The man’s face acquired another layer of fear. “You think . . . it . . . could open a door?”
“Better to be safe than sorry, pal.”
The merc jumped at the door and fumbled the lock until it clicked. Then he leveled his weapon at it.
Very quietly, he said, “Something’s out there. I heard breathing.”
Bodie saw a smear of darkness pass across the window. It was fast and low. Whatever was out there knew they were inside. “Can we shine the lights out the windows?” he said. “I have to know what we’re dealing with.”
“It’ll give our position away,” Nina barked.
“They have our position,” Cassidy shot back in a sarcastic tone.
Nina bunched her fists. Cassidy stared back as if examining an interesting new species. Bodie took the flashlight one of the smarter mercs handed him and aimed it out the window.
“Ready?” he said. “One, two, three.”
Then came the clawing at the door, not just a quick scratching but a long, deep tearing sound that lasted ten whole seconds. Bodie’s heart leapt into his mouth as he imagined something taking long gouges from the external wood, starting at the top and working down to the bottom.
“God help us!” The merc stationed beside the door leapt back as if electrocuted. “Use the lights. I can’t stand not knowing what’s coming for us.”
Bodie knew their initial anxieties were feeding off each other, enhancing everyone’s trepidation. They were the ones holding the guns, yet primal fear was hard to overcome. It occurred to him right then that this was the perfect time to attack their enemy.
A heavy body slammed against the door, rattling its hinges. The merc closest squeezed his trigger and fired a volley of bullets. The lead pierced the wood and struck something outside. There was a heavy grunting sound.
Bodie saw that a bullet had also destroyed one of the hinges. The door skewed now and twisted to one side, held only by a single hinge.
“Fuck!” someone cried. Gunn scrambled away to the far side of the room. Jemma clicked on the laptop, trusting her friends and ignoring the commotion as best she could. Everyone backed away from the door.
It screeched as the remaining hinge threatened to give way.
Then a head appeared, a huge skull still shrouded by the dark. It crept out of the deeper darkness behind. Two glinting eyes shone, reflected by the room’s lights. Bodie saw flared nostrils and sharp fangs that gleamed yellow and dripped with blood.
The thing snorted.
Mercs opened fire. Bodie’s ears rang with the sound. The window right in front of him resounded as a heavy body struck it. Blood exploded from the shape outside the door, painting the walls and floor inside. The mercs paused, but then something huge hit the hanging door at speed, smashed it off its hinges, and came hurtling into the room.
It howled as it fell and then twisted upright, confronting them.
One merc fell to his knees before the thing, gun pointed at its head. Bodie wished he had a weapon, feeling exposed before this vision of pure hell. It was an enormous wolf, flesh ragged from fighting, muzzle stained with blood from feeding. Its teeth gnashed together as drool dripped to the floor. Its eyes were merciless, wild. Its claws rattled against the floor as it prepared to leap for the nearest throat.
A second huge shape filled the doorway.
The nightmare snarls were snuffed out by the sound of a dozen automatic weapons opening fire. The first wolf twisted and fell, parts of its skull and body torn away by bullets. The second wolf collapsed across the broken door, head lolling inside the house, blood pooling from its brain onto the floor.
Bodie shone the flashlight out the window. “Save your fucking bullets, boys. This is bad.”
Countless shapes stalked the street, filled it so that all Bodie saw were the powerful, ragged bodies of wolves, their feral eyes and their nightmare heads swiveling left and right as they sought out their prey.
Something else rushed the door and hit the body of its dead fellow, making the entire frame shudder. Blood spurted from the dead wolf’s numerous bullet holes, spattering the floor. Another reddened muzzle briefly appeared over the body, snorting and grinding its teeth before moving away a split second before shots were fired.
Again, it struck what remained of the frame, protected by the other’s dead body.
The frame splintered. The door collapsed inward, the motionless wolf with it. Suddenly a wide space had been opened to the crawling night, and they were all exposed.
