"Rick." He spread his huge hands in front of him, palms up. "Wait. I'm not here because someone sent me. I'm here because I was surveilling that building and looking for a good place to run the moon, and I found you."
"And what will you do now that you have found me?" All of my instincts screamed to leave Markus by himself on this bridge. But my mind and my heart–and my wolf–couldn't seem to turn their back on the chance to have this conversation in my native tongue with a wolf who smelled of home.
I may have said this before, but while it's true I've been speaking English for almost a century now, I still dream in German.
"Don't worry, your secret is safe with me." Markus leaned his back against the stone railing and crossed his arms. "If I tell the pack I saw you, and don't bring you home, I'll be the next one exiled."
I stepped back again, keeping some space between the two of us. I wasn't sure what I would do if he acted on that intention, but he was a lot larger than I. At least in this form. At that thought, the Überwechsel stirred, reaching out to me as before.
This time, I reached back, grateful for its comfort, pulling away just before I touched it. Scheisse! I'd never come that close to achieving it outside the full moon before. And I definitely didn't want to give Markus any more information to bring back to the pack–and my mother–than he already had.
Did he notice I couldn't stop twitching? Probably not. He, himself, wasn't the picture of a calm forest evening. He kept glancing up and around, his fingers drumming against his arms. Every so often, he would push himself up off the railing, then sit back down. He waited for the moon as well, her energy wiring him up for the change.
Markus caught me staring and grinned. "Or, we could run this moon together, cousin. See what havoc we can cause among the villagers and their modern superstitions."
Yes! Yes, we want to run!
Biting my lip until I tasted blood, I shook my head. Markus still looked hopeful.
"I will not run with you, cousin." He opened his mouth to answer, but I cut him off. "I am no longer pack, and you don't want to pay the price that's on my head."
"You have a pretty high opinion of yourself, don't you?"
I ignored the bait, even if I didn't think it was true. "And that facility is ours. Anyone who finds themselves present there tomorrow will be ours as well."
Markus pushed himself up off the wall, throwing up two fingers in a British salute. "I don't know you, cousin Rick, and you don't know me. I will stay away, but the pack is pack, and someday you will need someone to negotiate your return."
I doubted that.
He turned and stalked a few steps away, then halted. Swiveling around on the balls of his feet, he gave me another grin. This time, I could glimpse the giant of a wolf he would inhabit in a few days under the moon.
"Family is family, cousin." He spread his arms and shrugged. "If you ever decide to reconcile with yours, come to this bridge."
"Just come here, hang out, chuck some rocks in the water?" I couldn't help the wiseass comment.
"Something like that. Auf Wiedersehen, Bruder." With another wolf-y grin, he turned his back to me and headed away down the road. The shadows swallowed every trace of his passing.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The four of us made an interesting if motley cast of characters as we stepped out of the van at the entrance to the Schwarzberg International Resort and Spa. The front was all white stone and glass, although the sheen off the surface made me think the glass had been strengthened with some sort of reinforcing sheeting.
Two attendants hurried out to meet us, helping me to get Dmitri's wheelchair ramp down, unlocking the chair from its security buckle in the van, and then wheeling him down. I took over from there, pushing the chair after them as they led us into the bowels of the resort.
Dmitri played the role of feeble, yet feisty, old Jakob to the hilt. If I didn't know better, I would have sworn he was at least three decades older, and not scary at all. Calix strode in front of us, looking around at everything we passed, playing the role of the interested granddaughter, wanting to make sure they were getting the proper attention and care for a man of Jakob's wealth and position.
Karen fell into step beside me. I leaned over and pitched my voice so only she could hear. "I feel like I'm working with Charlie's Angels."
"Does that make you Farrah Fawcett?" she returned without cracking a smile.
Her deadpan delivery reminded me of the old Karen, and I grinned, then hastily reverted to a more serious gaze. I was a nurse, after all, and they never smile. Just glare menacingly and threaten to knock you out if you don't quit playing with your IV.
Ahem.
From what we understood from the brochures, the Schwarzberg billed itself as a high-end institution of care, with medical facilities available and the best physicians around. I'd never seen a hospital set up like this place; rather, it appeared to be exactly like the resort and spa its name advertised.
We passed through several large, open rooms, where patients lounged in the late morning sun, reading or playing games in Sudoku or crossword puzzle books. Not a single television blared, and the only sound was the hush of pages turning. The scuff of my feet on the floor started to make me feel self-conscious.
Mission jitters aside, something was off about this place. In addition to the near silence, the halls and rooms were devoid of scent. There were no perfumes, no subtle aromas of urine and bleach, no flowery indoor plants, no aromatherapy–nothing. Almost as if the entire place was one giant void of sensation.
Calix looked back at us, as if checking to see we were still there, then turned around again.
"This place gives me the creeps," I muttered.
To my surprise, Karen answered. "You're not the only one."
The sterile nature of the place asserted itself even more strongly as we headed down another corridor. I got the feeling we were leaving the resort area behind us. The halls of open, inviting rooms and lounge areas gave way to small, boxy offices, and closed, heavy doors with no windows or identifying plaques.
