by L. A. Banks
“Sasha!” Hunter arched again, his nails elongating to rake the table. “Shoot me!” His voice broke on an anguished sob, his eyes not his own. “If you love me, shoot me!”
“Don’t,” Silver Hawk commanded, stepping in front of her leveled weapon. “Or you doom him to be trapped betwixt and between forever. Let them eat away that which is theirs to reclaim.”
She was blinded by tears as Hunter’s wails escalated, and her throat was so tight that for a moment only her mind could sob. “Oh my God, they’re eating him alive in the Shadow realms? That’s why he’s bleeding? Can’t we do something?”
Instinct propelled her forward; two strong hands caught her by her upper arms as Hunter yelled her name again.
“I’m his alpha enforcer . . . he even asked me to be his mate,” she whispered thickly.
“I know. But if you love him, you will let him come through the doors a free man.”
She stared into a pair of aged eyes, focusing on the depths of knowledge within them, trying to blot out the sounds of agony that echoed off the kitchen walls and stainless-steel fixtures. A shudder of nausea racked her, and Silver Hawk’s hard squeeze into her bunched biceps helped her remain steadfast. His body blocked her vision to the center island. But the awful sound of Hunter retching finally made her have to turn and dry heave.
When she looked up, Hunter was leaning over the side of the butcher block vomiting a brackish mixture of blood and meat that she didn’t even want to consider the source of. His spine had risen under his skin into huge, thick humps, each vertebra evident through skin stretched so tautly over it that the flesh had become white. Then just as quickly as his spine had distended, the sound of cracking, snapping bones echoed through the room.
Helpless to do anything but hold on to Silver Hawk’s arms, she saw Hunter throw his head back, screaming as his spine realigned itself. The moment the last disc in his back normalized, he dropped to the table, panting, sweat and tears running down his face.
Silver Hawk slowly released his viselike grip on her upper arms and nodded, then turned to walk back to stand by Hunter’s side.
“The worst is over,” the old man announced. “This was a very bad moon.”
“Trudeau wasn’t lying when she said we could find all we’d need stashed in this joint,” Winters said, gaping as they entered the steel cage reinforced attic. “When did she haul all this up here?”
“Better question is how?” Bradley said, clearly impressed.
“Probably had a deployment team drop-ship it to specs or, knowing Trudeau, had some layers of unnamed contacts that even the brass doesn’t wanna know about broker it in and set it up. This is all pro,” Clarissa said, marveling as she unlocked the cage and touched the bars. She leaned her face forward and sniffed and then ran her fingertips across the shiny surface. “Silver paint job, but I’d lay odds that there’s actually silver in the bars.”
Bradley nodded and looked overhead. “Sprinkler system, in case they try to burn us out, first and second floors with panic rooms and steel walls. She had to have this designed with some serious shit in mind.”
“Yeah, but, like, how’d she get this done in a month?” Winters walked over to military crates that lined the far side of the room within the cage. “Sweet Jesus . . . she’s got a MLRS up here.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Clarissa said, her voice bottoming out on a horrified murmur. “I thought we were monitoring, not going to war . . . what the hell do we need a multiple launch rocket system for?”
“It’s a steel rain, for sure,” Bradley said, going over to the crates, his expression now ashen. “Not precise, but can hit a target in a hundred and twenty seconds that would take a car forty-five minutes to drive to . . . so, uh, maybe she’s thinking of a preemptive strike? Hell, what’s your take on it, Rissa? You’re the resident psychic.”
“I’m telling you, whatever she’s got us monitoring is bigger than HQ knows, gotta be,” Winters argued, pulling back tarps. “She’s even got a metal storm up here.”
“Oh, shit,” Clarissa murmured, going over to the weapon that looked like a small pipe organ set in a box.
