by Jamie Davis
“Believe me, I am.” Clark glanced at his watch and slid his chair back from the table. “It’s time to leave. We want to be down there just after midnight. Hopefully, any guards will be good and bored by then.”
Quinn glanced at the clock on the wall in the corner. Her eyebrows shot up. “Wow, I didn’t realize it was so late.”
“Time flies when you’re having fun.”
Quinn sheathed her knife and then handed the stone back to Clark.
He shook his head. “No, you keep it. Use it to work at your blade when you have the time. I think it will help you bond with your hunter side.”
“Huntress,” Quinn corrected.
“Uh, yeah, that’s what I meant.”
Quinn knew he wasn’t buying into her whole huntress meme, but it felt right to her, so she was going to keep using it. She attached the sheathed Bowie knife to the shoulder holster rig she’d been using and slipped her arms through the straps. She retrieved her black leather jacket and pulled it on, concealing the knife beneath it.
Clark had returned his sword to its hidden sheath beneath his knee-length coat, then turned to Quinn. “Ready?”
She nodded, and the two of them left the farmhouse to head downtown.
Chapter Nine
Clark left his car several blocks from the target building, pulling into a garage and parking on the second floor.
When Quinn checked her phone against the address, she asked, “Why aren’t we getting closer? Are you afraid they might see us coming? This beat-up old car doesn’t exactly scream, ‘Hunters are coming,’ you know.”
“This location offers us quick access to several quick ways out of the city if we’re followed on the way back.”
“Yeah, but we’re like two or three blocks away. That’s a long way to run if they’re chasing us.”
“Don’t worry, we’re hunters. We do the chasing.”
Quinn hoped Clark’s bravado wasn’t misplaced. She wasn’t afraid of anything catching her. She knew how fast she could go, especially with her ability to boost things. She wondered how Clark would do with his perpetual limp. He did fine during training, ignoring whatever pained him during their bouts, but she’d never seen him run anywhere.
“Quinn, keep yourself focused. Let’s get moving.”
She realized she still sat in the car, and Clark stood by the passenger door waiting for her. “Sorry, just going over a mental checklist of what we might need if we have to get out of here quickly.”
Clark nodded. “It’s good to have contingency plans, but you can’t let yourself get distracted so badly that you don’t pay attention to what’s around you.”
“Got it. Keep my mind in the game. I’m good.”
“Great. Let’s go.”
Clark headed to the stairs that led to the street level. Before following him, Quinn noted they were on the second level and marked the car’s location.
On the street, they headed north one block and then turned left and started west. The building was one of many similar tall concrete-and-glass office buildings in this part of the city.
As they drew closer to the target, Quinn asked, “Do you think we should mask our presence or something? We’ve got that hide-in-the-shadows thing we can do.”
“No, first we’ll just walk on by like we’re on our way home after a late drink at a nearby bar. I want to see what they have in place in the way of security first, and the front of the building is too well-lit to make our shadow-hiding abilities fool-proof. Once I’ve got a good idea what we’re up against, we’ll check around back where it’s darker and we can hide.”
“Won’t they see us if we walk by in plain sight?”
“Of course, but that’s the point. Who’d suspect us as anything but a couple of late-night pedestrians coming home from a club?”
“No one, I guess.” Quinn understood the logic of it, but her stomach churned with worry as they passed the address Taylor had given them. Quinn tried to act nonchalant as she walked beside Clark.
She worked to take in as much as possible. That included counting the visible video cameras both outside the building and inside the glassed-in first-floor lobby. It presented a challenge to look without seeming to be doing so, so she turned her head and smiled as if she were looking at Clark while she looked past him at the lobby.
Two, no, three guards stood inside the well-lit area. The third one was partially hidden back by the elevator. Even masked in the shadows, there was no way they’d make it past all three guards.
As they neared the corner after the building, Quinn whispered, “That’s a lot of guards to be up this late, don’t you think?”
“Not really. They could be the only ones for the whole building and are just checking in at the lobby. It might just be a coincidence. Turn left. We’ll circle the block and see if there’s another entrance.”
Quinn did as she was told. To play out the masquerade, she hooked her arm in the crook of Clark’s elbow. She figured if they really were returning from a bar, it would look more realistic. She didn’t play for that team, but the bad guys didn’t know that.
“Nice touch,” Clark muttered as he brought up his free hand and patted hers where it rested on his forearm.
“Just trying to make sure we don’t get spotted. Don’t let it go to your head.”
“No chance of that, kid. You’re way too young for me.”
Quinn nodded at the sidewalk ahead. “The streetlight is out up there. We could shift into shadow mode and try to access the rear of the building. There might be a loading dock down the alley on the left.”
“Good call. Move left to walk up beside the building. Try to shift into the shadows slowly as you enter the dark area so you sort of fade from sight if anyone is watching. They’ll think it’s too dark here for the camera to penetrate. I’ll be right behind you.”
Quinn nodded and pulled her arm free to walk closer to the building. She focused on her amulet and tried to meld with the shadows the way she had before. She murmured as she walked, “Mist.”
