by H. D. Gordon
With a move that would have made Bruce Lee proud, I reacted so quickly that even as trained as Thomas Reid was, he couldn’t have stopped me. Jumping up, I landed a kick dead center his wide chest, putting all my Halfling force behind it, and his large body lifted into the air before slamming through the door of my apartment. It sent him skidding on his back out into the hall. The cracking of the door was like an explosion, but I was all geared up for fireworks anyway.
Thomas did not try to regain his feet as I moved out into the hallway, but only stared up at me from his place on the floor.
“Maybe your blonde bimbo needs saving,” I said, looking down at him. “But I sure as hell don’t, so don’t ever tell me what I’m not strong enough for.”
Thomas was back to holding his peace, his face free of emotion. That was just as well with me.
To Matt, I said. “You wanna help? Go back to the warehouse and be my eyes.” With one last glance at Thomas Reid, I added, “We’ve wasted enough time already.”
CHAPTER 55
Though I surely reached my destination at record speed, I felt as though it took a lifetime to get from my apartment to where I could only hope Sam was being held. It was plenty enough time to consider the situation I was rushing into, gave plenty of space to analyze the things that had led up to this.
Only as I charged ahead, leaping from the rooftops of Grant City toward my likely demise, did I let myself acknowledge all that was on the line here.
Despite my intentions to remain unattached, to guard myself from the possibility of having everyone and everything I knew and loved taken away from me again, I’d gone and found my first and only true friend in all the worlds… and then my pompousness and selfish desires had overridden my good sense, and now that friend was gone, taken, running out of time at the very moment, the seconds steadily ticking away.
The truth came to me in this small space of paused time, and I let myself feel the force of it in hopes that it would strengthen me, as I surely would need all the help I could get.
I may have only known her for a short period of time, but there was no doubt to me now that I loved Samantha Shy the way I liked to think I would have loved a sister, had I ever had one. Being around Sam was good for me, was the healthiest and most honest relationship I’d probably ever had in my life, and the image of her in that tank, bound to that chair, filled me with both a fear and anger of which I’d scarcely known the equal.
There was a part of me that was screaming of the foolishness of my actions, that told me there was no way in all the heavens that I could hope to defeat Dyson. He was a fully grown Halfling Werewolf. He was stronger, faster, had more experience. On top of that, he was clearly prone to be a killer, whereas I had been taught to incapacitate and disable.
In short, he was more than willing to kill… and I was not so much.
But to save her… To save her, I told myself as I neared the area I expected them to be in, I would do what was necessary.
I spotted the building up ahead, my fear now big enough to make me want to turn tail and run. When I caught a whiff of Dyson’s unmistakable scent on the wind, there was nothing I could do to stop every hair on my body from standing on end.
Checking my watch, I reminded myself that Sam was counting on me, and now was not the time to lose my nerve. I’d been raised to be able to handle tough situations, trained by the best of instructors in the arts of controlling my body and mind. I closed my eyes, ignoring my fatigue and concentrating on the power I knew was within me, calling on all the strength of my soul.
When I opened my eyes, I was still scared, but it was a feeling I could work through, and I clamped down on it by telling myself that Dyson had to be scared of what I was capable of, too. Otherwise, why call me out in such a personal manner? Why make this thing too deep to turn away?
I moved closer, the scent of the Grant City Bay strong in my nose, and the docks and buildings neighboring it silent and rich in shadows. They were here. I could feel it as surely as I could feel the wind on my face. Sam’s aura in particular called to me, and I pinpointed her location by following the pulse of terrible fear.
They were in the building just east of the one I sat atop, and I could tell even through the brick walls that the second aura beside Sam’s belonged to Dyson—Mr. Gracie to his friends. Good to his word, the two of them seemed to be alone.
I could also tell that he sensed me, too, could hear the pickup in his heartbeat.
With one last glance up at the full moon rising over my head, I reached into my jacket and removed my staff, saying the incantation that made it take its full size, and gripping the weapon until my knuckles went white.
Then I hopped down from the rooftop and approached the building where a Halfling Werewolf waited for me, along with my best and only friend in all the wretched worlds.
CHAPTER 56
The door that led inside was locked, and I resisted the urge to growl in frustration. The bastard had given me a timeline, and locking the door served no other purpose than to mess with me.
I was in no mood to be messed with. Using my left hand, I gave the doorknob a sharp twist, snapping the lock open with a click. Adjusting my grip on my staff, I pushed the heavy door to the squat old building open, revealing shadows inside.
My breathing was steady, my senses on high alert, my mind clear now that I was so very close to the danger. The open door let out the strong scent of the Halfling Werewolf, and my eyes adjusted to the darkness as I stepped inside, letting the heavy door fall shut behind me.
I crouched low in the shadows, using my other senses to acquaint me with my surroundings. The building I’d been lured to was an old factory of some sort, complete with conveyor belts and seemingly random metal chains that hung from the ceiling.
The place was large and open, the high windows letting in the light of the full moon and the dim docking lamps that hung out over the boats in the bay just outside. Though I could make out much of this, most of the room was only hulking shapes draped with shadows.
