by T. A. Grey
Alex dressed quicker than she’d ever seen a lykaen move, nearly a blur of speed, his rage paramount. A lykaen male was most agitated before and after sex, his testosterone at its highest.
He sniffed the air again, nose held high. “No, it’s...humans.” A strange note in his voice, like rage.
“What would humans want with us?” Then she remembered. “The gas station. They saw us, Alex. What are they trying to do? Burn us out of here? Kill us?!”
More windows shattered and imploded, bringing more dangerous flames. She could feel the heat of it already, closing in on them, eating away at the old, dry wood of the cabin like it was nothing.
They were going to be burned alive.
Alex grabbed the satchel and tossed it over his shoulder. “We have to get out of here. Follow me, and stick close at all times. This is going to be ugly.”
At least he didn’t make any false promises.
She was staring at the flames beginning to eat the kitchen. She felt surprisingly dead inside. As if she was shutting down. This insanity was never-ending. Why couldn’t it just stop?
I don’t want to do this anymore. I just want this to all be over.
“Hanna!” he snapped and she jolted. “Stay with me, baby. I’m gonna get us out of here.”
Clothed, he grabbed her by the hand and tore out the front door.
Alex was like a madman. He viciously attacked the first man he saw. With brute strength and cunning, fists used as clubs and boots delivering jackhammer blows.
The humans had formed a lynch mob and they’d come prepared with plenty of Molotov cocktails and guns. Hanna jerked as one man unloaded a round straight at her. She flinched at the loud burst of sound, but shock and surprise kept her from moving. He actually shot at her. Actually was trying to kill her. A complete stranger, who’d no more than seen a picture of her on the news. She meant nothing to him. And yet...
Pellets slammed through her stomach and stuck inside her guts. She flinched, pain roaring madly in her brain, her caged beast lashing out, but as she blinked down at her blood red fingers, she felt her skin already beginning to heal. And that’s when she realized--they weren’t using silver bullets. These men had no idea they were messing with lykaens. Lykaens who were much stronger than they were...with their puny human guns.
“It’s not silver!” she shouted to Alex.
Hanna growled into the night, then got low in a crouch. Now, she was in control. These humans were feeble. They were nothing, and they were here to kill her and Alex. Hanna’s beast, her inner monster surfaced. Beginning in her throat as she made a sound unlike anything she’d ever made in her life: A feral cackle. Like that of a hyena mixed with a snarling tiger. She didn’t know it but her eyes began to glow a shade of yellow. That of the animal inside her.
The man froze in fear. She could smell it. Like old food, it disgusted her with its rotten odor. Hanna snapped and snarled at him, and his gun lowered. She struck then, launched herself through the air, leaping with all fours with a feline’s snarl at her lips. She landed on him, slamming his weight to the snow.
Another blast pierced her chest in a dozen places. She didn’t even feel it. Adrenaline was a powerful drug coursing swiftly through her veins like pure heroin.
She snatched the rifle from the puny human and turned it, shoving the barrel against his throat lengthwise like a bat, choking off his air supply. She got low in the man’s terrified face, his eyes wider than a frightened deer on a highway. Her fingers were covered in blood.
“Is this what you wanted? Human?” Her voice was distorted, transforming from the release of her lykaen. She felt stronger than ever, like she could lift a car and throw it.
The man trembled in fear and awe, mouth agape. “What do you mean...?” he whispered. “Aren’t you...?” Then he wet his pants, his bladder releasing.
“Hanna, don’t kill him!”
She’d been pushing on the barrel, harder and harder, watching as he squirmed and kicked beneath her. Fighting for his very life. The same life he’d come here to take from her and her beloved.
How dare you her instincts roared.
Then she found herself being shoved away, Alex knocked the man out cold with a brute kick to the head. Alex rounded on her, breathing hard, also covered in flecks of blood.
He crouched low and snatched her by the face. His eyes travelled over her face quickly, searching for injuries. “You don’t have to kill him. I don’t want that on your conscious, baby. They aren’t worth it.”
