by LC Champlin
Albin, take my weapon and empty a mag on these fuckers! he tried to roar, but it came out as, “Guh!”
Shouting, cursing, scuffling, then a gunshot. Nathan lifted his head to see as he struggled to move. Smoke, double vision, and the general confusion of struggling men obscured the view.
The terrorist motherfuckers tramped off with a farewell “Fuck you, shitbag!”
A black egg bounced onto Nathan’s chest and the double doors slammed shut.
Chapter 9
Sacrifice
The Howling – Within Temptation
Massive amounts of epinephrine in one’s system could bestow superhuman abilities: Ninety-year-old grandmas lifted cars off grandchildren. Mountain climbers dragged themselves miles after fracturing both legs.
Right now, the only superhuman feat Nathan needed involved flinging the “gift” behind a counter, lunging into the women’s locker room, and getting as much distance and as many barriers between himself and the entry as possible.
No problem—
Thunder exploded indoors. More ceiling tiles fell. E lights flickered. Nathan’s teeth rattled in their sockets. His heart stumbled on a beat.
He opened his eyes and peeled his hands from his ears. Still alive. On his stomach in a shower stall, but still alive. Pushing to his feet brought a wave of pain, its epicenter at his chest. It hurt to breathe.
A glance downward showed two bullet holes in the towel. He scrabbled for the armor neck and shoved a hand down. No blood. A shaking breath escaped him.
Albin? Shit! What the fuck happened to him? The terrorists.
“No!” Not separated again! He should have just left Kate here. A side-kick to the wall failed to return Albin, but it cooled the rage that threatened to hit critical mass.
He clicked a full mag into the AK.
One, two, three, four. Eyes closed, he centered his thoughts. Wolves slunk along the edges of his mind. Not again. Not now. The room temperature fell, raising the hair on his arms. E lighting glinted off the white tile like moonlight on snow. His breathing filled his ears like a beast’s panting. The wolves moved from the periphery of his mind . . .
Howls fill the cold air like arrows, spurring sixteen-year-old Nathan Serebus to leap for the radio tower’s steel bar overhead. His gloves slip on the ice, but boots scrabble for and find enough purchase on a strut to send him up. In a panic, he scrambles higher.
Finally he stops, clinging to the metal frame, shaking from cold and terror. Air forty degrees below zero burns his lungs as he gasps.
Below, golden eyes wink up at him from at least twenty monsters. Around, the tundra stretches away in a sea of snow and night. Nature rules this place, red in tooth and claw. Now Nature wants that red to come from him. No one will miss him until noon the next day, at the earliest. If the wolves don’t kill him, the cold will. It stalks the Aleutian twilight in search of any creature foolish enough to challenge it.
The harsh winter made predators and prey equally desperate. These wolves would wait him out. They sense weakness.
Already he shivers under his snowmobile suit. When he stops shivering, that means the beginning of the end. Jaws will tear his frozen corpse to pieces when he falls.
“Oh God, I’m sorry.” Sorry for being an idiot with more pride than sense. His breath fogs. “Please, I’ll do anything, just . . . just save me.” Darkness, cold, and silence answer. Wind moans over the snow drifts. God ignores him, but the wolves do not: they circle and snarl below.
He looks into the murk beyond the ridge, the abyss that birthed the beasts. “Can’t you take something else? Anything? . . . Anyone?” His friends had run off in the other direction, toward the broadcast station’s buildings. Maybe the wolves could go after—No! The cold is making him crazy.
“Anyone?” the ice and tundra, not God, seems to echo.
“Just not me. Can’t you . . . ”
“You.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“Die.”
He can’t feel his hands or feet anymore. The wolves growl and yip as they watch with golden eyes.
“I don’t deserve this. Go eat someone else!”
“Someone else.”
The chills slow. Thoughts crawl in the cold. “Someone else . . . Yes.”
“Yes.”
