AWAKENING

by Cooper, JK

  Heat shot up his left leg, and Kale barked savagely. So that’s what it’s like getting shot. Just registering the taste of human blood on his tongue, he thought, And this is what it is to kill. It shocked him how easy it had come, and he knew his work had just begun. Leg stinging, he turned and leaped at the man who shot him. The whites of the man’s eyes went wider as he fired wildly, trying to overcome his fear and find his target.

  Kale tore him apart, leaving him mortally wounded, and slammed into the next hunter, somewhat smaller than his comrades. The hunter fell, scrambling to draw a knife from a sheath at his belt, but it clattered on the metal roof as the hunter toppled off the edge. Kale heard the man grunt as he hit the ground over twenty feet below.

  No, not a knife, Kale thought. A red light pulsed at one end of the rectangular device, dimly illuminating a button. A trigger. Kale had never seen a detonator before, but he knew this was exactly that. The last hunter dove for it.

  No! Kale launched at the man, but he grabbed the detonator before Kale reached him. Kale, however, caught the man’s wrist and sunk his fangs just barely into his flesh.

  The man froze. “It won’t matter. I’ll press that button before you can—”

  Kale bit down with all his strength. The hunter screamed as his hand came free and pulled his mangled limb to his stomach, bending over. He staggered back, retreating from Kale’s slow advance.

  “I die a martyr for the cause of righteousness,” he said, voice quavering. “The sword of justice will see to your end soon enough.”

  He died in silence as Kale ended him swiftly. The same thought, how easy it came to kill, flashed in his mind, and he found that it bothered him, no matter his motives. In the severed hand still lay the detonator. He shifted to human form and pried the device free, then toggled a switch to the “disarm” setting. Was it really that simple?

  He stood and spied Grant taking cover behind a jersey wall, trading fire with a group of hunters atop another warehouse. He was pinned.

  “Grant! I disarmed the bomb.” Kale held up the detonator. “Should be safe to enter.”

  “Kale!” Grant yelled. “Get down!”

  The bullet tore through Kale’s chest, entering his left side at the ribs and exiting through his right pectoral. He stumbled, the burning so intense he could not even cry out. Kale tumbled from the edge of the roof. His vision blackened before he hit the ground.

  Grant saw Kale disappear from the roof of the adjacent warehouse. Sniper. Grant quickly calculated the vector of the shot. Has to be around 800-1,000 meters out. From inside the warehouse, he heard a tormented scream rise above the din of gunfire. Shelby. The pain in that wail sounded inhuman.

  Grant fired his M4 as he stood, covering his move to the edge of the warehouse that held Shelby. Hunters returned fire, and he flattened against the wall. A new pitch of gunfire, faster and higher, rang out. The drone. Grant peeked around the corner. Above the hunters who had him pinned from the roof of another warehouse, the drone fired devastating 5.7mm rounds in fully-automatic bursts. Men let out truncated grunts as they died.

  “Grant,” René said into the comm unit. “They’re coming.”

  Grant swiveled his head, moving his rifle from one vector to the other. “From where?”

  “For me,” René said. “They’ll breach the control room any second.”

  “Get out, René!”

  “It’s too late. Switching all drones back to autonomous flight. Good luck.”

  Grant heard a loud crash through his earpiece. “René!”

  Tinny gunfire erupted in his ear, then silence. “René!”

  No answer. Grant pulled the comm unit from his ear, and the wire hung loosely over his shoulder.

  Another wail from the warehouse.

  Grant’s chest hurt from hearing his daughter in such agony. The drone jerked violently followed by the sound of the shot that had struck it. The sniper again. Spinning out of control, the drone bounced off a building and crashed to the ground.

  “Your air support is gone,” Sherman said, his disembodied voice still coming from the same roof as before. “That beast your daughter was so sweet on is dead. You’re alone, Grant.”

  “So are you.”

  “Not so,” Sherman said. “They that be with us are more than they that be with them.”

  “Ya know, I always hated your misuse of scripture to justify what you did.”

  “What we did, Grant. What we did. Or have you forgotten?”

  “It’s just you and me, Sherman. Come down, and we’ll settle this.”

  “Oh, it’s not just us, Grant.”

