pack of lies

i gave the room a three hundred sixty-degree perusal. the bar was empty of patrons, and berna was nowhere in sight. but people or not, the air was thick with magic. it also smelled of fresh blood and bruises, my palate tingling at the possibility of an early lunch. but this wasn't blood to be sipped; it was blood already spilled.

hank williams crooned softly through the jukebox, warbling out a haunting song about whip-poor-wills and loneliness. the jukebox suddenly hiccuped, and the song skipped, stopped, then picked up again.

i walked to the bar, where the scent of blood was stronger, and gingerly touched my fingertips to a spot on the wood. i pulled back fingers, wet with blood.

"oh, this is not good," i murmured, wiping my hands on my pants and scanning the room for signs of the struggle that put it there. a low moan suddenly echoed from the back room. it was a sound of pain, maybe with some despair thrown in. the hair on my neck stood on end. blood on the bar and moaning in the back room - something was very, very wrong. i glanced back at the door, wishing i'd asked adam to stay and escort me back into the bar.

what the hell had happened while he'd been on the way to pick me up?

and so much for gabriel's theory that conpack put an end to shifter drama.

i let out a curse and thought about my options. option one: i could wait for adam to return, but that left me in the bar, with god only knew what on the other side of the door.

option two: i could make a move of my own. that, of course, risked injury and ethan's wrath, but someone was injured in there. i couldn't very well just stand by and wait for them to die.

i lifted the hem of my pants, pulled the dagger from my boot, and adjusted it in my palm until the grip was perfect. i stood beside the bar for a few more seconds until i'd gathered up the courage to take a step. when i was ready, i blew out a breath and crept, weapon in hand, toward the door. when i reached the red leather, i put my hand on the door and pushed.

the room was black, light spilling around me as i stood in the doorway, one hand still on the leather.

the smell of blood was strongest in here, along with something else . . . a tingle of emotion, of fear. pack magic.

as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, a shape emerged - a man on the floor, propped against the wall, face bloodied and bruised, one knee up, the other leg extended. his t-shirt was torn, his jeans shredded at the knees.

even though the tingle had felt familiar, it took my brain a moment to realize what i was seeing.

whom i was seeing.

it was nick.

"oh, my god." i ran to him, ignoring the pain as my knees hit the tile floor. i dropped the dagger and began scoping out cuts and bruises. "are you okay?" he groaned in response.

"what happened to you?" i asked. and, more important, how? nick was a shifter. he may not have been an apex, but i'd felt the wake of his magic, knew he had power of his own. who had the power to hurt nick?

"gabriel," nick muttered, then coughed hoarsely. "it was gabriel." i blinked back confusion. "gabriel?"

"he thinks i - ," nick began, but before he could finish, my dagger skittered to the other end of the room. shocked, i froze, one hand at nick's temple, my heart suddenly pounding in my chest, as i watched it spin in the far corner.

"too late," nick muttered.

swallowing down a thick rise of fear, i glanced beside me at the booted foot that had kicked my dagger into the corner, and the shape-shifter it belonged to. golden eyes glowed.

gabriel.

my heart began to thud. improved sparring skills or not, i felt as puny and weak as ever, huddled on the ground before a man who was piqued enough to make the air prickly with his magic.

"it was me," he confirmed.

he'd done this? to nick? one of his own pack members? i tried to play catch-up but couldn't make sense of it. what could nick have done that would prompt gabriel to this kind of violence?

without words, gabriel walked to the door and flipped on the overhead fixture with a loud click, flooding the room with light. i blinked back white spots, then stood up and looked him over. his knuckles were raw, and a bruise bloomed over his right cheekbone. nick had gotten in a hit, then, but had ultimately been bested by the alpha in the room.

and here i was in a room with him, my colleagues miles away, my dagger on the other side of the room.

it was time to use the only weapon i had left - a good, old-fashioned vampire bluff.

i adopted the haughtiest tone i could muster. "what did you do to him?" gabriel arched an eyebrow, as if surprised i'd challenge his authority, his right to deal with a member of his pack as he saw fit. after a moment of staring at me, he turned and slid a chair out from the table, then sat down. his posture was negligent - slouchy, legs sprawled, one elbow propped on the table. i wasn't sure if he was really that unconcerned that a vampire had just walked into . . . well, something, or if it was some kind of ploy.

