by Laura Taylor
One of them, though, seemed a more lucid sort. He held a small pistol in his hand and fired without hesitation. The bullet hit John in the chest, and he grunted, pausing a moment as pain ripped through him. But he’d been through enough torture to know how to deal with pain, to know how to turn it back on itself and channel it out again as raw fury. He went for the man, only to pull himself up in disappointment as he turned tail and ran. But instead of clumsy efforts to hide, this one still had his wits about him. He headed straight for a small room at the back of the lab, dashed inside, and slammed the door. John grabbed the handle with his teeth and yanked, then, when that yielded no results, shifted again, and tried to open it as a human.
No luck.
But no matter. They would deal with the man sooner or later. In the meantime, there were a dozen more people waiting to die.
Andre was torn between relief and disappointment as he surveyed the room. Intellectuals. Nerds. Not a warrior among them. It would make his job easy, but also prodded the gnawing guilt he habitually felt at killing those so helpless.
No matter. He had a job to do, and he would do it without hesitation.
He pulled himself up short as a small, lithe woman dropped down out of the ceiling, landing gracefully a few metres in front of him. She was short, slight of build, with dark skin and hair cut short against her scalp, and he felt his entire body go on alert.
Killing the guards had been easy. Killing the assassin had been a good workout, the first real challenge he’d faced in years, and it had been invigorating to meet an opponent of worth for once. Not that that had helped the assassin, who was now lying dead on the floor with his blood painting the tiles beneath him. But the woman who stood before him now…
By Sirius himself. Andre’s blood turned cold as he recognised the tattoo on the woman’s cheek. A Satva Khuli. The Noturatii’s version of himself. As he understood it, their training was more brutal, more thorough even than his own. He’d been lucky to survive some of his trials. What the hell had this woman survived to reach the rank she held now?
The Khuli seemed to recognise in himself the same thing he’d recognised in her – a ruthless killer who would stop at absolutely nothing to reach his goal.
Andre slowly put his weapons away, sheathed his knife, holstered his gun. Neither would help him now, and he needed both hands free to deal with whatever it was she was going to throw at him. The room around him faded away – the sounds of John ripping out throats, and of Simon popping off rounds of bullets at guards who fought to break into the room. The Khuli was the only threat now, the only real barrier between himself and his goal.
He sent a brief prayer to Sirius to receive him with honour into the afterlife.
John was in his element. He leapt from one body to the next, his teeth put to good use, the taste of hard-earned blood in his mouth, adrenaline pumping in his veins as years, decades, of hate and anger ripped free and set his blood on fire. These monsters were going to die. He leapt and bit and tore and growled, feeling blood running into his fur, dripping from his face, tasting flesh between his teeth. If he’d been in human form, he might just have cried at the beauty of it all. One scientist stabbed him with a scalpel blade, a tiny, pathetic sort of knife that would have made John laugh if his mouth wasn’t full of human flesh.
Another tried to hit him with a metal post. Missed. Slipped in the blood on the ground and died with a gurgling scream as John ripped his throat out. He was dimly aware of screams in the room, of bodies moving around, but he focused solely on his next target, and then the next, a deep wound carved into the Noturatii, as deep as the wounds they had carved into himself.
Finally, the last body fell, a hard crack as the woman’s head hit the floor, possibly splintering bone, and John shifted back to human form, scanning the room for-
He froze, backing away slowly into a corner. Not from fear, but simply in an effort to stay out of the way. Fuck it all, what the hell was Andre fighting? And how had he missed her arrival?
The woman was almost supernatural, as strong as Andre, despite her smaller size. As quick as lightning, ruthless, determined – the perfect counterpart to Andre’s formidable skills. And from the looks of it, the Council warrior was barely holding his own.
John all but held his breath, not willing to make the slightest move that might distract the man from his task. He would have willingly fought alongside Andre, of course, but any attempt to break into the battle now would be as likely to kill him as to help him. The woman was surreal.
He watched, eyes fixed on the pair as they grappled, throwing out kicks and punches that rarely hit their target. Andre succeeded in knocking the woman to the floor at one point, only to leap out of the way as she struck out with her legs, each shoe tipped with pointed steel blades that could maim him enough to throw the balance of the fight.
Andre was no slouch in the fighting department, though. And he put every resource available to him to use. In one moment, he was throwing a punch at the woman. Then he’d shift, a split second blur as powerful teeth snapped at her limbs, then he’d be back in human form, spinning behind her, catapulting himself off furniture, over a desk, behind a chair, then back into wolf form so fast that John barely caught the shift, landing a bite to her leg, catching a kick to his jaw, then back in human form, a gun in his hand, with no time to pull the trigger before she deflected the muzzle and tried to put him in an arm lock.
Fuck, this one was going to be close.
Andre ignored the burning in his lungs as he fought the Khuli. She was more beast than human, her instincts honed to razor sharp, lightning reflexes. One moment her hand was empty, then there was a knife in it, a blow meant to disembowel him managing instead to only graze him, then the knife was gone and a pistol took its place, deflected by a timely strike from Andre, and then her hands were empty again, those vicious spikes on her shoes spinning his way. She was relentless – as was he. There was no pause in the battle, no respite to reassess their opponent, to take stock of the room, the available cover, or objects that could be used as makeshift weapons. There was only the fight, the woman, the invigorating, captivating, sickening dance on the razor-sharp edge of life and death.
