Читать книгу Alpha - Rachel Vincent - Страница 13

I stood slowly, fear and anger warring inside me. I couldn’t make my hands unclench at my sides, but my voice and my face were under control. Even-tempered and respectful, at least from the outside. “Councilman Blackwell, please reconsider.”

“You no longer have the floor!” Mitchell snapped, glaring at me from across the room.

“Neither do you.” When the first unruly tendril of my temper began to uncoil, I grasped at it desperately, trying to keep it in check. To keep my mouth from digging a hole my father couldn’t climb out of. I turned back to Blackwell, ignoring the complete outrage written in every line on Mitchell’s face. “Councilman, you know these charges have merit. You were there when the thunderbirds attacked. You know we’re telling the truth.”

Blackwell’s gaze hardened beneath wiry gray eyebrows, and I realized I’d made a mistake, reasonable though my presentation was. I’d questioned his judgment in front of the entire council.

“What I know,” Blackwell said, his creaky voice steadier than I’d heard it in years, “is that you’ve had your say and I’ve made my decision. This council is not unmoved by impassioned pleas, but neither is it governed by them. If we don’t abide by our own rules, we will fall into chaos. Little better than the lawless warlords to our south. When you bring eyewitness testimony, we will hear it, and we’ll decide then whether or not to try Councilman Malone on the charges your Pride has brought forth. Do you understand?”

I understood. I also understood what Blackwell was not saying—that he was sacrificing truth and justice to preserve order in a legal system he would no longer be in the position to enforce. For all his ideals, Blackwell was about to lose his position of authority, and if Malone was voted in with enough support, he would be able to completely restructure the council.

By the time we came back with a thunderbird to testify—assuming that ever happened—Malone might simply refuse to hear the testimony. If he retained the support of all of his current allies, his power would be virtually limitless. He’d be more of a dictator than a council chair.

Especially if Blackwell insisted on remaining neutral. By refusing to accept our evidence, he was creating the very monster he was trying to destroy. How could he not see that?

But for the moment, there was nothing I could do. Nothing any of us could do, without declaring war right then and there. And that would have been beyond foolish. We were outnumbered by our enemies, and most of our troops were hundreds of miles away, at the ranch.

My father watched me intently, but sent me no signal. No silent instructions for my next move. He was as frustrated as I was. Maybe more so. So I could only nod and return to my seat, in spite of every impulse urging me to keep talking until they all saw reason.

On my left, Colin Dean spread his legs to take up as much room as possible in his folding chair. His thigh met mine, and I wanted to reopen his newly healed scar with my bare fingernails.

I started to scoot away from him, then realized that would mean scooting closer to Alex Malone, who’d been directly involved in Ethan’s death, his own brother’s murder, and the new scar bisecting my cheek. So I could only sit there, fuming and grinding my teeth, trying to ignore the unwelcome warmth leaching into my leg from Dean’s as Councilman Blackwell called for the official vote.

It would be an open, vocal vote, for something this big. Each Alpha’s decision would go down on record. We might have actually pulled it off, if they’d used closed ballots. If the weaker of Malone’s allies—Nick Davidson seemed less than solidly on board—didn’t have to face him during the procedure, or admit that they’d switched sides.

Or if Blackwell had voted. But he stuck to his guns, shaky though his aim was.

One by one, they went around the table, and each Alpha said a name. My father and Malone were excluded, and Blackwell removed himself from the proceedings.

The vote started with Milo Mitchell, whose son Kevin had been exiled by my father, then killed by Marc. “My vote goes to Calvin Malone.” No surprise there.

Next came Umberto Di Carlo, across the table from Mitchell. “I support Greg Sanders.”

Then Jerald Pierce, who had two sons—Parker and Holden—in the south-central Pride, and had just lost his oldest, Lance, to the thunderbird justice system. “Malone.” I wanted to shake him and ask how he could side with one son over the others. Especially considering that Lance’s cowardice had cost two other lives, and almost cost many more.

After Pierce came my uncle Rick Wade, my mother’s brother. “Greg Sanders has my vote, and my unyielding support.” I wanted to cry.

Wes Gardner, whose brother Jamey had been killed in our territory by Manx, voted with a single word. “Malone.”

