Splintered (17 page)

I tried to focus. It was Alec, he was important
and I needed to be there for him, but the words were so far away
and my mind was so lethargic.

"I'm grounded. Mom thinks you killed Brandon
and that I'm involved."

There was a pause as Alec processed what I'd
just said and how I was responding.

"How much trouble are you in?"

"Lots. We had a really big fight."

Thinking started getting easier again. Thinking
about the yelling match hurt, but it was waking my faculties back
up.

"I wish I didn't have to ask this of you. I
wouldn't ask if there wasn't so much riding on it. Can you sneak
out?"

"I think Mom's gone. Getting out won't be the
problem, getting back in will be though. She's the maddest I've
ever seen her."

"Okay, I need you to sneak out. A
couple of Agony's men will meet you on the road, start into town
and they'll pick you up on the way."

"What's going on?"

"I wish I could say for sure. All I know is
we've got to be getting close to seeing the big finish."

"All right. I'll leave in the next
couple of minutes."

"Before you go, there's a small package in the
bottom of your dresser. I hope you won't need it, but you'd better
bring it just in case."

My legs were weak and shaky from sitting in one
position for so long. I stumbled over to my dresser and found
Alec's mystery package. It turned out to be a long, knife. I
gingerly pulled it out of the sheath. It looked wickedly sharp and
gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. If things were bad
enough that I'd need a knife to protect myself then I was already
in over my head. I had no idea how to use a knife.

I slid the knife back into its sheath and
noticed the clever clip that would attach it to a belt. I stood
there for a minute or so debating before pulling on some jeans and
hooking the knife onto them so it was hidden under my tank
top.

I crept out of my room, verified the Jeep was
really gone, and then started hiking down the lane. Agony's guys
found me before I'd gone more than a hundred yards or so. They
pulled up in a large, black SUV.

I didn't recognize the guy driving
it, but Oblivion opened the door and motioned me in. The driver
wasn't chatty and Oblivion was his normal terse self so we passed
the ten-minute trip in silence.

When we arrived, Oblivion escorted
me into the house while the other guy parked the vehicle. It felt
wrong to be in Graves manor without having been greeted at the door
by Donovan. I was about to ask Oblivion where we were headed when I
heard Rachel's screams.

I reacted without thinking, running towards the
sound. I kept expecting Oblivion to pull me up short. He was
obviously faster than me, but somehow I made it to the door to
Alec's mom's suite without him catching me.

The main room had been transformed
from the airy, sunny haven to a place of nightmare. Rachel was the
one screaming, but it was her mom who was being hurt. Only hurt
wasn't quite the word.

Marco had tied both of them up and was slowly
rubbing his hand along Mrs. Graves' face. The contact was drawing
little tremors of pleasure from its target, but Rachel was
screaming and straining at her bonds.

"Stop it. Don't do that to her, it's not
right."

Rachel's mom opened her eyes long enough to
look at her daughter. "Shut up. It's what I've wanted all these
years."

"That's right, Samantha. All these years
missing the touch of a real man."

Marco returned his hand to her cheek and smiled
coldly as her eyes rolled back up inside her head.

"She's an addict. You're violating
every law regarding the Ja'tell bond. She can't decide for
herself."

"I won't violate any laws. I'll take
her with me when I leave. She's still a handsome woman and I rather
expect that Alec will loosen the famous Graves purse strings to
make sure she's taken care of appropriately. She'll never even look
back, never miss you guys."

Rachel had already been through so much. I'd
been there when she'd cried herself to sleep because her mother was
so far gone she didn't recognize her own daughter. I couldn't let
her lose what little bit of her mom she had left.

I stepped forward, moving closer to Marco as my
hand slipped underneath my shirt. I didn't know the first thing
about fighting, but I wasn't thinking, I just unsheathed the knife
and stabbed.

Marco was completely surprised. I managed to
stab him a second time before he backhanded me into the wall. A
collection of plants in wrought-iron stands more or less broke my
fall. Somehow I'd managed to keep a hold of the knife. I rolled
back to my feet just in time to see Marco explode into his hybrid
shape.

I felt my mouth go dry but I dropped down into
a crouch, trying to drop my center of gravity so I could move in
whatever direction I needed to. Rachel screamed, and then suddenly
Oblivion was between Marco and me, shaking his head at the hulking
enforcer.

It wasn't possible that Oblivion was actively
going to defend me. He had to have known what was going on here. If
he wasn't going to defend me though maybe he was willing to buy me
some time. Somehow I kept the fear at bay enough to
think.

"Rachel. Rachel!"

I'd never yelled at Rachel, she'd always seemed
too delicate to survive anything more than a stern look. I knew
that wasn't true though and I needed her knowledge of shape shifter
rules and tradition. Somehow the scream managed to miraculously get
through to her. I saw her eyes track over to me and her breathing
steady.

"I need you to think about this situation. Is
there any reason why Marco wouldn't want to kill me for what I've
just done?"

"He…he's just lost a lot of status.
You hurt him, forced him to shift shapes, so his body is back to a
blank canvas. One of the traditional ways to mitigate the damage
would be to kill you."

Marco was scared of Oblivion, scared of the
possibility of losing everything he was when the memories were
sucked out of him. Even so, I could see him working up to an
attack.

"You can do this, Rach. There's got to be
something."

"Alec. It's Alec. We're all under his
protection. If Marco kills you, then Alec would be within his
rights to challenge Marco. Alec would kill him and then Agony would
be down a fighter. It's the kind of provocation that the Coun'hij
usually uses as an excuse themselves."

Marco growled. His voice was deeper
now than when he was in his human form. "I can always say your
attack on me was unprovoked. I kill all three of you and there's
nobody left to dispute my version of the truth."

