Terry whipped him again and again, until he curled into a fetal position and rolled over. Char drove her last stake under the creature’s shoulder blade and into its heart.
It shivered and jerked, unable to get the stake free, but it was already too late. Its death throes continued for another few seconds before it collapsed into itself, a dead shell of what it had been.
It needed energy, and the pitiful state it was in allowed even a piece of wood to do it in.
Terry breathed heavily. “How many are left?” he asked.
“Three. This way.” She walked with a purpose.
“Where’s Adams?”
“That way,” she pointed.
“Adams!” Terry bellowed in his best Marine voice. The rifle fire started from up ahead. Char pulled her pistols and ran with Terry hot on her heels.
***
“How you doin’?” Timmons called in his hardest New York accent.
The creature remained unmoving, watching them from under the shadow of his hat.
“What a fuckstick,” Timmons said, working the adrenaline. He had both his hands and wasn’t as weak as he had been. Ted was at his side with his pack. Timmons knew Lacy was right.
This wasn’t a one-wolf fight.
The Forsaken started to walk toward them. He’d recently fed, so he shouldn’t have been looking for a quick meal. They had that small advantage.
A hungry Vampire would have been far more dangerous.
The Forsaken stopped before them. “My name is Joseph,” he said as if they should have already known. “What brings you to my town?”
Ted stared at the man, showing no fear and no remorse. Timmons looked closely, wondering if Ted was catatonic.
“Scavenging. We’re playing with a power plant not far from here, seeing if we can bring it back up,” Timmons said, expecting that his feeble efforts to shield his mind weren’t successful.
“A Mini Cooper? Right here for all these years? No matter, I have no idea how to make it work and neither do you, but he does.” Joseph pointed to Ted.
“What are you thinking, little man?” Joseph leaned close, but Ted’s eyes remained unfocused. Timmons had given him away.
The Werewolf growled at the Forsaken.
“Dogs, how apropos,” Joseph sneered before continuing. “Civilization? Yes. I’m all for bringing it back. Give me one of them and I’ll leave you alone to accomplish your mission.” The Forsaken looked at James and Lacy as they held hands and looked at each other.
“No can do, boss,” Timmons said, nudging Ted to break him from his self-induced trance or whatever he was doing to shield his mind from the Vampire.
The pack started to spread out.
“Corporal!” Timmons shouted. “Your rifles would come in handy about now.”
James and Lacy unslung their AK-47s and moved to better firing positions.
Joseph watched them with little concern, unable to see anything worthwhile in their minds. The two humans had no time to think. They went from sex to executing, according to their training. Good sight picture, good sight alignment, clear the field of fire, then repeating that over and over as they prepared to shoot.
“Well trained minds, all except you,” he taunted Timmons.
The Forsaken backed away after seeing in Timmons’s mind the engagement fought by Terry and his people against the crazies in Waukegan. Then Timmons’s mind went to the day that he foolishly challenged Terry to be the alpha, the spark of red in his eyes, getting body-slammed at the speed of light. His mate, every bit as strong.
“How interesting. The alpha of your pack and his mate. You don’t know what he is, do you?” Joseph said, narrowing his eyes in concentration and giving up when he realized that he couldn’t kill them all and that these people worked for someone who was stronger and faster than him, considerably so if Timmons’s thoughts were to be believed.
“Two greater than the whole,” Joseph suggested. “I can’t wait to meet them. For now, tata, Were folk. Until the next time our paths cross. Take the Cooper if you wish. I look forward to visiting when the lights are on.”
He walked backwards to be sure he wasn’t going to get attacked until he was far enough away to turn. He looked like he wanted to say something, but held his tongue.
Joseph walked away, quickly disappearing into the distance.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Terry’s mind was twisting in different directions. Char was pregnant? And they had three Forsaken they needed to keep from escaping. Xandrie was already dead and Adams was running around somewhere in the tunnels. And his people were firing at someone or something.
When they reached the main tunnel, they stopped. Bullets were ricocheting past them and further down the slope.
Terry was not a patient man, but he had no intention of running into a hail storm of bullets.
“Cease fire! This is Colonel Walton and I said cease fire!” he commanded. The firing stopped. “We’re coming out!” He stepped out where they could see him.
“What the hell were you shooting at?”
Mark pointed at something past Terry and Char, farther down the road into the mountain. Terry turned and crouched. The AT-4 swung off his shoulder with the quick motion. He caught it before it hit the ground and threw it back over his shoulder.
He couldn’t see anything. “I see you, fucker!” Char screamed and bolted. Terry tore after her. The Forsaken had staked his ground, but seeing the two coming his way, he started to backpedal. Char picked up speed and Terry gave it all he had to keep up.
She ran past the Forsaken and slid to a stop. She knew Terry was behind her and wanted to bracket this one just like they did the last one.
Terry’s eyes started glowing again, faintly, but he was skylined against the lights behind him. The Forsaken stayed in the shadows.
“My brother has died at your hand, a Werewolf and a scum-sucking human,” a gravelly voice said. Terry threw the AT-4 to the side. It had been a stupid idea to carry that thing around.