A shadow larger than the wolves slinks over the ridge thirty yards away. It rises from four legs to two, towering half the height of the pines. Its shape wavers. A hallucination? Nathan shakes his head. When he looks again, the shadow has merged with the darkness, but twin orbs of fire stare—stare into his soul and see what coils and slithers there: the anger and arrogance. Nathan squeezes his eyes shut.
“Amarok.” The word sticks in his throat. The Inuit spoke of the giant wolf, said it stalked and consumed anyone foolhardy enough to hunt alone at night. Only the amarok could hunt alone in the Arctic dark. “It’s a legend. It’s not real.”
“Real.”
Ice crust crunches as something big and four-legged crashes through the drifts. Nathan’s eyes open a slit. Ears pricked, the wolves turn, fan out. A caribou charges down the hill in a spray of snow. The crystals glitter in the moonlight as time slows. The animal halts in surprise.
Howls from behind it, then golden eyes, white teeth, open jaws. The pack descends on the caribou in a frenzy. Blood sprays across the snow. It ends in a moment. Snarling, the carnivores drag their kill into the shadows.
What was a lone caribou doing out here at night? “Thank you,” Nathan breathes, eyes closing.
“You.” No longer an echo, now the word resounds in his mind.
“A sacrifice . . .”
“Sacrifice.”
“For my life.”
“Life.”
The wolves surround a silhouette that flickers between human and beast. They spring at it, tear it to pieces, as they did to the caribou. Light more blinding than darkness washes over the scene, erases it.
The temperature returned to the ambient seventy degrees, but chills still rattled his teeth while his heart hammered in his throat. At some point, he’d dropped to one knee. Nausea washed over him, churned in his stomach. He gulped. Deep breaths.
“Enough.” With a shake of his upper body, he gained his feet, straightened.
He had two sacrificial victims to save from the wolves.
Chapter 10
When One Door Closes
Broken Glass – Three Days Grace
Nathan reached the entry hall in two seconds flat, but the eviscerated sofas and shattered counters forced him to pick his way to the doors.
He reached with both hands for the handles, then stopped short, instead pressing an ear to the divide. Silence.
The motherfuckers thought him blown to Hell, so they had retreated to their leader with . . . with the prisoner or . . . the corpse. It made sense for them to snag the one in the suit, not the one wearing a towel and waving an AK around like a Call of Duty fanatic.
Coast clear, or as clear as he could tell, Nathan dropped his weight on the handles, shoved. Outide, gun smoke tinged in the air. Other than the plaster, the floor and runner remained clean. No gore near the doors. The chains of dread around his heart loosened a notch. Be safe, Albin.
Now he could focus on Kate.
She peeked out from under a towel as he neared. “A bomb?” Green tinged her pallor as she struggled to stand. “What are they—”
“They took my friend.” The wolves wanted her, but they took Albin as a trade to spite him. They wanted their prey tonight. They could go fuck themselves.
“He’s alive, though?”
A chill brushed its claws down Nathan’s back.
“The police must be coming. They’ll help him.” Her attention focused on her injured leg, which still oozed blood. She tried to push away from the bench but slumped back onto it, grimacing. “They’ll help us.”
“We’ll help us.” Shifting the AK to his front, Nathan laid a
hand on her shoulder.
“I’ll slow you down. They want guests, not staff.”
“Brace yourself. This isn’t going to be pleasant.”
“What—”
He slung a second towel around his neck, then took her right wrist in his left hand, squatted, then pushed under her for a fireman’s carry. She stiffened, cursing in Danish. “Nvad helvede—For fanden!” The words dug into his brain, painful and familiar.
“‘What the hell’ indeed,” he grunted.
Other than her hissing breaths, she fell quiet.
“Grab the Glock with your left hand.”
She shifted. “’Kay.”
Drawing the .45, he marched to the exit. No enemies outside. The primal part of him felt disappointed, but his rational self sighed in relief. Still cautious, he stepped into the hall.
“You . . . know Danish?” she whispered.
“Mom’s side of the family.”
