Lost (2 page)

I'd spent a lot
of time recently trying to convince myself that I was still in
control, but the truth was that I wasn't, not fully. Everything had
changed when Jess had lost her memories. I'd never realized how much
Jess and Andrew had grounded me.

I'd thought I
was something unique, but once Jess had lost her memories she'd
become a different person and I'd lost the cornerstone of my world.
Andrew had tried to still be there for me, but we both knew that
things couldn't be the same. Maybe they could have been if I hadn't
kept pushing Jess, but I had. Andrew had been forced to make a choice
between the daughter who'd lost her memory and me.

He'd made the
right choice and I respected him for it, but it didn't make things
any easier. I was drifting in the middle of a black ocean with no
land in sight.

I closed my
eyes for a couple of seconds, and when I looked back over at Kristin
I felt at least a little bit like my old self.

"Maybe
you're right, but since I've never had the benefit of a normal, safe
life, you'll just have to pardon me if I continue to long for
something different."

I'd meant it as
a peace offering. It wasn't perfect, but considering how much
friction there had been between the three of us lately, it wasn't a
bad attempt. I'd thought I'd get an eye roll, or maybe a smile. I
hadn't expected Kristin to go completely white and stop breathing.

"Guys, we
need to get out of here right now! I've dreamed this before and what
happens next isn't pretty."

Isaac Nazir
Right-Size Burger and Gas
Outside of Dallas, Texas

Ash started
moving while I was still scanning the burger joint for threats. He
grabbed all of the food he could hold in his left hand and started
towards the door without looking back. Kristin was half a step behind
him with a big fountain drink in her free hand, but I caught up with
the two of them before they made it outside.

We were almost
back to Ash's car when the first bruiser stepped around the corner of
the building. That was apparently the signal because other guys
started appearing from behind trees and cars.

Ash was in the
lead and he never even broke stride. The first guy, a
heavily-tattooed Latino, tried to hit him, but Ash checked the blow,
stepping into his opponent and driving an elbow into the guy's
throat. It was a killing blow against a human, but Ash didn't take
any chances. He followed his elbow up by spinning the first guy
around and throwing him headfirst into the side of the building.

"Get into
the car!"

Kristin didn't
look like she was happy about Ash's order, but she already had her
keys out and was only two steps from the car. I paced her, half a
step behind as my mind finished processing the situation.

Three more guys
had almost reached us, but none of them were giving off the
characteristic energy surge I would have expected from shape
shifters. Ash stepped forward to deal with the guy on his side of the
car as Kristin threw herself across the passenger seat, and then it
was my turn.

The taller of
my two opponents, a skinny white guy with a mohawk, threw a jab at
me, but everything about the attack was human-slow. I didn't try to
block it. I could have probably absorbed the blow without going down
if it had come to that. Being a shape shifter made me strong and let
me take a lot more damage than a human, even in this form, but there
wasn't any need to take the hit.

I lashed out
with my fist, connecting with his strike and shattering his hand and
wrist in a move that no trained fighter would have used, but that was
okay, I'd never trained to fight as a human. There wasn't any reason
to waste time learning to fight in this form, not when there was
still so much to learn about fighting as a hybrid.

A flicker of
motion brought me around just in time to intercept an elbow strike
from the next guy. I hit his arm with an open palm a split second
before he would have connected with my throat and then stepped in and
hit him in the ribs with the other hand.

He went down to
one knee from the sheer shock of having the entire right side of his
chest caved in, and then I spun back around and punched the taller
guy in the throat with a blow that was carefully measured so that I
wouldn't break his neck.

My side of the
exchange had taken less than two seconds. Ash's car roared to life as
I looked up just in time to see a new guy step up behind Ash and hit
him in the kidney hard enough to shatter Ash's floating ribs.

A normal human
would have probably collapsed on the spot, but Ash was a shape
shifter. He wasn't particularly strong or fast as a wolf, and he'd
never manifested a hybrid form, but he was still one of us. Ash
blocked the next blow with his elbow, and then he stuck a knife in
the new guy.

It wasn't a
very big knife, but Ash knew how to use a knife with the best of
them. I expected the new guy to fall to the ground in a spray of
blood, but he just backhanded Ash across the parking lot. It was the
kind of thing you sometimes saw in a movie, but it was next to
impossible for a normal human to hit someone that hard.

The pieces
clicked into place. This last guy wasn't just local muscle like the
rest—he was a shape shifter, and based off of his tattoos and
piercings, he was a Coun'hij enforcer. I'd already started forward to
back Ash up. For all I knew getting thrown across the parking lot had
been part of Ash's plan all along. It got him far enough away to get
his handgun into play, which was his best chance against a hybrid,
but it was still a plan born of desperation.

Ash was on the
ground, off balance and disoriented from the force of the blow he'd
taken. He was fast, but a hybrid was faster. Luckily Ash wasn't by
himself, he had me.

Shifting forms
in public went against everything I'd been taught since I'd first
found out that I wasn't like other kids, but I didn't even think
twice about it. My beast cut loose with a hammer blow of power and
between one step and the next my human body exploded out into the
hulking form of my hybrid shape.

The wash of
power was unmistakable for one of our kind, and the other shape
shifter spun back towards me to honor the greater threat that I
represented. He shifted as he moved, and then I crashed into him.

In this form I
was nearly six feet seven inches tall and I was several hundred
pounds heavier than I'd been just a few seconds before, but I still
gave up more than fifty pounds and nearly a full inch to the new guy.

I'd hoped to
bowl him over with my initial rush, but he dug in and dropped his
shoulder. We stumbled back away from each other, rocked by the force
of the impact, and then he slashed at me with seven inches of
razor-sharp semi-retractable claws that were harder than steel.

