Omega's Run

by A. J. Downey

  “Where the fuck do you think you’re going to go now, numb nuts?” she asked, panting slightly as she came over the edge of the building behind me. “You do realize you’re on top of a roof, right?”

  I looked back at her and laughed, a choking wheeze as the silver started to affect my throat. It wouldn’t kill me, but I really wasn’t going to be happy for the next few days.

  “And you do realize I’m wolf-kind right? I’m not as trapped as you think.” I broke into a shambling sprint running directly away from her and right toward the edge of the building.

  The street below was five lanes wide, counting sidewalks on either side. I didn’t have the slightest clue what that distance was in feet and I’m glad I didn’t because I might not have attempted what I did if I had known.

  I heard her curse behind me as my foot hit the edge of the building and I launched myself into the air. The gun went off once again and a searing pain exploded in the back of my right thigh. The controlled leap turned into an awkward fall as I left the roof of the five story building. I flew across the street and crashed through the third floor window of the next building over in a spray of broken glass and shattered wood.

  I tumbled across an empty office space and crashed into the far wall. Something popped in my back, I had officially lost all vision in my left eye, and my right leg burned horribly. A bit of blood touched my lips as something inside my body protested its current treatment. Outside I heard a frustrated scream and I laughed, coughing up a bit more blood as I slowly struggled to my feet.

  “Tell Mathias Young, he can shove his invitation up his ass!” I yelled and stumbled out of the office and into the rest of the building.

  Chapter 4

  Ava

  “Oh you can tell him yourself, asshole,” I muttered under my breath before raising my coat sleeve to my lips.

  “It’s the building across the street from my location, capture him as he comes out; don’t be afraid to hurt him a little.” I pressed a finger to my ear and waited for a response, the earbud in my left ear crackled to life.

  “Copy that, Ava.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly as my heart-rate began to calm. I watched with detached interest from the rooftop as the front doors burst open at street level and Remus “Remy” Reese looked up, a smug grin on his face, twisted though it was in pain.

  Aw, poor baby.

  The van raced up and when Reese turned to lope up the sidewalk, he turned right into one of my guys who unloaded not one, but two police issue Tasers into Reese’s chest. He stiffened, like a board and keeled over right onto his back where two more of my team waited. They caught the monster in their arms and pulled him into the van. The panel door slid shut, the engine revved once and pulled away from the curb to the blare of traffic horns.

  “Package has been acquired, and is sufficiently detained,” came through my earpiece a moment later.

  I smiled and said, “Copy that, I’m en route.”

  I took my time coming down the same way I’d come up and when my boots hit the broken asphalt of the alleyway I breathed a sigh of relief. I cracked my neck back and forth and rolled my shoulders before heading back to my bike. The safe house wasn’t far and then it would be a transfer to a Crusader facility after that, but first? I needed to get that slug out of his leg, pronto. So safe house and a little impromptu kitchen table surgery before anything.

  I caught up to the van easily and trailed it out into the Illinois country. Every once in a while I would check on the package the van contained but according to my guys, he was out like a traffic light and showed no signs of stirring. Vitals were stable though, so there was that. I didn’t need him dying on me. That wasn’t the mission this time.

  We pulled up to the farmhouse and Jordan got out of the front passenger seat.

  “Jesus Christ he’s a big bastard!” he cried and I leaned my bike onto the kickstand and hit the chinstrap on my helmet.

  “Quit your bitching, you pussy!” Harper called from the back of the van. I laughed. She was just as bad as me sometimes.

  Donnell shut the driver’s side door and came around the front of the van.

  “Shut the fuck up, the both of you. It’s going to take all of us to get this monster inside.” I nodded.

  “Kitchen table,” I stated and everyone froze and looked at me.

  “Seriously? We should just take him to the facility and let them handle it,” Logan said as he hopped out of the back of the van behind Harper. Mason followed Logan and my team was assembled. I shook my head.

