My hand slipped into my pocket, searching for the ring, but as I did, he flung me through the air. I hit the door he’d been guarding like a sack of wet cement. The thin particleboard shattered around the jamb, and I fell inside. The King of Wolves lay in a bed across the room with all sorts of angrily beeping machines hooked to him.
“See, I knew you’d come for the King after I sent all those pissed off widowers into Atlantis. It’s your only play, really. You have to keep me,” he tapped his chest with one slender finger, “from becoming the supreme leader. Blah, blah, boring. Truth be told, I’d hoped the Prince would be with you, but I guess that traitor’s love isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, now is it, Annie? Do you have any idea how many lost little orphan girls I’ve had to bury in the woods after the prince was done with them? I’ll give you a hint. It’s a non-zero number.”
Alabaster approached as I fingered the ring, but as I pulled it from my pocket to slip it on my hand, it erupted into flames so hot, I’d have screamed if I could. The ring turned molten in my grasp, searing into the palm of my hand and making everything go spotty with agony.
“Now, now, we’ll be having none of that.” Alabaster knelt down next to me and gave the top of my head a patronizing pat. Everything had grown so dark, I could barely see, but I wasn’t going to go down that easily. No. I was going to do something… “Remember, I’m the King of Air and Fire. The ‘and’ is an important bit.”
I nodded dumbly. It was so hard to see him through the haze, and as I slumped forward onto my hands in front of him, the blade in my sleeve cut into my wrist. My eyes widened in pain, and a thought struck me. Before my body could give up the ghost, the blade slid into my hand. My fingers barely closed around the blood-slickened handle as I collapsed forward onto Alabaster, using the full force of my weight to drive the silver point into his foot.
A cry of pain exploded from his lips as he instinctively tried to kick me away, and as my body lifted into the air and flew backward across the room, I realized I could breathe.
Air never tasted so good, and as I gulped down a sweet lungful, I sent my animator power out in a wave. It struck the silver knife embedded in his foot and flared like the sun. Silver fire erupted from the hilt as I crashed into the wall with a wet thud. My vision shattered into a million indecipherable shards as I slid down the wall twenty feet away and came to a rest on the tile. Through the haze I watched Alabaster jerk the dagger in his foot free and toss it angrily out the window.
It was crazy because he should have been burning up with silver fire, but instead, he snapped his fingers and the flames died away. Was his mastery over fire so great, he could control even silver fire? Holy fuck.
His footsteps left a bloody trail behind him like a macabre snail as he surged toward me, a snarl on his lips. But I could breathe, and if I could breathe, I could fight. Not well, mind you, but well enough.
Unfortunately, there was no way a fight would end even slightly well. He was a werewolf which fine, okay, I’d dealt with them before, but at the same time, I didn’t have the energy left to disintegrate him. Besides, he could suck the air from the room and light me on fire with a thought.
And now he was pissed. So pissed he wasn’t trying to suffocate me anymore, but what he lacked in finesse, he was about to make up for in tearing my arms off my body and beating me to death with them. Let’s just say I didn’t want to be around when that happened.
I pushed myself to my feet and staggered toward the blown out windows. My chest heaved as I gripped the sill, ignoring the bits of broken glass that dug into my palms as I stared down at the street. It was a long way down. Too long for me to think I could make it. Only I couldn’t stay here.
Alabaster grabbed me as I put my foot on the sill to leap out a ten story window like a dumbass. His grip on my sweatshirt jerked me backward off my feet with the sound of tearing fabric. I crashed to the tile as he stood there, holding the hood of my Werewolf Ninja sweatshirt in one hand. His eyes had gone molten and literal flames danced around his head like a flaming crown.
“You impertinent worm.” Alabaster kicked me hard in the ribs and this time I felt them break. That horrible stabbing pain filled my body and my mouth gagged open as I tried to remember how to breathe. Everything hurt too much to try. So what did the bastard do? He kicked me again because fuck him.
My back slammed into the wall beneath the sill as the sound of gunfire filled my ears. Alabaster’s head cocked toward it, and his eyes widened as he stared out the window.
