by R. Lee Moore
What came next had to have seemed like hell on earth to the remaining cartel. Bright streaks of tracer fire whipped through the air all around the interior of the complex. There were shouts and the sound of heavy booted feet echoed loudly through the courtyard. The screams of the dying and the pleas for mercy drowned out by the crackling sound of multiple heavy weapons firing in a rapid booming staccato.
The cavalry had arrived, and Tamina felt the tension drain from her body as she leaned heavily against the side of the wall breathing a sigh of relief. She found her eyes drawn to the struggle just outside what remained of the door in front of her. It was a horror she found she couldn't look away from.
The big cartel wolf was thrashing and yelping out with frantic and terrified desperate howls. The red wolf that held its jaws around the beasts neck busily worried its head back and forth ripping and tearing as its teeth sank deeper and deeper into fur covered flesh. Wolf blood coated the sleek creatures jaws and dripped down from its fur. The whole time it was growling deep pleasured sounds as it violently tore the life from the beast locked in its jaws.
When it was done, the red wolf ghosted silently into the apartment, and its golden amber eyes pierced deep into Tamina with a predatory, still hungered and unsatisfied look.
She knew the wolf wasn't an enemy, but even still the look in the red wolf's eyes was enough to send a chill running through her. It was looking at her expectantly. Like it was waiting. Waiting for Tamina to give the red wolf any excuse to tear her apart.
“Sorry,” Tamina said. She was too tired to be afraid of the red wolf. She knew who she was anyway. “There was only one guy in here when I got here, and he's already dead.”
The red wolf sniffed at the air and growled towards the door to the back room where all those women lay chained to bed.
“Don't,” Tamina warned. “Don't go in there. They've all been bitten. Fuckers were trying to breed them it looks like.”
The wolf growled, and suddenly the air became very hot all around her. She could feel the beasts rage washing hot over her skin. It took a lot for a normal person to be able to feel the supernatural energy coming out of a shapeshifter. Strong, violent emotion usually did the trick.
Tamina watched as the wolf took one last scent of the air, turned and went back to the corpse of the wolf it had just killed, and began to tear it apart in a violent rage. The werewolf's fury was understandable, but it was still hard to watch. Even for her.
“That was close,” Tamina said turning away from the enraged beast in front of her. She looked over to Carson and gave his wounds and the state he was in a critical look. “When this lets up, we need to get you down to the medics before you pass out. I can take it from here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The timely arrival of the Strike Teams signaled the end of the fight. The firepower arrayed against the remaining cartel members was too overwhelming for them to survive for long. Those few that remained fought against the withering and merciless assault to their last breath. It wasn't like they had a choice, Strike Teams didn't take prisoners.
There was a bit of sporadic gunfire remaining when Tamina helped Carson to his feet and out the door, but it wasn't anything to be concerned about. The pointed cracks of rifle fire going off here and there all over the complex was just the Strike Teams cleaning up and putting down any wounded they came across. It was standard procedure in an operation like this. They'd scorch the earth behind them. Once the Teams had been called in, there were never any survivors left behind. Human or otherwise.
Once she was sure Carson was safely in the hands of one of the medics and being taken care of, Tamina rushed back into the apartment and began checking on the victims inside. A few of them hadn't survived. As much as she'd expected there to be at least a few casualties with as much firepower the cartel had thrown at them. Her stomach knotted up at the sight of each and every victim she hadn't been able to save. She'd saved most of them, but not all of them. Not enough.
Well over half of the ones that did survive all bore the same mark on their arms, but instead of the temporary tattoo or ink stamp that Amy Lynn and Albira Adams had on them, these people had been branded. From the looks of them, It had been a sloppy rush job, and they'd barely had any time to heal. The marks were fresh enough for Tamina to come to the conclusion that most of these people had been taken off the streets recently. A few days ago at most.
There wasn't going to be anyone left alive to tell her who'd put up the money to get the cartels to grab all these people. The victims themselves weren't in any condition for questions even on the off chance that they knew anything. It was going to be days before they were ready for any sort of interrogation.
“Really hope these assholes were dumb enough to keep records,” Tamina muttered under her breath as she turned away.
She made her way into the back rooms when the medics started swarming in to deal with the victims, and started doing what she could to free the women from the bonds that held them in place on the beds. They'd been through enough to be left chained up one minute longer.
Once she was able to get a closer look, Tamina realized that these women were worse off than she'd initially thought. It was horrifying to look at. So much so that she had to take a moment to collect herself and push all her emotions deep down inside her and lock them away just to be able to do what needed to be done. She had to be as cold and dispassionate as possible, otherwise the rage building inside would get the better of her. This wasn't the time for that. That was later.
The bites the women had sustained looked like they'd been barely cared for at all. Like they'd been bitten, chained to the bed, then forgotten. Some of them had scabbed over to some extent, but they still oozed with a gangrenous mixture of blood, pus, and bile.
The rotting sickly stench that filled the air was nearly unbearable. It was a miracle any of these women had survived as long as they had. Surviving a werewolf bite by itself was hard enough without the wounds having been as neglected as they were. Most of them probably wouldn't last much longer even with the help they were going to get. They were just too far gone.
