Kiss Me Deadly

by R. Lee Moore

  Tamina raised her shotgun up to her shoulder, took aim, and sent a burst over Carson's head directly into the wolf. The first round tore through one of its eyes ripping a massive hole in the back of its head as it exited. The second shredded and set aflame flesh and bone surrounding the wound from the first. The third smashed well over half of the creatures muzzle to pieces and tore the upper part of its jaw clean off. Momentum alone carried the beast forward where the remaining part of its shattered and mutilated face ground across the concrete.

  Dropping to a knee behind the limited cover of the cinder blocks and sandbags to change out her magazine, Tamina could hear the cracking sounds of rounds snapping all around her. She could feel the bits of dust and plaster smacking against her cheek from each and every impact on the walls behind her. The hail of fire directed at her and Carson was intense and very near to the point of being completely overwhelming.

  “We have to keep moving,” she said grabbing the back of Carson's collar to haul him up after her.

  The two of them bolted down the walkway towards the unit Tamina had found with the chained door. They'd have to hole up there and hopefully wait out the storm until the Strike Teams arrived. It was the only chance they had. They ran in a half-crouch behind the cover of the walkway's fortifications, firing from the hip at any of the cartel that got in their way. All they were trying to do was suppress any resistance forward on their way to their target. Most of their shots weren't killing blows, but they still did the trick. A wounded enemy writhing and kicking on the ground but still alive was still out of the fight.

  By the time Tamina barreled shoulder first into the locked door, the incoming fire had lessened enough to tell her the people trying to kill them were regrouping and repositioning themselves. The intent of the two Supernatural Affairs officers had to have been clear to them, and they were reacting accordingly.

  The cartel's bound victims beyond the door barely seemed to notice when Tamina burst into the room. The few that glanced up almost seemed to welcome whatever end was coming for them. Even now, the victims in their wretched states weren't Tamina's concern. The man with the machete that came flying out of the back room, however, most definitely was. Aiming from the hip Tamina stroked her trigger, only to be met with an ominous metallic click that was all too familiar to her.

  With her weapon jammed, She had no other choice but to meet her attacker with the butt of her weapon swinging up in a high arc. Her strike batted away the swing of the man's machete and kept on going right into the side of his head. It staggered him back with a grunt of pain long enough for Tamina to drop a hand down to her side and draw, aim, and fire her sidearm with a single fluid motion. The round struck the man in his shoulder and spun him around face-first into the wall behind him. Even then he was still a threat, so Tamina stroked her trigger twice more and double-tapped the man in the back of his head painting the wall with blood and bits of gore.

  She turned back to the door in time to watch Carson backing into the room spraying out in front of him and across the courtyard with the MP7 gripped tightly in his hands. When he was halfway across the threshold, his firing abruptly stopped, and he shouted out in pain as he spun around from the impact of a bullet that tumbled him down to the ground. Tamina saw the man that'd gotten him racing down the back portion of the walkway that surrounded the courtyard. Two quickly triggered shots from her pistol sent him and the man after him careening over the balcony. She heard the impact of their bodies on the ground below as she latched onto Carson's flailing arm and drug him clear of the doorway.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Carson was bleeding. The bullet that hit him had gone through his shoulder and taken him off his feet. He'd survive, if they managed to get out of this alive. Right now, with all the incoming fire raking through the thin walls all around them, survival was far from guaranteed.

  After slapping a field dressing on his wound, Tamina had propped him up against the wall beneath what remained of the front window so that he could keep an eye on the walkway outside the door. Wounded or not, they were going to have to hold here, and hope it gave the Ramirez and her Strike Teams the time and distraction they needed.

  The firing from the other side of the courtyard had slowed, but it hadn't stopped. It was just the right volume aimed at just the right spots to keep their heads down. Tamina knew suppressing fire for what it was. It was meant to keep them occupied while the cartel gunmen moved into position to finish them off.

  Tamina had ushered the bound captives into one of the rooms in the back that wasn't already occupied by even more bound and naked people to keep them out the line of fire. It would have been easier if they'd been a little more interested in their own survival, but all of them seemed listless and resigned to let whatever happened happen good or bad. The track marks every one of them had on their arms might have had a little to do with that.

  The room Mr. Machete had come out of had rows of cots lined up against opposite walls filling up every inch of space. There was a bound and naked woman of various colors and ethnicities chained up to every one of them tightly enough that they couldn't have moved if they'd wanted to.

  The thought alone of what had gone on in this room to these poor women had chilled Tamina and steeled her heart. Whatever abuse the cartel had put these women through before and after they were brought here wasn't the worst of it. There was a reason these women had been chained to the beds as tightly as the cartels could. Each of them had vicious and ragged inhuman bite marks all over their bodies in various stages of healing. These women weren't meant to be trafficked like the others, they were being conscripted. Infected and forced into the supernatural world against their wills. Whatever the cartels had in mind for this many women, this many new werewolves, couldn't have been good.

