Autumn swung her arm and took aim at the next screen. She pulled the trigger and the second screen imploded, the images that had been displayed vanishing from sight.
Vivian might be somewhere else in the building, but Autumn was determined that even if she did not find her, the other woman would never be able to use this equipment again.
Other shots were fired, mainly from the other side. A couple of shifters were hit, but Autumn struggled to work out which of the animals was connected to their human form. They weren’t shifters she recognized. Chogan and Peter fought valiantly, taking down those who appeared to be causing the most trouble, disarming them. The moment the soldiers found themselves without weapons, they ran. What else were they going to do? Unarmed and faced with creatures who could bite their heads off with one snap of their powerful jaws.
Thorne grabbed a still-armed soldier from behind, knocking the man’s gun from his hand. But a woman rose from behind a desk, a weapon held in two shaking hands and pointed at Thorne’s back.
“Look out!” Autumn cried.
She swung her weapon in the direction of the woman and pulled the trigger, but the other woman was quicker. Autumn’s shot went wide, hitting communication equipment behind the shooter. Autumn’s call had only made Thorne glance her way, not the direction of the shooter. He jerked as a bullet hit him in the back.
Thorne gave Autumn a look of confusion as if he couldn’t quite understand what was happening. Blood bloomed on his shirt where the bullet had passed right through his body, and his legs crumpled beneath him. He slumped and fell, face first, to the floor.
Autumn fired another shot at the woman, causing her to duck and run for the doors.
“Thorne!” Autumn cried. Quickly, she checked she wasn’t about to be shot herself, and then ran forward, ducking low to use the desks as shelter. She reached him and placed her hand against the side of his neck, feeling for a pulse. There was nothing.
She pressed her fist to her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut. Calvin Thorne was never her favorite person, but she hadn’t wanted him dead. The reality of what they were doing sank in.
She would lose more people before this was over.
Chapter Fifteen
THE DUST SETTLED.
Some of Vivian’s team were injured—bites, scratches, knocks when they’d been thrown to the ground. Nothing too serious. Others, who had been unarmed, had run, not wanting to risk their lives for Vivian’s cause. Autumn was glad they hadn’t needed to resort to killing, though the one person she’d planned on killing still eluded her. Was she even still in the building?
Autumn left Thorne’s body and walked over to one of the men, clutching a bite mark to his arm. Chogan prowled near, Peter close behind. The man stared up at the giant beasts with terror in his eyes.
Autumn pointed the gun at him. “Tell me where Vivian Winters is.”
“I … I don’t know!”
“Bullshit. She must have been here when we attacked. Now tell me where she went.”
“Please … I …”
“You have three choices. You tell me where she is, or I shoot you in the head, or else my friends over there,” she nodded toward Chogan and Peter, “can have you for their next snack.”
“Ms. Winters went below as soon as the alarms were raised.”
“Down below? You mean where the laboratories are?”
He shook his head. “No, lower. Where the test subjects are kept.”
Her heart leaped. Blake? Tala?
“What test subjects?”
“There are a few of them now. All shifters, or part shifters. One of them used to be one of us, but then—” Understanding dawned in his eyes. “Oh, you’re her!”
She didn’t confirm or deny his comment, but she knew what he meant.
“Come on,” she told the others. “We need to keep going. I think Blake and Tala are here.”
Before leaving, she glanced around at what looked to be the most important equipment and put a bullet into each console, preventing the remaining soldiers from calling for help or using the equipment to continue their crusade against shifters any time soon.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
She cast a final glance over her shoulder at Calvin Thorne’s body. She felt bad at leaving him here, but what else could she do? These people knew him. If he had family—and she had no idea if he did or not—they would know who to contact.
The shifters padded from the control room, Autumn staying close on their heels. She held the gun close. How many bullets did she have left? She’d used plenty on the equipment, leaving the carnage she’d caused—the popping of plastic, an acrid tang of burning in the air, sparks showering—behind.
They made their way back into the stairwell. A couple of frightened people in white coats were coming up the stairs, but they turned and fled as soon as they caught sight of the group headed toward them. Chogan and Peter were only just able to squeeze through the doorway.
They stopped at the level of the laboratories, but Autumn shook her head. “We need to go down another level. I think that’s where they are.”
She’d never been down that far, but she knew there wasn’t anywhere secure enough in the labs to keep several shifters, so they must be in the level below.
Autumn followed the furry hinds of Chogan, Peter, and the others down into the basement level. The room opened out into a low, cavernous space. The only dividers were pillars designed to hold up the ceiling and add support to the rest of the building. The room was made of concrete—solid gray slabs of floor, walls, ceiling, and pillars.
But other objects were dotted around the basement, some of them divided off by curtains, others simply positioned like macabre art displays.
A ripping of muscle and a cracking of bone made her look toward Chogan. He was shifting back, his fur vanishing to reveal his brown skin, his limbs cracking in jerky movement, shrinking before her eyes. His muzzle retracted into his face, his human teeth pushing through even as his canines withdrew. His human hair began to sprout from his head, growing long and longer until it brushed down his now smooth shoulders. However many times she watched this, it never seemed to happen in the same way. Every shift had its own pattern and order of changes, as if each part battled for dominance, to be the part that changed first.
