by Jen Haeger
Marcus strained to see into the cage, which was about 25 feet away from him. He knew that Clem would be in there and likely injured, but he was unprepared for the sight before him. Clem was chained to the wall inside of the cage and his naked feet barely touched the ground. He was wearing nothing but soiled underwear and his entire lower half was covered in blood. Some of the blood was from deep, horrific gashes on his legs, but most seemed to be coming from his torso which was a mess of blood-matted fur. His muzzle had also been cruelly slashed and blood seeped from under one of his closed eyelids. Clem was alive, but just barely and Marcus took it as a blessing that he was unconscious.
The rage made Marcus’s vision go red and he had to pull himself back behind the crate and close his eyes for a moment to regain control. If he leapt out now, alone, he would likely be taken down by a rain of bullets fired by the smoking man. On the other hand, if the grey-haired man succeeded in calming the other two down, then they would all be focused again and he would have almost no chance of rescuing Clem. Marcus waited for just a few moments more until he could smell Jackson, one of the other alpha team members just on the other side of the hatch door, then he carefully unclipped two small metallic canisters from his waist and slid out the pin on each with a single long claw before chucking them towards Clem’s captors.
There was a shout of surprise before both canisters exploded, spraying thick smoke which quickly filled up the room. Marcus shot out of his hiding spot, low and silent, hamstringing the largest man, who had not had time to move from his position. He heard the big man yowl in pain and surprise and crash to the ground as his damaged leg failed to hold his massive weight. Marcus then took little time to open the man’s throat before he could recover from the initial attack. Marcus considered it to be a quick and painless death in comparison to the one Clem was currently undergoing.
*
Jackson had not had the advantage of a view of the cargo hold, and sight and smell were currently worthless in the smoke, but fortunately the other alpha team member, Ben, had stopped banging on the wall and howling now so Jackson was all ears. He heard someone fumbling with their gun as it rattled in their hands and making small, desperate noises. Jackson hit the youth from behind and knocked him forward. He did not like the idea of killing needlessly, but in this situation they couldn’t afford to take chances, so he grasped the young man’s head in both hands and twisted it to the side in a sharp motion. There was an audible crack and the youth’s body went limp as gunfire erupted and spat in Jackson’s general direction. He dove away and rolled sideways to put distance between himself and the gunfire.
*
Marcus could hear the scraping of the chair at the table and knew that the radioman was trying to get up. He lunged towards the sound and the faint glow of the lantern, and knocked over both the table and the chair. To his credit, the radioman made little noise as he tried to crawl away, but Marcus heard him tumble out of the chair and jumped onto the man’s back. The man then shouted something in Russian and Marcus sprang away, just as gunfire again rang out and the radioman’s shouting was cut short as he took several rounds. The lantern had either broken, been shot, or rolled off behind something because Marcus could no longer see its glow and the hold was noticeably darker. Marcus had clearly heard where the gunshots had come from, but he doubted that the smoking man would stay in one place after firing.
Everything seemed eerily quiet as the echoes of the gunshots died away and the swirling smoke began to slowly dissipate. Soon the smoke would be thinned enough that Marcus would lose his advantage and be once again an open target for a bullet. He had to douse the lights or they would be sitting ducks. Marcus felt around on the ground and his paw slid over a metallic chunk that must have been part of the radio. He kept listening as intently as he could as he pulled the Glock from its holster at his waist. It was difficult to handle with his claws but he managed to get a grip on it with one wolf hand then hurled the piece of radio away from him towards the far wall. The fragment made a pronounced clang as it struck the metal wall. Gunfire once again erupted and bullets ricocheted off of the wall. With the mask of gunfire, Marcus took off the safety and chambered a round then took careful aim and prepared to dodge. He shot out one of the lights and then rolled away as bullets sprayed the floor where he had been squatting.
