Prince of Blood and Thunder_An Urban Fantasy Novel
Page 9
A wiry, apish arm covered in coarse black hair that ended in a pair of wicked-looking black claws burst through the metal. It retracted, leaving blood glistening on the metal as it wrapped its claws around the ceiling and pulled. The shriek of steel nearly shattered my eardrums as the ceiling rolled back like the top on a sardine can.
As it opened to reveal a snarling werewolf, Gordon flung one hand outward. A burst of web-fluid leapt from his palm and slammed into the shifter’s face. It cried out in shock, reaching up to tear the sticky substance away.
“We don’t have time for that,” Gordon said, glancing at my lightsaber. He was right. I hadn’t gotten anywhere near cutting us a way out, and that was assuming we weren’t next to blank wall between the floors and could avoid the molten edges.
I spun as the creature dropped in with us. It was so large, its bulk took up nearly half the space, and as I buried the lightsaber in its side, it batted me across the face with the back of one huge hand. My fingers slipped from the hilt of the saber as I crashed into the metal wall.
My vision splintered into hazy fragments as I slid down the wall in a heap. As I tried to shake my vision back into place, the creature snorted at me, lifted one huge foot, and crushed the hilt of my lightsaber into plastic shards.
“No!” I cried, reaching out for the shattered toy hilt like I could call it back with the force.
“Not so tough without your toys,” the werewolf said in that guttural rasp they all had right before Gordon decked him in the jaw with his infinity-glove clad fist.
Light burst from the red gemstone as its head snapped backward and it staggered the six inches into the molten metal doors. A cry of agony erupted from its lips as Gordon stepped closer, hammering its chest with blows in an effort to keep it pinned to the molten metal. The smell was almost enough to make the contents of my stomach want to take the express elevator up my throat, but I clamped my lips shut and threw my kill switch. Instantly, my pain, fear, and revulsion vanished.
I calmly grabbed my phaser and pointed it at the creature.
“Move,” I told Gordon, flipping the phaser to disintegrate. There must have been something in the cold emptiness of my voice because Gordon dropped to his belly a split second before I pulled the trigger. The disintegration beam hit the werewolf in the center of his chest, and I felt the magic in my weapon tear him into atoms.
A rush of fatigue swept over me as I collapsed onto my knees breathing hard. Using disintegrate was always hard on my spiritual muscles, and this time was no exception. My vision was too spotty and my hands too shaky for me to do much more than clip my phaser to my belt. Even that took a couple tries.
“Nice move, sis, but we’ve got to go,” Gordon said as I crawled toward the shattered remains of my lightsaber and tried to scoop them up.
“Go where?” I asked, looking up at him to see him offering me his hand. I took in another breath. It seemed to help, so I took another.
“Up,” he said, throwing open his leather jacket to reveal a yellow utility belt. Then he pulled out what looked suspiciously like a bat-grappling hook. That was also when I realized his glasses disguise had turned back to normal. Had using the infinity glove’s power drained that much energy from him that quickly?
“Up?” I replied, hoping he wasn’t planning on doing what I thought he was when he couldn’t even maintain a simple illusion.
“Up,” he affirmed with a look that made me want to flee in the opposite direction. Before I could rightly protest, he knelt beside me, threw a strap around my waist and cinched it to a strap on his own waist before wrapping an arm around me.
“Wait,” I said as he fired the grappling gun up into the shaft. The explosion of sound was deafening in my ears.
“For what?” he asked, snapping the gun to a mount that had been hidden beneath his jacket. “It’s like a Band-Aid. Better to just do it.” Then we didn’t move. Gordon began to sweat, and I felt him slump against me. I watched as the grappling hook he held turned back to plastic. Well, screw that.
“Let me do it, you big oaf,” I said, wrapping my hand around his and feeding him my power. The plastic turned to metal in our hand and then we were flying upward through the shaft with so much force it actually hurt my brain. I wasn’t sure how we managed to miss all the cables and the like, but thankfully we stopped in front of a pair of closed doors a moment later.
