Shattered (44 page)

I
knew that in a very real sense I'd failed my parents, that I'd been
the one to lead them into the situation that we were all in, but
there was a tiny part of me, a fragment of the child I'd once been,
that felt betrayed by the fact that my mom and dad hadn't been better
or smarter or more dangerous. It was a terrible way to feel—one
that I didn't want to own up to, but it was there.

In
that moment I realized, deep down inside, that the universe was a
cold, uncaring place. I wasn't special, my family wasn't special.
There was no force of good out there guiding the world to a better
place. It was just us against them. The bad guys against the good
guys, and the only power for good was whatever power we turned
ourselves into.

My
friends, friends who were good and strong and dangerous, were the
only thing that had kept my life so far from being a much darker
place, and in the end I'd betrayed my friends and led them into the
clutches of a monster they'd never even had a chance of beating.

"Well,
Adri. What is your answer? Are you prepared to see me kill your
parents? Are you ready to let your friends die? Some of them are
probably dead already, but I could spare the rest of them if you
would willingly serve me."

She
hadn't ripped my gun out of my hands. I would have in her place, but
all she'd chosen to do was force my arms down at my side and bind
them there with invisible bands of force. If I'd been able to move I
would have used my gun again, but I wouldn't have tried to shoot her
again. I wouldn't have even tried to shoot any of the minions who
hadn't left with Mathews. I would have turned it on myself.

It
would have been the coward's way out, but I still would have done it.
There was no way out of the trap I was in. A tiny voice in the back
of my mind was screaming to give into her terms, to give her whatever
she wanted so that I would be able to keep living. Where there was
life there was still hope, a chance to turn the tables on her and
escape, but I knew that was a false hope.

I
couldn't hope to match wits with someone who was more than a thousand
years old and realistically expect to come out ahead. If I agreed to
her terms then I would never be free again. I would forever be her
weapon. Turned against whomever she saw fit to punish or kill.

My
friends and family would be prisoners, except for the ones judged too
dangerous. She would kill them regardless of whatever promises she
might make.

"Adri,
I understand the gravity of the choice before you, but my patience is
not inexhaustible."

She
made a lazy gesture with her hand and the piece of machinery that
Heath had been thrown into lifted itself into the air. It had been
bolted into the floor, but those massive fastenings were nothing in
the face of the forces at her command.

Two
of the bolts were simply sheared off more or less evenly with the
floor. The other two were stronger, one tore through the metal base
of the machine and the other was ripped free of the floor, taking a
massive chunk of concrete with it.

The
machine floated over until it was directly over my parents. Something
that size would have easily crushed a hybrid. If it dropped, my
parents were both dead, and everyone in the room knew it. My mom
looked so terrified that I couldn't help but cry.

The
threat almost had a dark, evil poetry to it. My parents, my friends,
all of us lived by her sufferance. We were surrounded by a group of
bloodthirsty, murderous vampires and none of us were in a state fit
to fight. She didn't have to
do
anything to kill us, all she had to do was simply choose not to keep
holding her people back and we would all die as surely as the
machinery she was suspending above my parents would crush them.

"Your
sister is still in my power as well, Adri. Don't think that your
friend was successful and that at least the two of them will drive
off together into the sunset. One unremarkable shape shifter never
even had a chance against my disciple. She easily captured him
several minutes ago. By now he'll have been executed and she'll be on
the way back here with my surviving people."

The
despair that I'd thought before was crushing and complete was
nothing. It was foolish really considering what Tristan had said, but
I must have been unconsciously holding onto the hope that Brindi had
been wrong.

It
was all so clear now. Alec's power might have been real, but he'd
never planned on actually succeeding in his rescue attempt. The signs
had all been there—everything from the video feed, which I
could now see was so Taggart and I would be able to hunt down Alec's
killers after the fact, to Isaac having split up our communications.
We'd only been one person short because we'd given an earpiece to
Tristan of all people.

The
signs had all been there all along, but I'd refused to see them. All
of my friends had gone into this fight, this rescue attempt, knowing
that there was a chance they might not survive, but only Alec had
left the hotel
knowing
that he wouldn't see tomorrow.

I'd
been so convinced this entire time that Alec was one of the most
incredible people I'd ever met and I'd still somehow managed to
underestimate him. And now he was dead too. All in a failed effort to
save three people who were completely unimportant in the grand scheme
of things.

My
family couldn't kill vampires or fight the Coun'hij. They mattered
only because they were important to me. I'd been selfish in asking my
friends to help me, and my bad judgment had resulted in more damage
to the rebellion in one afternoon than the Coun'hij had been able to
manage in the last two months.

Despite
everything else going on, despite the raging torrent of
self-recrimination going on inside of my head, my eyes were still
drawn towards my dad's face. My mom was still hysterical, but none of
that seemed to have touched my dad. He looked calm, almost serene.

He
wasn't looking up at the heavy machinery that was hanging just above
his head or around at the vampires with their bloody weapons. He
wasn't even looking at the vampire leader who currently held all of
our lives in her hands. He was looking at me.

Actually,
his eyes hadn't left my face ever since he'd been yanked out of that
room and into the main open space. He seemed to be drinking me in.
His eyes weren't begging or pleading. He mostly just seemed glad to
be able to see me one last time, and proud that I'd come here and
stood up for what I thought was right. That was what made the thing I
had to do next so hard.

"Very
well. I'll join you, I'll help you spy on whomever you want spied on,
I'll even help you kill whomever you want killed. Just please don't
hurt any more of my family and friends."

