by Geonn Cannon
“Works for me,” Milo said. “Plus we got all these cool new weapons to use.”
Ari said, “I was thinking I’d go in as the wolf.”
“Me too,” Milo said, “but it’s nice to have options. And Dale should be nicely protected.”
“My number one concern,” Ari admitted. “Shall we...?”
Milo nodded and they continued on to the car. Gwen was in the back, Dale in the driver’s seat. Milo joined Gwen in the backseat with the bag, while Ari got in the front next to Dale.
“Have a nice chat?” Dale said.
Ari said, “We decided to let you help us.”
Dale wiped imaginary sweat from her forehead. “What a relief. Did Lucy explain what a dazzler is?”
“Yeah. Along with some other cool stuff. We’ll fill you in on the way.” She twisted in the seat to look at Gwen. “You ready?”
“Ready,” Gwen said. “Drive south, Dale. Toward CenturyLink. Once we get there, it’ll just be a matter of one or two turns.”
Ari faced forward as Dale pulled out of the driveway. “Okay, then. Into the lion’s den we go...”
***
New York got the credit as the city that never slept, but Ari wondered if any big city ever really went completely to bed. She looked out the window as Dale passed through downtown, the streetlights dimmed but still shining, traffic still flowing, container ships rolling through Puget Sound to deliver their cargo. She saw people out walking, shadows without detail, and wondered if they were out at this hour by choice or necessity.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to say?” Dale asked.
Ari pulled her thoughts back to the car. “What? Say to who? About what?”
“The hero speech.”
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“You know,” Dale said. “Last time the hunters showed up, you gave a big speech about how this whole thing was archaic. You got them to put down their weapons.”
Ari scoffed. “Yeah, and look where that got us. They’re already back, and they’re worse than ever before. We’re not going to talk.”
Dale looked over at her, then glanced into the backseat. “You’re... you’re not talking about killing them, are you?”
“They planned to kill us, Dale,” Gwen said calmly. “The raid on our home. The attempted attack on the Cardoso pack. Marin and Val are still in incredible danger. Ariadne is right. We can’t afford to use kid gloves on them.”
Dale looked at Ari. “I never thought I’d see you advocating deadly force.”
Ari didn’t answer immediately. She took a few deep breaths and watched the downtown lights for a few blocks before she spoke.
“We’ve tried to be peaceful. We’ve tried talking sense into them. It doesn’t stick. There will always be people like Roemer who either want us dead or think they’re doing the right thing by revealing us to the world. Either way, they’re not going to stop unless we make them stop. Maybe that makes us the monsters Magnusson wrote about. I don’t know if this is the right thing to do. The only thing I’m sure about is that if we don’t do something drastic, a lot of wolves are going to die.”
Dale pressed her lips together.
“You don’t have to be there for it,” Ari said.
“Do you still have my bracelet?” Dale asked.
Ari frowned. “Uh. Yeah. I think so.” She reached into her pocket and retrieved the bracelet. She held it for a moment, then handed it over.
“Can you take the wheel for a second?”
Ari watched her carefully and put her hand on the wheel. Dale kept her eyes on the road as she unfastened the clasp, wrapped it around her wrist, and snapped it shut again. She took the wheel again and breathed out slowly.
“When I had this made, hair and fur, it meant that I was accepting both sides of you. If someone wanted you dead, if someone was actually sending SWAT teams to your house to kill you, nothing in Heaven or Earth would stop me from doing whatever it took to keep you safe. I’m all in, puppy.”
Milo said, “Knew you were a true wolf, Dale.”
Dale smiled, but it was weak. “Trust me, this isn’t what I want to be doing. But if the option is between helping you and doing nothing, when I know that doing nothing means more canidae will die, then I don’t see a choice.”
