It’s so… beautiful…. Edwin said with a voice that sounded as if he’d been moved to tears by the sight.
I rolled my eyes.
Thankfully, the other two wolves had run off elsewhere. I wasn’t sure I could handle more than one at a time—and even that was going to be a challenge. I’d expected to see mangled metal, evidence of an escape made possible by brute force, but the cell doors didn’t look like they had been broken. There wasn’t any damage to the doors at all. They had been opened on purpose…
Who would intentionally allow the werewolf out?
Three security guards appeared behind me, gripping their rifles. One of them shot; the bullet entered the wolf in the back. The beast hardly noticed. So much for silver bullets. At least, if they worked at all they’d have to hit a vital organ.
“Aim for the head or the heart!” I shouted at the guards.
They fired again.
But the wolf wasn’t a still target. They hit the wolf with little effect—one bullet in the leg, another in its abdomen. All they’d managed to do was piss it off. The wolf leapt past me—if I had a heart, it would have missed a beat—and landed in front of the three guards, taking them all out with a single swipe.
I had to do something fast, before anyone got bit. I gripped my wand and aimed it at the beast. I hadn’t cast anything like this since before I’d been a vampire. I wasn’t even completely sure I remembered the incantation properly. Just one missed syllable and it wouldn’t work. But it was the only thing I could think of.
“Magic prison, magic cell, bind this creature by the power of hell!”
A jolt of red energy shot from my wand and struck the werewolf in the back, quickly enveloping the creature in a magical prism. The wolf roared and thrust itself against the prison I’d cast. It seemed to hold.
“Run,” I shouted at the security guards. “I don’t know how long this will work!”
The three guards stood as quickly as they could. One of them limping, they moved briskly down the hall.
A voice echoed on the loud speaker. “Evacuation order in effect. All staff, engage protocol thirty-three.”
I didn’t know what the code meant, but the asylum was being evacuated. I didn’t know what else I could do. I didn’t know how long the prison I’d made would hold the wolf.
“Let’s go,” I shouted. Nyx nodded, and we ran past the wolf as it tried to claw at us, to no avail, though the magical energies holding it. I could only pray the spell would hold through the night. Truth be told, I didn’t even know for sure if it would last more than a few minutes. It was a spell I’d learned but had never really had use for when I was a human. Moll taught it to me, said it would come in handy some day—and that day was today.
Holding my grimoire tightly in one hand, my wand in the other, I turned to run back down the hall. One wolf was contained, at least. But if everyone else was evacuating, I sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around. If anything, the evacuation order was about to make my escape plan a whole hell of a lot easier.
Suddenly I felt an awful pain in my back.
“I thought you loved me!”
I knew that voice—it was Rutherford. I screamed in agony as I felt the skin on my back boil and I dropped to my knees.
Nyx spun around and, like lightning, kicked the sunlight lamp out of Rutherford’s hands. It shattered against the wall. My back was still searing in pain. There is nothing so vengeful, I suppose, as love betrayed. And that’s what she felt—at least so long as the spell had a hold on her.
“Rutherford!” I yelled.
The nurse stared daggers at me. “The thing about a code 33—every room gets checked during evacuation. You never should have betrayed me, bitch!”
I moved like lightning, pinned Rutherford against the wall, and looked her in the eye. “If you or I want to survive, we need to get out of here. We don’t have time for this crap. We can sort out our… love… later.”
“Fine,” Rutherford said. “But you hurt me!”
“You just zapped me with a sunlight lamp, and that’ll leave a mark! Do you know how long it takes sunlight scars to heal?”
“Sorry…”
“Whatever. Do you have any idea who might have released the wolves?”
Rutherford shook her head. “I don’t know… The nurses are the only ones who could access the cells… but it obviously wasn’t me. I was with you. And I don’t think the others would…”
“What about security? Someone did this. Those doors weren’t broken open, they were unlocked and opened on purpose.”
“If anyone did that, they’d capture it on the cameras… There’s no way. Unless someone turned the camera off, like I did in your room.”