"you lied to me, merit."

"excuse me?"

gabriel crossed his legs at the ankles, then traced a circle on the tabletop with a fingertip. my skin began to itch with the pins-and-needles effect of his magic. i fought to hold back my fangs and the silvering of my eyes even as my genetics screamed out, run, or prepare to fight. now.

"you told me you learned about the contract on my life because you'd received an anonymous phone call." he looked up at me, the color in his irises swirling with obvious fury. "that was a lie." i met his penetrating gaze with a neutral expression.

gabriel bobbed his head toward nick. "in fact, i've learned mr. breckenridge here was your not-so-anonymous source. a man with whom you've had a lengthy personal relationship." i frowned at gabriel. nick had given me the information because he'd gotten an anonymous phone call.

and, yes, i'd had a personal relationship with nick . . . but in high school.

confused, i glanced at nick, who shook his head. "he thinks i did it. thinks i planned it - the hits. the attempts on his life."

"you did have the knowledge," gabriel said dryly.

nick barked out a strangled laugh. "with all due respect, apex, i'm a goddamned reporter. i get tips.

it's my job."

"he was trying to help you," i added. "he told me so i could pass along the warning, so you'd know there was a risk of a hit at the conference. that's why we told you. that's why we were prepared when the chaos started."

"i'm now regretting that i called the convocation, that i didn't just pull the shifters back to aurora. one shifter - a leader - is dead, and there's now a division between the rest of them. do you have any idea how frustrated that makes me? when i trusted you?"

given the angry magic in the air - and the sulfurous smell of it - i had a pretty good sense of it.

"nick didn't do this. he couldn't have done this. you know he does everything possible to protect you, to protect the pack. do you recall a few weeks ago when he tried to bring down our house because he had just a suspicion that we might harm shifters? and you have no right to question my or ethan's motivations after what we've done this week."

"we know what you call us," gabriel said. "pretenders." i lifted my eyebrows. "i don't call you that. ethan doesn't call you that. and even if there are vampires who use that term, we certainly don't have a monopoly on prejudice. there are plenty of shifters with some grade-a hatred of vampires." nick used to be one of those shifters. and here i was protecting him.

"you lied to me. i do not take kindly to treachery, merit. i do not take kindly to being set up. why should i let you escape that with impunity?"

screw this, i thought, and darted for the dagger. gabe let me get it; he didn't lift toe one from the floor as i came back and stood in front of nicholas, weapon in hand.

i moved around, keeping my body and blade between gabriel and nick. it's not that i had a lot of lost love for nick, but gabriel was higher up on my shit list at this point. i was going to have to figure out what was going on, but i was damned sure going to do it with steel in my hand.

"don't come any closer," i warned him, my dagger tipped out toward his chest. "i don't want to have to hurt you."

he grinned at me, wolfishly. "i'm amused you think you could hurt me, merit. you've fought some shifters, sure. but they weren't alphas." as if to prove his point, he stood up and threw out a hand. i think he meant to casually disarm me, to push the dagger from my hand, but he underestimated my speed. i slashed at him and made contact, a crimson line appearing across his forearm. his eyes instantaneously widened, and he looked down, surprised that i'd done it, but still not intimidated.

i, on the other hand, was feeling pretty damned intimidated.

"as you'll no doubt recall, i got shot yesterday. this is only a scratch. i'll just have berna bring in a band-aid. berna," he called out, his head half tilted back toward the door.

there was no answer.

"she's not out there," i told him. "the bar's empty."

"the bar's not empty," he said. "they're still working out there. berna," gabriel yelled again, but his call was met with silence. he looked back at me, bewilderment in his expression.

the pieces fell together. "adam," i whispered.

gabriel's voice wavered. "what about adam?"