“Interesting,” he said right before he dropped to the ground beside me. Bullets streamed through the window and tore into the drywall across from us, ripping it to shreds in a second. I went momentarily deaf from the report of automatic weapons fire, but at the moment, I didn’t care.
I lashed out, driving my heel into the side of the albino’s head. My ribs ground angrily together inside my chest as my foot crashed into his skull with all the strength I could muster. He flopped onto his side, dazed by my blow, but he was already coming back to his senses. Damn.
“Hey,” I wheezed as I reached into my pocket and pulled out my gun. “Say hello to my little friend.”
Alabaster turned his head toward me as I pulled the trigger on the Noisy Cricket. The tiny gun Will Smith had used in Men in Black came to life in my hands with enough force to throw me backward into the wall. Stars flitted past my eyes as my head caved in the drywall, but that was lucky compared to what happened to Alabaster.
The werewolf took the blast full in the chest, and the force of it threw him through the wall like a flaming comet with a tail of blood and gore. His torso exploded into flame as he slid across the floor and out of view.
It was a good thing too because I wasn’t sure I could pull the trigger on the gun again. Darkness swam around me as I put my hand on the ground and tried to hoist myself to my feet. Only I didn’t have enough strength in my arm to push myself up, and my ribs hurt too much for me to think doing more than lying there would be a good idea.
My ears rang with the aftermath of the explosion as I tried again to get to my feet and managed to pull myself to my knees when a hand reached through the window in front of me.
I turned my gaze toward it, but between my blurry vision and the sunlight streaming through the window and casting the figure in shadow, I couldn’t make out who it was.
“Annie!” my brother called as I tried to blink away the haze. “Come with me if you want to live!”
His hand seized my wrist as I reached toward him, and as he pulled me through the window, a guttural scream of rage exploded from the hole in the wall behind me.
“What about the King of Wolves?” I asked, trying to scramble toward him. I wasn’t sure how he was standing there from outside a sheer ten story window but I knew what that cry had meant. Alabaster was back up and fuck that noise. I mean, Noisy Cricket to the chest at point blank range? That was just unfair.
“We don’t have time!” my brother said, and as he said it, I pulled away from him. It hurt so much that for a second, I thought someone had filled my chest with fire. On second thought, that’d have hurt less
“No! We’re not leaving him. Not after all this!” I whirled and took a step down the hall as Alabaster emerged from the hole I’d blown in the wall in full on white wolfman form.
“I think I’m going to need a bigger gun!” my brother said, bringing up his M16, and I instantly agreed.
13
Alabaster lunged as my brother held down the trigger on his M16. Bullets sprayed from the barrel in an upward arc that would have cut the werewolf in half if the wind around him hadn’t flung them away like tiddlywinks. They struck the tile like a handful of dropped change moments before Alabaster crashed into my brother with enough force to practically knock him out of his boots.
My football player sized brother slammed hard into the wall between the broken windows as Alabaster clawed Gordon’s abdomen. His claws raked against the metallic body armor, throwing sparks into
the air as I tried desperately to get to my feet.
Pain exploded in my chest as my brother tried to wrestle the huge white werewolf, but just when he’d seem to get a handle on things, the wind would howl or fire would leap from the sky so that just a couple seconds of fighting reduced nearly all of Gordon’s toys to hunks of melted plastic.
“Here’s the thing, boy,” Alabaster said as he dodged my brother’s fist and slammed his clawed hand into my brother’s midsection again. This time his claws pieced the steel plate, and with a horrific shriek, he tore the metal open like it was made of tinfoil. “You animators think you’re so special because you can make silver hurt me, but I’m designed by nature to fucking own you.”
Alabaster’s hand drove forward. As his pink-nailed claws bit into my brother’s flesh, a scream tore from my lips. The world turned into a red haze as crimson splashed across the floor, but I was so angry I couldn’t see straight.
I’d just gotten my brother back and now I was going to lose him? No. That was not allowed. Not even for a fucking second.