  “All of you knock it the fuck off, get his ass out of the back and in the kitchen, and make sure the fucker is chained down face first. I have to dig out that slug or there’s a good chance he’s not going to make it to the facility. Mathias would be fucking pissed if he dies and none of us are exactly his golden children. Not after losing his daughter. So seriously, move it or lose it!” I lectured, barking the last and they moved it. I went into the house before them and to the medical locker stashed in the corner of the kitchen.

  There was a bunch of grunting, cursing and wheezing as they brought the tranquilized man… creature, I corrected myself automatically, in through the front door, past the living room, to do what I’d commanded.

  They dropped him face first onto the rustic kitchen table and chained him at wrist and ankle to the eyebolts set in the floor. Reinforced steel chain. The eyebolts were set into the foundation of the house beneath the floors, driven into the concrete by a good eighteen inches. It would hold a couple of elephants in place. One of these bastards, no matter how big, wouldn’t be any match for the restraints.

  “Need an assist, Av?”

  “No, as long as he’s secure,” I stated.

  “Yup,” Mason declared, leaning up from the final shackle. I checked the restraints myself anyways.

  “Cow,” I heard Harper utter.

  “Call me names all you want, Sweetie. Better to be safe than dead.”

  With a few extra grumbles and a gripe or two, the team went out front to the porch. They did, however, leave the front door open to keep an eye on things.

  This was going to suck for the monster. It was going to suck hard. I pulled on a pair of latex gloves then pulled on two more. Double gloving was standard operating procedure with these things, even after discovering that their disease wasn’t a blood borne pathogen.

  I snapped the top off of the ampule of ammonia and went around to the front of the table where his head was at, but before I could bring it near, his head snapped up and he glowered at me, snarling and snapping.

  “Oh, good! Don’t need that!” I threw it into the sink and heard it plink into the garbage disposal.

  “Listen up, mongrel. I’m going to dig that slug out of the back of your leg. It’s going to hurt, a whole fuck of a lot, but you need to stay awake for me and tell me if I got it all. You copy?” I demanded and raised my eyebrows. He snorted, a derisive sound.

  “There’s not much you can do that I haven’t already dealt with, just get the fucking bullet out.”

  I got up on the table and sat on his ass, mostly to pin him down as best I could. This worked best when they had a reminder that they needed to hold still.

  “Ride ‘em cowgirl,” I commented dryly and he snorted. He was cool as a cucumber when I started digging for the bullet. He grunted a few times, made a choked noise and the table groaned where he gripped the corners.

  “Break my fucking table I’ll put another bullet in you on principle,” I muttered.

  “You’re a cold bitch aren’t you?”

  I wrenched the pliers a little deeper into the wound, digging a little unnecessarily hard for the bullet I’d put in him, he grunted and bucked slightly beneath me.

  “I don’t know, you tell me.”

  He barked a bitter laugh and I grasped onto the offending object and pulled it out, mostly intact, dropping it into a dish waiting on a cart beside the table with a hollow clatter.

  “Get it all?” I asked.<
br />
  “Give it a minute, let the burning settle and I’ll tell you,” he grated.

  I wiped at the sweat on my brow with the back of my wrist and breathed out. A moment later, he grunted again as if satisfied.

  “I think you got it, now get the fuck off me.”

  I laughed some and slapped him on his ass, it was a nice one as far as the male physique went; too bad it was wasted on him. I got off and bent at the knees a bit when I hit the floor. I turned around and met smoldering dark eyes and raised a brow.

  “Glare at me all you like, it was your dumb ass that got caught, not my fault you underestimated me.”

  He jerked at his bonds and growled and I gave him a sardonic little smile.

  “Not done yet, Fido. Might want to save it until after I’ve finished. Wouldn’t want this to be more unpleasant than it needs to be now would you?”

  “Fuck you, Hunter bitch.”

  “You wish, buddy, it ain’t never gonna happen.”

