by Dean Murray
Tyler only had a single long set of slashes on his left flank that were leaking blood, and Chad had so far managed to remain unmarked, but we all knew that they were only seconds away from being killed. It took a lot more than just two or three wolves to hold off a werewolf. I stumbled over the corpse of the werewolf we'd just killed, but Geoffrey had already moved, gliding forward into engagement range of the werewolf.
Chad yelped in pain as the werewolf connected with a backhand that was fortunately more fist than claw. Geoffrey raised his sword for an attack, sliding to the left in an attempt to shield Chad, but he was too late. I could clearly see that nothing any of us could do was going to be enough to save Chad.
The werewolf spun around, but rather than following up on the opening it had just created, it stopped and for a fraction of a second that felt like eternity nobody moved. The werewolf was staring at Geoffrey and there was something in its eyes where I'd never before seen anything more complex than hatred or anger.
Sally and Omar resumed moving, trying to flank the werewolf, and that broke the spell, but rather than killing Chad, the werewolf turned and sprang away from us.
None of the wolves could speak in this form, but it was obvious from the way that Tyler was staring after it that he wanted permission to give pursuit. I stepped forward and bumped his shoulder with the back of my hand.
"Let it go, guys. We've got bigger worries than one vacuum that will hopefully take a few more Coun'hij enforcers with it before Puppeteer gets it back under control."
Even as I said the words I realized just how unbelievable it was that Puppeteer still hadn't brought his minions back to heel. Geoffrey apparently had the same realization.
"This can't be just Puppeteer, something else is going on here. Something or someone is interfering with his ability to control the werewolves."
"That's unprecedented, nobody has ever reported anything like that."
Geoffrey nodded. "I know, I can't explain it, but I've never seen a werewolf back away like that. They fled once or twice back in the city when we had them outnumbered, but this was something different. It was almost like that one recognized me."
"How? Like from the fighting in New York?"
"I guess that could be the case, but I killed all but two of the werewolves that I ran into. None of this makes any sense."
"You're right, but there isn't time to figure out what's going on. We need to take advantage of all of the craziness and get to Melody, how much further do we have to go?"
"She's not far now."
We set out again, but the Coun'hij enforcers seemed to be trying to make it to Puppeteer too. The battle was moving towards us now and despite our best efforts we couldn't stay completely out of things.
I saw three hybrids team up against a werewolf as Geoffrey took us out around a thick cluster of trees. The werewolf managed to bring one of them down before the other two swarmed it under, but we'd slipped back out of sight before they could decide whether or not they wanted to pursue us.
The darkness seemed positively alive with the sound of fighting. I caught additional flashes of violence as Geoffrey led us deeper into the forest. Usually we were far enough away that I couldn't even tell for sure who was winning a given fight before we dashed past at a run. Hybrids and werewolves bit and clawed at each other, circling, but I forced myself not to get involved.
I told myself over and over again that neither group was on our side. A part of me wanted to wade into the melee regardless, to kill as many of them as I could, werewolves and hybrids both, because each one we killed now while they were distracted with each other was one less we were going to have to face later, but I knew that Geoffrey was right to be leading us around the worst of the fighting. We couldn't afford to waste our strength here, not when we had no idea what we would be up against once we made it to Puppeteer's lair.
"We're getting close, but there's a group ahead of us fighting and there isn't any way to avoid them, not without stumbling into even bigger fights. We need to take these guys out or they'll follow us into the caves."
My beast flexed her claws inside of my head. She was past ready to kill more of our enemies. It was all I could do to restrain the bestial yell that she demanded from me, but I managed to just nod in agreement. My wolves spread out a little to either side as Geoffrey and I slipped through the underbrush and into a smoke-filled nightmare.
There had been so much else going on that while I had noticed the smoke on the air, I hadn't assigned it any importance. We'd just found the source.
Three of the hybrid enforcers had squared off against a single werewolf and they fought inside an artificial clearing that had been created by the fires that now flickered, barely living, at the clearing's edge. I'd never heard of a hybrid whose ability was strong enough to overwhelm the absorptive field of one werewolf, let alone the dozens that seemed to be fighting within a hundred yards of us, but one of these hybrids was some kind of pyromancer and he was nearly strong enough to use his power despite the werewolf that he and his friends were trying to kill.
The ash-covered ground was hot under my feet as I crossed it, but I ignored the discomfort as I sprinted towards the closest hybrid. The hybrids had backed the werewolf nearly all the way to the edge of the open space, and before I could cross the length of the clearing a tree directly behind the werewolf went up as though someone had poured gasoline on it.
The initial rush of heat was great enough to cause the trees on either side of the burning one to start smoking, but the fire died down almost instantly, leaving the original tree blackened and charred, dead, but not consumed. The heat scorched the back of the werewolf, which let out a roar that was answered by two more howls from nearby werewolves within seconds.
Under normal circumstances it was almost impossible to take a hybrid completely by surprise, and we were running much too fast to have any prayer of remaining silent, but I simply forced myself to go faster and hoped that the hybrids were all too involved in the battle at hand to notice us until it was too late.
