Burned Page 5

  Somewhere along the line I'd jumped out of bed and thrown myself at Taggart, but he caught me and easily immobilized me so that I couldn't hurt him.

  "It's okay to be mad at him, Adri. It's natural to want someone to blame, but it's not his fault. You need to allow yourself to grieve so that you can work past this. You can't stay mad at him forever."

  "No, you were right all along. He's no good. He's a glory hound who only cares about making sure that he's seen as the hero who saved the best hope of the rebellion."

  "He went in after Cindi expecting to die, Adri. He didn't want you to have to pick between her and your parents, so he came up with a plan that was believable enough that you wouldn't question it. His power wasn't working when he set out to 'rescue' Cindi. You know this—or if you don't you should.

  "Alec isn't the villain here, he's the one who saved Cindi. He was ready to sacrifice his life for nothing more than the hope that you would be happy. The real question is how many people would be willing to do that for you, Adri."

  "You just finished telling me the answer to that question. You, Isaac, Dom, Heath, and more than a dozen others."

  "No. Being willing to risk one's life isn't the same thing as going into a fight knowing you will die, Adri. You should know that better than anyone. You were ready to do exactly that for your family. Would you do that for Dom? For Isaac? For me?

  "Alec is going to try to help the Tucson pack simply because it's the right thing to do. The only question is if you're going to let him go into battle by himself. He needs us—needs you. You don't have to be past what happened to your parents, but you need to acknowledge that it wasn't Alec's fault."

  I was shaking, sobs wracking my body, and somewhere along the way Taggart's restraining hold turned to an embrace. As the sobs finally started to die down, I looked down and realized that I had my gun dangling from my right hand.

  Taggart saw my questioning look and wiped away my tears. "You have one of the strongest survival instincts of anyone I know. I didn't know any other way to get through to you."

  "That's a hell of a risk for you to be taking—for both of us."

  "It wasn't loaded, but even if it had been, it would have been a risk I would have been willing to take—for you."

  Chapter 3

  Alec Graves

  The Comfort Motel

  Minneapolis Minnesota

  I knew I was dreaming because Brindi wasn't anywhere to be seen. I'd spent years trying to train myself to be aware of my dreams enough to detect when Dream Stealer—Taggart—paid me a visit, and it had all been useless, but a lack of Brindi's presence instantly alerted me that this couldn't be reality.

  Even as I thought it, I knew that wasn't fair. Kaleb—my father—had warned me that it had taken him more than a decade to learn to instantly recognize his dreams, so it wasn't as though I was surprised at not having mastered that particular discipline yet.

  It was funny really. There had been a period of time where I'd held out hope that Kaleb's training was secretly because he didn't want Dream Stealer to find out that he was working against the Coun'hij. It was by far the less-likely explanation, but somehow my young mind had fixated on that idea rather than just understanding that Kaleb was every bit as bad as my mother had been telling me he was.

  Of course she turned out not to be so amazing herself.

  As far as Brindi went, that wasn't quite fair either. She was around on a nearly constant basis—she'd been waiting for me back at our hotel when I'd finished up with Shawn—but she was genuinely making an effort to work on the skin addiction.

  It wasn't uncommon for her to go eight hours at a time without any physical contact with me, but I'd realized somewhere along the way that whenever she was out of my sight I could feel an invisible timer ticking away in the back of my mind. It counted down the seconds until she needed to see me again.

  It wasn't exactly that I was looking forward to seeing her—although it was nice to have one person in my life who was always glad to see me—it was more like an acknowledgment of the fact that she depended on me. If the clock got too close to zero without her making it back, then I knew I needed to track her down before the shakes settled in and she lost the ability to make it back to me.

  That was actually one of the reasons that I knew Brindi was making an honest effort to distance herself from me. The old Brindi would have never let herself get more than a dozen yards away from me for more than an hour. The new Brindi actually pushed the envelope more than she should have. There had been a couple of times already where she'd stayed out so long that James or one of the girls had been forced to go retrieve her.

  It was frustrating. She was trying so hard now, but the withdrawal symptoms had gotten even worse. Carson didn't have any more experience with the Ja'tell bond than I did, but he agreed that this was unlike anything he'd ever seen before. He'd even floated the theory that the strength of Brindi's addiction had something to do with my being from the royal line.

  I'd been racking my mind ever since in an attempt to remember exactly how bad things had gotten with my mother, but she'd mostly retreated back into her rooms when her symptoms had gotten the worst. Rachel was of the opinion that Mom's addiction hadn't been as bad, but that had just confirmed what I'd already been suspecting. The simple fact was that Brindi hadn't been this bad before I'd manifested my ability.

  Somehow I was doing this to Brindi. I suspected that Brindi had come to the same conclusion, and that was part of why she was trying so hard to get some distance from me, but I hadn't had the courage to ask her yet.

  Not hearing that timer ticking away had been all I needed to know that what I was experiencing couldn't be real. Some part of my subconscious mind knew that Brindi was sleeping on the second bed in my room, that she was safe.

