Lycan Legacy - 4 - 5 - 6: Princess - Progeny - Paladin: Book 4 - 5 - 6 in the Lycan Legacy Series

by Veronica Singer

  As expected, the tough soldier slapped his hands down over his crotch—exposing his throat to my lunge. My fangs sank into the soft flesh of his neck and blood fountained into my mouth. It tasted so good, filling a hunger I hadn't known I'd had. Was this the pregnancy craving I had heard about?

  Finished with this prey, I turned to the last. He was smart enough not to attack, but stumbled backward until he was up against the wall. "Please," he whispered.

  "Too late," I growled as I leapt.

  Before the wolf was sated, the sound of a relay clicking and the hum of the backpack interrupted us. Wary of the danger posed by these devices, I pulled the wolf back and stood. My attacker's backpack was damaged beyond repair and therefore safe. I turned to Mike to see how he had fared against his opponent.

  Mike stood over his attacker with a grim look on his face. I stepped around the table, leaving bloody footprints, and checked on the soldier. He was dead, lying stomach-down on the floor, but his crushed skull was twisted around so he was facing up. I smiled at the rictus of fear and pain on his face.

  "Thanks, Mike," I said.

  Mike nodded, then bent down and started removing the backpack device from the body.

  I took a deep breath to calm my post-battle nerves, and faced the real enemy.

  "So, Marcus, are you ready to scurry back to your rat-hole in hell?"

  The image on the screen was so still I thought it was a screenshot. Then Marcus licked his lips and leaned back. He placed his six-fingered hands in front of himself and tapped each finger against its mate on the opposite hand, a strangely hypnotic gesture.

  He stared into my eyes, eliciting an urge to attack from my wolf's side. A useless attack, as he was not really here. I restrained the wolf and stared back, refusing to avert my eyes from this monster.

  The longer we stared, the more I noticed about his nature. Even over the video link, I could see the tiny flashes of hellish red flames in his eyes, one clue that told me he wasn't human. I had assumed that the human-made video link wouldn't show his true nature.

  "Luna, who is this asshole?" asked Mike.

  Marcus finally broke my gaze, turning to Mike. "I'm General Marcus, and you, little soldier, are in a lot of trouble."

  Mike grinned in the face of evil. "You're no more a general than I am. In fact, you're not even human." Mike turned to me, "Is this the demon you beat up? The one Logan told me about?"

  "None other," I answered. Then it hit me. "You can tell what he is? Even over a video link?"

  "I don't know what he is, but he isn't human."

  "Interesting," Marcus said. "You're not a magician, not a werewolf; I would say you're only human. I'm going to have fun dissecting you."

  "And I'll enjoy sending you back to hell," said Mike with calm certainty. He touched the coin under his shirt and made the sign of the cross. "In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti."

  Marcus' nose scrunched up in disgust, then he forced a smile. "Saying nasty things won't help you, soldier."

  Mike continued chanting. "Exorcismus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas—"

  The screen blanked out abruptly.

  "What was that?" I asked.

  "Faith. That was faith."

  "I didn't feel any magic, that wasn't any spell I've ever heard of."

  "It's not a spell, it's a prayer. I don't have magic, I have faith."

  I opened my mouth to ask more questions, then realized we were still in the middle of a fight. Having a theological discussion now was a bad idea. Especially with witnesses present.

  "Where's Ashton?" I asked. Mike pointed under the conference table.

  I got down on my knees and checked. Ashton was curled into a tiny ball with his hands over his head. I couldn't believe three hundred pounds of human could squeeze down that small.

  "Ashton," I said, "come on out."

  His hands wiggled as he shook his head. "No! You're still here."

  I forced my voice to calm. "Ashton, I'm not going to hurt you right now. The fight is over."

  Ashton pulled his hands away and opened his eyes. Unfortunately, there was a single eyeball on the floor in front of him. He jerked back and covered his head again. The scent of urine suddenly filled the room, overpowering the coppery scent of blood and the stench of voided bowels.

  "No! Please don't kill me."

  I flicked the eyeball away and cooed, "It's gone now, Ashton. You can come out."