Chogan straightened, standing naked before her. Even though he didn’t seem to care about his nudity, she couldn’t help but let it affect her, heat rising to her cheeks, despite the situation.
He stared around the space with horror in his dark eyes. “What the hell have they been doing?”
Autumn turned to take in the sight of what lay before them.
Misshapen creatures lay flat or curled up in massive glass tanks. Some were larger—the size of a big dog—while others were no bigger than a monkey.
Her whole face felt scrunched up in anticipation of horror and dismay. She knew she wasn’t going to like what she was about to see. Part of her wanted to back the hell up and get out of there, but the other part of her needed to know what Vivian Winters had been doing.
Still standing back, the other wolves growled, low and ominous, their hackles raised. Even the big cats grumbled a strange feline growl at the massive tanks and their inhabitants. None of the shifters made any move to get closer.
“Have they been experimenting on animals down here?” She was thinking aloud. None of the creatures was moving. Were they dead? Or perhaps just sedated.
Taking quiet, cautious steps, she edged toward the nearest tank, Chogan close behind. The creature was either asleep or unconscious, lying on its stomach with its head buried in its paws. What type of animal was it? The tail looked to be long and strong, like she’d expect to see on a marsupial, while the body was longer, with four even sized paws, like that of a dog.
She crept closer, only a couple of feet dividing her from the creature. She couldn’t see it moving.
Suddenly, it lifted its head and stared directly at her.
Autumn let out
a scream and stumbled back, her heart beating hard. Chogan caught her, but she felt his hands trembling.
“Oh my God,” he breathed.
Autumn fought the urge to throw up. She recognized the face as one she’d seen behind the first door in the holding rooms when she’d been kept here.
The face staring at her was not one of a dog or a monkey, but was that of a young man.
“Its head is human,” she whispered.
Chogan slowly shook his head. “What the hell have they been doing down here?”
The creature stared at them, seeing them, but with no recognition in its eyes. Though the eyes were human, Autumn saw no sign of humanity, no intelligence, or emotion of any kind. Though clearly they had somehow managed to transplant a human head onto an animal of some kind, she didn’t think they’d transferred any part of its soul that made it human. If she dared to get closer, she thought she might be able to see the stitching that had connected the parts together. The worst part about the whole thing was how young the head was. At the most, she’d have said the boy would have been in his mid-teens.
She was relieved Mia hadn’t been here to see this.
With a new understanding, she stepped back and surveyed all of the other glass containers. Would they be the same? Did they all contain some kind of weird, mutant creature?
Chogan’s voice came from behind, making her jump. “They must have been trying to create shifters in a physical sense.”
“It’s sick.”
“They tried to create a human brain and intelligence with an animal’s strength.”
They were being kept like freak-show exhibitions in glass jars. All the poor bastards who had gone wrong.
Another creature—a black, rodent-like animal she thought was a Tasmanian devil—unfurled from behind a different glass screen. A massive scar ran around the circumference of its squat head. It snarled and snapped at them, but staggered in the confined space, swaying, as if it didn’t have full control of its body.
“What’s the bet they tried to put a human brain in there?” said Chogan.
Another beast sat in a different container, its face half human, half primate. It looked out at them with sad, mournful eyes. Deformed and hideous. It had no idea what it was. With her hand shaking and tears blurring her vision, she lifted the gun and placed it as close to the glass as she dared.
She squeezed the trigger, the bullet punching a hole in the glass.
The chimp-man slumped to the ground, a red hole between its eyes.
Not allowing herself to think any further, she turned to the boy-dog and put a bullet between its eyes as well. Then the thing with half a brain. By the time she had finished, hot tears burned pathways down her cheeks. Chogan’s arms wrapped around her and he pulled her head against his chest. For once, she gave no thought to his nudity.
“You did the right thing,” he assured her. “You did the only thing you could. There’s no place in the world for those things. They go against nature.”
She nodded against him.
Across the far end of the room, curtains hid things they’d not yet explored. Autumn didn’t want to find out what was behind them. It was too much, she’d had enough. Yet she knew she’d never live with herself unless she looked.
She approached, and reached out a trembling hand, the gun still clutched in the other. She yanked back the curtain.
“Oh, God!”
Tala was kept in what must have been a soundproof, clear plastic box. It was large, large enough for her to move, but only barely.
Peter stepped in behind them. He had changed back to human form, too. Autumn averted her eyes from his naked body, feeling she was spying on him in a way that she didn’t feel with Chogan. Perhaps it was because he was Mia’s guy, and weirdly it felt like she was betraying her friend by catching an eyeful.
Tala’s eyes widened in recognition of them, hopeful but guarded. She must have realized Autumn had every reason not to want to help her, and Chogan had abandoned her last time they’d been together.
She was more human than bird now, and lifted her hands to place her palms against the inside of the thick plastic.
Help me, she appeared to mouth, though Autumn thought she’d probably spoken the words out loud, they just couldn’t hear.
Chogan sprang into action, searching the outside for a way to get it open. “We’re coming, Tala. Hang in there.”
