by Art DeForest
“Naw,” Replied Jake with a snort. “I think it just an excuse to go out and run around the hills with Tango.”
“Those two have rather hit it off.” Chuckled Sara.
“Really?” asked Kaitlyn. “They had a pretty rocky start.”
Sara shrugged her shoulders. “Engaging in battle can build respect and even a kind of bond between the combatants.” She said, leaning closer into Kaitlyn. “Much like certain other physical activities.” She said in a silky voice next to Kaitlyn’s ear. Kaitlyn giggled.
“Get a room, you two.” Groused Jake, good-naturedly and shaking his head. “She’s right though, sexual innuendo aside. Combat, even against one another can lead to a kind of brotherhood once the heat of battle has cooled.” He stared off into the distance for a moment as if remembering something.
Sara reached down and picked up her whiskey glass once more. “Here’s to friends and enemies. May we always be able to tell them apart.”
Kaitlyn raised her own glass to the toast as Jake quickly filled himself a shot glass with a rich amber liquid. The three friends smiled companionably as the glasses clinked together in acknowledgment of the toast.
They all drank and slammed their empty glasses on the bar. “As for your suggestion,” Said Sara with a slightly wicked smile. “I think we’ll do just that.”
Jake looked puzzled for a moment as Sara led Kaitlyn by the hand toward a door just past the end of the bar. “What suggestion?” He asked.
“Why, getting a room, of course.” She replied, glancing over her shoulder with a sultry grin.
Jake’s knowing chuckle followed them as the opened the door and entered the hallway behind it.
Sara and Kaitlyn walked hand in hand down to the door at the opposite end of the hall. As Sara started to raise her hand to turn the doorknob, she felt Kaitlyn pull her gently back. Sara turned to meet Kaitlyn’s loving, but tentative gaze. “Sara... I’ve... I’ve never been…” she stuttered.
Sara raised a finger to Kaitlyn’s lips, silencing her. Stepping in, her lips quickly replaced the quieting finger. Kaitlyn stiffened slightly for a moment, but finally, let herself relax and give in to the feelings. Her hands came tentatively up to Sara’s waist and pulled her into an embrace. They stood there in the hallway for quite a while. Their whole universe focused on where their lips touched, and their tongues danced and played.
After no time at all and an eternity, they slowly drifted apart. It felt like gravity, or maybe magic was conspiring to pull them back together with some kind of magnetic force. “What were you saying?” she whispered softly, looking into her companions caramel colored gaze.
“Never mind.” Said Kaitlyn, breathlessly as she leaned past her and pushed open the door to Sara’s apartment.
++++
Cream colored satin sheets coiled luxuriantly around the soft, skin of two intertwined bodies. The room smelled of sex with an undercurrent of blood. Kaitlyn was a vampire, after all, and their nature came more strongly to the fore in the heat of passion. Sara and Kaitlyn faced each other, smiling. Legs entwined and hands casually stroking the soft skin of the other. “Are you sure you have to go?” Said Kaitlyn, plaintively.
Sara sighed with regret. “We both have to get back to our duties, love,” she replied, running her hand down Kaitlyn’s cheek before allowing it to travel further down and trace a butterfly, light touch along the side of Kaitlyn’s breast.
Kaitlyn hissed softly in pleasure. “Sometimes being an adult, sucks.” She pouted, bottom lip sticking out cutely.
Leaning in, Sara bit the lip gently letting her tongue play along its leading edge. Kaitlyn moaned and tightened their embrace as they kissed passionately. Eventually, they broke apart once more, sated and content in the touch of the other. “I suppose you’re right.” Said Kaitlyn with a sigh. “But I’m going to miss you.”
“And I, you” replied Sara. She reached out and took her lover’s hand and raised it to her lips. “It’s only temporary though.” She continued. “And we have all the time in the world.”
The ladies got up and took a shower together, the water was definitely edging toward the cold side before they finally got out. After a tender kiss for Kaitlyn and a hug for Jake, Sara found herself once more in her SUV and headed west, over the mountains.
She could have flown into Grand Junction and rented a vehicle, but Kangee hated to fly unless it was under his own power. So, she chose to drive and keep the big raven’s anxiety level as low as possible. Besides, at highway speeds, it was only three and a half hours to the town of De Beque where she needed to turn off Interstate 70 and make her way back into the badlands and wild horse country between there and the Grand Junction.
Her satellite radio was belting out Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” as she drove. She didn’t like all modern music, but Freddie Mercury was a flippin genius, in her opinion. Her mind drifted from thoughts of Kaitlyn, and the night they’d spent together and eventually settled on the underground facility she was headed to. The transformed animals created there by her old, and now dead, nemesis, Hatali were going to be an ongoing nightmare for a long time to come.
Not that the creations themselves were bad, but their mutation meant that they needed to be hidden away from humans. There was no way any of them from the huge grizzly bear creation, Ivan, who was Sara’s personal favorite. He was as gentle and playful as he was huge and terrifying. All the way down to Kenzie the Corgi, could not possibly be mistaken for a wild animal. And yes, a mutant corgi was as funny and cute as you might expect unless his powerful jaws clamped down on you when he was angry. Then, it was a whole new ballgame.