“You tell me what we need with something that can fire a million rounds a second, huh?” Winters said, his voice becoming shrill. “Like, I do computers, Bradley does radar, you do the blood and bio thing, we might be military but we’re really not what you call front line personnel.” He looked at the group, pure terror in his eyes. “Like, I’ve read up on this stuff, but do you really know how to load forty-millimeter rounds in this sucker, or grenades—yeah, it launches grenades from each one of these pipes, plus it can kick a quarter million rounds a minute and the explosion alone will collapse your ear drums and sinus cavities if you’re anywhere near the blast.”
“I sure hope they’re sending in the Green Berets,” Bradley said in a tight mutter. “We’ve gotta set up the systems ASAP to connect the infrared security cameras and night-vision monitors. After seeing this, I’ve got a really bad feeling that it’s gonna get worse before it gets better.”
“Ya think?” Winters fussed, walking around checking out gear. “At NORAD I felt safe. We were in the middle of an entire base, not a strategic tactical unit in the field with no real walls or fortification. There, we were dug in deep. But she’s got all sorts of IEDs—and what do we need with Improvised Explosive Devices? Us?”
“To booby-trap the perimeter, in case something moves on us,” Clarissa said, her voice far off and her gaze wandering. “Now I better understand the dirt on the first floor and in the yard. It was brick dust and hallowed earth. Floors one and two are buffer areas and where we can eat and sleep by day, but as soon as the sun goes down, this is command central.” Clarissa motioned toward the crates of medical supplies, food, and water rations, and shook her head as she stared at an inflatable raft and orange life jackets. “She thought of every eventuality. I’d also lay odds that every round in here is silver-laced one way or another.”
Bradley nodded and picked up a large gun that had multiple barrels. “She’s even got handheld metal storms.” He tossed one to Winters. “Takes nine millimeter shells, fires sixteen thousand rounds a second, with an electronic firing system—which means it can’t jam and the only moving part is the bullet. Guess if we’re down in Werewolf and Vampire country, along with zombies and whatever else, we gotta give it to her—at least she didn’t send us down here ass out.”
Chapter 10
His body hurt so badly that the mere act of breathing was agony. Each breath that required his diaphragm to lift, and rib muscles to expand and contract, sent stabbing, blinding pain into the offended area. The only reason he’d rolled over onto his side to puke was so that he didn’t choke to death—but he now cursed his own foolishness, because that might have been a legitimate way out. To just fucking die was all he wanted.
Slowly he opened one eyelid by a slit to stare at Sasha. He’d never forgive her for having so little mercy. It would have been so easy; she had dead aim. The silver residue hanging in the air was making his skin crawl like mites were feasting on him. He’d hollered his vocal cords raw. Scratching at the millions of mites infesting his skin would mean he’d have to move an arm, crane fingers, and lift a limb to rip at the itch when every muscle already felt like it had been filleted from his bones.
He heard his grandfather moving about and running water. So many tears had already slipped from the corners of his eyes that they were parched like his throat. He only cracked open one eye again when he heard a huge sloshing sound. Sasha and his grandfather had wet the blanket and were bringing it toward him. He shook his head no, too weak to do more, and then cried out when they lowered the warm heat onto his skin. They were the monsters, not him.
But slowly as he calmed, he realized their intent had worked. The viral itching had soothed. A soft hand caressed his cheek and slid carefully beneath the nape of his neck to slightly incline his head. The press of plastic against his bottom lip made him open his mouth, and he was r
ewarded with cool, room-temperature wetness that he greedily drank.
Water spilled down the sides of his mouth and his neck, and he kept guzzling until the bottle had been drained. Panting, he fell back against the table, feeling his insides begin to cool and settle for the first time since the moon had come up. Somewhere in the distance he heard the rattles again. . . . It was complimented by his grandfather’s soft shuffle and low, resonant chant. He just prayed with all his heart that the old man wouldn’t touch him with anything else that would begin the agony all over again. Then he remembered how Sasha had let him suffer. He opened his eyes and pulled away from her, furious.
“You’ll live, I guess,” she said flatly. “You came through the—”
“You didn’t pull the trigger,” he said through his teeth, paying dearly in degrees of agony for his pride and the slight movement.
“No. I didn’t. You’re right,” she said, no apology in her tone. “Want me to do it now, though?”
