Driven (23 page)

My
claws went through the soft flesh of his human body like it wasn't
even there. One second we were standing there looking each other in
the eye, and then his corpse was lying on the ground in front of me
as his blood dripped off of my hand.

I
was still in shock, I could feel it, but I knew I needed to do
something
.
I reached for my beast, begging her for the power required to do a
full transformation, but for a split second nothing happened. My
beast was shocked too, she hadn't realized we were capable of a
partial transformation and she had to pull deeply on the golden
thread that fed
her
power before she could turn around and offer me the energy I needed.

A
whisper of sound behind me brought me around, but despite the
fearsome form of my right hand, I was still just a human, still too
slow to have any chance of surviving against the enraged moonborn of
the Duluth pack. I turned just in time to see a large gray wolf
sailing towards my throat.

I
couldn't dodge, not in this body. My one hope was to shift, to move
my throat out of range of the attack by the simple virtue of growing
more than a foot, but my beast was still depleted. In the instant
before my attacker would have fastened his jaws around my neck, a
blur of silver flashed past me.

The
wolf still hit me, but Geoffrey's strike had killed him. Rather than
gray snapping, clawing death, I was hit by nothing more than dead
weight, but the collision was still more than enough to send me
sprawling backwards.

As
I tumbled through the air my beast finally found the energy to force
my body through the sweet pain of a transformation. I hit the floor
as a hybrid and then rolled over backwards and landed on my feet.

The
Duluth pack was moving towards us, fanning out to make sure that they
could surround us, but a second corpse was already resting at
Geoffrey's feet and they were obviously not eager to come within
range of his sword.

The
other pack was down to eight living moonborn, but that would still be
more than enough to kill the two of us unless I was able to come up
with some way to stop them from coming after us all at once.

"Stop!"

I'd
opened my mouth without a clear plan, with no real idea how to save
Geoffrey and me, but as the words came out I realized that there was
a single pretext under which what I'd done might not be considered a
gross violation of everything the challenge law stood for.

I
didn't actually expect my yell to give pause to any of the wolves or
hybrids stalking towards me, but Stekensbridge echoed the order a
split second later.

"What
do you want, Bianchi?"

"He
killed my mother in an unlawful attack nearly two decades ago. My
killing him was nothing less than the king's justice."

"We
don't have a king now."

Stekensbridge's
words came out low and angry, but some of his pack members were
backing away, slowly, almost as if they were hoping that he wouldn't
notice what they were doing.

"You
may not have a king, but I do, and it's only a matter of time before
Alec overthrows the Coun'hij. When that happens, anyone who treats
what just happened as anything other than justice will pay the
ultimate price."

"How
will he know? Your pet vampire isn't going to have a chance to text
him before you're both dead."

I
shrugged. "These things have a way of coming to light sooner or
later. It's always a surprise when you actually figure out who
spilled the beans. For something like this Alec would grant a pardon
to whoever steps forward first, but he'll only grant a single pardon,
everyone else will be killed."

I
could see wolves and hybrids alike looking at each other out of the
corner of their eyes. It was time to drive the knife in a little
more.

"All
I'm trying to point out is that attacking Geoffrey and me would be
running an awful big risk to avoid having to face me in the ring
yourself."

Hybrid
faces didn't show quite the same range of emotion as what a human
face could, but there was no mistaking the fact that Stekensbridge
was pissed. I'd just mousetrapped him quite handily, but that didn't
stop him from trying to weasel his way out.

"You'll
never make it past my challengers. Either way I won't have to bother
with putting you out of your misery."

"Are
you so sure of that? Wasn't Branson your best fighter?"

"You
killed him through trickery, you couldn't have beaten him in a fair
fight."

I
couldn't help it, I grinned at him as I responded this time. "I
guess we'll never know. Personally I think he would have been easy
meat, but I couldn't take that risk. An execution, the delivery of
justice, couldn't be allowed to interfere with this particular
challenge match."

He
opened his mouth to rebut that, but I didn't give him a chance. "The
law is on your side, Stekensbridge, if you want to get some more of
your people killed trying to save your own throat and they are
willing to die for you then there's nothing I can do about it other
than to kill each of them. When
was
the last time you all went up against a hybrid powerful enough to
shift just their hands? Were they as big as I am?"

That
had him. In a strong, unified pack the alpha could afford to exchange
barbs with a challenger, but they rarely needed to. It was only a
weak pack, one beset by divisions where the alpha had to trade
insults. Refusing to hear the challenger out could be construed as a
weakness and weakness invariably made the submissives less willing to
fight in your behalf. If you matched wits and came out ahead you
could motivate your people to make an even stronger showing, but if
you did poorly then wolves and hybrids who otherwise would have
fought for you decided that they weren't willing to risk their skins
on your behalf.

Stekensbridge
had gambled and lost. He could order people to fight me, but that
would just make things worse for him in the long run. He needed to
beat me and it needed to be a decisive win, especially now that he'd
lost his main enforcer.

"Very
well, I'll kill you myself. I don't care how big and strong you are,
you haven't been a hybrid for long enough to be worthy of my time,
but I'm not opposed to proving that with fang and claw."

I
waved Geoffrey back outside of the circle and then watched as the
rest of the Duluth pack withdrew as well. It was time to control my
breathing once again. Our circle back home was sand. We had another
circle cut into the floor of one of the caves below the manor, but we
rarely if ever used it. I couldn't remember the last time I'd fought
on stone, but I knew it was going to be tricky. Stone didn't absorb
the force of your lunges the way that sand did, but it was so slick
that in some ways it was worse.

With
sand if you wanted to move faster you just had to push harder. With
stone there was a practical limit to how quickly you could change
direction. It didn't matter how strong you were, talons only gripped
so well.

