We stop about a quarter mile away from the lake houses to drop off the majority of our packs. There’s a lot of supplies that have been packed in case we get stuck here for a few days, and there’s no point in dragging them around while we are busy capturing our targets and bringing them in without any casualties.
Gryph makes a makeshift hole to hide them in and covers it with tree bark and leaves until there’s no real way of telling that the area has been disturbed at all. There’s a reason he’s the head Tactical Leader and it has absolutely nothing to do with his social standing or his place in the Draven Bond Group.
The girl watches his every move as though she is taking a class in tactical training. When he straightens again, she gives him a small nod. There’s nothing of the mouthy college student left standing before me, just a well trained soldier, and I could almost commend Gryph on his work.
Almost, but not quite.
She’s never going to lull me into the same state of complacency that she has the rest of them. I can see through it. I know exactly how Bonds operate.
I cast out my Gift again to check in with each of my shadows, but there’s still no one anywhere near where we are. This area is frequented by Top Tier families and most of the houses built around the lake are owned by Gifted community members. There are even a few that have full-time staff of lower Gifted families who live here year round to maintain and take care of the property.
North and I have been to a few Council parties and functions out here. There was even a Bond ceremony that he’d dragged me to years ago, back before I was old enough to say no to that sort of thing.
I don’t have any bad memories of this place, but I’m not exactly excited to be back either. The fact that Giovanna and her family are, at the very least, Resistance sympathizers and own property out here makes me suspicious of the rest of the family. It’s not too much of a reach to think that maybe the time that they spend out here all together has more to do with strategizing and fundraising for the cause than it does about rest and relaxation.
Gryph looks out past the thickest section of trees and then says, “We need to move out. There is going to be nonverbal communication from here on out. The O’Neill family has extensive security around their property, including microphones and heat detectors. Their property borders where Giovanna and Riley are staying, so we will be circling around it just to be sure. Oli can speak to me, and I will relate anything I need to Nox. We will also use the usual tactical hand signaling should we need to.”
There’s no need to acknowledge his words but the girl nods, rolling her shoulders back, which is the only sign she gives that maybe she was struggling with the pack on her back. I have to admit, I was not expecting her to make it the entire way with the weight of it, and I already know that it was a small test from Gryph just to see what her boundaries were.
He would have made it slightly heavier than he thought she could handle, which is an old tactic of his with his team members. I doubt he would change much just for her. He always will be the tactical group leader, and that’ll bleed through to how he goes about his relationship with her, even if he is blind to her manipulative ways.
As we begin to move, I cast the shadows out to a wider perimeter around us. They won’t show up on heat cameras, microphones, or even on video footage. If someone has had any experience with them before, they may notice the distortion of video images trying to capture them and possibly figure out that we’re here, but there’s no way to get a shadow creature on film. North and I have tested it out on every product available and each time, the images come up white.
I do one last check through all of the weapons and ammunition strapped to my body to make sure that I’m fully armed and everything is where it should be before we move off together. Gryph does the same, though he’s faster and does it mostly by touch, then he moves over to do the same with our little poisonous Bond. Again, she watches his every move as if there’s going to be a test on it later.
Strange behavior, I take note of it for later.
I don’t believe that she’s actually going to accept it if we have to deal with her little friend and that Bond Group. I doubt Gryph is going to take it well either, if we’re being honest about it. Aside from North and I, Kieran is his oldest and most trusted friend. They went through training together and served on TacTeams together for years, witnessing the worst of what the Resistance can do to innocent lives.
There’s a connection there that isn’t going to just disappear because of the Benson girl’s treachery.
I move off and take the lead, leaving the Bonded pair behind as I work my way towards the lake houses. Rahab and Procel stay close to my side, while the rest of the shadows form a perimeter around us. When Gryph and his Bonded start moving behind me, the shadow creatures have the three of us completely covered.
I’ve trained them well over the years, a desolate and disturbing childhood has channeled that need, and it’s like second nature for them all to follow my every command. Azrael, even with his recent rebellion of fawning all over the girl, will jump at any direction he’s given.
I will never be helpless again.
We walk in silence until we reach the area where the trees begin to thin out, my feet slowing down as I begin to focus on staying undetected. There’s a different feeling here, the sounds of small animals disappearing and the wildness melting away as we reach the area of human life.
I’d rather stay amongst the trees and leave the bullshit toxicity of the Gifted community behind, but, alas, I promised my brother I would help defend the smaller and innocent people who live below our own standing.