  I set to work fixing him up. We knew wounds made with silver took longer for the mongrels to heal and as far as wounds went, the one I’d dealt him was a bad one. Hell, his reaction to the graze was one of the most spectacular I’d ever seen. The side of his face looked like hamburger with how raw, red, and lumpy it was with swelling. It was to the point I debated using an epi pen.

  “You breathing okay?”

  “What do you care?”

  “Personally, I don’t, but Mathias does and what Mathias cares about, I better damn well care about too. So do me a favor and answer the fucking question.”

  Resolute, glowering, silence filled the space between us and I rolled my eyes. If he were being that fucking ornery, he wouldn’t need the epi shot, but I slid a pen into my jacket anyways. You never knew and it was better to be prepared than not.

  I used everything at my disposal, the medical training I’d received coming in handy. Granted it wasn’t much better than your rudimentary combat medic training plus a touch more, but it would get him to the containment facility. They’d possibly take the care to get him fixed up right. I didn’t know what they did with them after I brought them in, and it wasn’t my problem. I just hunted them down, killed them when it was called for and brought them back alive when it was ordered for me to do so.

  “Donnell! Mason!” I called out, both appeared in the safe house doorway. “Get him back in the van.” I ordered. For some reason I wanted this particular mission over and done. It probably had a lot to do with the way this one was looking at me. A fire in his dark eyes that smoldered, a calculation to that dark stare… control. He had an eerie amount of control for one of these creatures to the point it was unsettling.

  Yeah. I wanted this mission done, because this one almost scared me with what he could and might do if we slipped up. I didn’t want to leave anything to chance. It wasn’t my style.

  Chapter 5

  Remus

  My leg felt like it was on fire, worse when she dug the bullet out but I refused to let her see my pain.

  Do not show pain. Do not show weakness. Your chance will come, be patient, wait; watch for it.

  These words passed through my head like a mantra while she dug around in my leg for the bullet and continued as we talked after. When she slapped my ass it was all I could do not to jump. I hadn’t been expecting that at all and it startled me, so focused was I on everything else.

  Rom would be ashamed of me for getting caught so easily. Father would be ashamed. Hell, even William would have mocked me for how easily they’d brought me down, how easily she had. How had I sunk so low? Had my instincts really dulled so much that I couldn’t smell a hunter coming? I should have recognized the scent of gun oil around her, or the stink of silver. I should have known.

  “What do you think they think about?” A voice asked and I blinked, coming out of my thoughts to find two men standing at the head of the table.

  “Chasing rabbits or something?” One of them asked.

  “Yeah but they’re not dogs all the time, right?” The first voice asked coming from the man on my left. He was tall and willowy, whipcord muscle over bone with barely an ounce of fat on him as far as I could tell. His partner was exactly the opposite. Short and stocky with a rounder middle but no less strong for it. I could tell by the way he held himself that thick middle was all hard muscle beneath the fat.

  “You two geniuses do realize that I can hear you, right?” I growled caustically and Whippy, as I mentally dubbed him, looked at me and nudged his buddy.

  “Look, it’s like he’s trying to talk. Isn’t it funny how they try to act like human beings? I mean, don’t you think? Like monkeys at the zoo or something.”

  Tubby grunted. “Yeah, but monkeys only throw their shit at you. This guy’ll rip yer head clean off and eat your heart if you give him the chance.” I rolled my eyes. This was how it was going to be, I could just tell. I hoped we didn’t have too far to go to get to this containment facility that they were talking about. I really didn’t want to put up with them any longer than I had to.

  There was no reasoning, or arguing with that kind of stupid. It just wasn’t possible. All I could do was wait for my chance to get away. Statistically it was going to happen. I just had to be ready for it.

  These fuckers moving me from the table to the truck would ideally be the most likely time to get away. I would be on my feet, and though I still felt woozy and my leg still hurt like hell, I was stronger than both of them combined. I could force my way out of there.

  Right?

  Wrong.