The rest of the ride was spent in silence until the stadium loomed into view. Gwen directed Dale where to go, pointing her toward a nondescript concrete wedge of a building that could have been anything from a warehouse to a parking garage. There were only a handful of small windows, and those were blocked by thin sheets of mostly opaque plastic. Lights were on in most of the windows, but there was obviously no way of knowing how many people were actually inside. Ari heard a sharp intake of breath from the backseat. She didn’t know which of the women had made it, but it didn’t really matter.
“Neither of you have to be there either,” Ari said. “You’ve both been through enough.”
“I’m getting my closure,” Milo said.
Ari nodded.
Dale parked at the end of the block and shut off the engine. “Battle plan?” she asked.
“I was going to say we go in as wolves, use the element of surprise, let the animal brain take over. But that was before Lucy gave us all these wonderful toys. So new plan. We take the bulletproof vests that Dale and Lucy so kindly appropriated from the hunters and we go in the front door. Hopefully we can catch them unawares and take them out before they have a chance to get their weapons.” She twisted to look into the backseat. “What do you remember of the interior?”
Gwen said, “We didn’t see much of it. Four floors. Multiple rooms on each floor. Milo and I were kept on the ground floor, I’m pretty sure Marin is on the second floor, and Roemer is at the top.”
“Like a video game,” Ari said. “Easy levels leading up to the big boss. I’ll go in first. Then Milo. Dale, you and Mom bring up the rear.”
Gwen said, “I’m--”
“Not arguing with me? Great. Because you understand that you and Milo have both been through something traumatic, and she’s had more time to heal. Right? That’s what you were going to say?”
Gwen curled her lip. “Smart ass.”
“Well, you raised me,” Ari said. “We ready?”
They geared up. Ari and Milo put on the bulletproof vests, protective eyewear, and slipped the dazzlers into their pockets. They also got batons, which Dale and Gwen were also armed with. They got out of the car and fell into the formation Ari had come up with. Ari kept them close to the building where they would blend in with the shadows. They passed three rusted-over loading doors with locks that looked like they hadn’t been touched in decades, the metal defaced with indecipherable graffiti.
At the far end of the building they reached a gravel parking lot enclosed by a chain-link fence which had conveniently been left open by whichever hunter had last left. Only three cars remained, which supported Ari’s belief that most of the hunters were currently in custody. She looked back to make sure she hadn’t lost any members of the team, then motioned them to follow her across the lot.
Still hugging the building, Ari spotted a ramp that led up to a pair of double doors. She looked over her shoulder and pointed. Gwen understood the motion was meant for her and nodded. Ari returned the nod, then trotted closer. She closed her right hand around the knob and gave it a gentle turn. No resistance. She held up her left hand, all five fingers out, then counted down. Four, three, two...
On one, she yanked the door open and ran inside. Three men were seated around a card table in the center of a massive main room. Ari saw doors spaced around the exterior wall of the room, probably offices once upon a time, but all the doors were currently closed. The hunters were dressed all in black, all casually settled in folding chairs. One was looking at his phone, another looked to be asleep, and the third was playing solitaire.
The card-playing hunter was the first one to look up. Ari clocked the confusion on his fa
ce changing over to realization, then fury. They were obviously expecting their hit squad to be coming back. He shouted, words failing him as he fumbled for a weapon on his hip. Phone Man twisted around to see who had come inside. Ari fired the dazzler, shining a bright strobe light directly into his face. He howled, waking his sleepy companion. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the strobing flash. He threw both hands over his face and fell out of his chair with a confused cry.
Milo had stepped around Ari and launched herself across the room with impressive grace, rolling when she landed. The first hunter had managed to unholster his weapon. Milo cracked him in the knee with her baton and he folded, dropping into a crouch and opening himself up to another strike from the baton. This time she hit him in the chest, and he fell to the side. She took his gun and tucked it into her belt.
Lucy’s care package had also contained zip ties, which Gwen used to secure the blinded and disabled men. Ari grabbed the shoulder of the man closest to her, Phone Man.
“How many people are upstairs?”
He spit at her, but missed her due to the angle. Ari let go of his shoulder and he dropped hard onto the floor. Milo was already running for the stairs, and Ari followed her.