Duct tape, zip ties, and a pair of handcuffs held the double doors closed. Apparently the terrorists hadn’t felt like clearing the spa.
“Copenhagen?”
“What?”
“From—”
“Yes.” He trudged toward the stairs, dispelling with a shake of his head the memories that scratched at his heart’s door.
“Small . . . world.”
“And getting smaller.”
Blood stained the carpet at the halls’ intersection. Spray adorned the pale green walls, a gruesome parody of Christmas colors.
“Now what?” Nathan muttered as he reached the fire door. Fuck, Good Samaritan hero shit never worked. He was as old as Christ at His crucifixion, and he too might end up sacrificing himself.
“F-fourth.”
“What?” He pushed the door open, entered the fire doors’ airlock chamber.
“Vitrine. Staff . . . stairs.”
The Vitrine restaurant seated seventy-four and offered full breakfast and lunch menus based on fresh, local ingredients. So said the website. Nathan had yet to sample it. What a shame.
“Safer?”
“Mm.”
“It doesn’t help me find my friend.”
“S-sorry.”
Then again, he could leave her in the kitchen’s safety. If the terrorists hunted guests, they wouldn’t look there. That would free him to get Albin and get the fuck out.
He slipped into the stairwell and started down, pistol up.
Fifth floor. Blood splattered the wall where the yuppie had fallen. A drag trail of red led through the door. Poor bastard.
Plans of attack flicked through Nathan’s mind: ambush, reinforcements, frontal, flank. Variables slotted in and out to alter outcomes. If-then statements, chess moves—this work he knew. This he had studied.
Fourth floor: Yerba Buena Terrace, Modernist and Impressionist art galleries, Vitrine.
The fire door opened into another airlock, providing a respite.
“Red One,” the mic spat, making Nathan flinch, “Red Chief. You find Red Four on three?”
“No, sir.”
“What the fuck is y’all’s problem! Did you get Serebus yet? No sense keepin’ his buddy around for leverage without him.”
They were hunting specifically for him. Worse, they would kill Albin without him. Nathan’s heart kicked his ribs. His hands went numb and his ears whistled. Locking his knees, he propped himself against the door with his gun hand.
Whistling turned to howling. “Not tonight.” He squeezed the shoulder mic’s PTT button three times, then another two, before holding it down. “This is Red Four. I just got lucky, grabbed that Serebus fucker. This madhouse got him acting like a Die-Hard wannabe. I’m on four, in the diner. You still on three?”
“Damn, you did get lucky! I’ll send some guys up. Hold on to that bastard; we don’t got much time left.”
“Got some of the Russians with me.” Red Chief didn’t have to send a whole team. “We’ll be waiting.”
“Them dipshits?”
“Yeah—”
Kate dropped her voice an octave and retorted in Slavic, or whatever the Russians used.
Atta girl! Nathan glanced over his shoulder at her. She wore a thousand-mile stare of misery.
“Dumbasses. Red Chief out.”
One, two, three, four. Through the second fire door. Hold. Down the hall, right turn. Ahead, beyond the glass that divided terrace from foyer, lay the Yerba Buena Terrace. Tables dotted the terrace, a serene scene at first glance. A closer look revealed tipped chairs, spilled food and drink . . . bloodied bodies behind red-splashed tablecloths. In a show of savagery, the terrorists had torn the throats out of the nearer bodies.
“Why?” Kate breathed.
“Two can play the kidnap game. I need to know what’s going on. They’re going to tell me.” They wanted to use Albin as leverage. This pointed to a motive more complicated than ransom.
Right turn ahead. He edged around the corner and continued past the banks of dead elevators that glinted like futuristic tombs.
“Leave me . . . in the . . . kitchen. Get your friend.”
Nathan grunted. Invitation accepted.
Two of the bodies outside shifted as they lay across their fellows. No time to check. One burden on his back filled his lifetime quota for forced good deeds.
An acre of herringbone-patterned floor stretched before him, gleaming in the waning light through the curtain-wall windows. Keeping close to the wall, he skirted the terrace as he headed for Vitrine’s dining room. Double doors ahead promised a refuge. The shadows watched him pass.
