Riven (20 page)

Carson seemed to
read my mind. "There are good parts about what I do now, taking
care of you for one, but when I look back over my life so much of it
has been spent doing things that were important rather than doing the
things that I wanted to do."

"I'm sorry,
Carson. I never really thought about that. You've got a lot of time
ahead of you though, right? I mean given that shape shifters live for
so long you've got, what, another couple of hundred years at least?
You could do a lot between now and then."

I looked up in
time to see Carson shrug his shoulders. "The future is a path
branching with endless possibilities, but I suspect that I'll never
live to see peace arrive for my people. There will always be another
group of monsters that need put down, another threat that needs dealt
with. Unfortunately, for all that I love gardening, my true talents
lie in other areas."

Carson smiled as
he looked off into the distance and for a second I wondered what he
was thinking about. His expression had changed there for a heartbeat
into something gentler than I'd ever seen out of him before.

"My life
hasn't been a waste though. I have a lot to be thankful for, a lot to
be proud of, and I've learned a few things along the way."

There was another
pause, almost as if Carson was searching for the right words. "If
you would like, I'll let you in on the part of gardening that was the
hardest for me to accept early on."

"Yes,
please."

"The plants
are going to do what the plants want to do. All you can do as a
gardener is try to encourage the behavior you want, provide the best
conditions possible and then wait to see what the plant does with
what you've given it. People are the same way. Jess, Isaac and Wyatt
will have to find their own path and the most that you can hope is
that they will take advantage of the conditions here while they
last."

I nodded as the
meaning of his words started to sink in. "I guess that holds
true with Jasmin and Rachel too. It's just so hard not being able to
help them more right now. You would think that I'd be used to feeling
powerless given that I'm surrounded by people who are all stronger
and faster than me, but I hate this feeling."

Carson patted my
arm. "That feeling is a good sign. The fact that you're feeling
powerless now means that you've come to an understanding of just how
much power you actually do wield. So many people go through life
never realizing the extent of the influence they can exert through
seemingly small things. They feel powerless all of the time, but this
is a recent development for you, so it's a good thing."

I shrugged. "If
you say so. It doesn't feel like it though."

"This feeling
is a gift, especially for someone like you. You need to remember what
it feels like so that when you are standing at Alec's side passing
judgment on your people, you'll remember to be merciful."

Tears started
pooling in my eyes. I shouldn't have been surprised that Carson had
seen through to the thing that was bothering me most of all. He'd
shown an incredible amount of insight already in the past.

"Carson, I
don't want to be a queen. I don't want that kind of power. All I've
ever wanted is to take care of my friends and family."

"I know,
Adri. That's part of what makes you so special. You understand your
power, but you don't love it for its own sake. All of the best
gardeners are that way. You're starting down a path that will help
you become one of those rare people who know how to cultivate others,
how to nurture them, while still remembering that ultimately it's
their choice what they will become."

"I suppose
that it's too late to back out now."

It was a pretty
feeble attempt at humor, but Carson seemed to sense the truth behind
it. I didn't want to back out on Alec, but I woke up every morning
wishing that Alec and I could just go off by ourselves without all of
the concerns of running a pack or ruling the moonborn.

"As long as
there is room for a choice it's never too late to make a change,
Adri. In your case though, I suspect that making that kind of a
change would run counter to your nature. I've seen people make those
kinds of choices, but denying your fundamental character always leads
to prolonged unhappiness. You may not realize it yet, but you've
already started expanding your list of friends and family. Being
queen is just that on a bigger scale. Don't worry though; you'll have
time to grow into the role."

I reached out and
wrapped both of my arms around Carson's arm, hugging it for all I was
worth. "Thanks, Carson. Sometimes I don't know what I'd do
without you."

"You'd be
fine, Adri. It might take you a little bit longer to find your way,
but you'd do it eventually. The good plants always do."

Adriana Paige
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah

I was somewhere
completely new, but it somehow felt familiar at the same time. To my
left was an inconceivably big tangle of thread that stretched back
further than I could see. As I studied it in the dim light I realized
that it wasn't so much a tangle as it was an infinite number of
hair-fine threads that each moved from left to right and that, while
the total assembly hung unsupported in the air, each individual
thread was supported by tens of thousands of connections with other
threads.

I tried to study
the threads in front of me in more detail, but my mind shied away
from looking too closely. I got vague impressions of individual
threads, some magnificent with rich colors, others dull and frayed,
but it seemed more than my consciousness could handle to actually
take in the full measure of an individual thread.

Part of me wanted
to force the issue, to pick a single thread and focus all of my
attention on it, but something below the level of sentience refused
to let me proceed. Frustrated with my inability to make sense of what
I was seeing, I instead looked to the right and felt my sanity start
to unravel in the split second before primitive survival instincts
forced my eyes closed.

The threads that
had been a weighty mass off to my left became something different
when they passed me and went the other direction. They didn't have
substance anymore, instead they were shadows cast by a million points
of light. They expanded to take up more space than existed in the
entire universe, or maybe they simply disappeared into dimensions
that my mind wasn't ready to know existed.

The only thing
that had been solid, that had seemed real, in the vista that had
expanded out before me had been the tired figure of a man who'd been
struggling to cut a single thread free of its neighbors.

He looked
different here, but I somehow knew that this was the same man who had
saved Isaac, Jasmin and me from the werewolf in New York.

"Where am I,
what am I looking at?"

My eyes were still
closed, but I could hear the laughter in his voice. "I was about
to ask you the same thing. It's different, you know, for each person.
None of us can see it in its entirety, so we all put up artificial
constructs to protect ourselves. Even me, even after all of these
years."

