“One of the lights on my scan just flared and died,” Reaper announced.
“Meaning?”
“She’s gone.”
The moment I hit the corner, I saw what Reaper’s disappearing light meant.
Susan was on the ground in a pool of blood. More accurately, what was left of Susan was on the ground in a pool of blood. The wolves had shredded her. Let’s put it this way, I doubt even dental records would have verified her identity at this point.
“Damn it,” I hissed. “Are those fucking things still around here anywhere?”
“About three blocks away,” he said, pointing, “and moving fast.”
I sat down and put my back against the nearest wall, fighting to get my breath back.
Sometimes this job really sucked. Susan came out to try and do the right thing and this is the thanks the universe gave her in return. I wanted to pound the pavement, chase after those wolves and waste each one of them, but it was hopeless. They were too fast and they were already long gone anyway.
“You okay?” Reaper asked.
“I’m pissed off, but I’ll be fine.”
He nodded and squatted down beside me, not saying anything for a few minutes. It was getting more and more difficult to deny how nice it was to have a partner again. Even when it was just for sharing moments of misery.
“Am I correct in guessing that we’re going to Alcatraz?” he asked finally.
“Yep.”
“Thought so.”
“With any luck, we’ll find the pricks who killed Susan there by the time we arrive. They need some payback, don’t you think?”
He merely sighed in response, but I also noticed a gentle nod. I’d more than likely be the one exacting the killing side of things, regardless of how Reaper felt, and that was fine with me. His experience made him what he was and mine formed me. I didn’t fault him for it. We were who we were, and it seemed we complemented each other perfectly.
I glanced up again at Susan’s remains.
“Fuckers,” I spat.
“Indeed,” agreed Reaper.
Chapter 22
He did some sort of light-show on Susan’s remains and sent her down to the morgue. Basically, it looked like he’d been able to get everything together, including the blood. Yet another interesting ability. This one would help us avoid having to ask Roger to send up a cleaning crew. That’d help keep the chief happy, if nothing else.
As always, Reaper was a bit wobbly when he finished his spell.
I steadied him.
“The problem as I see it,” I said, trying to get his mind back in the flow of Retriever duties, “is that we don’t know precisely where Bane is hiding out inside of Alcatraz. If we just pick a spot and portal in, we may land right in the middle of his pack. That’d obviously suck.”
“Actually,” Reaper said, “I do know where he is.”
“Huh?”
“When I did the memory pull on the wolf in Dr. Hale’s office, I learned very little, but I did see the location of Bane.”
“Wait,” I frowned, “so you knew he was in Alcatraz?”
“No. I didn’t know what building he was in, but I did see his location inside the building.”
“Oh.” I then raised an eyebrow at him. “But if you’ve only seen the room inside the building, how will you be able to place it?”
“Because it looked like a mess hall.”
“Ah.”
“So,” he continued, “if we can transport to one of the upstairs cells on the opposite side of his location, we should be safe. I just need to study a map.”
He took out his datapad and started tapping around. Better him than me. I was more the type who just showed up wherever I was needed and started shooting.
“You do realize that they’ll be expecting us, right?” I asked. “There are bound to be runes everywhere, and knowing what Keller and Azura have been capable of thus far, I’d say we’re in for quite a challenge.”
“I agree, but I don’t see any other options, do you?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “One thing I will say is that we need to wipe out those damn runes as fast as we can.”
Reaper couldn’t see runes, but he’d damn sure felt the effect of them. Again, another complementary aspect of our partnership.
I did have to admit that I was hoping Azura would be on location so I could give her a nice kick in the mouth. If Keller was there, I could see making a stew from his…well, you know.
I was never all that fond of mages and wizards. Twisting the world’s energies around like they do is just fucked up, in my humble opinion. No, they weren’t all bad people. In fact, most of them were really nice and had aided in forwarding society, but I’d just always felt that they were wrong somehow. Not that fae, pixies, and so on were right, from a normal’s point of view, but I had a particular dislike for magic.
Watching your parents get killed before your eyes by a mage did that kind of thing to you.
“Is there anything else we should be thinking of before going in there, Reap?” I asked, hoping he’d have some additional bits of wisdom from all his study. “Does this Bane dude have any other nefarious capabilities up his sleeve?”
“None that I’m aware of,” he replied. “However, we must remember that Keller has manipulated him somehow. It takes a certain kind of wolf to be a pack leader, and Bane’s history does not exactly paint him out to fit that mold.”
“Which means Keller fucked him in the head.”
“That’s a disturbing image,” Reaper said as if he’d just seen something worse than the remains of Susan’s shredded body. “Honestly, Piper, these things you think of are—”
“It was said rhetorically, Reap,” I groaned. “I meant that Keller messed with Bane’s thoughts. Twisted him around. Use a little common sense, yeah?”
“Ah. Sorry.”