In her periphery, the cabin was becoming engulfed in flames. The adrenaline, as swiftly as it came, faded rapidly. Suddenly, she felt very much like crying and wasn’t sure why.
Alex dragged her away. More humans were running at them, shooting wildly. Loud cracks of explosive gunpowder, sulfuric clouds of black smoke forming plumes in the white terrain.
“Kill them! They hurt Ian!”
“Is he dead? Did they kill him?” another shouted.
They darted for the heavy woods where they could run and hide. Their lykaen speed carried them faster letting them get some distance away before they slowed to a stop. Outrunning humans wasn’t a difficult task; it was other mysterious creatures that could keep pace with them that terrified her much more. Such as the Justicars and Xavier.
A strange noise filtered through to her senses.
“Do you hear that?” she whispered to Alex.
Not gun shots, though those continued to be fired aimlessly into the woods, doing no more than damaging innocent trees. The sound wasn’t her uneven breaths.
What was that?
Like...chopping through air. Something heavy...something... metallic.
Hanna and Alex both looked up to the sky at the same time, the noise growing ever louder, ever closer, ever more significant. Her gut clenched.
“What the hell is going on?”
Alex tensed as the clamor grew to a roaring pitch and then he shoved her to the ground behind a large tree where he held her there, blocking them from view. They both watched the sky and saw it as it came and flew over them.
A black Apache war helicopter. The heavy blades cutting through air, whonk, whonk, whonk, whonk.
“Who the fuck is that?” Hanna whispered, grabbing at Alex.
“I don’t know. Maybe...human police?”
“Humans wouldn’t call the police if they were coming to kill us, Alex.”
“I know. Quiet! Do you hear that?” he asked.
The helicopter landed by the cabin. She could no longer see it, they were deep enough in the forest. But over the tree line, she could see black smoke curling from where their secret cabin burned.
Alex stood and she followed suit. “We need to get out of here now.”
Something about the way he said it scared her. His voice hard and unnerving.
“What’s wrong? Why?”
Then, she heard a sound she would never forget.
The sounds of men screaming in agony to a chorus of rapid gunfire. The wind blew their way bringing with it the charred aroma of fire, the coppery twinge of blood, and the scent of fellow lykaens.
Hanna grabbed Alex’s arm urging him away in panic. “It’s Xavier! He’s found us. We have to get out of here!”
He’d already realized this too, she could see it in his expression.
They took off at once, further from their cabin, further from the pick-up point Gavin had told them to go to, and they did it to the screams of dying men.
And she’d never gotten to tell him she loved him.
* * * * *
Not again.
Xavier pulled up the stiff collar of his black wool trench coat. The breeze was strong this early morning brushing along the snowdrifts stirring up small tornados of white dust.
He’d just missed them.
“They’re close by. Send units in all directions. Follow the tracks and bring them to me. We end this today.”
At his order, his men moved at once.
He smelled human
blood. A nasty, coppery scent that repulsed him, made his gut churn. Xavier pulled out his handkerchief and covered his nose with it to help disguise the scent of death. The aroma of charred flesh wasn’t pleasant either.
Humans were a violent, reckless species. If they hadn’t shown up with pitchforks in hand, Xavier would have gotten the jump on his two fugitives. And this little game of cat-and-mouse would finally be over. But, alas, twas not so. He’d been searching tirelessly for his fugitives, ready to end this, so he could finally return to Gerioux pack and finish his business.
At least his plan had worked. With no clues as to where they’d run (and they could be anywhere), Xavier had been pressed to call in a favor with the local Canadian police department. They ended up running a prime-time television spot looking for the two suspects. Within hours, they’d received two calls. One came from a gas station attendant in a small, podunk town some twenty-eight miles east of Gerioux land, the other from some demented caller saying they’d seen the two “in a vision”.