"he picked me up at the house in a limousine and drove me here. he said you wanted to talk to me. he showed me a text message you sent. he dropped me off and said he was going to circle the block to give us a few minutes to talk."

"i didn't send a text message."

"i get that now. i think he set us up." i looked at gabriel. "did he tell you that nick and i set you up?" there was a flash of alarm in gabriel's golden eyes, at least until he closed them again, his expression haggard. "he said you two were working together to create problems for me in chicago." he glanced at nick. "he said he had proof you were going to use your family's money to put yourself in charge of the pack."

nicholas scoffed and looked away. "i would never. never."

"he is my brother," gabriel added quietly, frustration in his voice, as if willing nick to understand why he'd trusted adam, even if the story was a little too soap-operatic to be entirely believable.

"i assume he was trying to get you pissed at me and nick," i said. "maybe so you'd incapacitate us or just take us out altogether. and then what?"

"and then he tries to take me out while you're here - "

"and they'll think i did it," i finished for him. "adam will take me out and claim he caught me in the act of killing you. and that's the first shot in the war between shifters and vampires." i softened my voice.

"gabriel, if you didn't call me here, why else would he have arranged for me to come?" while gabriel considered my question, i considered the fortuity that had put me outside the house.

what if i hadn't been there? would he have come into the house looking for ethan? would ethan have been drawn into the trap?

"did he tell you ethan was in on it?" i asked.

gabriel nodded. and then, as if the weight of his brother's betrayal had suddenly hit him, his eyelids fell shut. "dear god," he said, shaking his head, as he puzzled it out. "you're right - why else would he have arranged for you to come?"

"could he have been behind all of it?" i asked. "tony's death? the attack on the bar? the convocation?

the hit? i mean, he's your brother."

"i would assume that's the motivation. he's family. he's in line for the position of alpha - but last in line.

he must want the position, and i'm the current obstacle to that plan. not the only obstacle, since fallon and the rest of them fall in line before adam, but a current obstacle." he swore out a string of insults that reddened my ears and made nick whimper from his spot on the floor.

"he killed an apex, for christ's sake." gabriel crossed himself, two fingertips moving from head to heart, then across his chest, as if protecting himself from the karmic backlash that adam's mortal wound would have incited . . . or perhaps apologizing to the universe for it.

"he's good," i said quietly. "he never directly implicated tony, but he pointed us in the right direction so that we implicated him ourselves."

"which made the idea that much more believable."

i nodded, then glanced around. if adam was still circling the block, waiting for gabriel to take me out, we were going to need a plan, and fast. "is there another way out of here?" he shook his head. "there's a fire exit, but it's through the door on the other end of the bar." i blew out a breath, squeezing and resqueezing the dagger's handle. we'd been set up, and some really, really bad shit was about to go down in this bar in ukrainian village.

better yet, no one knew i was here, and i didn't have a phone on me. adam had a phone, the little shit, but a fat lot of good that was going to do me now. i tried to slow the hammering of my heart and hold back the silvering of my eyes. i did not want to be stuck in the back of a bar with no exit. i felt like the stupid heroine in a horror movie, willingly walking into the lion's den without phone or sword, now stuck in a family squabble between an apex and his cain-like brother.

backup, i figured, was my only bet. i could call luc or ethan - or even jonah - and report that adam was trying to take us out. "do you have a phone?"

"behind the bar," gabe said.

as we glanced at the red leather door that led back into the bar, preparing to make our move, the bell over the front door rang.

"he's back," gabriel said.

my effort to hold them back notwithstanding, my fangs descended and my eyes silvered. the blood began to rush through my veins as my body prepared for the fight.

"sire?" nick called out. "please?"

gabriel moved to nick, put a hand behind his head, and pressed his lips to nick's forehead. he whispered something i couldn't hear, but the words were low and earnestly spoken. then gabriel glanced back at me, as if my presence affected whatever answer he was going to give to nick's plea.

"shift," he said, "and do it quickly. i don't know how much time we'll have." nick closed his eyes in relief and began the slow process of standing.