He closed his eyes.
She walked away from the table and holstered a gun in her waistband.
He opened an eye and stared at her, not sure if she’d decided to oblige him or not.
His grandfather had stopped chanting and put down his shakers very slowly as Sasha picked up a pump shotgun and checked to see that it was loaded. The way she broke down the barrel, snapped it back in place, and trained it on him told him it was.
“Where are Woods’s and Fisher’s remains?”
“I don’t know,” Hunter said carefully, watching her expression fade from worry to cold fury.
“You don’t remember where you ate them? Then where’s Crow Shadow, since familiars don’t warrant memory?”
“Are you insane?” Incredulous, Hunter tried to sit up.
“The evidence is damning, but not necessarily as it may seem,” Silver Hawk interceded. “I may be his blood, but I am also a clan elder. My knowledge of his soul is not clouded by my love for him.” Silver Hawk looked at the foul mess on the floor where Hunter had upchucked. “He did no abomination, this I know.”
“No disrespect, Silver Hawk . . . and my deepest sympathies for even having to take this position in your sight, but—”
“There are no human pieces in that refuse,” the old man said calmly. “That is all undigested moose from an earlier time, maybe as much as twenty-four hours ago. Use your nose.” He looked at Sasha with an unblinking gaze. “When they cannibalize their own, there are whole parts—they eat so ravenously. The smell of human flesh is also different when it comes back up.”
She pulled back the weapon and walked away, suddenly needing air. “Jesus.” The nape of her neck was damp with perspiration and she briefly lifted her hair up off her shoulders as a nervous habit. There were obviously two beasts out there—one had clearly savaged the trucker and ranger, was probably what had spooked the deer, too. The other one had to be Hunter. Why that only made her feel slightly better, she wasn’t sure.
“I need to know what happened out there,” she said, leaning against the wall on one hand, mentally fatigued. The shotgun was by her side but pointed toward the floor. Sasha rested her head on her arm for a moment before turning to look at Hunter. “I have to know how severe the transformation was . . . and if it’s going to happen again.”
“We all do,” Hunter replied, his voice raw and his tone flat. He pushed himself up with effort and eased himself off the table with a wince.
Two pairs of eyes followed him over to the sink as he turned on the water and adjusted the temperature to as warm as he could stand it, then put his head under the faucet. If Sasha was going to blow him away, he really didn’t care. Maybe she’d be doing him a great service, albeit late in the pain game. Right now he felt filthy and was focused on remedying that, since it seemed he had to live for the next few moments, anyway. To be dirty, matted, and flea-infested in whatever transformation had bested his Shadow-self was a pure violation of the meticulous wolf within. This was not the way of the Shadow Wolf. A dignified end was in order. He’d earned at least that over the years of protecting the clan.
Grabbing the industrial-size, antibacterial soap, he squeezed a huge amount into his hair and began scrubbing, then yanked the sprayer hose out from the sink as far as it would reach and rinsed off in the middle of the floor.
Blood, dirt, sweat, and grime cascaded down and off his hair and body as he continued to take a makeshift shower, furiously lathering every inch of himself. Thick globs of brownish-gray soap splashed onto the floor and then raced toward the concave drain at the center of the room. He continued the process until the suds were pristine and the water clear; he didn’t even want to glance in the direction of the butcher block table. It looked like someone had performed an autopsy on it. Maybe they had.
Between slamming open cabinets and yanking open drawers, he found enough towels to reasonably dry himself, and then found the supplies stash to get dressed. Baking soda offered a toothpaste alternative to chase the horrible taste out of his mouth. The entire process had taken less than five minutes, but it was time he’d needed to think, to remember, to piece back together his own sequence of events while Sasha and his grandfather remained mercifully silent.
“I got back here in Shadow Wolf form,” Hunter finally said, firmly planting his foot against the wall to tie a hiking boot. He looked up from the task and held Sasha’s gaze. “The moon had risen and so had I—you were in heat and whatever else was in my system was not to be denied. I needed air.” A tremor of satisfaction threaded through him when she looked away, although he wasn’t sure why.