And if he lost, he knew she was going to kill every single member of their Den. And so defeat, in this most solemn of games, was simply not an option.
A stab at her midsection missed. An elbow to her face merely grazed her cheek. A jump to put distance between them gave her more room to strike faster and harder at him. He caught the foot aimed at his face, anticipating her violent twist, releasing her before she broke his wrist, but it was too soon to throw her off balance as he had hoped.
The Khuli were legendary, even amongst the Council’s assassins. Battles between them were rare, but the outcome was never assured, a solid 50-50 tie hanging over them all in the tallies of who had killed more of whom – a tie that Andre was determined to break.
While the Council had invested heavily in the best training it could find, martial arts experts from around the world and deadly games between its own assassins to hone their skills, they had also pursued more clandestine routes of securing victory. There was no misguided sense of honour in their ranks, no rules about taking it easy on a female opponent, no shame at using the most underhanded tactics to weigh the outcome of the fight. Victory was the only important outcome.
And they had refined their weapons with that singular purpose in mind.
Andre was getting the hang of the fight now, learning her style, anticipating her next move. Not that it gave him much of an advantage, the Khuli learning his own moves almost as quickly as he learned hers.
But they were both landing more blows now, small scratches and tiny cuts that would go little way towards killing their opponent.
Andre let loose a burst of static electricity, let his form blur as if to execute a shift, a signal she had learned to anticipate by now, and he saw her weight shift to the left, a subtle movement aimed at avoiding his next attack.
He never completed the shift. He surged back into his human form in the blink of an eye and lashed out with the tiny wooden spike that sat hidden inside his glove. He buried the tip in her arm, barely an inch deep, no more than half a millimetre thick.
And with that one successful strike, the battle was over.
Not for him, of course, but for her, as she struck back at him, limbs flying in a dance that could prove just as lethal as it ever had…
The fight went on for another minute or so, a knife grazing his abdomen, a fist missing his face by scant millimetres.
But then, as the seconds ticked by…
The Khuli paused. Stopped. Pulled back, the first break in the fight since it had begun long minutes earlier. A stray glance at the puncture wound in her arm that would have provided Andre with the perfect opening in the battle… if it had been necessary.
She stared up at him with a look of pure disbelief. And then she collapsed on the floor, her body convulsing as the poison took over.
Breathing hard, Andre took out his gun, pointed the muzzle at her head, and pulled the trigger. And the Khuli lay still.
Andre glanced around, seeing Simon still stationed by the door, surveying the bodies of fallen guards outside. John stood beside the wall, his face expressionless.
“There’s a scientist in the store room,” he said, his voice seeming loud in the suddenly quiet room, and Andre holstered his gun.
“Let’s get him out, then,” he said, fighting back the nausea, the triumph, the warring sides of victory and defeat that always haunted him when he took another life.
John watched as Andre pulled yet another weapon from his arsenal. This one was a… crossbow? “A little archaic, isn’t it?” John wasn’t fancy in his choice of weapons. It was either teeth or guns, depending on which form he was in. Quick, simple, effective. Trust a Council stooge to be all fancy about it.
“You might want to step back,” Andre said, and John did, because okay, the guy might be a poncy show off, but he was a straight up killer at the same time. The way he’d shot that ninja-assassin-girl in the head…
Andre shot the arrow cleanly at the door. It stuck, a light flashed on the tip, and then an explosion ripped through the door like it was made of tissue paper. A man inside screamed, then the clatter of glass breaking and things falling off shelves came at them from through the smoke.
Impatient for more blood, John strode forward, grabbed the man by his collar and yanked him out of the room. He held a laptop in one hand, and John felt a stab of glee as he wondered what secrets Skip would coax from the little machine later. But he realised a split second too late that the man also held a glass bottle in his other hand. A flick of his wrist, and the bottle shattered on the floor at John’s feet, splattering him with a chemical. And from the sudden searing pain that shot up his leg, he knew he’d just been doused in acid.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Outside the cage where they’d been holding their captive, Miller stood tensely, eyes fixed on the shifters trapped in the hallway, gun drawn, though it wouldn’t do much good just at the moment. The barrier was bullet proof, and he took the time to wonder whether it was because the Noturatii wanted to protect its members, or to prevent them from shooting valuable specimens.
The man leading the new arrivals was huge, as big as the man they held captive, and Miller kept his focus on him. He’d be fearsome in a fight, though the woman looked just as capable and more pissed off. Hmm. Best not to underestimate her. Blood was splattered over them, and he wondered how many guards they’d taken down to reach this point. And where the hell this legendary Khuli was. After she’d been over the lab with a fine-tooth comb, their defences were supposed to be impenetrable.