The only sounds were three heartbeats, all moving at separate paces, and the steady and slight noise of softly falling sand.
“You’re afraid,” said a deep, familiar voice, coming from somewhere in the darkness. It’d be a lie to say that it didn’t cause the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. “I can smell it.”
“Says the half Wolf who won’t face me in the light,” I replied, pleased when my voice came out steady and strong.
A moment later, the factory was illuminated with fluorescents, the abrupt change in brightness blinding me momentarily. My eyes adjusted quickly, and what they landed on was enough to catch the air in my lungs.
In the center of the large factory was the tank I’d seen on the television, and inside that tank, the black hood she’d been wearing during the broadcast had been removed, and Sam stared back at me with blue eyes as scared and wide as two whole moons. Around Sam’s legs, which were bound with duct tape to the chair in which she was sitting, brown sand was filling the bottom of the tank. Just her knees were visible, her shins, ankles, and feet already buried. Tears were streaking down her cheeks, her hair mussed atop her head. Duct tape was secured tightly over her mouth. When she caught sight of me, her terror increased tenfold, and I saw with a small sink of my heart that she also thought this was going to end badly. I didn’t need to read her aura to see that she almost wished I hadn’t come.
Beside this tank, standing like a psycho sentry, was Dyson. His baldhead gleamed in the bright lights, his dark eyes eating up the radiance, and his mouth stretched wide in a grin.
“I wasn’t sure you would show… Aria Fae,” he said.
I pulled my hood from my head, revealing my reddish-brown hair, but left the mask on my face. “So you know who I am,” I replied. “And I know who you are, Mr. Gracie.”
He was wearing his usual black fitted suit, but he began to unbutton the jacket, shrugging it off his enormous shoulders and tossing it neatly aside. “Which
is why you can’t leave here alive,” he said. “No running away this time, little lady. You’ve got to answer for what you’ve done.”
I spun my staff around in my hand, settling deeper into my fighter’s stance.
“Unless,” he continued, “you think you might want to join the dark side.” He laughed grotesquely at this, and a shiver ran down my spine. He sniffed at the air, his eyelids fluttering. “I could put you and your talents to particular use.”
I didn’t give him the satisfaction of an enraged reaction. I just pointed at Sam, who was struggling futilely against her restraints. “Let her go, and maybe I’ll tell the prison guards to go easy on you.”
This struck Dyson as hilarious. He clapped his hands, giving me a toothy smile. “It’s a shame,” he said, after he sobered. “Before I kill you, do you want to know how I found your girlfriend over there? How you led me right to you?”
I said nothing, only continued to calculate my attacks, preparing to use the environment to my advantage by acquainting myself with it.
“That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll tell you anyway. It was her voice.” He walked over to the tank in which Sam was trapped, scratching long nails over its surface and producing a noise that made my sensitive ears cringe. “I heard her in your ear the night we first met. You remember, don’t you? The night I almost killed you.”
He took a step toward me, his grin still leering. “So you can imagine my surprise when I heard that same voice at a party with my associates, coming from a nerdy teenage girl in a dress too expensive for her.” Another pause, another laugh. “It was easy enough to follow her home. Easier still to lure you here on her behalf.”
Now my heart was racing, but I stood my ground, telling myself I was ready for what was ahead. Telling myself I had to be.
“Tell me, Aria Fae,” Dyson continued. “What all do you know about Halfling Werewolves?”
I shrugged, tired of his games. “I don’t know,” I said. “That you smell like wet dogs and like to sniff people’s buttholes?”
This, he did not find so funny, and the look he gave me then was, in a word, terrible. He stood under the light of one of the high windows, the reflection of the full moon visible in his eyes.
“We don’t shift all the way,” he said, his voice eerily calm all of a sudden, and somehow all the worse for it. “Not like full Wolves… and we can only do it once a month.” He turned to face me now, and his eyes were glowing Wolf gold. “On the night of the full moon.”
I could repeat the words in my head all I wanted, but for what happened next, I was most certainly not ready.
In the pale blue light of the moon, while the life of my only friend hung in the balance, I watched as Dyson the Wolf Halfling made his shift, as the stuff of nightmares took shape before my very eyes.
CHAPTER 57
It was hard to be sure what was worse; the sight of the shift, or the sounds that tore out of him as a result of it.
It didn’t happen slowly, but all at once, like the ripping off of a bandage, and I was helpless to do anything but stare at the ghastly transformation taking place before me.
Dyson’s face contorted, the skin of his mouth and nose stretching as though something were trying to tear its way out from the inside. He bent double, his back arching like a sick hound’s, a guttural rumbling ripping through his chest and exploding from between his bared and clenched jaw.
His jaw. It extended in a canine-like manner, the flat, blunt teeth becoming longer, sharper, the incisors and canines growing into that of a monster. Fur began to sprout out of his skin, covering the whole of his body; his face, his hands, his shiny bald head.
His fingers and feet became claws, fit with nails that would tear through flesh and muscle with the faintest swipe. His suit split open, first the fabric over his contorting back, his spine elongating and bending in an unnatural way, then the clothing covering the rest of him shed away, too, having been too small to contain him.