I bit my lip, pushing the pain and fatigue plaguing my body deep down inside as I hurled myself at Alabaster. I don’t weigh a lot, so I wasn’t particularly surprised when my leap onto his back did little more than stagger him.
But as my brother slumped to the ground trying to tuck his insides back in, I wrapped my arm around the werewolf’s throat and pulled tight, cutting his windpipe off with the crook of my elbow. Alabaster gagged and tried to reach backward and pry me off. I felt his claws pierce my body, felt them scrape along my ruined ribs, but I was past that.
“How’s it feel to not be able to breathe you fuck!” I cried, pulling on him with everything I had. The werewolf started to topple backward, and I realized he was about to slam me into the far wall. Well, that was good, I’d half thought he might just set me on fire or something. Maybe I was too close to him for him to want to try that?
As we crashed into the drywall, I bit my lip to keep from screaming and hung on with everything I had. There was no doubt in my mind as to what would happen to me if I let go. Death.
“Annie, watch out!” my brother said, and I couldn’t understand how he was standing again. His clothing was covered in blood, but his stomach wasn’t injured anymore. What’s more, he had scooped up a handful of the spent silver bullets. They glowed with eerie green animator light as Alabaster reared back to slam me into the wall, only I could tell he was starting to flag. If I let go now, he’d win. He’d kill us all. If I hung on, Gordon would live.
“Just get the King!” I cried, and the words tore from my lips like dynamite, blowing out everything in me as pain crashed against the walls of my concentration like a tsunami. We had to save the King. If we didn’t there was no way to help Justin heal the rift between our peoples. “That’s why we’re here. Do your fucking job!”
“Annie!” my brother said, but the look on my face must have told him to get the fuck away from us because he nodded and took off toward the door at the far end. He reached it as Alabaster slammed me into the wall again, and this time, my grip slipped a touch.
The werewolf sucked in a fraction of a breath, and as he did, the barest edge of a chortle slipped from his throat.
Gordon stepped through the threshold to the King’s hospital room a moment later, and the whole room exploded outward in a flaming fireball of doom that threw him backward across the hall. He hit the ground like so much charred hamburger as the entirety of the room he’d been trying to access was blown backward across the street below.
“No!” I cried, cinching my grip down tighter as I watched the remains of the hospital room rain down across open air. I wasn’t sure if the King had survived, but I didn’t see how. Part of me worried about him and what his death would mean for us, but most of me was worried about Gordon because he wasn’t moving.
The fire sprinklers turned on, drenching me with cold, fetid water, and as that happened, Alabaster slipped. We crashed to the ground, and as my head smacked hard against the linoleum and stars shot past my eyes, the only thing I could think was that I was glad his weight hadn’t landed on my broken ribs or I’d have punctured a lung.
Even still, a scream ripped out of me as I tried to hang on, but it was no use. My grip on Alabaster’s throat slipped off, and he wormed away like a fucking eel.
In the time it took me to blink he loomed over me, huge and imposing. His chest heaved as he glared at me, saliva dripping from his teeth as he raised one clawed foot in the air. “Goodbye, Annie. See you in Hell.”
“Stop!” Gordon cried, and amazingly the werewolf did. He slowly put his foot down, evidently unconcerned with me as he turned to look at my brother who was holding a fucking thermal detonator. Jesus, where the hell did he get all those cool toys? Would it have killed him to offer me some of those instead of a fucking Glock?
“That will kill you two,” Alabaster said. He was so calm it bugged me, and as he stood there with the fire suppression system matting his fur to his body, he seemed strangely weak and diminished. “It will not kill me.”
“Wanna bet?” Gordon said, a smile on his charred lips. The entire right side of his face was blistered and oozing, but thankfully, his body armor seemed to have shielded him from a bunch of the blast. So why had he looked like hamburger a second ago?
Had he healed?
I sucked in a breath as the two stared at each other. Healing took a ton of energy, but my brother had managed it twice. Sure, he’d always been more powerful than me, but not that much more powerful. If he could heal twice, I could heal twice.
