Shattered (22 page)

"Which may
or may not have had anything to do with the Scientist from last
night…"

"True,
we'll need more evidence to say for sure one way or another, but my
gut tells me that was a watershed moment for Kaleb. He's not one to
spend a lot of time reminiscing, so generally when I've seen a past
memory featured in a dream like that it turns out to have been
defining for him as an individual."

"Really?
Like what?"

Taggart paused
for several heartbeats before responding. "I'm sorry, but I'd
rather not say. If you dream walk for long enough you're going to see
some awful things, but I'd rather not contribute to your loss of
innocence any quicker than necessary."

Part of me
wanted to press, but mostly I was just grateful that I wasn't going
to find out right then exactly how depraved Kaleb had gone on to
become. Just seeing the abrupt change last night from the
kind-hearted individual he'd been to the ruthless killer he was now
had been shocking enough. I didn't need an even bigger shock, not
right now, not so soon after what I'd just been through.

"You're
probably right about it being important though. It seems like an
awfully big coincidence to have some random person with that kind of
ability show up, who wasn't a shape shifter, a vampire or a werewolf
and have him
not
be in the secret cabal pulling the Coun'hij's
strings."

"Indeed. I
have to admit that the Scientist has piqued my curiosity. I'll have
to run back through my collection of human and shape shifter legends
to see if there's any hint as to what he might be, but for now I
don't have any solid theories."

"I'm
sorry, Taggart. I know that you'd rather I stayed here than put
myself in danger trying to help Alec, but I can't just sit here and
hope that everything will be okay. Even if Alec fails there is a
chance that he won't be killed and if he's imprisoned somewhere I
want to be part of saving him. Besides, I don't have any qualms about
killing vampires. This way there is a chance that I can form the link
I need with some of the vampires so that you and I can pull them into
my dream one at a time and make sure that they don't ever hurt anyone
else again."

"If you
are going then I'm going with you, but before we leave I need to know
what makes you willing to risk everything for him."

"It's hard
to explain, but I think that some of it just boils down to the fact
that he was there for me before anyone else was. You were the one who
saved me, but if I hadn't met Alec I probably wouldn't have decided
to trust you. Without Alec vouching for you, Pamela would have
kidnapped me and tortured me. Knowing Alec was out there, that there
was someone I could instinctively trust, was part of what kept me
going there at the end."

"Then I
guess I owe Alec more of a debt than I'd realized. If he helped bring
you into my life then he can't be all bad."

I rolled my
eyes at Taggart. "I appreciate the sentiment, but you're not
usually this cheesy."

"I guess
you could say that your story just struck an unexpected chord for me.
For the last little while it has been you who has been keeping me
going."

Taggart didn't
seem like much of a hugger, but I threw myself against his chest
anyway.

"I'm so
sorry for everything that has happened to you over the last little
while. I know that Agony meant a lot to you. I want you to know that
I think you're handling things amazingly."

After a
half-second's awkward pause Taggart wrapped his arms around me and
returned my squeeze.

"You'll
want to check your message service before we go. Once we're on the
road Isaac's precautions won't be running all of the time so we'll
mostly be traveling with our phones off."

"I hadn't
thought of that, but you're right—thank you."

"I'll give
you some privacy."

Taggart pulled
my door closed as he left, and then it was just me and my phone. We
were too far underground to get a reliable cell signal, but one of
the first things Isaac had done when he arrived—even before
pitching in to help with the cleaning—was to set up a secure
communications solution.

He'd tried to
explain it to me, but I hadn't really understood it—there was
way too much tech speak for me to follow. All I knew was that as long
as I had his program loaded up on my smartphone then the GPS and
everything else that could be used to track me was off and I was
using his special cell network which somehow bounced between five or
six different towers that were spread across hundreds of miles.

If the Coun'hij
tracked my number down and linked it to me they'd be able to localize
me, but only to within a few hundred miles, which was the next best
thing to not being on the grid at all. It sounded like it had taken
quite a bit of work to set up, but it had been a real lifesaver so
far.

I dialed the
number to the message service that Taggart had helped me set up, and
then entered the thirteen-digit code that proved I was really me.

"You
have…four…new messages."

I rolled my
eyes at the sultry voice, and pushed the number three.

"Well
then, let's hear them."

Tristan was
first. "Hey, A…hmm, it's probably best if I don't use
your name. Anyway, it's me…calling to leave you the number to
my burner phone so we can talk."

I had a
sneaking suspicion that the 'we' Tristan was talking about was more
than just him and Cindi, but I still hadn't figured out exactly what
I was going to do about that. I grabbed the notepad and pen that I'd
brought down from the store and quickly jotted his number down. I
couldn't put both their numbers up, not without giving away the fact
that our code was as simple as just reversing the order of the digits
in the phone number, so it made the most sense to put Tristan's
number in my greeting message since I could guarantee that Cindi
would be checking my message service multiple times per day.

Once I was sure
I had Tristan's number written down correctly, I pushed seven to
delete his message and then waited for the next message.

"Hey, it's
me again. Just checking in again. You made it sound like you were
going to check this relatively quickly so that your sister and I
would be able to give each other a call, but your recorded greeting
hasn't changed so it looks like you haven't had a chance to check
your messages yet. I've been thinking and I realized that the easiest
thing would be to have my friend swing by your sister's house and
leave her my number. Kind of stupid that I didn't think of it before,
but whatever."

The end of the
message had a timestamp on it, and I'd set it to Minnesota time when
I'd set up the service. Maybe it was silly, but it made me feel a
little bit less like I was never going to see home again. Only this
time stamp didn't make any sense. It was from just a few hours
earlier.

