That made Julani uneasy. He had never known the other man to fidget, to panic. Hell, he hardly even talked.
Julani could hear the electronic locks beeping as he approached the door. Brown was no doubt surprised to find that his all-access security card didn’t open this lock. That was because the heavy door had a good old fashioned dead-bolt that could only be flipped open by hand, by someone inside the lab.
Another failsafe against junkies who stole or hacked security cards.
Dr. Peel took safety seriously, for herself, her staff, and her animal patients.
Julani placed a large foot inches from the base of the door before throwing open the lock.
The door swung quickly inward, stopped only by his expensive loafer.
Through the crack, Brown’s normally stoic face registered a look of mild surprise. Beads of sweat glistened on his smooth scalp. Harsh fluorescent lighting from the veterinary lab threw a strange shadow behind him. Ghastly grunts and howls wailed out of the false twilight, accompanied by dull thuds and the squeal of chitin on glass as the animals tried to mount a mass escape.
The feel of raw primal fear was oppressive as it rushed at the big man from out of the faux wilderness.
Brown himself was a mess.
His shirt was torn, his tie missing, and one pant leg was soaked with what smelled like urine. Julani wondered if the man had been attacked and tasered.
“Brown, what the..?”
He was interrupted mid-sentence by the man who never talked.
“Where is Serena Dayne?” The question was breathy, overeager, like a junky looking for a fix.
It made no sense.
Julani had never in his life considered himself a smart man. School wasn’t much his thing.
But he did possess an almost animal sense of danger. He called it survival instinct. Born of necessity from a rough upbringing. The same alarms that were setting the elephants and leopards on edge were ringing in his own skull.
He shifted more weight onto the foot blocking the door.
“I don’t know.” He lied.
Brown’s eyes widened uncharacteristically, spiderwebbed veins against jaundiced yellow.
“You are lying! I know she is here! I can smell her!” A thin vein of spittle slipped out and dripped to the floor unnoticed.
The sinewy man was manic, worked into a state Julani had never seen before.
Whatever the reason for such odd behavior, it would clearly be unwise to let him into the lab. The Brazilian was always armed, and it looked like he was on something.
Today was going bad enough.
Besides, it was clear that in his current state, Brown was not carrying out orders for Valdez.
And what the hell did he mean he could smell Serena?
Julani was not much in the mood for an argument, so he simply slammed the door shut in Brown’s face and threw the lock.
He would deal with the fallout later. Turning his broad shoulders back toward the inner labs,
he headed back to where he’d left Serena and Haley. As he passed the bank of security screens again, he noticed that the door cam registered only blank floor.
Brown had gone.
He found the doctor pulling a horse blanket over Serena’s still form. For a moment his heart froze, but the fabric stopped at Serena’s collar bones. She was being tucked-in to sleep, not covered for the morgue.
“J, it looks like she is stabilizing pretty well in here. In fact, her fever broke almost instantly. Come feel.”
Julani laid a gentle hand on Serena’s neck. The skin was now cool and clammy to the touch, where only minutes ago it had been burning up.
“Great job, Doc.” He offered.
Haley waved him off.
“I doubt it was anything I did. Now, why don’t you get some of the others? And maybe track down Valdez so he can make a phone call or two and get this girl some proper care.”
Julani heaved a tired sigh. It was a good idea. Nobody pulled strings like the boss.
“Yeah, alright.”
She came around the corner, a look of unkempt relief on her face.
The vet really was way out of his league. Maybe soon they would have time to start and finish a real date.
“Hey Doc.. Haley… Lock the door behind me. I think Brown is high on something and he wanted to get at Serena for some reason. Make sure and check the monitor to see it’s me before you answer door.”
She smiled at his concern, warming his concrete heart a bit as he turned to leave.
He blew another bellows sigh and brushed the corded hair out of his eyes. Two more steps and a flick of the lock and he was out the door, into a jungle night that shouldn’t really exist.