  Another few seconds of terrified trembling, then he said, "Do you promise not to kill me?"

  "Not today." Mike gave me a disapproving look, but said nothing. I would have to have a talk with him about how magicians did not give promises lightly. 'Not today' was the best I could offer an uncertain ally.

  I wiped my still-bloody hands off on the relatively clean shirt of Mike's opponent and crossed to the door and picked up my purse. I sat it on the clean part of the table and pulled out a cleaning cloth. The cloth shone gleaming white, like the finest silk.

  Wiping my face made me feel better. The cloth removed all traces of blood and gore. I ran it over my hair and cleaned it thoroughly. There was nothing to be done for the styling until I could brush it out.

  I retracted my nails fully, revealing crescents of gore, and wiped them off with the cloth. I wiped down both arms, then sat on a chair and started wiping my feet, repeating the same trick with my claws.

  "That cloth should be red with blood by now," said Mike. "But it's still as white as snow."

  "Oh, this?" I held up the cloth. "It's magic. It absorbs dirt and disintegrates it."

  "Another miracle," said Mike.

  "Not really. The one Mason made for me was much nicer. But I lost that one and had to make a new one by myself."

  Like a child peeking around a corner, Ashton popped his head above the desk. "Magic? There's no such thing as magic."

  I smiled at him and continued cleaning myself with the impossible cloth. "I'm sure you're right."

  With a groan, Ashton levered himself up to stand beside Mike.

  I put the cloth on the table, in the middle of a puddle of blood. We watched as the cloth sucked the blood into itself, leaving the table clean.

  I pulled some replacement clothes out of my purse. "These clothes are ruined; I'm going to change."

  I slid a razor-sharp nail down my blood-drenched top and started peeling the sticky cloth from my body. Mike turned away to give me unneeded privacy. He still wasn't used to how werewolves viewed nudity. To my surprise, Ashton also turned away, his cheeks bright red with embarrassment.

  I stripped to the skin, tossing the shredded clothes over my former opponents, and wiped all traces of blood from my body. Then I dressed in my spare clothes, a black maternity blouse and black stretch pants. Not my favorite colors, but when you need to hide bloodstains…

  "Okay, guys, I'm done," I said as I walked over to the door and put on my shoes. I stepped back to the table and stowed my magic cloth.

  Mike turned to Ashton. "How much time do we have before the rest of the backup forces get here?"

  "You think they'll try to attack us again? After all the damage we did?" I asked.

  Mike looked at me in puzzlement. "No army would allow their most secret facility to be invaded without doing everything possible to destroy the invaders."

  Mike turned back to our escort. "So, Ashton, how much time do we have?"

  Ashton bit his lip and pulled a keyboard from the shelf under the blank monitor. He typed quickly, and the monitor came to life, showing multiple split-screen images taken from various security cameras around the facility. Each screen was conveniently labeled with the location of the camera. The cameras for levels one, two, three, and four showed empty corridors. Level five was a hive of activity as armed soldiers pushed everyone towards the elevators.

  "They're evacuating the personnel, floor by floor," said Ashton. "We have maybe thirty minutes before they get to this floor."

  "Ashton, does this place have a back door
?" I asked.

  Ashton and Mike exchanged looks and shook their heads simultaneously. Mike said, "Secure facilities usually only have a single entrance or exit."

  "Well, we can always go through—" I halted. One view on the monitor was of our room, in real time.

  "Shit, we're still on the feed," I said, certain that Marcus was still watching. "Can they see us through that?"

  I scanned again for microphones. The Polycom unit on the desk was active, as were five other hidden microphones. They must have been activated after the first scan I had made entering the room. I sent noise-canceling bubbles of air over each of them.

  Turning away from the camera, I made sure my back hid Ashton. "They can't hear us now," I said.

  Ashton snorted in disbelief, but bent over his keyboard and typed quickly.

  "Testing, testing, one, two, three, four, FIVE!" he said, growing louder with each number.

  "Can they hear us now?" I asked.

  "No, the audio cut out. It must be a problem with the CODEC."

  "Or I magically jinxed the microphones."