It boggled the
mind that Cindi could bring herself to wait more than two days to
call and leave her number. She'd been desperate to talk to Tristan
again. I would have expected her to immediately run to the store for
a burner phone. There was only one possible explanation. She hadn't
been able to finish memorizing the card I'd given her before she'd
left the dream.

It was a good
thing that Tristan had thought to send Brad over to give Cindi his
new phone number. Only that didn't make any sense, not given that I
still had two messages that I hadn't listened to yet. Unless Brad had
already put Cindi and Tristan in contact with each other and then
Cindi had called to tell me she was sorry she'd forgotten the number
to my messaging service. Only that still didn't explain the fourth
message…unless Tristan had called back again after talking to
Cindi. Feeling my stomach drop a little at the prospect, I deleted
Tristan's second message and waited for the third message to queue
up.

This voice
wasn't one I recognized. It was a woman, but her voice sounded subtly
wrong. At first I thought it was her accent—which gave her an
odd, not-quite-European sound—but that wasn't it. The sound I
was hearing was what you would get if you took a normal voice and
bleached out all of the warmth and human emotion.

"Greetings.
This message is for Adriana Paige. I know who—and what—you
are. I know you killed Pamela and Jackson, and I have your family.
You have forty-eight hours to call me or I'll start cutting pieces
off of the people that mean the most to you."

Alec Graves
South Central Los Angeles, California

I woke in an
unfamiliar bed in what looked like a low-cost hotel. My shirt was
off, presumably so that whoever had brought me here could bandage me,
and Brindi was curled up on her side next to me with her arm resting
against my bare skin.

I tried to lift
my head up, but my muscles were strangely exhausted. It was like
there was a huge weight attached to the top of my head, a weight that
I couldn't possibly move. Even my slight movement was enough to cause
the person—Jack, unless I was mistaken—seated next to the
door to stand up.

A second later
Jack was close enough for me to see him, and then he casually lifted
my head and shoulders up so that he could slide a couple of pillows
in behind me.

"What
happened?"

Jack looked
different, looked old for the first time that I could remember, and
his voice came out as a whisper. "That's the
three-billion-dollar question. We were all looking an awfully lot
like goners there for a minute and then you broke free of the
mentalist's restraints and proceeded to go all medieval on him and
his sidekick Sparky. James, Carson and I have talked it over at
length and the only thing we're sure of is that it wasn't one of the
three of us who broke you free."

"I'm not
exactly sure what happened either. It was like there was a black hole
inside of me trying to break free and consume the world, but it
couldn't, so it pulled in all of the energy the mentalist was using
to trap us. That can all wait though. What about our people?"

Jack looked
away for several long seconds. "It wasn't pretty. After you lost
consciousness we worked as fast as we could to get everyone
stabilized. Alison woke up a few minutes into all of that, but the
rest of the wolves were still out when the rest of the gang came
back.

"I was
pretty sure that we weren't going to make it out, but Carson felt
them coming and worked his magic. They showed up calm and complacent
with their weapons all sheathed. James and I tore through half a
dozen of them each before they even realized they were under attack
and then Carson and Alison blindsided the rest of the group. We
killed all of them and took only minor damage in return."

Part of me
wanted to breathe a sigh of relief. That was already much better than
I'd feared it would be. Still, just because we hadn't lost everything
didn't mean that we hadn't lost a lot.

"What was
the final butcher's bill?"

"It's
pretty bad. Alison survived without much more than bruises to show
for it, as did Addison. Other than that, you, me, Carson, James,
Jess, Jasmin, Alison's mom and one of my kids made it. Everyone else
is dead."

My mind spun in
disbelief. I remembered pillars of flame consuming wolves in a
blinding torrent of energy, but somewhere along the way I'd lost
count of the fallen.

"What
about Chloe's parents and the two wolves you dispatched to shadow the
pair who left to go to the drop site?"

"All dead.
That mentalist knew exactly what we'd planned on doing and apparently
he had a lot of people still outside of their headquarters. Carson
went out to check the substation and Alison and her mom went out and
tracked down the pair who were tailing the bad guys to the drop site.
It looks like Chloe's parents never even saw the hit coming. They
were gunned down from behind. My wolves got led into a dead-end alley
and half a dozen gang members—a mix of humans and vampires—cut
them to pieces."

"I'm so
sorry, Jack. I should have waited for more backup, we never should
have gone in without Isaac's crew."

"I'm not
going to lie to you, kid. We're all hurting right now—I'd known
a lot of my boys and girls for a lot longer than I've known you. Even
the new recruits, the ones I brought in after the busted escape
attempt we put together for Agony, were people I'd worked with
before, people I trusted to stand with me against Kaleb's forces.

"My beast
would like to rip you in half for leading us into that trap, but the
rest of me knows it wasn't your fault. That pyromancer was stronger
than any other vampire I'd ever encountered before today. I figured
something like that was the absolute worst we'd come up against, and
if that had been the case we would have still probably lost a person
or two, but we would have carried the day."

"Only that
wasn't what we ran into. Instead we went up against a mentalist who
had to be at least thousands of years old."

My words came
out as a whisper, just like Jack's had been, but that wasn't because
I was trying to let Brindi sleep, it was because the horror of what
we'd just been through demanded that kind of respect.

"Right, we
went up against something that shouldn't be allowed to exist. I've
heard the same kind of old wives' tales as everyone else about
super-vamps, but I didn't really believe there was anything that
dangerous out there. I've been killing vampires for decades—I
thought I'd pretty much seen everything, but I hadn't seen this
before."

"He talked
about taking us back to his master. That means that there's another
one out there, one who's even stronger than the one I killed."

"Yeah,
that little tidbit is going to keep me up late worrying on a regular
basis."