by Jamie Davis
Quinn did as she was told, then asked, “Can I power down the monitor while I wait?”
“No. That might cut off my access. Don’t worry, it won’t take long.”
Taylor started humming over the open connection. She always did that while she worked. It wouldn’t be that bad, but the poor girl was pretty near tone-deaf. Quinn leaned back in her seat, tried to ignore the atonal drone in her ear, and waited for Taylor to do whatever it was she needed to do.
After a minute or so, Quinn cut the connection. She couldn’t take it anymore. Taylor could just call her back. Craning her neck over the top of the cubicle, Quinn looked around and saw that the three traders were still at work.
A chime across the room sounded . It was distant, and she probably wouldn’t have heard it if she hadn’t been directing her huntress senses to listen in to the traders nearby.
Quinn tried to localize it and realized it came from outside the trading room’s main entrance. Taylor had said there was a lobby with a bank of elevators outside.
More voices drifted her way, then the lobby doors opened.
Quinn ducked and tapped her earpiece, whispering, “Someone’s coming, Taylor. How much longer?”
“Don’t let them see the screen. Whoever it is will know what you’re doing right away and warn someone.”
Quinn cringed. She was afraid of that. Then she got a whiff of stale, wet dog. At least one of the newcomers was a werewolf.
She drew her Bowie, crouching and weaving through the cubicles toward the long corridor. As she made her way across the room, Quinn listened and tried to filter out the stock traders’ voices so she could hear the ones who’d just arrived.
“…I don’t see why? It’s just busywork.”
“You wanna go argue with the boss, Barry?”
“No, but it’s a waste to search every floor every hour just to keep the boss’s friend happy. We can secure this place just fine from the entrances down on the ground floor.”
“Just do your job. Walk through and check out this end while I go check the rest of the floor. I’ll meet you back upstairs.”
The lobby door clicked shut as the other one left Barry in here alone. Quinn heard him grumbling as he started down the row of cubicles. She wanted him to be as far from the lobby door as possible before she attacked. She ducked into a cubicle in the row right next to the hallway leading back to the file room and waited under the desk.
A shadow passed, accompanied by idle whistling.
Peeking around the cubicle wall, Quinn watched as a large man walked down the hall to the file room. He was going to wonder who’d puked back there.
Crouching, Quinn darted out and padded down the hall, following the guard.
He entered the room and flipped on the lights. “Gah, it smells awful in here. Aw, jeez, seriously? Who makes a mess like this and doesn’t clean it up?”
Quinn raced up behind the guard before he could turn around. Just before she hit him, she said, “Me.”
She realized it was foolish to announce her presence like that, but she hadn’t counted on his reaction speed being as good as it was. Because she wasn’t enhancing her strength or speed at the moment, the guard twisted out of the way and dodged her knife thrust.
He snarled in pain as the tip of the Bowie scored a shallow slash across his side. He returned the attack with a strike of his own, his fingers sprouting claws.
Quinn brought her arm up to block the incoming blow. Luckily, her leather jacket caught the worst of the sharp claws extending from Barry’s hand, but the attack still sent her reeling across the room to slam into the filing cabinets.
Quinn rolled to the side and jumped back to her feet, expecting a followup attack at any instant. Instead, she watched in horror as Barry completed the transformation from human to full bipedal werewolf form. She’d never seen the change before in bright light like this.
He snarled something that might have been words, but she couldn’t understand them.
“Come over here. Let’s see if you’re any better than the friends of yours I killed the other night downstairs.”
The creature’s eyes widened, then he charged, clawed hands raised, his snarling jaws open to snap at her.
Quinn didn’t make the same mistake she’d made the last time. Dialing up her strength and reaction speed from her stamina, she ducked under the swinging arms.
Her Bowie was out of position for a return strike, but she did punch forward with her other hand. It landed with enough force to knock the wolfman back before he could bite her. Clark had said she was immune to becoming a shifter. That didn’t mean she wasn’t worried that once those jaws closed on her, she’d have trouble getting away.
This guy was way bigger than the other werewolves she fought downstairs. Quinn wondered if the others were younger or juniors.
Now wasn’t the time to try to ask, though. The wolf bounded at her again. This time, a slashing blow caught her right arm, ripping through her jacket and scoring deep, bloody, claw marks from her shoulder to her elbow.
Trying to ignore the fiery pain from the hit, Quinn slashed out with her knife and got in a shot of her own, cutting open a gash in his thigh with the silver-infused knife.
He howled and tried to close the wound and staunch the bleeding with one hairy hand while swinging at Quinn with the other.
With both of them wounded, she figured it wouldn’t be long before one of them was down for the count. The next solid hit would probably decide things.
Knowing this, Quinn took a chance. She feinted an attack to her right, drawing the werewolf to step in that direction. Then, she ran left, leaping up sideways and running up along the face of the filing cabinets for a few steps.
This move allowed her to push off and land behind her adversary with her blade extended. Crouching then lunging forward, she pushed the Bowie forward into the hairy thing’s back. The knife’s tip grated up across its ribs, before slipping between two of them. It plunged home into one of the werewolf’s lungs from behind.