The laughter that
had been dancing behind his voice momentarily leaked over into the
real thing, but this laughter that had an element of hysteria to it.
He cut off the sound almost before I'd realized how disturbing it
was, but it echoed through my mind even after he'd become silent
again.

"It would be
interesting to know what you saw, but that will have to wait for
another time. It's risky for you to be here. Go back to Alec and tell
him not to bother with trying to track the cats down."

"What do you
mean?"

"There's no
time, Adri. Just remember to tell him. Tell him that and tell him
that the three must go their separate ways."

I was thrust back
into the waking world with a suddenness that left my heart racing,
but I pulled myself out of bed and stumbled over to the door out to
the hall, still in my pajamas. Carson was still faithfully standing
next to my door when I opened it.

"Are you
okay, Adri?"

"I'm not
sure. I need to find Alec though. Can you please see if anyone knows
where he is?"

"He's in
Donovan's office. Things are pretty chaotic right now. The trailer
with the cats just arrived but they escaped somehow."

I took a deep
breath and then nodded. "Even more reason to get me there sooner
rather than later. Let me throw some clothes on so that people will
take me seriously."

Less than fifteen
minutes later Carson and I were standing outside Donovan's office. I
knocked on the door and felt a pulse of power as someone throttled
back irritation at the interruption.

Donovan answered
the door and then stepped to the side to allow me to enter.

"I just had a
dream where someone told me that the cats were going to escape and
that we shouldn't try to track them down."

I managed to get
it all out before anyone managed to interrupt and then I looked
around to see who was present.

Alec was sitting
behind Donovan's desk with Ash in the seat closest. Jaclyn shook her
head as Donovan pulled the door shut again. "The only way for
someone to have sent you some kind of message already was if they
engineered the escape."

Ash shook his
head. "Technically we don't know when they actually disappeared
on us. It could have been mere minutes or it could have been hours
ago."

I held up a hand.
"What happened?"

Alec rubbed his
temples as he answered. "Nobody knows, not really. Peter and Rex
were the two who were driving the truck back. They both swear that
they only ever stopped for food and gas, and that even then they
worked in shifts to make sure that the cages were never left
unguarded."

"There's
no evidence of any kind of tampering on the truck?"

Ash
looked over at Jaclyn for confirmation, but it was obvious that he
already knew she was going to shake her head. "No, there's
nothing physically wrong with the cages or the trailer. The locks are
all still in place and I checked that they still work with the
original keys that Peter had on him."

A
half-formed thought tickled the back of my mind. I couldn't pin it
down to anything specific, but a question tumbled out of my mouth
almost without conscious effort on my part.

"What
about Peter and Rex? Are there any kind of physical clues there?"

Jaclyn
looked at me oddly for several seconds before nodding. "Maybe.
Peter has a gash on his arm that he doesn't remember getting. It's
not a major wound, but it struck me as odd that he didn't remember a
two-inch-long cut."

"Are
there any hybrids who are known to have the ability to walk through
walls?"

Jaclyn
shook her head. "No, I'm not even sure something like that is
possible, no matter how powerful someone is."

Alec waved us all
quiet. "This isn't getting us anywhere. Absent a known suspect
who can somehow manipulate space and time, we aren't going to be able
to track the missing cats down. For now, I think that Adri's mystery
messenger was right. There isn't any point wasting time and effort
pursuing them, not with everything else we have going on. We just
need to remember that whoever was in your dream is probably working
with whoever took our missing cats, and both of them are probably
going to continue to work against us."

I opened my mouth
to tell Alec that it had been the old man, the priest, who'd saved
Jasmin, Isaac and me from the werewolf, and then shut it without
saying anything. I didn't have any reason to distrust anyone present,
but something wouldn't let me say it. Until I knew more about this
mysterious priest I wasn't going to draw any more attention to him
than I had to.

Alec Graves
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah

Tasha didn't look
happy to see me, but she'd shown up to the briefing, so I didn't
complain. Jaclyn arrived a few seconds later and shut the door to my
new office. Donovan had paid some pretty hefty fees to get my dad's
old office refurbished in just two weeks, but getting access to some
more secure, usable space would have been worth at least four or five
times as much as what he'd actually ended up having to pay.

Jaclyn
sank down into one of the plush leather chairs and then we both
turned to Tasha. She didn't seem keen to volunteer anything so I
cleared my throat.

"Have
you been getting the cooperation you need out of the other packs?"

"Yes.
I got a little bit of static from the Flagstaff pack right after they
joined up, but Mom helped get them to toe the line for me."

I
nodded and leaned back in my chair. "Good, I'm glad to hear it.
You indicated that you thought you had enough information to make
this meeting worthwhile, so go ahead and tell the two of us what
you've found."

Tasha
took a deep breath and then started. "Nobody has anything solid
on the ghost pack, but I'm starting to see a pattern. Every time I
get close to someone who is supposed to have actually talked to one
of these guys they get really quiet about where they were when it all
happened."

Jaclyn
tapped her finger against her chair. "So they were probably east
of the Mississippi. That's not surprising. If you were going to try
and hide a pack you'd almost have to put them in the prohibited
area."

Tasha
pulled out two file folders and tossed one to each of us. "I've got a
map in there with all of the reported encounters on it, but the
really interesting bit is the list of supposed powers that I've been
able to start pulling together. The first page is everything I've
heard even once. The second page cross-references the powers with any
description I was able to connect to the individuals with the powers. I've started to
create a list of pack members and their likely powers."