He didn’t even bother to touch the solid metal and armoured glass doors, he simply walked towards them and unleashed his power in a sharp, forward spear. The doors exploded from their moorings, the glass shattering like crystal, the frames crashing into the space beyond with a deafening clatter.
The lab must have had its own back-up generator, as the inside wasn’t entirely dark. Several multi-coloured LEDs blinked at them from the remnants of the reception desk.
“What do think the chances are that this fucker has rigged this whole place to blow?” Gabi asked quietly.
“Not while he’s inside,” Alexander assured her. “He’s not the martyr type; he’ll want to get out of this alive. No matter what.”
“So, now we just have to hope he doesn’t have a rat run out of here that we don’t know about?” Gabi asked no one in particular. Despite her concerns about being blown to hell in tiny pieces, she was feeling pretty invincible. Having a second dose of Julius’s blood just before the raid began had hotwired her reflexes. The world appeared to be moving in slow motion while she was moving at full tilt. She felt like Neo once he had control of the Matrix; she literally felt like she could dodge bullets without breaking a sweat.
The Vampires poured into the darkened room, Gabi in amongst them. Tim and James hung back a little, as ordered. A quick scan showed the reception area was empty of life. Gabi’s Vamp sense was picking up something non-human inside, but she couldn’t pinpoint how many or what species. They turned towards the first set of internal security doors. These doors blew inward as easily as the first set. This time something was waiting on the other side. Several pairs of bright green eyes gleamed sinisterly from the dark. Nothing more could be seen of the creatures, but scent told Gabi they were wolves of some kind. There was a cacophony of snarls as the creatures lunged at the team. The narrow confines of the room made fighting challenging, but the Vampires moved as a seamless entity. Fergus and Charlie moved to the front, giving each other room to swing their weapons. Marcello fell in close behind them—back-up if either faltered. Alex and Julius took up the rear, Gabi between them. Without hesitation three huge, hairy forms sailed over the heads of the front rank and ploughed directly into them.
Time almost stood still as Gabi glanced up at the beast flying directly at her. Shock drenched her as she realised it wasn’t in man form or Werewolf form. It was a grotesque mix of the two, as though the Change had been halted part-way. Under normal circumstances, this would have rendered the Werewolf incapacitated until one form or the other was fully achieved, but obviously Mr King had been doing worse things than developing sedatives. He’d been creating monsters. Nex flew up in front of her as the wolf-man crashed into her, sending her flying backwards. As they slid to a stop, she had Nex at its throat, pressing hard to keep the spittle-covered fangs, extending grossly out of a semi-formed snout, from ripping off her face. It roared in frustration. Human-like hands, fingertips ending in long, vicious talons, clawed at Nex, oblivious to the painful lacerations it was inflicting on itself. Gabi groped for the dart gun at her waist—the bulletproof vest wasn’t helping matters. Suddenly the wolf-man flew sideways off of her, slamming into a wall with a bone-jarring crunch. Julius quickly turned back to his own quarry. There were more than enough to go around. Her wolf-man landed on the ground in a crouch, shaking its head, and didn’t hesitate a second before launching at her again. She was on her feet and spinning out of the way before she remembered that Tim and James were still somewhere behind her.
“Shit,” she spat, halting her spin and launching herself at the wolf-man’s back. Bizarrely, it still seemed intent on attacking her. Ignoring the less aggressive targets, it whirled back towards her instead of ploughing into the other Hunters. She caught it on the shoulder and managed a glancing blow with Nex across its mostly human face. It roared and flung her away, sending her crashing into a wall, Nex spinning from her hand.