“Where’s Blake?” Autumn cried. “Have you seen him?”
Tala looked at her with confusion. Either she hadn’t heard her, or she didn’t understand why Autumn would think Blake was here in the first place.
There were other curtains.
Autumn left Tala in Chogan’s hands, and raced from the compartment to the next. She pulled back the curtain, her heart in her throat.
“Oh!” It wasn’t Blake. The young soldier Vivian had turned was in his half-shifted form. Frightened, angry, and in pain.
“We’ll get you out,” she shouted to him, but couldn’t stop. There was another curtain, behind which she might find Blake.
She paused, her hand on the silky fabric. Please, please, please. And she yanked it back.
Blake’s beautiful form lay on his back in the container, as if he were the sleeping beauty, and this were his coffin.
Is he dead?
But no, his face turned toward her and she ran up to the reinforced plastic and pressed her hands and face against the clear material. He stared at her, almost disbelieving. Then he lifted his hand and reached out and touched the place her cheek pressed against.
But no smile moved his mouth. Something about the situation made her blood run cold.
“Chogan!” she yelled. “Peter! Blake’s in here. Come and help him, please!”
The two men came running. Chogan held Tala in his arms.
“There’s a catch at the top,” said Peter. “You just need to unlock it and the whole top slides off.”
She reached up, trying to find the catch. Her fingers fumbled in her desperation.
“Here. Let me.” Peter moved her out of the way.
In less than a minute, he’d unclicked the top and slid it off to let Blake out.
Blake didn’t move.
“Come on,” Autumn begged. “Get out of there. We need to go.”
But he shook his head and spoke so quietly she had to hold her breath to hear him.
“I can’t.”
“What? Why not?”
“I can’t move my legs.”
Her heart stopped. “Did they drug you?”
“No, Autumn. You don’t understand. The bullet severed my spine when I was shot. I’m paralyzed from the waist down.”
She felt everything stop around her, and her world tilted, the floor sliding out from under her. She grabbed the outside of the container to steady herself. “But... But ... You’ll heal.”
He shook his head. “I think I would have started to heal by now if I was going to. I can’t feel anything down there. Someone might as well have cut my legs off.” And he turned his face to the side, away from her.
Autumn turned to Peter in desperation. “We can help him out of there, right? We can lift him out?” Some of the other shifters had switched back to men and women, and lurked on the other side of the curtain.
She could see everyone trying to pull themselves together, to not let Blake’s news change everything. They wanted to act the same way they always had around him.
“Of course,” said Peter.
Chogan put Tala down and placed his hands against the plastic. “It’s good to see you again, Cuz. I thought you were a dead man.”
“I might as well be.”
Tears burned the backs of Autumn’s eyes, a hard, painful lump forming in her throat. The tension was unbearable.
“Come on, Blake,” said Peter. “Let’s get you out of there.”
“Don’t bother. I’m no good to anyone.”
“Blake!” Autumn was shocked. “Don’t you dare say that. You’re coming wi
th us, whether you like it or not.”
He glanced at the gun in her hand. “You’re better off putting one of those in my head. Leave me here. I’ll only slow you down.” He glanced at Chogan. “I already almost got one of my cousins killed.”
“Bullshit,” Chogan spat. “I was the one who left you. I was the one who decided we should split into teams and let you lead the wrong one.”
“Guys, this isn’t the time or place to be discussing this,” Peter said. “We’ve been here too long already.”
“Just leave me,” Blake insisted.
Autumn stepped in. “No. We’ve come all this way to rescue you. Now shut up and let us.”
Blake fell silent. Then he spoke up. “Actually, they keep spare scrubs in the unit, over there. Do you think we could be wearing something before we have to make quite such close contact?”
He still cares about something, Autumn thought with relief. Whatever he was saying, he still hadn’t given up completely.
Quickly, the men yanked open metal drawers and closets, pulling out green scrubs, pulling them on to cover their nudity. As usual, the clothes were too small. Chogan and Peter half climbed into the container with Blake. They helped Blake into a set of the medical wear, struggling due to the confined space and Blake’s lack of movement. Autumn tried not to experience a stab of pain and dismay as they lifted Blake’s limp legs into the pants.
Surely he would heal? Wasn’t that one of the benefits of being a spirit shifter, that they could heal? Yet, if they were able to die, perhaps there was a point where the damage done was too great to repair itself.
A number of the other shifters had changed back to human again. They pulled on the remaining clothing. At least it provided some form of disguise for when they were on their way back out. If someone had managed to alert forces outside of the facility, there was a chance those in scrubs could pass themselves off as members of Vivian’s team.
Where the hell is Vivian?
Peter and Chogan lifted Blake between them, hauling him out of the container. Sahale and Tocho carried Tala. Her shift seemed to have calmed down from when she’d first injected Autumn’s blood, but she was still part bird, part woman. Her arm was coated in shiny, blue-black feathers, the lights catching on the colors like oil on the road. The skin on her face was hard and drawn forward, part beak. She was still able to speak, though her words sounded strange, as if she had a mouth full of food.
Autumn's War (The Spirit Shifters Book 4) Page 10