But the humans ruined his surprise visit with their reckless behavior and therefore they must be removed. What had they really thought to do? Kill or perhaps kidnap the two fugitives themselves? Little did they know they were facing lykaens, not mere humans. Their strength could crush puny humans like snapping a toothpick in two.
A young white-faced solider raced up to him. “Sir, do you want me to bury the bodies?”
“Why bother? Throw them into the fire. Let them burn.”
The solider hesitated, then nodded and took off.
Behind Xavier, bodies were tossed haphazardly into the roaring flames. Like one might throw a broken twig into a bonfire. Meanwhile, he studied the surroundings, and at his order, he took some men and silently followed two sets of footprints that headed south.
Sniffing the air, a zing snapped him to attention. He caught a scent he recognized: his fugitives. Close by. Finally! A rush of pleasure akin to an orgasm gripped him, stopping him in his tracks where he rocked on his feet. Yes. His task here was almost done.
“They couldn’t have run far from here. Be on the lookout, boys. Today we’re going home with a win.”
He’d bring Hanna and Alex back to Gerioux pack, behead them, and then dethrone Lysette. Everything was coming together, all the little pieces, one by one. Glory was nigh.
The time had run out for the two murderers of Prince Remi Gerioux. The time had come for Xavier Carbon’s Pack to come to life for the very first time.
Chapter THIRTY-FIVE
Hand in hand, they raced through the woods. Lungs charged and burning from the cold, wintry air. Throat dry and lips chapped, the sun began rising in the horizon casting the snow-white world in hues of pinks and orange. A beautiful sight, but one Alex did not pay mind to. He was too busy being chased.
“They’re close,” Hanna whispered, struggling to plow through the snow as it got deep in some crevasses.
“Just keep it up. You’re doing great.” He tried to be encouraging. Even though his heart raced with doom. There were too many of them, too close. The Justicars and Xavier coming for them, visibly behind them...and closing in. But he didn’t want to scare her any more than she already was, so he kept his worries to himself.
“Where are we g-going?” It was difficult speaking and running at the same time, disjointing her words.
“There’s a mall not far south of here. They’ll know we’re going there, but we might be able to lose them inside.”
They crossed a clearing, ran over an icy embankment, the frosty crystals beautiful and frightening to think about the icy water that lie beneath it. Could a lykaen survive the freezing cold depths of water? He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t want to find out. They weren’t immune to death after all but were merely more survivable than humans were.
A gunshot cracked. Birds squawked at the intrusion and flew wildly into the air away from the sound. Hanna half-ducked, but Alex tugged on her hand.
“Don’t stop moving!”
He heard her faint whisper. “I won’t.”
Okay, don’t panic, he told himself.
He could get them out of this. He could. The other choice couldn’t even be considered. First humans, now Xavier. He knew which problem he’d much rather face. Maybe he could hope everything would turn out well.
He wanted to laugh, but he could hardly breathe as it was.
Hope. What a joke. Where was “hope” when his father had beaten his face black and blue? Where was “hope” when dad broke his arm in two places and decided to take a knife to dick?
“You think you’re a real man? Let’s see if you’re still a real man after I’m through with ya.”
God dammit. He could still remember his father’s words, exactly as he said them, his voice still a recognizable sound in his brain. Some things could never be forgotten.
They crossed a snowy street; it’d been plowed recently, tire treads visible through the packed snowy-ice mixture. The mall was in sight, across the highway, where not a car was in sight so early on this bitter morning.
The mall was not glamorous, but more sedate. A country mall, with far fewer stores and it looked to be only one-story tall. Even the name was in French and Alex couldn’t read it without butchering its name.
Across the mall parking lot, ice made it difficult to run. Alex and Hanna ended up performing a sort of awkward dance, shuffling through and sliding across particularly slick sheets of ice toward the front doors.
“It’s gonna be locked,” Hanna panted.
“Already on it.” He whipped his satchel out and pulled the lock picking kit out.” Keep an eye out will ya?”