“Wait,” Gurka said carefully. “Wait until you see the whites of its—”
The wolf came fast, leaping over the entranceway like a racehorse leapt a fence. It was in midair as the mercs started firing. Riddled with bullets, it came down hard, landing atop a man and snarling in its death throes, teeth still seeking the soft flesh of his throat. Luckily for the merc, it died a few seconds later, still fighting. Two mercs helped drag it off the fallen man.
Bodie listened as Gurka radioed those he’d sent to reconnoiter the area. One was already dead, but the others replied that they were okay, sheltering in houses. The villagers were nowhere to be found, it seemed, probably hiding in some safe area.
“So much for saving their lives,” Gurka growled at Bodie when he’d finished. “They left us here to be massacred.”
The thief shrugged. “So would I, if you threatened my family.”
“We have threatened your family.”
Bodie allowed himself a grim smile but said nothing.
Another snarl came from the blocked doorway. More gunfire made the wolf move off. Bodie wondered briefly how much ammo the mercs had brought but then saw one of them take out his dry mag and open a backpack that bulged with spares.
No chance that they’d run dry anytime soon.
Quickly, he checked outside again. The pack was thinning, but eyes still glared their way. Muzzles quivered with vicious snarls. The next thing Bodie saw was the wolf that blocked the doorway suddenly start to move, its carcass sliding backward.
“Bollocks,” he said. “They’re clearing the bloody doorway. Get ready!”
Very slowly, the dead wolf slithered back out into the darkness. For a moment there was complete silence. Nothing moved. Bodie heard only those breathing around him.
A merc turned to Gurka. “Maybe they’re—”
And then they hit. Shapes streaked through the open door, silent as death and dripping hot blood from their fangs. Nightmare shapes. Monsters.
The lead wolf clamped its jaws onto the gun arm of the first merc to cross its path. He screamed. Gunfire erupted, the other mercs panicking as more wolves attacked. Gunfire rang out again. Wolves twisted and fell in midair, still snapping their jaws as they fell and died. One landed atop a merc and bore him to the floor, dug its great claws into his shoulders, and lowered its muzzle to tear out his throat.
Then its head exploded as another man pressed his gun to the wolf’s head and fired.
Bodie and Cassidy were in front of Jemma and Gunn. Yasmine and Pantera were a step to the right. Caruso cowered at the rear of the house, behind everyone. Heidi looked ready to relieve one of the mercs of his gun and start firing herself.
Bodie could only hope that Lucie was okay.
The mercs bore the brunt of the attack, firing and falling and twisting to escape excruciating deaths. Wolves fell under the hail of bullets. More came, falling over their dead brethren. During all this the first merc who’d had his arm clamped wrenched free of the deadly jaws. He brought his gun up, only to find he didn’t have the maneuverability to bring the weapon to bear. The wolf was faster, snapping down and tearing out the man’s throat before he even knew what had happened.
The wolf leapt again through a fountain of blood, only to be shredded by bullets.
The wolves behind started backing away, seeing their dead and twitching brethren before them. Quickly, they turned and vanished back the way they had come, out into the night.
The house was left in chaos, mercs f
iring through the door into darkness, wolves dying on the floor, and the mercenary’s body leaking pools of blood. Caruso was crying. Jemma and Gunn were whiter than bone.
Cassidy nudged Bodie. “You keeping count?”
“Course I bloody am,” he replied. “Two dead. Thirteen left.”
Pantera caught Gurka’s attention. “What about Lucie?” he asked. “And your man, Dudyk?”
Gurka immediately checked on the radio, looking worried, but everyone outside the room was safe, hidden away inside a secure house they’d found.
“We’re not even into the mountains proper yet,” Heidi pointed out to Gurka. “Your tents aren’t gonna be much use if we come across more of this.”
“Yes.” Caruso spoke into the silence, eyes focused past the walls of the house and toward the peaks. “Yes, it’s much worse up there.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A troubled night passed. It was cold enough to cause uncontrollable shivering. They moved out of the house and found another, crossing the pitch-black pathways in anxious silence. Guards were posted, but the wolves didn’t return. The remainder of the dark hours passed with Gurka and the other members of R24 taking turns catnapping. Bodie and the relic hunters did the same, staying close. Jemma worked on the computer with Gunn. Bodie guessed it helped still the night terrors, both real and imagined. It took most of the night. Not because it was hard to spot the train track but because the signal was weak and erratic.