“Can you open the door?” Gordon whispered, strain evident in his voice as we hung there in midair. It was the scariest thing that’d happened to me in a while. Darkness swam below me, and I knew, just knew, if I fell, I’d be dead.
“How?” I asked, clinging to him for dear life, even though the harness holding us together felt fairly secure. Still, I hadn’t lived this long by trusting in Batman. Besides, the doors were a good two feet away. How did he expect me to reach them? Cosmic radiation? Then an idea struck me. “I’m going to borrow this.”
I reached out and grabbed his web-shooter and pointed his hand at the doors. Then I focused my power, bringing the gadget to life and shot a rope of sticky webbing across the shaft. It truck with a thwip and snapped taught.
A smirk crossed my lips as I released his arm and held onto the webbing. I glanced at my bigger younger brother. “I’m going to pull us closer. Once I do, you need to grab onto the doors.” I winked at him. “You can do it.”
“How do I grab onto them?” Gordon asked, and as he said the words, I jerked us closer to the elevator doors on the far side of the shaft. It was harder than I expected and my arms corded with effort. Overhead, the metal creaked and sang, letting me know it wasn’t all too fond of our temporary swing set.
“You’re an animator. Animate something sticky,” I growled as he reached out toward the doors. His fingernails scrabbled across the surface like a dog on linoleum before our pendulum like movement swung us away.
“It doesn’t work like that. I have to have something to animate. You know that,” he snapped, glaring at me. “It isn’t like I can turn myself into a gecko.”
His anger intrigued me, since he shouldn’t have felt it with his switch in the off position. Was he coming back to me? I wasn’t sure, but either way, I didn’t have time to dwell on it. Instead, I sighed loudly, trying to exasperate him further. Hey, what are big sisters for?
“You’re completely worthless,” I replied, reaching into my pocket and pulling out a small dark circle. I wrung it out as I called upon my power. As a green sheen of emerald energy wrapped around the circle, it expanded to a man-sized hole which I flung at the doors.
Instantly, I could see through the doors like we were in a Looney Toons cartoon, and as I pulled us closer, Gordon grabbed onto the edge of the hole and held us in place.
“A portable hole? Nice!” Gordon said, smirking at me as he pulled us into the corridor beyond the elevator and released the grappling hook. “Why didn’t you use it earlier?”
“I was saving it for a special occasion,” I said as he unclipped us. I stared forlornly at the hole. “It’s sort of a onetime use item.”
“Well, I’m glad you had it,” he said, pulling a long thin knife from the small on his back. I hadn’t known it was there, but now that I was looking at him, I realized he must have had a back sheath of some sort. Man, was that cool. I could totally have gone all Anita Blake and rocked a back sheath.
“Well, if you’d told me I’d have to Batman my way up an elevator shaft before we came in here, I might have told you about it,” I replied, crossing my arms over my chest.
“If I’d known, I’d have brought my own hole,” he said, shrugging at me by way of explanation, which was balls. I was tired of him doing crazy shit without thinking about the consequences. Shutting off his humanity to annihilate the werewolves was one thing, but that didn’t mean he’d turned off his common sense.
“Haven’t you heard the phrase, ‘always expect the unexpected?’ or was that one lost on you in between Lord of the Rings marathons?” I asked, but instead of responding, he took
a step forward and raised his hand to silence me.
Gordon cocked his head toward the door to the stairs right before it burst open to reveal a pair of machine gun-toting werewolves.
They were dressed in what looked like Kevlar body armor, which made them all the more imposing. The two of them didn’t even hesitate as they opened fire on us. Gordon was ready though, and with a wave of his infinity gauntlet, caused the bullets to stop midair like he was fucking Neo. Then he sent them back into the werewolves.
Those that didn’t bounce off the body armor, did superficial damage that healed before Gordon even reached them. I wasn’t sure how much power he’d used to manage that little trick, but I could tell it’d taken a toll on him. His skin was clammy and noticeably paler, and we hadn’t even reached the King yet.