“Slow down,” Ari hissed.
Milo shook her head. Her whole body was tense, and her eyes were shining with a rage Ari had never seen in her before. When she spoke, her voice was flat and forced. “I recognize two of those bastards. If I stay down here with them, the wolf is going to take over and it’s not going to be pretty. I have to keep moving.”
“Fair enough,” Ari said, clapping her hand on Milo’s shoulder. “Lead the way.”
They reached the second floor landing as a door opened and Isaac Hayden stepped out. He was walking briskly, clearly on his way to see what all the commotion downstairs was, but he almost tripped over his own feet when he recognized Ari and Milo.
“What was it you said last time we met, Hayden?” Ari asked. “Take this mutt down? Something about killing me?”
“Miss Willow...”
Milo howled and threw herself forward, the sort of leap that a wolf could do with ease but a human might have found difficult. She raised her baton and brought it down in a wide, beautiful arc that very nearly came down across Hayden’s temple. She only missed because he threw himself forward and wrapped both arms around her waist. He pivoted and threw them both forward, slamming hard into the wall with Milo to cushion the fall. The air exploded out of her mouth with violent force and her arms twitched, went limp. She dropped her baton and dazzler as her head lolled disturbingly.
Ari was on Hayden’s back before he could step away from Milo. She threaded her arm around his throat, grabbed a handful of hair, and pulled him off her. Hayden growled and scratched at her arms but Milo clearly had the upper hand. She held tight, wrenching his head back as he stumbled in a circle in a futile attempt to shake her off.
Gwen suddenly stepped in front of Hayden, appearing as if she was a ghost. She didn’t waste time with a threat, she simply pulled one arm back and punched Hayden in the stomach with as much force as she could muster. He doubled over and Ari let go to keep from going down with him, stretching out one arm to brace herself against the wall to keep from falling over with him. Hayden, clutching his stomach with a wheezing cough, made a break for the stairs and ran up to the next floor.
Ari thought about giving chase, but wanted to make sure her team was intact first. Gwen was already at Milo’s side, trying to rouse her.
“Where’s Dale?” Ari asked.
“Dealing with the computers. They’re downstairs. We had to take out another guy who was monitoring the livestream, but he wasn’t much of a hassle.”
“Ariadne...?”
Ari turned and saw Val. Her hair was much longer, her clothes were filthy, and it looked like she hadn’t showered during her entire imprisonment, but still unmistakably herself. There was a caution in her posture, just in case she was hallucinating, but Ari could see the moment Val realized this was really happening. Her shoulders relaxed, her eyes widened and shined with tears, and she sagged as if she was about to pass out. Ari took off her protective glasses and went to the doctor, bracing her against the wall.
“Are you okay?” Ari asked.
“No. But I can definitely see progress in that direction.” She gripped Ari’s bicep and squeezed, then looked past her. She recognized Milo and Gwen, and her expression fell. “Oh, son of a bitch, we got you out!”
“We had unfinished business,” Milo rasped.
“Milo, get Val out of here.”
Val and Milo both protested, but for different reasons. Val’s argument was the only one Ari heard: “I’m not leaving without Marin.”
“Where is she?” Ari asked.
Val pointed. “Around the corner, in a dead-end hallway. Can’t miss it. There are guards, though.”
“How many hunters are still here?”
“Um.” Val squeezed her eyes shut. “Um, four downstairs, two at Marin’s room. Six. Just six.”
Ari said, “And upstairs?”
“Roemer and the bitch who is running things,” Val said. “Never got her name.”
Ari patted Val’s arm. “Okay. You did good. But now you need to go, get out of here. You’ve gone through enough. I’m here and I’m not going to leave her behind. Okay?”
Val’s eyes filled with tears. “Promise me.”
“I swear to you, I’m not leaving this building without Marin.”
Val nodded and surrendered.
Ari turned to Milo. “As for you--"
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Milo grunted. “Gwen talked some sense into me while you were getting your intel.” She was standing up again, though clearly it was painful. She motioned for Val to come with her. “We’ll get you somewhere safe, c’mon.”
