Wolfen

by Alianne Donnelly

  The way they’re going at it, it ain’t gonna happen.

  Then, through the din of random noise, I recognize a pattern.

  Thump-thump-thump-bang.

  Thump-thump-thump-bang.

  I squeeze down onto the floor between the front and back seats and kick the roof as hard as I can.

  Two bangs answer me.

  “Fuck yeah!” I kick again, and wait.

  Thump-thump-thump-bang. Three…

  Thump-thump-bang. Two…

  I hunker down and cover up as best I can.

  Thump-bang. One…

  Metal groans and screams as the roof peels up from the back. I reach out. Trey grabs onto my arm and hauls my sorry ass out of there. “I thought you were roadkill,” he says, as Spencer jumps off the mangled roof into the thick of the action.

  “ ‘chu talkin’ ‘bout, shun.” I’m slurring, and my voice is hoarse, but at least my brain’s working right. I’m pretty sure. “I’ma be a legen’.”

  ~

  Aiden cracked his neck. “D’you see ‘em?” His ode-worthy Evel Knievel maneuver had landed him too close to the wall on the west side of Haven. He’d have to run the gauntlet east and go around for a view of the hill beyond it.

  “See a lot of things.” Trey handed him a sword, before he hopped down to decapitate a convert about to get the drop on Kiera. “Bryce ain’t one of ‘em,” he shouted back, already several paces deep in convert scum and getting down to business.

  Aiden scowled at the weapon, but didn’t have time to complain before he was knocked off of the mule. What happens when you run out of bullets, genius? God, he hated when Bryce was right.

  He slammed to the ground, holding off fangs by sheer force of will. Too close to use the sword. Claws dug into his arms, a gaunt, leathery face with beady black eyes straining closer. Venom glands over its canines throbbed. One nibble, and Aiden would not be getting back up.

  The fuck that was happening again!

  Rage boiled, and he let it loose, embraced the flood of adrenaline-spiked power that came with it. He rolled the convert beneath him, shoved his full weight onto the forearm wedged against its throat. Bones snapped, and the creature went still. To hedge his bets, Aiden severed the head clean off. Then he followed through, slicing another one in half from hip to shoulder while he was at it.

  He set out east, cutting his way across the battlefield through so many converts, he couldn’t see a single Wolfen among them. But he scented them. Through the stench of pheromones, the smoke, and the dust, he scented his people and knew they were holding together—one unit, a pack. The only way they would win this.

  Across the clearing, a howl sliced through the din of battle, and Aiden grinned. He knew that voice. He threw his head back and answered. Then waited.

  Nothing.

  He cut down another convert and howled again, louder, more insistent—a call Bryce wouldn’t dare ignore.

  A different voice answered, softer, farther away. Sinna. Little bit made it! All right! Now they just had to get them home. Aiden shoved on, listening for Bryce’s call. It didn’t come. His brother was close enough to scent now, but didn’t deign to announce himself. Aiden howled a third time.

  A chorus of voices rose up in protest; a song of pure annoyance that if put into words, said, Unless you’re in trouble, quit making all that goddamn noise. It lost some of its elegance in translation.

  Finally, he caught a glimpse of Morgan’s mule. The dogs were making a stand around it—one man on the top as lookout, the others surrounding the truck on the ground. Ten in the innermost circle, fifteen more several yards out with the rest cutting outward and thinning convert ranks as they pushed in.

  The hair on his nape prickled and he turned, sword up to meet the juggernaut. He almost speared his own brother through the heart. Aiden swept the blade sideways a millisecond before Bryce collided with him and forced him back several steps. Bryce had a feral gleam in his eyes as they pushed against each other. Fuck, the bastard was strong. Aiden braced one foot behind him and shoved with all his might, gaining a few inches of breathing room. Bryce came at him again, snatching Aiden by the back of the neck to bring him in. Aiden dropped his sword and mirrored him, slamming his forehead against his brother’s. They snarled a challenge at each other, poised on a dangerous edge between a brotherly welcome and bloody carnage.

