Broken: A YA Paranormal Romance Novel (Volume 1 of the Reflections Books) Read online

  Chapter 30

  The cool night air dimpled my skin despite the warmth of Alec's chest. We'd been walking for quite a while before I came fully awake.

  Dominic and Jasmin had shaken me awake, and then helped me out of my dress and into jeans and a white shirt.

  Donovan had been waiting in the hall just outside Alec's room. He'd pressed objects into Dom and Jasmin's hands, and then brushed his lips across the back of my hand. He slipped away, and then we'd entered a brightly-lit room filled with the rest of the pack.

  Alec had picked me up and carried me out to a massive SUV that I'd never seen before. Everyone piled in, and despite the seriousness of rapidly approaching events, I fell back asleep somewhere en route to our destination.

  Apparently you couldn't drive all the way though, because we were walking again, or at least some of us were. I could just make out Isaac off a little ways into the darkness. He was in hybrid form and moving with a ground-devouring gait that was deceptively smooth. Flashes of movement off to either side of us, lower to the ground, made me sure the girls were all following along on four legs.

  Alec shifted me around as he realized I was awake. "We've still got nearly half an hour, you should get some more sleep if you can."

  I tried to argue but couldn't find the strength. A while later the flash of light as James and Isaac lit flares pulled me back awake.

  It took several seconds for my eyes to adjust, and then I started being able to pick out individual shapes in the darkness. Alec set me down as Vincent appeared, a towering, furred figure illuminated by the light of the flares that'd been planted on either side of the cleared space. His dark eyes drank in the light as he surveyed us with his typical boundless arrogance.

  A horde of shifting figures milled about just outside of the twin circles of light. The rest of Brandon's pack and they seemed to have grown in number since the dance.

  Jasmin and Dominic crowded up against me, one on either side, and I let my hands brush against their heads. The feel of their fur, one short and soft, the other long and coarse, anchored me before the surreal strangeness of the scene could carry me away.

  The tingle of shape shifter power was as strong as I'd ever felt it, jumping from multiple sources, arcing around me as it unsuccessfully looked for a place to ground out. For the first time, I was able to accurately pick out the individual signatures that made it up.

  Jess was off to the left, white hot with mixed anger and fear, stabilized only by the cool, controlled pillar of power that was Isaac. Jasmin almost hummed under my fingertips like barely-leashed violence, while my other hand drank from the still pond that was Dominic, her mere presence feeding me comfort.

  I'd just finished identifying the raging beast to the right as James, when Brandon stepped into the light.

  He looked like some kind of pagan god, smeared all over with blood, an uneven circle drawn on his chest, filled with sharp, angry lines that didn't mean anything to me, but which made the wolves around me tense and growl.

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

  His voice had changed, becoming deeper and harsher, with elements that didn't sound like they could come from any human throat. He stepped forward, and I felt my chest seize up. The transformation I'd sensed the beginnings of at the dance had run its course now and any question as to why someone as cultured as Brandon would associate with a near-psychopath like Vincent was put to rest.

  He was shaking now, quivering with the need to kill, and I realized that it didn't matter whether the darkness inside Brandon had created Vincent or just attracted him to orbit in his sphere like a small moon. It was enough to know that Vincent's was the lesser evil.

  "Adri is here solely as a witness."

  Alec's voice was huskier than normal, but still carried most of its velvety perfection. As I looked at him, I realized I wasn't feeling any power arcing from him. Everything centered on him now, but he wasn't adding to the storm. The wolves behind Brandon growled as Alec stepped forward.

  "Ah, and here I'd thought you'd once again settled on a course of appeasement." Brandon's features were hollow, almost skeletal in the harsh chemical light.

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

  Brandon worked more mockery into a simple clap than most of us could carry off with a full cast of supporting actors.

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

  One second Brandon was a human, the next he was a huge monstrosity, a thing that normally dwelt in the bottom, most primitive parts of the mind, venturing out only to star prominently in nightmares.

  The rush of power beat back at our entire pack. If it'd been a physical wind it would've knocked me over. Intangible or not, it still staggered me and only my grip on Jasmin and Dom kept me from dropping to my knees.

  Alec stood motionless for a pair of seconds, and then seemed to explode and melt back into himself. I blinked, and his human body had been replaced with the hybrid form that'd saved my life once before.

  Only this time he wasn't fighting wolves, he was fighting another hybrid, and Brandon towered over him.

  There was another ripple of movement on the other side of the light. Jasmin and Dom both pulled away from me, joining the other three, facing outward in preparation for the inevitable attack.

  Vincent's dark form inched slightly closer, but Brandon's growl froze his henchman in place. The complete stillness that resulted was suddenly shattered by a flash of heat lightning off to the east, and when the spots cleared from my vision, the two hybrids were a blur of motion.

  Merely human eyes never could've hoped to follow all of the action. I got the feeling Alec's technique was superior. He moved from spot to spot, motion to motion with the smooth economy of a tree bending before the wind, but if he was a tree, Brandon was the hurricane.

  Flare-light reflected off of deadly claws, and blood splattered the earth as Brandon drove Alec before him. Gashes appeared on both leaders, wetly glistening in the green light, but they were more numerous on Alec than on Brandon.

  I expected the unseen plane to mirror the fight I was so desperately trying to track with my inferior vision. There should have been titanic clashes of power, ants marching up and down my skin from being far too close to ground zero, but there weren't.

  Brandon's energy beat down on Alec, beat down on all of us, but although I could feel the answering flare of power from the rest of the pack, Alec remained silent, dancing away from the worst bursts of metaphorical death at the same time he dodged Brandon's fangs.

  The flares were almost dead, but there was just enough light for me to see the smaller figure reel away from the larger as a vicious slash sank home in Alec's chest. Time stretched and pulled like taffy, and I had plenty of time to watch Alec fall, to feel splatters of hot liquid even standing so far away.

  A scream ripped itself free from my throat, and it suddenly seemed we really were caught up in a hurricane. As the flares finally died, the pulsing pressure, the pins and needles disappeared as well. Only that wasn't quite the term for it. The power, the energy that'd become more than oppressive, was sucked towards Alec and Brandon, dragging with it my strength, and the unnatural vitality of the rest of the pack.

  I felt a lance of pain sink into my back, mirroring the jolt in my ankle, as all five shape shifters collapsed around me. I knew with a certainty I was going to die, that we were all going to die, but that didn't matter. It was only right that my existence cease within heartbeats of Alec's.