Even if Reaper and I remained partners for a hundred years, he’d probably still misconstrue some of the things I said. Hopefully Agnes would help straighten him out in areas aside from humor. Great, now even I was hoping the turtle could help my partner further acclimate to society.
Clearly I was in need of a psych eval.
Ugh! Why would I even think that?
“Anyway,” I said before my brain could come up with an answer, “are we ready to go?”
“Maybe we should get some backup?” Reaper suggested.
I winced at the suggestion. “That’ll just mean more coordination, Reap. Let’s do some recon first and then we’ll see what we need.”
He shook his head at me. “Okay, but you may wish to have your gun prepared.”
That wasn’t something I would have expected him to say, considering how he abhorred guns, but he was right.
I held up my gun with my right hand and put my left on his shoulder. He pulled up his sleeve and began tapping away until his tattoo began to light up.
It was go time.
Chapter 23
I wasn’t familiar with the layout of the prison because this was the first time I’d ever been here, but I knew we were on the second floor in a cell that was near the back wall. I also knew that there were runes all over the place.
“Shit,” I said. “They’re everywhere.”
“Who?”
“Runes. Notification, shields, and some I don’t even recognize, but I’ll bet your scanners are down again.”
“Yes,” he said after a moment. “Connector is out, too.” He then tapped on his tattoo and shook his head at me. “Nothing.”
“And this, Reap, is why we have guns.”
I fired at the nearest rune and it cracked in half. Then I fired at the next one and the Nail bounced off. So they’d shielded some. Great. I walked right up to it and kicked it, snapping it in half.
“Sure would be nice if you could see these things,” I remarked. “Damn wolves are going to be here any second and we have to break these down. Problem is that half these boards are just blank.”
“You point
and I’ll kick.”
It was worth a shot. I pointed. He kicked. It broke.
We snapped about ten of the damn things before the first wolves arrived. I spotted them on the lower level. They were staring up at us. Normally that would mean we had time, but these guys jumped up and started climbing. A normal couldn’t have managed that, obviously, but wolves were notoriously not normal.
I fired Nail after Nail, blowing them back in a screaming rage as they fell to the ground.
Between each hit, I pointed at another board. I was the killer and Reaper was the destroyer of information.
Apropos.
“There are too many of them, Reap,” I croaked, looking through the various cells and seeing the rune boards everywhere. “They definitely knew we were coming.”
“What can we do?”
How the hell was I supposed to know? Just because I could see runes didn’t mean I was a fucking expert on them.
I snapped my fingers.
“Shields,” I said. “We only need to take out the shields. From there I can blow the shit out of everything else.”
We ran to the next cell and I pointed at the shield board. He kicked it and I fired Nails into the other boards. We repeated this for the next two cells before going back to the first cell.
“Use a fireball and blow out the wall here,” I commanded. “We’re going to need room to fight.”
He did and the explosion rocked the place, blowing away the wall, the bunk, and all that. Unfortunately, it not only took out the dividing wall, but also the cages and part of the main railing. When the fireball hit the other side, the shield runes stopped its progress.
Those fireballs were insane.
At least we had room to move when the fighting started, and I had a feeling it was about to start pretty soon.
“Can you hear me, Reap?”
“I heard that,” he said, his head snapping up. “My scans are working, too. But only a short distance and only on this floor. My tattoo is also back online.”
“Well, we have that going for us anyway. I hate to say it, but you may need that fireball if we’re going to get out of this alive.”
“Yeah,” he replied while releasing a long breath. “I know.” His head jerked and looked past me. “Two wolves coming.”
I spun to fire at them but they were too fast. The first one was on me, knocking me to the ground and sending my gun flying.
Reaper dived toward the other one, but I couldn’t see their exchange due to the white-hot pain that seared through my head. The wolf was biting me.
Now, most people would freak out at a time like this, but I’d learned over the years that freaking out got you killed. Of course, so did getting your head crushed by a set of powerful werewolf jaws.
So I did the thing that nobody seems to think of when being attacked, and you may judge me all you want, but I’ll just say that it’s a pretty fucking effective move.
I clutched the wolf’s balls in my hand and effectively neutered him.
His shriek of pain popped my eardrum, but at least I was alive. Woozy as hell, yes, but able to moderately function.
When I got to my feet, the wolf was writhing around on the ground in agony. I kicked him twice more in his nether region and he passed out. Then I moved over and smashed his head with the heal of my boot.
I nearly fell over as blood poured into my eyes.
Getting bitten by a werewolf was a lot less fun than you might imagine. Now, I’m not saying that you would actually think it would be fun, but whatever you do think it’d feel like…it’s a lot fucking worse than that.
Reaper was wrestling with the other wolf, who was now on top. My parter made no sounds as he fended off his attacker, which told me that he was not one to panic either. To be fair, he knew what was on the other side. Not that he’d go there, due to his immortality, but knowing is half the battle regardless.
“Grab his balls,” I yelled through the connector as the world decided to spin as if I were just finishing my tenth shot of vodka. I hit the ground. “Rip the fucking things off.”