  "Yeah, right," sneered Ashton. At the look on my face, he backtracked quickly. "Well, whatever the reason, audio is not being transmitted from here."

  "But they can still see the video feed?" asked Mike.

  "Yeah," said Ashton. "Do you want me to kill the video feed?"

  "No, let him see what we can do to attackers," I said.

  Ashton was busy typing on his keyboard again. "Hey, there's a stored video file here that shows you attacking those soldiers."

  As he watched the video, his face paled, and he gulped repeatedly. Hiding under the table, he had missed most of the action.

  "Ashton, can you delete that file?" asked Mike.

  "I can delete the local copy, but the file has already been sent."

  "Someone out there has a video of us attacking and killing US military personnel," said Mike.

  "Ashton, can you burn me a copy of that file to DVD?"

  "Sure, but how can that help you?"

  "Just burn the disk, Ashton."

  In less than a minute, he handed me a disk with the video, which I stashed in my purse.

  "Are you ready, Mike?" I asked.

  "Ready?"

  "Yeah, we're getting out of here."

  I turned to Ashton. "Thanks for your help, but we don't need you anymore—"

  Ashton put his head on the keyboard and covered it with his hands. "Please don't kill me! I helped you. I can still help you. I can tell you where he is!"

  "Where who is?" asked Mike.

  "General Marcus. I can tell you where he is."

  22

  "That's impossible," said Mike flatly. "He's in a secure facility; there's no way to trace his location."

  "I can," said Ashton. Then he started babbling about a firewall, keep-alive pings, and time domain reflectometry.

  "Techno-babble," said Mike. "I don't trust him. We need to get moving. They're on the sixth floor now. We have about twenty minutes before they try to breach the door."

  I sniffed Ashton, running my nose up the side of his neck. He shook like a terrified puppy at my nearness. "He's not lying," I said. "But he's uncertain it will work."

  "I'll do my best," he pleaded. "Just promise I won't end up like them." He pointed to the dismembered bodies on the other side of the room.

  "I already told you I wasn't going to hurt—"

  Ashton shook his head and pointed at Mike. "I want him to promise. He's nicer than you, and I trust him."

  "Nicer?" I growled.

  "It's okay, Luna," said Mike. "He's just freaked out after he saw you rip that guy's heart out and start gnawing on it."

  I bit back my next comment and forced a smile. "Sorry I scared you, Ashton."

  I nodded to Mike, and he said, "Ashton, if you help us find Marcus, we promise not to hurt you." He paused a long moment, then added, "As long as you don't act, or testify, against us."

  I expected more bargaining, but Ashton got to work immediately on his keyboard, muttering to himself as he typed at lightning speed.

  "This can't be right," said Ashton after almost a minute. "This shows the distant end less than a kilometer from here."

  "He's on the base?" I asked. "Where? Let's get the demon-ridden bastard."

  "Does that calculation give you a direction?" asked Mike.

  "No, only distance," said Ashton. Then he pulled a map of the base up on the screen. A ring appeared overlaying the map. "He has to be at a location this distance from us, but there are no other secure facilities at that distance."

  "That can't be right," I said. "If he had been within a kilometer of here, I would have smelled his sulfur-laden ass."

  Mike was looking at the map, tracing his finger over the circle. His finger halted. "He wasn't here until after we entered the building."

  "What do you mean?" asked Ashton and I together.

  Mike stepped to one side, leaving his finger on the map. "He's here. On the runway, on board a military aircraft."

  Ashton muttered, "That makes sense." Then he looked down at his screen. "Oh crap, he's moving." A few seconds later: "Moving fast. The aircraft must be taking off. Once he shifts from line-of-sight to satellite feed, I won't be able to track him."

  I took a deep breath, fighting down the urge to fight my way out of this deathtrap and race for the runway. That was the wolf speaking. I calmed her down by projecting an image of a wolf howling at a receding aircraft, followed by a wolf jumping off a cliff while chasing prey. She still tugged at my mind, so I added an image of Mike jumping off the cliff after us. We still had our pack to think about. She calmed, but was still angry.