Gordon’s silver knife lashed out, splitting the Kevlar, but missing the left werewolf as it leapt backward, avoiding the deadly metal while his partner moved past the dueling pair and headed for me.
The magazine slid from the werewolf’s oversized M16 as he brought a new one up and slammed it home. The gun was already coming up as I hurled myself bodily at him. It was a poor plan, and not just because hitting him in the gut with my shoulder was like trying to body check Marty McSorely. (Yeah, that’s a hockey reference.)
“Stupid girl,” he said and drove his elbow into my shoulder blades. The blow dropped me to the floor, and as I landed, I reached into my pocket and drew my secret weapon. I rolled onto my back as his huge index finger started to depress the trigger on his machinegun.
Then I slid my secret weapon onto my finger and concentrated with everything I had. Immediately, power flowed into the circular golden band, and I felt the ever present gaze of ultimate evil watching me with its solitary, unblinking eye.
A shadowy version of the room swam into focus as I rolled easily out of the way before the werewolf could figure out how I’d vanished. Then I got to my feet, pulled my own silver knife, and called upon my power. The ring seemed to warp it, turning the dagger in my hand into a veritable fount of silver flame.
I drove my flaming dagger deep into the side of the werewolf’s neck and tore it free. Blood and silver fire spurted through the air as I stepped past the werewolf, content to let him bleed out through his fingers. No, not just content. Overjoyed by the idea of his suffering death. Morbid satisfaction settled across my brain at the thought of his life leaking out across the cheap tile.
Power surged through me as I turned and saw Gordon and the other werewolf grappling inside the stairwell because the door had been reduced to splinters. Gordon bled from a cut on his lip, and the dark splotch around his right eye let me know he’d be in for a hell of a bruise, but he was otherwise fine which was damned impressive in its own right since he was fist fighting a fucking werewolf.
The werewolf turned its gaze upon its fallen friend as I stepped up next to him, completely invisible to his senses and drove my dagger deep into the underside of his chin. His cry of pain came out in a wet gurgling scream as Gordon came forward with a wicked leaping punch that tore the creature from my flaming dagger and sent him cartwheeling over the railing in the stairwell.
I didn’t wait to see what happened to him as I forced myself to pull the golden ring from my finger and slipped it back into my pocket. The moment it was off my finger, my dagger returned to normal, and the dark malevolent need to kill, maim, and destroy slid off me in such a way that I shivered. I always hated how the ring made me feel when I wore it, but nothing was worse than taking it off. While I’d never done drugs, I always imagined it was like a junkie giving up a fix. The sudden lack of power made me want to shove it back on my finger and crush my enemies before me until I heard the lamentations of their women.
“Did you seriously use the One Ring?” Gordon asked, a strange look of fear on his face as he studied me. “Because we both made a promise not to use that one.”
I took a deep breath, trying to ignore how it felt to have Sauron gazing down my back. I always got the feeling that if I stayed in that particular piece of fiction too long, he might actually reach out and claim me for his own. Besides, the extra power was too tempting. So tempting, I could see why Gollum would throw himself into a volcano to retrieve his precious, which was probably why Gordon looked so betrayed.
“Firstly, you don’t get to tell me what to do since you are basically a terrorist.” I glared at him. “You can say what you want, but you killed a lot of innocent people with your ritual.”
“And secondly?” he asked, far too calmly for me not to want to hit him.
“And secondly, I’m a grown ass woman who just saved your skin, so can it.” As I glared at him, he had the decency to sigh and look embarrassed.
“Fair enough,” Gordon said, eyeing me appraisingly before shaking it off. “Let’s go before the rest of the guards get here.” He tried to smile, failed, and shook his head once more. “And Annie, I did what I did because of what the werewolves did to me personally. I know it’s overkill on one level, but when I turn my switch on to feel everything, I hate them so much I can’t stand it. You think I turned my switch off because I couldn’t deal with what I’d done, but after what they did to you, me, and Pauline, I had to take a stand. I had to show them they couldn’t just kill us and not fear retribution.” He let a breath out through his teeth and made eye contact with me. “I turned it off, so I wouldn’t kill every last stinking wolf on the planet. The only reason I didn’t was because I turned off my switch and thought about what that might mean for the world.”