“Come on, Rutherford. Who let the dogs out?” Before I could follow up my question with a “hoo, hoo, hoo,” I heard another scream followed by a roar and a howl. Another wolf came bounding around the corner. And then a second one appeared. And a third. That made four wolves in total… Who the hell was the fourth wolf? Only three wolves were brought into the asylum. There were only three cells. Whoever the fourth was had to be the one who’d let the others out.
And the wolves moved fast. Not as fast as Nyx or me, but much quicker than most humans. Fast enough that I knew I couldn’t get off another spell. I suppose that’s the downside to long, poetic incantations. But in this instance, even if I managed to imprison one of the wolves there were two more ready to charge.
Nyx and I didn’t need to say a thing to each other. We knew what to do—we hauled ass to the evacuation point. At least, what we thought was the evacuation point. We reached the doors where I’d gone for visitation before, where I’d met Hailey, but steel bars had been dropped to block the exits—presumably to keep the wolves out. Something to do with protocol 33, I assumed. “Fuck!” I shouted, shaking the bars. They wouldn’t budge. If these bars were meant to keep the wolves from leaving the facility, I wasn’t going to have much of a shot, either. “There has to be another way out…”
“There’s no other way out,” a voice said over the loud speaker. It was Rutherford.
“There must be!” I shouted. “There’s no way you ran here faster than we did.”
“All the exits are sealed,” Rutherford said.
“Goddamn it, Rutherford!”
“Good luck making it through the night, bitch.”
She was either still feeling betrayed and vengeful, or my love spell had worn off. Either way, I wasn’t going to make any headway trying to convince Rutherford to let us out.
“Let me talk to Cain!”
“Cain isn’t here.”
“Where the hell is he?”
No response.
My first thought was that he’d gone home for the night. But surely someone would have told him what happened—called him, or whatever. He’d be here to manage the trauma, help out somehow. Even if he wasn’t in the facility, he’d be near the evacuation point. Wherever Rutherford was communicating from.
I heard a howl not far away.
“We’re sitting ducks here, Mercy,” Nyx said. “We have to stay on the move.”
I shook my head. “The cells they were in before—they were supposed to keep the wolves contained. Think they’d keep them out, too?”
Nyx shrugged. “Probably.”
“I like our chances hiding out in there better than trying to make it through the night on the run. It’s just a matter of time before they start dividing up, trying to come at us from different directions.”
“I agree.”
“We should have fucking left when we had the chance,” I said. “See what I get for the first time in my existence trying to play the hero?”
Nyx shrugged. “Could be worse.”
“How could anything be worse than the situation we’re in right now?”
“We could be human.”
I laughed. “True. If we were human we wouldn’t stand a chance. At least we can outrun these monsters.”
Nyx nodded. “Pr
oblem is, we’re going to have to run past them. There’s only one way back to their cells…”
I heard a chorus of howls down the hall. They were sniffing us out. At least, they were trying to. But we moved quick enough that we shouldn’t have left much of a trail.
“Or we could just wait and see if they find us here.”
“When they do,” Nyx said, “we’ll be cornered at a dead end. We’d still have to run past them somehow, but then they’d be expecting it.”
“Good point. If we run now, we at least have a chance. They won’t expect us to be running at them.”
“On three?” Nyx asked.
I nodded. “You’re sure running in heels is your best bet?”
“Hell yeah!”
I chuckled. “I don’t know how you do it.”
Nyx smiled and winked. “One… two… three!”
We ran like the wind toward the wolves. We had to just hope they weren’t completely blocking the hall. So long as there was room to maneuver by them, we stood a chance.
I’d never exactly clocked my speed. But I was fast enough that most humans couldn’t see more than a blur when running my hardest. Nyx wasn’t any slower. If anything, she was maybe at touch faster—even in heels. We ran past one without much problem—he took a chomp at my “blur” as I darted past, but he wasn’t quick enough. Nyx ran past him on the opposite side.