Aaron Taylor, whose daughter we’d saved from being kidnapped and sold in the Amazon, showed his loyalty by voting for my father.

And finally came Nick Davidson, and for a moment, I thought he’d falter. I thought he was seeing the light at the last minute. Then he closed his eyes and sighed. And said, “Calvin Malone.”

And just like that, justice died without so much as a whimper of pain. Four votes to three. If Blackwell had voted, he could have forced a tie and bought us time. But he went with his conscience, and as inconvenient as that turned out for the south-central Pride, a part of me respected him for sticking to his guns, regardless of the consequences.

Yet there was another part of me that wanted to choke him where he stood.

And suddenly I understood something my father had been trying to teach me for almost a year: sometimes you have to do the wrong thing for the right reason in order to truly make a difference.

I’d come close to understanding that with Lance Pierce, when we’d had to turn him over to save Kaci. But in a span of ten minutes, by simply refusing to act, Paul Blackwell had driven home a point my father hadn’t been able to make me see in all my time as an enforcer.

The world isn’t black and white, good or bad. The battles that make a real difference are fought in the murky area in between, where the greater good requires brutal sacrifice. Where both the means and the ends are just shadows in a featureless gray landscape.

And that was the death of my idealism.

Jace followed Marc out the front door by less than a second, and they glanced around in unison, both looking for me. Temporarily united in their common concern. They found me leaning against the wall to the left of the front porch, and their identical expressions of relief would have been funny, if we hadn’t just seen justice strangled by the steel-gloved fist of oppression.

Melodramatic? Maybe. But also accurate. Calvin Malone couldn’t even define integrity, much less uphold it.

“You okay?” Jace jogged down the steps first, but neither made any move to touch me, so we stood there like the first three kids at a junior high dance, unsure who should make the first move.

“No. That did not just happen.” I sniffled in the cold.

Jace shoved both hands into his pockets, probably to keep from reaching for me. We all needed someone to either hold or punch, but neither of them would cause any more trouble, after what we’d just witnessed. “No one’s less thrilled about seeing Calvin in charge than I am.”

“Don’t bet on that,” Marc mumbled, leaning against the cabin wall beside me, only a few inches away this time. “His first act as council chair will be finding a way to get rid of me.”

“That won’t be easy.” Jace sat on the top step, facing us. “This is a pretty damn hostile takeover, and he’s gonna have Faythe’s dad, her uncle, Bert Di Carlo, and Aaron Taylor fighting him every step of the way. Which means that for even a simple majority—that vital six out of ten votes—he’s gonna need Blackwell.”

Marc kicked a pinecone across the dead grass. “Paul Blackwell isn’t going to lift a finger to keep me here, even knowing what Malone tried to do to us.”

“Yes, he will,” I insisted, grasping for the silver lining surely edging the storm cloud that had just rolled over us. “Blackwell may not be openminded or progressive, but if Malone forgets to cross one single T, the old man will vote against him. In fact, I bet Blackwell will be looking for legitimate reasons to go anti-Malone.”

Marc shrugged. “So Malone will do what he always does—hide his personal agenda within some technically valid, if morally repugnant, new proposition. Either way, he’s going to make our lives hell.”

“I know.” There was no way around that. And I’d be next on his list of lives to ruin. Experience had already shown us that Malone was willing to do anything to marry off as many of his sons as possible into Prides where they could later become Alphas, thus putting a considerable piece of the territorial pie under his own paw. He’d already mentally paired me with Alex, his oldest son, now that Brett was dead. And I had no doubt that he’d use our trespass onto his territory to get rid of Marc and try to blackmail me into a position that would better benefit him.

Jace would be harder to dispose of. He was neither a stray nor a shrew, and he wasn’t technically guilty of trespassing, because he’d been invited by his mother, to mourn his brother’s death with the rest of the family.

But we all knew Malone would kill Jace if the opportunity presented itself. After killing his own firstborn son, taking out the stepson he’d never liked in the first place wouldn’t even faze him. Especially if it could be written off as self-defense, or somehow otherwise justifiable.