The painful howl turned into a gurgling sound as frothy pink bubbles came from the werewolf’s mouth. He turned and tried to take a half-strength swipe at her.
She dodged backward with ease and watched him fall over to the floor. He tried to rise once and then was still.
Quinn twisted her head as she tried to see how bad her shoulder was. It hurt a lot, especially when she moved. She flexed her fingers a few times to see if she could still use them. There didn’t appear to be any permanent damage, but she wasn’t at a hundred percent. She left the lights on in the filing room but shut the door. The glow showed under the door. Hopefully, if Barry’s partner decided to come looking for him, it would serve to draw the other werewolf down that way where she could get behind him from out in the trading area.
She moved back out to the cubicles. The three guys hard at work in the middle of the room showed no signs of having heard the howling and fighting just down the hall from them.
Taylor was right. The vampire had them under some sort of mind control. Their focus never seemed to waver from their screens or their phone calls. Quinn moved back to the corner cubicle and tapped her earpiece. “Taylor, you done yet?”
“I just finished. Where’d you go?”
“Two guards came down to check the area. One of them went back this way.”
Taylor asked, “Did you get him?”
“One of them. The other one is checking the rest of this floor. I don’t know how much time I have until he comes back.”
“This won’t take long. I’ve already selected the cameras I want you to freeze. All you have to do is click on the ones I’ve highlighted for you in the system. It won’t let me do it remotely. Make sure nothing is in the image when you freeze it. Freeze all five of the selected cameras on your end, and then you can shut off the monitor.
Quinn did as she was told until all the selected cameras were frozen.
“I’m finished.”
Clark’s voice answered. �
��Okay, hide on that floor, and we’ll come to you. Then we can all go search for Filippa and Carina.”
“Got it,” Quinn replied, switching off the monitor and moving back to the end of the cubicle row. She needed to be ready to take care of Barry’s partner if he came back. Hopefully, her friends wouldn’t take too long. She wasn’t feeling very patient right now.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Clark checked his watch as he drove around their circuit for what felt like the hundredth time. The sun would be up in a few hours. They needed to hurry up and get this done.
He listened as Taylor gave Quinn the final instructions to shut down the cameras. He added, “Okay, hide on that floor, and we’ll come to you. Then we can all go search for Filippa and Carina.”
“Got it,” Quinn replied.
He hoped she listened to instructions for once. She wasn’t prepared to take on a vampire with the kind of power this one probably had. Add in the demon-kinder and a rogue pack of werewolves, and she’d be in way over her head.
He pulled the car into a parking space along the curb. They’d be gone before the seven AM limitation on the No Parking sign.
“Miranda, you come with me. Taylor, stay here and take care of getting Quinn out of there if you have to.
The tech witch held up her phone. “I’ve tapped the whole system into a custom app I built here. I can control the whole thing from any mobile device loaded with the app.”
“No,” Clark said.
“What do you mean, ‘no?’”
“Just what I said. You’ll only get in the way in there. I can’t be watching out for you while I’m trying to get the job done with Quinn.”
“I’m not staying in the car, Clark. My best friend is in there alone. If you leave without me, I’ll just follow you. There’s going to be more tech in there that you’ll need me to deal with, so don’t count me out.”
Clark grumbled, mostly to himself, “I don’t have time for this.”
Taylor laid her laptop on the floor of the car with the other gear and covered it with an old blanket. She climbed out of the car and smiled at him as he got out and stood next to her.
Miranda came around from her side and joined them on the sidewalk. “How do we approach this, Clark? Do we just walk up and break in?”
“I’ll lead the way. You wait here for now so I can sneak up on any guards still out and about. I’m not sure how many there will be. I’ll call you when it’s time to enter and go upstairs.”
“As long as you remember to call for help if you need it,” Miranda said. When Clark opened his mouth to argue, she held up her hand and said, “Our goal is to get all of us inside and upstairs to rescue the princesses. We can’t leave Quinn to do it by herself.”
Clark thought about explaining how dangerous this was likely to be but decided against it. These two had seen enough by now to know what they were getting into. He hoped that meant they knew this was going to be rough, and they might not all survive. He gave a final nod and turned to head across the street, setting a fast pace.
As he walked, Clark drifted into the shadows, drawing them around himself like a protective cloak. The soft gasp he heard from Taylor behind him brought a smile to his face. She’d never seen him or Quinn use that ability before. It was impressive when you saw it for the first time.
He remembered the first time he’d seen one of his companions shift themselves into the shadows. The memory turned to one of sadness. That friend from his youth was long dead, betrayed by someone he’d trusted, along with all the others in the clan.
Pulling himself back to the job at hand, Clark extended his senses outward, taking in all of his surroundings in the way only a hunter could. His hearing, vision, sense of smell, and even his taste buds were all amped up to a new level of sensitivity. Now, he could detect his enemies before they discovered him. It allowed him to home in on those he tracked.