  “Pull it back,” Aiden growled.

  Bryce snapped his fangs at him.

  “Bryce! Pull it back, man!”

  Kiera shouted a warning.

  Bryce broke off and took a convert down by the throat, then bent over it and, after a panicked squeal, its head rolled past Aiden’s feet.

  “Right.” Aiden picked up his sword and dived back into the fight. Bryce needed to stay feral; the shift back took too much out of him. Instead of forcing his brother to make himself vulnerable, Aiden put his back to Bryce’s and did what he did best: exterminate. He didn’t stop Bryce when he moved, just checked him with an elbow to steer him in the right direction—toward the others.

  They slowed as they neared. Something wasn’t right. This was too easy. With the Wolfen outnumbered by at least fifty-to-one, they should have been convert feed by now. Why weren’t they? Aiden hooked an arm through Bryce’s and turned them around so he faced front.

  He gave Spencer a hand and bumped shoulders with Kiera so they’d make room for Bryce. With a running leap, Aiden replaced the lookout on Morgan’s mule to get a better view of the battle. Off to the east, a clump of converts circled a blender of gleaming swords, and Aiden raised an eyebrow at the strange female making minced meat of them. Definitely not human. She screamed like a banshee, fought as if it was the only thing she lived for. Covered in convert blood from head to toe, she didn’t pause for a second.

  Even with her making a considerable dent in the enemy forces, they were surrounded by far too many of them.

  But the horde held back, keeping the Wolfen busy enough to stay put, but alive. What the hell were they waiting for?

  The blonde female gave an ululating squeal and launched into the air to land on a convert’s head. She broke its neck, then leaped again, making her way toward the mule.

  “Who the fuck is that?” Morgan had to shout to make himself heard.

  The female disappeared in the throng, and when converts closed in over her, Aiden thought it would be the end of her. But they started dropping one by one, cut down at the legs, and the warrior princess reemerged.

  “Ever seen anyone fight like that?”

  “Like killing was air?” Aiden looked across to the other side where Bryce was tearing converts limb from limb, no weapons necessary. “Never,” he replied. Bryce moved on instinct, yielding to an overwhelming drive to protect. Xena over there was different. She was fully in control of her senses; she chose to kill. And it looked like she enjoyed it.

  Suddenly, between the inner and outer circle of Wolfen, psychotic gaze trained on Aiden, Xena stopped and turned south. Aiden’s old mule, battered and stripped to dull metal, rolled down the hill and rammed into the convert horde, burying deep in their midst before coming to a stop.

  “Sinna!” Aiden jumped down and shoved through the inner circle. “Hold formation!” he ordered, running for the wreck, the blonde falling into step on his right, Bryce on his left. The blonde was smaller, faster. She pushed ahead between them, clearing the way when the going got thick. They speared through the horde, against the current part of the way, and with it the rest, when those closest to the crash realized there might be a meal inside.

  The female ran up the hood, over the roof, and across to the back, ducking down on the truck bed while Bryce dived for the glass-less front and Aiden for the driver’s side door.

  All three looked in at the same time, and Bryce let out an agonized wail that accompanied his rapid, involuntary shift back to human shape. He met eyes with Aiden, desperate, confused, silently pleading for help Aiden didn’t know how to give.

  Sinna was gone.


  59: Bryce

  Gone.

  Truck empty. No scent trail.

  Nothing.

  A heartbeat stretches into eternity, its roar loud enough to drown out the horde at my back as they bear down on us.

  Gone.

  I stare at Aiden in the same way I did the first time a whitecoat cut me open from navel to neck to see how I ticked, unable to connect one dot to the other, brain refusing to comprehend what happened—why it happened. How it could possibly have been allowed to happen.

  Sinna gone.

  You’ll live, Wolfen girl. Don’t you worry none. Sinna is mine; she’s part of me.

  Gone.

  The ribbon of time has a massive flaw, a paradox in the middle of nowhere. Everything intersects in the eye of a needle, and it shatters the world into chaos. There’s before, and there’s after, but the now, the moment is broken. Wrong.

