“Let’s go,” the werewolf ordered crisply.
#
As Michael led the way deeper into the mountain lodge, toward the blinking icon of the mark David had put on the map for a point of interest, his superhuman ears noted that the gunfire had all but stopped. From the slowly descending quiet in the cult’s hidden headquarters, the fight was almost over.
The cultists’ numbers and equipment bothered Michael. They hadn’t expected nearly so many men—and certainly not men this fanatical and equipped with military-grade weapons.
“ONSET Nine, this is Nine Actual,” the werewolf said gruffly, activating his radio. “Check in, over.”
“This is Nine Deuce,” Kate’s voice responded immediately. “I’m with Ape Six Actual, we have the main entrance secured and are coordinating with our covering teams. No one’s made a break for it, over.”
“This is Nine Four,” Dilsner replied. “I’ve found their coms center. This is one hell of a network hub for the middle of bloody nowhere. I’m secure, over,” the Mage added as an afterthought.
“This is Ape Six Charlie Actual for your Nine Six,” a voice said over the radio. “We just finished sweeping the east wing—looks like it was their barracks. Your gal took some bad hits and is being medevaced with our wounded. Paramedics say she’s probably going to make it.”
“Thanks, Charlie Actual,” Michael replied. He’d known about Bourque’s injuries from her combat suit, but the paramedic’s assessment of her survival chances was more useful than the suit’s transmission of her pulse and blood pressure.
“Nine Three here,” Akono reported as Michael cut his link to Ape-Six-Charlie squad. “Still over your head. Confirm on Nine Deuce—our boys in the hills are bored. Nobody even tried to run, over.”
Michael growled, low in his throat, as he hit a set of stairs running, taking three at a time before forcing himself to slow so the AP soldiers could keep up. Only a supreme effort of will kept the transformation at bay. He was worried—and angry. There shouldn’t have been this many cultists here, and they shouldn’t have been heavily armed. Two of his team were down and he didn’t even know what David had run into.
“Nine Five,” Ix said in his clipped, inhuman, tones. “Closing on Nine Seven.”
“I’m close,” Michael responded. “Stabilize him and check for gear failure, got it? Over.”
“Check,” the demon replied. There was a moment’s pause, and the demon didn’t drop the line. “Actual,” he continued in a strained voice. “I can’t get closer. Watch your-grrgh!”
The demon’s voice cut off as his vitals—already very different from the other members of the team—went crazy. His pulse dropped to single digits and body temperature plummeted.
“Shit,” Michael cursed, his sense of foreboding crystallizing into a chill of fear. He turned to his contingent of Apes. “Hold here; something’s going very wrong. Dig in and wait for my signal.”
They were on the second floor, less than ten meters from the spot David had marked, and maybe three times that from David himself. With a nod, the sergeant began to order his men to break down doors and find a barricade.
Without the detail to slow him down, Michael allowed the transformation to take him. His ears caught gasps from the soldiers behind him as his skin flowed, the form of the massive wolf subsuming him and all of his gear.
He sniffed the air, relying on superhuman senses instead of the technology that had gone Elsewhere when he transformed. An odd scent caught his nose from the direction he was headed. It smelt like incense but cut with gunpowder—and burning blood.
The massive wolf launched into a run.
#
He hit the area where he figured David’s marker would have been, and understood why the junior agent had left it. This richly and strangely decorated section of the lodge was almost certainly the temple area. David had found the sanctum.
The scent of blood drew Michael on, and the werewolf found the shattered corpses of the two guards David had gunned down. He sniffed at the bodies and the heavy assault shotguns.
Both were dead, and he was running short on time—David, if there was any chance for him at all, was running short on time. The werewolf left the bodies, cringing as his paws sank into the sticky pool of half-dried blood.
He could feel himself leaving a trail of bloody pawprints as he ran down the corridor, and it distracted him at a crucial moment. Michael rounded a corner at full speed and was almost too focused on his sticking to the floor to pay attention to the man standing there.