“What?”
“Do it, Reap!”
A gurgled cry sounded and the wolf fell off of Reaper, gnashing his teeth and whining something horrible.
My gun was within reach, giving me the opportunity to put him out of his misery.
“You’re hurt,” Reaper said, rushing over to me and brushing the hair out of my eyes. “That looks really bad.”
“I’ll heal.”
“I know,” he said with a nod, “but I don’t know if you’ll do it in time. There are more coming.”
“Aren’t there always?” I said, trying to smile. “Help me up.”
He did and I staggered over to the two dead wolves.
“Help me drag them out of here.”
“I’ll do it,” he replied, grabbing the first one and moving him out of the cell. “Where am I putting him?”
“Turn him so the next set of wolves can see what we’ve done to them.”
“That’s warped,” replied Reaper with a thin smile, “but I can’t think of a better deterrent. Honestly, I think that was more distressing to do than using the fireball, Piper.”
“Especially if you were the guy on the receiving end,” I noted.
Chapter 24
My plan worked. Apparently the wolves were more afraid of our neutering technique than they were of Lucien Bane. Somehow I had the feeling that wouldn’t last long, though.
I only needed time to heal up enough to lose the damn dizziness anyway. Five minutes should do that, but it’d be fifteen to twenty minutes before I was fully mended.
“I can heal you faster, if you’ll let me,” Reaper said.
“It’ll just drain you even further, Reap,” I noted. “Besides, whenever healers do their thing on me, it pretty much wipes me out. I don’t know why and they’ve never been able to explain it either, but I’ve found I’m always better off just recovering on my own.”
He shrugged at me. “It may be worth a try. I’m not just a standard healer, Piper.”
“And if it doesn’t work, I’ll be lying there useless and you’ll be dizzy and out of energy when the next wave of wolves arrive.” I pushed him away. “Thanks, Reap, but no thanks. Just keep scanning and let me shoot the damn things when any of them get brave enough to say hello.”
He went into scan mode.
I knew he wasn’t happy with my refusing his help, but what was I to do? He wasn’t exactly fond of going on the offensive, though he did tear into that poor wolf’s nuts pretty angrily. Regardless, we didn’t have time to take risks like this, and I was already starting to feel better. Yes, I’d have a headache for a while, but that would only serve to remind me why I needed to end these damn wolves.
“Three approaching cautiously,” he informed.
“This floor?”
“Yes.”
It took some effort, but I managed to get to the cell door. I stayed low and pointed the gun down the hall, firing off a number of rounds.
Grunts and yelps followed.
“They’re gone,” whispered Reaper aloud. “No more on scans yet.”
I had little doubt that Bane was planning to redouble his efforts on finding a way to destroy us, but if he was holding back right now that meant we had time to get closer to him. It was just a shame that we had all these damn runes to contend with.
I needed Pecker. Yes, I realized that sounded wrong.
“Pecker,” I called down through the connector, “can you hear me?”
“Hey, babe,” he cooed. “I was just thinking about you.”
“Not now, okay?” I nearly pleaded. “We’re in trouble and need some help.”
His voice completely changed. “You got it. What’s up?”
“We’re pinned down in Alcatraz and these fuckers put runes all over the place. I’m talking tons of them.”
“That sucks,” he replied. “Wait, are there shields?”
“One in each cell that I�
��ve seen so far.”
“Damn it. Okay, okay. I can send you infused Empirics. They’ll defuse magic, but they won’t destroy the runes.”
I knew I had a head injury, but wouldn’t defusing the magic effectively destroy the runes?
“Uh…”
“I know what you’re thinking, Piper,” he started before I could get my question out. “The magic is only temporarily defused with one of these. You’ll need to throw in the real Empirics right after in order to blow up the actual runes.”
“Ah. Well, that sounds fun.”
It didn’t. The timing that would be required to accomplish that was insane. We needed to have help to accomplish it, and that meant backup.
Ugh.
“Okay, send me as many as you’ve got to my position. I have to talk to the chief.”
“You got it,” replied Pecker. “And be careful, will you? You’re the only chick in this entire place who at least lets me hit on her.”
I cracked a smile at that and then disconnected from him before connecting to the chief.
“Piper? What’s up? Are you okay?”
“I’ve been better, but there’s no time to get into it, Chief.” Then I spit out the three words that made bile rise up in my throat. “We need backup.”
There was a long pause. “What?”
“We’re in Alcatraz and there are runes everywhere. Pecker is sending up Defuser Empirics and normal Empirics, but there’s no way Reaper and I can do this alone. So…we need backup.”
“I’ve got none for you, Piper. Our Retriever mill is down to nothing already. We’ve lost seven more since you two were here last. It’s a damn bloodbath out there.”
Shit. This was definitely the worst night I could remember in my history on the force, and that included the time the vampires decided it’d be fun to attack people during Halloween on the streets of New York.
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