“Oh, sure.” Hanna spun around, struggling to catch her breath. “Keep an eye out for those five--no, I see seven bad guys coming at us.”
“Yup.” He inserted the tool kit into the lock and got to work jimmying it. He’d been doing this since he was a kid.
He had his dad to thank for teaching him one useful thing in life. The lock snapped open and he pushed inside, swiftly locking the door behind him.
“Okay, well they’re raising their guns again. Silver bullets and all that.”
She spoke too soon. Glass crashed, shattering around them. Alex took the brunt of it, covering Hanna with his body. Luckily, his thick snowsuit kept most of the glass off him as it bounced to the ground.
However, he wasn’t entirely fortunate.
“Get ‘em!” someone shouted. Footsteps audible and closing in.
Alex gritted his teeth then snatched Hanna at the elbow, ploughing them through the darkened mall, only security lights brightening the way.
“I smell blood,” Hanna said.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Did you get cut by glass?”
“Yeah,” he lied.
He didn’t want to tell her about the fact that he couldn’t move his right arm anymore and that was his dominant hand. Double fuck. He’d been shot.
They ran swiftly across the floor, past department stores that sold delicious smelling candles and clothing stores for teenagers and pregnant women, past gaming stores and electronics. Occasionally their feet slipped and they relied on the other to save them from falling.
“I know something’s wrong,” Hanna said.
Alex checked over his shoulder, spotted the Justicars closing in on them, flanking from the left and right side.
Shit.
And meanwhile he was leaving a trail of blood. A perfect fucking tail.
“Nothing’s wrong just keep moving. Here, take this.” He gave her his gun. “I know it doesn’t have silver bullets but it could slow them down. Aim for the head.”
Suddenly he ventured them left, swiftly taking them down a dark hallway that led past bathrooms and a janitor’s closet and vending machines. An exit door was in sight.
Behind them, footsteps were too close for comfort. Time was running out.
Sweat dribbled into his eyes, searing his retinas. He shook his head and with his injured arm he sho
ved open the back door which had a red glowing sign above it reading EXIT.
Bright sunlight stunned them both as they once again returned to daylight.
He had only a moment to blink and then he felt it. Heard it. Screams. Gunshots at close range.
His body was battered with holes, tearing through him. Before him as he squinted past the burning glow of the sun, he saw Xavier and his team waiting for him.
He collapsed to his knees, not even sure what the damage was, but he couldn’t keep standing any longer. His knees simply wouldn’t work anymore and gave out on him. Hanna went with him, a nasty gurgling sound coming from her throat.
Beside him he saw he Hanna raise the gun he gave her.
“You don’t want to do that, Ms. MacKellen,” Xavier said.
She fired anyways. He counted four ringing shots. The snow seemed to amplify the sounds, carrying the echoing waves even further than normal. It sounded like a war zone.
Alex wobbled on his knees, head becoming heavy. He leaned against Hanna and she took the brunt of his weight at first, until a Justicar fired another round and she grunted, clutching her middle.
No! Can’t fail! I have to save her!
I love her.
No sooner had he experienced the thought did she slam face first into the ground, eyes open but not blinking.
Steps came closer, blocking out the sun and encompassing his vision.
“I’ll kill you,” he spat. Blood spilled own his chin. His body littered with bullet holes, the silver bullets having an acid-like reaction in his body, burning and searing; killing him.
“I don’t think so,” Xavier said. He raised his gun and pointed it at Alex’s forehead. Aimed to kill. “Your time is up.”
And he fired once more.
* * * * *
Hanna heard noises. Strange sounds that seemed to come from faraway. Her brain was foggy, vision even more so.
But she swore through it all that she heard a voice she shouldn’t be hearing. Not at all.
She wanted to cry because she knew she was dying. She must be. Because otherwise she wouldn’t be hearing the sound of her brother’s voice. Gavin’s gruff baritone, that hint of scratchiness that had never gone away as a teenager but had only grown raspier as the years went on.