Stop, listen at the crack. Silence. Pistol leading the way like a bowsprit, he stepped through the doors and into the “elegant and light-filled dining room with a sophisticated palette of sage green and white.” It looked as generic as every other high-end restaurant.
At this hour, only guests with reservations would have been dining. The staff likely fled at the first sound of the fire alarm. Good. Vitrine’s kitchen contained concealment: many closets, counters, and corners, according to the floor layout online. First he needed to get there, which required traversing most of the dining room.
Ahead, a young couple in business casual occupied a corner table.
Chapter 11
Pale Horse
Animal I Have Become – Three Days Grace
“Hel—” The salutation died in Nathan’s throat. Dark splatters shone under the nearby exit sign’s sick green light, adorning the wall and mingling with spilt wine on the tablecloth. They were . . . dead. The couple’s doll eyes pinned Nathan, riveted his attention like a hypnotist’s. The female had semi-shielded the male—who looked shocked—with her torso. Muzzle flare and hate were the last things they ever saw.
Nathan’s Nikes padded on the herringbone floors as he passed the corpses. A lock of fiery Irish red slid down to stick in the woman’s emerald eye. She could pass as Janine’s sister, if she had one. She’s not Janine, so don’t think about this . . . happening to her. Nickel-sized polka dots of blood decorated the woman’s blouse. Blood tracked from the half-open mouth. Bloody heroic woman, but a bloody stupid sacrifice. She would’ve died anyway.
Death. It shouldn’t be. It wasn’t meant to be.
“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” A voice. His own.
Heavy breathing in his ears. Kate hissed as she pulled herself higher on his shoulders. Nathan returned to reality with a start. Leaving the couple to their eternal embrace, he continued toward the kitchen.
A rustle and gurgle from a table near the wall halted him. Two overturned chairs guarded the perimeter of the table, which abutted a cream-cushioned bench. The blood contrasted with the off-white.
His grip tightened around Kate’s wrist. He couldn’t prevent her injury or Albin’s kidnapping, but he could prevent their deaths.
Off the end of the couch lolled two bodies, male and female. Corpse
s. Keeping with the heroine theme, the female carcass was sprawled over the male, her sculpted form nearly bare in the style common to hookers and trophy wives. Three exit wounds gaped from her back.
“What . . . is it?” Kate grunted.
“A waste.” Since the terrorists had already rampaged through the Vitrine, it would make a safe—rather, less dangerous hiding place for Kate. Or it would have, if he hadn’t just called the terrorists. If his efforts to save Albin cost Kate her life . . . she wouldn’t die in vain.
He made his way through debris that would have made Vitrine’s designer Yabu Pushelberg cry. Once in the chrome-covered kitchen, he eased Kate down near the doors. She growled at the movement.
“I’ll be back.”
Eyes squeezed shut, she nodded, head against the metal cabinet door.
Nathan returned to the table, drawing his P2X Surefire flashlight. He needed to clear the area before the terrorists arrived. Hooking a chair, he kicked it aside. He whipped the tablecloth back, AK covering the cave underneath. They were playing hide and seek with the ultimate stakes.
Hell’s breath kicked him in the face. Ground liver, acid bile, barnyard shit, and Axe mingled, made him gag.
Two bodies lay jumbled in the darkness. One gurgled at him. Shit. One hand on the AK, Nathan played the flashlight beam over them. A female behind a male. Light washed across the male’s white face. Eyes tracked the movement. That face . . .
Something snapped in the dark of Nathan’s mind: jaws.
“You! You’re fucking kidding me!” He holstered the light and shoved the AK to his back. Muscles flexed, red haze in his vision, he grabbed the table in both hands and heaved it aside in a clatter of dishes and silverware.
“Gaaaaah!” He hauled the man upright by the suit lapels. “You utter fuck-up! You call yourself a goddamned fucking bodyguard?”