Alabaster gave me a contemptuous little kick that ground my ribs painfully together, and stared down at me. “Don’t go anywhere, Annie. I’ll be back.” He grinned again. “I have a few more things I’d like to do to you before the end.”
He turned and strode toward my brother who was still laying on the tile, one hand clutching the thermal detonator like it was a deadman’s switch. Only, that wouldn’t work. If Gordon died, his power would stop working, and it’d turn back into a toy. I was also willing to bet Alabaster knew that.
I shut my eyes and took a breath as I called upon my power. There wasn’t a lot left and definitely not enough to heal me back to full, but probably enough to get me on my feet. Sort of. I forced it into the charm on my wrist as I brought the healing potion to my lips and pulled the cap off with my teeth.
The warm, sticky fluid filled the inside of my mouth, and I swallowed it while trying to ignore the Flintstone’s vitamin taste. As I did, my vision cleared, and I could practically see my health bar start to rise. I pushed myself into a sitting position as Alabaster reached my brother.
“Any last words, animator?” the werewolf king asked, curiosity filling his voice. “Because I assure you, these are your last words.” He nodded toward the detonator. “Either you use that and kill yourself and your sister in the desperate, yet misguided hope you’ll get me too or I kill you. It’s a simple choice.”
The cold rationality of it seemed to settle over my brother, and as I watched him start to relax like he was going to drop the detonator, I instantly knew he intended no such thing. No, Gordon was going to make a big old boom, and I couldn’t have that. No. I had to get rid of Alabaster, and he’d been pretty good about keeping us from hurting him, but at the end of the day, even the strongest werewolf couldn’t fly.
“In brightest day, in blackest night,” I said, calling upon what remained of my magic. “No evil shall escape my sight.” There was so little there that I knew using the spell would knock me out, and once that happened, we were screwed, but what were my options? Stay here and let my brother explode? No, that wasn’t an option. I pushed the energy into the ring on my finger. “Let those who worship evil's might. Beware my power.” Emerald sparks leapt across my body as I reached out toward them. “Green Lantern's light!”
Power exploded me in a rush as a giant emerald fist closed around Alabaster and flickered. I fell to my knees, chest heaving for breath.
No I couldn’t crush him. He’d just heal, anyway.
“Hope you can fly, jackass!” As the words left my lips I flung my hand to the side, pitching the werewolf through the open window like a Randy Johnson fastball. Then I fell forward onto the ground and tried to keep the darkness from enveloping me completely.
I failed.
14
“Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey,” Gordon said, poking me with one sausage finger. “I mean, I got thrown out a ten story window and am fine so what’s your deal, Annie?”
I blinked at him, trying to focus on him, but the surroundings were speeding by so quickly I couldn’t orient them to any sort of reality, least of all one where we were alive.
“How?” I asked, and as the word slipped from my lips, my brother smiled at me.
“How did we escape?” he asked, patting the hideous carpet next to where he was seated. “Easy. I have a magic carpet.” He peered at me. “Don’t you have one?”
“What the fuck is going on?” I asked, scrambling into a seated position and nearly falling off the stupid carpet in the process. That would have sucked because as I leaned half over the edge with only Gordon’s hand on my arm to keep me from falling the several hundred feet to the ground, my vision went sort of wonky in a way I couldn’t explain.
“Do you want to die?” Gordon exclaimed, strain evident in his voice as he pulled me back onto the chartreuse shag. “Because falling off this thing while we’re this high up will pretty much kill you and last I checked, you aren’t packing a web-shooter.”
I took a deep breath and tried to ignore the pounding between my temples as I turned my gaze upon him. Tina was lying toward the front of the carpet, and if her buzz saw-like snoring was any indication, she was fast asleep.
“How?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him as I watched Tina’s chest rise and fall. I wasn’t sure why, but the fact that we’d all survived made me feel better even though the whole mission was a complete failure. Not only had we failed to save the King, but Alabaster beat the crap out of us.
Prince of Blood and Thunder_An Urban Fantasy Novel Page 10