Once we make it through to the edge of the tree line, I can see through to the water and have to change the way that I’m moving forward once again to make sure I’m still covered. The lines of houses along the waterline runs along the entire circumference of the lake, spaced out and each of them with private decks and piers with boats and watercraft on them.
I shouldn’t call them houses. They’re mansions built by the richest families in the Gifted community of the West Coast to come out and relax away from their pathetically sheltered lives. I’d always assumed that they were just typical Top Tier cliques, too elite and rich to mingle with those ‘beneath’ them but our community is in a time of crisis right now. Definitely not the time for a holiday..
There are a lot of people here.
A lot more than you would expect during such a volatile time of conflict, and instantly, I know that North’s assumptions about this area being a Resistance sympathizer hotspot is correct.
Nobody takes a holiday within driving distance of their house while members of their community are being gunned down by the Resistance unless they have a reason to believe that they are safe. Nobody.
I make note of which houses are lit up. When I glance back at Gryphon, mostly to see if he agrees with me, he’s doing the same, his eyes shrewd as he clocks every single one of the traitors who are here. I’ll assume all of the Gifted who have property here are traitors, but the ones actually staying here right now are further up the ‘take-down’ list.
When we reach the O’Neills’ property boundary, we have no choice but to give the perimeter a wide berth to avoid detection. Harriet, Langton, and Grant O’Neill had always been fairly high up on my list of potential Resistance sympathizers, and the smoke coming out of their chimney only confirms for me that they are.
If this wasn’t a quiet mission of getting in and out without detection, I would happily send my shadows in to dispose of them all right now. Top Tier families with more money than is good for them, happy to sacrifice the lower families in their never-ending pursuit of power and recognition; it’s sickening. It also says a lot to me about their Gifts and what they’re able to do if they feel this way.
I have never once felt the need to exert my power over those underneath me.
Only when someone has been unnecessarily flexing have I used my Gift against them to prove a point. I would bet that every last one of them are compensating for what they are lacking, and I can’t wait to wipe them all from the face of the earth the moment the girl is no longer with us. If she weren’t here right now, Gryphon would have changed the plan. I’ve worked with him for long enough to have no doubt. He would have taken one look at the frivolity and carefree disposition of these people and he would have gone in, guns blazing. But because we have his Bonded with us, we’ll have to stick to the quiet mission North set out for us.
When we finally make it to the edge of the O’Neill property and onto the land behind the lake house Giovanna and Riley are staying in, I send one of the shadows out in front of us to figure out where exactly in the house they are for extraction. I choose Mephis, and he shrinks down to barely more than a palmful of smoke, moving faster than my eyes can properly track. He’s the most persistent of my creatures, like a bloodhound when he’s given a task, and I have no doubt this will all be over in under a half hour.
Gryphon catches my attention and shakes his head, sending a message directly into my head, thanks to his Gift. They’re not in there. The house is empty.
For fuck’s sake.
The girl is infuriating. “Let your bond out.”
She looks at me as though I have suggested she slit her wrists in front of me just for my enjoyment. Gryphon gives me a stern glare as well, as though he believes the same of me.
He’s gotten a lot more vocal about my supposed poor treatment of his precious little Bonded, and I don’t have the heart to tell him that this? This is nothing. This is me on my best behavior.
It could get so much worse.
After three hours of watching the lake house in silence, waiting for some sign of either of the targets and coming up with nothing, we’d moved back to where we’d stashed away the packs to regroup. I was perfectly happy standing in silence, but Gryph had made the order and he is the lead here. I’ve been on enough of these missions to know that there’s no scenario where you don’t follow your lead, that’s how you end up with pointless deaths and people being captured by the enemy.
She takes a deep breath and works at keeping her voice steady, though she’s not quite successful at it. “There’s no need for me to let my bond out. None of us are in danger. Whatever it is that you need me to do, I can do it myself.”
The height difference between us means that I can stand over her and really stare her down, but there’s a fire behind her eyes as she glares back up in return that says I’m pretty close to waking her bond up anyway, which is the entire point of this endeavor. “I don’t need anything from you. I need your bond.”
She huffs with the same ferocity as a toddler, and I’m surprised that she doesn’t just stamp her foot in a full tantrum. “I can do anything that my bond can do, and I think it’s more of a risk to have my bond out right now than it’s worth. We’re not being attacked. We’re not in danger. There are no warning signs of the Resistance lying in wait. There’s no reason for it to be at the surface.”
She just keeps repeating that, as though she will somehow be able to talk sense into me. “This isn’t about me wanting something from your bond, this is about the work that I need to do, and I would rather have your bond here for it than you.”