"no vampire sees this and lives," gabriel said, his voice gravelly. "i allow it now because one of my own put you in this position. but you saw none of it."

i nodded. even if i hadn't taken his words to heart, the expression in his eyes signaled clearly enough that he was trusting me with something momentous - the right to watch a shape-shifter work his personal magic.

"sir," i said, recognizing his authority. when gabriel nodded and turned back for the door, the first line of defense against adam's coming attack, i risked a glance at nick. he'd stripped off his t-shirt, revealing a fuzzy - but bruised - chest, and was pulling off his jeans. not expecting the show - weren't shifters supposed to rip through their clothes? - i turned away again, but not before nick had caught me inadvertently peeking.

"it's not entirely necessary to strip down," i heard him say as fabric fell to the floor, "but these are my favorite jeans."

i bobbed my head in understanding but kept my eyes averted.

"if you want to see it," nick quietly offered, "you'd better look now." the only vampire alive to see a man shift into . . . something? no way was i going to miss that.

i glanced back, catching the full monty of a very naked and well-honed journalist. he had athletic feet, long, lean calves, and firm thighs. his shoulders were strong, his arms muscular, but he was also bumped and bruised, cut and bitten. he'd clearly taken a beating at gabriel's hands. nick nodded, and then it began . . . and my mouth gaped open in shock. it wasn't what i'd expected. i'd seen under world and the rest of the movies that detailed the transformation from human to wolf. i'd assumed the change was a physical one - a gory shifting of muscle and bone, an exchange of paws and fur for human skin and feet.

but there was nothing anatomical about this. i raised a hand to shield my eyes as light flashed around nick's body, a cloud of shifting colors as the magic - thick enough to take tangible form - swirled around him.

i'd always thought, as was the common vampire understanding, that shifters were like us - superpredators who'd come into existence as the result of a genetic mutation that altered the form of their bodies. that was not what this was, this gentle light and haze of color. shifters were predators only secondarily.

first, and foremost, they were magic - clean, pure, inherent magic.

not like us.

gabriel turned to face me, his amber eyes alight with predatory arrogance. but the emotion softened. i shook my head.

"i've seen that look before, merit. it's neither as good nor as bad as you think." i looked back at nick, who was still wrapped in the fog of it, invisible through the mist that cocooned him. and then the mist changed shape, from the tall, lean form of a man, to something low, something horizontal.

and when he padded toward me through that mist, low and feline, a sleek, black cat - cougar? jaguar?

puma? - in the middle of a bar in chicago, my heart nearly stopped. he was tall - his head high enough to reach my elbow, his coat so sleek and black he gleamed like velvet beneath the overhead light, his paws heavy, big enough to take a chunk out of a vampire, should he feel the urge. there was no mistaking his power. there was also no mistaking his health. where nick had been beaten and bruised, the cat was healthy. maybe that was why he'd asked to shift, so that he could heal himself and lose the bumps and bruises. and maybe that was why he'd had to ask - because gabriel had prevented his recuperation.

they might have imagined themselves to be casual, relaxed, less strategic and anxiety-ridden than vampires . . . but there was assuredly a hierarchy in the shifter food chain. and hierarchy mattered.

nicholas padded toward me and nuzzled his face at my thigh.

"now who's 'kitten'?" i murmured, and although the low, grumbly sound he made was decidedly feline, it was still sarcastic.

"all right, children. let's get ready for showtime. breckenridge, take care of merit." he lifted his gaze to me. "you'll be a soldier, a warrior, someday, when you're ready. that's the legacy of you and yours.

you nicked me, even without your steel. but he is my brother. this is my fight, my family's fight, so i'm asking you to defer."