I felt a calm certainty flow through me at
Rachel's words. "No. Or rather you could do that, but it won't stop
Alec from killing you and you know it. If you kill all three of us,
the three most important people in his life, then nothing will stop
him from killing you in turn."

Marco shifted back and forth, as if trying to
decide how to get around Oblivion. "No guarantee that he can take
me. Besides it would then provide Agony with exactly the excuse he
needs. We'll rip your pack apart and salt the ground. Agony will
finally get to finish the job he started with Graves' old
man."

I wiped the dagger, dripping with Marco's
blood, on my leg. "Trust me. Alec would destroy you. Are you really
ready to die for Agony? Agony's not even willing to face Alec
himself. This whole visit is nothing more than an attempt to
maintain appearances. You all know what Alec is capable of. If
Agony backs him into a corner your entire group will
die."

Marco's head tilted to the side, considering my
words as his nostrils flared in an attempt to smell whether or not
I was telling the truth. I was betting all our lives on me being
too far gone in shock for the normal signals to work.

The stalemate held for several seconds before
Marco turned away. He threw a nearby chair through the lovely
full-length windows as he left, but he left. Oblivion backed
several steps away and then watched me as I cut both Rachel and her
mom free.

Rachel's mom weakly pushed us away, a faint
mewing sound coming from the back of her throat, but she was too
frail to stop us. I sheathed my knife and then we half carried her
out of the room.

As we turned onto the main hall I
realized I was shaking, and a second later the tremble got too bad
for me to keep moving. I set Mrs. Graves' feet down and wrapped my
arms around myself, trying to hold things together long enough for
the adrenaline to finish flushing out of my system.

Rachel's mom curled up against the wall as soon
as Rachel put her down, and suddenly Rachel's arms were around
me.

"Rach, why am I even here?"

"It's standard procedure. The
Coun'hij always wants as many non-combatants around as possible.
It's leverage against the rest of the pack actually standing up to
them. Alec knew this might happen, it's why he's been so careful to
try and keep you ignorant of everything. As long as you didn't know
too many of our secrets, there was a possibility that whoever the
Coun'hij sent would decide not to suck you further into our world.
It's not like there's not already plenty of us who can't defend
ourselves here. One more human shield more or less shouldn't have
made a difference."

The last sentence had more defiance
to it than I'd ever heard from Rachel. I looked up, half afraid
that Oblivion would be angry, but he seemed unaffected by the heat
in her voice.

I grabbed Rachel's arm, willing her not to say
something that would make our situation worse, and took a deep
breath.

"We'd better get moving again, Rach. I don't
want to make things worse for Alec and the others."

All too soon we found ourselves back in the
underground cavern where Alec had fought Vincent. The torches were
back, barely managing to illuminate the gathered groups of shape
shifters. With our arrival the entire pack was here. Alec sported a
number of ugly-looking gashes on his arms, but he looked to be in
the best shape of any of our shape shifters. I'd already had a
chance to catalog most of Jasmin and Donovan's wounds. James and
Dominic stood close together, him favoring his right leg, her with
nasty bruises ruining the perfection of her otherwise flawless dark
skin.

Isaac's ha'bit had been ripped away
from his chest to show a peculiar pattern of wounds that made it
look as though someone had tried to tear out his heart. James had
looked angry, but I'd gotten so used to that expression on his face
that it hadn't made me think twice. The same expression now graced
Isaac's face and the loss of his trademark calm was one more clue
as to just how bad things had been.

Jess looked like she wanted to fold
in on herself. Her right arm was a mess of bandages, most of which
were stained crimson from their futile attempt to stop the
bleeding. She'd taken far more than her share of mental and
emotional scars in the fight with Brandon. We'd never particularly
been close, but I hurt for her at the thought of what this week
must have done to her.

As we crossed the last little distance to our
pack, I looked the rest of them over one by one. It was more and
more of the same. Even those who'd already been maimed by Agony on
his last visit bore fresh signs of abuse. Donovan, Andrew, Addison,
everyone.

Donovan took Rachel's mom from us, careful to
keep from touching her bare skin. As he laid her down in the back
of our group I took in the other side of the cavern. I'd somehow
expected to find Agony's men more or less unmarred. I hadn't
expected to find them sporting at least one respectable wound each,
nor had I expected to find them missing their piercings and
tattoos.

Some of them had replicated a
smattering of their earlier piercings, but of the whole group, only
Oblivion still had his tattoos. I didn't know if Agony had a
dedicated group of enforcers who accompanied him on every visit, or
if he drew from a larger pool used by the Coun'hij as a whole, but
either way these men had lost their cool. Our people had proved
that the Coun'hij's men weren't untouchable and managed to do it
without crossing that treacherous line that would have let Agony
wipe us all out.

It couldn't help but make it that
much harder the next time Agony needed bully boys to go terrorize
somebody. Alec had somehow guided our people in a kind of guerrilla
warfare that had chipped at the enforcers' composure and cohesion.
He'd eaten away at them from the inside out. The only question
remained what the ultimate price would be. Our people had been too
abused to easily forget what they'd been through, and I found
myself wondering just how much of his precious store of goodwill
Alec had used up.

Agony looked up from his conversation with
Marco and shook his head. "Young Graves, your pet human has been
free with her promises of your vengeance. I'm quite curious, would
you really have killed Marco if she'd been killed for interfering
where she had no business?"

Alec's answer came without hesitation. "If Adri
felt she needed to interfere with whatever Marco was doing then I
have every faith that she was in fact doing exactly what needed
doing. In those circumstances I would have indeed killed Marco for
harming her. I will always extract vengeance for harm against those
of my pack who are loyal to me."