Wicked Creatures

by Jessica Meigs

  “I find it interesting that you’re so fixated with this Ashton of yours,” Ahm was saying, and it took Scott a second to realize she was talking to Zachariah. “Considering how he has spent the past three years that he’s been with you telling you a passel of lies.”

  “What are you talking about?” Zachariah demanded.

  “Don’t listen to her, Z,” Riley spoke up. “She’s just trying to fuck with your head.”

  Ahm ignored her, keeping her eyes focused on Zachariah. “He’s spent the past three years lying to you,” she repeated. Her left hand darted out and closed around Ashton’s throat, dragging him closer to her, pulling him flush against her in a mimicry of intimacy. She must have not been choking him, because he didn’t seem distressed—at least, not from being strangled. “He’s spent the past three years hiding who he really is.”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?” Zachariah snarled. “Ashton hasn’t hidden shit from me.”

  “Oh really?” Ahm’s fingers tightened around Ashton’s throat, and he let out a soft, choked noise, like his airway had been, if not cut off, at least restricted. His hands came up and clasped her wrist, most likely on instinct, but Ahm continued regardless. “Why don’t you tell them, Ashton? Why don’t you tell them who you really are? Why don’t you show them what you can do?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ashton choked out, his voice strained with the grip she had on his throat.

  “Of course you’re going to say that,” Ahm said. She loosened her grip on his throat and stroked his cheek with her thumb. “You’ve been hiding who you are for so long that it’s probably ingrained habit to keep lying about it.”

  “I’m not what you think I am,” Ashton insisted, a full-body shudder of obvious disgust roiling through him at her touch. “I’m really not. I don’t know where you got that idea you told me on the plane, but it’s not true.”

  “Enough with the theatrics,” Riley interrupted. Ahm tore her eyes away from Ashton’s face and moved them to Riley instead. Scott’s stomach felt like it tried to turn itself inside out.

  “Riley, don’t,” he hissed, hoping she’d get the message. Don’t antagonize her. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Don’t make her kill you in front of me. Even as the thought crossed his mind, the wolf buried inside him tried to rise up and take control, and he had to struggle to keep it tamed. The wolf clearly didn’t like the idea of her getting hurt or killed any more than he did.

  Riley didn’t get his message. Either that or she was being stubborn and ignoring what he was trying to tell her. Both possibilities were bad. Really bad. “Why are we here?” she continued, heedless of his warning. “What do you want with us?”

  Ahm shoved Ashton away from her, sending him stumbling a few steps before he was grabbed and righted by the werewolf guy. She squared her shoulders and began walking down the row again. “What do I want? I want the three of you dead,” she said, as casually as if she were discussing the weather or placing an order at a restaurant. “I want the three of you out of my hair, because you keep interfering.” She gestured at Scott with the knife and added, “I’d save him, but I have a feeling I’ll never be able to make him compliant. And you two,” she jabbed the knife she still held at Zachariah and Riley almost viciously, “you have to die. I highly doubt I have to explain why.” She looked to Brandon then and said, “Have at it.”

  “With pleasure.” Brandon moved forward, drawing a pistol from a holster on his hip and aiming it at Zachariah’s head in one smooth movement. Scott’s entire body stiffened, and Riley rocked forward with a jolt, like she was about to lunge to her feet but thought better of it. Katie gasped in obvious terror, and Scott tore his eyes from Brandon long enough to look at her and Ashton.

  The expression on Ashton’s face was a horrible thing to see. It was this mix of fear and some sort of realization dawning over him at the same time. His eye was wide, and he took half a step forward, like he wanted to stop Brandon. “No,” he said. “No, Ahm, please. Don’t.”

  “It has to happen, Ashton,” Ahm said, her tone calm and resolute.

  “No, it doesn’t. Look, I will say whatever you want me to say,” Ashton pleaded. “I’ll tell them I’m the fucking Devil himself if that’s what you want to hear. Just do not kill them.”

  “It has to happen,” Ahm repeated. “Do not think you will be able to convince me otherwise.”

