Serefini burst into the surveillance room. Blood dripped from his face and down his shirt, but no one commented. Had he waltzed in with his head on backwards and wearing a Hawaiian hula skirt he’d have drawn no more than a cursory glance from any of the controllers. Their collective attention was super-glued to the bank of monitors and the unfolding assault.
“What the fuck are they?” Someone cried.
“There!” George Decarius jabbed a finger at a monitor. On screen, two guards fired sub-machine guns at an elusive Will-o’-the-wisp form. The fleet footed figure moved impossibly fast, never still long enough for the cameras to capture a likeness, leaping from guard to guard with inhuman agility, tracing a zig-zag path through them, sending up fountains of rain water where the lizard-quick feet came down, always one step ahead of the bullets.
At the west corner of the house, tucked away and partly hidden by the building’s architecture, was one of the GPMG emplacements. The creature stood in range of the emplacement, but the gunners remained inactive. “The fuck is wrong with you clowns.” Decarius grabbed his radio. “Shoot it, for Christ’s sake, shoot it.” The creature spirited itself to a position between the two guards, and with what seemed to Decarius a nine foot arm span, reached out, grabbed them by their heads and brought them together. Before their bodies splashed down, the creature loped away, churning clods of turf with its feet.
Finally the GPMG gunners opened fire. Although the exterior cameras were without sound capabilities, they heard the heavy machine guns through the natural acoustics of the house. The high velocity rounds tore up the lawn where the creature stood, but the gunners hit nothing.
At the opposite end of the building, another of the GPMG’s rattled into life. A tempest of raised voices bustled for air-time on the radio; each of the monitor screens depicted frantic activity, several displayed abandoned posts, one screen broadcast a close up of a guard’s lifeless expression, the rain pummeling his open eyes; other monitors showed guards running to and fro, shouting, running, screaming. Several cameras had blown, either from stray bullets or from sabotage; four of the monitors displayed only static.
“Christ, how many of them are there?” Decarius asked.
“Three,” Serefini said. “Two male, one female.”
“Two male and a female what?”
Serefini leaned on the console, his eyes flicking across the screens. “Pull everybody back,” he ordered. “Back to the house. Do it now.”
Decarius grabbed the radio. “All guards, all guards – fall back to the house. Get your goddamn backs to the wall. Repeat, drop what you’re doing and fall back.”
On three of the screens several groups of guards ran along paths and through shrubbery, their weapons held high. Someone slipped on the saturated lawn, went down heavily, murky water splashing up around him. No one stopped to help.
“Bar the doors and the windows,” Serefini told others in the room. “Get to it!”
“The men aren’t inside yet...” Decarius said.
“Fuck the men,” he said, grimacing. “They’re history.”
Manning the machine gun nest at the southeast corner of the house, forty-five year old Harry Corrigan crouched behind his weapon. His fingers gripped the trigger handles so tightly his forearms trembled. A sudden rustle of movement in the bushes directly ahead of him and he swung the GPMG in that direction, his fingers straining at the trigger.
The disturbance shook the branches, releasing a fall of water from the leaves above, which further saturated the several guards that burst from the tree line. They were slipping and sliding in the mud, fighting to stay ahead of one another. “What the hell…”
Then he saw the creature they fled. All the strength drained from his arms. It stood seven feet tall, and though shaped like a man, looked anything but. It walked upright on legs whose architecture appeared a human-canine hybrid. Remnants of dark clothing clung to the odd angles and twisted bone structure. It looked as though it might fall over if it tried to walk, but that proved deceptive to the nth degree.
It moved on its toes, and with cheetah speed intercepted the trio of men as they burst onto the lawn, its wolf-like head snapping at their faces. One after the other they fell. A fourth guard broke from the trees and tried to flee, but with a single stride the beast caught him, clamped an enormous mouth over his shoulder, and shook him as a dog shakes a bone.