He then took careful aim again, but before he could shoot he heard a quiet shuffle behind him. He took a deep but quiet breath and smelled cigarette smoke. Just in time he flung himself out of the way as gunfire sprayed at his back. Marcus felt a ricocheted bullet strike his thigh, but he didn’t allow himself to make any noise. The smoke was thin enough now that he saw the shadow of the smoking man angling around to get a better vantage point and Marcus could only stay still as any movement would have given away his position.
*
The third member of the alpha team, Ben, having stayed quiet and out of sight until just then, could also see the smoking man’s shadow flitting through the smoke. Ben tackled the man and knocked the gun out of his grip as a few rounds went off harmlessly to one side. The man struggled to regain hold of the weapon then, failing, tried to press his fingers into Ben’s eyes while flailing wildly. Ben was too quick and strong for him and swiped the claws of both hands across the man’s throat. Blood sprayed out of the severed artery, yet the smoking man didn’t stop thrashing for another twenty seconds.
*
Marcus saw the vague outline of a Wolfkin attacking the smoking man’s shadow, so he wasted no time in putting out the other lights. No more gunfire erupted and as the smoke cleared and his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Marcus could see the grey-haired man. He was in the cage with Clem and had a knife to his throat.
The man shouted in heavily accented English, “Stop! Stop or I will kill the mongrel you came after!”
Marcus could see by the way the man’s eyes darted back and forth, that he was blind in the darkness. He knew that they had a gun, but he was obviously depending on the bars and his proximity to Clem to protect him from bullets. Marcus crept up to the bars of the cage and had to steady himself as he felt the rage rising up again as the man’s shaking hand drew more of Clem’s blood. The grey-haired man was obviously in shock and most of his authoritative demeanor had slipped away. He was desperate and he might kill Clem accidentally if anything startled him now. Marcus would have preferred to leave the man alive, but if he just injured him, he might not be able to get into the cage before the man killed Clem, so he took aim and fired. The bullet struck the man in the forehead just over his right eye. He twitched, the knife dropped from his hand, and he blinked once before falling backwards onto the cold metal floor.
*
Marcus eventually found the key to the cage on the smoking man’s corpse. It was difficult to maneuver it into the keyhole and to get the lock to turn, but he managed it while Jackson and Ben double-checked the room for humans who may have been hiding and then guarded the doors. As Marcus gained entry to the cage, a banging and shouting began behind the locked main door of the room. Marcus didn’t know how many more abductors there could be, but there was no need for further risk or bloodshed, so he decided to forego attempting to coerce the tiny key into Clem’s manacles and hurried back into the engine room to retrieve a crowbar he had noticed in the pile of tools in front of the utility hatch.
He found the crowbar easily enough and was about to dive back through the hatch, when he caught the whiff of another Wolfkin. He spun back around and peered around the hot dank engine room. He spotted Zachary at the top of one of the metal gridded staircases. At first he was startled because beta team was supposed to stay on deck to secure their escape and he feared something had gone wrong, but then Zachary took two long clawed fingers and pointed them towards his eyes, then at Marcus. The clear translation of the gesture was, “I’m watching your back.” Marcus nodded and then returned to the cargo hold. In his absence, the banging on the door had suspiciously subsided along with the shouting, but Marcus wasted no time
in jimmying Clem’s manacles free from the chains that held them to the wall. Clem didn’t stir as he slid to the floor. They would have to extricate him from the cruel iron cuffs later.
As he gingerly hefted Clem up in a fireman’s carry, a bright surge of light burst through the edge of the door. The remaining captors were using a blowtorch to slice through the metal door lock. Marcus let out a short bark and the three alpha team members retreated to the utility hatch. Ben and Jackson went through first and hastily pulled Clem’s dead weight along the passageway. Marcus turned and threw two more smoke bombs into the cargo hold before entering the utility corridor and closing and sealing the hatch behind him. Hopefully the smoke would delay the captors long enough for the Wolfkin to make their escape.