This time, it allowed him to detect the two shifters sitting on a bench near the front of the building that was their target. He thought they were alone, but he wasn’t a hundred percent sure.
He had to be sure these two shifters were the only guards out here. He could take them himself, but he didn’t want any surprises.
Moving in silence, he crossed the street to circle around the two guards. Once he passed by their location, Clark crossed back to the other side, searching for any other guards.
There were none.
Now to take out these two shifters.
Clark took out his phone and texted Miranda and Taylor.
Come on in. Make a little noise to distract the guards out front on your way.
He slid the phone into his pocket and waited. It didn’t take long. He heard their voices over the persistent background hum of the city.
The two werewolves, still in human form, heard the two women approaching, too. They stood and moved to the sidewalk so they could see the source of the voices up the street.
Clark smiled as both guards relaxed at the sight of two women walking together toward them. That was all he needed.
Moving in like a lightning strike, he took down the first werewolf from behind before they even knew he was there.
The other shifter was fast, too. He ducked under Clark’s return sword stroke and snarled as he punched at the hunter with a fist already shifting form to grow claws.
Clark rolled with the punch, diffusing most but not all of the attack. It hurt, but he’d had worse. Pulling in the follow-through from his sword’s swing, he stepped back to strike again before the full transition to wolfman happened.
The shifter had other plans. He turned from Clark and darted at the two women standing and watching nearby. The shifter had realized they were part of the attack.
“Damn. Watch out!” Clark called to the others. He raced to catch up but knew he’d not get there in time.
He didn’t need to.
Miranda and Taylor saw the enraged creature charging at them. The younger of the two drew two silver knives and held them in front of her. At the same time, the witch’s hands moved in the air as she wove a spell of some sort.
The shifter almost reached the pair when he yelped, pulled up short as thick vines grew up from cracks in the sidewalk and wrapped around his legs. They continued up to confine his arms, too.
Taylor charged in and stabbed with both hands in a sort of double lunge that struck the creature in the chest. She drew back and moved to thrust again.
Clark’s sword struck from behind at the same instant Taylor’s blades plunged in for the second time.
The shifter sagged against the vines, wrapped so tightly they held his now-lifeless body up so he couldn’t fall.
“Good work, both of you,” Clark said. “Come on. Let’s get inside.”
Taylor wiped her blades on the shredded rags that had been the shifter’s t-shirt. She slid her tiny knives back into their sheaths and beamed at him as she walked by, probably because of his compliment.
Clark bit back an additional qualifying comment. That was what he got for being nice.
Miranda slid into step beside him and said, “You should remember both she and Quinn need encouragement from time to time. It doesn’t hurt anything when you compliment them.”
“You reading my mind now?” Clark replied.
“Didn’t have to. It was all over your expression when Taylor went by.”
“This is deadly serious work. If we fail, there’s no one else around to pick up the slack. There’s no room for coddling anyone.”
“All the more reason to make sure we keep this team together,” Miranda said. “As strange as it is having all of us, with our various backgrounds, together in one team, it seems to work. We all complement the skills of the others in a way that almost seems preordained.”
Clark shook his head. “If this is all part of some grand plan, it would’ve made a lot more sense to have saved the hunter clans twenty years ago. We are way too little, too late.”
Taylor had reached the front
doors ahead of them and pulled one of them open for them.
Clark nodded a thank you and stepped inside.
Miranda followed, then her hand snapped out to grab his shoulder. “Stop, there are wards in here. I didn’t pick up on them from outside. Don’t move.”
“What kind of wards?” Clark asked. He shifted his eyes into the limited amount of the magical spectrum he could see as he scanned the room. “I can’t see anything.”
“Neither can I, not with my eyes, but some sort of magic is in play here. It’s connected to something or someone on one of the floors above us.”
“Can you dispel it or defuse it from doing whatever it’s supposed to do? I don’t want to get fried by a rain of fire or something like that.”
Miranda paused for a few seconds before she answered. “If I dispel it, whoever is connected will surely know and wonder who shut it down. I can try to create a sort of bubble around us that keeps it from activating, at least in theory. I’ve never done anything like that before.”
Taylor leaned in from behind them, still holding the door partially open. “Maybe we should just dash across to the elevators and hope for the best. It might just be a warning spell or something, in which case whoever cast it already knows we’re here.”
“Let’s hope not, kid,” Clark said. “Otherwise, we’re going to be facing a lot more than a few werewolves up there. I’d like to get in, locate the Fae princesses, and get out without any more fighting.”
Based on the way her shoulders sagged a little, Taylor had anticipated more action. She didn’t understand how bad this could get.
“Cast the bubble thing,” Clark said. “Let’s get going.”
Miranda’s lips moved as she spoke the spell while weaving her hands and fingers in an intricate circular pattern in the air just inside the doorway.
After about ten seconds, she held her hands up in front of her at shoulder height, palm out. She glanced at Clark and nodded.
Taking a deep breath as if he were about to plunge underwater, Clark strode into the lobby. He didn’t feel or sense anything to indicate they’d tripped an alarm.