  "Okay," I said with regret, "forget about the fake General Marcus. Ashton, cut the video feed; it's no good to us."

  Five seconds of keyboard clattering and the image of Marcus' office blanked out.

  "Done," said Ashton.

  "Now we need to get out of here." I stared at Ashton. "Preferably without killing more soldiers."

  Ashton nodded convulsively. I asked, "Do you have any ideas?"

  "Surrender?"

  I turned to Mike. "That's not an option. My children will not be born in prison. Any other ideas?"

  Mike silently mouthed, "Magic?" while looking at Ashton.

  "You can talk about it in front of Ashton," I said. "He won’t tell anyone."

  "But you promised!"

  One look and he shut up. "We won't hurt him. He'll either forget about it or get sent to a psychiatric clinic. If he's smart, he'll keep quiet."

  I looked at the screens. "They seem to have stopped on the sixth floor. I thought they would be outside our door by now. We have a few more minutes."

  "Do you have a cloak of invisibility?" asked Mike.

  "No, I left it at Hogwarts." Mike's face fell and I felt bad about the joke. "Sorry, Mike, it's not your fault you don't know what's possible. I have an invisibility spell, but it would only work for me."

  I also had my invisible purse, made from the magic suit that Fae assassins used. But that would only cover someone's head. I regretted not making a cloak out of that material. Something else to add to my to-do list.

  "Then use it. I'll draw their attention and you get to slip away."

  "No. We came in together and we'll leave together," I said.

  "Luna, be practical. I knew when we entered the building that this would be a one-way trip." He rubbed the coin on his chest, his good-luck charm.

  "Quit being so noble," I snapped. "We're getting out."

  I had an inspiration. "Mike, give me your portal coin."

  Mike nodded and pulled the chain over his head and handed the coin to me. "You'll probably want to give it to someone else after this."

  I took a second to process, "Mike, I'm not taking this coin away from you. You'll get it back when we're done. Do you know what this is?"

  "It's a BITCHCoin!" interrupted Ashton. "The commander asked me to try to break the encryption protocol on those
coins. But it's impossible. Even a quantum computer would have a hard time with that."

  "It's not a BITCHCoin, Ashton," I said.

  "Sure it is," said Ashton as he stepped closer. "It's gold, there's the wolf, and there should be a hexadecimal address—hey! There's no address. What is that? A fake?"

  "No, it's real, and it's more valuable than a BITCHCoin," I snapped at Ashton. "Now keep quiet." He pulled back as if I had slapped him.

  I turned to Mike. "This portal coin allows travel from Earth to Fae magically. If I can activate it, we can walk out of here."

  Ashton snorted. "Couldn't you have used it to get down here, instead of breaking through all those doors and killing all of those people?"

  "It doesn't work that way, Ashton. It has to be a known destination."

  Ashton shook his head. "Wait, why am I talking like that's possible? Teleportation is a fantasy."

  "Believe or don't believe, Ashton," I said, "but if you don't shut up, I'll leave you here."

  Ashton opened his mouth, saw the look in my eyes, and shut up.

  "So this only works between Earth and Fae?" asked Mike.

  "Normally," I said. "Mason told me we could make it work between any two points on Earth."

  "Great! Let's get out of here." For the first time since the wreck, Mike smiled.

  "Don't celebrate yet," I said. "Mason could do the spell easily. I'll have to work at it. It would be much easier to travel to Fae, then return to Earth."

  "Then let's take a shortcut through your fairytale land."

  "It wouldn't be short, and it's very dangerous there, for both humans and us." I ignored the puzzled look on Ashton's face. "I have a lot of enemies there, Mason has a lot of enemies there, and humans are not welcome."

  "Can't we avoid the enemies?"

  "Not really, the most congruent space in the Fae world to our world lies in the midst of the great forest. We would have to trek several miles to reach a point congruent with a safe place here in Las Vegas."

  It was Mike's turn to look puzzled. "So we have to hike a bit, I've been through jungles and forests—" He stopped and looked at Ashton. A mile of forced hiking would probably kill him.

  "Hey, I'm in good shape! I get at least three thousand steps on my pedometer almost every day," said Ashton.