Tamina put that out of her mind and concentrated on removing as many of the restraints as she could. She wasn't going to let any of these women suffer in chains any longer. If they were going to die, she was going to at least make sure they died free. It was the least she could do. It might not have been much, and in the grand scheme of things it might not have mattered, but it mattered to her.
She took the time to inspect each of them as she released them from their bindings. In their barely conscious drugged induced haze, none of the women showed any responsiveness to Tamina's gentle prodding. That was probably a good thing all things considered, Tamina thought. It kept the women from being fully aware of the horror that had befallen them. Their wrists and ankles had been chaffed and worn raw from the restraints, but none of the women appeared to have the same mark that the cartel's other victims had burned into their flesh. No, Tamina thought, the cartel was keeping these women for themselves.
There didn't even seem to be any outward indication at all that these women had any connection to each other at all let alone the two murder victims she was investigating.
There didn't seem to be any pattern to them at all. Not ethnicity, race, or color. The only thing that seemed to connect the women at all was the fact that they were women. That was it. It was as if they'd all just been picked up off the street at random. Like they'd all just been at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Tamina had made it all the way down the first row of beds when she saw her. The woman's blonde hair was greasy and matted to her head. Her pale skin caked with grime and splatters of dried blood and small bits of her own torn off flesh. The wound on her side was massive. Different from the careful and concise looking bites all the others had. This woman had been mauled in a particularly brutal and vicious fashion. The bruising and gouges all over her body were a telltale sign of someone losing control, and it wasn
't hard for Tamina to figure out how that'd happened. The marks all over the woman's knuckles and the back of her hands told her that much. Hailey Keene had fought back, and they'd punished her for it.
Big strong fucking men, Tamina thought as she rushed over and knelt down by Hailey's side. They hadn't just bitten her, they'd brutalized her in every way possible. Like the others, there weren't any marks on her wrist other than the raw chaffing from the restraints that Tamina could see, though it was difficult to tell with all the damage the woman had sustained. Her blank cloud covered eyes were bruised, bleeding and almost completely swollen shut. Her lips puffed, cracked, and tinged with blood. They moved wordlessly as if she was trying to speak, and nothing was coming out. Tamina doubted she would have been able to understand the woman even if she could speak. She was too far gone at this point to have been cognizant in any way. She wasn't going to last much longer without immediate help.
“Medic!“ Tamina shouted out over her shoulder. “This one's critical.”
One of the medics peeled off from the group and rushed over. Tamina scooted up out of her way and tried to assist as much as she could, but it almost seemed hopeless. The woman didn't even seem to have the strength or even the will to keep herself alive. They were losing her, and very quickly.
“Hailey,” Tamina urged desperately. “Stay with me now. You have to fight. You didn't give up when they got you, don't give up now. Fight. Don't let the bastards win!“
There was a slight twitch in the woman's eyes. A faint hint of recognition that almost gave Tamina hope, but it faded just as quickly as it had come.
“Keep talking to her,” the medic said. “If you know who she is, let her hear your voice. It helps.”
Tamina tried. She called out the woman's name. Urged her to hold on, to keep fighting, but it didn't look like she was having much of an effect. There was this glimmer that appeared when Hailey first heard her name, but it wasn't enough. It never lasted.
“This isn't working,” Tamina growled anxiously.
“It is,” the medic replied as she worked. “Trust me.”
“Not enough,” Tamina said angrily. “She doesn't know me. It's not going to be enough.”
Almost out of pure desperation, Tamina's thoughts coalesced around this tiny fragment of an idea that had suddenly forced itself to the forefront of her thoughts. She frantically dug into the interior of her vest for her phone hoping against all hope that it hadn't been damaged in the fight. When she found it, she furiously scrolled through all the messages she'd received until she found the number she was looking for and thumbed the call button.
The phone rang several times, then abruptly disconnected. So she tried again, and again. Dialing the same number repeatedly over and over until the line finally picked up on the other end.
“Who is this!“ an angered sibilant voice demanded.
“Kala,” Tamina cried out in relief. “No time to explain. I found Hailey, but we're losing her.”
“What!“ the snake woman shouted back at her. All her anger had swiftly morphed into a deep fear and concern. “What do you mean losing her? What's going on? Where is she?”
Tamina growled in frustration. She didn't have time for this.
“Listen to me damn it,” she snapped. “She's barely conscious and barely holding on. You need to talk to her. She needs to hear someone she knows. She needs to hear your voice.”
Tamina switched her phone to speaker and held it up as close to Hailey as she could without being in the medic's way.
“Go ahead,” she called out into the speaker. “Say something!“
“Hailey?” she heard Kala say panic-stricken. “Hailey is that you? It's Kala.”
The effect wasn't immediate, but it was there. Hailey's eyes fluttered slightly in recognition, and it looked as if she was fighting to open them in spite of the swollen bruising forcing them shut. Her swollen lips moved silently. It wasn't much, but she was trying to answer to the insistent voice of the snake-woman on the other end of the line. Kala never gave up, and neither did the battered woman struggling desperately to call out to her.