It
was a betrayal of everything my dad believed in, but I did it anyway.
It broke something inside of me and I knew that I would never be the
same again, that there wasn't any going back from this decision, but
I couldn't bear to have their blood on my hands.

It
meant that I would probably have the blood of hundreds of other
innocents on my hands, but that was still better than being
responsible for killing the people who meant more to me than anything
else in the world.

I
couldn't look at my dad after that. I wanted to, but I knew what I
would see there in his eyes now and it would have destroyed me.
Instead I looked at
her
,
at the vampire who had caused all of this to happen.

She
didn't even try to control her expression of happiness, and that was
almost as bad as looking at my dad would have been. We both knew that
this wasn't over, but as long as she had my friends and family in her
possession, I would ultimately do whatever she wanted.

I
was long past being able to say whether that was right or wrong. All
I knew for sure was what I could and couldn't do. Maybe she'd had me
wrong all along. I was just as selfish and pragmatic as anyone else,
it was just other things that I was selfish about.

"You're
just like all of the rest of your country. So assured of your
rectitude, but when push comes to shove you're all too willing to
compromise. Do you know that once upon a time we actually feared this
continent?

"Mostly
we were just occupied with our war against the werewolves, but there
was a hint of fear there as well. So few vampires ever returned after
coming here. It was a distressing contradiction. All the reports were
of nothing more than a few vampires hardly worthy of being called
such and the occasional werewolf, and yet many of my master's most
trusted lieutenants disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

"It's
a mystery no more. First in LA and now here, we run into these
miserable mongrels, little more than weaker shadows of the
werewolves. With each contact we gather more intelligence regarding
your capabilities. It is only a matter of time before we come over
here en masse to cleanse the land of your taint and finally build an
empire that not even the king himself would be able to pull down."

She
opened her mouth to say something else, probably something gloating,
and then it felt like the entire universe tried to devour me from the
inside out. My knees were suddenly too weak to support my weight and
as I started to fall, I saw Alec come barging through the door just
behind the vampire leader.

He
was in his hybrid form, bleeding in a dozen different places, and he
looked like some kind of proud, bestial demigod. He crossed the
distance from the doors to his prey in two long bounds, claws
flashing in the weak light, but my mind was having a hard time
following everything that was happening.

I
wasn't the only person falling. Taggart was collapsing, I could hear
the clang of weapons hitting the ground behind me, and
she
was falling too.

The
only person who remained unbowed was Alec, only I didn't understand
how that could be. The hungry, greedy force that seemed to be sucking
my life out through the soles of my feet was too strong for anyone to
withstand it.

Alec's
claws took the vampire through the chest a split second before the
crash of something heavy off to my right shattered the foundation
that I'd built my life on.

Adriana Paige
Primary Target Site
Cloquet, Minnesota

I hit the concrete floor hard enough that I nearly lost consciousness,
that or maybe it was still just the aftereffects of whatever had
caused me to collapse in the first place. Either way, I seemed to
have misplaced some time in there somewhere.

I
was disoriented and my mind seemed to only be working in fits and
starts, but as I slowly rolled to my right I saw my gun lying a few
feet away on the cold concrete floor. I was in danger. I couldn't
remember from what, but danger meant that I needed a weapon.

I
could hear the sound of fighting coming from off in the center of the
room. I crawled over to my gun and looked up to see Alec kill another
vampire. He was covered in blood. It felt like too much blood…only
I couldn't have said why that was. When had I seen him last? At the
hotel?

He'd
obviously been fighting since then, so it was only reasonable that
he'd be bloodier, but that didn't seem like enough of an explanation
for some reason. It wasn't just all his blood, which was good. I
wasn't sure that anyone could lose that much blood and survive. It
was important that he not die, I couldn't afford to lose anyone, but
when I tried to follow that thought back to its source my mind
stuttered, refusing to obey me.

The
force that had been holding me to the ground was gone—had been
gone for a while—but I was still so tired. It was all I could
do to pull myself up onto one knee, but I made it happen because I
wasn't the only one who was starting to get back up. The vampires
were recovering their strength enough to be able to start resisting
Alec and that was bad, really bad.

He'd
torn through their ranks like a buzz saw, but there were just too
many of them and they were recovering too quickly. He was just one
hybrid and not even he could fight half a dozen vampires at the same
time.

My
first shot was too hurried. I took that vampire through the shoulder,
but since he was still in the process of pulling himself to his feet
it was enough to at least knock him down. My second shot took another
vampire through the chest and the third was a head shot.

It
was mechanical, which felt wrong to me. I hadn't felt this way when
I'd shot Brandon. Then I'd been scared, desperate to protect Alec and
Carson. This time I felt dead inside, but I continued on killing
vampires with every pull of the trigger because that was what needed
to happen.

The
soul-sucking feeling from before wasn't just gone now, it had been
replaced by a burning warmth that seemed to start just behind my
navel and surge up and down through my entire body. I felt both
flushed and light-headed, but there wasn't time to worry about that.

Alec
fell, a vampire's axe in his chest, and I shot the vampire who'd
brought him down. The first vampire I'd shot was getting back up, but
when I pulled the trigger nothing happened. More vampires were
flooding into the room now; it was the group Mathews had taken with
him to execute the rest of our wolves.

I
went for one of my spare magazines, but everything was moving so
slowly. My spent magazine hit the concrete with a tinny sound as the
wounded vampire stepped towards Alec with a long knife in his hand.

My
replacement magazine slammed home with a click and I thumbed the
slide release just in time to put a second bullet into that
particular vampire. I needed to track over and up to my next target,
to one of the vampires running toward me, but for some reason my arms
wouldn't move.