Forsaken (35 page)

He
looked like he'd dressed in a rush. He hadn't even taken the time to
get a shirt, just jeans and boots, but that just made him more
perfect. A light snow must have started while we were downstairs.
Snowflakes dotted his perfect, muscular shoulders and chest but they
were already melting and trickling down his body.

His
presence hit me almost like a physical blow and my knees went
weak. I managed to remain standing, but it was a close thing. Rachel
hissed and I looked down to find that I was squeezing her hand much
too tightly. I loosened my grip, but she didn't look very good. I
hadn't realized it when she'd walked into the room, but now that I'd
had time to look at her more closely, I could see that she belonged
in a bed somewhere, not standing in a cold basement watching her
brother prepare to fight to the death.

Agony
started clapping sardonically, but Alec answered with a rush of power
that literally took my breath away. It was possibly the only thing he
could have done to shut Agony up so abruptly. Shawn's surge of power
back in the plane had matched anything I'd felt out of Alec
previously, but it was a pale shadow of the display Alec had just
completed.

"I
will fight you, Agony, but I will not allow you to turn this into
anything but what it is. I'm fighting you because I refuse to be
party to a system where our rulers manipulate the rules required by
our nature so that they can kill innocents. The Coun'hij has all but
turned its back on our duty to defend humans. The werewolves run
rampant, and rather than helping organize hunts to trim their numbers
back, you kill any pack caught policing its borders. I'm fighting you
because the last time we crossed paths I sacrificed part of my pack
to preserve the rest of my friends and family. I've realized that the
only person I can rightfully sacrifice is myself."

Agony
shook his head and then turned and looked at the gathered shape
shifters. "You see before you the spoiled heir to a system we as
a people rejected centuries ago. The rules we have are in place to
keep us safe as a society, but he expects to be able to flout them
and avoid the consequences. He is the one who hopes to use brute
strength to twist our laws into protecting those they were never
meant to protect. I take no joy in what I'm about to do, but when you
find a cancer you cut it out before it can spread. The Graves family line is a cancer, nothing more, nothing
less."

Agony
fell back a couple of steps and transformed into his hybrid shape
with a dramatic flare of power. Alec took a deep breath and shifted
forms with hardly a ripple on the metaphysical plane. I knew Alec
wasn't a match for Agony. I knew he was probably going to die for his
conviction, but none of that mattered. I was proud of him.

The
man with the sword had said that I needed to send Alec all my love,
and in a very real way, it felt like that was what I was doing right
now. I needed him to know how much I loved and respected him, but I
wouldn't shame him with some kind of outburst just before this fight.
I sent my love to him because it was the only option I had left.

Alec
and Agony were still with a completeness I'd never seen before. They
were like twin statues set to face each other through the ages. One
moment they were motionless. The next they exploded into a violence
I'd never seen matched before.

**

The
fight was just getting started. An uneducated observer might have
thought we were going after each other with everything we had, but
they would have been wrong. Isaac wasn't the only one who had been
toying with Abaddon's fighting style. I'd spent more than a few hours
trying to tie it back to some form of human martial art that I
already understood.

The
breakthrough came for me when I realized that, for Abaddon, there was
no defense. He didn't block; he attacked his opponent's limbs as a
way of countering their attacks. It was a bit analogous to the
stop-hit in fencing, but it relied less on that instant between when
your opponent decided to attack and when they actually moved.

Agony
and I were feeling each other out, neither interested in risking the
kind of full commitment that would have been required to bring the
fight to a quick close. Agony was content with a long, drawn-out
fight because that would allow plenty of time for his power to take
hold of me. He hadn't scored anything deep enough yet to be
crippling, but it was only a matter of time before that happened.

He
should have worried less about what he wanted and more about why
I was willing to fight the kind of fight he was best
at. Originally, it had been because I'd wanted my execution to make
the deepest impact on the Chicago pack possible. If I was going to
die then I wanted to make sure I was the most powerful symbol
possible.