“Right,” she snarled, leaping up off the floor and dragging a pair of butterfly swords from a sheath. “No more games.” Then she raised her voice to be heard over the melee in the room. “Kill them,” she roared. She made an executive decision and hoped she wouldn’t live to regret it. Their orders were only to kill if there was absolutely no other choice, but there was no way they could allow these creatures to live, it would only be putting them out of their misery a little sooner than the Council itself would. She saw Julius’s gaze flick to her, question in it. “Do it,” she snapped, then frowned, wondering why her wolf-man hadn’t attacked again. She cast around in the dark for it and found it standing immobile, but not willingly. Rage contorted its already misshapen features, and it was clearly fighting to move. Standing upright on two deformed human legs the wolf-man stood well over eight feet tall. Gabi then noticed James a few feet away breathing hard, his hands out in front of him.
“Quickly,” he gasped out between clenched teeth.
Tim was standing next to him, motionless, horror frozen on his face as he stared at the wolf-man. Gabi didn’t hesitate, she charged. A quick slice with a butterfly sword hamstrung it, bringing it crashing to the floor. Gabi felt James’s strength give out as the creature suddenly flailed towards her again. A last vicious downward stroke with the other sword finished the job. The creature’s head rolled a few feet away, where it’s now dull green eyes glared balefully at her from the dark. A repulsive shudder ran through her as she turned to check on the bigger battle.
Her order had the desired effect. The rest of the wolf-men were quickly being dispatched now that the Vampires weren’t trying to keep them alive. The last one had been dealt a blow to the spine and only had use of its arms and head, but it was still trying to pull itself towards its attackers.
“Finish it,” Julius growled to Fergus, who quickly and efficiently decapitated it with his broadsword. “You okay?” he asked, making his way back to Gabi.
“Fine,” she assured him. A couple of bruises from her encounter with the wall wasn’t going to slow her down. “You?”
He grinned in the dark. “Just warming up,” he purred.
His energy was infectious. Gabi couldn’t help grinning back.
“So, Mr King has some surprises in store for us,” she noted, trying to avoid having a good look at the grotesque bodies of what must once have been men lying in pieces around them.
“A real live Doctor Evil,” Julius said, the humour vanishing from his face.
“James, you okay?” Gabi checked, looking over at the Hunter.
He was still upright, but bent over, his hands on his knees, like a marathon runner at the finish post. “Yeah,” he gasped. “That thing…” he dragged in another breath, “was huge.”
Alexander sauntered up to them. “The rest are dead. There were seven of them, including this one,” he reported.
“The others haven’t changed to human shape either?” Gabi asked him, indicating the corpse of the wolf-man, which still looked exactly like a monstrous amalgamation of man and wolf.
“No,” Alexander confirmed, “they also look the same.”
“So not Werewolf, then.” Gabi chewed on her lower lip worriedly. In true Werewolves, the lycanthropy virus died moments after the death of the host, and the body always Changed back to its original form.
“What’s wrong with him?” Alexander nodded towards Tim, who still hadn’t moved or changed expression.
“Uh, I’m going to go with shock,” Gabi said, going over to snap her fingers in front of the Werewolf’s nose. “These creatures are quite literally a walking nightmare to a Werewolf’s mind.”
Tim blinked and then focussed on her.
“Tim,” she said sharply. “Are you with us?”
“Yeah,” he gasped. “Yeah, those things, they…they…” he trailed off.
“Tim, we need you to go and find Kyle and Derek. Can you do that?” Gabi asked. “You need to tell them about the wolf-men. They must get the word out. If any others are found, they are to be destroyed.”
Tim nodded, but d
idn’t move.
“Tim,” she said again, “have you got that?”
“Yeah.” He nodded, still staring forward. “Kyle. Tell him, wolf-men. Destroy them.” He turned and practically fled the building.
Gabi took a deep breath and turned back to the rest. “Ready to see what other horrors await us?”
The team formed back up and cautiously made their way through the doorway into the corridor beyond.
