use the mentalist to pull the location of the Coun'hij's headquarters out of them."

  "Jasmin has already done it. She tracked them to a state park in Tennessee, but she plain and simply doesn't have enough backup to get the job done."

  I blinked in shock. Alec hadn't revealed that particular detail earlier. Donovan was so astonished that it took him several seconds to find the right words.

  "Master Alec, why are we not headed to Tennessee right now to aid her? This is our chance to end the war once and for all."

  "Because Rachel told me not to."

  "You talked to Mistress Rachel?"

  "Not exactly, more like she sent me a message telling me that I couldn't get involved in Jasmin's offensive."

  Donovan appeared to be choosing his next words carefully. "It must have been difficult to let Jasmin head into tha
t kind of situation on nothing more than faith in Rachel's apparent ability to see the future."

  "Yes. Especially because it is almost certain that Jasmin's attack will result in the Coun'hij relocating. When we are ready to attack we're going to be faced with tracking the Coun'hij down again before we can actually strike. It was a hard decision, Donovan, but I'm confident that I made the right one."

  "As you say, Master Alec."

  "No." My voice came out oddly detached considering the raging torrent of emotions trying to break free of my tenuous mental control. "No, that's not okay. We need to go right now and help Jasmin. I'm willing to take a lot on faith where Rachel is concerned, but you are not going to throw away what may be our only chance at killing Dream Stealer. I'm going to tell Addison to make for Tennessee."

  Alec grabbed hold of my hand with a gentle, but still unyielding strength. "We can't do that, Adri. I'm already on my last legs. By the time we arrive in Tennessee I'll be long gone. That means you would be going up against the might of the Coun'hij with nothing more than a few dozen wolves and hybrids. You can't win, not against those odds. I started out lying to Jasmin and refusing to help her because of Rach's message, but by the end I'd realized that it really was the only way forward."

  I cast about for a counter-argument—I wasn't going to give up without a fight, not this time. "Use your ability. It propped you up earlier in the parking garage. Use it on some of our people and you can keep yourself awake until we arrive in Tennessee. That way when we go up against the Coun'hij we'll have you at our backs. It's the perfect answer."

  "We don't know that the use of my gift was what gave me a second wind. It's entirely possible that it was nothing more than the result of my being positive for a second that you were going to die. I've never felt that much adrenaline hit my system at once."

  "That's crap and you know it, Alec. I saw the same thing happen before then when you used your power on our people back at the music festival. Really it shouldn't have taken me this long to put the pieces together, but now that I've had a chance to think about things it couldn't be more obvious."