Las Vegas, Nevada
Julani paced steadily toward the bank of elevators, listening through the roar of animal din for more human sounds that would give him some indication of where Brown had gone.
Somewhere far off in the expansive space a thunderous crash sounded.
Glass breaking.
More commotion echoed through the wide, wandering corridors. It sounded like some of the gaming tables were being knocked over.
Only then did the magnitude of what he was hearing dawn on the large man.
Glass breaking. A whole wall of glass breaking.
Animals were escaping.
He could only guess which ones had breached the security glass. But no, there was little guesswork, he had spent enough time on this floor to know that only a handful of the species that had been placed in the manmade wilderness packed anywhere near the punch necessary to take out one of the panels of reinforced Lexan.
It was supposed to be unbreakable, but Julani was no stranger to breaking things that weren’t meant to be broken.
He decided it was a good idea to move a little faster toward the far bank of elevators. Another heavy boom and the squeal of metal on metal changed his mind.
Move a lot faster.
He didn’t want an angry hippo or Cape buffalo to catch him slipping.
With an irritated huff, he broke into a light jog. He kept his footfalls light, letting his considerable quadriceps absorb the impact so as not to give away his presence too obviously. A flash of white in his peripheral vision startled him. Just a zebra, tossing its flat-top mane as it skittered along the transparent wall opposite him. Julani wondered how much of the wildlife was making its way toward the opening in the wall.
They smell fresh air right?
Maybe in the panic most of them failed to notice.
The thrumming sound picked up another notch as he continued on, as if his movement was irritating the fauna even worse…
Wham!.... ….
Something hit him from above, sending him sprawling to crack a knee hard against the floor.
His ears rang.
Before he had time to recover, a hand gripped him roughly by the hair and yanked sideways. Total disorientation reigned.
It took a breath for Julani to realize what was going on.
I’m getting jumped!
Brown. The Brazilian had been lurking.
As Julani’s head was whipped around, he rolled into the pressure and kicked outward, clipping his attacker’s ankle and sending him off balance.
J scrambled to his feet, and took quick stock of the situation.
Damn my knee hurts.
A yard away, Brown recovered his balance and sidestepped, circling toward the middle of the wide corridor.
Behind them, another zebra ricocheted off the glass, screaming wildly. Julani noted how the other man’s bloodshot eyes swam slightly. Brown’s skin shone with slick sweat, and he had shed his shirt. Veins bulged, casting subtle shadows in the dim light.
Julani was not intimidated.
This piece of shit is finally gonna fight me.
He took a moment to kick off his giant loafers, trusting that damp socks would grip better than the smooth English leather. He let Brown’s path arc out away from him. Julani knew how the other man fo
ught. The Brazilian would take his time.
This would not be pleasant.
The manic look on Brown’s face made him think about pulling his gun and ending it now, but he reconsidered, knowing he would have to answer to Valdez for it.
No more time for thinking. His rival was incoming
Come on then asshole.
Brown stalked forward, flexing his hands. The normally stoic Brazilian twitched and panted, brows knitted in needlepoint concentration.
Julani squared his broad shoulders and tucked his chin, pulling his elbows close and rolling up onto the balls of his feet. It had been awhile since he’d been in a fair fight, but he was willing to bet that it had been even longer for Brown.
The Brazilian feinted left, then right, then kicked straight down the center, catching Julani in the gut. The kick was lightning fast, but it was the insane power of it that was unexpected. Impact traveled through fat, muscle, guts and melted into his spine. Air belched from his lungs in a fierce whoosh. Brown kept coming, kneeing sharply into his hip, and swinging a short vicious uppercut that Julani was able to deflect with a wrist.
He countered, snatching the smaller man’s bicep and bringing his own forehead down on the bridge of Brown’s nose.
A rewarding thwack reached his ears just before the heel of Brown’s hand smashed into the side of his head.