At least they had a place to house the creations if only temporarily. The Abandonados knew the facility's location after all. Heck, they’d built it. Sara figured that eventually, they might want their property back.
Sara lived in the southwest for decades back before the Europeans came to this country and she could think of several places where they could construct a new complex for the mutant animals. Places that were well away from humans and yet more hospitable than the arid lands she was just now entering.
Exiting the interstate, Sara swept into town and past two different marijuana retailers on her way out toward the Little Book Cliffs Wild Horse Area. The area was an absolute maze of small dirt roads, thanks largely to the rich natural gas deposits deep underground and the drilling and maintenance equipment the energy companies brought to extract the resource. What appeared to be one such facility sat squarely on top of the underground facility that housed the creations.
Forty-five minutes after leaving the pavement behind, Sara finally pulled into the garage of the faux pumping station. She got out of her vehicle and Kangee hopped out and onto her waiting shoulder. She unfurled her mystic senses as she headed toward the secret elevator that would take her down to the complex of tunnels below. That was the first time she felt something wasn’t right.
Instinctively almost, she coaxed Kangee onto the roof of her SUV and reached in behind the front seat for her staff. Her gut was telling her to keep the staff, and the three feet of steel blade concealed inside, close to hand.
Absently, her brow furrowed in concentration, she walked over and opened the garage door once more. With a mental nudge from Sara, Kangee leapt into the air and flew out of the open door and into the sky above. She sent a mental command out to him to scout the area. Closing the garage door, she headed to the elevator, still concentrating on the wrongness she was feeling.
She could feel the life force of the creations below just like always, but something was different. They all felt the same, like they all shared the same thought and the same level of consciousness. It was like they were robots.
Concern and trepidation crossed her features as she closed the door on the freight elevator. Her unease grew as she descended into the underground depths.
3
Sara unconsciously crouched in a defensive position as the elevator made its slow progress downward. She began to sense the pres
ence of two of the creations in the room at the end of the elevator’s journey. Creations were supposed to be supervised if they were out of their personal enclosures and Sara couldn’t sense any of the lycans in the room.
Her caution was well founded. As soon as the doors opened, the two creations charged her. Both creations had been mutated from black bear stock. Anyone who knew of lycans would have assumed them to be werebears in battle form. They stood on two legs, heads hovering a foot below the eight-foot ceiling. Short brown muzzles were opened as they charged, showing an impressive set of teeth.
Sara spun into the room, withdrawing her blade from the base of her staff as she went. The charge of the two bears didn’t give her any time to think about the ramifications of her actions. It was simply the choice between fight or die.
Her speed was a surprise to her opponents, and they both missed with clumsy strikes from handpaws tipped with two-inch claws. Sara felt the breeze caused their passage as she passed between them. She finished her spin behind them with a slash to the hamstring of the left-hand opponent.
The bear creation collapsed to the floor with a bellow of pain mixed with rage. Her backhand swing was meant to disable the opponent on her right, but he recovered too fast and tried to take her head off with another swipe of his handpaw.
Sara was forced to abort her strike. Instead, she put her momentum into a forward roll that brought her inside the circle of the bear’s reach. Her blade was still reversed, angling back behind her. Rather than try to bring it around for a slicing attack, she used the split second of opening she had to thrust the hardwood butt of her blade into her opponent's solar plexus.
Sara’s strength was the equal of any vampire and most lycans, so when the butt of the sword impacted on the bear’s thickly muscled abdomen, he felt it. Breath whooshed out of him as he doubled over in pain.
Sara stepped back out of his reach as his head came down to convenient striking level. Her combat instincts were to bring her razor sharp blade down on the back of the creature’s neck, but her gentler side altered the blow. Instead, she spun in place to generate momentum and slammed the base her staff with all her might to a focused point behind the bear’s ear.
The creation collapsed in a heap as Sara leapt over a swipe from its compatriot, who couldn’t stand, but seemed determined to press the attack. Landing once more, Sara moved back into the elevator and hit the button that would send the car back up to the surface. As the doors were sliding closed, a door across the room that led deeper into the facility opened and an enraged Tango, the mutant puma that had been Hatali’s greatest creation, streaked across the room toward her. She prayed to the great spirit for the elevator doors to close faster. She loved Tango and had no desire to hurt him. The last thing she saw as the doors closed, was a shiny, metal collar strapped around Tango’s neck.
Sara leaned against one wall of the elevator car as it traveled upward and considered what she’d seen. As she replayed the fight in her head, she realized that the two bear assailants had also been wearing collars. She assumed that the collars were some kind of control mechanism, but how had they come to be around the necks of her people and who had put them there?
The obvious answer as to who had done it was the Abandonados and their lackeys. She knew for certain that her side of this conflict had no such technology and she was sure that the humans had no knowledge of the facility.