With no time to process any oddities, Michael leapt for the throat, long fangs bared to rip out the throat of the damned cultist getting between him and any chance of saving his junior agent.
The hand that caught the massive werewolf in midair and flung him against the wall was a complete surprise. Michael himself couldn’t have done that to a werewolf of his age and power, and he assessed his new opponent carefully as he sprang back to his feet.
It was not a man. It looked like a man, wearing a burnt cultist’s robe over a neat business suit, but it smelled all wrong. Even if Michael hadn’t been a werewolf, the fact that the face was still regrowing itself out of a charred mess would have given the game away. Or the eyes, where green flame burned instead of eyeballs.
Undistracted, Michael felt the power of a greater demon and knew they’d failed. Only once before had the werewolf had stood in the presence of a being of this power—and this time, he was alone.
The werewolf charged forward anyway, changing into a hybrid form of man and wolf as he did—a creature of fang and claw and muscle, perfect for this kind of close-range brawl. His claws extended, slashing for the demon’s stolen flesh.
Each strike was blocked easily, casually. As each clawed blow flashed out, a hand easily interposed itself, stopping the strike. Finally, the demon stepped back and lashed out at Michael in turn.
The werewolf dropped, dodging under the blow and stabbing forward with both hands. He felt his claws drive deep into the flesh of his enemy, and his gorge rose. This flesh was not living. He’d just driven his claws into a walking corpse sustained by the sheer power of the entity that had claimed it.
His claws stuck in the dead flesh, the demon’s next blow sent him flying through the air. He bounced off the wall and around the corner. He landed next to the corpses of David’s victims, multiple bones broken.
He focused, and even as the demon walked sedately around the corner, his bones clicked back into place with loud cracking noises and a scream of pain. His transformation undid itself as the demon came, and Michael faced the monster as a man.
An unimaginably strong man. With two assault shotguns right to hand.
As the demon threw a bolt of green flame at Michael, the werewolf rolled away, grabbing up a shotgun in each hand. Years of practice found the safeties and flicked them to automatic.
Another bolt of green flame burned a clean strip through the top of Michael’s hair as he dropped to a crouch and lifted the guns, pulling the triggers as they bore on the demon and unleashing a hail of full-auto fire.
Even through the earplugs that had returned with his human form, the cacophony of two assault shotguns hurt. The shotguns slammed back against his hands with too much for even his endurance, and he felt even his left wrist shatter, the gun dropping from his grip before it emptied.
The second gun fell to the ground as it worked its way to vertical, having filled the corridor with a wall of lead. The smell of the pellets was enough for Michael to know they weren’t silver, and that was bad news.
The smoke from the shotgun bursts faded, and the demon grinned at Michael. The side walls had been demolished, the murals obliterated by flame and lead. The robe that had hung over the demon was gone, its fabric disintegrating under the hail. But the claw wounds Michael had inflicted were gone, and the shotguns had done nothing to the demon itself, not even marring the suit.
For the first time, the demon spoke. “Nice try,” it told Mich
ael mockingly, the voice low and smooth as silk. Then it punched him in the chest. Michael flew backward, crashing through the twisted murals with a crash. He hit the floor of the room beyond and bounced, crashing into the outer wall of the building with enough force to punch through its solid wood—and take Michael into darkness.
#
The brief flash of unconsciousness faded, and Michael pulled himself out of the wreckage of a neatly trimmed hedge along the edge of the lodge’s grounds. Hard leafless branches prodded into his back even as his regeneration fixed broken bones with painful cracks.
He waited a moment, focusing on healing his injuries, and looked back at the hunting lodge he’d just been punched out of. A massive hole marked the nearest wall around the second floor, bits of which were scattered around the bushes he’d landed on. As he watched, a suited figure walked up to the edge of the hole and calmly jumped out of the building.