Julani had grossly underestimated the smaller man’s power.
Stepping to his left, still gripping Brown’s upper arm, he swung his hips around and yanked the Brazilian off his feet, using momentum to toss him over his shoulder and slam him to the ground. In the same motion he brought his massive right fist down to meet the other man’s face. But Brown was a dervish, spinning away at the last millisecond and taking the impact on his shoulder. Undeterred, Julani kept coming, raising a foot to stomp where his fist had missed. Another countermove.
And another.
The Brazilian lashed upward at his bent leg, sending him stumbling away.
Julani sought to close the gap between them, hoping to overpower the man and eliminate the speed advantage.
Too slow.
Brown lunged again, cracking his fist into Julani’s cheek. A tooth bounced around inside of his mouth and he tasted metal. Stars danced, and the corners vision went dark. Another kick to his sore knee jarred something loose. Probably a cracked patella. He went down as the smaller man unleashed a vicious flurry of punches on his neck and face.
It all seemed impossibly fast.
Julani had never been bested in a one-on-one fight.
Never.
The thought centered his swimming consciousness, making him angry. With a growl he pushed off of his good leg and wrapped his enormous arms around his opponent. Pure weight carried them both into the glass wall. They bounced awkwardly off of it with a riot of cracking bones.
Julani used his bulk to pin the other man down, knee against sternum. One broad, scarred fist rose and fell like a piston, crashing full-force into Brown’s goateed jaw and chin. Four, five, six times the gnarled bones of his knuckles sought and found their target. Brown’s head bounced back and forth, trapped between fist and floor. A fast-moving rock and a hard place. With each blow, the strength sapped from the Brazilian’s grip, until the smaller man no longer resisted.
Julani paused, glaring down at his rival. Anger washed over him in waves.
The biggest part of him wanted to kill the man, to continue this beating until his own hands were numb and the Brazilian’s smug face was unrecognizable.
He had done it before.
But he would not do it here and now. There was too much going on, too many questions to be answered, and too little time to waste.
Why the hell did Brown attacked me? Just because I shut the door in his face?
Something told him it was more complicated than that.
Brown never looked or acted so haggard. Besides, Julani couldn’t just kill the man. He was too close to the boss. There was no doubt that if he ever crossed Hunter Valdez, he would wind up in a hole in the desert just like everyone else.
As rage subsided, the pain in his knee and jaw throbbed louder.
He needed to get moving. It wouldn’t be long before whatever beasts that freed themselves found their way to this stretch of the hall. He planted a foot and heaved himself up off of his unconscious colleague. Immediately, the knee gave out, a white-hot bolt of pain shooting all the way up to the back of his neck.
Shit.
He tried again, this time supporting himself with one hand on the wall. He figured he was about halfway to the bank of high-speed elevators. He could make it. First, Dr. Peel needed to be warned about the animals. He looked again at where Brown lay, already groaning his way back to the land of the living. She needed to be warned about him too. He slid the tiny phone out of his pocket.
“Oh come on damnit!” He followed up with a string of curses. The face of the handset was shattered, flaky innards spilling out. Smashed during the fight.
Change of plans.
He would have to get back to the lab, lock up and help Haley.
Maybe he could wrap his knee and come back out with a tranq rifle. It would be a bad idea to be out in these corridors for too long though. The escapees were truly feral. Hand to hand, Julani could handle just about any man, but the thought of having those wild lions hunt him down and eat his guts like on T.V. made the skin under his dreadlocks crawl. Though the cacophony of noise had lulled, there was little doubt that the animals were still good and pissed-off.
He turned back the way he had come, hop-sliding as fast as he could manage, frowning darkly at the pain radiating from his lower leg. He also noted that his hand was leaving messy smears of blood on the wall as he posted it to support himself. From what little he knew about predators, that wasn’t a good thing either. Gritting his teeth, he redoubled the pace.