Her task at this point then was to get the word out about the retaking of the facility. She could then gather enough forces to take it back, preferably without killing the creations who were merely pawns in the Abandonados power play.
All of Sara’s speculation came to a screeching halt as the elevator car suddenly did the same. Apparently, there was someone close enough to the elevator who was smart enough to activate the override and bring the car to a stop.
Sara wasted no time in attempting to reactivate the elevator or open the doors. She knew she had to be surrounded by solid rock at this point. Moving quickly, she used her staff to dislodge the emergency escape hatch in the top of the elevator car. Her legs flexed powerfully, and she propelled herself up through the hatch, feet touching down lightly a half second later on the car’s metal roof.
Taking inventory of her surroundings, she visually followed the cables attached to the roof of the car up into the darkness that engulfed the elevator shaft. Even with her night vision, she couldn’t see the top. With a resigned sigh, she put her staff between her shoulder blades and slid the end between her belt and the jeans she was wearing. Once she was sure it would remain in place, she started the arduous climb up the cables.
She hoped she was fast enough to get up the elevator shaft before Tango could get up the emergency stairs. She wasn’t. Tango was waiting patiently beside her SUV as the doors opened up. She could also see that he’d had time to slash all four tires on the vehicle. She groaned inwardly. ‘That’s going to make for a long walk out,’ she thought.
Tango glared coldly at her as she stepped out of the elevator. She got the feeling that he’d been given a different set of orders than her previous attackers. Probably by whoever had disabled the elevator. “Easy, Tango,” she said as she took a slow step toward him. “We can work this out.”
She took another step in his direction, trying to get a good look at the collar around his neck. She could tell that it was made of metal but from this distance that was all she could see. Her next step was one step too far.
Tango suddenly coiled and leapt at her, arms extended to grapple, not rend. As she ducked underneath the rush, she saw that his claws remained retracted into his feline handpaws. She dodged nimbly aside, her staff slashing out as she went, sweeping his legs out from under him.
He landed adroitly on all fours, poised on his toes and fingers. His muscles bunched beneath him and he charged at her once more. Tango was insanely fast in his battle form, he was the only creation that Sara knew about who actually had two forms. Most of them were permanently frozen in a half animal, half humanoid state. Tango had been created by Hatali’s magic, not Abandonado science. As a result, he could transform between battle form and the form of a natural looking, if extraordinarily large puma. He had all the speed and power that implied.
As great as his speed was, however, Sara’s was its equal. The spinning combat technique she had mastered centuries ago served her well now as she quickly twirled out of the path of Tango’s charge and sent a strike with her staff into the side of his muscular knee. She heard a watery crunch in the joint and Tango grunted in pain as the knee buckled beneath him. Her return strike was headed for his forehead, but the puma demonstrated his own quickness with a flashing forearm block that sent the staff whizzing over the top of his head and ruffling his short fur with the wind of its passing.
Sara’s combat style always had her in motion, but never off balance. She used the force of the missed strike to curve the staff’s path in a U shape that caught Tango at the ankles. He would have probably managed to remain standing even then, but the damaged knee gave way completely with the rapid second strike to the same leg.
The blood shaman never hesitated. Her low, sweeping strike curved upward sharply, raising the end of the staff high over her head. It moved just as fast in a downward trajectory toward Tango’s skull.
He managed to get a handpaw up but not far enough to divert the strike. The staff broke two of his fingers as it plowed past and ended with a meaty thunk right between Tango’s eyes. Sara followed the strike with two more just like it before unconsciousness finally claimed him.
Sara knelt next to her friend and examined the collar. There was a box attached to the back of the collar. It had three LED’s on it, two of which were lit. One yellow and one green light showed brightly at her. The third light was red but wasn’t lit. She took that as an ominous sign. The collar also appeared to be made of a tough woven metal of some kind. She decided it was too risky to remove the collar without getting more information. She sighed with regret, knowing she couldn�
�t free him yet. Standing back up, she turned and headed east, hoping she could get to help ahead of the pursuit she knew would be coming for her.
++++
Tango woke with a growl of pain. His knee and fingers were already well on their way to being healed, but the deep, throbbing pain in his head was a stark reminder of his defeat. Deep inside, he was grateful for the defeat and the brief respite that unconsciousness had given him from the compulsion that was forcing him to follow another’s will.
Hatali had been subtle in his manipulation of the creatures he’d created. This new compulsion was the opposite. It bludgeoned its way in, pushing Tango’s will aside. It ruled his mind and body with an iron fist. The compulsion was irresistible. The part of him that remained Tango was walled in and held captive in a dim corner of his mind. Still, cats didn’t like being caged, and that part of him raged and scratched at the walls unceasingly, fighting to be free.
The compulsion remained in force, however, and it spurred him back into action. He had to track down Sara. He had to bring her back to his new mistress. Suppressing the pain in his head, he stood up as the door to the emergency stairs opened. Another creation entered the room along with one of their lycan allies. The creation was his friend Ivan, a huge creation mutated from a grizzly bear. The lycan was Mike, second in command of the local lycan pack. Both were wearing collars.