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anything else about what's going on with that cell of the
rebellion? I'm nervous about getting blindsided again. Neither of us
anticipated that Dream Stealer would be able to put together a second
force of that size to interfere with the Agony movement. Heck, I even
told you that Alec had taken my sword, and we still didn't expect him
to use it, let alone find some swordmaster from a school that was
supposed to be long dead to train him in its use. If we're wrong
about who their allies are and how much help they've managed to drum
up, I could lose everything."
    Kaleb had been
suspecting that Puppeteer was holding out on him, but the look in the
other man's eyes confirmed it. Puppeteer was very good at everything
he did, but he spent too much time off by himself with no other
companionship but his thralls. It made him rusty when it came to
dissembling in person.
    "The only
other thing I know is that both your son and Dream Stealer have run
into problems with vampires over the last little while. They managed
to win in both instances, but they lost people—a lot of people.
It doesn't speak very highly for their abilities, which frankly is a
big part of why I haven't been more inclined to bring it to the
attention of our…patron. For them to lose more than a dozen
people in fights with a bunch of piss ant parasites indicates that
they've had a healthy dose of luck in getting this far without being
torn apart by our people."
    Kaleb didn't
respond, just continued to stare at Puppeteer, and eventually the
other man shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "That's it, that's
all I know. My asset hasn't told me anything else—in fact it's
been all I could do to pry that much information out of him. Beyond
that, both groups have completely disappeared. It's like they're a
bunch of ghosts—you know that as well as I do."
    Kaleb finally
nodded. "Okay, I'm in. Get your asset to start the pieces into
motion and I'll come up with some kind of pretext for dropping out of
sight along with Brandon and a group of my best fighters. It will
have to be something that won't make it back to the other packs or
the cats either one, so it won't be easy, but I'll find a way."
    Puppeteer
smiled, but it was a cold expression, the kind of thing you'd expect
from someone who'd just buried their nemesis. Kaleb told himself that
the expression had everything to do with the impending defeat of Alec
and Dream Stealer, and nothing to do with Puppeteer having managed to
back Kaleb into a corner.
    It didn't help.
     
     

Chapter 1
    Alec Graves
Club Inferno
Chicago, Illinois
    Under other
circumstances I wouldn't have felt comfortable interacting with
Shawn—not without a full retinue of guards at least. The last
time we'd seen each other rogue elements inside of his pack had tried
to kill him. The fact that they hadn't been there specifically to
kill me hadn't been a lot of comfort once blood had started flowing.
    This time I
wasn't just dropping in unannounced though, which meant that Shawn
was presumably taking extra precautions when it came to his security.
Especially with regards to forces inside of the Chicago pack who
wanted Shawn's father, Ulrich, to side with the Coun'hij in the
coming war.
    That was great
in theory, but it didn't particularly reassure me—not when
there was a decent possibility that the real threat to my safety was Shawn . Our mission to save Agony just a few weeks earlier had
every sign of having been compromised by someone in the know.
    Whoever was
running things for the Coun'hij had been smart about it. They'd made
it look like Brandon and his people had just been a general security
precaution, but I wasn't buying it, and neither was Taggart. That
meant that feelings were running hot in both of the groups that had
nearly been killed when Brandon had parachuted out of the sky and
then proceeded to tear through our people until Agony, Carson and I
had managed to stand him off for long enough that everyone else had
been able to