The gradual bend of hall carried him past a quivering herd of some sort of antelope. Five or six of them huddled together, shivering and wild eyed. Somewhere far behind, another ungodly howl erupted, starting the hellish chorus anew. A second later, the deer-like creatures on the opposite side of the glass broke out of their stupor and scattered. The largest of them took two quick bounds and leapt straight at the glass. The impact jarred Julani’s hand and made him jump.
“Damn!”
The hysterical antelope caromed sideways and scrambled away, following the white flashes of his brethren’s rumps further into the enclosure.
Julani watched them go as a growing sense of foreboding enveloped him. Animals didn’t act this way without a reason. Dogs in the old neighborhood only barked all at once when something bad was coming, like a storm or a fire.
Moments later, the vault-like door of the labs came into view once again up ahead. Welcome relief for his pounding knee.
Made it.
Something fell out of the artificial evening halfway between him and the door.
At first he thought it was a giant bird. But it wasn’t.
It wasn’t a sheet of builders felt, and it wasn’t a trick of the lighting or weird reflection or any of the other possibilities that ran through his head.
His sore jaw slacked open as he tried to make sense of the impossibility before him.
Standing there, grinning maniacally, was Brown.
How he had managed to get up into the rafters or onto the maintenance walk for the rain system was beyond Julani’s comprehension. He had left the man battered and bleeding on the floor only a few minutes ago.
Out cold.
Hell, his own hand still bled from a split knuckle earned on this guy’s face.
He couldn’t help but say it out loud.
“This is crazy.”
Brown’s chest shone with a greasy sheen. One side of his face and neck were swollen and lumpy, the slick of blood already crusted, as if baked on with a blow dryer.
How he had survived falling from wherever he started was beyond explanation. Had he jumped? Or did he… fly?<
br />
The glass walls extended all the way to the ceiling here, and that ceiling was way too high up to be dropping from safely.
Brown glared at him, all fury and murderous intent. It looked like the sweat was steaming off of him, as if his fever was too intense even for his own fluids.
The Brazilian said nothing.
Julani, never much of a talker himself, was especially at a loss now.
Brown slithered forward, closing the distance rapidly.
Abandoning discretion, Julani pulled his firearm.
It had become plain that this was a kill-or-be-killed situation, and somehow his own immense physical power had failed to be enough.
He swung the dark eye of the barrel up and fired, but Brown anticipated and dropped, sliding mid-run like a baseball player, popping back up without losing stride. Ten steps away, He feinted left and spun back right as Julani’s bead went wide again.
The big man calmly brought the gun to bear a third time, the closer Brown got, the less he wanted to miss, and already he was only a few steps away.
He squeezed the trigger just as his opponent leapt high into the air.
Impossibly high.
No man can jump that high.
The shot was low, but it found flesh and blood sprayed. Before he could readjust and fire again, Brown was on him.
The heel of one bare foot planted directly on J’s forehead, all the momentum of two-hundred pounds behind it.
Julani’s neck snapped back violently, dreadlocks fanning out like the crest of a cockatiel.
He toppled like a tree, and landed flat on his back. The Brazilian rode him down, landing with a knee to the throat. Fingers sought his eyeballs and crammed into his mouth, wrenching and tearing at the soft tissues.
As Julani gasped for breath and tried to shift the weight off his windpipe, a sickening aroma reached his nostrils. Like frying bacon. The other man’s skin was unnaturally hot. Brown’s missing pinkie still held its ring, and the edges of it cut into Julani’s nose and brow as blow after blow rained down.
As his consciousness faded, he felt himself being lifted bodily, all three-hundred and change.
A moment of weightlessness was followed by a jarring and painful crash. His wandering mind flashed back to another time he had felt this way, when he had fallen off of a fire escape as a twelve-year-old trying to escape the wrath of a neighbor whose stereo he’d stolen.
To Light Us, To Guard Us (The Angel War Book 1) Page 15