"you don't want my help?"

gabe barked out a laugh. "i'm apex, and he's kin. this is the natural order of things, the way our world operates. there's nothing you can do but get hurt, and get sullivan pissed at me. in the event i survive this, i sure would like to avoid that."

my heart stuttered, but i was smart enough to take his advice, at least until honor required me to intervene. i looked around the room and decided on a table that sat in one corner, the stack of cards from the poker game atop it. i crawled beneath it - a vampire hiding from a fight. sure, it was a little humiliating, but i, too, was hoping to walk out alive.

nick followed me, then turned and arranged his haunches on the floor, putting himself between me and the door - a few hundred pounds of now-feline shifter between me and whatever hell was about to break loose.

gabriel began the methodical process of stripping off his own clothes, the muscles of his body taut beneath them. when he was done and stood naked before the door, he crossed his arms, and we waited.

when adam finally pushed open the door to the back room, there was shock in his expression.

i decided not to take it as a compliment that he was surprised i was still alive.

"what - happened in here?" he asked haltingly. he was scrambling, i imagined, to analyze the situation, to figure out whether there was a way to salvage the script he'd developed or whether he needed to write a new ending.

"i'm still alive," gabriel pointed out. "nick is also still alive, as is merit. everybody wave." i skipped the wave, but offered up a lip-curling snarl, which i directed at the boy who'd led me right into a trap - a trap he'd created.

"so just give me the basic refresher," gabriel said. "the point was, what, to take out tony, frame him for the attack on the bar, and have me assassinated? and when that didn't work, you decide to take me out yourself, take out merit, frame her for my murder, and assume control of the pack?" he crossed his arms over his chest. "and when that's all said and done, what? you take on the houses and lead the packs into genocidal glory?"

adam's features hardened, his lips pulling into a thin line. and then his eyes darkened, and he stepped onto his soap box. "and what have you done for us?

we have meetings, while vampires are treated like celebrities. they control the spin. we're part of this world - one with this world, like nothing else in existence - but we act like children running behind their mothers' skirts!"

i had to admit, that speech wasn't exactly hard to come by these days. although the shifters at the convocation hadn't made it, celina and her cronies had. it was the same argument made by vampires who wanted power in the human world. i'd heard celina say it, and two weeks ago i'd heard peter spencer make the same argument.

"the pack acts like the pack," gabriel countered. "we do not exist to control the fates of humans or vampires. we control our fate, and that's enough."

"not when we could do more."

being supernatural was clearly no immunity against the weaknesses of the ego.

"leading this pack is not about power," gabriel earnestly said, as if we'd been thinking the same thing.

"it's not about ego or wearing the mantle of leadership."

"i think dad would have disagreed."

a pulse of chilling magic filled the air; i guessed gabriel hadn't been thrilled about adam's bringing their father into it.

"dad is no longer here. i speak for the pack now."

adam rolled his eyes. "you hardly speak at all, and that's exactly my point, brother. we both know why i'm here. let's get it over with. i have things to do." the pressure in the room suddenly changed, as if the force of the magic they both brought to bear had altered the atmosphere, and that difference was enough to make my ears ache. and then they shifted.

the light was brighter than it had been when nick transformed, maybe because gabriel was an apex, and adam shared some of those genetics. nick let out a low growl and bumped back closer to me, until his back haunch hit my knees. i'm not sure if the move was made to protect me, or because he was as nervous as i was. too curious to resist, i reached out a hand and stroked his flank, which felt like thick velvet stretched over taut muscle. he flinched at the contact, but settled into it soon enough.

the mist rose again, surrounding adam and gabe, and then sank as they shifted, adam's clothing apparently evaporating with the force of the magic. they were enormous, and our intel had been correct.

they were wolves, both of them, and huge. they were easily bigger than nick, and both had thick, steel gray fur and pale green eyes. their bodies were almost barrel-like, their muzzles pointy, their ears flat against their heads as they prepared to battle. adam was a little smaller than gabriel, maybe because he was younger. he also had a white mark on his left shoulder, which was otherwise the only way to tell them apart as they moved.

and move they did. they made their first strike simultaneously, both of them standing on back legs to swipe at each other with their front paws. their jaws were bared, lips pulled back to reveal thick white teeth. they jumped for a moment before hitting all four legs again, adam in a lower position - maybe a recognition of his submissiveness to gabriel - before apparently deciding that the time had passed for that submissiveness. with a high, keening cry, he pounced, teeth and claws at gabriel's shoulders.