They ghosted down a narrow passage; a few dim, back-up lights illuminated the way. A door led away to their right. Charlie and Fergus took up protective positions on the far side of the door, watching the passage ahead while the rest prepared to see what lay behind the door. This time Julius left Marcello to kick the door in. As it burst inward, the team charged in, prepared for anything. It was empty. A large room filled with heavily reinforced steel cages the size of your average jail cell. There was several feet of space between each cage, enough that the inhabitants wouldn’t have been able to reach each other. The doors to all of them stood open. Each cage contained a mattress and very little else. Open holes in the floor emitted the gag-inducing stench of raw sewage. This was one of the rooms Kyle had been worried about. It was apparent that this was where the wolf-men had been housed until they’d been unleashed against the team.
Gabi nodded towards the ceiling. “I guess he knows we’re coming now,” she said as a surveillance camera rotated silently to focus on them, a red light blinking owlishly. There were half a dozen cameras throughout the room, but only the one was operating at the moment.
Julius flicked a hand nonchalantly at the camera, and it simply vaporized into dust particles.
Gabi reached out a hand to catch some of the particles as they drifted towards the floor. “Cool,” she drew out the word, “fairy dust.”
“Let’s go, Tinkerbell,” Alexander said, knocking her with his shoulder on his way past her.
She aimed a kick at his rear, but he was too fast.
They continued down the darkened corridor. A second door appeared to the left of the corridor. This one was locked and secured by a keypad. Fergus aimed one of his size 13 boots at it, and it gave way with a startled shriek of metal. The team braced, fighting positions held, weapons still drawn. Nothing happened. Nothing leapt out of the dark at them, no sound came from inside. A distinctly wolfish scent drifted out to envelop them like an unwanted phantasm. After a second of no attack, Marcello and Fergus darted inside, closely followed by Charlie.
“Holy fookin’ Christ.” Fergus’s voice echoed softly, revulsion clear in his tone.
There wasn’t enough room for the rest in the doorway, but Gabi impatiently dove between the Vampire bodies, squirming to get to the front to see what was inside.
“Whoa,” she said, coming to a halt in the middle of the room, just ahead of the Vampires.
“Gabrielle,” Julius exclaimed, frustration in his tone. The Vampires moved to give him access to the scene as well. He stopped right next to her.
The room was a storage area. Stacked on one side were large, metal chests, some over six feet long and two feet deep. The lids of several of the boxes were scattered across the floor, as though opened in a hurry. Inside was every modern weapon known to man, as well as some Gabi had never seen before. Hand guns, assault rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, Tasers, grenades, cases of ammunition. The list would be endless. The view on the other side of room was less deadly but far more horrifying. Metal shelves groaned under the load of preserved medical specimens: foetuses, organs, hands, feet and several skulls and heads. Pieces of Werewolves, humans and true wolves, some bits a grotesque amalgamation of all three.
Gabi fought back the bile clawing its way up her throat. Sick. Jason King was sick. It was as simple as that. The world would be a far better place without him in it.
“What’s inside the cold storage?” she asked, looking towards the rear of the room where a bank of small, rectangular, refrigerated doors were set into a steel-plated wall. She knew she didn’t really want to see what the cold storage contained, but she had to. This was part of the job; this was why she did it. She needed to see what happened when no one cared enough to step in and eliminate evil. It was what made her pull on her fighting gear and weapons and go out there when it would be easier to crawl into bed and pull the covers over her head.
“We can check these later,” Julius began.
“No,” she growled. “Now. I want to see now.”
Fergus and Charlie backed out of the room, to stand watch in the corridor, while Marcello moved to open the first door. Gabi held her breath, dread clogging her throat. The latch clicked open, and Marcello reached in to pull out the steel tray. Empty. Gabi let the breath out and then tensed for the next one. Empty. She was starting to wonder if she was just being paranoid. Drawer three. They could smell the rot and decay the instant the air from inside the hollow touched their noses. Not a strong smell but enough to wrinkle a Vampire’s nose. It was a young man, almost more of a boy, probably no older than nineteen or twenty. Dark, mottled bruises marred the side of his face, his glassy eyes stared unseeingly, and to Gabi’s mind accusingly, up at them. No attempt had been made to show any respect for the body, no sheet or clothing covered the corpse. It simply lay there like a slab of meat. He’d been gutted, the ragged tears in his flesh consistent with enormous claws and teeth. Whatever had attacked him had been trying to eat the boy alive. Gabi clenched her teeth hard to control the sudden tide of nausea. She swallowed.