Jace sighed, and his warm puff of breath was visible in the glow from the porch light. “There has to be a way around this. We’re screwed so long as Cal’s in charge.”

“So let’s get him fired,” I whispered, to guard against eavesdroppers. I pushed myself away from the wall, clinging to the only bit of hope I could see on the horizon, far-fetched though it was. “Let’s go back to the Flight and snag a witness. Now, before Malone has a chance to come up with some reason to outlaw thunderbird testimony. We already know Blackwell’s not going to support him on that one.”

“But do we really want to squander our best asset on testimony?” Marc asked, his voice as soft as mine.

The thunderbirds owed me a favor for saving the life of one of their young when Lance Pierce took her hostage in a last-ditch effort to save himself. And they were eager to remove themselves from my debt. But we’d been saving that favor, planning to ask for their services as air support in our inevitable, imminent war against Malone. The thunderbirds were ferocious adversaries, and we had yet to come up with a way to defend against attacks from on high, short of shooting them out of the sky. But if we called in my favor for testimony instead, we’d lose our only real advantage against the Appalachian Pride and its allies.

“I don’t know…” Jace began. “If the testimony works and Cal gets tossed out, we won’t need to fight, right?”

“We will if he decides to take his position back by force,” Marc said. “We already know he’s been stockpiling both enforcers and allies, so we have to be prepared to defend against the backlash.”

I thought for a moment, pulling a tissue from my pocket to wipe my dripping nose. “So, if we’re going to fight anyway, asking one of the thunderbirds to testify is pointless. Especially if it means giving them up as allies in battle.”

“Exactly.” Marc nodded firmly, still speaking in a whisper. “The way I see it, we gave peace a chance, and peace screwed us over. It’s time to get serious. Time to avenge Ethan—” Malone had sent the contingent that killed Ethan and tried to take Kaci “—and put an end to Malone’s tyranny permanently.”

“And for that we need to officially enlist our special forces.” I nodded, pleased with the direction our discussion had taken. “We can leave tonight and be there first thing in the morning.”

“Where you going?” Colin Dean stepped around the corner of the cabin, and I froze. My enthusiasm for the road trip/assignment flared into a blaze of anger in my chest that eerily mimicked vicious heartburn. “Romantic getaway to ease the sting of total failure? Just the three of you, or are you hoping to add a fourth? Rumor has it you’re pretty hard to keep satisfied. Right, Marc?”

Marc snarled and lunged for Dean. I grabbed him from behind as Jace stepped in front of Dean to protect him from Marc, and Marc from assault charges.

“Marc, stop!” I shouted, digging my heels into the frozen ground to hold him back. “He’s not worth it!”

Dean only laughed, inches from Jace’s chest, because he refused to back down, either to avoid admitting he was in any danger, or because he wanted to fight Marc—so long as Marc took the first swing.

Unless someone was seriously injured, occasional one-on-one brawls were typically overlooked by those in charge. Sometimes tempers had to be vented to avoid later, more vicious explosions, and honestly, sometimes horsing around just got out of hand. But Marc couldn’t afford to give Malone any reason to kick him out. And Dean damn well knew it.

“What, you’ll share with Jace but not with me?” Dean raised one taunting eyebrow at Marc. “What happened to ‘the more, the merrier’?”

“I should have cut your tongue out when I had the chance,” Jace growled, glaring up at Dean from inches away.

“Yeah.” Dean nodded, grinning. “You should have. Then neither one of you would have to hear how hard her nipple got when I traced it with the tip of my blade. I’m sure she was just cold. It probably had nothing to do with the fact that she liked having my hands on her. Not to mention my knife.” He glanced at me, and my fingers twitched around Marc’s arm as I briefly considered letting him go. I really wanted to see Dean’s face broken again. Or maybe his neck…

“Isn’t that right? You could have stopped me anytime you wanted, which either means you were too proud to beg, or you liked it.” Dean’s focus shifted to Jace again as Marc’s arm tensed beneath my hands and I remembered that we couldn’t afford to take the bait. “You could have stopped it, too, but you let me cut her. What kind of man lets the love of his life get carved up like a fucking turkey while he watches?”

Jace’s fists clenched at his sides, but he kept his mouth shut. I didn’t have that much self-control.