He reached the opposite end of the passage and sealed that hatch too. Ben and Jackson had already gone up the stairs to the vent and Ben was climbing up the rope with Clem strapped to his back. After about a minute, the rope went slack again and Jackson quickly followed him. The rope was strong, but they still had to be careful not to put too much weight on it. Then Zachary grabbed the rope and began hoisting himself upwards. Marcus watched the end of the rope jerk back and forth and waited impatiently for it to stop. When the rope end finally went still he grabbed hold of it and began climbing as fast as he could towards the surface.
The rope gave way when Marcus was about halfway up and he abruptly fell back down the vent onto the hot metal floor of the engine room. Marcus let out a yip of pain and shock as he scrabbled to regain his feet. He felt something fall and bounce off of him before making a metallic clunk on the grated metal about a foot away. Turning he saw that it was a live grenade between him and the stairs. Marcus howled defiantly and dove over the side of the platform just as the grenade exploded in a flash of light and fury.
27
After another blissfully uneventful night with Kim under sedation and bound with the heavier rope on Wednesday night, Thursday was much more restful. Evelyn decided on a slight break from her work in the lab and spent the better part of the day out with David and Kim. At lunchtime as David made sandwiches for them all in the kitchen, Kim and Evelyn enjoyed a few moments alone.
“Evie, how did you and David meet?”
“David hasn’t told you already?”
Kim shrugged. “He’s told me how he became infected, but he said that it would be better for you to tell your own story.”
Evelyn leaned back in her chair and rubbed her forehead.
“Well, did David tell you about going to Russia?”
Kim nodded. “He said that there’s a pack of crazy werewolves there called the Vulke, and that they kind of kidnapped him for a while, but that he escaped.”
Evelyn wondered if David’s account had truly been that vague or if Kim was just paraphrasing. “Right, well before he knew that they were crazy, he told them about me, how I might be able to cure them, and they decided to kill me.”
Kim’s eyes widened but she stayed silent. Maybe David hadn’t gotten to that part of the story with her.
“But David realized what he had done, so he… er… kidnapped me to save my life, and took me up to the Upper Peninsula to try to get away from the Vulke. After he told me what he was and what was going on, I thought that he was crazy, but then Clem—“
“Who’s Clem?”
Evelyn choked up but managed to continue. ”Clem’s our friend. He’s a member of the American pack of werewolves, the Wahya. He found us and helped us get to a safe house in Sault Ste. Marie, his sister’s house actually, but the Vulke found us there.”
Evelyn shivered at the memory.
“What happened?” Kim gasped.
Evelyn didn’t want to breathe life into the gory details by recounting them. “There was a big fight, but everyone, well not the Vulke, but everyone else got out O.K. We went to a hotel, and the rest of the packs found out what was going on. I guess the Wahya told them. Anyway, they were negotiating with the Vulke.”
Kim’s face twisted in disgust. “Why would the other packs negotiate with those monsters? They were trying to kill you!”
Evelyn sagged in her chair. “It’s kinda hard to explain, but basically there was a war between the packs a long time ago, and they’ll do anything to prevent another war. Even try to placate the Vulke.”
The last few words left a bitter taste in Evelyn’s mouth and she had to take a moment to collect her thoughts again.
“Anyways, the negotiations weren’t going well for us, mainly because I was seen as a threat by some of the other packs too, so Clem got together with the Amaruq, the Canadian pack, and one of their members, Madeline, flew us up to Quebec to meet with the Scribe.”
Kim’s brows furrowed.
“The Scribe is the keeper of werewolf law and history, and he came up with a loophole in the law to protect me. We had to go in front of the Wolfkin Council, and David had to defeat the Vulke Alpha.”
“Well obviously David won, thank goodness, but how did you become a werewolf then?”
It was an innocent enough question, but it brought with it a surge of emotion in Evelyn as she remembered discovering that she had feelings for David in the midst of all the turmoil. She replayed in her mind, David grievously wounded but alive and her, bloody from her encounter with Darya, flinging herself into his arms. Evelyn’s bottom lip quivered as she finished the story for Kim.