gabriel scrambled to recover, but not before blood was seeping from a wound at his shoulder. he let out a high-pitched cry that made me clamp my hands over my ears, before the whine turned to a canine-bearing growl. he rolled, taking adam with him, then kicked adam with enough force to propel him across the room.

and as if the sights and sounds weren't enough, each time they lunged, they sent a pulse of magic into the air that made it hard to suck in oxygen. my senses, already on edge, were nearly overwhelmed. this wasn't just two wolves play-fighting to assert their dominance. this was a battle of magical forces - powerful magical forces - for control over the pack and its members . . . and the future of shifters. gabriel represented the status quo; adam represented a much, much different future.

adam stood up again, shook off the force of the impact, and, with tail high, hackles raised, and ears flat, attacked. he tried to best gabriel again, blood-tipped teeth snapping at the larger wolf's muzzle, but gabriel wouldn't give in. he scrambled to loose adam from his hold, then made his own move for dominance, pinning adam to the ground and snapping at adam's snout. adam yipped in pain, the sound more like that of a puppy than an oversized wolf, but gabriel didn't yield.

adam scrambled beneath him, trying to reverse their positions, but gabe rotated as adam moved, canines bared and emitting throaty growls to keep the dominant position. like grappling cage fighters, they continued that way for a while, chairs sliding as they tousled across the floor of the back room and the linoleum beginning to bear the bloody marks of their fight. adam wouldn't give up, but neither would gabriel give ground. i wondered if gabe had fought this fight before, and how many times he'd had to battle to keep his hold on the apex position, or to keep order in the pack. adam made one final attempt at the crown, running to the far side of the room as if to regroup, then bounding toward gabriel with the strength he had left. there couldn't have been much left in him. they'd been grappling for ten or fifteen minutes, and adam bore the brunt of the fighting. his once-thick, flat gray coat was now matted and bare in places, blood seeping from wounds on his face, neck, and front legs. but he came at gabriel again, two-inch-long canines nipping at gabe's snout as adam tried to push him to the floor. gabriel yipped at the contact but managed to maneuver his legs enough to get them beneath adam's torso and push him again. this time, adam squarely hit the thick wooden leg of a side table on the other side of the room.

the vase of plastic flowers above it toppled, and the wood cracked as the table leg splintered with the impact.

adam, still on his side, tail now tucked submissively between his legs, whimpered. he was alive, but he'd lost his quest for the pack. i wondered what fate awaited him.

nick paced forward a few feet, and with another burst of flashbulb-worthy magic, shifted back into human form. gabriel did the same, scratches and punctures still evident on his face and arms. i climbed out from under the table, ever the brave vampire, and dusted off my pants. the room was quiet while they dressed again, slipping into jeans and t-shirts, then socks and shoes. gabriel's gestures were simple and efficient, and i wondered if the act of redressing was a kind of meditation for him, a process of readjusting to the human world and to his human form, after time spent in the body of the wolf.

when nick was dressed, he moved back to me. "you all right?" he asked, scanning my face. i nodded, then shifted my gaze to gabriel.

"the shifting didn't heal him?" i whispered.

"only wounds taken on as a human can be healed by shifting. wounds taken on as a shifter are costlier.

he'll heal eventually, but there's no quick fix."

gabriel, now dressed, offered nick and me nods of acknowledgment, then moved toward his now-prone brother. he crouched down on one knee and stared into adam's eyes. adam, still on his side, whimpered again.

"change," gabriel commanded.

i had just a moment to raise my hand against the sudden light. when i blinked again, adam lay on the floor, naked and curled, his body a mess of cuts and bruises.

"you are a disappointment to me, to the family, to the pack," gabriel said.

magic rose again in the room, but not the energetic buzz from before. this magic was old, heavy, and oppressive. although it had nothing to do with me, my lungs burned with the effort of pushing in and out the air made heavy with the weight, and consequence, of gabriel's disappointment. there was no missing it.

"you don't choose to be apex," he told adam. "the pack chooses you. being apex isn't about power or wealth or statu-->>

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