Finally, Harry Corrigan’s inertia snapped. He leaned into the GPMG and opened fire. With the first rounds he scored several direct hits. They punched into the creature with the force of a riot cannon, sending it cart-wheeling across the ground. But then like an alley-cat, it twisted back onto its feet.
Moving more quickly than he could adjust his aim, it raced in a decreasing arc toward him. Harry Corrigan didn’t scream – he howled, his hands fisted around the trigger, the bullets sending up columns of rainwater at the creature’s heels. Several more rounds smashed into the monster, jerked its shoulder, but failed to bring it down.
The weapon fell silent as the bullets dried up; the trigger fell on an empty chamber. Harry struggled to unsling his HK, falling backwards against the wall. But the creature pounced into the nest, and before Harry Corrigan fell, he saw his attacker spring away from him and disappear down the side of the building. Steam rose from both his torn throat and the GPMG’s red hot barrel, which had begun to melt. Raindrops hissed on contact with the metal.
Only ninety seconds had elapsed since the alarm first sounded.
Several guards clustered at the front entrance, hammering on the door with the butts of their weapons. Their pleas went unanswered. Three of them stood back to back, fighting for space, as though playing a kid’s game.
A guard in full infantry garb moved across the front lawn in slow circles, a HK in both hands, firing indiscriminately. Bullets careened off the stonework, smashed windows, terracotta pots exploded, half a dozen floodlights blew, casting sudden shadows over the building’s facade. The guard was baptized in blood, but had no visible wounds. He drew a line of fire low across the front of the building, hitting two fellow guards who were scaling the barred windows.
George Decarius stared at the monitors, his eyes eating up the rest of his face. He thought briefly of Fletcher Regan’s assassination, the similar horrors their surveillance people must have witnessed. The carnage. The breaching of Durant’s high level security had proved swift, devastating, and now all but complete. Only those in the house remained.
Outside, the firing ceased; the only sounds the alarm, the pounding rain and the frequent rumble of thunder. The bank of monitors covering exterior surveillance showed nothing but lines of rain pummeling dead bodies, abandoned guard posts; half a dozen monitors were dark. The assassins had collectively blitzed exterior security in less than two minutes.
With the siren blaring and the blue lights flashing, Joshua threaded the car through the traffic, which parted like the Red Sea for him. But Stromboli Mansion still lay several miles away. The worm of dread in the pit of his stomach began to squirm. The clock was at zero – the hourglass empty. Darkness settled like a suffocating blanket over the city. He shook the steering wheel, snarled at the speedometer, willing the vehicle to go faster.
Swirling blue lights suddenly washed the cruiser’s interior. Joshua checked his rearview mirror. A line of four or five police cars came up behind him, moving fast. The nearest car flashed its stop lights. “Give yourself up, son.” Eduardo said from the back seat. “Don’t make it worse.”
Joshua put his foot down.
With a heavy splintering smash, the double doors of Stromboli Mansion finally gave. Before the debris settled, Nathan Grenire sprang through the gap. A dozen automatic weapons fired on him; few found their target. With a burst of acceleration he crossed the main hall and scooted down the west corridor. His head snapped slickly left and right. His lupine instinct rose and matched his human awareness, became its equal, the two existing in perfect harmony. Every sound, every scent, every incidence of movem
ent he absorbed and deciphered with his super-charged senses in a fraction of a second. By comparison, the guards moved in slow motion. Nothing in his path challenged him. The gangsters docile, virtually defenseless. He was unrivalled.
Two men dressed in combat fatigues burst from Durant’s study. In the characteristic sluggishness raised and fired their puny weapons. Nathan dodged left and right and then dropped into a forward roll. Bullets flew harmlessly over his head. He emerged from a coiled crouch three feet from the guards. Too late to readjust their aim, the guards could only look down in horror as Nathan sprang from his tuck, driving clawed hands into their throats.
Caught in the landslide of his own racing metabolism and the wild panic of the guards, Blayne Cortland abandoned awareness and fully embraced the instinctive pull of his bestial alter-ego. Specifics of the assassination lay buried so far beneath his aggression they all but ceased to exist. He crashed through the mansion with abandon. Blood never tasted so sweet, the kill never so gratifying, the screams of his victims never so musical.