“Kala?” Hailey whispered out in a raw hoarse voice.
“It's working,” Tamina said in nervous relief. “Keep going.”
“It's me meri jaan,” Kala said. There were tears in her voice.
“It hurts,” Hailey raw hoarse voice whispered.
“I know,” Kala replied. “You need to hold on for me. You need to fight.”
Hailey's reply was an unintelligible whisper that trailed off as her eyes began to dim. Tamina held her breath and felt herself gripping tightly at her phone. The woman was fading away right before her eyes, and there wasn't anything she could do about it.
“Meri jaan, you have to fight,” Kala called out desperately. “Don't leave me. Please. Fight for me. I'm begging you.”
“Kala?” Hailey breathed out.
The medic roughly and suddenly shoved Tamina out of her way forcing her to scramble to get back into position out of the way. She kept the phone as close to Hailey as she could while the medic worked, urging Kala to keep going. She wasn't listening to what was being said over the phone anymore, all of her attention was on aiding the medic and watching Hailey's eyes begin to lose their light.
“I need an AED,” the medic shouted over her shoulder. “Keep that phone back unless you want to kill her.”
Within seconds, another medic was kneeling down beside Hailey with a red and white box furiously attaching pads and cables to the woman's body. Both medic's forced Tamina back, and a shrill screeching siren pierced the air building up rapidly in intensity.
“Shocking!“ the first medic called out.
She depressed a button on the machine, and Hailey's body tightened and arched upward suddenly. When her body dropped back down onto the filthy bed below her, the siren began calling out a second time. The medic's finger hovered over the button with an intently focused gaze, and with a press of the button jolted Hailey back up off the bed a second time. The medic quickly pressed her fingers to Hailey's neck just beneath her jaw once she'd settled back down onto the bed. There was a slight pause, and then it was as if all the tension the medic had within her visibly drained all at once.
“We got her,” she breathed out with a heavy sigh. “We need to move her now. Get out the way.”
Tamina quickly scrambled away and pressed herself flat against the wall behind her to give the two medics as much room as possible to work. Another medic with a litter appeared as if out of nowhere and the three of them worked in tandem to get the injured woman up off the bed and strapped into it. Without another word the three of them rushed out of the room and quickly disappeared out what remained of the apartment's front door. More medics swarmed in to replace them, and Tamina decided it was time for her to take her leave. She was just getting in the way where she was.
“What's going on?” Kala's voice cried out over the still open phone line. Her voice filled with tears and fear. Desperation.
Tamina switched off the speaker and pressed the phone to her ear for privacy as she made her own way out of the apartment and down the courtyard steps.
“I think they got her,” she said. “They're rushing her out to an ambulance I think.”
“Is she okay?” Kala demanded tearfully. “She's going to live right?”
“I don't know,” Tamina said as gently as she could. “Listen, she's been beaten pretty badly, she might not make it. And if she does, she's been bitten. Werewolf.”
There was a shocked silence at the other end of the line. Tamina waited. She didn't want to get in the way of what she'd just said fully sinking in.
“You're the woman from the other night,” Kala said. “The cop.”
She was still tearful, but a hard edge had begun to creep into the sibilant tones of the other woman's voice. A hard, dangerous edge.
“Yeah,” Tamina replied. “Names Tamina. Listen I need you to be straight with me here. You know who Amy Lynn is don't y
ou.”
There was a slight pause.
“I know the name,” Kala replied tightly.
“And you know what she did for a living I'm guessing,” Tamina continued. “Was Hailey involved in that too?”
“No!”
The reply was quick and sharp with a not so subtle thread of angered offense weaving its way through.
“Are you sure,” Tamina pressed. “You need to be 100% honest with me in this. I ain't trying to pass no judgment on anybody. But I need to make sure of this.”
“Quite sure,” Kala said firmly.
Tamina couldn't decide if that answer was good or bad. She'd found the same mark Amy Lynn and Albira Adams had on a few of the trafficking victims, but none of the women with Hailey had it. It was possible that the cartel was still holding the ones they'd bitten for the same people, but it wasn't likely. The two groups had been kept separate. Two wholly unrelated incidents from the looks of it. Tamina had mixed feelings about that.
“Who did this?” Kala demanded. There was definitely something dangerous and concerning in her voice now. No doubt about it.
“An Aztlan cartel,” Tamina said. “It's possible they were working with someone I'm looking for. Don' t take this the wrong way, but was Hailey involved anything that would draw these people's attention?”
“I already told you the answer to that,” Kala replied. There was a hard, unfriendly edge to her voice. “Which cartel?”
Tamina didn't respond. Not at first. She recognized the tone in the other woman's voice for what it was. She may have not known all that much about Naga, but she knew with grim certainty what the woman was thinking.
“Get that thought out of your head, and stay the fuck out of this,” she said. She hoped Kala would understand the tone of her voice as much as Tamina had understood hers. “You know what happens if you don't. Don't do that. Don't do that to Hailey.”