  The sniper. Grant cursed.

  “Yeah, I thought you might feel that way,” Sherman said.

  “I can evade your sniper.”

  “Right. There’s that. But why? We can talk this out, can’t we?”

  Grant realized Sherman’s delay tactic a split second too late. The soft scuffle of a footstep sounded behind him, and he spun, M4 raised, just as Lucas pulled the trigger of his pistol. The bullet tore into Grant’s left hip, and he jerked from its momentum but issued nothing more than a surprised grunt. In the fleeting moments it took him to bring his rifle back to bear, Lucas was gone. More bullets struck the ground from his opposite side, barely missing him. He flattened himself against the wall again.

  “He’s fast, isn’t he?” Sherman asked. “Proud of that boy. He’s overcome quite a bit, you know. Your girl, leaving him like she did and all.”

  Grant staggered. From a pocket in his vest, he tore open a packet of QuikClot and dumped it on his wound. He grimaced as the powder hit the bullet hole. A glancing blow, thankfully.

  “Yeah, but he’s a bad shot,” Grant called back. “You taught him, I take it.”

  “Well, he is nervous, I’ll give you that.”

  “Dad! Dad!” Shelby cried.

  “Sounds like she’s really upset, Grant,” Sherman said. “Best see if you can comfort her, don’t you think?”

  Grant again peeked around the corner. A round slammed into the metal just an inch from his eye, and he pulled back. Then, praying the sniper was using a bolt action and needed to chamber another round, he dashed from his cover and jumped through the window he, Kale, and Elias had breached earlier. He landed and rolled, then came up to a one-knee position, swinging his gun from corner to corner. His hip smarted like nothing else.

  In the middle of the dark warehouse sat an empty chair and broken chains.

  Shelby felt the burning in her chest, like someone had stabbed her with a white hot blade. She screamed. The pain ceased suddenly, and her connection to Kale—that lifeline that had been forged when they first kissed—snapped. She fell, still bound to the chair. Her heart, her soul . . . Again she wailed, and her wolf wailed with her. She sensed her rage, the depth of loss that matched her own. Shelby’s eyes burned as salty tears sprang from them, and she jerked the chains that bound her to the chair. Again, she pulled on her restraints. The metal cuffs bit into her arms as she yanked yet again, harder.

  “Kale!”

  She grunted on her next pull.

  Kale! Memories swam before her as if a lifetime’s worth. Her insides fluttering with a comforting warmth when she’d felt him near on her first day at gymnastics tryouts; the drowning depths of his hazel eyes at the dinner table; first touching him, his rough but kind hands . . . She pulled the chains harder, and her wrists started to bleed. Please, Kale . . .

  The first time she made him laugh—that joyful, large laugh—when showing him the goat music video on YouTube; the bonfire, that fateful kiss that had opened something within her, that something that now shriveled and wilted; him helping her dad repair the porch steps; the quarry’s shockingly cold water, pushing Kale from the ledge . . .

  This time, her grunt sounded more like a growl. And the chains . . . had they flexed at her last pull? She felt her wolf, saw her lantern-moon glowering eyes, saw the pain in them. Pain for Kale’s wolf, Shelby realized. But Shelby also saw the hesit
ation. How? How could her wolf be hesitant now? No, it was . . . weariness, not hesitation. Sluggishness.

  The drug. Sodium thiopental. What had Sherman said it did? Her chest ached, physically and emotionally for that connection to her love, the man she had only known for just over a week and yet had always known in some way she could not explain. They had taken that from her. From them. Something pulsed in her, beneath her skin.

  Sharing her music with him; feeling his solid, steady heartbeat as she laid her head on his strong chest; him holding her the night of the pack meeting, of him kissing her against the servant-quarters, making the whole world feel safe and complete . . .

  She ripped her arms forward savagely, not caring for the pain or damage it would do to her. As the metal bit into her skin more deeply, she heard something creak. She turned. The plates bolted to the floor to which the chains were attached now bulged higher in the center. They had given.

  “Come on, girl,” she said aloud but speaking to her wolf. “I don’t know how to do this! I need you. Please! Fight through it.”