  They disconnected the chains that held me to the floor and helped me to my feet. The second I started to try to run, and I do mean the very second there was a loud snapping sound, several points of pain bloomed on my back and a loud crackling noise filled the room as I pissed myself and my body started to flop around like an epileptic carp. I jerked and spasmed as the four contact points from the two tasers fed who knew how many volts of electricity into my body and all my muscles seized up and refused to cooperate with my mental commands for movement.

  “Dammit, Ava,” Tubby growled. “Now we gotta carry his heavy ass again.”

  “Would you rather tell Mathias that we lost him? Would you rather have that thing,” she kicked at my leg. “Come back and rip us all to shreds? You can deal with having to lug him to the truck.” She kicked me again, a sensation I was barely aware of in the deepening haze of darkness that enshrouded the edges of my consciousness.

  “Now hurry up and move, I want this mission over and done...” Anything else she said was lost to me as I finally fell unconscious.

  The next thing I knew I was laying on my front on a cold slab of metal and there was a sensation of motion that made me want to hurl. Thick, heavy chains were wrapped around my body, crossed several times from shoulders to ankles and I lifted my head only to realize that I was in the back of a cargo container on a semi-truck. Whippy and Tubby stood against the doors that opened on the back end and sitting on a stack of wooden pallets next to me, was Ava.

  Her smoky jade green eyes regarded me intently and I glared right back at her. “What?” I snapped.

  She shrugged, an action that did little for me this time as she was dressed much more practically than she had been the night before. She still wore her Joe Rocket jacket, but beneath that, she had on a simple black shirt that clung to her curves with a tactical holster and her gun tucked into it under her left arm. The shirt was tucked into a pair of black tactical 5.11’s, the waist cinched tight to prevent them from falling off her slim hips. Her pockets bulged with who knew what items and the cuffs of her pants were tucked into a pair of shiny black combat boots and bloused.

  “I was just wondering how long you were going to sleep. It’s not like we’ve been that hard on you. We’re practically babying you, compared to some.” She smirked, her full lips turning up in a truly distracting way, but I crushed that under an ocean of rage and glared at her. Pretty she might be, but she was a royal fucking bitch. Yet
for some reason, that wasn’t taking away from her beauty any for me. It really should have, but it wasn’t. Maybe being electrocuted had fried something vital in my noggin.

  “So proud of yourself. Kidnapping and terrorizing innocent people just for who they are. You must find yourself compared to the SS a lot, right?” I didn’t have to pretend to be pissed off, chubby aside, I was pretty fuckin’ pissed too.

  She glared at me. “We can’t be compared to some lunatic despot trying to wipe out an innocent people. Your kind murder for fun.”

  I looked her evenly in the eye. “Humans kill for sport; my people do not.”

  “You mean you animals don’t. Isn’t that the quote? Animals don’t kill for sport, only human beings do? I’ve heard that thrown around before by people trying to discuss morals and philosophy.”

  “And yet you didn’t listen to them? Good move, Sugar Tits.” I grinned at her when she suddenly flushed just slightly and crossed her arms over her breasts.

  “So is that why you wore a skimpy dress when you tried to capture me?” I asked, abruptly changing the topic. I needed to keep her off balance if I wanted to try and get anywhere in this game.

  “Tried?” she snorted. “I did capture you, you dumb ox. I thought even you would be able to recognize that. Guess I gave your intelligence too much credit.”

  “No, you didn’t. I escaped you. Your team brought me down. Without them I would’ve been in the wind.”

  She glared at me for a moment but obviously couldn’t think of an argument so she changed the subject. “What’d you mean about the dress?”

  I smirked. “Well, since you’re obviously forced to wear such an ugly, and simple uniform on the job I’m not surprised you’d dress up a bit when you got the chance. It must feel nice to get to pretend to be a regular woman now and again–” I was cut off as her hand whipped around, grasped the gun in its holster beneath her jacket, drew it, and pistol whipped me across the face all in one smooth motion.

  My head jerk to the side and I saw stars for a second. I turned back to her, blood smeared grin firmly in place and spit out a fragment of back tooth. “Hit a nerve did I?”