“All helicopters and heavy weapons,” he said into his radio, coughing to clear the taste of his own blood from his throat, “this is Nine Actual. Our primary mission is a failure,” he said grimly, his voice clearer now as he pulled a laser target designator, somehow intact despite everything, from his harness. “I’m designating a target for a full fire mission. The demon is heading east, and I want him hit with everything we’ve got.”
“Hold that thought,” a drawling voice interjected onto the radio network. Michael froze at the sound of Anderson’s words, the laser designator half-raised.
“This is Stutter Actual,” Anderson continued. “Abort the direct-fire mission. Do not, I repeat, do not fire on the demon. I’m uploading a fire pattern to all helicopters and guns. My Bravo team is setting up a trap in the hills. We’re going to herd him in.”
Michael took a very deep breath, his body aching with the effort of regenerating so much damage, and switched to a direct channel with Anderson.
“Are you mad, Stutter?” he demanded.
“No,” the SSTTR Commander said flatly. “My man Casey is already on the ground and laying out a path while keeping an eye on that thing. This was the backup plan, remember? Your mission was to stop the summoning, but you failed. This is my mission now, understand?”
Michael stood on the cold ground, watching the demon run to the east as artillery fire began to fall around it, trying to drive it in a specific direction. “He’s not stupid, Captain. He’ll realize what you’re doing.”
“His choices are to go where we want or walk into an AG-shrapnel shell,” the Texan drawled harshly. “Either we take him alive or he dies. Think of what we’d lose if he dies, Commander,” he implored. “He’s a high court demon. He’s a major player in the Masters Beyond’s plans for invasion. We have to take him alive.”
“He’s too dangerous,” Michael argued. “Last time we faced a high court demon, it took a nuke to put him down, Anderson! Unless you didn’t tell me something, that’s not an option here!”
“It’s not your decision,” Anderson said sharply. “It’s not mine, either. The Director gave his orders. If the demon was summoned, we were to take him alive.” The Texan’s voice softened. “I agree with your point, Commander, but we need what he can tell us. And I have my orders.”
With a click, Anderson cut the connection, and Michael inhaled sharply, catching the iron tang of blood. The scent brought back the thought of David, and he switched to another channel.
“Did anyone make it to Seven?!” he demanded.
“This is Nine Five,” Ix reported, his voice showing no sign of his earlier problems. “I’m sorry for earlier,” he continued. “The bastard is higher-court than I am—I can’t fight him!”
Michael nodded, and then remembered the demon couldn’t see him. “Understood, Five,” he said quietly. That wasn’t something he’d been aware of, but it explained why Ix had collapsed when a high court demon had approached. “Did you get to Seven?”
“Just reached his position,” the demon confirmed. “Checking him over now.” There was a pause, and Michael looked around him, making sure there were no more threats and that the cascade of explosions herding the demon was moving away.
“He’ll live,” Ix reported, and Michael quickly checked his data feed on David.
“I’m still showing him flatlined,” the werewolf observed. “Is there damage to the gear?”
“His gear is totaled, but he’s definitely going to make it,” the demon said cheerily. “He’s lost a lot of blood and is still in shock—but he’s regenerating.”
Chapter 33
David woke up to pain. It was a dull sensation in his chest and upper left leg, like there was cotton wrapped around injuries that should have hurt more. He twitched in pain and felt something sticky under his hand. The cop slowly opened his eyes and looked at his hand.
He was lying on a polished hardwood floor, and he wasn’t entirely sure how he’d ended up on the ground. He remembered the mission—assaulting the mountain lodge to stop the ritual. What had happened?
Then it finally sank in what the sticky red substance his hand was in—that he was lying in—was. It was blood. A massive pool of blood spread out around him. His own blood.
David remembered. He remembered turning and shooting at the other man, and being shot in turn. With a lurch, he rose to a half-sitting position to look toward where the cultist had shot at him from. The man lay in a crumpled heap, blood spattering the wall around him.