He uncoiled his whip.
A scream sounded from nearby. Adams. Terry flicked his arm, sending the silvered tip of the whip licking across the Forsaken’s chest.
The Vampire grunted as he leapt toward Char. They met mid-air with a crash, a flurry of blows, and they both fell separate ways, with Char between Terry and the Forsaken.
He dodged around, but the Vamp had sprinted away. Char fired into the darkness until both pistols were empty. She carefully ejected each magazine, catching the empty ones and pocketing them after the full mags were in place. Terry fired where he thought Char had been aiming, but stopped when he heard a human groan after his bullet went through an innocent’s body.
“Dammit!” he snarled as he ran downhill. Char was coming after him. The claw mark across her cheek was already starting to heal.
She fired past Terry and he dodged left. She was a good shot, but the bullet had whizzed too close to his head for comfort. His eyes were still recovering from going from the light to the darkness, when Mark and the FDG started firing again. A few bullets ricocheted down the tunnel past them. He dodged into a side tunnel as Char jumped the other way.
Claws raked across his back and he felt as if he’d been napalmed. Attack into the ambush was what he’d always been taught.
So he powered backwards, trying to pin his attacker against the wall. That earned him claws across his arm and slamming into the wall without pinning the Forsaken there. It was too dark for Terry to see anything beyond shadows. He crouched and drew a figure eight in the air before him with his silvered blade as he rallied himself through the pain.
The Vampire casually stepped back. Terry howled in rage. His eyes glowed more fiercely, lighting the area in front of him and highlighting his enemy. Terry slashed his whip left-handed while keeping his knife poised and ready to strike.
The first touch of the silvered end of the whip shook the Forsaken’s confidence. He mistakenly thought the red glow was a reflection of his own eyes. He back
ed away. “No human can stand up to us,” the creature intoned, as if forcing his propaganda on Terry would get him to yield.
Terry was done talking. He cracked the whip to the left of the creature, stepped right and buried his silvered blade in the thing’s neck. Terry picked the Forsaken up and drove him into the wall, where he continued to twist the knife.
The Forsaken gurgled through his destroyed throat. Terry spun the creature around and started hacking through its neck with his blade. It caught on the spinal column, but that didn’t stop him. He reared back and plunged the blade into the creature’s chest.
It spasmed and rocked back and forth. Terry left the blade in its chest as he fumbled for the stick he’d tucked through the belt loops in the back of his pants.
It was gone.
“I guess we do it the hard way,” he grumbled as he picked up the Forsaken by its head and started spinning around until he slammed it into the rock wall. When it hit, he twisted it until the neck broke and the head came free. He jammed the knife in through the back of the skull, scrambling its brains with his silvered blade.
“Eat a bag of dicks,” Terry told the head as he dropped it to the ground and kicked it soccer style into the darkness. The scratches hurt, but he was still riding an adrenaline high. The shining knight within insisted that he find his pregnant wife.
***
“What did you tell him?” Ted demanded.
“I didn’t tell him jack shit! He was in my mind,” Timmons argued.
“Your undisciplined mind. He wasn’t in their heads!” Ted pointed an elbow at James and Lacy. “Couldn’t you think of sex or something?”
“What the hell were you thinking of? You looked like a stoner!”
“Nuclear calculations. I was running through the fuel we’ll need to start the reaction in the Mini Cooper. All kinds of stuff needs calculated, why not take the time when we have it?” Ted stated logically.
“But a Forsaken was standing right in front of you. How could you ignore that?”
“Easy. I was too busy to be bothered,” Ted said dismissively.
“Talk about bothered, how are we going to move that damn railcar?”
“Steam.” The answer was simple for Ted.
“A steam engine. EMP wouldn’t affect that. Good call, Ted. Where do we find one of those?” Timmons pressed.
“I don’t know.” Ted shook his head emphatically.
“That’s round two. We finished round one by finding it, right where Terry said it would be. Round two is finding us a damn steam locomotive. Let’s head back. There’s a lot to think about.”
James didn’t see Gerry or Kiwi and was worried. He ran around the train car and found them both naked and going at it pretty vigorously, so he backed away, trying not to make any noise. Lacy was following him, but he stopped her. Then he made a motion with his hand and finger. Lacy nodded knowingly and tiptoed away.
They collected the horses and groomed them while they waited. Finally, Timmons was out of patience. “Time to go!” he bellowed.
It took two more minutes for the love birds to show up, flushed and out of breath.
“Well, you suggested it,” Gerry said as he helped Kiwi to the front of the saddle and he sat behind her.
Ted and Timmons started undressing and soon, two Werewolves were running at the front of the pack, with three horses carrying four people trotting to keep up.
***
Adams staggered along a corridor. Char was calling his name, but he couldn’t yell back. A slash across his throat left him unable to howl. He thought that if he changed back into human form, he’d die. His wolf fur was holding his shattered body together. The Forsaken had left him for dead when the second of their kind had died.
You go, Terry and Char, kill all those evil fuckers, he thought. He staggered two more steps and flopped to the ground. The cool stone felt good. If I can only sleep for a while.
