Bite Back 05 - Angel Stakes

by Mark Henwick

  Yelena backpedaled past me, clutching Dante behind her and firing her P90. Alex was covering both of them with his body as he walked backwards and fired down the hall.

  No more smoke grenades. Not enough ammunition. No cover. The Altau teams on the wrong side of the big rolling doors. No werewolves.

  Shit.

  Captives were screaming. Some were so terrified they stood up and tried to run, despite being shackled; others cowered as far back as they could.

  The bidders’ bodyguards were already using the cover the captives provided, and someone would start thinking about hostages soon.

  My plan had been to overwhelm the guards quickly. That had failed.

  Bad, bad, bad. Fix it. Without the Pasadena wolves. How?

  Fortunately, someone on the Altau teams had been researching the Amber Farrell approved way of entering a hostile location—a truck smashed through the steel doors and ran into the back of one of the groups firing at us.

  Black-suited Altau swarmed through after it.

  Still not enough. It was too difficult for us to get clear shots. Too many captives. Too many of the enemy in amongst them.

  Screams were cut off. Casualties in the captives.

  Shit.

  “Grab some of the children as shields,” a voice shouted at the end. I zeroed in on one of the bodyguards—tall man, powerfully built, buzz cut. Buzz One. I could see the others forming around him.

  “Keys?” someone else yelled.

  The group who’d been dragging Dante to the auction block had to have them to release her shackles.

  A couple of guards ran crouched toward where their bodies lay.

  Then a horse kicked me in the stomach and I was thrown backwards.

  Alex and Yelena were suddenly in front of me. Alex knelt down beside me.

  Thank you, Stephanie Kwolek, inventor of Kevlar and savior of my life, again.

  Think, Farrell! Do something! Work to our strengths.

  Lying there on the ground, looking up, I got an inspiration. I used my P90 to spray the ceiling lights with bullets.

  Alex joined in. Yelena took out the arc lights on the auction block.

  It was suddenly dark in the hall, and in the darkness, the Altau could see better than humans.

  It was still going to get bloody. The body count was going to rise and many of them would probably be the captives. Panicked bodyguards were shooting everywhere, a thunder of bullets punching through the metal frame of the building.

  Keith down!

  Julie helping him.

  Dante? Shit! Yelena had put her down and she was running the wrong way. Back into the middle of the hall.

  Everything going wrong.

  And then, rising out of the frenzy and confusion, like a fiery trumpet blazing through the night, a Call.

  Hunt! Kill!

  Alex beat me to call it on the commset. “Werewolves coming in. Altau teams, cease fire. Cease fire.”

  There was a screech of tearing metal as skylights were ripped from their bases in the roof, and then it was raining Pasadena Were.

  They’d kept to my instructions and hadn’t changed to wolf.

  In the darkness, it was like crows floating down from the open skylights. Crows that bounced up and flowed over the bodyguards, who thought they’d fallen into a nightmare. There were screams as men were attacked by enemies they couldn’t even see.

  I took back every unkind thought I’d directed at the Pasadena after meeting their alpha. He might still be a misogynist jerk, but he was a jerk who hadn’t hesitated to send his pack in on the right side when it came down to it.

  Buzz One was running blindly down the middle of the hall, a group scrambling to follow him.

  Smart man. The best way out was where the least enemies were, even if you couldn’t see the way clearly.

  However, his smart move was bringing them right to me.

  I met them in the middle, as they tripped and jostled to get around the auction block. Pasadena Were caught up with the ones at the back and the panic spread like flame on a gasoline spill.

  Buzz One ran into my side kick. I put everything into it, knowing his weight would absorb the momentum and leave me balanced for the next blow.

  He’d crouched lower at the last moment, some sense telling him something was coming at him. As a result, he got the full power of the kick on his breastbone and ribs. I could feel them shatter.

  He fell, and I punched the next one in the face.

  Alex roared past on my right, grabbing one bodyguard and using him like a battering ram to hit the others.

  On my left, Yelena punched two in the throat and they fell to the floor, choking.