They shrugged on heavy coats, gloves, and hats and spent a miserable night in the ghost town, listening to distant, mournful howling, a chilling counterpoint to Jemma’s and Gunn’s quick-fire consultations.
Before dawn, Jemma caught Bodie’s eye and nodded. She’d found the right area. Bodie saw no reason not to let Gurka know—he and his companions had been checking constantly anyway. Jemma proceeded to explain how she’d found the old train tracks that bypassed Dydiowa to the east and continued around one of the higher mountains. Gurka, Nina, and Vash checked the route, calculated distances and times, and sent three worried glances up through the house windows at the highest, darkest mountains and the treacherous passes that wound around them.
“The only way is over,” Gurka said. “We can’t spend a week going around it.”
As a relic hunter, Bodie agreed with his thinking, but as a captive, he thought the opposite. But the mercs would take the risks, and from a callous perspective, that would almost certainly thin their numbers. The more hazardous their journey, the better. All he had to think about was protecting Jemma and Gunn.
And Lucie. But that was an entirely different problem.
For Lucie, the night had started as one of the loneliest of her life, which was saying something, since her closest family was all dead. She fought hard to keep up the prim-and-proper front, the reserved attitude, but she was ready to start blubbering in front of the hard-faced, violent Dudyk.
But her fatalistic belief had receded, for now. How could it not when Dudyk threatened to hurt her every few hours?
He was worse than she remembered Jamie being. Maybe there was no coming back for him. Maybe he had been the one bullying others.
The R24 psycho had crouched by a window all night, keeping one eye on the door he’d managed to wedge firmly closed. Most of the wolves’ attention had been centered upon the other building, but occasionally, some snorting, snarling monster had come clawing at their door.
Dudyk had readied a rifle and two handguns. Always, he was ready. Always, he was watchful, in tune with his surroundings. Lucie had watched him for hours, taking her mind off the battle outside and the screams of the dying. Occasionally, every hour perhaps, he’d looked over to check on her. She’d barely moved, not wanting to alert the wolves or incite her captor’s anger.
Near dawn, Dudyk spoke: “They are leaving now. So you can stop cowering like a frightened rabbit. Sleep, if you like. The next day will be hard.”
Lucie scrunched her face up, confused by his words, both nasty and unselfish at the same time. So far she hadn’t seen a scrap of goodness in Dudyk, only the desire to cause harm. She didn’t trust him one bit, so she fought to stay awake even as her eyelids drooped. To keep from falling asleep, she tried conversation.
“Do you really hate everyone so much?”
She had given some thought to what she should say, but unsure how to talk to a homicidal relic hunter, she’d decided to keep it simple. And honest.
Dudyk seemed to notice her watching him. “What?”
“You heard me right. I used to have an uncle like you.”
“I don’t hate everyone,” Dudyk said defensively. “Most people—like you and your friends—don’t understand me.”
Lucie coughed. “What is there to understand?”
“You see—this,” he said, pointing out the guns, his harshly drawn face, the tattoos, and the scarred arms, “and you think you know me.”
“No. I have always looked past the exterior. I value actions, morals, and respect.”
“Just shut up,” he said. “If they tell me to hurt you, I will hurt you.”
She saw the truth of it in his eyes. Dudyk possessed no compassion. To him, she was a tool, useful in controlling Bodie and the others. A long, lonely night was about to turn into one more lonely day.
Dudyk took a radio call. “We will go up the mountain soon,” he said. “It will not be easy.”
Lucie met his eyes, saw the harshness there, and tried to keep her stiff upper lip from starting to tremble.
It was a cold, dim, unwelcoming dawn. The entire group filed out of their houses to greet it, stretching, rubbing tired eyes, and making sure they were warmly wrapped up. They all wore thick coats over several layers, as well as thin insulated gloves, and they’d been given even more thermal coverings for the higher altitudes. The hope was that they would find a pass at a low elevation, but R24 had planned for the hardest outcome.