Gwen watched Milo head down the stairs, then looked at Ari. “Shall we?”
Ari nodded and led the way.
“They’re going to know we’re coming,” Gwen said. “They must have heard the noise by now.”
“Yeah,” Ari said. “And Hayden is probably letting Mister and Missus Hunter upstairs know everything, too.”
“So much for the element of surprise.”
Ari shrugged. “I never much liked the element of surprise. I like people to know when I’m coming for them.”
She saw the opening to the hallway ahead and stopped, shoulder against the wall. She breathed in deeply and smelled flop sweat mixed with cologne, and gun metal. They were armed, and they were nervous. They definitely wouldn’t go down as easily as the guys downstairs. Ari was very aware of the fact she was mostly armed with a flashlight and a glorified stick. She looked at her mother, who was crouching against the opposite wall waiting for her to give a signal. Ari watched the corner carefully.
“Let’s just get this out in the open,” she said. “We know you’re there. You know we’re here. There’s no point in pretending like either of us is being sneaky.”
“Didn’t hear a lot of gunfire,” one of the guards called back. “Makes me think you’re not very heavily armed.”
“Makes me think none of your guys was quick enough to get a shot off.”
Silence from around the corner.
“The fact we’re even in the building is a really bad sign for you, too. Have you heard from the guys you sent after Eva Cardoso tonight? Were they supposed to check in, but they’ve been mysteriously silent? Yeah, you might want to stop checking your phone.”
“There’s a big difference between being arrested for kidnapping and an attempted murder charge,” Gwen added.
“You don’t want to be Butch and Sundance,” Ari said. “You want to be Newman and Redford. Badass heartthrobs living live to the fullest into their eighties.” She thought for a second and then whispered to Gwen, “Redford’s still alive, right?”
“I haven’t seen the news in six months. But he better be.”
One of the guards said, “Redford’s alive...�
�
“Cool,” Ari said. “So come on out. You can move past this period in your lives, move on, have a solid second act. One of you can start your own salad dressing company. It’ll be great. Just put your guns on the ground and kick them out.”
She counted to fourteen before she heard the first clatter of metal. She resisted the urge to say ‘holy shit, I can’t believe that worked’ when she saw the first gun slide across the carpet. A second followed it.
“Okay, come on out slowly.”
The first man came around the corner, slumped in defeat. He looked at Gwen, then Ari, and she saw his expression slowly change.
“Oh for fuck’s sake, there’s only two of them!”
Ari ran forward, dazzler up and shining as he went for a second gun that was holstered at his side. The strobe blinded him before he could draw the weapon, and she cracked the baton across his jaw as she slammed into his chest. She wrapped her arm around him and spun him around to use him as a battering ram against the guard behind him. All three of them fell into a pile with Ari on top. Neither guard seemed to be wearing body armor, so Ari punched the one she had tackled in the stomach as hard as she could. He coughed and sputtered while the second guard shoved and wriggled in an attempt to get free.
The guard Ari was wrestling with had a bloody nose and a split lip. His lips were pulled back over disgusting red teeth, and she clapped a hand over his mouth before he got the idea to spit at her. He bucked up at her, twisted his waist, and threw her off of him. She hit the wall and dropped to the floor, instinctively bracing her fall instead of protecting herself. She tensed, expecting a gunshot, but instead she heard a solid thud followed by the man collapsing next to her. She looked up and saw Gwen drive the butt of one guard’s gun into the remaining guard’s face. He went limp and didn’t look prepared to get back up any time soon.
“Damn,” Ari said, using the wall to get back to her feet.
Gwen said, “You expected me to pull punches after everything they put me and Milo through?”
“No, ma’am.” She bent down and patted the first guard’s pockets, then tried the other’s. She found keys and went to the door. The lock was pitiful, something she could have picked in a few seconds if she hadn’t found the keys, and she eased the door opened and peeked inside.