Stekensbridge
moved towards me across the scarred surface of the rock and I told
myself for the final time that it didn't matter how little experience
I had fighting in this form. I was bigger and stronger, I just needed
to keep him at arm's length long enough for him to start getting
tired and then I could end the fight all at once when he couldn't
keep up anymore.

I
feinted forward and smiled when Stekensbridge darted back with more
speed than the attack justified. He was scared. It was starting to
look like he was out of practice. Branson had been fighting too many
of Stekensbridge's fights over the last couple of decades.

My
moment of moral superiority was short-lived. I moved forward, trying
to force him even further back, but he changed directions with
impressive speed, springing forward and raking me across the outside
of my left arm.

I
countered, slashing at his face, but that was a mistake, his head was
too mobile and he managed to avoid my attack. I took another slash,
this time to my left leg before I managed to land a blow of my own on
him.

His
shoulder was dripping a slow flow of blood, but I was bleeding in two
spots and starting to realize that he was doing to me exactly what
I'd been planning on doing to him. If he continued to land two blows
for every one of mine then it wouldn't matter how much bigger and
stronger I was, I'd still end up bleeding out.

I
tried to push the tempo of the fight. I couldn't change direction
much if any faster than him, but I was stronger, which meant that he
couldn't match my upper body speed. I drove him back before me with a
barrage of slashes. High and low, left and right, I worked every
possible angle of attack, and I was rewarded with a host of cuts to
his arms, but he just kept backing away from me, denying me the
critical wounds I was going for as he led me around the edge of the
circle.

He
was tiring, he had to be under the fury of my assault, but I was
tiring too, and even my massive hybrid muscles weren't going to be
able to continue to keep up this level of aggression forever. My
lungs sucked air in with big gasps, but I was still managing to keep
him off balance and on the defensive right up until he saw an opening
and charged me.

I
tried to get out of his way, tried to knock the cruel edge of his
claws away, but neither effort was fully successful. He scored a deep
slash along the outside of my leg and a tremor of weakness raced up
the damaged limb.

I
could still walk on it, but I could tell that it was nearly done for.
Any additional blows to that leg would put me down on the ground for
sure and there was a possibility that even too sudden a move would
cause it to collapse underneath me.

Stekensbridge
should have pushed the attack and capitalized on my new
vulnerability. It was what I would have done, but apparently he felt
the need to recapture some of the credibility he'd lost before we
started fighting.

"Maybe
next time you'll all do your job and take down the challenger rather
than making me deal with them. I can promise you all that you're
going to regret standing down today."

The
words were just a distraction. Even as the last one left his lips he
sprang at me with the force of three hundred pounds of raging hybrid.
I wanted to dodge out of the way. Every instinct I'd been born with,
every reflex I'd spent so many hours as a wolf wiring into place said
that meeting that kind of charge head-on was just asking to be
killed, but I couldn't move and I knew it.

I
tried to move to the side regardless, but my leg started to give way
and instead I was forced to step forward to avoid falling. My left
hand went down, claws digging into the rock floor beneath me in an
effort to convert all of that shaky momentum into something I could
use.

I
hadn't realized just how outclassed I was until that instant, until I
saw Stekensbridge dart to the side. He was still going to hit me, he
was still leading with the claws of his right hand, but rather than
just crashing directly into me he'd changed his course enough that he
would bury his hand in my stomach and then use it as a fulcrum to
swing around behind me. Once he was behind me, I would be as good as
dead, but I didn't have the mobility required to get out of his way.

With
all other options closed to me, I did the only thing I could think
of. I let his fist sink into my guts, but I drove my own claws into
his shoulder and then I pulled with every ounce of strength I had. My
left hand pushed off against the rock at my feet to give me a little
extra rotational momentum, but what happened next still shouldn't
have been possible.

Stekensbridge
curled around to the right just as he'd intended, his fist sending
bright ribbons of pain through me, but he moved with incredible
slowness. Instead of him snapping around behind me and grabbing me, I
used the force of his charge to pivot around on my uninjured right
leg, and a second later I was behind him and my left hand was sinking
into his back.

My
right arm was a single bar of fiery pain, but I refused to let go of
his shoulder until I had a better grip on him with my left hand. I
sank the talons on my left foot into the back of his leg. I couldn't
use that to lever myself up any higher, not with my leg weak and
shaking like it was, but it served to help reduce his mobility.

The
metallic snick as my left hand closed around a pair of ribs was all
the reassurance I was going to get. I let go with my right hand and
buried it in the meat where his neck and shoulder met. If I'd been
fighting a werewolf I never would have been able to climb up high
enough to put him down, but Stekensbridge was shorter than me by a
few inches and it only took a few more seconds before I was able to
end him with two violent motions that left me exhausted and shaking.

I
looked out at the remaining members of the pack, meeting each set of
eyes until they'd looked away, acknowledging my greater strength. The
wolves were all too submissive to question my claim, and I could
practically read the thoughts of the remaining hybrid.

Challenging
me right now would go against every unwritten law the moonborn
believed in, but doing so would practically guarantee he'd win and
become the new alpha, only his tenure at that point would be
painfully short. He wasn't intimidating or deadly enough to stem the
tide of dispossessed hybrids who would be headed this way in the next
few weeks.

"I
rule here in Duluth now. You all live by my sufferance, you all
shelter under the strength of my arm."

Geoffrey
Stekensbridge House
Duluth, Minnesota

Geoffrey
stood guard outside of Jasmin's suite of rooms, the suite that had
belonged to Stekensbridge until she'd killed him, for nearly twelve
hours before she finally stumbled back out dressed in what he was
pretty sure was her last change of clothes.