“When I got here, though, something was wrong.” Hunter put his other foot against the wall and tightly tied his boot laces. “Crow Shadow’s vehicle was just as you’d found it—”
“I smelled you all over it, Hunter.”
He put his foot down hard on the floor and stared at her. “I’m sure you did. I went right to it, scented it out to try to figure out what happened. All his weapons were gone. His blood was everywhere like there’d either been a struggle or a slaughter. I don’t know which it was.”
“Then what happened, son?” Silver Hawk asked, his eyes unreadable and his voice the balm of wisdom in the room.
“I ran the perimeter searching for a Werewolf signature, but got nothing . . . it was really bizarre. The lodge hadn’t been entered, that much I could tell on the first round. So, I went in and began collecting ammo.” Hunter tipped his chin in the direction of the weapons pile. “But then I heard a huge crash, and I knew what it was before I saw it.” He looked away toward the window, shame singeing him so deeply that his face felt warm. “I couldn’t control my shape-shift. It was male, had invaded my space, my mate was en route—it was war.”
Sasha raked her fingers through her lush thicket of velvety hair and hearing her do that made him glance at her.
“The kitchen has two doors—one way in, one way out, so the wait staff doesn’t bump into each other. I came out on the far side,” Hunter added, again using a curt nod and the direction of his chin to indicate which door. “The demon had crashed in through the dining room deck . . . but it was bigger than I’d expected.” He looked away again, not even sure how to articulate the level of insanity that had coursed through him at that moment. “I should have shot the damned thing, but was already fully committed to my wolf. The fight took us through the lobby and then the front door.”
What he didn’t say was that the cinder-block punch the beast had lobbed sent him in a sliding sprawl into the lobby, where it had been everything he could do to avoid the massive jaws and claws that came at him—that’s how things had gotten so torn up in there. It was sheer momentum that had kept the beast hurtling forward and through the front doors as it lunged at him and he’d ducked. This hadn’t been like a typical barroom brawl of evenly matched opponents. No. This was more like one entity trying to avoid being massacred while the other uprooted tables and chairs and anything the other had used as a shield. He wasn’t ready to admit that pa
rt to Sasha, much less his grandfather.
“How many times did it bite you?” his grandfather asked, his voice tight and his expression haunted with clearly visible concern.
“None,” Hunter muttered. “He just damned near broke my jaw.”
“When he punched you, did he break the skin?” Sasha’s intense gaze captured his.
“Yeah.” Hunter finally looked away toward the moon beyond the windows. She had no idea how much he hated admitting that the demon had split his lip clean open with a bloody fist, and in the course of trying to stay alive by avoiding another massive blow, he’d licked away his own blood.
“Your system was already compromised from birth. Plus, given the circumstances you were already battling, it’s no wonder that introducing new infection into your bloodstream completely impacted your immune system.” Sasha’s body hit the wall with a weary thud as she ruffled her hair up off her neck again. Then she looked at his grandfather and spoke to Silver Hawk as though he wasn’t in the room. “But Hunter was struggling with this since last night. That’s what worries me. He’d been going through symptomatic spikes before he got sucker-punched.”
He hated being clinically spoken of in the third person and he growled his displeasure. Both Sasha and Silver Hawk jerked their attention toward him.
“I’m sorry, but it’s true. Your grandfather needs to know the full scope of what we’re dealing with here. If Silver Hawk hadn’t shot you with antitoxin, who knows what would have happened.”
“The flux will pass,” Hunter muttered in a surly tone. “It has before, will this time—”
“No,” Silver Hawk said very carefully. “This time even the demons are not themselves.”
Both Sasha and Hunter stared at the elderly warrior.
“I felt the demon-infected Werewolves on the move, their presence. I knew one was hunting in our territories. I saw what it did to the grizzly and the other bears; their kills were very strange. Then I came upon a carcass of one of their own that had not just been destroyed in battle, but the carcass was eaten. No living scavenger would dare approach the half-human, half-wolf form, not even one that had been left dead for days in the snow.”