A burst of nearby gunfire drew him like a beacon. He snapped his head toward the sound, homed in on its source, striding over a trail of bodies. At the far end of a corridor he saw the other of his kind, Melissa, as she chased down a fleeing guard. With a heron like dip of her head she opened his jugular. The man fell, his hands clawing and fumbling at his spurting throat.
Melissa saw Blayne.
Their eyes locked. She cocked her head, the snarl smoothing away as she reassumed the appearance of a girl. Took several paces toward him. “What are you doing”?
Words were a nonsensical jumble; sounds and sibilance he could not decipher, could not hold in his head - did not want to hold in his head. The killing instinct raged through him and he snapped at the air like a rabid dog. The desire had a narcotic affect on him, and like an addict, was unable to ignore the call. He spun away from Melissa and retraced his path along the upper corridor.
Nathan searched the remaining ground floor rooms on the west wing but found neither Durant nor Serefini. A growing sense of urgency put him on edge. He and the others should be gone by now. They had overshot their stay, and so risked confrontation with the authorities.
But only after Durant and Serefini were corpses would he leave. They were here somewhere. Or they would not have gone to so much trouble aligning defenses. Oh yes, they were still here, all right. They were hiding.
Deliberately assuming a quasi-human form, he stalked the corridors, shouting. “Durant!” He struck the walls along the way, plaster dust puffed out, doorframes buckled. “Duraaaaaannnnt!”
Brief gunfire rumbled in the opposite wing. An out of control roar shook the windows; a guard shrieked the high pitched wail of a hysterical woman. Nathan looked up, narrowed his eyes, and cursed. Blayne was misbehaving; should he find Durant while in this state, he would tear him apart. Durant was his.
Nathan stalked the corridors until he found Blayne in an upstairs room. Three corpses lay at his feet; a fourth man, still alive but choking on his own blood, tried to crawl away. Blayne held a chunk of flesh in his claws; he tore at the meat, gorging himself on the fresh blood, ravenous as a wild dog starved to the point of insanity.
At Nathan’s arrival Blayne rose to his feet, blazing crimson fire in his eyes, and he dropped the pieces of flesh. He no longer resembled the human he once was; his renegade side held sway; he retained the animal features: a snout instead of a mouth; completely furred body; hind legs that defied logic. His flesh haltingly churned and changed, and he half reassumed a human guise.
“Durant.” Nathan said, stepping up to him. “Find him and bring him to me.” He raised a sharp-clawed index finger. “I want him alive.”
The rabid dog look never leaving his eyes, Blayne made a lunge for the door. A deep growl rumbled in his throat: “Durant!”
Nathan grabbed him and slammed him against the wall. Paintings fell from the picture rail and the domed glass of a wall sconce shattered. Blayne growled and instinctively fought back, but could not overcome the superior strength of his creator. Nathan held him off the floor. His fingers disappeared into the flesh of Blayne’s throat. “Alive.”
Several minutes after she crawled into the closet, Genna heard the first of the doors adjacent to hers being broken down. Several short bursts of gunfire followed. And then the inevitable screaming, a desperate, chilling sound. She realized the assassins were methodically cleansing the rooms, killing the men, working their way down to her.
She hugged a pile of linen and tried to stay as still as she could. Light from the outside shone through the louver slats into her hiding place. From where she hunkered down she could not see the door, but she thought she heard someone right outside the room. Floorboards creaked.
Crash!
Locks and hinges exploded in a shower of screws and splinters. Six and a half feet of solid oak back-flipped across the room and hit the far wall beside the exposed balcony. She cried out reflexively, but the racket the intruder made drowned out her voice, or so she hoped. The wooden floor creaked under heavy footsteps. She heard deep, fierce respiration. She felt horribly sure the sinister presence knew she was here, sniffing out her whereabouts like a bloodhound.