There’s a small shocked silence and then she makes a sputtering noise of outrage, glancing over at Gryph as though she’s asking him to intervene. She’s been so adamant about ‘dealing’ with me on her own lately that it feels like a win.
She’s very obviously whining about me directly to him, but his face gives nothing away, which is a tell of its own, and he holds out an arm to beckon her over into his arms.
This is getting old; you need to grow the fuck up.
Rahab snaps at Gryph’s ankles and he shoots me a look, which I ignore. Either they accept my attempts at civility or they deal with me treating their Bonded the way she deserves.
That’s all I have to offer.
He simpers away to her, “He needs quiet to work with the shadows for a while. Of course he can’t just say this to you, that would be the reasonable thing to do. Instead, he’s baiting you. Let’s go eat something for lunch and leave him to work.”
I turn my back on them and walk away, done with having pointless and fucking stupid conversations. There’s an itch that works its way down my spine that isn’t exactly mine.
My bond wants hers.
The Bond, of course, that’ll never change, but it also just wants to see it. To know that it’s still in there, that it still belongs to it, and that they’re here on this earthly plane together.
I want to take a knife to my skin to hack away until I can get the being living inside of me out, to carve any link to that girl out of me so that she can never wield her manipulation and sadistic plans against me. I have lived with this other being inside of me in relative harmony my entire life, but the moment she had been dragged back to Draven, it started. The war waged beneath my own skin.
I loathe her for it.
More than I already did.
I walk over to a fallen tree and sit down on the rough trunk, rolling my shoulders back as I let my eyes slip shut. I reach out to each of my shadows and check in with them, seeing through their eyes and taking in the full perimeter of the small community we’re monitoring. Procel is inside the house with Mephis, both of them trawling through paperwork and anything else they might come across that could help us with this extraction.
They’re both safe and somewhere that they’re not going to be spotted, so I leave them and move on, one by one, until I’ve been through the entire town. I hear a lot of damning things, a lot of pro-Resistance chatter. This community thinks they’re safe here, and I’m thankful for all of the training I’ve done to sharpen my memory.
I’ll never forget the Gifted or the evil they’re talking about.
When I’ve gone through each of my creatures, I go through them again.
And then once more, just to be sure.
When I come back into myself, darkness has fallen around me. My muscles are all stiff and sore, my fingers are numb and a little blue in the cold night air, and my stomach is growling viciously.
I’ve been in the shadows for hours without noticing.
There’s a small, wrapped bundle sitting next to me on the tree, simple rations that I inhale without much thought and barely taste any of it. There’s not really enough there to fill me up, just ease away the edge of my ravenous hunger instead. Rahab is still sitting at my feet, his void eyes watching out over the trees protectively as he stands guard.
The girl must have brought me the food.
The shadows aren’t usually combative against North, Gryph, or Gabe, thanks to the years of trust I’ve built with them, but the recent issues I’ve been having with them all have meant that they’ve been more reactive, even to them.
Never with the girl though.
It’s just another thing I loathe about her.
When I stand up, my body cracking and stiff at the action, I make my way over to the small camp that Gryph has put together. It’s standard procedure to have the small camouflage tent set up on the ground and two more of my shadows keeping watch a few feet away. There’s silence inside, but they’re both awake. They’ll be communicating through the mind link they share, partially so they don’t disturb my work, but also so that we remain undetected out here.
I don’t want to sleep in the tent.
I’ll speak to Gryph and then take up watch for the night. There’s plenty of trees I can lean against and with my shadows out, I could sleep there without being any risk to us at all. Gryph’s Gift would also wake him if someone got close enough for him to hear their thoughts and… the girl’s bond has always been good about keeping her alive. I’m sure it’ll wake her if needed.
I lift open the flap and hunch over to duck into the tent. I have to almost immediately find a spot to sit down. This thing is only made to keep us dry and unseen, not at all to keep us comfortable.
What did you find? Gryph says before I have the chance to address either of them.
He’s stripped off his jacket but he’s still fully armed. He’ll sleep that way too, always ready to wake with a gun in his hands. It’s saved our asses more than a few times. There’s a weariness etched into his face that comes with him using so much of his Gift, even with the extra boost he has thanks to his bonding.
I push the answer to the surface of my mind, the area that we had learned years ago that he’ll find without having to pry, and the only acceptable way I’ll allow him to use his Gift on me. He knows that boundary and has always respected it.