I
still wanted that. I still hoped that my death would serve as a spark
that would trigger rebellion. I'd thought in the past that it was
goons like Abaddon and Marco who allowed the Coun'hij to stay in
power, but I'd realized that was wrong. If the muscle that backed up
the Coun'hij were to disappear tomorrow, the Coun'hij would
eventually fall. Even without that, if the various pack alphas had
just put their petty differences aside, then all of the Coun'hij's
muscle and inconceivable power wouldn't have been enough to stand us
off.

I
was guilty, Ulrich was guilty, and Jaclyn was guilty, too. I hadn't
been willing to abdicate my power in favor of a person, but I
realized now that I would have abdicated it in favor of an ideal. It
was too late for me to change my decision, but it wasn't too late to
hope that Ulrich and the rest could see the truth that the Coun'hij
ruled with our consent, however cleverly they'd disguised that fact.

I
fought for hope, but I also fought because I wasn't ready to be
parted from Adri yet. We hadn't exchanged a meaningful set of words
since she'd left Sanctuary, but I almost believed that I could feel
her out there at my back. She was a glowing pillar of love and
strength with two equally powerful, but different, pillars on either
side of her.

When
you distilled my reason for fighting down to its simplest form, I was
fighting for Adri, and Rachel. I was doing this for Dom and Jasmin. I
was doing it for the people I loved and who loved me in return.

Agony
feinted to the left, but it was the second time he'd used that move,
so I took his blow on the outside of my arm where he couldn't get to
anything too important and stepped in as I drove a set of talons into
his right leg.

If
I'd committed to the move it might have taken him to the ground, but
it might have just left me open to a brutal riposte. I wasn't
particularly interested in either option, so I jumped backwards and
barely avoided his retaliatory slash.

We'd
been going at it long enough that blood painted an irregular circle
around us, but neither of us was in danger of bleeding
out yet. Agony came in and then abruptly changed directions.

It
earned him a long gash along the outside of my left arm just below
the shoulder. On a normal hybrid it would have had a good chance of
disabling the arm, but I had an extra ridge of bone that helped
protect the muscle. Royal hybrids still had vulnerabilities, but
unlike Brandon, Agony had only been in one other fight with a full up
heir of Thanatas. He probably hadn't had a chance in the fight
against my dad to realize just how different our anatomy was to what
he was used to.

I
let my left arm drop and hang limply at my side. The deception wasn't
perfect, but Agony fell for it regardless. He came in with another
slash, this one aimed at my chest, but I surprised him by slashing
his arm with my
left
hand and then moved in and scored another
deep wound with my talons, this time on the leg I hadn't managed to
mark up yet.

Despite
everything I'd decided before the fight started, I found myself
pushing the tempo of the fight. A chink was starting to develop in
his armor. A lot of hybrids didn't appreciate just how important
their mobility was, but footwork was the core fundamental of a
successful defense. If you let your opponent flank you and latch on
from behind, you were finished.

If
Agony's legs started giving him problems, then I had a chance of
winning. It went against everything Kristin had predicted, but I
couldn't just leave the chance of victory on the table without going
for it. I'd already lasted longer than I'd expected to. Maybe my
decision not to capitalize on one of the earlier openings had made
the difference. Maybe my willingness to die for my beliefs had
somehow changed the future away from what Kristin had seen.

I
started working the perimeter, trying to force even more movement
into the fight. It would tire us both out faster than the pace we'd
settled into, me more so than him, but I pushed on regardless.

It
took only another thirty seconds or so for me to decide that my new
tactic was working. Agony was still fast, but occasionally I seemed
faster, almost like I had an extra half step that he couldn't quite
match. Blood was showing in greater and greater quantities as I
managed to land blows to his arms and shoulders with increasing
frequency, as he couldn't quite get around fast enough to stop all of
my attacks.