  The fight ended quickly.

  “Drop your weapons, lie on the floor and you won’t be harmed,” I shouted hoarsely. “Shoot and you will be killed. Down! Get down now! Now! On the floor.”

  They obeyed. Our speed and the loss of light shattered any morale they had as a group of bodyguards who were working for money and didn’t even know each other. They knew they were beaten. They lay down in the dark, blind, shivering in shock, half expecting the nightmare would rip into them anyway, but unable to do anything else.

  As for the Were, they understood the words too, but restraint was a different matter for the younger ones. Pack lieutenants had to snarl and pull them back.

  Discipline held, just. No one was shooting. And only Altau and Pasadena were standing.

  Another truck nosed forward and shone its headlights through the ruined doors into the chaos of the hall.

  I took a shaky breath and looked around.

  Julie and Keith were wrapping his leg with cloth torn from his pants. Keith seemed to be moving okay. Julie glanced up, saw me looking and gave me a thumbs-up.

  Yelena stalked down the middle of the hall, P90 still sweeping over the surviving bodyguards lying on the floor.

  “Yelena. Dante? Tamanny?” I called after her.

  Yelena stopped and indicated with a nod of her head to one side, her eyes still searching for threats. She ignored the blood that dripped down her arm.

  I rushed over to where she’d directed me.

  Dante had known where Tamanny was. She’d run back inside, through the bullets, and thrown herself over the girl, protecting her with her body. She’d taken one of those bullets for her efforts. She was bleeding too, but she was lucky—it had barely grazed her shoulder.

  “Idiot,” I muttered in her ear as I knelt down beside them and wrapped my arms around them both.

  “I’m sorry, Mistress.”

  I huffed, tasting the bitter flavors of the healing bio-agents in my mouth.

  “Never mind that. This’ll help,” I said, and licked her wound, dosing her with the aniatropics and analgesics. Air hissed between her teeth.

  Tamanny had her eyes squeezed shut, tears leaking from them. She was trembling.

  “Told you she’d come. Told you,” Dante whispered to Tamanny. “You’re okay now. You’re safe.”

  I took off my Kevlar jacket and wrapped it around the pair of them.

  “You’re both safe. I’m going to be busy. Just stay down,” I said. “We’ll get the shackles off Tamanny and get you…away as soon as we can.”

  Away. Would I have to give Tamanny back? Her mother was dead, not that I’d have let that bitch get her daughter back. Did Tamanny have other family?

  No. Mine.

  My Athanate had made another adoption, absolute and unwavering. How that might play out against the Californian legal system, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t care at the moment.

  Yelena didn’t look pleased that I’d taken off the Kevlar jacket, but she followed suit, wrapping up another couple of youngsters.

  When she’d done that, I pushed her sleeve back and licked the wound on her forearm to stop the bleeding. To hell with what the bodyguards thought of it, if they were watching.

  It wasn’t a bad wound. My House had come through almost untouched.

  Tamanny and Dante were saf
e.

  But Forsythe had run.

  I needed to find him so much my legs started to shake.

  Deep breaths. Slow. Slow.

  Concentrate.

  “Team leaders to me, please. Sky One team, keep guard. Sky Two team, secure the weapons and find the keys for these shackles,” I called. “And some clothing if you can.”

  Altau security split up and got to their tasks, not as slick as Ops 4-10, but they’d do fine.

  The two team leaders appeared in front of me, and a Pasadena wolf joined them—the lieutenant I’d met at the concert.

  “Casualties?” I asked.

  “One dead, sixteen wounded, eight seriously, including three hostages,” Sky One said. He knew which casualties I meant, too. Ours. The casualties among bidders and their bodyguards I could find out later. “Already in hand, Gunny,” he finished.

  Once a marine…

  If it hadn’t been for the death, I would have smiled. We’d been lucky. That and Athanate emergency life support, no doubt.

  I turned to the Were. “Pasadena?”

  He smiled. “Just a lieutenant, Ms. Farrell. We got one ass broke his leg. Nothing much else.”