  I looked around at my surroundings and realized that I was back in the gardens that surrounded the estate in Sanctuary. It was just as breathtaking as always, but then again I'd reconstructed this from my memories of home, so it only made sense that it would meet my expectations in every way.

  I inhaled a lungful of the scented air, and briefly considered switching forms. The gardens were an aromatic banquet that could only be appreciated in wolf form, but doing that would mean that the amazing colors of all of the vegetation would be washed out in the cool light that all living organisms gave off in that form.

  It was a familiar conundrum. In the end, I chose to remain in my dominant form and enjoy the gardens on two legs. I ended up being glad of my choice a few seconds later when I heard a whisper of movement behind me and whirled around to find someone who looked like Taggart less than a dozen feet away from me.

  "Hello, Alec."

  "Hello. How do I know if you're really who you appear to be? Our usual encounters don't start out—or end—this amiably."

  That earned me a smile. "I'd tell you that it's very unlikely you'll run into anyone but Adri or me inside the privacy of your dreams, but the truth is that we ran into someone a little while ago who seemed to be able to do at least some of what we could do."

  The thought sent chills skittering up and down my spine. "For centuries you were the only one who could dream walk, and now suddenly there are three of you. That can't be coincidence."

  Taggart—or at least the man who looked like Taggart—shrugged. "I don't know. I would have said the same thing, but at this point I'm hoping very strongly that it is coincidence. The alternative is that Kaleb and the rest have figured out a way to trigger specific abilities in people. If that's the case, we're all screwed anyway."

  I rubbed my eyes. This was a dream, I shouldn't have felt tired, but I did. Then again, it wasn't a physical exhaustion, it was all mental. I was so tired of trying to keep a hundred balls in the air at once. Worrying about what Kaleb and the rest of the Coun'hij were doing was beyond a full-time job.

  Taggart didn't try to get closer, he just stood there with an expression of understanding on his face. It suddenly struck me that the two of
us were much more alike than we'd ever given ourselves credit for being.

  He'd carried the weight of his sins across his shoulders for centuries as he'd dedicated himself to trying to atone for the help he'd provided the Coun'hij back when their evil had been less apparent. That had made him treat the war as though it was him against the world.

  I carried fewer sins along with me, but that was just because my hand had been forced at an earlier point than his had been. I was alone simply because nobody else could do what I could. Even Jaclyn and Heath were in some ways less powerful than I was. That, combined with the fact that I was the heir to the monarchy, meant that most of my burdens couldn't be carried by anyone else.

  Taggart understood me in ways that nobody else could, which told me exactly the question I should be asking to establish he was really who he said he was.

  "I haven't been able to stop thinking about one thing, Taggart. Tell me about the state of your forces. We're going to need them if we're going to have any shot at winning this war."

  Taggart looked at me for several seconds and then shook his head. "You haven't been thinking non-stop about our forces, and you aren't dying to ask me about Isaac and the rest, you've been wondering about Adri."

  I closed my eyes and nodded. "Apparently you really are who you say you are. How is she doing?"

  "Not good. She's retreated inside of herself in ways that I didn't expect. I knew that it would be hard for her to cope with the loss of her parents, but I didn't foresee this. I…I've wanted to call you a hundred times over the last few weeks."

  "I would have come if you had. I would have dropped everything and driven straight there."

  "I know you would have. I told myself that I wasn't calling because what you were doing was important. The intelligence that is being gathered needs to be analyzed, and you are the only one who has a chance of uniting all of the disparate pieces of the rebellion, but the truth was that I was worried seeing you would break her.

  "I finally forced the issue when I heard that something was going down in Arizona. I knew that you would need both of us at full strength in order to figure out what Kaleb has planned."

  "Was that smart?"

  Taggart shook his head. "Probably not, but I was at my wits' end. I think that she's going to be okay though. She agreed to come here tonight with me, so that's a huge step forward."

  My heart skipped a beat. "She's here now?"

  "No, not yet. She may not even manage to connect with your dreams. She's tried several times in the past without success, but the fact that she was willing is promising."

  I opened my mouth to ask him for more details and then I felt something I'd never felt before. My ability was coming more and more under my conscious control, but it still sometimes operated at a low level without me realizing it.

  It was happening again, but I wouldn't have even noticed it if not for the fact that I could feel odd pinpricks of heat as my ability absorbed energy from somewhere. It probably wasn't the smartest thing to suppress my ability while experiencing something that very well could be some kind of unusual attack, but that never even entered into my mind.

  If there was a chance that I was going to see Adri then I needed to take advantage of the opportunity—regardless of the possible risk. I shut down my ability completely.

  It was like making a fist with an invisible hand that I'd only discovered I had a short time earlier. It seemed like I was getting better and better at locking down the absorption field that I naturally generated, but even now it wasn't something that I could sustain on a constant basis. Eventually my mental fist got tired and relaxed. Usually it wasn't enough to make a difference, but apparently whatever Adri was doing involved such small amounts of energy it was having a hard time surviving even the most minimal drain from my ability.