The closest hybrid spun around just before I made it into striking range of him, but it didn't do him any good. He slashed at me, but I grabbed his wrist and spun, throwing him bodily into a nearby tree. Geoffrey hadn't been able to keep up with me, but his blade licked out as the hybrid stumbled past him. Geoffrey's sword came away red, but there wasn't any way to know for sure how badly he'd injured the enforcer because my wolves all jumped the hybrid before he could get back to his feet.
A hybrid was often a match for two wolves, but rarely could a normal hybrid take on three and never four, especially not when fighting from the ground after they already had both arms immobilized. I didn't stop to watch them tear the hybrid apart; I turned to go after another enforcer.
The werewolf was bleeding in a dozen different spots and had charred spots where it had gotten too close to one or more of the fires, but it took advantage of the shift in the balance of the fight with the kind of brutal suddenness that was so typical of its kind. One second there were two hybrids trying desperately to keep the werewolf busy, and then in the next the werewolf had one of the hybrids dangling lifelessly from its claws.
I'd expected the last hybrid to attack the werewolf while its back was turned, that or run away to join up with others from the enclave, but instead she turned towards me as I rushed forward. A blistering heat started to build just before I reached her.
"Scatter!"
My yell came only a split second before another intense fire exploded behind me, but I'd done all that I could to warn my people. I raked my claws along the other hybrid's arms and then ducked a blow that would have otherwise taken my head off.
As a wolf I would have probably stepped back then and waited for another opportunity. She'd turned slightly, enough to deny me a shot at her throat, but not enough to open up any of the other targets that I usually preferred. Retreat wasn't an option this time though because if I took the pressure off of her she'd launch another fire attack
at one of my people. Besides, there was still the werewolf to worry about. A wounded werewolf was still more than capable of killing me, so I needed to finish off the hybrid now.
All of that went through my mind in a split second, but I'd already started moving, acting out of reflexes and an instinctual sense on the part of my beast of what needed to happen in any given fight. I stepped into the hybrid, slapping her arm out of my way to enlarge the opening that she'd left with her overeager slash, and then I hit her with my shoulder.
I didn't have enough momentum to send her sailing, but I hit her hard enough to knock her to the ground and I was on her before she could recover enough to regain her feet. I sank one set of talons into each of her arms, pinning them to the ground with my full weight, and then buried my right hand in her chest.
I looked over to the side, half expecting to find the werewolf half a second from pouncing on me, but it was looking at Geoffrey and slowly backing away from the vampire. It was impossible, but as the werewolf turned to disappear into the night a second werewolf crashed into the first one.
I was so shocked that I just stood there for a second. I'd never heard of two werewolves fighting each other. As Geoffrey had indicated, there were scattered records of them fleeing a fight that they couldn't win, but other werewolves seemed to be the only living things that they didn't view as their rightful prey.
Geoffrey stepped forward as though meaning to help the first werewolf, but in the dark they looked too similar to pick out one from the other, and even if he was inclined to guess, they were moving around so quickly that he'd probably have no better than an even chance of actually landing a blow on his intended target.
"We need to go, Geoffrey, now while they are distracted with each other."
"I know, it was just that I could almost read the first one's thoughts. There for a second when the fire started its absorptive ability was overwhelmed and I managed to get a couple of probes inside of its mind. It's alien in a way that I can't even begin to describe, but it was different somehow than the others that I've scanned. It was almost like there was a second presence there inside of its mind."
Geoffrey had started walking as he talked, but I checked first to make sure that my wolves were all okay before joining him. My people were all picking themselves back up off of the ground as I checked them over. The hybrid they'd been busy savaging had been what the pyromancer had ignited.
Omar had a pretty nasty-looking burn on his right side, and everyone else was singed around the edges, but they were still capable of moving under their own power. My warning must have come just in the nick of time, that or they'd been able to feel the hybrid starting to heat up.
"A second presence inside of that werewolf's mind would tend to gel with Puppeteer controlling it. That's no surprise."
I caught up with Geoffrey in just a few strides as he angled away from the snarling set of bodies that were busy tearing into each other with an abandon that I wouldn't have thought could be sustained for more than a few seconds.
Geoffrey shrugged. "I know. It's hard to explain, when it comes to werewolves their thought processes are so different that half the time I don't even understand what it was I saw. It comes down more to hunches based off of what I think it all means, but I just don't understand why Puppeteer would have backed away from us like that."
"Maybe he can't tell his own hybrids apart when he's controlling a werewolf?"
"Doubtful. You've indicated in the past that he's had werewolves and hybrids working together in some kind of limited fashion. Besides, he has to know that he doesn't have any vampires working for him, and from what you've said the Coun'hij doesn't make use of ordinary wolves very often."
Before I could respond another hybrid came crashing through the trees and threw itself into the fight. There wasn't any way to know for sure which side the newest arrival was on, but we were already nearly out of sight by the time the third softly-glowing figure started drawing blood from one of the other two.
