The Elder Witches

by R.E. Packer

  Chapter 26

  The door to the room I was being held in suddenly swung open and crashed into the wall. One of the were-agents in his black fatigues came rushing in startling everyone, even the colonel. He was breathing hard and his wide eyes darted around the room wildly finally coming to rest on the Colonel. As his nostrils flared he drew quick short breaths through his nose, sniffing the air. His features looked too big for his face, his ears too pointed. If I could see his hands I bet they would show razor sharp claws.

  The colonel frowned as the man sniffed closer, causing him to get a defensive look.

  “I heard some of them can make you hallucinate… sir,” the agent drawed in response to the Colonel’s hard gaze, like he was a bit slow.

  “What on God’s green earth do you want, agent?”

  The colonel raised his arm and poked the agent in his kevlar vest. The muscles on his forearms flexed and strained against his rolled up sleeves.

  The agent let out an “oof” sound, more like he’d just been punched in the chest instead of having had a single finger jab him. The cocky look fled from his face, replaced by a look of complete obedience.

  The colonel puffed his massive chest out, leaning forward slightly. The gray crew cut man was shorter than the agent by a head, but his girth dwarfed the younger agent. He had muscle to spare under his uniform. The show taking place had nothing to do with size. It was more primal than that and not for the first time I wondered what secrets the Colonel was hiding. If he was one of the were-agents he didn’t show it.

  The beeping of machines hooked to me was the only noise in the room now that the agent’s breathing had slowed. The harsh overhead lights spotlighted the agent as the colonel asserted his dominance, once again taking control.

  “Report, agent,” he all but shouted.

  “Troops reported a breach in the west side of the building, sir! A fire broke out shortly thereafter but the HALO system put it out, sir”

  “Proceed with plan A. Capture them. Do not use the serum yet. Go. Now!”

  “We have already captured one of them, sir,” the man added quickly.

  The colonel raised his eyebrows.

  “Excellent news. This will be easier than we thought. Now deliver my orders back to the men,” the colonel said, taking a second to notice the look on my face.

  The agent nodded, retreating the way he’d came.

  Meanwhile, the techs, ignoring the scene between the two men completely, continued pecking on the computers, eyes downcast.

  “How much longer?” the Colonel asked them.

  “Two minutes maybe. All of the test results have already been transferred offsite. It’s just syncing the backups now.”

  “Perfect. When that completes we will have everything we need to reconstruct the experiments. Contact the commander. Let him know everything is in place for site two. For your own safety, see yourselves out when it completes.”

  A few minutes later, the room was empty again, and I got back to working on the ring keeping me chained to the table. The fire breaking out sounded suspiciously like a pint size blond I know.

  Gwen and Maeve must have come trying to rescue me. How they found me was a mystery. And who did the agent mean when he said they’d captured one? If they were hurt I would never forgive myself. I kept working on the ring for what seemed like an eternity. My hand was so tired from holding the knife that I was losing my grip and I was starting to get a cramp in my arm. When I had a groove in the metal ring to where I could lever the knife I applied brute force until I was rewarded with a satisfying crack.

  The ring broke just enough to force the chain through the loop, allowing me to get to my feet. The straps holding my legs down were soft nylon, and, while very strong, even the now dull knife cut through them without a problem. Sliding to the linoleum floor, I looked around and spotted a screwdriver laying near a pile of half assembled machine parts. Breaking the remaining ring was much faster than the first.

  I needed a weapon to help the women. I concentrated on my apartment, where I had a tactical shotgun. I could feel the buzzy feeling that started when the magic builds, then… nothing. Damn. The cuffs I still wore, with the ruins carved in them, must still be blocking my magic somehow and I didn’t see an easy way of getting them off.

  I hurried to the door and pushed the red open button. Leaning out I could see agents walking with purpose to and from. A pair of agents holding the limp figure of a middle age man caught my attention. It was James. They brought James with them to try to rescue me?

  I stayed just out of sight as they took him to a room not far from where I was being held. I waited for the men to leave him before slipping down the hall to his room. He was being held in a cage with thick metal bars, where he laid on the floor in a heap. I leaned down to get a better look at him. When he opened his eyes, I sucked in a started breath. I’d held back a yelp of surprise, but just barely. He instantly surveying the room at the same time that he saw me and gave me a warm smile.

  “Nice to see you Gordon,” he said starting to stand, albeit a bit wobbly.

  “What are you doing here, James? You’re going to get yourself killed. This isn’t guarding some house in a posh neighborhood, this is the government you’re messing with.”

  Ignoring what I’d said, he continued on, “When I get out of here, I won’t be able to talk and I’d rather not have to do this more than once... You need to follow me.”

  Then he took all his clothes off.

  Caught off guard and feeling a little self conscious I looked down at my feet. Until the sounds of him changing made me look up. I heard his bones cracking and looked up to see his muscles swelling, joints popping out of their sockets as new limbs replaced the old. His face was contorted into a mask of pain.

  He dropped to his knees as his arms and legs shifted, growing and shrinking until they became the same length. Human cries turned into something else as his face elongated. I watched in horror for what was probably less than a minute but I had completely lost track of time.

  A giant cat— 500 pounds at least, stood on four huge furry feet where James had been just minutes before. It looked like a lynx; a very big lynx.