  Her wolf emerged further in her mind, and Shelby saw that beautiful bluish-gray, svelte muzzle again. The struggle . . . her wolf struggled against the drugs in her system. The pulsing beneath her skin intensified and turned to a burn.

  Muted gunfire outside. Bullets pierced the warehouse walls, sounding like fishing weights rattling on a metal trashcan lid. Shelby flinched as one struck the ground next to her then ricocheted away.

  “Please!” Shelby begged. She felt her eyes stinging as if hot needles pricked them. Then, the vision of the wolf inside her mind changed. An older wolf took its place, the face black with beautiful white and gray flecks around the short muzzle, and the eyes a deep glow of amber. Half of the wolf’s face morphed to a beautiful woman with thick dark hair and piercing green eyes. Eyes, just like Shelby’s.

  Shelby froze. And, in that moment, she knew her wolf saw the vision as well. The memory.

  A tear trickled down Shelby’s left cheek, and her breath caught as a sob choked in her throat. “M . . . Mom?”

  The woman smiled. Such longing and relief all at once filled Shelby. Was this real? She knew it was, just as she knew that she and Kale had belonged to each other before their lives had begun on this earth. She knew the regal woman she now beheld was her mother, and that she saw that her mother had also been an Omega. How she discerned that eluded her, but Shelby knew it. Felt it.

  “Mom, how—”

  A gunshot. Much closer this time. Just outside the warehouse. A grunt that sounded familiar. The face of her mother—Moriahna—paled with what could only be trepidation, and she turned toward the sound of the gunshot.

  “Dad!” Shelby screamed. “Dad! Dad! Dad!” Her voice went hoarse as she writhed.

  Moriahna whirled her head back to face Shelby, her eyes sparking with deep orange pinpoints, like angry stars on a moonless night. Release her, Moriahna said.

  Shelby’s voice broke. “I don’t know how!” She screamed in utter frustration and fear and anxiety and doubt.

  You must, her mother said.

  Shelby jerked on her chains again, but they did not budge. Her arms shook with pain and rage. “Help me!”

  Her wolf longed for her mother, the same way Shelby ached for her. The vision of the black lupine face with snowy streaks filled her mind again. So beautiful and graceful. In her mind, Shelby’s wolf howled a solemn tone, and emerged from that haven that had concealed her within Shelby’s heart for too long.

  “No more,” Shelby said in whisper. “No. More.”

  You must become that which you were born to be, my daughter. Moriahna’s voice danced in Shelby’s mind like an echo, beckoning and commanding. You must awaken.

  With a final scream, Shelby Brooks released her anguish, her fear, her hopes and dreams, her love and hate, her strength and weakness. Her being. In that terrible but supernal scream—a declaration that became a howl—she cried a name she had once known but that had been buried deep in ages of memory. And with that name, she called forth her wolf.

  The shackles that bound her came free.

  Lucas found the naked body of Kale Copeland. He shook with revulsion at being so close to a Lycan, dead or not. He bit the inside of his cheek so hard it bled. There . . . the pain. Just enough to charge his courage.

  The son of the Alpha lay still on a stack of pallets and empty oil drums. He had broken through at least one pallet from his fall.

  “Not so tough with a bullet through you, huh doggie?”

  Although . . . the cursed Lycan had killed three hunters before being taken down by their sniper. That, Lucas had to admit, was somewhat impressive. And, the detonator. Where had that fallen? It would be near impossible in the dark to find it. He looked up. It could still be on the warehouse’s roof.

  “Lucas!” someone whispered.

  He turned to see his dad against the wall of the adjacent warehouse, ducking below the window Shelby’s dad had just jumped through.

  Yeah, I made you bleed.

  “The pup is dead,” Sherman said.

  The sniper, a man named Frowly, hustled up next to Sherman. “Nice shooting,” Sherman said. His eyes returned to Lucas. “It’s time to finish this.”

  Lucas looked back at Kale’s body. A dark gleam of red liquid streamed from his chest. Lucas smiled. Maybe he could learn to be a sniper with the hunters. The ability to meet out pain and death stealthily, to watch prey from afar and know that he controlled whether they lived or died . . . yes, that appealed very nicely.