Geoffrey found the entrance to Puppeteer's lair a couple of minutes later. It was exactly like he'd described it as we'd been ghosting through the darkness except for the fact that there were three dead werewolves outside of the first door.
I tried to pick out the separate scent trails, but it was just too hard. The air was so still and there wasn't any natural mechanism to wash away old scents so all I could really make out was the base smell of stone with other, fainter scents layered on top. There were dozens of 'people' who had crossed this way recently and dozens more who'd been there before them. Even worse, Geoffrey's overpowering vampire scent was washing out everything else even more than usual since we were in such an enclosed space.
The only real common denominator was that the corridor we were in was lousy with the aged, earthy smell that I'd sometimes found associated with some of the older werewolves. Geoffrey started to take the lead spot, but I stopped him with a word.
"You'll be second for this, Geoffrey. I'm more durable than you are. Just walk behind me and tell me which way to go. Oh, and keep your probes out looking for someone trying to ambush us."
We worked our way deeper and deeper into the complex and every step was a nerve-wracking ordeal. There was a very good chance that I'd be able to hear the heartbeat of anyone trying to get me with some kind of surprise attack, but nothing was guaranteed.
The heartbeats of my people stuttered along behind me at double-time and on top of that, sound seemed to be playing weird tricks as it bounced off of the stone walls. We walked down what felt like miles of gray-stone tunnels and found an unbelievable variety of different kinds of rooms at the end of them.
One room was as big as the entire west wing of Graves Manor and was filled almost to the brim with more art than I'd ever seen in one place at the same time. Greek sculptures, Renaissance paintings, blocks of stone that looked like they'd been lifted straight out of the crypt of one of the pharaohs, it was a display of plundered wealth that was somehow obscene in ways that I couldn't even begin to describe.
Alec and Rachel are rich in the way that some small countries are rich, and Graves Manor had been a very large and extremely luxurious home, but most of their wealth had been put to work making more money. This art collection could have purchased a hundred houses the size of Graves Manor and still had money left over.
It was somehow wrong for so many gorgeous things to be locked away where only one person would ever appreciate them, but it was more than that. Alec's money had largely been the result of creating value, but the Coun'hij hadn't ever done anything good. They had robbed and pillaged, scammed and extorted to get their initial chunk of working capital and I had very little doubt but that their business practices had remained essentially the same ever since they'd overthrown the monarchy.
Other rooms came and went without much in the way of rhyme or reason. A massive dormitory, a laboratory that looked like it was secure enough to work with pandemic-level infectious diseases, and a large kitchen capable of feeding a small army. It took twenty minutes for us to find the elegant study that Geoffrey had seen earlier when he'd manipulated the dream of one of Puppeteer's lieutenants.
It was empty, but a quick search revealed a wall safe that I was able to get open, which was odd in and of itself. Puppeteer had obviously known that this type of safe wasn't durable enough to stop a hybrid from getting in, so he hadn't meant for it to protect the contents from his people, but kitchens and dormitories notwithstanding we hadn't seen any signs of humans or others who would have been stopped by the safe.
The contents of the safe were practically a clone of what Geoffrey had left in his safety deposit box. Cash and bearer bonds, which I'd more or less expected, but it also had a small leather-bound book that seemed to be written in some kind of cypher.
Geoffrey emptied the safe, stuffing the contents into a small backpack that was also in the safe, and then we turned to the computers. There were two of them, a laptop that wasn't connected to anything other than the power
cord, and a desktop that had an Ethernet cable coming out the back.
"I can't carry them both, not and still be able to fight."
I nodded at Geoffrey. "Grab the laptop. The only reason for him to have it here like that is that he's got something on it that he doesn't trust having hooked up to the internet because if it's connected to a network it's always possible for it to get hacked."
"You're right."
The laptop disappeared into the backpack too, and then we left the office, still hoping against hope that we'd either find Puppeteer or stumble onto Melody's location.
The next room we found was like something out of The X-Files. It had a door that would have put a bank vault to shame, which was plenty odd, but the inside was even odder. There were a series of metal loops set into the wall like the room had been intended for use as some kind of stainless steel dungeon. I checked the inside of the restraints and found them lined with thick rubber bladders that looked like once they were inflated would take the area inside of the restraints down to something roughly the circumference of a human wrist.
"Come on, Jasmin. We don't have time to waste, Puppeteer could be getting further away with each second that passes."
"All right, I'm just curious what Puppeteer might have been using these for."
Over the next ten minutes we passed a variety of laboratories, a massive library and a room full of weights and cardio machines, and then we found it. It was all clean stainless steel, but there wasn't any mistaking a torture room. It still had the feel of a room that had seen terrible things.
A huge, sturdy cage took up a third of the room and the rest of the space was dominated by a table and a variety of metal instruments.
"This is where she was."
I looked over at Geoffrey with a questioning expression. "How do you know? Can you smell her?"
"No, I can just feel it, but I know who can confirm my hunch."