The next two were a bit more difficult. They were standing side by side in the hallway, each sniffing at the floor. There was just enough gap between them that we each squeezed through, though now all three of the wolves we’d dusted past were onto us. The wolf I’d imprisoned before must’ve gotten out. The red prism that held him wasn’t there anymore—and neither was he. Still, he wasn’t in the hallway, so I wasn’t going to complain. I was sure he’d show up soon.
And he did…
Just as we ran into one of the open cells, the missing werewolf bounded out of the corner of the room, catching my leg in its jaws.
I screamed in pain—it felt like venom, maybe an infection, spreading from the wound. I kicked at the wolf with my other foot, but it didn’t do much.
The next thing I knew, a stiletto-covered foot came flying through the air and struck the wolf right in the temple. I felt the beast’s jaws loosen as it whimpered in pain. With her other foot on the werewolf’s forehead, Nyx pulled her heel out of its skull as the monster collapsed on the floor.
“Quick,” I shouted. “The door!”
I wasn’t sure if the wolf inside was dead or not—I mean, it wasn’t a silver bullet. Perhaps stilettos could be added to the list of werewolf kryptonite?
Just as Nyx grabbed the door to pull it shut, another wolf’s claw came swiping through the door and nicked Nyx in the arm.
“Fuck!” Nyx shouted as water poured out of the wound. She quickly pulled the door shut anyway. These rooms didn’t have locks on the inside—we had to hope the wolves didn’t have the dexterity in their paws to actually turn doorknobs. Still, it was the best we could hope for at this point.
All three of us lay there in agony—Nyx, myself, and the werewolf. Though the wolf’s whimpers had gone silent.
My wound hurt like a bitch, but I wasn’t going to cry about it. I certainly wasn’t looking forward to the nagging pain I’d likely have to endure on account of it for the next century or so. But it could have been worse. Nyx, on the other hand, was losing water fast.
I ripped off a part of my hospital gown and wrapped it around her arm. It slowed the bleed a little, but it was quickly soaking up water.
“I need a needle…”
“And thread?” I asked.
“Use a strand of my hair. Just rip it out from the roots. You won’t be able to cut it.”
I nodded. Thankfully, there was a small first aid station mounted to the wall. Inside there was a small needle and thread. Still, I wasn’t going to question Nyx’s suggestion to use her hair.
“Ready?” I asked as Nyx gripped her wound, holding the piece of fabric in place. Before she even responded, I yanked out one of her long white hairs. It took a few tries, but I managed to thread it into the needle. “Any particular stitch work best?” I asked. “I’m not exactly a seamstress.”
Nyx shook her head. “Anything to hold the wound shut.”
We quickly unwrapped the wound, and pinching her skin together with one hand, I tried to push the needle through her flesh. With water pouring out, trying to keep a grip on her skin was difficult. Still, I managed to get in the first couple stitches. With every stitch it was like Nyx’s hair just melded with her skin, closing the wound behind it.
“Think your hair could magically heal a wolf bite, by chance?” I asked as I added another stitch.
“I wish it could,” Nyx said. “But it’s something to do with my makeup as an elemental. I think the only part of me that didn’t lose the ability to shift when I was bitten is my hair. It’s like it just re-shifts my skin back the way it’s supposed to be.”
I bit my lip as I added the last stitch, closing her wound entirely. “Well, good thing it wasn’t a larger gash.”
Nyx nodded. “How’s the bite on your leg?”
I winced. “The pain is spreading into my thigh. Not sure there’s much we can do about it other than let it run its course. And that will take a while.”
Meanwhile the dead werewolf’s hair was retreating. Its snout had shortened and its ears almost looked human again. “I think it’s changing back,” Nyx said.
I nodded. It was a slow process—probably slower now that the beast was dead. But as it returned to human form I recognized the naked man as one of the three who’d come into the asylum before. Only he had a sigil tattooed across his chest—one I’d seen before. A symbol that had haunted me for more than a century.
It was the sigil of the Order of the Morning Dawn.
Chapter Seventeen
I took a deep breath. “This isn’t good.”