My senses started humming. Next to me, I could almost taste the adrenaline that began building under Karen's skin, a sweet liqueur underlying her normal scents of rosemary and, now, cinnamon. It gave a welcome contrast to the uncanny lack of anything around us.
The attendants led us around several more corners. I was pretty sure I knew how we had gotten there, but I really didn't want to test that knowledge. Maybe the others had kept track.
The two men ushered us into a large room at the end of the final hallway, waiting at the door as we filed inside. I briefly wondered if the others were going to react–clearly, we had not arrived at the all-expenses therapeutic bath and massage they'd assured us awaited Grandpa Jakob when he arrived.
"Please wait here," one of the attendants instructed in lightly accented English. "The doctor will be here soon."
The two of them left the room, closed the door behind them. The faintest clicking sound informed us they had locked the door as they left.
"Looks like someone was expecting us," Calix offered, prowling down one side of the room and up the other. One long conference table, a few chairs, and a water dispenser stood in an unreasonably large space. Unlike MONIKER, there were no windows or shitty motivational posters adorning the walls. Just the giant room and the table. Maybe they had a lot of standing room only meetings. Who knew.
"Well, shit," was all I had to say. "So much for all that sneaking around."
"Shut up, Rick," Karen said, leaning her ear against the door. She looked like Nancy Drew, and I snorted.
"Don't worry, they're coming back."
"We were expected." Dmitri stood, brushing imaginary wrinkles from his slacks and suit jacket.
"What do you know?" Calix examined the walls, trying to find some hidden weakness.
"I know that a good operative, faced with the unexpected appearance of unwanted allies, would immediately be thinking that this is a trap, and she must be
the one to spring it." Dmitri's face didn't betray anything except possibly some minor annoyance. In fact, he checked his watch, looking for all the world like a commuter whose train is five minutes late.
The lock in the door clicked and all of us turned, except for Dmitri, who clasped his hands behind his back, facing the rest of us.
"Good morning, Großvater Jakob."
The woman who spoke was at least three inches shorter than either Karen or Calix, although she still stood two or three inches taller than me, but the presence she exuded dwarfed the three of us. In fact, the only thing in the room that matched her intense energy was the slight figure of her father.
We barely even noticed the squad of heavily armed men who entered with her, surrounding us, patting us down. I didn't have anything on me to find, but Calix grimaced at the foolish mortal who relieved her of her sword, the gleam in her eye promising a slow disembowelment.
"Maria." Dmitri acknowledged her, turning to face his daughter. "You look well."
I stared at her, trying to square what I thought of her father with the woman who stood at the vortex of all the activity, like a mountain in the eye of a storm. Her eyes were a light grey, and I wondered if they were green.
"Pull yourself together, Rick," Calix muttered.
Dmitri spared me a quick, calm look, and I almost crapped my pants. Now was not the time to be musing if his daughter had green eyes. In fact, probably never would be a good time to think about his daughter's eyes.
The Black Mountain minions ushered us out of the room at gunpoint, leaving Dmitri's wheelchair behind, and herded us down another maze-like set of corridors. This is where a few weeks of planning and rehearsal time would have been useful. Or even one of those corporate icebreaker teambuilding exercises. We hadn't planned for a trap to be sprung, and I for one didn't want to be the only one to start clawing my way out of it, and then realize the others were going with a different plan.
The strange sense void lingered throughout the corridors. From the minions and Maria herself, I couldn't detect anything. It reminded me, unpleasantly, of Dr. Gratusczak.
The resemblance grew stronger as we drew up to a reinforced steel double door and stumbled to a halt. Maria swiped her hand over a small, black sensor. It beeped, and then someone unlocked the door from the inside with a key, a curious mix of technological and mechanical security.
Inside the room, the déjà vu that had begun with the sense of nothing returned full force. We found ourselves in a laboratory not unlike the one MONIKER had built for Dr. Gratuszcak.
"Come on up to the lab," I muttered again.
Calix grinned. "And see what's on the … slab."
We thought we were hilarious. Everyone else regarded us like we had farted in front of the Pope.
The only difference, and it was a major one, was that instead of only one research subject–yours truly–this lab had apparently decided to head into the testing phase of whatever they were working on. Along one row stood a series of six hospital beds, three of which were currently occupied by two men and a woman, all far past middle age.
"Are those … patients?" Why was I asking them? This wasn't the movies where some evil villain was going to spill the beans.
Speaking of evil villains, this lab came complete with its own version of Dr. G. A short, gnomish man of indeterminate origin had met our arrival with dispassionate, clinical interest. He held a clipboard, referring to it as he looked us up and down, then over at the beds.
"Herr Doktor Mengele, I presume?"
"The women, Ms. Nicolaiova." The man ignored my quip, gesturing with his pen in the general direction of the beds, then regarded Dmitri and I, assessing us both against some unknown criteria. "And the younger one."
"The older?" Maria asked in as flat and sociopathic a voice as I'd ever heard.
"Discard." He turned away from us, clearly expecting the orders to be followed without any need for follow-up or close supervision.
The minion standing next to Dmitri raised a gun to his head, the hammer cocked, and depressed the trigger. The shot echoed in the small space.