“If you ever come near me with a knife again, I will kill you.” My voice was calm, and clear, and soft, revealing none of my hidden panic at the memory of Dean wielding a blade, yet all of my cold determination to see him dead. I was kind of impressed, and so was Marc. I could tell because he relaxed a bit beneath my grip.

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “The rules are changing, and you’re in for a very rude awakening, little puss. I hope you do resist. I hope you have to be broken like a wild horse. And by the time I’m done with you, you’re going to wish I’d slit your throat, instead of your cheek.” He glanced at the window over our heads, smiled coldly, and turned to walk off toward his own cabin, as if he hadn’t a fear in the world.

“If I accomplish nothing else in my life, I will see that bastard bleed out,” Marc breathed.

“He’s mine,” I insisted, as Jace fell in at my side to watch Dean go.

The front door opened on my left, and my father emerged, followed by Di Carlo and his enforcers. “What happened?”

“Just a little fraternizing with the enemy,” Jace said. “Nothing we can’t handle.”

“Dean’s trying to bait us into a fight.” I tucked my arm into my father’s. At least I could accept his comfort without pissing anyone off or making anyone jealous. “What’s up with Malone?” After the official vote, the Alphas had kicked the enforcers out so the new chair could meet with his council for the first time ever. “Is he already plotting to take over the world?”

“One Pride at a time.” My father sighed as we turned toward our cabin, the path lit only by cold, white moonlight. “He came prepared with a list of ideas to ‘restructure’ things.”

“Steal from the poor to feed the rich?” Marc asked from my right, and I could practically taste Jace’s frustration at having lost a place at my side.

“Something like that.” My dad rubbed his forehead with his free hand and lowered his voice. “If his new proposals pass, this is going to get unpleasant very quickly.”

“We were just thinking the same thing.” I glanced from Marc to Jace, and they both nodded for me to continue. “We think it’s time to call in the reserves. If we leave first thing in the morning, we can be in New Mexico by tomorrow night.”

My father stopped and faced us, and Di Carlo and his enforcers fanned out around us all. “You think we should strike here? On the mountain?”

I shrugged, trying to look more confident than I felt. “It’s neutral territory, so Malone doesn’t have home field advantage. And if you call in our men while we’re gone, they could be here by the time we get back with the birds, which means we’ll have Malone vastly outnumbered. It could all be over relatively quickly and easily.” Assuming he didn’t catch wind of what we were doing and bring more of his own men.

My father considered for a moment, then looked to Di Carlo for an opinion. “We’ve never fought on a large scale in neutral territory.” So far, war had always come in the form of a territorial invasion. “If this maneuver didn’t occur to us, it probably won’t occur to him.”

I nodded, eagerness creeping up from my toes to tingle in the rest of my body. “And if we don’t make a move soon, we’re going to lose the opportunity. Malone’ll do everything possible to handicap us, starting with exiling Marc.” One of our very best fighters. “Again.” Or worse.

Di Carlo frowned. “I agree, but are we really ready to go to war this soon?”

“We’ve been ready,” Jace said. “We just need to call in a little favor and get the rest of our men in place.” Only a few enforcers apiece had accompanied the Alphas to the cabin complex.

“I don’t see that we have any choice,” my father said. “Calvin’s already talking about supplementing the council chair’s budget, for operating costs. I have no doubt he’ll spend that money hiring more enforcers. Add his allies’ troops to that, and our chances of a victory decrease with every day that we give them to prepare.”

Di Carlo finally nodded. “But we need to make sure Aaron and Rick are on board before you three head for New Mexico. Unfortunately, we won’t have time to discuss it all tonight. We reconvene in fifteen minutes.”

“How about over lunch tomorrow, in our cabin?” my father asked.

Di Carlo thought for a moment, then nodded again. “I’ll pass it along, and hopefully you three can leave that afternoon.”

My father glanced from me to Marc, then to Jace. “I’ll fly Vic and Brian out to replace you.”

I couldn’t resist a smile. It was finally happening. Malone was going to pay, and a mere pound of flesh would not suffice. Justice demanded all one hundred eighty pounds of him, laid out cold and dead for the earth to reclaim.