A gruesome feeling consumed Jessy’s soul, knowing the power these beasts wielded. These two Lycans were far more fearsome than the ones she’d encountered in NYC’s fighting rings, although those forced to fight in the city’s underbelly were omegas and gammas. The silver one currently licking his snout, Lucas, had to be a purebred alpha—if her assumption was correct. She wasn’t sure about the black one’s rank. The Lycans and Chetlér were cardinal forces, making the rest of them look like tiny, fluffy bunnies in comparison.
Jessy’s heart pounded a rapid beat, her chest held captive in a tense embrace by her bulletproof vest. Chetlér’s frame and stature were a silent presence of pure, vibrating vengeance, ready to rip loose and deliver chaos when he stepped past her. She expected him to shift, watching the black shirt he wore struggle in its attempt to confine his bulging muscles. A popping sound emitted from him, along with the distinct cracking and hissing of joints as he flexed them. Ever since they’d begun their trip from Chetlér’s mansion, after Landon had sent the location where the missing supers were being transported to, she had heard the sound coming from him. Now, as his massive back was displayed to her, she could clearly see why. His spine twisted under fabric in a slithering curve, a sickening rippled S. Each vertebra individually protruded, creating misshapen bumps along his spine.
“You ready for this, Red?” Landon blew in a low grumble from behind her.
She glanced at him through her helmet’s face shield, and like her, his brow was covered in a fine sheen. Knowing Landon, it was more like a river dripping off him. Hesitantly, Jessy gave a nod, too scared her voice would come out as a weak, shrill whimper.
“I got your back; so do the other boys.” Landon’s tone was serious, his gaze narrowed and sharp. Dead set on following Jessy’s every order.
She was thankful for the words, still slightly shocked about the whole situation. Not only did she have to manage this group of beasts, but she was leading them and Landon’s team. And Cap was the one who believed Jessy was capable of commanding the operation and executing it. The four officers, including Landon had not questioned Abby on her decision. Instead, they had respected it, fell right in line with a pat on Jessy’s shoulder.
“Tell us to wipe the floor with them, Red, we’ll do it!” Anderson had said, back in the van.
“You’ll do good, Jessica.” McHenry had encouraged her.
Brody, a large muscle-head, better known as the silent giant within the precinct, had just given her a salute and uttered, “Boss.”
Cap had also authorized the help of the pack along with Chetlér’s assistance, however, two Lycans could hardly be called a pack—and assistance was a feeble word to use with regard to the demon’s hidden motives, all of which wouldn’t have been conventional in any normal police raid. These were special circumstances, such that none of the other officers currently with them had objected. Jessy suspected this was the precinct’s first official raid by the Para-Super Tact Division.
If this had been New York, with Ryder and her former officers, Jessy wouldn’t even have been on the front lines. She would be where Cap now currently waited, back at the edge of town on standby, waiting on the call for backup.
Jessy took a deep breath. This wasn’t New York. Her new colleagues might still joke around in the office, and make inappropriate sexual jokes about both men and women, but when it was time for action, they’d turned on a deadly face of seriousness in the line of duty, or when they needed to save one of their own.
Way back in her mind, a niggling thought pestered. One truth she really didn’t need, nor want to face right now or ever… Her period had missed the fucking party.
She swallowed the bitter pill, pushing away the thought of her and James, and the need for a serious and ugly confrontation.
Chetlér advanced, and she moved in after him. Both the demon and Lycans probably knew Jessy was using them as shields, but none of them had given any indication they cared.
The bunker was a short stretch of narrow hallway, held together with moldy concrete and rusted steel. A breeze whispered past their helmets from deeper down, the chill of it felt wrong to Jessy. Despite the bubbling-hot wrath spitting in her blood, since her hormones started acting up, and the protective gear she wore, she could feel the lethal cold dip its invisible fingers into her soul.