  Brandon hadn’t moved from his position, as if he was waiting on word from Ahm on when to squeeze the trigger. But even though his face was angled down like he stared at Zachariah, arm extended with the pistol aimed at the younger man’s head, his eyes were angled upward, scanning the rafters, until they settled on a single point beyond their heads. He’d spotted Damon. Scott just knew it.

  Scott’s heart pounded hard in his chest, and he strained against the zip-ties, hoping for a little bit of the strength he’d gained from being bitten and turned to make its appearance and help him break loose. Riley was doing something behind her back, surreptitiously, but he could see the slight flex of her shoulders as she worked at something.

  Zachariah, for his part, had barely moved a muscle, save to straighten and tilt his head back to look Brandon right in the eyes, unflinchingly. It was probably the bravest thing Scott had ever seen.

  Then, inexplicably, an alarm, faint, like one on a wristwatch, started to chirp.

  “What the hell is that?” Brandon asked, breaking his eyes away from Zachariah to look for the source of the noise.

  At the same time, Ashton raced forward, sprinting faster and smoother than Scott had ever seen him move, and slammed into Ahm in a full football-style tackle. They tumbled to the concrete in a flurry of limbs. Gunfire erupted, and the sound sent a surge of adrenaline through Scott. That was enough to push him over some invisible edge. The strength flowed into his limbs, and he strained against and broke the zip-tie handcuffs binding his arms behind him. He lunged forward and flung himself on top of Katie, trying to shield her from any danger. His hands had shifted into long-fingered claws without him noticing, and he flexed them against the concrete like he could anchor himself to the ground.

  “It’s okay, Katie,” he told her as she stared at him, a mix of fear and relief on her face. “It’s okay. Just stay down. I’ve got you.”

  He’d barely gotten the last sentence out when a hand closed onto the back of his shirt and lifted him off Katie, flinging him away from her and into the side of the free-standing room. He crashed into it hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs and tumbled to the floor, landing on all fours and looking up to see the Alpha werewolf storming toward him, the muscles in his body roiling as he worked to shift into a wolf.

  Scott shook off his impact with the wall and slid into a crouch, almost a runner’s stance, like he was about to run a marathon and only waited for the pop of a gunshot to signal for him to begin. His eyes blurred, and his vision and hearing became sharper. A low growl issued from his throat, challenging his enemy to come closer so he could tear his head clean off. The other wolf accepted the challenge, because he kept coming, and Scott sprang forward to meet him, lashing out with one clawed hand as soon as the man was within arm’s reach. The scent of blood burst into the air as Scott’s claws rent skin.

  The other wolf let out a short, abrasive howl of pain, one that made Scott’s sensitive ears want to fold in on themselves, and he abandoned whatever instinctive attempts he’d been trying to make toward shifting into his wolf form to go on the attack instead. Scott gave ground as the other wolf advanced, trying to avoid the rapid swipes and strikes the man aimed at him in retaliation, sucking his stomach in to dodge a particularly close one before colliding with the free-standing room again. His opponent aimed some sort of punch at him that he led with his claws, like he wanted to embed the sharp appendages into his face; unable to go anywhere else, Scott dropped to the ground, aiming a retaliatory swipe of his own claws towards the man’s ankle, hoping to slice through his Achilles tendon
and hobble him. The other wolf shifted his leg, and Scott missed, gouging his calf instead.

  Then the wolf hauled his leg back and kicked him right in the chest. The breath left his lungs again, and he felt a couple of ribs crack, but he ignored the lack of air and the sensation of breaking bone, wrapping both hands around the other’s legs and yanking them hard. The wolf’s legs went out from under him, and he went down hard, landing on his back with a whuff as the air rushed from his own lungs. Scott pounced, falling on top of the enemy and launching a flurry of blows at his face, chest, and abdomen. Just as he thought he had the upper hand for certain, the other wolf’s hand shot through his defenses and latched onto his throat.

  What, does this guy have a thing for necks or something? Scott thought irrationally. Then he was on his back again, the other wolf’s hand squeezed around his throat so tightly he couldn’t breathe. Scott wrapped his hands around his wrist, digging his claws in as he bucked and thrashed, trying desperately to get enough leverage to throw him off.