  Aiden stares back, speechless for perhaps the first time in his life, the most crucial time when I need him to say something. Anything.

  Make this right, goddamn it!

  ~

  Claws in his shoulders.

  Bryce reacted on instinct, whirling around to tear into the horde with his bare hands, but he wouldn’t be lured away from the mule. That truck was his constant, his last connection with Sinna. If he had to kill them all one by one, he’d do it, but he would not give up that truck.

  “Move!” Helena shouted, leaping over the roof and him to rejoin the fray. Her swords sliced through flesh and bone, blades covered in blood and grime. It was caked all over her like dirt. That’s what they all were—dirt. Filth. Vermin to be exterminated.

  Bryce took out a creeper that had crawled, undetected, between them, aiming to take Helena down at the knees. It left Bryce’s back exposed, but Aiden was there to cover him, and they fought like they always did: together. Move as one. Think as one.

  But this time was different. Bryce’s head wasn’t in it. His muscles remembered what to do, but his limbs worked on autopilot. Slash, kick, twist, claw, bite, punch, tear… A routine a split second slower than Aiden’s half, and he couldn’t sync back up. He tried, but the subconscious link they used to share had been severed.

  Aiden shouted something, but his words held no meaning to Bryce.

  Helena screamed back in a language Bryce no longer understood.

  They shoved him this way and that, turned him wherever they needed, like a broken machine without a conductor.

  Then someone shoved one time too hard, and Bryce was on his own. Gone was his brother, the blonde female, the mule. Claws, and fangs, and wiry gray bodies rushed at him.

  He kept fighting. Human, nowhere near that cusp where he knew the beast within should lie in wait, eager to rise up and tear shit apart. It wasn’t there anymore. He was on his own. The routine kept his head up, kept air in his lungs. But his mind was miles away. Back on the hill, the last sight he’d had of Sinna, head thrown back, howling to the sky, owning everything she’d ever been and everything she ever would be. Wolfen inside and out. The last sight he’d ever have of her.

  Converts buried him to the ground. Light gone, air gone. The weight of the new world pressing on his chest, cracking his ribs, compressing his skull until his bones groaned. And he couldn’t remember…couldn’t think of how to get out.

  Monsters screeched, blood trickled between pressed bodies, dripped onto his face like acid. Then the weight eased, and eased some more as the mule’s tires spun on top of them at full speed, friction burning skin and flesh off of bone until the bodies all fell away. The ones who could still move gave up, and suddenly there was sky above him.

  Air expanded his lungs, ribs screamed in protest as they realigned and knitted together.

  Bryce blinked at the puffy black clouds of noxious smoke wafting across the sky.

  Hands on him. Clawed, but not tearing. He turned his head enough to see Helena’s face. Her eyes glittered, her mouth moved to form words. Get up! He deciphered that much. Get up! Move! Let’s go! She kept tugging until he was upright, then more until his feet were under him. But the ground moved, pitched him sideways, and he slammed into the mule’s hood. Metal vibrated, hot against his body. The engine purred.

  Aiden sat behind the wheel. He leaned far forward, grabbed onto Bryce, and hauled him into the cabin. “Move!” he ordered, his voice delayed, slower than his mouth moved. “We need to haul ass, bro.”

  Bryce righted himself as Aiden put the mule into gear. Helena was on the hood, keeping converts off the truck, but when it moved, she back flipped onto the bed where she hunkered down as Aiden gunned it through the horde, mowing them down.

  “B, are you listening?”

  Bryce mutely turned his head to his brother, unseeing.

  Aiden grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. “Wake the fuck up, B!”

  Bryce pushed him away, faced forward. Converts rammed into the mule from the side, raising it onto two wheels, but the damned thing was heavy as a tank and as soon as Helena cut their arms off, it slammed back down onto four and they kept going. South. East. Away from the other Wolfen, circling around Haven to the other side.

  “…the caves run for miles, I know where they lead out. We’ll hit them from the back, like they did Haven. Are you listening? Bryce!”

