Torn (10 page)

My script had run out
after my second comment. I'd never meant to give any kind of reason
for Adri's behavior, it had just kind of popped out of me. The
startling part was that I wanted to believe it was the truth. It
would be so much better if this really were a series of freakish
anomalies. If she wasn't faking, maybe she wasn't a rogue Fir'shan
intent on taking our pack down.

The only question was,
if she wasn't faking, then why hadn't
I
ever wondered what was
causing her panic attacks?

The question was one
that stuck with me through the rest of the day. Our whisper campaign
was highly successful. It seemed hard to believe, but in the course
of just an hour and a half almost the entire school was abuzz with a
new set of carefully-crafted rumors.

Physics was even more
of a trial than I'd expected it to be. Adriana was back to
pretending nothing unusual had happened. Mrs. Alexander was keeping
a close eye on us for whatever reason, so there was nothing to do but
watch impassively as she angrily moved her desk next to mine. Being
within arm's reach of her made my skin crawl, but I refused to let
her understand just how much I'd figured out.

Isaac nodded at the
end of the day when I reminded him he was on Rachel watch. Rather
than complaining about the duty he just added a few extra books to
his bag and started towards the lab. I hadn't managed to catch the
titles of any of them, but it was a good bet they weren't in English.
Isaac spoke more languages than anyone else I'd ever met, and unless
he was deep in the midst of learning a new one, he generally could be
found reading a novel or history book in Italian, Spanish, German or
Arabic. There were a few more rattling around inside his head but it
was nearly a full-time job to try and keep up with his scholastic
endeavors.

Arriving home was a
distinct relief. I wanted nothing quite as much as to head to my
room and catch up on the hour and a half of sleep I'd missed the
night before, but there were more important things to be done.

Donovan met me at the
door with a thick letter. He always knew when I was going to go
visit her. At first I'd assumed he was just tracking the food
shipments, but over the years there had been a couple of times when
there hadn't been a food shipment to give me away. I quickly checked
that nobody was within hearing range and then took the letter.

"How do you do
that, Donovan?"

"I've had much
of the raising of you these many years, Master Alec, but I'm not so
vain as to assume that I have answers to all of your questions.
Occasionally something pressing comes up that is completely outside
of my keen. It's only natural to assume that when those times arise
you'll visit our mutual friend."

I would have expected
a level of sorrow to go with such a confession but Donovan didn't
seem melancholy, at least not more than the occasion called for. I
grasped his arm in a most unprofessional display of appreciation and
then tucked his letter away and left.

Even after all these
decades of service and care, he still didn't feel it proper for
Rachel and I to embrace him, but sometimes it wasn't about what he
needed. Sometimes we had to do it simply because we needed
reassurance from the man who'd replaced a murdered father and an
absent mother.

The R1 was crouched in
one corner of the garage, sleek and low like some kind of shiny
predator. I slipped a pair of sunglasses on, walked the bike out to
the driveway, and then streaked down our lane with the instant power
that you couldn't find anywhere else outside of a four-hundred
thousand dollar car.

Once I turned off of
the main road I opened the throttle up and felt the thrill of my
front tire coming off of the ground at sixty miles an hour before the
first corner came up and I had to lean on the brakes.

I threw the bike over
with a heavy dose of counter steering and then used both lanes to
streak around the corner at a significantly higher speed than I could
have managed in my Porsche. All too soon the trip was over and it
was time to start checking my back trail.

I pulled up to the
dilapidated shed that would serve as a hiding spot for my bike and
then spent a few minutes with a pair of binoculars looking for signs
that anyone had followed me. This stretch of road began well inside
the pack's territory and didn't connect to another road for nearly
sixty miles, so the only way for any of Brandon's wolves to stumble
on it would be for them to either penetrate very deep into our land,
or detour out nearly one hundred and fifty miles and come in from the
other side.

I ensured that the
road was well-maintained on this side through a stream of anonymous
bribes to a couple of DOT employees, but the other side devolved into
a pot-hole filled mess. The payments were technically illegal, but I
made sure that they included enough cash to pay for the actual cost
of maintaining the road, and so far my pet bureaucrats had been
passing along the state's cut as instructed.

A few minutes later I
was traversing the little-used path down to the cabin, and then
knocked on the door.

Mallory answered
moving slowly as always. She favored me with a smile at the
unexpected visit, accepted Donovan's letter and then motioned me
towards one of the empty chairs in her tiny living room.

"Much as I enjoy
your visits, I know you don't stop by for an unscheduled trip unless
something is bothering you. What's happened, Alec?"

"I think we've
got one of the Coun'hij in town pretending to be a normal human while
she aids Brandon in his effort to tear the pack apart."

Mallory's face was
wonderfully expressive. It was one of the few parts of her battered
body that didn't hurt and she used it in place of the body language
more common to the moon born.

"You're sure
she's a shape shifter?"

“It's all circumstantial, but it's adding up. She's got no history, doesn't show up on any of the databases we've managed to get access to so far. Her glow is stronger than Brandon's, but she doesn't ever seem to raise any power, which would hint at a control so solid that it's almost unimaginable. She faced down Cassie in front of Brandon's entire pack and then turned around and seems to be dating Brandon. She knows things she shouldn't know.”

For several seconds Mallory didn't respond. I could feel the room begin to arc with power as she brought her beast back under control. Mallory's control was good. It hadn't always been, but the injuries she'd received the night my father had died made shifting form excruciating, and she'd had to master her beast to avoid unnecessary agony.

“I'm probably not the most objective individual when it comes to the murderers on the Coun'hij, Alec.”

“You were there. You saw what happened; you are the only living person who fought them instead of just bowing down and waiting for the ax to fall.”