The third man had only one eye, and he wondered why a fighter with such a liability had been brought along… until the man suddenly shifted into a huge grey wolf, who seemed to grow larger by the second as his hackles came up and his head went down, teeth bared in open threat. The wolf, surprisingly, had both eyes – eyes that fixed themselves on Miller with lethal intent.
Miller was awed by the sight. The wolf wore armour in a deep red colour, full body coverage, and yet the design was such that it wouldn’t impair his movement in the slightest. Their recent captive had refused to shift, no matter what ‘incentives’ – namely, torture – they’d offered him. But watching one shift of its own accord? It was beautiful. Graceful. Smooth and seamless in a way Miller had never imagined it could be.
“No deal,” Melissa said beside him, in response to the man’s suggestion that they just let each other walk away. “Besides, I think you’re at rather a disadvantage to be bargaining with us.”
The man smiled – smiled – a look filled with genuine humour and no small threat of death. “Don’t say I didn’t give you the choice.”
Footsteps sounded from further down the hallway… Oh fuck, there were more of them? The guards should have killed them all! Miller gripped his gun tighter, a dozen escape routes for the guards and Melissa mapped out in his head. They could always capture another shifter, but Melissa was a key component in these trials, her and Phil the brains behind an operation that seemed to get more complicated with every new discovery. Without them, they’d lose ten years of hard research and progress.
Three more shifters arrived at the end of the hallway, two humans and one wolf, and the huge man seemed not at all surprised by their arrival. No, that wasn’t a shifter, he realised. That was Phil! The head scientist, stripped of his lab coat and glasses, had a gun held to his back and looked utterly terrified.
But as he watched, the shifters took stock of the situation – the captive with the gun to his head, the bars…
“Control panel’s in the ceiling. Just above you,” the leader said to a tall man wearing a trench coat, the one with a gun to Phil’s back. How the fuck did they know where it was? Then Trench-Coat pulled out a crossbow, and before Miller could blink, the ceiling was on fire, smoke pouring out of the hatch, flames crawling along the ceiling. Trench-Coat went for the bars trapping the others in, shoving the metal back into the floor, while Warrior Woman went for the barrier. Gloved fingers couldn’t get a grip on the glass, but another explosion popped off inside the ceiling hatch, fresh smoke pouring through the gap, and the wall protecting them all from sudden death retracted, leaving three guards and a headstrong scientist facing off against five angry shifters.
Negotiate, Miller thought desperately, scrambling for a deal that would get all of them – or most of them, at least – out of here alive.
But Trench-Coat was way ahead of him. “How about we all stay calm. We’ve got something you want,” he said, shoving Phil in the back and making him stumble. “And you’ve got something we want. So how about we arrange a nice little trade, and we all get to walk away alive.”
Melissa glanced at their captive, who remained impassive, despite the showy entrance of his fellow shifters. “How do we know you won’t just shoot us once we let him go?”
Certainly a valid question. But just then, another man swung around the corner. He had dark hair and a cold, steely expression on his face, though he looked younger than the others. He pulled up short as his gaze landed on Melissa, and his hard face turned pale.
“Sarah?” The word came out jaggedly, a husky cry of disbelief, and Miller realised that Melissa looked as startled as the young man did.
What the hell? As Miller tried to catch up with whatever it was that was going on, he noticed that the other shifters seemed just as surprised as he was by the young man’s sudden question.
After helping Dee and Raniesha get Gabrielle up the stairs, Mark checked in with Kwan and Aaron who were guarding the door, and learned that there had yet to be any sign of Baron and his team. And despite his orders to do his job and get out, Mark grabbed Dee and kissed her hard on the mouth, then bolted back inside the building. He had led them all here, after all, and as his life was likely forfeit at the end of this parade, he’d just as soon go d
own fighting. If Baron had got into trouble – which was more than likely, given the defences of this place – then an extra pair of hands – and teeth – wouldn’t go astray. He ran back down the stairs, navigating the place like he’d lived here for years. He followed the hallway along to the cages, expecting to find them all locked in a fight, perhaps wounded, maybe pinned down and unable to escape, or worst case, possibly already dead. He braced himself for all manner of horrors and chaos when he turned the final corner, seeing smoke filling the hallway, flames licking along the ceiling.
But then he caught sight of…
Nothing could have prepared him for this. Sarah! His sister! The one he’d been looking for when he came to the lab in the first place, the one he’d given up for dead. She’d been captured after all! She was surrounded by guards, their guns drawn, Tank standing patiently as they threatened to shoot him, and his gut lurched to think that perhaps she’d been kept here all these months, ready to be the next test subject in the Noturatii’s sick experiments.
“That’s not my name,” Sarah snapped at him, and Mark’s heart sank at his mistake. Perhaps she’d given them a false name, tried to protect her identity? Not that it would matter now. They were going to kill them all and free her, so there would be no one left to threaten her.
“We can help you,” he tried again, taking a step forward, dimly aware of the stares of disbelief from Baron and the other shifters. “We can get you out of here-”
“What the fuck do you think I am?” The cold, hard statement was delivered with all the hate she could muster, and it was then that Mark finally felt himself pulled up hard, feeling reality snap back into place.