It took a few seconds longer than she’d planned, but it eventually worked, and soon she turned the corner into the alley with the familiar haze surrounding her visual field. She waited for Clark, invisible and unnoticeable as long as she didn’t attack anyone or do anything overt to draw attention.
She looked around for Clark. He should have been here by now.
His voice came from directly behind her. “Forget I’d be hidden too?”
Quinn jumped, and she turned to look for the source of the voice. She could sort of make out the hazy outline of a figure standing in front of her. “Uh, yeah, I did. I’ve never seen it from the other side before, just when I did it.”
A low chuckle emerged from the darkness. “Come on. Let’s see what things look like back here. Hopefully, we can find a way to get in this way. It might also make a good exit point for when we make the real infiltration.”
Quinn started to nod, then stopped. He couldn’t see her. “I’m right behind you, or I’ll try to be as long as I can sort of see you.”
“You can see me?”
“Yes, you’re sort of a hazy Clark-shaped outline in the dark.”
“Good. It takes some people a long time to be able to locate a magically hidden person. Some never get the hang of it. Stay close and keep your eyes open. Remember, the more light, the easier it is for someone to notice you, even masked. The shadow-hiding isn’t perfect.”
Clark’s form shifted forward, and Quinn moved to follow him down the alley to the loading dock at the rear of the building.
As they neared the pool of bright light around the rear entrance, Quinn counted three cameras, two focused up and down the alley approaches. The last was angled to pick up the immediate area around the dock. There were no guards in sight. There was a faint musky odor in the air that was sort of weird, but other than that, she couldn’t sense anything.
“Damn,” Clark hissed.
“What?” Quinn whispered.
> “Shifters. Somewhere near. I can smell them.”
“That musky smell? I can smell it, too.”
“Good, that’s something else I don’t have to teach you. I was hoping you got that inside the VR game on your first hunt.”
He might be right. Her first target as a slayer for VirSync had been a shifter.
She tapped Clark on the shoulder as he started to move forward, causing him to stop.
“What is it?”
“I thought the shifters were on our side nowadays? You said all the supernaturals now secretly worked with the humans of the world.”
“Most of them are, but they’re people just like us, so they can take sides. Some are motivated by the same greed and desires as anyone else.”
Quinn drew in a deep breath through her nose to see if she could sense how close the werewolves, or whatever shifter type they faced, were. The odor hadn’t changed in intensity, but she didn’t know if that was because of proximity or something else. She had no way of knowing how far away she had to be to detect one.
Clark whispered, “I’ll head by the dock first and take up a position on the far side to check around there. Once I’m in place, you head up and check the area around the door. Move slowly as you enter the light. It’ll help the masking magic work. A bored night guard probably won’t notice you. See if it’s unlocked, or if you can spot any guards around inside, then move away back to the shadows.
“Got it. Be careful.”
“You, too.”
The vague form ahead of her moved around to the other side of the alley and then passed the loading dock area. It stayed far away from the lights by the big double doors leading inside. The farther away he got, the harder it was to see him. Eventually, she had to just sort of guess where Clark was.
When she was pretty sure he’d had enough time to reach the shadows on the far side, she took a deep breath and crept forward and up the short steps leading to the elevated loading dock. She tried to remember to breathe normally. With no one in sight, and knowing she was virtually invisible to the cameras, Quinn drew herself up with newfound confidence and walked over to the doors. Each had a large square window filling the upper half. The doors were locked, but she leaned forward and peered inside the dark hallway on the other side.
When she was sure she didn’t see anything in there, she looked over her shoulder and motioned for Clark to come up and join her. As soon as she turned, she saw a trio of hulking dark shapes emerge from the shadows directly behind where she thought Clark was standing.
“Clark, behind you!”
A flash of silver caught the floodlights just before Clark became visible. He’d drawn his sword.
Growling snarls filled the alley as the three dark forms charged the hunter. Quinn didn’t have time to admire Clark’s style with a sword. Snarling growls from behind sent her diving to the side to avoid the charge of two werewolves as they burst through the doors.
Rolling to her feet, now fully visible, Quinn drew her silver Bowie and brandished it at the massive hairy beasts in front of her.
The pair split up, moving in opposite directions on the broad, flat loading dock to try to get behind her.
Quinn couldn’t keep them both in her sight, which was a bad thing. She picked the one to her right and charged, drawing on her stamina to boost her speed.
The suddenness of the attack caught both creatures by surprise. Quinn scored a deep slashing attack on the wolf-creature before dancing away from the beast’s clawed counterattack.
She remembered its companion in time to duck under a leap that would otherwise have had its snapping jaws closing on the back of her neck.
As she ducked, she stabbed upward, and a wailing howl of pain rewarded her initiative.
Straightening from her crouch, Quinn squared off against the pair of now-wounded shifters. In a moment of foolish bravado, she pointed at the one on the right with her knife. She beckoned for it to come and get her with her free hand.
Instead of just the one, the pair charged at the same time.