The wounded man slowly looked around, still stiff. The doors to the ritual chamber had been torn down, and the once-elegant pews and hangings of the sanctum were a mess. Fire had claimed many of the hangings, and bullet holes had been torn through the sanctum. Bodies were scattered everywhere, and David was sure he hadn’t shot them all. The carnage was far beyond his capabilities—many of the Mage-priests had been ripped to pieces.
His blood-soaked hand, unthinkingly checking out the body armor he was wearing, found a hole, and David looked down. His black combat bodysuit was shredded and soaked in blood. An ugly-looking hole in his upper left leg showed where one bullet had clearly gone through, but the chest of the suit was so mangled, there was no way to tell how many bullets had hit him.
Even as he began to panic, a hand settled down on his shoulder. David turned quickly to see the red-skinned and horned form of ONSET Nine’s demon member, Ix’s helmet missing for some reason.
“Take it easy,” he rumbled. “So far as I can tell, blood loss knocked you unconscious for about twenty-two minutes. You should be dead.”
“Dead?” David repeated, staring uncomprehendingly at the demon. Even with the state of his body armor, that seemed…a bit much to take in.
“You have already regenerated most of your injuries,” the demon told him quietly. “That wound in your leg alone should have bled you out in the time you’ve been unconscious. I got here before it fully sealed up—your femoral artery had been nicked—not enough to kill you quickly, but more than enough to kill you in the end. Your armor probably saved your life—it looked like most of the rounds bounced off, so the ones that got through were, again, not enough to kill you quickly. And not quickly apparently wasn’t quickly enough,” Ix finished.
David’s mind struggled with the idea, although part of him remembered the Uzi firing and knew that he’d been lucky just to receive the wounds Ix described—and should still have died from them. But…regeneration?
He tried to stand, but Ix’s grip tightened, holding him down. “You’re a lot more tired than you think,” the demon agent told him. “Stay down for a moment. Here.” With the last, Ix pulled a chocolate bar from a pocket hidden inside his bodysuit and handed it to David, who found that he was starving. “Eat.”
“How’s everyone else?” David asked, between bites.
“We’re still doing a tally now, but Michael has ordered the team to converge here,” the other agent said. “From what I’ve heard, Bourque got beaten up pretty bad and was airlifted out with the Apes’ wounded.”
“The demon?” the wounded agen
t asked, finishing the chocolate bar. He watched as Ix’s inhuman face suddenly went even flatter.
“Summoned,” another voice said from behind them. “Then kicked mine and Ix’s asses and broke out of the building,” Michael continued as the burly werewolf crouched down beside David.
“Why aren’t we pursuing?” David demanded, scrabbling for his gun before Michael’s hand sank down on his other shoulder.
“We’ve been stood down,” the werewolf replied, his voice a low growl. “The Stutter platoon has tactical control. We failed to prevent the summoning, and the demon’s capture, not destruction, is their mission in that case.”
He paused for a moment, and then admitted, “While I disagree with the objective, they are more qualified to carry out that mission than we are.”
David nodded, and silence descended on the bloody hallway. Kate and Morgen drifted in a few minutes later, but no one in the team said a word, just exchanging silent nods.
Eventually, they helped David to his feet, and ONSET Nine made their way down to the Black Sun cult’s lodge’s lobby to continue waiting. Their job was over. Now all they could do was wait to hear whether or not the SSTTR team succeeded.
#
The lobby was less ornately decorated than the sumptuous inner sanctum where David had almost died, but it had still been gorgeous before a running gunfight had torn through it. Now blood spattered the shag carpeting and bullet holes marred the oak paneling half-covered by torn deep blue curtains. A dozen padded brown armchairs were set up in small clusters of three, but one cluster had been all but obliterated by a grenade.
The heavy wooden double doors were closed, their carefully carved wood miraculously untouched by the violence that had occurred around them. Two AP soldiers stood by the windows next to the doors, peering out, while another pair manned a heavy machine gun set up pointing at the door.
“Expecting trouble?” David heard Michael murmur to the corporal in charge of the fire team.
ONSET: To Serve and Protect Page 27