When it was done, a half-man/half-beast stood before me, its eyes now as animal as eyes could be. Ropes of saliva dripped from its jaws, its long teeth bright white in the moonlight. The transformation complete, he stood to his full height, towering over me in a way that had me craning my head back involuntarily.
More than I had ever been in my life, I was terrified. For the smallest space of time, we only stood there, regarding each other. It was not a small thing to be seeing what I was seeing, to be face-to-face with a creature that would have sent most anyone running for the hills, and somehow the pause seemed inevitable.
Then the tiny moment was over, and the beast came charging at me, fangs bared, claws swiping for my neck.
Last time, this move had caught me, but this time, I ducked and spun out of the way before I could be seized, at the same time striking out with my staff.
As I’d known he would, Dyson absorbed the blow to his lower back as though he felt it not at all, and I danced back again to put some distance between us.
I was still afraid, but I was using my fear to sharpen my focus, to keep hold of my mind rather than allow it to seize up in the direness of the situation. The fact that he couldn’t scoop me up quite so easily this time only angered him more, and he let out a howl that made my very bones feel cold.
Striking out again with my staff, I missed the target this time, his movements too fluid and fast to be caught again, and flipped out of the way just in time to avoid capture.
I tried this move again, thinking the best way to beat him would be to keep moving and wear him down, but I made the mistake of overestimating my own stamina, and this method proved ineffective shortly thereafter. I was just too drained from waking Caleb’s brother less than a day before… and if I were being honest, I was simply outmatched.
Moving in for another shot, I was just a touch too slow, and the back of the beast’s hard claw struck me right across the jaw. His strength was such that I felt my feet leave the ground, my body lifted into the air, my fingers just barely able to keep the grip on my staff.
When I hit the unforgiving concrete of the factory floor, what was left of the air in my lungs was knocked right out of me. Pain exploded like lightning in my head, across my right cheek. The world blinked entirely out of focus before bursting into bright white before my eyes.
I heard a moaning. Realized it was coming from me. My vision slowly came back as I struggled to sit up, my head screaming at me to do so but my body painfully slow to follow the command.
The first thing I saw when I was able to see again was the beast bearing down on me. If such a creature could be said to be smiling, I would say Dyson was doing so now. He knew he had every advantage over me.
And, terribly, awfully, heartbreakingly, I knew it, too.
Scrambling to my feet, I did the only thing there was to do.
I ran.
I couldn’t leave, of course, though it would be a falsehood to say that the urge didn’t strike me. I’d tried the fight part, and now the flight wanted ever so badly to take over, but I refused to let it. I couldn’t leave because I’d vowed to save Sam, and I wasn’t going to exit this factory without her.
Most likely, I wasn’t going to exit it at all.
I could, however, evade the beast in an effort to provide myself some recovery from the backhand he’d just delivered.
So I got up and I ran, and he followed, the hot breath from his snout practically tickling the back of my neck. My heart was jackhammering in my chest, the air tearing in and out of me as I pumped my arms and legs with all I had in me.
I felt a sharp pain in my back as his claws reached out to snatch me, but did not gain any purchase.
A small grunt of pain escaped me while something warm and wet ran down the burning places on my back. His sharp claws had gone right through the polymer of my jacket, a true testament to their potency. One swipe across an artery from those, and I was a goner.
I began to feel like I could taste my own defeat, as though this fight I had rushed into was
lost before I’d even stepped into the ring, and the heaviness of my impending doom, and the subsequent doom of Sam, threatened to take over.
Shoving these thoughts away with Herculean strength, I tried to remember all the things, all the training for survival and combat that the Peace Brokers had tried so hard to teach me over the years. If ever I needed to call on the only gift they’d left me with, the only thing they’d been unable to strip me of, it was now.
I needed to be the warrior they’d created me to be, the force that all the supernatural worlds had to reckon with.
What I needed, I thought as I bounced around the factory, narrowly evading deathly blows from a crazed Halfling Wolf, was a miracle.
CHAPTER 58
In all the time I’d spent with the Brokers, which was effectively my entire life, I’d only ever really made one friend. He’d been an instructor of mine, and my fascination in him had been equal parts respect and infatuation.
Nick Ramhart had been eight years my senior, and my sparring instructor since I hit the age of seven, which was the point in a Halfling’s life where the Brokers deemed us ready for physical combat training.
Nick had been a serious boy of fifteen, with bright red hair, deep brown eyes, and a pleasing face. I’d loved him since the moment I set eyes on him.
As a child, I knew only that I thought he was handsome, and that he was my superior. He was the only other Halfling Fae I’d ever met, and I the same for him. Over this, among other things, we’d bonded.
Other than my mother’s death, leaving Nick had been the hardest part of my uprooting, of my being casted out of the Brokers. Things had begun to change between us as of late. He was now twenty-five years old, and a well-respected officer for the organization. I was a girl on the verge of womanhood, my feelings towards him—and, I like to fancy, his feelings toward me—were beginning to become something more than the childhood bond we’d forged.