Quinn realized she’d conceded the initiative. In a desperate move, she tried to leap straight up high enough so the two passed below her. It worked for one of her attackers. However, the werewolf on the left jumped to meet her. The two of them crashed into the brick wall of the loading dock.
The pop in her chest upon impact told her she’d probably just broken a rib. She grunted in pain when she landed but managed to stay on her feet.
The werewolf wasn’t so lucky. The impact with the wall stunned it, and that gave her an opening to stab its neck. She drove in her twelve-inch blade to the hilt. Its howl of pain turned into a gurgling, choking sound as a flood of blood poured from its mouth. The werewolf began to shift to human form as it died.
Quinn yanked her blade free and turned to check on the other wolf. It had recovered and was advancing on her again.
Now that the odds were even, the other beast was more cautious. Quinn took advantage of the stalemate to steal a glance at Clark. Judging from the two naked human forms lying still in the alley, he’d taken out two of the beasts.
Quinn was starting to think she and Clark had this in hand when distant howls sounded from inside the building.
“Clark, more are coming. We need to get out of here.”
“Get back to the car if you can. I’m a little busy here.”
Quinn focused on her stamina. The bar was about half-full and had turned a faded yellow-green color. She had room to try something.
Drawing on the boost even more, Quinn gathered herself and crouched just as the werewolf facing her charged.
Launching herself into the air from the loading dock’s edge, she arched her back and sailed out into the alley to land on one knee nearly fifteen feet away, facing the rear entrance. Damn, she thought, that must’ve looked freakin’ epic.
Clark’s voice beside her startled her out of her reverie. “Don’t congratulate yourself yet. We need to get out of here.”
Quinn would ordinarily have been upset by Clark’s typical buzzkill, but she was still impressed with herself. This would have been successful if it weren’t for the impending reinforcements. The sole remaining werewolf had darted back inside rather than face both hunters.
“Which way?” she asked.
“Follow me.”
Quinn nodded and started after Clark. She could tell he was injured, possibly severely.
She picked up her pace and caught up to him with ease. “Hey, are you all right?”
“Yeah, just a few scratches.”
Quinn glanced at the drip of blood on the pavement. “It doesn’t look like just a few scratches.”
“We don’t have time to do anything about it anyway. Let’s get back to the car so we can get out of here.”
A loud howl behind them, followed by a series of barking yips, announced that the rest of the pack had arrived at the loading dock. A chorus of howls followed immediately, and Quinn didn’t have to look back to realize they must have found Clark’s blood trail.
Quinn glanced ahead, trying to judge the distance to the car against the potential pace of the pack of uninjured werewolves behind them.
It was going to be close.
She was right.
They raced up the stairs and made it back to Clark’s car just in time.
He pressed the keys into her hand, nearly collapsing beside the vehicle. She lifted him under one arm and helped him in as he climbed into the back seat and collapsed across it.
Quinn jumped into the front and gunned the engine to life, then backed out of the space and peeled out, heading for the ramp to the lower level. A werewolf jumped onto the hood as she drove, snapping and snarling, its drooling jaws on the other side of the glass from her face.
She didn’t miss a beat.
She slammed on the brakes, then reversed, and the beast flew off the car’s hood to land in a heap twenty feet down the ramp.
A grunt from the back reminded her about Clark. She glance
d in the rearview mirror. He was climbing back onto the seat because the sudden stop had sent him to the floor.
“Seatbelts on for safety, please. This isn’t over yet.”
Quinn didn’t wait for an answer. She stomped on the gas and raced forward, wincing a little as the car rumbled over the werewolf lying prone in the lane.
Then she drove straight for the street outside the garage, not bothering to stop and pay at the automated exit. The speeding sedan crashed through the wooden crossbar blocking the ramp, sending it spinning through the air as she snapped it off on the way through.
She turned left and picked the first exit that led onto the interstate winding through the center of the city.
Quinn checked the rearview mirror again to see how Clark was doing. He now sat upright on the passenger side. His seatbelt was on.
“How are you doing back there?”
“Better now that we’re out of there in one piece. Good driving, even if I did break my nose against the back of your seat when you stopped.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be. We got away. That’s what’s important. Plus, we learned what we needed to. That is definitely the right place. Those shifters were hired muscle to keep an eye out for us. Now we need a plan for how to get past them and inside.”
Quinn smiled as she drove north back to the farmhouse. She’d gotten two compliments from Clark in one night. Things were looking up.
Chapter Ten
“Hold still, silly,” Miranda snapped. “Don’t be such a baby.”
Quinn hid a smile behind her hand as the witch wrapped the bandage around Clark’s arm where the shifter had bitten him.
“It’ll heal well enough on its own. I told you I…”
“Hush,” Miranda replied. “It was bleeding so bad that you might not have lived long enough for your superhuman hunter healing to work. I’m almost finished anyway.”
“I’ve survived worse,” Clark muttered under his breath.
Miranda shook her head as she finished with the roll of gauze and used a strip of white tape to hold the end in place. Leaning back to check on her handiwork, Miranda smiled.