I moved
forward, trying to get inside the arc of his attack, but he ducked
under my arm and tore a long gash in my side. I reversed direction
and checked his next attack, grabbing his left arm a split second
before he could sink it into my back.

I didn't try to
hold onto him as he tore his wrist free, he was stronger than me, but
I managed to nick a couple of the smaller veins in his arm in
exchange. He darted toward me and I slapped his claws away, but he
was even faster than I'd realized.

His other hand
came out of nowhere and buried itself in my stomach. Even my hybrid
body couldn't continue to take that level of damage for much longer.
Every nerve I had lit up in agony, but I ignored that and threw
myself backward.

The Coun'hij
guy didn't want to let me go, he tightened his grip and tried to pull
me closer, but that just provided me with the leverage that I'd been
looking for. I walked up the side of his body, sinking the talons on
my feet into his legs and chest as I extended his arm all of the way
out.

His claws
pulled free of my gut and then I heaved against his shoulder with
every ounce of strength I had. I'd seen Carson do something similar
in a sparring session back at the estate before everything had fallen
apart. Done right, it dislocated the other guy's shoulder, but either
I hadn't managed to execute the technique correctly, or the other
hybrid was just too strong for it to work.

For one long
second I thought I had him, but then he started reeling me back in. I
would have said that nobody was strong enough to lift me by one arm
like that, but this guy didn't just lift me, he whipped me through
the air and slammed me into the side of the gas station.

I initially
thought that the popping noise I was hearing was my vertebrae, but as
I stumbled away from the wall I realized that the other hybrid hadn't
stayed around to finish me off.

Kristin had
screamed to a stop a couple of feet from where Ash had landed and
they both had their guns out. The Coun'hij enforcer had disappeared
behind the detached car wash in an effort to avoid the hail of
bullets that they'd sent his way, but there was too much blood on the
pavement for it all to be mine.

I started after
the other hybrid, but Ash yelled at me before I could make it more
than a step or two.

"Get to
the car, they wouldn't have been waiting if they didn't have more
people coming, and the cops are on their way!"

Part of me
wanted to argue with him, but he was right. I turned and sprinted
towards the car, huge hybrid legs devouring the distance. Ash climbed
inside the vehicle as soon as I started moving, but Kristin sped up
her rate of fire to compensate. It only took her about a second to
shoot herself dry, but that was all that Ash needed to get into
position behind her and he picked up firing with hardly any break at
all.

Kristin was on
the move now, the car was already doing twenty, but Ash managed to
space his shots out just enough to keep the enforcer pinned down for
the extra second it took me to catch up with the car.

I managed to
shift back to human form on the run without stumbling, and then threw
myself into the car just before Kristin cranked it up to forty.

"How did
they find us? My phone wasn't on for long enough to track."

Kristin didn't
look away from the road. "Are you sure of that? It's the logical
explanation."

Ash shook his
head as he scanned our surroundings for somewhere we could lose the
cops. "No, Isaac is right. Those guys had to be moving into
position even before Isaac turned his phone on. One hybrid and a car
full of hired muscle—they'd been tracking us before we even
stopped for gas, it's the only explanation. It was an opportunistic
hit; they knew where we were and happened to have one guy and some
contacts in the area where we stopped."

"That
means that they have something other than cell phone tracking in play
then. Alec needs to know that, every single one of his people could
be walking into traps as we speak."

Ash didn't look
happy, but this time he couldn't argue with me. "Fine. Get your
phone powered on. You have one minute before it needs to go back off
and this time just pull the battery. It's going to be anyone's guess
as to whether or not we're going to be able to lose the police."

I fished my
phone back out of the compartment inside my ha'bit where I stored it
and pushed the power button. It was going to take forty-five seconds
to boot up, so I reached back into the back seat for the first-aid
kit next to Ash. If we ended up on foot at some point over the next
hour or two then I needed to not look like I'd just finished fighting
for my life.

I slapped a big
square of white gauze over the hole in my stomach and then used half
of a roll of tape to hold it in place. I finished right as my phone
finished booting up. Alec picked up on the first ring.

"Isaac, I
thought you guys were going to stay dark for the next few days."

"Yeah, not
that anyone bothered to tell me that before we left." I wanted
to say more, but I knew it wasn't the time or place for
recriminations. "We just got jumped. One hybrid, who was
probably hoping not to have to get involved, and a bunch of local
thugs. It looked like they had someone else on the way."

There was a
second of silence as Alec digested the news. "So they were
tracking you. You're positive that you all had your phones off the
entire time?"

"Yeah, I
had mine on for about fifteen seconds, but that isn't long enough to
run any kind of trace on it."

He cut me off
before I could finish explaining. "Then we don't have proof. Are
you guys going to be able to help if another team in the area runs
into the same kind of problems?"

Ash responded
before I could. "No, we have to go to ground in the next five
minutes or we're going to end up in a jail somewhere. Is there
anything you can do to take some heat off of us?"

"No. The
Chicago pack just went silent, and I suspect that all of the rest of
our people are in hot water up to their necks. I'll let you know as
soon as I can shake someone loose to help out, but for now you guys
are on your own."

Isaac Nazir
I-30
Eastern Texas

I pulled on a
fresh set of clothes and then we ditched Ash's car inside what I was
pretty sure was the oldest, most decrepit parking garage in the city
of Dallas. Ash had a lot of history with that particular car, but he
walked away from it without looking back.

From there we
headed on foot to a shopping mall. We spent the next four hours
ducking in and out of places as we made abrupt changes to our
appearances.

Kristin had a
good eye for spotting security cameras, but Ash was even better. It
was like he had a sixth sense when it came to anticipating where we
were most likely to find blind spots. We moved quickly. We kept it
down to a walk whenever there were people around, but it was a
deceptively fast walk and we covered a lot of ground.