Bound (Dark Reflections Volume 1)

Chapter 8

Alec Graves
Rest Easy Hotel
Rio Rico, Arizona

I made it through most of the operations manual before it was time to go to Brandon's briefing. I knocked on the doors to James' and the girls' rooms and then we all went downstairs together. I'd thought that there were a lot of moonborn waiting for us at the airport, but that was nothing compared to the sheer number of people packed into the conference room. I counted thirty people and when you factored in the fact that there were probably some of Brandon's people still detached as lookouts and guards, it meant that the actual size of Brandon's force was probably somewhere in the range of forty or fifty warriors, and I only recognized about half of the faces present.

It wasn't something designed to help me rest easy at night. Not only did Brandon have a miniature army more than twice the size of most packs, he'd successfully recruited from outside of the Sanctuary pack, which meant there was a chance that Kaleb didn't even know the full extent of Brandon's powerbase.

Vincent entered through a side door and then held it open so that Brandon could walk through it. Brandon scanned the waiting shape shifters and then seemingly satisfied that everyone was there, he launched into his briefing.

"We got another anonymous tip last week and the Brain Box, our intelligence group, has finally managed to confirm its validity."

Brandon pulled a remote out of his pocket as someone hit the lights and a second later the overhead projector that had been quietly humming flared to life with a map of northern Mexico.

"A nest of cats have set up an hour west of Santa Ana apparently relying on the sheer distance between here and there to keep them safe. It's taken some work to confirm numbers that far away from our normal area of operations, but the Brain Box puts the group at twenty, only two of whom are old enough to potentially be classified as Ancients."

The projector flashed and the map was replaced by a picture of a compound. "This is an aerial view of their base…"

I relaxed into the briefing, memorizing the layout of the compound and making mental notes of how Brandon was deploying his people. It appeared that he had pulled in his thirty best fighters and was planning on using them to storm through the interior of the compound. He was likely more than a match for one ancient, which meant that Vincent and the rest of his people should outnumber the rest of the cats by a healthy enough margin that at least some of the cats would scatter and try to get out of the compound.

Fortunately for us, there were really only two decent routes away from the compound, so Brandon was deploying two more groups outside of the compound to serve as a safety net to scoop up all of the runners.

It was a simple plan that seemed to rely more on Brandon's extreme lethality and our superior numbers than on anything else, but I couldn't see any glaring holes in it. I looked away from the screen and back at Brandon as he started to wrap up.

"…We've got information packets for you all to review on the trip out, but despite the fact that it's outside of our normal theater of operations and a bigger group than we usually tackle, it should be a pretty straightforward job. For the most part you're all staying in your normal units. The team leaders have already been pre-briefed and they'll reach out to anyone who's been moved between teams. Let's kill some cats and all come back in one piece. This could be the propaganda win that we need to get the trickle of recruits to start flowing south again."

Apparently any questions would be answered by the team leaders because Brandon walked out of the room without looking back. James gave me an inquiring look, but I just shrugged. There wasn't anything that we could do other than just sit here and wait for our new team leader to come find us.