  There was a sudden flurry of activity beyond them, and then a woman’s voice shouted, “Get the hell off my uncle!” Additional weight came down on Scott, and he could see Katie on the other wolf’s back, pummeling him around the head and neck with her fists and elbows, a look of fierce determination in her eyes. The wolf tried to throw her off, but she held on, grabbing him around the forehead and yanking back so his throat was exposed.

  In a flash, Scott remembered the nature documentaries he used to watch, particularly the ones about wolves. The throat, he recalled. When wolves fight, they go for the throat. He jabbed his claws upward, embedding them deep into the man’s skin, burrowing past flesh and muscle, tearing into veins, and closing around something wet and slimy. The wolf flailed against them both, a panicked look in his eyes, and that look died when Scott yanked his arm back and tore the wolf’s windpipe free from his body.

  Riley had begun working on an escape plan from the moment Brandon’s jackasses had dragged her from the SUV and zip-tied her, working through a little trick she’d come up with in her years at the Agency. Which was why, as she knelt on the concrete floor, she’d been carefully and discreetly picking at the threads that held her flannel shirt’s cuff together. The razor blade she’d secreted inside it during the drive from Memphis fell neatly into her fingers, and at the same time, Ashton rushed forward and slammed into Ahm.

  Oh, Ashton, if you liked women, I’d kiss you for your timing, she thought, slicing through her zip-ties with the razor blade. Then she was on her feet, spinning around and grabbing the barrel of the rifle Brandon’s thug had had aimed at her head. She pushed the rifle up, twisted it, and grasped it with both hands, slamming it into the man’s face once, twice, three times. Then gunfire erupted, and a single bullet struck the man in the neck, spraying Riley with a mist of blood. He toppled to the floor. A grin crossed Riley’s face, despite the situation in which she was stuck. And there’s my cavalry.

  Knowing that Damon and Angelique had her six, she turned her attention to the one man in the room that she’d been itching to kill since he’d flipped on her and had her old partner killed. Without a moment’s hesitation, Riley leaped on Brandon, clinging to his back like a monkey, wrapping her arms and legs around him as she tried to manhandle him to the floor. He wasn’t having any of that, apparently, because he pulled her legs loose from his waist and flipped her over his head. She twisted, landed on her feet, and lobbed a punch straight at his nose. He dodged it with a quick jerk of his head and grabbed her wrist, spinning her around and wrenching her arm behind her back. Shards of pain rocketed up into her shoulder, tearing a gasp from her throat.

  “You feel that?” Brandon breathed in her ear. “Hurts, doesn’t it? I could do so much worse to you. But I won’t if you give up this silly fighting and join me.”

  “I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, Vader,” Riley said, breathless from the pain. “Fuck. You.” She slammed the heel of her shoe onto his foot, and when his grasp on her arm loosened, she turned into him and kneed him in the gut, simultaneously slashing out with the only weapon she had on her: the razor blade. She opened up a cut on his cheek, not as deep as she wanted, but only because he jerked his head back at the last second. She pressed the attack, stepping forward and swiping at him again. He caught her wrist and squeezed it so hard her fingers went numb; the razor blade fell to the concrete.

  “Son of a bitch! Stay still so I can kill you!” she snapped. Brandon had the nerve to laugh—actually laugh—at her statement, which only infuriated her further. She lurched toward him, grasping the front of his shirt with her left hand and yanking him toward her, at the same time swinging her right fist forward. The impact of her fist against his jaw was so hard she felt a stab of pain rocket up the nerves in her arm up to her elbow, and she was pretty sure she cracked a knuckle with the blow.

  Brandon took two steps back at the strike then shook it off and grabbed her, lifting her bodily off the ground and throwing her toward the concrete floor. Fortunately, she saw the move coming and managed to go limp, softening the blow, before tucking and rolling swiftly to her feet. Unfortunately, what she didn’t see was the punch that Brandon threw at her immediately after she stood; it slammed into her jaw and sent her entire world toppling end over end. She reeled backward, tripping over her own feet and falling. This time, when she hit the concrete, she wasn’t as prepared for the impact, and her graceless landing was painful as she sprawled on the hard surface.