“Yeah, well, now you’ve started a war that’s going to kill a whole lot of people,” I said, wishing I could ignore what he said. If he was that angry at the wolves, I didn’t want him to turn it back on and take a second shot at them. For one, he might succeed, and while that was horrible in and of itself, he was right. Something way worse than the werewolves might take their place, and while I wasn’t sure what that might be, I really didn’t want to find out.
12
As we stepped around the corner on our way to the royal suite in the swanky part of the hospital’s top floor, I sort of expected to see a bunch of werewolf shock troops behind sandbags and maybe one of those big guns the rebels used in Empire Strikes Back to defend Hoth from the AT-ATs.
Instead, I saw Alabaster, the werewolf King of Air and Fire, chewing on a toothpick as he leaned casually against the door to the room at the far end of the hallway. His gaze met mine, but he gave no other indication to having noticed our presence as we moved closer.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, unable to stop myself from voicing the question. Alabaster was the de facto ruler of the werewolves right now and had a vested interest in keeping the King of Wolves down. Was he here to kill him?
“I am king.” Alabaster looked at me with hooded eyes, and as he did, Gordon tensed next to me. The werewolf shrugged, pulling the toothpick from his mouth and examining it for a moment before wiping it casually on his jeans. Then he stuck it behind his ear.
“How is that an answer?” I asked, moving forward despite myself. I didn’t fear him even though I probably should have. Instead, the sight of him filled me with revulsion, and not because he was albino. No, it was because he was ten kinds of a jackass and had ordered the attack on Atlantis. Who knew how many lives that little debacle had claimed?
“You do not understand, so let me put it in a way your millennial brain will get.” Alabaster flicked his wrist, and all the air exited the room. It happened so abruptly, it actually took me a second to realize I couldn’t breathe. My hands went instinctively to my throat as Gordon lunged forward, hurling his knife at the werewolf.
The wind howled in that way that said on a cold dark night you could follow it all the way down to Hell itself. The knife fell lifelessly to the ground. As the clatter filled my ears, and my vision started to darken around the edges, Alabaster’s footsteps clacked on the cheap tile as he moved across the hallway to meet us, a bemused stagger to each step.
The air whipped around us like a living thing and that same dark wind howled. The windows in the hallway shattered in a cyclone of force that jerked me off my feet and slammed me into the wall beneath them.
Gordon was less lucky. His body flew through the shattered windows and careened off into the distance, and thanks to the lack of breathable air, he couldn’t even yell as he plummeted out of view.
I wanted to scream, to lunge out for him as he fell, but I couldn’t without breath. Still, as Alabaster smirked at me, I had to hope he was still alive. After all, this wasn’t even the first time today he’d taken an unexpected plunge out a window.
Alabaster pressed the toe of his Nike against my chest, and pushed. I fell, flopping onto my back as my vision splintered around the edges. I tried to breathe, but I just couldn’t. The blood pounded in my ears as I shut my eyes and racked my feeble, oxygen-deprived brain for something, anything that would help me.
“To be king is to be, as you kids say, Paris Hilton.” Alabaster knelt down next to me and smiled so broadly his white teeth were all I could see. They loomed in front of me like a malevolent Cheshire cat grin. “That is to say, I do what I want.”
He reached out, grabbing me by my hair and jerking me toward his face. It hurt, but I couldn’t breathe so it was hard to care. “Still, it wouldn’t be all supervillainy of me if I didn’t explain why I’m here waiting for you, Annie. And I want you to know. Very much so.” He stood and pulled me to my feet like I weighed less than nothing. “And since you can’t breathe, well, I’ll try to make this quick. If you struggle, just know I find it incredibly satisfying to kill people with my bare hands.” His grin was back again. It made me hate him more.