The next few moments happened so quickly that even I had trouble keeping track of time and reality.
Maria froze, betraying no sign of reaction.
Beside me, Calix went full vampire, eyes brightening with their intense glow, teeth sharpened to points.
Karen stepped toward the gnome-like scientist. She had no chance to reach him. Chaos would overwhelm her path. But her instinct was to go for the biggest monster in the room.
My ears rang. In the aftermath of the shot, as time started moving again, the minions reacted to the attack, piling on each of us. Two of them reached for me, and my instincts reached for the change.
So not only did I get the shit kicked out of me by Hans and Franz, but I kept jerking like a squirrel caught in an electrical fence. Under the onslaught, I lost track of the others. I lost track of anything except the boot that caught me in the ribs, the rifle butt on the side of my face, the electric shock that splayed me back out when I tried to curl in on myself.
A body thudded to the ground next to me. Dmitri? One of the others? The gnome Mengele?
Adrenaline flooded through me. I screamed, back arching, reaching for the change. The cuff gripped me in its charged embrace. I no longer felt anything else except white-hot liquid pain as the device took me for one long ride on the lightning.
Within the howl echoing through my head, as my ears deafened with the discharge of weapons in an enclosed concrete space, I screamed until even my inner voice had hoarsened to a mute growl.
My wolf and I drew a long breath, ragged and splintered from the agony. And in that half second of silence, the Überwechsel reached out.
I grabbed for the older, larger Change like a drowning man for a lifeline.
Somewhere in my subconscious, I knew it wasn't time. The moon shone just shy of its full orb. And yet, I called this Change to me, and it came.
My bones cracked, and the skin stretched and split with the now familiar agony, but with a different type of pain. This pain had me howling for joy and eager for the hunt.
Some force outside myself lifted me up. The final manifestations of the Change twitched through me. The last vestiges of pain faded into slavering pleasure.
In the back of my mind, a flash of dark green, and leaves, and urgent geas. Green Jack whispered to me, loosing me on his mission of cleansing chase. "Los! Der Mond ruft dich an…"
Reveling–perhaps indulging–in this freedom, I howled until at least one of the lights overhead shattered, and then I leapt into the maelstrom.
Claws flashing, teeth bared, ripping and mauling, I laughed at these little men who screamed and scrambled and aimed their little guns as if something as pathetic as bullets or silver could stop me.
The familiar, comfortable red painted the floor, the ceiling, and everywhere I could reach. I savored the taste of copper in my mouth and satisfaction of flesh giving way in my jaws.
All the sadness that remained was the fact that there weren't enough bad guys for me to wreak havoc among, and too soon I stood in a pile of bodies, panting, scanning the room for a new threat.
A bloody tableaux met my eyes. Karen stood off to the side, holding Mengele or whatever his name was in a chokehold in front of her. His face betrayed no reaction, but she had seen me do this before.
Calix stared. Somewhere in the chaos, she had reclaimed her sword and she held it away from her, at the ready. The bright blade glimmered, shiny with wet blood.
I whipped my head around. Dmitri and Maria stood next to each other on the other side of the room. The first thing I noticed was that Maria's eyes were indeed a brilliant green, the sort of shade that sees past every defense you erect, right into the soul you tried to forget you had.
The second thing I noticed was that Dmitri's hands were smoking, and Maria held a ball of fire in hers.
What the hell?
Nobody spoke for a full ten seconds. I wo
rked my jaw, trying to rearrange my tongue around all these teeth.
Finally, I simply pointed and growled: "Door."
Calix's jaw actually dropped, vampire face and all, which made me laugh. Karen, snapped back to reality, rolled her eyes.
"What's back there?" Karen gave Mengele a little shake to emphasize her question.
The little man just shrugged.
On one of the beds, one of the older patients moaned. We'd all forgotten they were there, judging by the startled looks on everyone's face. Not mine. Benefits of one's face being completely furry.
Without a word, Maria gestured and the fire burning above her hands faded away. Instead, she walked over and punched in the code.
A giant metal sliding door that took up the entire wall slowly opened. It was as if the wall gently stepped to the side.
Calix and I took the lead. I stepped past the sliding door into the room, claws up, senses spreading out. I knew what I would find from the stench of death that met me even before I crossed the threshold, but I didn't want to see it, all the same.
I've seen horrific sights in my life. I've been in places where men became monsters who led their fellow men to horrific deaths. I've dripped blood from my teeth and my claws, and I've hunted prey that walked on two feet. I've been the shadow in the night that took it down and ripped apart and reveled in it.
But the contents of this room showed us something far beyond that. Bright fluorescents overhead illuminated the gaping concrete cavern, their green-tinged lights casting a harsh green glow that lit, unflinching, the slaughterhouse within.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Death had stained this slaughterhouse for decades, the discarded blood and carnage seeping into the pores of the concrete until even I couldn't tell where the building ended, and the horror show began.
The charnel hit me so hard, I almost missed the army that faced us.
Row upon row of … creatures … stood, lined up with military precision, preternaturally still, highlighted in harsh, uncanny relief under the garish fluorescent lights.
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