  The bars on the cell he was being held in were steel by the look of it, and could probably hold any large zoo animal. A werelynx must follow another set of rules though. James swung in a large arc, his dagger sized claws slicked through the steel bars with little resistance. He struck a few more times, when one stubborn bar remained he reached through, grabbing it with his paw, bending it in toward him like it was a piece of licorice.

  Hopping through the newly created doorway he landing softly in front of me.

  “Now I see why they sent you… Jesus”

  He seemed to smile, which was actually quite scary as he showed his teeth.

  James led the way out, seeming to know which way to go, even though he was unconscious when they brought him in. The hall had the smell of antiseptic, and another chemical smell that I couldn’t quite place. As we passed a door on our left, I stuck my head through to have a peek.

  There was a a machine that had a conveyor belt where rows of the chemical bullets that held the serum were laid out. Toward the middle of the conveyor belt was an ominous blue tank full of liquid. I didn’t need to investigate further to know I was looking at the deadly serum that had killed Marianna. Just as Reynold’s said, they were mass producing it, and judging by the number of ammo boxes that were stacked around the room it looked about ready to be shipped out to waiting troops.

  I had to wonder how many supernaturals there were in the city. Surely this couldn’t all be for Gwen, Maeve and the deceased Marianna.

  “Hey you. Freeze!” a voice shouted behind us.

  I started sprinting immediately, but slowed as a gray and black spotted cat moved past me in the opposite direction. He moved so fast it was hard to make out the shape of the werelynx streaking toward the agent. The agent had just enough time to get two quick
shots off before the big cat landed on his chest, claws extended. They hit the floor with lynx on top, claws pinning the agent to the linoleum flooring like an insect specimen. Not wasting any time he retracted his claws and bounded ahead of me again.

  We hit the door to the stairwell running, and sprinted up the stairs to the next level. Well, I sprinted, James looked to be doing a slow jog as he loped along on all fours. I could feel Gwen and Maeve closer now through the link we shared.

  I almost tripped over a man who lay in front of the door to the stairwell. His upper body was a solid rock of ice. A few feet further a man lay still smoldering. Flames flickered from a few papers on the floor. I saw men yelling orders to each other 30 yards down the hall. They hid behind whatever cover they could find. Beyond them were Maeve and Gwen. They were both still alive.

  I took a second look at the agent encased in ice on the floor. His eyes stared at me wide open. On his belt were five magazines for an assault rifle. Three had a blue band painted around each of them, the other two had red bands of paint on them.

  I couldn’t tell how many agents were ahead of us, between Gwen and Maeve, it could have been a dozen of more. The large cat ahead of me was assessing the situation as well. A low rumble came from him as he as he turned and growled in the other direction. Then he sprinted past me, away from the witches, where more agents were just rounding the corner.

  I scrambled over and picked up the rifle that lay next to the man with the frozen torso slipping on the ice and nearly landing ass over heels. Once I regained my balance I didn’t have to wait long to use the rifle.

  James had already ripped a ragged hole in an agent’s neck and was moving on to the next threat without pausing. Two more agent were in death throes and the big cat hadn’t slowed down. The lynx was an efficient killing machine, one that nature hadn’t dared to create, but there were too many for him to get them all in time.

  An agent slipped past him charging straight toward me, lunging with superhuman speed. I brought the rifle to bear, point shooting more than aiming as I squeezed of as many panicked shots as I could. I’d been worried that the rifle might have been empty, but then darts started appearing in the agent’s chest as the rifle made it’s muffled popping sounds. His momentum carried him forward and my adrenaline pulled the trigger a few more times as we collided. I smacked my head on the floor hard enough to make me see stars.

  The were-agent’s claws retracted back into his hands and his head lolled to one side. The darts must have had some sort of tranquilizer in them. The agent was already out cold. I pushed the now human form off of me, wriggling out from under him.

  Even with their enhanced speed and strength, James had taken them apart with ease. In lynx form he was a fearsome predator, or perhaps the perfect defender of witches.

  I stood with my mouth hanging slightly open when I saw the path of destruction he’d left. The bodies of men who had been subjected to whatever the government was doing to turn its social servants into hybrid mutants littered the hallway. Some were missing body parts, severed completely off or ripped free, others had holes clear through them where the big cat skewered them with it’s claws. His claws. It was easy for forget this was the calm, easygoing man I’d spent the last few weeks with.

  As tough as a werelynx is, he appeared to have met his limits on how much damage he could take. He was bleeding a lot and his wounds were only slowly closing. For some reason I thought he would heal much faster. Too bad my knowledge of these things was based on Hollywood.

  Dozens of men armed with automatic weapons remained between us and the witches. Now aware of us, notified by the commotion behind them, some of the agents farthest from the witches, closest to us, had started to move in.They positioned themselves to get a better line of sight on us, then opened fire.

  We had just enough time to duck into a doorway before the bullets started to fly. My heart sank as I saw what else was mixed in with the bullets (like bullets being shot at you shouldn’t be enough to ruin your day). There mixed with the debris on the floor were what looked like stubby tranquilizer darts. And these darts didn’t have the clear liquid that had hit the were-agent from the rifle I still held. A menacing blackish sludge oozed from them where they lay. The serum.

  They were done trying to capture us, and had started using the serum loaded darts that had killed Marianna.