  She didn't have time to get a good look at any of them. The visceral reaction to what she'd seen was too distracting. So to was the fact that she couldn't help them, or even loosen up their bindings at the moment. She had to leave them in place, hoping that the cartel had at least had the decency to shoot them up with whatever they'd given to everyone else. At least that way they wouldn't be frightened completely out of their minds by what was going on in the next room. As small of a favor as that might have been.

  Once that was done, she took up position on the opposite side of the door as Carson and anxiously fiddled with her shotgun trying to get it to work. She doubted the manufacturer had intended the weapon to be thrust into the gaping maw of a werewolf. The beast had messed something up inside, and no matter what she did, she couldn't manage to get it to cycle or fire properly. It'd have to be stripped down and repaired, and now wasn't a good time.

  The little bit of ammunition she had left wasn't nearly enough for a protracted fight. All she had left to fight with was just her sidearm, a few magazines and a trio of grenades. The Strike Teams couldn't have been that far out, she told herself. They just had to hold out a little longer hoping Ramirez would get here in time. If they didn't, Tamina and Carson wouldn't stand a chance against the firepower being thrown at them.

  “How you holding up over there,” Tamina asked Carson as she peered out the corner of the door. He was looking pale from the blood-loss. Even with ammunition, he wasn't going to last much longer without help.

  “Not the first time,” Carson replied shakily. “I'll be fine. Got a job to do.”

  “They're not going to give up,” Tamina said absently as she scanned out beyond the door into the courtyard. “There's a whole crop of women in the back chained down and bitten. They might not care about the other people here, but I'm betting they aren't going to give those women up without a fight.”

  Carson's expression hardened. He understood. If it'd only been the trafficking victims, the cartel would likely have pulled out the second they realized what was happening. The chained up women in the back had changed that.

  “Thought only rats did things like that,” Carson muttered angrily under his breath.

  The f
lash of movement Tamina saw out of the corner of her eye stopped any response she might have given and focused her attention out the doorway in front of her. She picked out a pair of targets making a run for it down the backside of the walkway heading straight towards them. She took her time. With only a few magazines to spare, she couldn't afford to be wasting shots. She gently squeezed her trigger, and the weapon bucked in her hands with a bright flash of fire and thunder.

  The first shot struck its target beneath the chin and dropped the man running at her like a pile of bricks. Her aim was off on the second shot. Must have jerked a bit, she thought to herself. She was aiming at the woman's head, and ended up near blowing her leg off at the kneecap. The woman's agonized tormented screams as she writhed pitifully on the floor were ear-piercing, but at least she was out of the fight. The chances of the cartel soldier being able to concentrate on fighting while she was bleeding out like that was pretty slim.

  A hailstorm of bullets from every direction in front of them rained down all across the front of the apartment in response. Plaster, shards of glass and splinters of wood erupted all around them like a storm. Tamina could hear the tell-tale crack through the air of lead whizzing by her head. Both her and Carson hunkered down making themselves as small of a target as possible. There wasn't really all that much they could do against that much incoming fire, but every little bit helped.

  When the firing eased up enough that she could lift her head, Tamina aimed back around the edge of the door and started making sure that the people trying to kill her knew she was still there. They weren't all kill shots, and not even all of them hit, but they got the point across. A point that Carson made sure to punctuate with a spray of bullets the swept across the walkway on the other side of the courtyard. Together, the two of them counted maybe three or so kills, and at least double that many wounded. It helped, but it wasn't going to be enough in the long run.

  There were still far too many of them out there to get an accurate count while dodging bullets being thrown at you by the bucketful. They were running out of time, and fast.

  “On your right,” Carson shouted to her.

  He'd already begun to unload what remained of his current magazine in tightly controlled bursts. Tamina risked a glance around the door, and her heart sank. A pair of wolves with dirty gray and brown fur were racing down against the far wall coming straight at them, and behind the two wolves was a thick knot of cartel gangbangers rushing up after them. They were trying to storm what meager defenses Tamina and Carson had and overwhelm them with sheer numbers and ferocity.

  Carson's gunfire wasn't doing much to slow them down either. The two wolves were taking the brunt of his fire, but it wasn't enough to stop the two beasts rushing towards them. The rounds were too scattered for the impacts to make a difference, and unless the beasts were close enough for perfectly aimed head-shots, Tamina's pistol wouldn't do much better. She had another idea, though. Her sidearm wasn't the only weapon she had.

  Plucking two of the three grenades she had left from her vest and jerking the pins free, she lobbed them one at a time directly into the path of the oncoming werewolves. Both of the beasts saw them coming, but only one of them managed to get out of the way in time. That one took a dive out over the balcony to save itself. The other tried to skid to a stop, but ended up planting itself muzzle first right in front of one of the grenades bouncing into him. The men and women following behind didn't even know they were there in the first place. They kept rushing forward heedless of the danger in front of them.