Chetlér halted at the opening of the hallway, his body going still. The Lycans, naked in human form, stood at the edge of a lift platform ahead of him, in front of an orange railing. They, like the demon, were in a high state of alertness. When Jessy stepped into the open space, her skin pulled painfully tight. The air so frigid it hurt each time she drew breath. Her fingers screamed as she flexed them, toes feeling as if they’d been licked by the dead, they were so numb. Hell, at least her teeth weren’t a rattling, chatterbox like Landon’s behind her.
The space beyond the lift, a gaping mouth to a dark abyss, lay silent and waiting. She hadn’t noticed any frost in the hallway, but here the columns and steel framework of the shaft were coated in ice. Dry ice, evident by tendrils of white sublimation ghosting off it. The atmosphere infected with a deep, dense dejection Jessy could feel polluting her very being.
“This is not good,” Lucas rasped, a thick smog of white passing his lips. His eyes gleamed, bright coals in the darkness as he glanced over his massive shoulder. He jerked his chin in the direction of the ceiling.
Jessy lowered her gun, pointing it to the floor, terrified she might accidentally pull the trigger with the way her hands quivered. On the ceiling, completely blocking it out, like a colony of bats, tattered and decayed they hung. Draped cloth surrounded them like rotting pieces of flesh dangling from decomposing carcasses. Jessy, for the life of her, couldn’t tell what they were, but they were definitely the things responsible for the desolation pressing down on them like a dense mass of smothering air.
Chetlér uttered one word, painting a clear picture for her: “Wihts.”
Jessy swallowed, her spit moving like mud down her throat. Wihts were rare creatures. Not much were known about them, and she’d never read of an account where they’d appeared together in such a large cluster.
McHenry stepped into the space and peered up, gasping at the sight above him. He must not have paid attention to the ice at his feet because he slipped forward, his boots squeaking on the floor. The colony of wihts shivered at the noise, a pulsating wave that undulated through them.
Jessy glanced at the lift platform they needed to use to get to the underbelly of the bunker. Climbing down wasn’t a possibility because it would steal too much time. They couldn’t waste a second with Raven’s fate dangling between who-the-hell-knew-what.
The lift was the fastest option, but at the cost of the sound it would make. Surely, it would wake the wihts from their slumber. Jessy knew the creatures were formerly vampires, but she and her team hadn’t come prepared with weapons to use against—
A loud click of steel sliding into steel sliced through the tense silence. The sound drew the group’s attention to their left. Jessy was close to choking on her own saliva as she stared in disbelief. He stood there in a green-gray German style military greatcoat—something that looked like it had clawed its way out of the Third Reich. The coat’s tail reached just above the sole of his knee-high leather boots. There was a hood drawn over his head. Black leather-gloved fingers pushed a cigarette to his lips, all the while he stood fucking calmly and grinning handsomely. Landon’s body vibrated beside Jessy at the sight of him, making her wonder if he might combust out of his own skin in anger…maybe shock.
Aden casually pulled the cocking handle and loudly slapped it back into place, the noise ringing in the stillness of the shaft, waking the wihts above them.
He raised the assault rifle, resting the butt of the gun against the front ball of his shoulder. The weapon appeared modified, different than any military grade weapon Jessy had seen before. With a tilt of his head, he threw hood back, exposing striking features washed in low light,
and a multitude of cuts and bruises on his face. The beating looked fresh, the bruises swollen, but not yet discolored, the lacerations raw, some still seeping blood.
Aden grinned, not at every one, but right at Landon. “Couldn’t allow my Vati to get hurt, now could I,” and let loose. Bullets ate away at the wihts like greedy moths feasting on worn out curtains that had been exposed to too much sunlight. Some went up in embers, smoldering away, other popped like fragile clumps of dirt, raining dust down on them. And with Aden’s accurate skill, shooting the wihts down was like playing a casual game of Space Invaders.
Landon continued vibrating, shaking and grunting beside Jessy. He pushed his face shield back to bare the vexed sneer on his lips when Aden lowered the weapon, sucked the last of the cigarette, and stomped it dead under the sole of a boot. Aden peered up, a bleak smile on his face. “We need to talk,” he said to Landon, ignoring everyone else. Gone was his arrogant charm, revealing for the first time to Jessy what Landon saw in him: an innocent kid with a quirky, sad smile that didn’t quite reach his dejected eyes. He was hardly a kid, however, Aden was practically the same age as Jessy.