  I snorted.

  “Thank you for coming,” I said. “You really made the difference, saved a lot of innocent lives.”

  Especially considering I broke your alpha’s shoulder.

  “New times. Y’know, part of all us paranormals sticking together.” He seemed almost embarrassed. “This kinda thing needs doing anyway. And, well, you helped Paige change. Gotta lot more of that.”

  Ah. The young halfy from Denver.

  “Helping halfies doesn’t come with a price tag,” I said. “You need to call Denver and arrange with them for your other halfies to turn up at the next ritual. They’re handling all the admin.”

  He nodded, ducked his head. “Thanks, Ms. Farrell. Anyway, we’re glad we could help. We couldn’t get the whole pack here, but we got a couple more guys in the parking lot and around the front of the building, some off searching the ranch house an’ other buildings. Probably got a few late arrivals coming up the road if you need anything more.”

  They’d mobilized a lot of the pack in a short time. That was probably why we hadn’t been able to get through.

  “There was one group of men who got spooked and ran early,” I said. “Did you see them as you came in?”

  Please. Tell me you have Forsythe.

  “Oh, yeah. There was an SUV trying to come out as we came in. When we blocked it, five or six guys took off and ran up that way.” He waved in the general direction of the San Gabriel range north of the ranch.

  My wolf thrashed.

  On foot. Prey. Chase.

  “Should we chase, Gunny?” Sky One asked.

  “No. That one’s mine,” I said. It came out as a growl.

  I felt a slow burning in my gut. I had him. I didn’t care how good his bodyguards were. They were running up into the San Gabriel in the middle of the night. They probably didn’t even have a flashlight. I’d hunt them down like rabbits.

  “Take a couple of SUVs, send teams to make sure they don’t double back down to the road,” I said to Sky Two.

  She needed something to do. She was pale with anger, so angry she could barely look at the bidders and their bodyguards lying on the floor.

  She spun on her heel and walked out, calling some of her team to her side as she went.

  Almost all the bodyguards had been wounded: some by gunfire, the rest beaten by Were. The bidders had done better, mainly because they had gotten down on the floor early and stayed there.

  Any of them who needed treatment were going to have to wait.

  “Once you’ve freed the prisoners, shackle these men, every single one of them, wounded or not,” I said. “Stack their dead in the corner.”

  “We’re handing this over to the police?” Sky One asked. I’d told them that while I’d briefed them at the studios, but his tone left me in no doubt what he wanted to do.

  “Yeah.” I didn’t want to. But we needed to keep Ingram onside. I had to hope he’d overlook a few dead bodyguards for the sake of being able to jail the bidders and break up this network.

  Another Were came in and whispered something to the Pasadena lieutenant.

  “Ahh…we found equipment in the building next door,” he said, and peered up at the roof. “There are cameras hidden up there somewhere. This whole thing was recorded.”

  Ingram would want that recording.

  I sent a couple of Altau security to strip it down and take the recording.

  By that time, the prisoners were freed, the bodyguards were separated out and shackled. Sky Two’s team started to pull bidders to their feet and pat them down for weapons.

  Americans. Mexicans. Saudi princelings. Three guys who had to be Italian Mafiosi. Central African men with hard, scarred faces and five-thousand-dollar suits. A couple of billionaire playboys from Brunei or Indonesia whose faces seemed familiar, as if I’d seen them in the news. Russian arms traders. Gulf oil magnates.

  I stared them down until Sky Two came back in. I could feel the fury coming off her.

  “Kill them all,” she hissed. Sending her out hadn’t calmed her down.

  She brought up her hand, holding something.

  “On the ground outside,” she said.

  A tiny bear. Grubby. Lopsided smile. He’d lost most of his fur, and one ear. A child’s toy. Maybe their last possession, snatched out of their hands and thrown away as they were herded in here.

  I took a deep breath and took my finger back off the trigger. “Try and find his owner.”

  I watched as she walked to where the girls and boys were huddling.

