Bound (Dark Reflections Volume 1) (8 page)

I caught snatches of the fight around me as I backpedaled to get out of range of his next attack. James was up against a skeletal-looking woman with a huge two-handed sword and a look of intense concentration on her face while Jasmin and Jess were squared off against what looked like a kid our age who was stabbing at them with a pair of short swords.

My guy slashed at me with a complicated double attack that I couldn't follow and only barely managed to knock aside with the back side of my claws, and then someone screamed and I saw one of Jack's wolves burst into flame. She hit the ground and rolled in an effort to put the fire out, but it continued to burn despite her best efforts.

Jack swore and picked his opponent up, spinning once before throwing the struggling man into the vampire who was responsible for the fire.

"Quit screwing around and just commit. You're fighting their kind of fight instead of our kind of fight!"

He was right. Facing off against people who were armed instead of against hybrids or wolves had thrown us all off of our game, but Jasmin was the first to recover. I saw her take advantage of an opening and throw herself at her opponent, jaws finding his throat as Jess grabbed hold of his right arm, slowing it just long enough for Jasmin to plant her legs and start whipping her vampire back and forth.

James was trying to create an opportunity to get in close to the girl he was fighting, but she seemed to be anticipating every move he made. He was already bleeding from half a dozen slashes to his arms and legs, but even more concerning was the spot where she'd stabbed him in the chest. It had obviously missed his heart, but he was clearly outmatched.

My vampire attacked again, burying one of his axes in the muscle of my left arm before spinning away and grabbing another axe from his belt.

I couldn't see enough of the rest of the fight from where I was standing to tell whether or not Jack's people were holding their own, but our little corner wasn't going well. Jasmin was still trying to kill the vampire she had latched onto. He'd dropped one of his swords and Jess had ahold of his arm again to prevent him from stabbing Jasmin with his other weapon, but he was proving remarkably hard to finish off.

It was only a matter of time before Jasmin and Jessica succeeded in killing the vampire they'd been fighting, but there was no telling how much longer James was going to last and that was even assuming that they didn't get wrapped up in a fight with one of the other vampires.

My opponent looked like he was experiencing some of the same kind of frustrations I was feeling. I hadn't succeeded in marking him yet, but it was obvious that he'd expected to beat me already and be on to his second or third opponent. He needed to connect with a blow to my neck or chest if he was going to end our fight quickly and so far all I'd given up was strikes that were only slightly more than flesh wounds.

He attacked again, but this time his hands were slightly out of position. There was a very high likelihood that the opening was something he'd left there on purpose in an effort to draw me out, but I couldn't afford to pass it up, not if I was going to help James and the girls.

I took the opportunity, but I took it the same way that I would have attacked another hybrid. My left hand shot forward claws seeking for his chest, but at the same time I charged forward with all of my considerable weight bearing down on him as my right foot came up so that I could sink talons into his stomach and carry him to the ground.

Against an off-balance hybrid it was a devastating attack. Against a vampire who couldn't weigh much over two hundred and thirty pounds or so, it was practically guaranteed to be successful. It was just a question of how much damage he'd do to me as I killed him.

Only suddenly it wasn't a foregone conclusion like I'd thought it was. My left hand hit
something
a few inches in front of his chest, something hard and unyielding where my eyes were telling me that nothing existed. I'd been leading with my left arm and while bringing my left arm to a complete halt wasn't sufficient to completely arrest my forward momentum, it was definitely enough to slow me down. It felt like the barrier hadn't been intended to stop as much force as I'd generated. Rather than a plate of steel, it now felt like a block of wood. I could feel my claws catch on imperfections in the surface as my talons sank into my opponent's flesh.

He'd set himself and was trying to bring his axes back around to take advantage of the edge that his telekinetic shield had bought him, but the combination of my talons in his belly and the force of me slamming into him, even slower than I'd intended to, was enough to knock him off balance and break his concentration.

As his head slammed into the warehouse's hard concrete floor his shield disintegrated and my claws tore into his chest. Mindful of just how hard of a time Jasmin was having putting her vampire down, I put my other hand through his heart and then rolled back to my feet.

Jasmin and Jess were still working their fallen vampire over, so I sprang at James' opponent. I was coming in from the side and slightly behind her, so there was no way for her to have seen me, but somehow she still started around, almost managing to bring her sword up fast enough to impale me through the heart. I managed to slap the blade aside at the last second, claws screeching against steel, and then I was within arm's length of her.

She blocked my first strike with her hilt in a masterful display of swordsmanship, but James grabbed both of her arms in his claws and a second later she was dead despite all the advantages that her hardy vampire constitution gave her.

In the end the pyromancer vampire started another of Jack's wolves on fire, but Jasmin ripped his throat out before the blaze managed to really get burning hot. I visually checked the vampires over as I walked towards Jack, confirming that none of them were a threat anymore.

"What next?"

Jack looked at me and shook his head. "We need to get the wounded into the vans and start first aid on them. I'll start dousing the vampires in oil and we'll torch them before we go."

"Where is the oil? I'll go grab it."

Jack grabbed my arm, his lethal claws gently stopping me from turning away without breaking the skin.

"You need to get into the van with the rest of the wounded. We don't have much time and I'm not eager to have to carry you there if you pass out and don't shift down to your normal form."

"What do you mean? I'm fine."

Jack pointed at my right side and I looked down to see that my first opponent, although off balance and disoriented, had still managed to sink both of his axes into my side before I killed him. I made it four more steps before my knees started to buckle. I passed out about the same time as I hit the floor.

Alec Graves
Clean and Tidy Chain Hotel
St. Louis, Missouri

The clock said it was eight a.m. when I woke up in what was obviously a modest hotel room, but there was no way to know for sure how many days I'd been out. I pulled my sheets back and gingerly probed the bandages that had been liberally applied to my side. They didn't hurt, which was a good sign, so I stripped back the corner of the biggest bandage back to verify that the flesh underneath had knit back together.