Without seeing or waiting for any sign of the villagers, the group set out. Bodie bent his head into an icy wind, keeping his eyes on the gravel-strewed path that meandered its way up to the higher foothills. The mountains were shadowed by the rising dawn, dark smudges at first, slowly emerging. The mists that had blanketed the land last night folded gently away, lingering only in the low valley and slopes they traversed. Bodie walked at the head of his own team, with Cassidy, Jemma, and Gunn behind; the rest were strung out along the path, sticking to the main route as they followed its many ups and downs.
Miles passed. The slopes grew steeper and rockier. The air became colder. Bodie could see his own breath steaming in front of him. Once, Gurka called a halt to allow everyone an energy bar snack. It felt odd at first, seeing their captors concerned for their welfare, but of course it was all personally motivated.
Two hours in, they stopped once more, perching wherever they could, on the edges of rocks or in the lee of a cliff. Bodie deliberately sank down next to Gurka.
“I have concerns,” he said.
“About what?”
“First, Lucie. I don’t trust that psycho you’ve got guarding her. And second, your hired help. Men who enjoy killing unarmed civilians aren’t trustworthy.”
Gurka finished unwrapping the skin from an orange before replying. “I do not answer to you, no matter how important you think you are. So you found Zeus and Atlantis—so what? That does not make you better than us.”
“I never said—”
Gurka held a hand up to stop Bodie’s words. “But you expect something.”
“Sorry, I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You expect me to give a fuck about you. I don’t. So quit giving me the spiel, quit thinking you can make an ally of me, and understand this—you breathe only because I think we can use your experience. Now get the fuck out of my face.”
Bodie backed off, unwilling to goad the man, thinking it better to keep a lower profile for now.
The mountains reared up around them as they climbed higher. The paths grew scarce, and they were forced to t
ake some chances, climbing around outcroppings to gain new passes, scaling a good-size boulder that had fallen from above and blocked the way forward. But they looked after each other, Bodie concerned for everyone’s plight and Gurka making sure the relic hunters and Caruso were as unexposed as conditions allowed.
The air grew even colder, the wind snapping at their faces as if it had teeth. The thought put Bodie once more in mind of last night’s visitors. Twice, he heard distant howling and wondered if they were being tracked.
“I think we’re coming around the side of this mountain,” one of the mercs reported soon after midday. “The path falls, then rises across the next one, but then we’re clear.”
“Good progress,” Nina said. “But it still means we’ll have to spend the night out here.”
Bodie forged ahead. The passes were rock strewed, with sides that crumbled away down sheer cliff faces. He guided Jemma and Gunn, telling them to follow exactly in his footsteps. Three times now, the mercenaries following them had almost fallen from the pass, two catching themselves on outcroppings and being hauled back to safety and a third saved by Belenko, the silent member of R24, who’d wrapped his bearlike arms around the merc before throwing him to safety without the merest hint of emotion crossing his face. The merc’s gasp of thanks had gone unrecognized.
Bodie checked down the line as they crept along a four-foot-wide ledge with the high mountain at their back. They were sidestepping for safety. At the very rear Bodie saw Lucie and Dudyk. The historian looked okay for now, but Bodie knew she had to be suffering inside.
One chance, he thought. Just give us one good chance.
Sleet swept the mountains. Below, intermittently amid the driving rain, they could see swaths of green, flowers, trees, and blue lakes, and even Gurka had a wistful look on his face. It would be far easier to make the trek lower down but would take so much longer. Bodie lingered as long as he could on the ledge, making sure Jemma and Gunn made it, encouraging them with every step. Then he turned to face another pass made dark by the towering mountain above.
Ten more minutes, and they were out in the open again, negotiating a six-foot-wide path bordered by a rock face to the right and a sheer drop to the valley below on the left. The wind picked up, threatening to sweep one of them off the ledge. Bodie stood in the face of it, eyes narrowed. Ahead, Cassidy and Heidi followed Pantera step by cautious step, with the mercenaries in front of them.
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