by L. L. Raand
“Yes, Alpha,” Niki said, quickly whispering instructions to her lieutenants. “Alpha, perhaps the Prima should stay with the rear guard.”
Sylvan glanced at Drake. “She’s right. If we have wounded we’ll need you to evacuate them.”
“If we have wounded, you’ll need me at the front to take care of them. I’m going with you.”
“I thought you would.” Sylvan gripped Niki’s shoulder. “We’ll see you upstairs.”
*
Zahn Logan, Jody’s human servant and chief of security, and Rafaela, the head of Jody’s Vampire guard, ordered the drivers of their fortified vehicles to stop a mile from Francesca’s lair. The team of a dozen Vampires plus the Were squadron headed by Max covered the remaining distance on foot, keeping to the back service roads that wended through the forested properties dotting the slope overlooking the river. At one time, the city’s elite, including a few Vampires, had held court in the mansions along this stretch of river. Some were still occupied, others long abandoned. Fortunately, the owners had valued their privacy and kept as much wooded acreage between the houses as possible. Now Jody’s forces advanced within fifty yards of Francesca’s lair without coming across any security.
“She has grown overconfident,” Zahn murmured. “Her perimeters are unguarded.”
“Either that or she’s desperate,” Jody said. “If she’d been wise, or able, she would have moved every few days.”
Zahn made a disgusted sound. “Francesca has become a creature of comfort and ego. She cannot bring herself to believe she could be attacked in her own lair, yet again.”
“Always a pleasure to prove her wrong,” Jody said. She studied the sprawling house. A single light burned on the wide front porch and a smattering of lights glowed behind windows on the first floor. Francesca would not be in any of those rooms. She would be underground, probably in a fortified bunker. Her guards would be close by, ready to fend off attackers and spirit her to safety.
“You have the explosives,” Jody said to her security chief.
“Yes, Liege.”
“Warlord? Assessment?”
Lara scanned the building, saw no forces other than two guards in the front and rear. The rest of the grounds appeared deserted.
“We need to disable any vehicles as soon as we commence the attack. Francesca’s servants will try to get her out.” Lara looked to Rafaela. “The limos will be in the rear of the building. Two of your soldiers with RPGs should be enough.”
“I’ll see to it.”
Lara turned back to Jody. “Send the wolves to disable the guards on the outer doors. Wolves will be unexpected, and they’ll be swift. Once they take down the guards, we enter en masse. We need to be quick and deadly.”
Jody laughed. “Are we ever anything else?”
“Anyone we encounter must die.”
“Max,” Jody said without the slightest hesitation, “choose four of your fastest. Strike the throat. We’ll be right behind you and take the heads.”
“One minute.” Max signaled to Dasha and two of his most seasoned lieutenants. They shifted together and, on a short bark from Max, tore across the moon-strewn grounds for Francesca’s lair.
*
Sylvan, Drake, Gray, and three other sentries raced for the loading dock. At the same time, Niki’s squad broke from the shadows and ran down a ramp to the underground entrance. Sylvan flicked on her radio.
“Three, two, one.”
She gripped the bottom of the steel security door with both hands and ripped it from its hinges. It rolled up like a window shade severed from its cord, revealing a two-story space lit by dim security lights at floor level. Huge furnaces, water purifiers, air conditioners, and other machinery, all controlling the internal environment of the building, hummed and clanged. From somewhere off to the left, she heard a quiet thump of another door being breached. Niki was in.
Sylvan led the squad forward cautiously. Where were the engineers, the maintenance people, security for that matter? Why had no one tried to stop them yet?
“I don’t like it,” Drake murmured.
“No,” Sylvan said. “It smells like a trap.”
“Stairwells?” Drake asked.
“Probably—or the elevator shafts. That’s where I would plan the assault.” Sylvan radioed Niki. “Anything?”
“A Vampire limo and a few civilian cars. No guards.”
“Stay away from the elevators and stairwells. Go up the parking ramp to the first office level and wait for my signal to enter.”