“Unfortunately, the Vulke Beta, tried to murder me during the challenge, and both of us were bleeding afterwards…”
“And you kissed him and became infected,” Kim guessed.
Evelyn didn’t bother to correct Kim, but did have to chuckle inwardly since the thought of kissing David’s furry, gore-encrusted, post-challenge muzzle was so vulgar.
Evelyn smirked at Kim. “God, it sounds like some bad paranormal romance novel, doesn’t it?”
*
Evelyn, David, and Kim hiked out of the Tennessee woods early Friday morning. It took them the better part of three hours to make the parking lot where Evelyn’s car was parked, with Kim leaning on David and using a walking stick. They then drove Kim back to her car where it was still parked at the gym, and David followed Evelyn and Kim in Kim’s car as she directed them to her mother’s house.
“My mom went to visit my Aunt Grace in Pennsylvania, so I figured I’d just spend a quiet weekend doing laundry at her house, hit the gym. She won’t be back for another couple of days, so don’t worry, you won’t have to explain anything to her.”
Evelyn tried to keep the relief out of her voice. “I’m just glad that she wasn’t worried sick about you.”
The house was a plain, brown brick ranch with red tulips and yellow daffodils in well-tended flower beds and a gravel drive that swung around behind the building to the back yard. David pulled up the driveway, but Kim and Evelyn parked down the street and walked up to avoid possible inquiries by nosey neighbors about a suspicious car in the driveway. While Kim made several phone calls in the kitchen, she left Evelyn and David to rest on the 1970s floral- patterned couch in the living room. As Evelyn considered the other outdated features of the room, she wondered if the décor was original or if Kim’s mother fancied the retro-look. Evelyn was anxious to call Caroline to see if they’d found out anything about Clem while she and David were gone, but she knew that she had to wait for Kim to finish her calls first. Kim returned several minutes later.
“So, coach was pissed that I missed a couple practices, but thought that I was just blowing her off. I told her that I had a car accident, but it was more like a huge inconvenience than anything serious and that I didn’t want her to freak out. And thankfully my lab mates just thought that I was sick.”
David shifted in the sagging couch. “You’re not taking any classes right now?”
Kim sat in one of the two burnt orange recliners and shook her head. “Not this semester.”
“Would you mind if I used the phone for a quick call now?”
“Not a bit.”
“Tha
nks.”
Evelyn struggled with the soft couch cushions momentarily, then rose and headed into the kitchen. She tried calling Caroline, but the call just went directly to voice mail, so Evelyn left a grumpy message before hanging up. Heading back into the living room, she sat on the edge of the couch. David raised his eyebrows quizzically.
“No word, just got Caroline’s voice mail.”
David’s eyebrows drooped and he nodded looking down at his hands. Silence hung heavily in the air as Evelyn tried to think of something to say to Kim, hopefully something that would keep her from deciding that the whole week had been some kind of bad trip after she and David left. Kim beat her to the punch.
“You guys don’t have to stay. I’m fine now. I’ll probably just take a shower and then nap, or maybe nap then take a shower, and then I’ll head home tomorrow and regroup.”
Evelyn hesitated. “Are you sure?”
Kim nodded. “You have to work tomorrow, right?”
Evelyn frowned, but tilted her head forward in agreement.
“I’m sure.”
“Well, there’s plenty of extra bandages and ointment in the bag I brought in. And don’t forget to take your pain meds and antibiotics. Even if you don’t feel like you’re in that much pain, take them to prevent the pain from coming back. They work better that way.”
“Thanks…er…do you want your clothes back?”
Evelyn had helped Kim to take a bit of a sponge bath and wash her hair on Thursday, loaning her a spare set of slightly-too-small clothes since the ones Kim had been wearing when she had her accident were ruined.