Mallory looked up with fire in her eyes and for a moment I saw the powerful hybrid lurking inside the frail woman I'd known nearly my entire life. The hybrid that had been one of my father's most loyal supporters, the one who'd attacked Agony when he'd been bleeding my father to death.

“That's not fair to Donovan. He stood up to them.”

“You're right, but Donovan didn't have the seniority to know what was going on in my father's council when Agony visited. I need to know what made him make the decisions he made.”

Mallory exhaled slowly and it was like she shrank down inside herself. The powerful woman I'd seen just a second before disappeared and all that was left was the tired, crippled old woman that had met me at the door.

“Alec, it would be pointless for me to tell you everything we discussed leading up to Agony's visit. It all boils down to one thing. The Coun'hij has ruled our people with an iron fist for centuries now. They don't even really play by their own rules. If they want something, you'll have no choice but to give it to them and hope they're satisfied. If this girl is really one of The Hidden as you fear, then you should stay as far away from her as possible or eventually she'll swallow your entire pack.”

It wasn't the kind of warning that you just idly shrugged off. Fact of the matter, it wasn't the kind of warning that you could even just process and move on. We sat in silence for a few moments before it became apparent that neither really had any more to say on the subject.

I felt my chest tighten up in anticipation for what I knew was coming up. A regular wolf was nothing less than super human. A hybrid was physically the next best thing to invincible. Sure there were things that could bring one of us down, but they were the kinds of things that had become so scarce that humans for the most part didn't even have myths about them anymore.

If the contest between Brandon and I had just been a purely physical match, my situation would still have been precarious, but nothing like it was now. Hybrids weren't in and of themselves the very top of the food chain. A very small percentage of hybrids manifested an ability to go along with their raw strength and speed.

My father had been one of them, Mallory had been another. The abilities weren't all created equal, and could take an almost infinite variety of forms. My father's ability had been that of regenerating from wounds even faster than normal for our kind. Mallory on the other hand was actually able to see the abilities of other hybrids.

Ultimately there was no guarantee that manifesting one would make you any more powerful than any other hybrid, but there was more than one account of someone's power making a decisive difference in some key battle or another.

Father and Mallory had made a good team. He'd been able to face challenger after challenger without ever getting worn down, and she'd been able to warn him when he faced someone with an ability that might change the course of a given fight.

Isaac, James, me, none of us had manifested any kind of ability yet, which wasn't necessarily surprising. The odds were honestly very much against us. Plenty of packs did just fine run by hybrids who'd never manifested any kind of unusual ability whatsoever. It wouldn't have necessarily bothered me that I was
just
a hybrid except for the fact that Brandon
had
manifested an ability and it was a heck of a power.

His power had somehow bonded to the strength and speed expected of a hybrid and supercharged them to the point where no normal shape shifter had a prayer of standing up to him unaided.

I always anticipated and dreaded the end of my visits with Mallory, and this time was no different. I took a deep breath, kneeled in front of her chair, and waited as she placed her palms on either side of my face.

After several minutes she slumped back into her chair.

"I'm sorry, Alec. Nothing's changed. You've got the potential. More potential maybe than I've ever seen in anyone, but it's still just potential."

I returned just in
time to hand Donovan Mallory's letter and then join the others as
Brandon once again attempted to use his superior numbers to wear us
down. This time we were more prepared; I ordered Jasmin and Dom to
lag back, pretending greater exhaustion than they actually felt.

The ruse paid off in
that Nathanial and Simon had fallen from the rest of the pack in an
effort to taunt us. Jasmin and Dom had put on a burst of speed that
allowed them to run the two wolves down just short of Brandon's pack.

The rest of us had
been only a couple of seconds behind and we'd arrived just ahead of
Brandon's people. Dom wasn't one of our better fighters, but she'd
done her job, delaying Simon just enough for James to get there and
savage him. She limped away when we were forced to fall back, but
we'd left a pair of motionless piles in our wake.

It was doubtful we'd
managed to kill either Simon or Nathanial, but Brandon only had so
many truly aggressive wolves. If the most aggressive kept taking
beatings maybe his pack would start to show some of the cracks that
were in danger of tearing
us
apart.

We'd been quite
handily winning the skirmish until Brandon had doubled back and
entered the fray. We all left bloodied, but feeling as though we'd
come out on top. At the very least it cut the night's activities
short and allowed us all to go home and get a full two hours of
sleep.

The next day didn't
start out any better. Our rumors seemed to have taken on a life of
their own. Even the groups of kids that didn't normally get involved
were discussing Adri and the manufactured "tragedy" that'd
befallen her.

More surprising was
just how quickly perception of her had changed. She'd gone from
being perceived as a total freak, to someone who, it was generally agreed,
was polite to everyone. I waited, expecting it would only be a
matter of time before she began capitalizing in some way on her
recent fame, but I didn't overhear anything to indicate she even
realized just how much she could have gotten away with.

Physics was even more
nerve-wracking. I'd taken a fairly serious blow to my right shoulder
and another to my left arm when Brandon had knocked me away from
Vincent. The wounds would be healed in a day or so, but right now
they made me even less happy to be within striking range of Adriana.

Once again I slid my
body ever so slightly away from her and launched into a simulation of
what we were likely to face for our project. She was still
maintaining the charade that nothing had changed, but her mask was
starting to slip more often. She sat down and double-checked my
math, seemingly becoming more and more furious with my failure to
react to whatever Machiavellian game she was playing.

I heaved a profound
sigh of relief when I was finally able to leave the class and allow
my abused nerves a chance to calm down slightly.

Later that evening
Rachel bounced into my studio in high spirits.