With
someone else I might have been tempted to step back and try to give
the blood loss a chance to work on him. A few minutes might be enough
to slow him down even more, but I already knew my wounds wouldn't be
clotting like normal. His power would have seen to that. If I wanted
to win this fight then I was going to need to finish him in the next
couple of minutes before my wounds robbed me of enough
strength to continue to match him.

I
abruptly changed directions on him and created another opening that I
used to land another slash to the side of his right leg. It felt like
it was a deep one. It might be the break that I'd been looking for,
but it was too soon to be sure.

I
could feel myself heating up despite the cool temperature of the
basement. I was pushing harder than I'd ever pushed in a fight, and
the raw aggression combined with all of the blood I'd lost so far was
starting to play games with my mind. I knew the fluttery feeling in
my gut had to be psychosomatic, but it just served as another spur to
finish Agony before it was too late.

I
charged him, knocking both of his hands away as I stuck my left foot
into flesh yet again and drove him to the floor. Rather than try to
capitalize and go for a frontal clinch that would almost guarantee
he'd have a chance to take me with him, I sprang away.

Agony
used the momentum I'd just imparted to him to roll back to his feet,
and there was a noticeable limp to his right leg now. A calculating,
calm corner of my brain told me that the smartest thing to do would
be to continue to wear him down. If he was faking then the safe thing
would be to capitalize on his ruse and land some more blows. That
would leave him with the choice of abandoning the ploy or risking
even more damage which would eventually prove fatal.

I
wanted to pursue that course, but my limbs were already starting to
feel weak, and the rest of my body felt even odder than it had a
second ago. I planted my left leg and changed directions yet again,
but this time I was fully committed to the attack. I arrowed toward
his left side and I knew the attack was good. I was going to pass by
his left arm a fraction of an inch before he could get it into
position to intercept me, and then I'd be behind him and the fight
would be as good as over.

As
it sometimes did in a critical moment of a fight, I felt time slow
down. It was as though I had all the time in the world to see Agony
suddenly push off with his right leg, moving with a speed that had
been absent from our last several exchanges. I watched as his left
arm came around much faster than I'd been expecting. He'd been faking
and I'd fallen for it.

I
crashed into him, but not before he sank his left hand into my chest,
all four claws finding gaps between the ribs that allowed them to
sink home into my lung. We hit the ground with enough force to send
us both rolling, and the impact ripped Agony's hand free of my flesh.

I
tried to get up. I'd suffered wounds nearly as severe in the past,
but my body refused to obey my mind. Nothing would respond to my
desperate commands; even my beast had gone strangely silent.

Agony
pulled himself back to his feet and cautiously walked over to me. He
sank the talons of one foot into my right hand and the other set into
my left shoulder. As he bent down to kill me, Adri yelled and
in the next instant the entire world seemed to crack.

The
tiny singularity that had so steadfastly refused to heed my call for
the last several months opened up wider than it ever had before. When
I'd killed Brandon, my strength had been consumed to stop from being
burned up by all of the energy I was drawing into myself. This time
was different. This time the power that I was pulling in was going
somewhere different, I couldn't have explained where it was going,
but it wasn't draining me. Instead, it was energizing me.

Agony
collapsed beside me. I rolled up to my feet and looked out at the
gathered shape shifters. Nearly everyone in the room was on the
floor. Ulrich was on the far end of the room, and he'd managed to
remain upright in his chair, but I saw fear looking back at me from
behind his eyes.

The
only exception was Oblivion. He stood tall and proud, untouched by
the pull of my ability. I reached out toward him, trying to bring him
to his knees as well, but there was something inside him that was a
distant cousin to the gaping hole inside me. He was like me, but
different.

The singularity started to...wobble, so I tried to narrow the
area of effect back down. It was like making a fist with a hand that
I'd never known I had. I shrank the cyclone of power down until I was
only pulling from Agony. The change seemed to have stabilized my
ability, to have bought me time.