“What about us?” Drake said when Sylvan finished.
Sylvan smiled in anticipation. “One thing all these old factory buildings had were exterior fire escapes. I’m betting they still do.”
*
The wolves sailed through the air and took Francesca’s Vampire guards down in silence, tearing out their throats with savage bites. The injuries were not lethal to Vampires, but the attacks were swift enough that the Vampires couldn’t begin to recover before Jody and the others landed beside them with drawn swords and took their heads. When Zahn fired a shock grenade at the front door, Dasha and Anya disabled the limos parked nearby. The wide, heavy front door splintered inward, blasted into thousands of toothpick-sized fragments. As Jody’s Vampires and Weres flowed into Francesca’s lair, the Hound burst from the shadows and followed them in like a black tide.
Chapter Thirty-four
Francesca was abruptly pulled from her pleasure by the startling sound of an explosion. She raised her head from Dru’s neck, her heart pumping with the infusion of potent blood and the almost-forgotten sensation of fear. Daniela still crouched between Dru’s thighs, her incisors buried in Dru’s groin, oblivious to anything beyond the blood coursing down her throat. Dru’s back was arched, her eyes blind, her body taut with release.
“Dru,” Francesca said sharply, shattering Dru’s trance. “Something is happening.”
Dru shook her head, emerging from the erotic haze, and pushed Daniela away. With blood still streaming down the inside of her thigh, she sat up, her pupils mere slits in molten gold. Cat’s eyes. A growl reverberated in her chest. “Intruders.”
Dru jumped from the bed, her skin awash in adrenaline. Tawny pelt flowed down her chest and abdomen. Claws punched from the ends of her digits and her canines lengthened. She took two steps toward the door of Francesca’s boudoir, halted as a crash reverberated through the hall outside, and spun to face Francesca. She scooped up the clothes they’d left on the floor and tossed them to her. “Take Daniela and get to the limo. I’ll send Dante to drive you. Hurry.”
Francesca listened to the footsteps above. Just entering the main part of the mansion. A dozen. “Where are you going?”
“To stop whoever’s out there.
“No. Let the guards handle it. Leave with me.”
“I will if I can, but without help up there, we could lose all of them.”
Francesca sorted options. She’d had to run from enemies before, but she needed to win even in retreat. If she lost the entire seethe, she would be powerless and in danger of starving even if she escaped. If the attackers could be stopped, she still had a chance to recover and rebuild. She had fed, and she wasn’t a coward. No Vampire on the continent matched her strength.
“I’m coming with you.”
Dru showed her teeth, her eyes blazing. “Let me clear the way.”
She pulled open the door and slipped out. Francesca took a silver katana from the top drawer of the stand next to the bed. Its gleaming blade glinted red in the glow of the light from the crimson lampshade.
*
Sylvan and the others reached the roof in under a minute. The windows they’d passed on the way up had all been dark. The flat-topped roof was littered with broken boards, bits of rock and glass, and rusted metalworks. A bulkhead with dented double doors in the center of the roof was closed with a rusty padlock that looked as if it had not been opened in decades.
“Stairwell,” Sylvan said. “Probab
ly a maintenance shaft.”
“If this is a trap,” Drake said quietly, “they could be waiting for us to come down this way.”
“If I were setting a trap,” Sylvan said, “I’d be waiting on the floor where I placed the bait. Where’s the most likely place for them to be holding captives?”
“Either the basement or the top floor,” Drake said. “That way, only those individuals with clearance would have access or a reason to be there. The middle floors have too much traffic, with workers passing through to places above or below. We know they’re not in the underground level.”
“Then if they’re here, they’re right beneath us.”
“If Niki comes from below and we come from above, we can catch them in the crossfire.”
“Yes.” Sylvan flicked her radio. “Niki, where are you?”
“Clearing the third floor. Office spaces, all of them empty.”
“Let us know when you reach the fifth-level landing. We’re coming down from the roof.”
“Yes, Alpha.”