  From a pocket, Lucas withdrew a silver self-injecting vial of sodium thiopental and popped the cap, revealing a short syringe. Twenty milliliters ought to be plenty. Kale was probably dead, but Sherman always said it was tough to kill these bastards. Best to be certain. Even if Kale was still alive and somehow survived, the death of his wolf would leave him as little more than an invalid. Just a husk of a man. Lucas had inklings of how that might feel. He advanced toward Kale’s still form, silver vial raised.

  Grant moved to the empty chair. Chains lay on the cement floor, several links twisted and torn, as if no more than a soda can. At the end of the chain rested a shattered metal cuff. The moonlight’s dull glint provided little illumination, but his eyes adjusted quickly. A catwalk ran above his head and bordered the inside perimeter of the warehouse. Machinery lay randomly scattered throughout. Grant hunkered down behind a forklift.

  “Shel?” he whispered. “Shelby.”

  Footsteps sounded outside. Sherman and Lucas, or so he thought. He blinked sweat from his eyes and winced at the pain in his hip.

  “Shelby!”

  Grant heard a soft noise from the corner, a low rumble. A growl, he realized. Switching his optic to its thermal setting, he swept his M4 toward the sound. In a darkened corner, a deep red object filled the scope. The shape of a large wolf.

  Grant lowered his rifle. Two golden eyes stared back at him, hanging like disembodied orbs in the darkness. Despite the lupine influence in their appearance, Grant recognized them, for he saw the unmistakable similarity to Moriahna’s eyes.

  “Shelby . . .” He held his hand out to her. “It’s okay.”

  A canister hit the ground and skidded while dispensing smoke. Grant ducked back down below the forklift and slammed a new magazine into his rifle, then stuffed the old one in his tactical vest. The smoke, he knew that smell. Silver acetylide.

  “Shel, get out!”

  Grant heard the patter of fast-paced steps ascending metal stairs that led to the second floor of the warehouse. The gas was heavy and probably wouldn’t rise higher than eight feet. Hopefully.

  “Come on, Grant,” Sherman called. “Bring her out. Show me you’ve still got those hunter instincts in you. Show me you still have a righteous heart.”

  Red lasers pierced the haze around him, and his eyes watered. Sherman was inside with others. Grant detected three lasers. Lucas and someone else. Maybe more. He moved silently from his cover, rifle at his shoulder
. Through his thermal optic, he saw a splotchy bluish-purple image that looked like the outline of arms holding a rifle. He fired. The object did not react.

  “Anti-thermal camouflage,” Sherman said.

  “Good,” Grant said. “I prefer it the old-fashioned way.” He lowered his M4 and drew his Glock with his right hand and knife with his left, the one stamped with the small acorn.

  Kale’s finger twitched. His eyelids fluttered. As they slowly opened, only the dimmest light entered. The pain in his chest seared him as he tried to roll off the pallets that had broken his fall, and he breathed short, sharp breaths. He slid more than rolled, and fell onto a pile of metal barrels on their sides. Things moved in his chest. Bones. Or bullet shrapnel. He couldn’t be sure.

  The two things missing as he awoke were the sounds of gunfire. And Shelby. He could not feel her. Their link . . . he didn’t sense it. He groaned as he pushed his naked body onto all fours. Blood and mud crusted his torso. It hurt to breathe.

  He could feel his body attempting to heal, and it had to a degree; silver shrapnel must still be inside him. Yes, he felt the burning, pulsing most fiercely at his joints. As he tried to take a deep breath, he wheezed. Pierced lung, probably collapsed. Not like he had any medical training, but that felt correct.

  Through shaky vision, he saw the warehouse with the broken window, heard faint sounds coming from within it. He thought he had disarmed the bomb right as he was shot. If sounds were coming from inside the warehouse, he must have. Cautiously, he rose and swore as a new torrent of pain rippled through him. He tried to suck in a deep breath but could not. Oxygen, he needed more, but the pain . . .

  His vision shook as he stepped toward the warehouse, the same way videos of someone running with a GoPro looked. The ground seemed to bounce, and a wave of dizziness came over him. Shelby.

  Things inside were wrong. Broken. His brain wasn’t working right. Shift! But his wolf, where was his wolf? That place where it resided felt hollow, only a speck of the presence that usually filled it remained. What is this?