The wounds had scarred over already and were starting to trade in the pink of recent scars for the white of old scars. Given that Kaleb had wanted us down at the border less than twenty-four hours after we arrived in St. Louis, that was bad news. Normally I'd have said that it would take roughly twenty-four hours to swing that much healing, but that didn't match up with it being morning rather than evening.

The only answer was that I'd been more injured than I'd realized and I'd been down for at least thirty-six hours. I'd heard plenty of the older members of the pack quietly complaining that Kaleb's troop deployments never seemed to include any leeway for injured people, so I already knew that he'd be pissed that we'd missed our scheduled flight down to Arizona.

There wasn't much to do but go find someone and figure out just how much trouble we were in. I pulled some clothes on, grabbed my phone, and walked out into the hall. Our rapid healing was sure nice when it came to getting us back up and mobile after a fight, but it tended to leave muscles sore and subject to cramps, so I gingerly stretched my arms and torso as I walked.

The hotel was a single-story, sprawling structure that was kept clean enough that I was having a hard time picking up scent trails from any of the other shape shifters, so I walked to the front desk and tapped the girl manning it on the shoulder.

She turned around and I nearly gasped in surprise. I'd spent so many weeks and months wondering about the girl from my dreams and here she was. I was at such a loss for words that the silence stretched out into something uncomfortable.

"Can I help you?"

It was like I'd been punched in the gut. The voice wasn't right. It was silly, I couldn't remember my dream girl ever having spoken, but the voice I'd just heard didn't belong to the person I was looking for. That realization caused the rest of the illusion to unravel. This girl looked very much like my blonde, but there were differences. The eyes weren't quite the right shade of blue and her lips were slightly too full.

"Sorry, for a second I thought you were someone else."

The semi-annoyed, startled look was gone from her face. Her expression was much more inviting now.

"I'm pretty sure that we've never met—I think that I'd remember you."

I made it off of the estate so infrequently that it still took me by surprise when a female showed interest in me. Part of me wanted to respond in kind, to get to know her, to pursue the possibility of a relationship, but I refused to be so selfish.

It was impossible for my kind to have a normal, healthy relationship with a human. If I'd had any doubts of that watching my mother and Kaleb for so many years would have cured me of them. Actually, now that I thought about it, the odds were overwhelmingly on the side of the blonde from my dreams being a human as well.

The thought was depressing enough that I didn't manage to keep my feelings entirely off of my face.

"Are you okay? You suddenly look like someone drowned your puppy."

I mustered a smile that I knew from experience was believable for anyone that didn't know me well and shook my head wryly. "I'm sorry, seeing you made me take a stroll back down memory lane, which is always a dangerous thing to do when you've had as rough a week as I've had."

She looked like she was about to ask me more questions but I beat her to the punch.

"I'm in room 139 and I've got a friend who's staying here too, but I don't know which room he's in. His name is Jack Donahue. He's in his late forties and is about my size. He probably comes across as being pretty intense, maybe a little scary from time to time. Have you seen him around?"

I got a bit of an odd look, but she was still smiling. "Jack spends a lot of time out next to the pool. At least I think that's the guy you're looking for. He's the right age and size, I just wouldn't describe him as scary."

"Thanks, I'll go see if I can find him."

It wasn't until I was walking away from the desk that I realized I probably should have asked her where the pool was. I didn't actually need directions as my nose, even in human form, was more than equal to the task of following the smell of chlorine, but it was the small things that helped keep up the appearance of normalcy.

Jack was sitting cross-legged on one of the deck chairs that was positioned only a few feet away from a tiny fountain. He didn't open his eyes, but he no doubt smelled me coming as soon as I stepped into the pool area.

"You're up sooner than I expected, Alec."

"Then I must have been even more injured than I realized. I expected to be back up and moving around way before now."

He opened one eye and arched his eyebrow at me. "You've been out for less than a day. It was just last night that you were injured."

He'd shocked me enough that I dropped down onto the chair next to him hard enough to make it creak in protest.

"I've never come back so quickly from something like that before."

"Yeah, I was planning on asking you about that. How long have you been able to shift just your hand like that?"

"About twenty-four hours."

Jack uncrossed his legs, straightening the loose workout pants he was wearing, and leaned back in his chair. "So what is your next step now that you've joined the select group of hybrids who can partially transform? Are you going to run back to Sanctuary and show it off to anyone who will stand still long enough to see it?"

I shook my head. "I actually was hoping to get a few minutes to talk to you before we left so I could ask you not to spread that particular development around."

Jack pursed his lips. "Frankly that's about the last thing I expected out of Kaleb's son. He's been angling to hand you a pack ever since you turned. You outing the fact that you've got that level of control would make his job a lot easier. You could probably be calling the shots with your own little group before the year is out."

"I don't want to run a pack, at least not on Kaleb's sufferance. Besides, this is nothing more than a parlor trick. It doesn't make me any kind of a better fighter, it just paints a bigger target on my back."

"You're wrong there, Alec. It may not improve your technique any, but you've got a level of support from your beast that most of our kind won't ever experience. It doesn't necessarily mean that you'll develop any kind of special ability or anything, but you're going to find that you hit harder, take more damage, and recover faster than you did before."

He wasn't talking like someone who knew these things secondhand, he was talking like he knew them from personal experience. Suddenly a bunch of seemingly unrelated facts snapped together for me in a way that they never had before.

"You can do it too, can't you?"

Jack nodded, looked around to make sure that we were alone, and then shifted just his right hand in a cool wash of power that was somehow too calm for such a demonstration.