“But first—” Aden’s ice-blue eyes darkened “—I’m here to assist as a rogue agent of the Order of Heaven.” He reached for the emblem on his coat, gripped it in his leather fist and ripped it off, tossing it over the railing to flutter down into the dark hatch.
Oh, fuck her. Landon went pale as dried out-bone, even his mouth stood agape. It explained the reason for Aden’s tenderized face.
Jessy’s attention got drawn to her right when Chetlér grasped the orange railing and leapt over, descending into the darkness.
Both Lycans were already on the platform, their prime asses displayed immodestly. One black, naked and ravishingly glinting in the dim light, the other a soft caramel, enriched with dark-golden hairs. Jessy shook her head, pressing a hand to her womb—there were too many distractions around. She ran the plan through her mind, but she couldn’t know what to expect. Aden squared his shoulders, the movement catching Jessy’s attention. She instinctively shifted her regard to Landon, the man eerily silent next to her, except for his breathing. His gaze stuck to the mesh at their feet, while his nostrils splayed with each exhale.
The harsh sound of gunfire erupting, flashing in burst flares down below, jostled her into him. Landon steadied her with his large hands on her waist. She was thankful she wasn’t wearing heels that could get stuck in the holes of the woven and welded wire mesh. His grip pressed harshly, but she understood why. “Easy, Red,” he whispered, his voice bleak, and Jessy was well aware of Aden taking note from the way he stiffened. The echo of painful human screams vaulting up from down the shaft clamped a death grip around her throat, but a shiver of satisfaction also crawled along her spine, knowing Chetlér was handing these monsters exactly what they deserved. She glanced away when she felt Aden’s stare. Her own words to him —I’m not only here to distinguish between the good and the bad, but I also have a responsibility to protect the innocent, those who cannot fend for themselves—haunted her blood.
Another hallway revealed itself as the lift came to a shuddering stop, this one abundant in eerie green, luminous light, and wide enough for at least ten men to stand in a line across. Along it, stretched on either side, were barred cells, like some old prison. The underground structure didn’t look new, only reinforced. It might have been used as some sort of military facility in the years of the First or Second World War; all Jessy knew was that this was still government property and whoever had repurposed this facility was trespassing or had some major connection in government.
Blood stained the floor in puddles and splatters, the fluorescent light making the plasma appear brighter than it should. Guards lay in piles of limbs and pieces, others as discarded heaps of carcasses… Some still huffed, hissing clouds of gas as their bodies were reduced to a melted mix of bubbling, liquefied innards, skin, and even bone.
The scene was a little path of crumbs Chetlér had planted along his way. The demon had kept to the promise he’d made over the phone, and Jessy was scared that not even a mopping crew could clean up this carnage. Bar cells had been ripped open, warped metal bent and twisted in odd angles, glass splinters glistened in the low light, scattered on the floor like glitter. Each cell they passed, whether it was a glass casing or metal bars, held the same story, the occupant inside was dead.
“It’s better this way.”
She turned to where Aden stood at the mouth of a cell, the glass gone, leaving a rim of tiny splintered teeth along its edges. He stepped into the room, shards crunching under his boots. Jessy watched him bend over a woman, not sure what she actually had been… Her limbs were all wrong, head twisted backwards, legs and arms pretzeled behind her back. The female was no contortionist, her limbs had been forced, broken and healed into that position. Despite this, Jessy could still distinguish by her naked form, that she’d once been female. Aden crouched and reached out, having the decency to lower her eyelids. “The demon granted them a gift in death. No one would have been able to rehabilitate them, or set them back into society.”
Jessy closed her eyes, recalling the thing that had bitten Raven. Even without its eyes, she knew it too was mourning for Death to end its torment. These things—no, victims—had had their humanity stolen from them… For what? Experimentation? To what pointless cause? Innocence taken for vanity? Jessy balled her fists, anger and disgust coursing through her.