“Next,” she ordered Marcello.
He slid the boy back into his cold tomb and pulled open another one. This one didn’t seem to have quite the same degree of decay, though with the overpowering scent of death and wolf in the room, Gabi found it hard to tell. The body on this tray looked more like the wolf-men they’d encountered minutes ago. But smaller, lighter-framed, more human looking. Human enough for it to be apparent that it was female. Gabi had no words, but a cold, diamond-hard fury began to burn in the middle of her chest.
“Enough,” Julius said, his voice sharp. He pushed the body back inside its hollow and slammed the door shut. “Time to finish this.” He captured Gabi’s shoulder and spun her to face him. “Let’s finish this,” he reiterated. “We’ll raze this place when we’re done. No one else will ever try this again in our City,” he vowed.
She looked up at him, searching his face. He meant every word he said. She liked the way he said ‘our City’.
“Yes,” she agreed darkly, “let’s go capture a monster.”
They moved silently out of the horror storage room. The passage continued for several metres and made a turn to the right. As they moved, a camera hummed in a corner, swivelling towards them. A quick swipe of Fergus’s broadsword sent it tumbling to the floor in pieces. The passage ended in a half-open doorway. The team paused to regroup at the door before Fergus pushed it completely open, and they began to file through. As Fergus’s head cleared the door frame, a splutter of gunshots erupted towards them. Bullets ricocheted off the walls and steel door, and Julius’s arm slammed Gabi up against a wall. The rest of the Vampires didn’t hesitate to rush inside, directly into the line of fire. Quick and ethereal as ghosts, they disappeared into the room. Gabi glanced to check on James, he was also pressed against the wall, but by his own choice. He didn’t seem to have any bullet holes in him. Gabi pushed at Julius’s restricting arm.
“Lemme go,” she growled.
He released her and spun to precede her into the room. The shots had ceased, and a man could be heard begging, almost crying. Gabi resettled her annoying bulletproof vest into place and quickly caught up with Julius. As they stepped into the room, Gabi felt her eyebrows shoot up involuntarily. It was a laboratory straight out of a Hollywood horror movie.
“Well, dye my hair black and call me Selene,” she said, over the human’s whining.
Julius quirked an amused eyebrow in the dim lighting. “I hope that doesn’t make me Viktor,” he responded.
Gabi actually f
elt her mouth drop open in shock. “You’ve watched Underworld?” she asked in open disbelief.
He cracked a lazy smile. “You know I have a thing for hot chicks in fighting leathers who kick supernatural butt,” he said with a cool shrug, but mirth glinted in his eyes. He liked being the one to shock her for a change.
“I don’t think this is our intrepid Mr King,” Alexander interrupted their aside. He poked his toe at the man cringing on the floor in a far corner of the open-plan laboratory. The man still hadn’t let up his litany of pleading for his life. He was kissing fifty and sported a receding hairline, grey trousers and a white lab coat. His glasses were perched precariously at an awkward angle on his nose, and the scent of fear poured off of him in waves. A pile of handguns, hand grenades and an assault rifle lay in a heap a few feet from him, guarded by Charlie. Fergus held a sub-machine gun nonchalantly in one fist. The muzzle was bent back on itself.
“Please don’t kill me, please don’t. I was only following my orders. Please,” the man stammered.
“Shut up,” Gabi snapped at the man, stepping close to him.
The man subsided, though his lips still moved as though he was praying silently. She crouched down in front of him and brought Nex up under his chin, pressing to get the man to look her in the face. She allowed him to see just how much the thought of his impending death pleased her. He went utterly still, not even daring to breathe.
All Hell Breaks Loose (The Hellcat Series) Page 30