“Aren’t they the ones you said have been hunting you?” Nyx asked.
I nodded. “Hadn’t seen them in New Orleans at all until just recently. That they’d utilize werewolves to get to me isn’t surprising.”
“If they have an issue with vampires, you’d imagine they wouldn’t be fond of werewolves, either.”
“You’d think. But they have vampire operatives within their ranks, too. They call themselves nightwalkers.”
Nyx huffed. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Humans, so hypocritical. I mean, they fear us because we feed from their kind. Meanwhile, they kill each other in meaningless wars. For power. For money. Even in the name of religion.”
“You’d think that by comparison, what we do wouldn’t be so awful.”
Nyx ran her red-painted nails through her hair. “We feed for survival. We are not monsters, but people have to create monsters out of others so they don’t have to confront the true monstrosity of their own nature.”
I nodded. “So long as you can point the finger at something else, something you imagine is worse than you, it gives you an excuse not to face your own darkness.”
Nyx smiled. “Precisely.”
I sat on the ground and extended my leg. It hurt like hell. Imagine what it feels like to pour alcohol on an open wound; it was a pain I still remembered from when I was a young girl. Then imagine that rather than fading after the initial sting, the pain keeps spreading. Still, I wasn’t about to let on that I was hurting. Vampires don’t show weakness. At least, I didn’t. And I certainly wasn’t going to show any weakness in front of Nyx. She’d become something of a friend, given the peculiarities of our situation. But I had to remember—at the end of the day she was a vampire hunter and I was a vampire. Would we get along at all once we were back in the real world?
Of course, Nyx’s issues with vampires were more personal than for most hunters. Other hunters went after vampires out of some self-righteous notion that anything that’s a threat to humanity is an abomination, as if humans deserve ipso facto to be at the to
p of the food chain. Particularly since, without exception, vampires were human once; that made our existence even less tolerable. But we aren’t some kind of corrupted form of humanity—if anything, we’re another step forward in human evolution. We’re stronger. We’re faster. While we have an aversion to sunlight, all in all we have fewer weaknesses.
Nyx got that. Which was why, all things considered, I respected her. She hunted vampires for one reason only: a vampire had done her wrong. And, aside from the obvious flaw that her cuts didn’t heal so easily, she was a formidable foe for most vampires. And the fact that she’d come around to accept me—in spite of our unfortunate beginnings—showed that her reasons for hunting vampires were clear: she was looking for the one who attacked her. She wanted to recover her ability to shift, to go back to being what she once was. Though as I looked at her—in a male body with the finest of features, but nonetheless exuding a distinctly feminine character—she was a thing of beauty. And unlike me, whom other hunters might think of as some kind of abomination, her existence was natural. Mystical and magical, yes, but natural nonetheless.
I tore another piece off my hospital gown and wrapped it around the bite on my leg. It was healing as quickly as any superficial wound might. But the sting, the burn… that would linger a while.
We were stuck here for the time being, but I wasn’t about to let anyone collar me again when this was over. I knew I’d be in for a fight. They knew what I was. Rutherford would tell them what had happened between us. They’d come armed with sunlight lamps, probably some garlic, and who knew what else. The one thing I did know, though, was I couldn’t just wait here. This room was meant to hold a werewolf—it would hold me, too, if I got locked inside. But what else could I do? The wolves were just outside the door, pacing back and forth. From time to time one would bang or claw at the door, probably trying to break it in.
I still hadn’t had much time to peruse the grimoire Hailey had given me. I’d been carrying it with me all this time. It hadn’t really been a problem, since I’d done my best to avoid any fistfights with the wolves—not the best way to go at them, I’d wager. Still, I brought it with me because I knew it was valuable. Grimoires like this weren’t exactly easy to come by. She’d given it to me for a reason… and I suspected the reason was more than a general recommendation that I study up. She wasn’t able to talk to me too openly in visitation—there had to be something to this book. Something I needed to see.
Bloody Mad: A Dark Urban Fantasy Story (The Legacy of a Vampire Witch Book 2) Page 10