Bound (Dark Reflections Volume 1)

Chapter 25

Alec Graves
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah

I messed up catching Rachel and she hit harder than I meant for her to. She managed to avoid yelling and potentially alerting Scott to the fact that we hadn't stayed in the car with everyone else, but she let out a hiss of pain when she tried to put weight on her ankle.

"I think it's just sprained, Alec."

"I'm sorry, Rach. I'll carry you back to the garage. Once we get there you won't have to do much of any walking."

As I handed her the backpack that I'd stolen from Kaleb's office, I had a brief moment to hope that I hadn't broken the tablet when I'd exited the car, and then I lifted her up onto my back with one hand and picked the sword back up with the other.

We had to go the long way around in order to make sure that Scott couldn't see us, and I was in my primary form, but we still managed to cover the distance to the garage in a little less than three minutes. I set Rachel carefully down and then went and backed up the 450cc dirt bike that had taken up one corner of the smaller garage where Kaleb stored his toys.

I was pretty sure that Kaleb had forgotten about the bike years ago. There wasn't much reason to keep a motorcycle around when you could just shift to four legs and cover most uneven ground even more quickly than most dirt bikes, but the bike was one half of a matching pair that Kaleb had purchased back before things had gotten so bad between him and Mother.

They'd only ridden the bikes together a few times and Mother's had been scrapped a long time ago, but I happened to know that Donovan had seen to the care of this particular machine and that it was in perfect working order.

I checked to make sure it still had a full tank of gas and then wheeled it out through the side door before going back for Rachel. A few seconds later the bike roared to life and we set off towards a shallow wash that I figured would let us cover the first five or six miles while remaining safely out of sight of the house.

The noise was a concern, but we occasionally had people from Sanctuary come joyriding along the outer edges of the estate on similar bikes. I was hoping that, along with the fact that the bike had been stored in the smaller garage on the far side of the house from the main motor pool, would let us get away cleanly, but I knew it wasn't much more than a hope and a prayer. The fact of the matter was that I hadn't been able to come up with a better plan, at least not one that dealt with all of the other problems that became more important once we were a little ways away from the house.

I'd never spent any time on a motorcycle before now, but I'd spent a few minutes reading up on the relevant concepts before I went to Kaleb's office. I'd come away feeling fairly comfortable with the mechanics involved, but I still tried to start out cautiously. It was a good thing I did because I leaned too far to one side as I brought it around a corner and the back tire spun out.

I managed to get my foot down and stop from laying the bike down, but with Rachel's added weight on the back it was a close thing and I suspected that if I'd had merely human reflexes that I wouldn't have been able to save us.

We dropped down into the wash and I opened the throttle up a little more. I could feel the minutes ticking away and I knew that Kaleb and Brandon wouldn't be fooled by my sleight of hand with James and the others for very long.

As the bike hit forty-five miles per hour the wind started to become an issue. I squinted my eyes and cursed myself for not thinking to bring some sunglasses at least. A helmet would have been better, but I'd had no idea whether or not Kaleb had even purchased any safety gear with the bike let alone where he might have it stored away.