  One of them pointed wordlessly.

  A young boy, no more than eight. Curled up and shivering.

  Sky Two knelt down and held out the bear.

  He reached out one disbelieving hand. Touched. Now the tears came.

  Sky Two gathered him up into her arms and rocked him.

  One of the Saudis tried to jerk away while he was being shackled.

  “I demand access to my embassy,” he yelled at me. “I am a diplomat. You cannot arrest me.”

  “If he speaks again,” I said to the team watching, “shoot him.”

  Sky One tapped me on the shoulder. “Urgent from Tarez. Clear here and everyone back to the studios immediately with prisoners and the captives. He requested the Pasadena Were as well.”

  No!

  “Everyone?” I managed to say.

  “Except you and your House. He says good hunting.”

  Chapter 68

  The path was dry and dusty under our feet.

  They had a forty-minute head start on us. The night felt vast, and between the San Gabriel Mountains and Angeles National Forest they had over half of a million acres to hide in.

  There were hiking trails and a couple of highways cut through the mountains.

  From what I’d seen, Forsythe had chosen some capable men: maybe one of them knew the area, or, more likely, they had GPS-enabled smartphones.

  They’d be thinking that they’d only need three or four hours to get to one of the highways, even with Forsythe slowing them down.

  They’d be sure from the way we’d attacked the auction that we weren’t police, so all they needed to do was get on that highway and flag down a car. No roadblocks to worry about.

  They might have assumed they were safe.

  In fact, every minute they were getting less safe.

  Alex and I were in front, Yelena trailing a short distance behind. Athanate senses are good, but they’re nothing compared to werewolf.

  Julie and Keith had returned to Bembridge Studios with everyone else, apart from Victor. He was back at the ranch, waiting for a call, wondering how this crazy bitch was so certain she could track men in the night.

  And probably how she knew guys who could jump down twenty-five feet from skylights, bounce up and take out armed men in the dark.

/>   He’d have to keep wondering for the moment.

  Forsythe’s party numbered six. It’d taken them about fifteen minutes to find a hiking trail. They’d made better speed after that. One of them, not Forsythe, was bleeding slightly. There was a lot of adrenaline in their scent to start with, but it had faded. They weren’t panicked. They were professionals.

  They hadn’t been prepared for this, but the pace they kept up meant they weren’t going to get cold. Most of them had shoes that they could easily run in. They had no food or water, but I’d done hundreds of night runs in Ops 4-10 without anything to eat or drink.

  I knew what was going through their heads.

  They’d be wondering if they’d made a good choice of employer. They’d be thinking about getting clear, finding a safe place with a meal and shower and a bed. And then whether they wanted to stay employed by a man who clearly had powerful enemies.

  Forsythe would know that. I’d lay good odds he was increasing their bonuses.

  Just get me to Palmdale, he’d say.

  It was cold, and there was no moon, no stars. We made little sound other than our panting and the thud of our feet on the trail. I didn’t care how good Forsythe’s group were, they were only as fast as their slowest runner, the man who was paying their salaries, and none of them were any match for the pace we could keep up.

  Even if I was still human in body, I’d let my wolf out as I promised. She seemed to fill my head and she was fixed with lethal intensity on the scent of Forsythe fleeing ahead. A scent that was stronger with every step.

  Hunt. Kill.

  My wolf’s Call, echoed by Alex.

  I was getting flashbacks of the last time I’d hunted at night. Carson Park. I’d hunted Amaral down and killed him.

  Life simplifies down to that one thing—killing.

  Rogue. Rogue.

  No.

  I hadn’t killed indiscriminately. I had a reason to go after Amaral. I’d attacked him for that reason. That wasn’t the behavior of a rogue. Rogues didn’t reason.

  I had gone rogue after I’d caught him. And I’d come back. Alex and Jen had brought me back, and Diana had cured me.

  Thinking of her made the pain of my losses start all over again.

  Fragments of what was going through my mind must have leaked to Alex. He ran closer to me, and the sense of him was comforting.