  Brandon placed a booted foot casually against her chest, pinning her there.

  “Give this up, Riley,” he said, wiping at the blood oozing down his cheek with the back of his hand. “You can’t win. Not against this. Not alone. Give it up while you have a hope of getting out alive.”

  Riley scowled and snarled, “Never, you prick.” She punched him in the knee, but it only made her hand hurt worse. Not for the first time, she wished she had at least a modicum of control over the weird powers coursing through her veins; she’d blast the fuck out of his balls with them if she did.

  Brandon wasn’t fazed by her struggles. He merely pressed his foot down harder against her chest, pinning her more securely to the floor, and pulled another pistol from its holster at the small of his back. She glared at him defiantly, but he wasn’t looking at her; he stared beyond her, his eyes narrowed, and as she watched, he lifted the pistol and took aim at something. She craned her head around enough to see his target, and her heart tried to stuff itself in her throat when she saw that the pistol was aimed squarely at her brother, who’d gotten free of his zip-ties and was tag-teaming with Ashton in a fight against Ahm, a graceful, coordinated display of skill unlike anything she’d ever seen before.

  She swallowed her heart back down, opened her mouth, and screamed out a warning. “Zach!”

  But it was too late. The word had only just left her lips, and he started to turn in her direction, when Brandon fired off three shots in quick succession.

  The second Ashton had tackled Ahm, Zachariah had been in motion, kicking and squirming away from the fight enough to buy himself some space and time to break free of his restraints. He pulled against them, muscles bulging as he tried to get enough leverage to break the plastic ties, but it wasn’t until Riley jumped on Brandon’s back that the ties creaked and snapped under the strain. He threw the zip-ties aside and climbed to his feet. Ashton lay on the concrete nearby, where Ahm had flung him while Zachariah had broken free of his restraints, and he hurried to Ashton’s side to help him stand.

  “You okay?” he asked, noticing the grunt of pain Ashton let out when he straightened.

  “Just fucking peachy,” Ashton snarled. He jerked his chin toward Ahm and added, “Let’s waste this bitch.”

  “Right there with you,” Zachariah agreed. He was weaponless, but that didn’t matter. He had his hands, his fangs, and Ashton at his side. That was all he really needed.

  Without wasting another moment, he raced forward, rushing Ahm at full speed. He wasn�
��t sure if she was unprepared for his attack or if she allowed it to happen, but he slammed into her, driving her back into the researchers’ tables with enough force that it should have knocked all the breath from her lungs and maybe even cracked a few bones. If the impact did have an effect, it wasn’t a perceptible one. She struck out almost immediately, driving the heel of her hand toward Zachariah’s sternum. He avoided most of the blow, twisting so that it merely clipped him, and then Ashton was there, filling in the gap of time after her blow with a retaliatory strike while Ahm was still overextended. It drove her back into the tables again, sending a computer monitor toppling to the floor with a loud crash.

  When she recovered and attacked again, it was with an infuriated snarl and a lunge straight at Zachariah. She slashed at his face with her black claws, aiming for his eyes, and he rapidly retreated to avoid the strike. Her fingers closed on empty air, and Ashton didn’t give her a moment to recover. He stepped into her attempts to claw Zachariah’s face, throwing several rapid-fire punches at her, which she quickly blocked with her forearms. Zachariah moved up to help him.

  As they fought, trading blows, alternating hits in an erratic but coordinated manner, never getting in each other’s way as they tried to beat Ahm into submission, Zachariah noticed something: Ahm never attempted to hit Ashton. Oh, she blocked whatever blows he lobbed at her, sometimes easily, most of the time with increasing difficulty, but whenever she launched an attack, it was invariably aimed at him. It was like she was afraid to hit Ashton.

  Before Zachariah could pursue the thought any further, Ahm’s fist connected with the side of his head, sending him staggering sideways, dazed with the force of the blow. It was like he’d been hit with a bowling ball. If he’d been fully human and hadn’t been turned into a vampire and back recently, the strike would have probably cracked his skull, maybe even killed him. Regardless, his world still spun, and it took him precious seconds to regain his footing and orient himself, seconds that Ashton blessedly bought him with another flurry of punches.