  As soon as my ability stopped sucking in the ambient energy from my surroundings, I felt something snag on a point about an inch below my bellybutton and half an inch below the surface of the skin. I suddenly felt like a very big fish that had just been hooked by an expert fisherman. I felt a tug on my insides, and the urge to take a step forward was almost overpowering, but I refused to be moved. I dug my heels in as the line between us continued to strengthen, and then suddenly I got an impression of movement. It was as if the fisherman had started reeling in the line, but rather than pulling me towards her she was pulling herself toward me.

  The line between us vibrated more quickly the closer she got—it felt like a guitar string that had been improperly tuned, that was under so much tension it was going to snap at any moment. I turned my head to ask Taggart if this was normal, and almost missed Adri's arrival.

  For the briefest of instants she seemed to exist in three places simultaneously. She was standing in an open field under a purple sky, she was floating in an ocean of pure white light, and she was motionless only inches away from me.

  It happened so quickly that my natural tendency was to dismiss it as nothing more than my brain's attempt to deal with something completely outside my normal frame of reference, but it didn't feel like something I'd never experienced before. That sea of light felt somehow familiar. It felt like a home that I'd only lived in during dreams, a home that somehow surrounded my normal existence.

  Adri went from immobile to falling as time resumed moving again, and I reached up and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  "Are you okay?"

  Even as I asked the question I knew how it sounded. There were layers of meaning behind those words that I wasn't sure I wanted answered. Did she still blame me for the death of her parents?

  "I…yeah, I'll be fine. It's just the transition from one state to another. It's always a little tricky. I handled it worse than normal this time, but I usually manage not to fall all the way to the ground before catching myself."

  She looked down at my hands and I realized for the first time that I hadn't let go of her. I released her shoulders with a pang of loss. There was so much that I wanted to say to her, but none of it was appropriate so soon after her parents' death—especially not with Taggart standing less than a dozen feet away.

  I looked into her eyes hoping for some sign that things would eventually be okay, but there was a guardedness to her that hadn't been there any of the times we'd talked before this.

  "Adri—I'm sorry. I never—"

  "You don't have to say anything, Alec. You saved Cindi, which is so much more than would have happened without you. If you hadn't arrived when you did, everyone who went to Minnesota to help me would have died. Let's just put all of that behind us. Taggart said you have information about some kind of Coun'hij operation that we need to deal with. You and he don't have an unlimited amount of time here—let's get to brass tacks."

  I looked over at Taggart and saw a flicker of something that was gone too quickly for me to be sure, but which looked like disappointment. I just wished that I knew whether he was disappointed in her reaction or disappointed that I hadn't managed to break through her guard.

  "Right. There's not a ton I can tell you yet. One of my contacts told me that the Coun'hij wants to make an example of Jaclyn Annikov. Her pack is small enough that you can pretty much guarantee they will all be somewhere between Tucson and the border at any given moment. That means that they are easy to contain, which is a big plus for Kaleb and the rest. At the same time, Jaclyn is powerful enough that killing her makes a powerful statement."

  Taggart nodded as though contemplating what I'd just said, but I knew he'd already considered all of the angles.

  "It's a risky move. The Coun'hij has tried for the last couple of centuries to maintain an aura of legitimacy. They are brutal when it comes to eliminating enemies, but only after they find a violation of the laws they've created. Jaclyn has proven surprisingly good at not actually doing anything worthy of death despite all of her complaints.

  "Destroying her pack might scare all of the smaller unaligned packs into the Coun'hij's shadow, but it could just as easily force them all
into open rebellion. This isn't the kind of move I would have expected out of Kaleb."

  I shrugged. "You're not wrong. He's usually more subtle than this, but it's possible that they don't feel like they have any other option. We didn't manage to save Agony, but we did soundly trounce a fairly large group of enforcers before being chased off. The Coun'hij may not know everything that happened before Brandon arrived, but they must have realized by now that we brought someone with an ability that they didn't expect."

  "I suppose you're right. It's easy to get caught up with worries over the fact that Grayson isn't a resource we can count on to help us in the future, but the Coun'hij is probably concerned about the fact that Carson's people—and Heath—represent a completely unanticipated threat."

  "Right, and then when you throw in the fact that they haven't been able to track us down since then, they're probably feeling the heat. They don't know that we lost a ton of people in LA. My efforts at diplomacy haven't been bearing any real fruit, but I've been focused on the packs that are already only half a step away from joining the rebellion. Maybe I should have been focused on the independents. If Kaleb and the rest are getting signals that the smaller packs are already considering jumping ship, the Coun'hij may not feel like they have any other choice."

  I'd been very careful not to reference Minnesota again, but Adri flinched slightly when I talked about our losses in LA. It was, after all, only a small jump from losing people to super vampires in one place to losing them to super-vampires in another place.

  For a moment I thought she was going to crack under the memory of her parents being killed, but she pulled herself together with visible effort.

  "Okay, so what next? I take it we can't just call Jaclyn up and tell her to pack her bags?"

  Taggart smiled. "No, I'm afraid things are rarely that simple. It is difficult to stay off of the Coun'hij's radar, but it's even harder falling off in the first place. You and I were never really on it, and Alec had the advantage of leaving while most of his father's assets were focused on the more visible threats, but Jaclyn doesn't have either of those advantages."