by R. Lee Moore
Still, as weakened as Siobhan was, she wouldn't last long. The maneater was stronger and far less injured than she was. Vanya would wear her down quickly enough. When he did, he'd kill her. Tamina wasn't going to give him that chance.
She crawled forward pushing aside all the pain and discomfort her body was throwing at her. Crawled until she was right up beside the two wolves, and pressed the barrel of her pistol firmly beneath Vanya's jaws. She could see and feel his body tensing. He began to howl and snarl in desperation. He was whimpering. Pleading and begging for his life with feral little whine. He had to have known he wasn't going to get any mercy from. Not from her.
“This is what knowing you're going to die feels like you son of a bitch,” Tamina rasped out.
She squeezed her trigger twice in quick succession emptying out the last two rounds in the magazine into the maneater's face. Both rounds drilled up through the beast's jaw and burst out through the back of its head. Vanya's body stiffened, then went limp and lifeless still held tight in Siobhan's jaws.
Tamina rolled onto her back and stared up and the flashing blue and red lights beginning to dance along the night sky overhead accompanied by the screeching of tires and blaring of sirens all around her. Her hands were shaking with every labored breath, but she was alive and her enemies weren't.
She turned her head slightly and watched as the wounded red furred wolf beside her savagely continued to tear and maul at Vanya's corpse far longer than was necessary. Vanya was already dead, but Siobhan still wasn't satisfied. She found herself unable to stop the laugh that forced its way past her lips no matter how much it hurt.
“You do you, Red,” she whispered hoarsely. “I'm just gonna lay here a minute and try not to die.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Tamina didn't remember losing consciousness, but when she came to, the redheaded werewolf had already changed back to her human form and was laying motionless next to her. Siobhan's naked body was a patchwork of angry wounds scoring all over her pale skin. Most of them had healed at least somewhat during her transformation, one of the benefits of the supernatural, but she was still in just about as bad of shape as Tamina was. Her arm was going to take a few days to heal at the very least.
Neither one of them had the strength to move or speak when Carson raced up from out of nowhere and knelt down beside them to tend their wounds. They didn't have the energy or the inclination to do anything other than lay there and catch their breath staring up at the stars in the night sky above them.
When the medics arrived, Tamina was dimly aware of needles jamming into her arm, and her blood getting drawn out to be tested on the spot. It was standard procedure, but they needn't have bothered. Vanya hadn't bitten her, and his claws hadn't broken the skin. She was bleeding, but she was still human. They wouldn't have listened if she'd told them anyway. Safety first.
She'd fought when the medics tried putting her in the back of the ambulance. Even going so far as to throw a few sloppy and weak punches in their direction. They weren't happy with that, but Tamina was insistent that she wasn't going anywhere until she was sure the mission had been completed.
She'd finally given up and compromised with the med team, sat herself on the ambulances back bumper, and let them continue to work as best they could. They kept glaring at her for her lack of cooperation, but she ignored them.
“We get them all?” she asked Carson tiredly. She had to know. Had to make sure they'd killed if not all of them, then as many as they could.
“Most of them yes,” Carson somberly replied. “There's a small group that broke off into the hills, but we got them pinned down inside a ravine. They're out in the open. Won't last long.”
Tamina nodded her head with grim satisfaction. The Department was going to scorch the earth here. Either the Strike Teams would take the remaining werewolves and their cohorts down, or the Air Units would. Sooner or later they'd end up like the rest of them. Corpses tossed onto the burn pile for disposal. It wasn't a question of if, it was a question of when.
“Captain Harris already has people picking over the wreckage,” Carson continued. “Found a few laptops and hard drives the Blackhawks didn't completely obliterate. Might be able to find some useful information about who these people are, and whoever it was they were working with out here.”
“Outside the cartels you mean,” Tamina replied absently nodding her head.
She was barely listening. All she cared about or needed to know was that everyone involved in this was dead or very shortly going to be. Everything else outside that could wait. They had to die first. All of them.
It was air power than ended the standoff in the end. Tamina held onto the side of the ambulance and watched with satisfaction as the Blackhawks dropped into a low orbit over the hills, and lit up the night sky with their miniguns raining down hellfire on everything below them. The holdouts hadn't likely lasted long under the withering fire coming from above, but it still went on for some time. The Air Units left nothing to chance and didn't let up until there was nothing left beneath them but a smoking carnage filled crater.
Tamina gave in to the medics after that. There wasn't any use in holding out any longer. She'd done her job, and gotten at least some semblance of justice for Amy Lynn, Albira Adams, and a whole host of men and women whose names she didn't even know. It may have been more vengeance than justice, but it was well deserved no matter how you looked at it, she thought. She'd take what she could get.
“Martinez,” Carson called out to her as the medics guided her into the back of the ambulance and strapped her down. Tamina looked up at the man, her vision rapidly fading away. “I don't know how long you're going to last here. You've got a lot to learn about the proper way of doing things. You did good, though. Took a case no one cared about, and got the job done in just under a week. Got to give you credit where credit is due. Not how I would have done a lot of it, but we can work on that. I got your back as long as you're still with us.”
“Yup,” Tamina replied weakly. It was all she could think of. Too many other thoughts, and too much pain running through her to fully concentrate. “Hey Timmy, see if you can find my weapons before anyone else does. They're over by Vanya's corpse somewhere. Don't want to lose them. You know how some of these people are.”
“Uh huh,” Carson replied with a scowl. Whatever good will he might have had washed away by his annoyance. “Because what could I possibly have better to do in the middle of a crime scene than pick up after you right? And don't call me that.”
Tamina grinned and closed her eyes to let herself drift off into the calm of the darkness surrounding her. Passing out didn't seem to be such a bad idea right about now. She'd worry about everything else later. Much later.
About The Author
R Lee Moore
A veteran of the United States Army currently living in Southern California who is rarely seen without a big cup of coffee in his hand. When he isn't writing and drinking far too much coffee for a human being to safely consume, he spends his time trying to convince his three cats that he's the one that's actually in charge.
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