She pressed her face into the linen, not daring to breathe. Her mouth slowly filled with blood and she desperately needed to cough, so she pressed harder, sucking oxygen through a dozen layers of fabric. Blood bubbled from her mouth and wet the cloth. She gagged, came within a second of vomiting, but somehow held it back. Lack of oxygen made her dizzy. The dim closet started to darken further. Her heartbeat became a bass drum in her head, surely loud enough for anyone within normal earshot to pick up.
Her body was too tense, rigid almost, and she willed herself to relax. Twenty seconds passed, during which she managed to stay quiet. But instead of leaving the room, the intruder paused in the doorway, its shadow stretching across the floor, reaching to where she hid.
One of the patrol cars drew alongside Joshua, gave a brief whoop of its siren, the driver indicating for him to pull over. Joshua ignored him and stamped on the pedal. The car surged ahead, weaving through traffic, almost tail-gated a car in front, managing to avoid it by swerving into the opposite lane.
Then surprisingly he found himself drawing level with Stromboli Mansion.
He yanked the steering and the car skidded across the opposite carriageway and through the oncoming traffic, several cars tail-gated the ones in front, but Joshua slipped through unscathed. At the last moment he saw that the gates were closed. He locked his arms against the steering and stamped again on the accelerator, grimacing as he rammed the point where the double gates met. The impact threw him against the dashboard. The windshield shattered and the hood sprang up, but the gates held. Behind him, one after the other, police cars stopped behind him.
Joshua kicked open the door and scrambled out into the rain. Steam billowed from the cruiser’s radiator, shredded in the wind and blew away. Joshua grabbed the bars of the gate. A light burned in the gatehouse, but it was ominously deserted. Fear tightened his chest. Flowing down the left hand camber of the drive, a stream of murky run-off carried leaves and twigs and grass clippings, and then a man’s brown loafer. As he watched, the murky water became discolored with the darker hue of blood. The smell confirmed his suspicions.
A voice behind him. “Freeze!”
Without looking back, he leapt up and vaulted nimbly over the gate. He heard the report of a pistol and a bullet chiseled paint off the gate next to his hand.
Thirty yards along the driveway a guard in combat fatigues and body armor lay with his head and shoulders in the gutter. Something had taken a bite out of him.
Joshua saw the wound and terror filled his heart. He sprinted toward the house. “Genna!” Automatic gunfire and shouting issued from several locations within the building; the shouting became shrieks – the high-pitched, chilling sounds of mortal terror.
Rain hammered the grounds mercilessly. A flash of lightning,
followed instantly by thunder, illuminated the complex. Muted outlines of numerous bodies littered the forecourt. Weapons were scattered among the dead, dozens upon dozens of spent shell casings, and here and there, diluted splats of blood. A battlefield of fallen soldiers.
Joshua climbed the steps among chunks of broken masonry. The heavy oak door rested on the hall floor, its splintered frame still attached; broad claw marks scarred the varnished surface. He paused at the threshold. An overpowering smell of death emanated from the opening. Gun-smoke and plaster dust swirled in a bluish haze in the center of the hall.
Joshua stepped inside where he instantly came under fire. Two guards standing side by side against the wall beneath the balcony fired as one. Several rounds punched into his midriff before he cut left down the nearest corridor. Bullets chased him out of sight. And as he fled the gunfire, he felt and absorbed the overwhelming presence of renegades.
Bodies were strewn along the corridors. The walls, the floors, the ceilings, the very air he was breathing echoed with the heat of battle. Although these people were dead, their bodies cooling, Joshua still heard their screams; still saw their terror, he could taste it.
He opened his mouth to shout Genna’s name, but at the last moment bit down on his words. If she were here and undiscovered, then her answering could draw the renegades to her location. “Damn,” He moved quickly but cautiously along the corridor, turned the first corner and came face to face another man. Joshua swung up the Beretta and almost fired. But then realized the wild-eyed stranger was his own reflection in a mirror. He lowered the gun.
Wolfkind Page 26