Sylvan waved the squad closer. “Gray, take the sentries and go through the windows from the fire escape when the Prima and I come down from above. Niki will enter from the stairwell. Any armed resistance, shoot to kill.”
Gray nodded, her expression set and steady, and led the young warriors across the roof and over the side.
Sylvan looked at Drake. “I can take more bullets than any of the rest of you.”
“I know.” Drake gripped her arm. “But you aren’t invincible. So try not to.”
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
*
“They’re moving up, floor by floor,” the Vampire guard reported to Luce. “ETA three minutes.”
Luce glanced at Veronica, still stuporous on the sofa. The office adjoined the lab, and as long as the wolves never got that far, the human would be safe. If they did get past the guards, well…Veronica’s usefulness had come to an end.
“Hold fire until they enter the hallway, then take them. I’m on my way.”
“Yes, Senechal.”
*
The expansive marble-floored foyer was empty—no furniture, no guards, no servants. Jody raced into the main room, what had once been a formal living room with high decorative plaster ceilings, banks of floor-to-ceiling windows, and a huge marble fireplace against one wall. The great room was barren, save for two oversized sofas and a tattered brocade chair. Blood slaves stretched out on the sofas, arms and legs entangled. Two cat Weres lounged on the chair, naked and covered in blood and sex. The three Vampires who had been feeding from them when Jody shattered the front door rushed at Jody and Lara. The Vampires were too slow, and Jody and Lara took their heads in two swift arcs of their long swords. Max and Dasha gripped the snarling cats by the throats and slung them across the room. They flew into the stone mantel and fell senseless to the floor. Jody spun at a growl behind them and came face-to-face with the enormous Hound she’d last seen at Nocturne the night Francesca had been driven from power.
“Are you here to collect what remains of their souls?” she asked.
The Hound’s thick black lips peeled back and its fiery eyes glowed.
“Take them, but Francesca is mine.”
Jody signaled for the others to follow her on while the Hound prowled the room, dispatching the occupants to whatever underworld it ruled. Three more Vampires raced around the corner. Two held long swords, the third a handgun. Dasha shot the Vampire wielding the gun between the eyes and finished with two shots to the heart. Jody and Lara parried the blades of Francesca’s guards in a quick flurry that ended with their swords buried in the hearts of their opponents. As they swept from room to room, humans and a few mercs scurried to escape through broken windows. At the rear of the first floor, Jody pointed to a stairwell leading down.
“This way.”
She started down and was stopped short when a huge cat struck her full force in the chest. She flew backward, her sword flying from her hand. When she reached for her weapon, a silver sword drove through her shoulder and pinned her to the floor.
*
“We’re just below the fifth-floor fire door,” Niki announced over the radio.
Sylvan contacted Gray. “Are you in position?”
“Yes, Alpha.”
“Ready,” she said to both teams. “Go.”
Sylvan gripped the door’s hinges, tore them off, and flipped it open. Avoiding the narrow, dark inside stairs completely, she dropped down the stairwell to the floor below. Drake followed. The sound of glass breaking clattered somewhere out of sight and another boom told her Niki had breached the stairwell door. Gunfire erupted from every direction. A Vampire leaned around the corner and fired at her.
“We’re pinned down,” Sylvan radioed to Niki. “Can you clear the corridor?”
“Not without exposing ourselves.”
Another burst of gunfire, this time from farther down the hall, and the Vampire fell out into the open, an assault rifle by her side. Gray’s team. The Vampire twitched and jerked, an arm reaching for the weapon. Not dead, merely injured. Sylvan loped forward, kicked the weapon away, and buried a blade in the Vampire’s heart. She signaled to Drake, who crowded next to her at the opening of the stairwell. The hallway ran the entire length of the floor and ended at the far end in an airlock of some kind.
“That’s the laboratory,” Sylvan said.
Between them and that door were at least a dozen armed Vampires crouched in doorways, pinning them down with intermittent fire. Sylvan heard the doors above them clang shut and suspected there were more Vampires on the roof.
“We might be trapped,” Sylvan said, “but so are they.”