This wasn’t fair.
She turned away, not able to look at the cruelty anymore; besides, Raven still needed to be found. She knew she should follow the demon, as it seemed he knew where he was going, she assumed on scent.
“Red, get down!” Landon’s voice rocked through her mind, forcing her to open her eyes.
The air stood still.
A guard leaned against the wall, part of the right side of his abdomen exposed while blood gushed and flowed from the cleaved gap of missing flesh. His face set in a deranged, twisted sneer—the type one saw on a dying man not ready to just plop over and leave this world without taking someone with him—his weapon raised, trembling in his hand.
She heard the gun go off, felt the torrid fire ripping into her body, burning as it ate away at her flesh. The floor caught her in its cold hard embrace as wetness stained her clothes and the fire seared in her side. Fuck, just her stupid luck, the damn bullet had to wedge itself into the one place where she wasn’t shielded.
She heard Landon’s voice, but the pain was a brutal bane. Her blood, pounding in her head, diluted the sound of the guard’s dying gurgle. She blinked, and in the darkness a face appeared in front of her. Blood spilled down the right side of his scalp, running a crimson line along his jaw. “Stay down,” Landon rumbled in short grunting breaths and started undoing Jessy’s vest. But this fear was all consuming and terrifying. Her veins felt cold, ice starting at the tips of her fingers and toes, slowly spreading throughout her body. Her eyes blurred as warm moisture seeped from them. She knew she couldn’t fight this, no one could. Death was imminent, and he had come to claim her as his.
Bla’Gar passed down the hallway and paused at the spectacle to his right. He could still hear their mangled screams and pleas resounding in his ears. Most were in pain, some just squealing in agony, for there was nothing else they could do. Missing limbs, mouth, eyes, faces… It was as if Hell had filtered through and manifested its black stain in a small glimpse. Bla’Gar had ended their suffering, killing each one he had found with a snap of their necks, the tearing out of a heart, or a poison nail into their flesh. They had all welcomed it.
The guards hadn’t.
But this one… He peered at the human behind the glass. Unlike the others, this one was different. Bla’Gar knew he needed to get to Raven, needed to save his pet, but he couldn’t withdraw from the vision in front of him.
He was young, clean but naked. A beautiful boy, soft in his appearance, except for the raw cut to his brow and a swollen, split lip,
with large eyes that coruscated in the light, his skin a creamy consistence of pastel peach. His hair was a delicate gold, mixed with softer ginger strands that gifted a Venetian blond shade. The abundant freckles on his face, chest and shoulders only enhanced his haunting aesthetics.
But it was not his physical appearance that held Bla’Gar captive.
Even with the boy’s injuries, Bla’Gar had to admit, the krypto would cause any to stop and stare. It was the remnants in the boy’s eyes: his irises were a ghostly white. It was a blemish left on a human whose soul was once removed, but with their conscience left intact. The scar would then manifest itself in the bleaching of the human’s irises once soul and conscience were reunited.
This oddity puzzled him, for no legion would ever return a soul once taken, nor leave the body breathing, to wander the earth as an empty shell.
And there was simply no way a demon could remove a soul without the consent of the soul itself.
Bla’Gar sneered when the boy turned, displacing his beauty with the massacred art work of his back. Five, fat, jagged scars, ran in vicious paths from the boy’s lean shoulders down his back, across his right buttock to his thigh. Those nails had been driven in deep, and by the looks of it, the cicatrices were old.
It was not a disfigurement as a result of injury, but a brand. Bla’Gar squinted, trying to recall any supernatural species who claimed their mates in such a brutal way.
His mind came up blank to the maverick.
However, those scars were thick, which meant the boy’s mate was a larger beast, placing him possibly as an alpha... The mate might even be a mixed breed of Therianthropes, consisting of one pedigree lupine and one other bloodline. In this instance, Bla’Gar could only assume the mate was part demon, which would technically make the boy’s mate substantial, but also far more deadly for Bla’Gar to take on.
Neon White Season One: A Tooth, Claw and Horns Chronicle Page 23