  Bryce unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Storm a hive,” he said, managing a weak monotone. “Good plan. What the fuck for?”

  “What the… Are you shitting me right now?”

  Bryce chuckled—a droll sound. It tasted bitter in his mouth. “Look around. They’re winning.”

  “The hell they are! I’m sure as shit not giving up, are you?”

  Bryce just looked at him.

  “No, don’t you dare! Don’t you fucking dare! You hear me? You fight! For Sinna, you motherfucking fight, you lazy son of a bitch!” He swerved hard left, away from a mob running them down head-on. They glanced off the side, right into Helena’s blades. And the mule kept going.

  “Sinna’s gone.” He shuddered as he said it, the cold weight of the words sinking into his bones. “She’s gone…”

  Aiden shook his head. “You didn’t hear a damn thing I said, did you?”

  Bryce swallowed hard, gritted his teeth against the burn behind his eyes.

  “They took her alive, B.”

  The paradox exploded.

  60: Sinna

  Keep always looking up. See the light, your guiding star. The dark at the bottom is where the monsters are.

  I feel the light slip away before I open my eyes. I don’t want to. My head’s throbbing, my eyes feel swollen, and my stomach’s in so many knots it’ll take a month to unravel, if I don’t throw it all up first.

  But the stench reminds me of what happened, and I force myself to wake.

  It’s pitch-black around me. No light, not even a candle flicker, no crack in the thick shell of night. But there must be, somewhere. Otherwise, how am I seeing anything at all?

  I’m hanging over a convert’s shoulder, and the stumbling, lurching ride makes me wish I was still unconscious. I’m not tied, but my arms have gone numb from hanging over my head; could be dislocated. I can’t tell. I can’t feel them; can’t move them. Can barely move my head.

  Panic squeezes my throat in a tight fist.

  We’re in a tunnel. As my eyes adjust, I see others lurking in the darkness, groaning and clicking as we pass. They’re everywhere, crouched in nooks, crawling on the walls, hanging from the ceiling, their disgusting hair creating a curtain we have to pass through. There are bones piled together at intervals, stripped of meat so well they gleam white in the darkness. Largest at the bottom, decreasing in size going up, with a skull at the top for decoration. Tidy. Organized.

  The converts we pass sniff in my direction, reach out for me, more of them gathering the deeper we go. But the one bringing up the rear screeches and beats them back every time they get too close.

  The path slopes down. We’re going deeper underground.


  They took me alive, and they’re bringing me underground.

  No, no, no, I can’t do this. I can’t die like this! Not with the monsters in the dark! I start shaking, can’t breathe…can’t… Needairneedlightcan’tbreathecan’tFUCKINGBREATHE!

  Thoughts go hazy, what vision I have turns dark around the edges, but there are sparks of bright light floating all around, and I know once they coalesce, it’ll be over. I want it. I welcome it. I’ll kill myself before I let them touch me. I’ll stop myself breathing. I’ll slip away, and I’ll be safe.

  Bryce is out there. Helena, too.

  They’ll be all right. They’re so much stronger than me. They’re better off without me.

  But remember…

  Bryce. My hand in his. His arms around me. His lips on mine. “Just so we’re clear.”

  He’s out there, fighting for you.

  He has Helena.

  He’ll look for you.

  He’ll be too late.

  He’ll come down here, and they’ll kill him, too.

  He’s too strong for that.

  What if he isn’t?

  He’ll come anyway. For me. He’ll walk right in. No light, no air, no room to move. Too many of them, and only one of him. He’ll fight to find me, whether I want him to or not, whether I’m dead or alive. They’ll kill him. Because of me.

  Can’t breathe. Bryce will come. He’ll come no matter what. Need to breathe… He’ll come, and he’ll die, and it’ll be my fault. Can’t—get—air…

  Goddamn it, Sinna, take a fucking breath!

  I suck in air so fast and so loud, it’s almost a scream, and it incites the converts into a frenzy. The one in the back roars at them, and they slink away, but not far enough. They stay to keep an eye on me, drooling, working their jaws as if they already imagine gnawing on my bones.