“Adams!” Char called as she strode boldly from one corridor to the next.
“Char!” came a call from behind her. She could sense Terry coming after her. He had taken a wrong turn.
“Not that one, to the left,” she yelled back, while feeling her way. Two Forsaken left, but she couldn’t pin down where they were. Humans were starting to appear from the lower levels of the complex and the mass of humanity was cluttering things.
Terry backtracked and hurried down the corridor to find Char. He was relieved when he saw her and she seemed uninjured. His adrenaline rush was fading away and he was having a hard time seeing again.
Char’s eyes glowed purple in the darkness. “Got you good, didn’t he?” she asked.
“Just a flesh wound,” he said in his best Monty Python imitation. “Adams?”
“Up ahead. He’s still alive.” She walked away. Terry followed her more with his hearing than with his eyes. We need to turn on the lights throughout the complex to help the less gifted among those of us trying to kill each other, Terry thought. He stayed on Char’s heels until she whispered into the darkness. “Adams.”
They heard the scrape of wolf’s paw on the stone. Char crouched, finding him on the floor, tragically injured.
“We carry him.” There was no room for discussion. Terry felt his way around the Werewolf and tried to decide how he would pick the beast up.
She started to lift Adams around his chest. Terry ran a hand under his narrow waist and lifted there. He used his off-hand to cradle Adams’ legs, making it awkward to walk.
“We need to hurry. They’re flooding the corridors with people. The platoon will be overwhelmed and then they’ll escape. I can’t have that,” Char stated coldly.
Terry shuffled while twisting and lifting awkwardly. Char hurried forward, pulling Terry along. He kept up by gripping hands full of fur to keep from dropping Adams.
As they approached the main tunnel, light provided a respite so Terry could see what he was doing to improve his grip.
Char yelled that they were coming out and to hold fire. She turned left as soon as she made it into the tunnel and hurried up the ramp. They were relieved to make it past the front line with the men aiming their rifles down the hill.
“Corporal, call up the reserve and get the security squad in here, too. The threat is in here, not out there,” Terry ordered. Blackie ran off with Hank running close behind. Char grabbed Kaeden’s arm to keep him from running, too.
“Just wait here, Kae, he’ll be back,” Char said soothingly.
“What happened to everyone?” Kae asked innocently. Terry couldn’t see himself, but Char gritted her teeth when she looked at him. Adams was in a terrible state as he lay on the roadway, barely breathing. Blood was caked heavily in his fur. Terry was covered in his own blood, the Vampire’s blood, and Adams’s blood.
Terry jogged to the front line of riflemen. “Sergeant,” he said to get Mark’s attention. “There are two Vampires left down there and they’re driving a bunch of people in front of them to confuse us so they can escape. No one gets past you. Don’t kill any of the people, but don’t let them pass you by until we say it’s okay. We’ll set something up farther down the ramp to give us room, multiple kill zones if necessary.”
Second and third squads rolled into the tunnel following Blackie and Hank.
“Third squad, remain here. No one gets past you,” Terry directed, pointing where he wanted them to set up across the entrance. “Stage the survivors in front of you. Have them sit down cross-legged and wait. No one leaves the tunnel.”
Corporal Blackbeard settled his squad into a line of four up front, two behind. He and Hank were to the side to intimidate people into obeying. Kae was just behind them.
Char looked at the setup, wondering how she had brought her adopted son into a life and death fight.
She’d have to rethink her parenting strategy.
Terry moved second squad into position where first squad had been. He ordered Mark to move the squad down the hill and set up a blocking position at the first intersection to k
eep the refugees and remaining enemy from getting behind them until after they’d been vetted by Char.
“Listen up, people!” Terry called as he walked back and forth across the roadway behind Mark’s squad. “Be kind and courteous to every single person who comes up this ramp, and you better have a plan to kill every one of them, too. This is a battle at the far end of sanity. You will have non-combatants thrust into the middle of it all, being used as human shields. I would rather see you throw that person to the ground than let a Forsaken get past you. Now get ready! Trigger discipline, gentlemen.”
Terry coiled and uncoiled his whip. He worked his way through the front line and walked downhill to recover the AT-4. No sense giving the bad guys ammunition to kill members of the Force.
He saw the first people struggling up the slope, barely more than ghosts, shriveled and wearing dirty clothes.
“Hold up, people. We’re going to take you out of here, get you away from the leeches. Just point them out to us and we’ll take care of the rest.”
The refugees were unresponsive. They shuffled along, even while Terry tried to hold them up, almost as if they were automatons. Char bumped him as she took her place at his side. The fury started to grow within him again. Once proud people had their minds ripped from them as they became the personal buffet for four Vampires.
Char tapped Terry’s arm. “Showtime.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Do you remember seeing a phone book anywhere?” Timmons asked the four humans. In unison, they shrugged.
“You don’t know what a phone book is, do you?” They shook their heads. If he had one to show them, then he wouldn’t need them to find one.
“Anything that could be burned was used as kindling a long time ago, Gunner,” James offered. “Paper? That stuff’s mostly gone. We’ve found scraps here or there, but no books. It’s easier to find shoes and boots.”
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