A lot of Resistance support and treachery, but not the targets. There are signs of them in the house though. I doubt they’ll be gone for longer than a day. His contact lenses are in the bathroom, and there’s a bag with her ID in one of the closets that I doubt she’ll just leave behind.
He nods firmly and sips at the bottle of water in his hands. When he sees me look at it, he leans over to grab another one out of his bag, tossing it over to me.
I down it in one go, and then finally, I look over at his Bonded.
Her hair sticks up in a fuzzy little halo of silver around her head, the cost of her Gift that no one has really commented on yet. The photo we’d originally been given of her showed a dark-haired little girl. Whatever experiments the Resistance had done to her, the testing of her abilities and the limits of what a Render like her could do, had leached all of the color away from her hair, and sometimes I wonder if it’s done it to her skin as well. She’s unnaturally pale, a stark comparison to the olive tones of North and I, but even Bassinger’s Eastern European lineage skin has more tone than she does.
The effects of a Render’s Gift is something I’ve been researching from the moment I’d found out that she was lying about being Gift-less. I’d known from the beginning that she was lying, everything I’d done was to bait the Gift out of her. Having her here was already a threat, but having her here with no idea of what she was truly capable of?
Unacceptable.
If she’d also had the shadows or something like them, there was a chance she could get the better of me, and there was no way I was sticking around for that. No way. North knew it too, he’d spent weeks telling me there was no way she could ever have a curse like ours.
Then her eyes turned black.
Then her bond had a voice of its own, a sentient being lives inside of her that makes its own decisions the way that mine can, if it so chooses. Every little mutter of reassurance my brother had given me was proven wrong. His little Bonded was exactly the threat I knew she would be.
Rahab sets a paw on my leg, sensing the dark recesses that my mind has wandered into, and I reach down with one hand to stroke at his head, ruffling his ears a little. I feel a wave of calm settle over me for a brief moment, and then the panic starts.
Panic because it’s time to get up and walk out of here, but my bond refuses to let me leave.
It doesn’t take over my body, not fully, but if I think about moving to get my body out of this tent, I can’t. When I shift my weight to get comfortable, I can, and when I move to take my jacket off, I can also do that.
Standing? Nope.
Oli and I are going to sleep. We’ll be up at first light. I didn’t set up your bedroll because I assumed you’d throw a bitch fit about being in here, but it’s over there if you want to grab it.
There is no form of torture of this earth that would make me admit to him that I can’t leave this tent right now. Absolutely no fucking way.
Except that is a problem in itself, because if I fall asleep, my bond will come out and go looking for hers. Then this whole mission will go to hell in a fucking hand-basket, because he’ll slit my throat for daring to breathe near his precious little Bonded.
So I roll out the bedding on the far side of the tent, as far away from them as I can get, and lie down on top of it while avoiding his eyes. He knows something is up, he knows too damn well, but I just lie down and let Rahab curl up over my chest instead.
They both tuck themselves in together, their bedding mixing up as the girl curls into Gryph’s body. He does what he needs to do to keep her glued to his side while also keeping all of his weapons attached to himself, and then he kills the lamp.
It’s fine.
Until it’s fucking not.
After an hour, the girl is sound asleep. Gryph is finally starting to wind down a little. The tension is still in his body but his breathing is evening out some. I’m still staring at the camo fabric above my head as I force myself to stay awake. If I can just stay awake until he’s out completely, we should be okay here.
Except then, the girl’s bond wakes up.
Gryph goes on immediate high alert, assuming there’s a danger here that we’re not picking up on, shifting her away from his chest as he sits up and reaches for a gun.
I stay exactly where I am and hope that I’m wrong.
I’m not.
From the corner of my eye, I see the bond move fluidly away from him, crawling over to me on her hands and knees like some sort of feline predator in the night. I sigh and push back at my own bond which begins to flood my mind, pushing and fussing at me to take control and get what it wants.
When she gets to the very edge of my bedroll, right down at my feet, she stops short of touching me. I glance down and am struck by the void stare, my bond shoving at me desperately, but I fight it a little longer. Mostly because I’m stubborn, but also because I can feel the growing horror coming from Gryph.
What the fuck is going on, Nox?
I meet his eye across the tent, which is the worst fucking thing to do because the shock and alarm there is exactly what I knew would happen if he or my brother found out.
We’re talking about this, right the fuck now.
No, the fuck we’re not. I leave the words at the surface of my mind, but my bond takes over before I’m sure he’s had a chance to hear them, my own consciousness slipping away like the tide. Then I know nothing for the rest of the night.