  Both grenades went off one after the other with loud thumping bursts. The werewolf caught the brunt of the first blast right in its face. It screamed out with a high-pitched howling yelp, and Tamina watched with satisfaction as it pawed desperately at the ruined remains of its face. When the second grenade burst, it went off right in the middle of the knot of gunmen trying to rush past the mangled werewolf. A wall of molten metal erupted at their feet and tore through flesh and bone like they'd just stepped into a wood chipper. Broken bodies flung out in every direction from the concussive blast. Some crashing against the wall, some being tossed back the way they came, and others still were sent sailing over the edge of the balcony.

  Those that managed to get away unscathed quickly turned tail and fled back the other way. Tamina and Carson took the opportunity to make sure as few of them made it back to their friends as possible. Shooting someone in the back while they were running away wasn't nice, but it was effective.

  “I'm out,” Carson said as he dropped the MP7 and drew his service weapon from his hip.

  Tamina looked him over while swapping out her last magazine. He was paler than he'd been even just a few minutes ago, and his breathing had started to become labored and heavy.

  “You doing okay,” she asked. “You look like you got zapped a few more times.”

  Carson weakly looked himself over, gave a light shrug of his shoulders and tried to steady his aim out his side of the door.

  “Just nicks and grazes,” he said slowly. “I'll be fine. Got one more magazine after this. How about you?”

  “Last one,” she said peering out from behind the doorway. “Looks like they're setting up for another push. How many of those fuckers are out there? Can't be all that many left damn it.”

  She could see the silhouettes of at least two more fully shifted wolves. Maybe a dozen or so more gunmen. They'd managed to whittle them down some, but at this point it was a numbers game. Numbers that the cartel had, and they didn't. They were out of time and options. As low on ammunition as they were, one more push was all it was going to take before they were overwhelmed and butchered. There wasn't much more they could do.

  Tamina could see them moving across the courtyard on the other side of the walkway. There was one group hunkering down behind the sandbags, while two other groups began pushing out on either side of them. So that was the plan, Tamina thought. They were going to swarm them from two directions at once. The group in the center was likely going to pour as much fire as they could at the front of the apartment Tamina and Carson were occupying to keep their heads down. Keep them occupied long enough for their friends to rush in and kill them.

  The odd thing was, the two werewolves that she could see weren't going with them. It kinda made sense though, Tamina thought. They'd already lost three of their kind. Well, two and a half maybe. That kinda thing had to tamp down any sort of willingness to put yourself in the line of fire. Even for a werewolf. The problem with that theory was that these werewolves were cartel werewolves. Heavy combat experience was usually a given as far as that went. No, Tamina thought. They weren't holding back. Something was up.

  Her thoughts got suddenly interrupted by an eruption of gunfire coming from across the courtyard. It was well aimed and focused. Enough that Carson and Tamina had to furiously scramble away from their positions firing blindly out the doorway as they did.

  The whole front of the apartment was filling with holes that laced all up and down the front wall. Heavy chunks of wood and plaster began tearing free and falling to the floor kicking up clouds of dust and debris in their wake. The entire window that Carson had been beneath for cover split apart and exploded outward in a hail of glass leaving a gaping and rapidly expanding hole behind.

  The door finally gave way from its hinges, tumbling down from its frame spinning as it fell as round after round batted it back and forth until it lay in a shattered pile of splinters on the ground. The front of the apartment shook and shuddered as if the wall was going to fully collapse at any moment from the amount of whole piercing through it.

  Tamina and Carson dove into the hallway in the back of the apartment taking cover again on either side of the opening. It was from there that Tamina realized what their plan was. She could see a pair of werewolves rising up over the balcony at the far end of the complex, and the moment the firing coming from their side stopped, they dove over the railing and disappeared into the courtyard below. Seconds later two massive besti
al forms emerged over the railing in front of her with snapping wide opened jaws letting loose with thunderous howls. Their front paws latched onto the railing and the two monsters began vaulting themselves over.

  There was a crack in the air. A booming echoing report that sounded like thunder shattering the silence directly over head.

  Time seemed to slow to a crawl for just a moment. A moment long enough for Tamina to watch the lead wolf's head suddenly jerk up and to the side. There was a flash of shock and pain bursting through the beast's amber eyes. Then all at once, the things head disintegrated into a red misty cloud of flesh, bone, blood, and fur that sprayed out in all directions. It seemed as if the beasts body hung in the air ever so briefly like it was weightless. Then it dropped from view in a quickened blur.

  Seconds later Tamina thought it reappeared fully intact, and it took her a moment to realize she was mistaken. Another wolf had risen up from the ground mere milliseconds after the first had fallen.

  This one had a vibrant burnt red fur with streaks of silver down its back. It wasn't quite as large as the wolves she'd been fighting, but it looked just as ferocious if not more. No, she thought, this was a different wolf. Cartel wolves didn't wear specially made body armor like this one.

  The red wolf flew up from beneath the railing, and with a snarl its jaws reached up and snapped around the throat of the second wolf just as it cleared the railing. The both of them tumbled violently onto the debris and rubble strewn walkway. The bigger of the two desperately fought for its life, but the smaller red wolf was quicker. It managed to get itself on top of its opponent and wrestle the bigger beast down with an iron grip at its throat.