“They know where we’re going,” Drake said, “but we have them flanked.”
“If we draw their fire, Gray’s and Niki’s teams will have clear shots.” She glanced at Drake and grinned. “Do you feel like a run?”
Drake’s eyes glowed. “Always.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Sylvan’s wolf charged down the hall, Drake close by her side, moving so swiftly the silver and black of their pelts streamed together like clouds racing across the midnight sky. The first bullet struck her flank, the second her shoulder. She didn’t slow, neither did Drake. Her goal was the glass-and-steel door at the end of the hallway with the security pads and scanners mounted in the wall beside it. As she passed doorways, Vampires fired and a spiderweb of bullets crossed paths in the hall as Niki and Gray returned fire from either end.
She and her Prima raced on.
When she was ten yards from the door, she let her warrior form emerge, and she was suddenly looming over Drake, still in pelt, shielding her from fire. Niki and her squad moved in behind Sylvan and Drake, protecting their flanks. Ignoring all the security devices, Sylvan punched her claw-tipped hand through the reinforced glass, hooked her hands inside the metal frame, and, claws digging into the steel, yanked the door from its moorings. With a tremendous growl, she slung it down the hall like an errant Frisbee. It crashed from one side to the other, gouging the newly painted walls and tiled floors, now awash in blood. She glanced over her shoulder, saw Gray and the sentries moving en masse down the hall, dispatching the Vampires with sword and bullet, one after the other.
Are you all right?
Better than you, Drake signaled. Just a few scratches.
“It’s nothing,” Sylvan said, although the silver buried in her muscles burned like chunks of fire.
Drake rose beside her, shedding pelt, and extended a clawed hand.
Sylvan smiled at her Prima’s emerging warrior form. “You grow stronger every day.”
“Be quiet.” Drake plunged her claws into the festering wound on Sylvan’s shoulder. A minute later she dropped the bullet on the floor and said, “Turn.” She extracted the second bullet from Sylvan’s flank. “Now you’re all right.”
Sylvan strode through the destroyed airlock toward the inner door to the laboratory. “Let’s see what they
’re hiding.”
*
Jody glimpsed Francesca’s triumphant face gliding past her, power radiating from her like a tidal wave. The others would not be able to hold her, not with Francesca’s cat Were running amok and scattering their warriors. Jody gripped the hilt of the blade impaling her and yanked it free, keeping it in her hand as she lunged to her feet. The hall was chaos. An enormous mountain lion batted a huge gray wolf with its powerful front paw, raking the wolf’s side with four-inch claws. The wolf flew against the wall, blood streaming from torn muscles and fractured bone. A second wolf dragged a Vampire to the floor by its throat, and a fountain of blood gushed toward the ceiling. The air split with the screech of a wild cat, and another lion—larger and heavier than the first, with canines a foot long and claws nearly the same—soared above the roiling mass and tackled Francesca’s cat. Raina.
Jody searched for her prey in the midst of the blood and fury. Weres fought mercs. The two great cats rolled and screamed, biting and clawing. Lara and Zahn wielded their swords with ruthless efficiency, cutting down the last of the Vampires.
Francesca was gone. She had seen too many battles not to know this one was lost. Blade in hand, Jody charged into the battle. Blood pumped from her shoulder, and she could not stop it or replenish it until she fed again. But she was strong enough to keep on fighting. Francesca would not escape.
An animal screamed in chilling triumph. Raina straddled the other lion, her muscular body pinning the cat to the floor. Blood seeped from gouges on Raina’s shoulders and belly. Francesca’s cat twisted and clawed, screeching in rage. With a roar, Raina opened her powerful jaws, buried her teeth in the cat’s throat, and tore her to pieces.
*
The laboratory was eerily silent. State-of-the-art equipment, gleaming and alien, covered every surface of the long narrow rows of benches. Monitors and gauges ticked away with scrolling lines of data and graphs. The room smelled dead—not the earthy decay of the natural world that carried the promise of renewal, but the absence of life.