by Natalie Grey
She dodged sideways as he brought the gun up and took him down with her jaws on the back of his neck, shaking until he went limp. The other two tried to run, and just as Jennifer’s muscles bunched to leap after them, a figure in all black kicked one of them from a side corridor.
Claws and red eyes flashed, and Stephen, drew his hands across in an X as he knelt over his target, nearly severing the man’s neck. He shot a grin at Jennifer as he raised a gun, aimed without thought and took down the last of her targets.
—
She transformed as she ran to him. One moment there was a wolf bounding along the corridor and then, with hardly a stumble, there was a naked woman on two feet, flinging herself into his arms.
Stephen went over backward. He didn’t care. His fingers tangled in Jennifer’s hair and their lips met urgently.
“Hi,” Jennifer managed.
“Hello.” Stephen grinned up at her. “Are you going to be having the rest of this fight naked? Because I think Ecaterina would approve. Also, I brought your guns if you want them.”
Jennifer laughed as she hauled him to her feet, “No, it’s way too fun seeing their expressions when you appear out of the dark as a wolf. But it’s kind of hard to hug as a wolf.”
“Also, I much prefer kissing you when you look like this,” Stephen added. He raised an eyebrow at the man who had transformed behind her. “Hello. I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“Sergio,” the man said, by way of introduction. He nodded to Stephen. “I don’t speak much English. I see you. At Velingrad.”
“I can speak Bulgarian.” Stephen switched. “You saw me?”
“I was Hugo’s… favorite. He had me in the helicopter. I saw you on the roof.” The man looked back and forth between them. “So you, Dr. Yordan—you were why he was chasing the helicopter?”
Jennifer looked a little bit ashamed. “Yeah. I… yeah. Also, my name isn’t Irina, it’s Jennifer.”
“I smelled another Wechselbalg on that helicopter, but I thought it was just blood on you.” Sergio smiled. “You surprised me.”
“Yeah, I also surprised myself. What the hell was going on in that room?”
“He has developed a way to force transformation,” Sergio explained. “Surely you know that much, if you were posing as a scientist.”
“I had some help.” Jennifer lifted one shoulder. “Also, I didn’t know how they did that. I haven’t been implanted with anything. Doesn’t it require a chip?”
“No, actually. Some labs used chips to enhance the signal, but any Wechselbalg exposed to the signal will be vulnerable.”
“I was in the lab for a day and a half, though.”
“The labs are shielded so that the experiments don’t interfere with one another. If you didn’t run any experiments, you wouldn’t have been exposed.”
“Oh. So how does it work?” She asked.
“They force the shift with that machine, and then give commands. It is almost impossible to resist them over a long time, but he still does not know how to force someone to obey him immediately, except by breaking their spirit. It was why he hated me—even after two years, I did not reliably obey him.”
A female’s voice called out. “GERONIMOOOOOOOO!”
The yell echoed down the hallway and everyone turned to look. There was the sound of several things crashing to the floor, and some inventive swearing.
“Oh, didn’t I mention?” Stephen spoke to Jennifer. “Tabitha’s here.”
—
Gerard frowned. Hugo hadn’t answered his cell phone, and he wasn’t answering the main line that ran to the castle, either. At the very least, the butler should have picked up. He did not want to worry—after all, the odds were tiny of something striking the castle so quickly that not a single guard could get the alarm out, and none of the new guards had received so much as a peep on their radios.
But this was unusual, and he didn’t like it.
He strode into the guard captain’s study, letting the door slam against the back wall. “Show me the security feeds from the castle.” The guard captain jumped, but his trembling fingers dutifully pulled up the security feeds.
Gerard frowned at them. Everything seemed entirely normal.
People were moving about in the courtyard without any particular urgency, the butler was standing at attention inside the main doors, and servants were moving through the halls to clean. But no one was answering the phone. He lifted the receiver on the guard captain’s desk, and dialed again. There was a phone next to the butler. The man should pick up. He didn’t even move. He didn’t jump, he didn’t so much as glance at the phone.
Gerard counted the rings. By five, Hugo should pick up the phone, and if he did not, someone else should answer. That was standard. But the butler didn’t look over, and he didn’t pick up.
“That’s weird…” The guard captain’s voice sounded strained.
“What’s weird?” Gerard’s head whipped around. He didn’t like the sound of that.
“Well, it’s just… we can monitor the feed from the power station. And it’s still feeding power to the castle. Sort of.” The guard captain pointed to his screen. “But the castle is cut off from it.”
Gerard looked at the screen the guard captain was pointing at. He looked back at the video feeds. They weren’t frozen. People were moving. But if the power was truly off, they should be showing static. He looked back at power station feed. He had a very bad feeling about this.
“You’re telling me,” he said carefully, “that although the castle looks to be running entirely normally here, it’s—”
The room went pitch black.
“Lost power,” the guard captain finished Gerard’s comment.
“Yes.”
—
Tabitha dusted herself off as she walked.
“Fucking vase ripped into my pants when it shattered,” she complained.
There was a resounding silence from Ryu and Hirotoshi. Tabitha looked over her shoulder. Both of them had the too-straight faces of men trying not to laugh.
Well, if they were trying to stay quiet, she clearly had no choice but to tease them a bit. “Totally the vase’s fault.”
The corner of Hirotoshi’s mouth twitched. It was just slightly, but she knew she was getting to him.
“I am a paragon of grace and elegance,” Tabitha announced.
Ryu gave a pained squeak as he pressed his lips together.
“Busted.” She gave him a look as they came around the corner.
“I believe that vase was very valuable,” Hirotoshi tried. “Perhaps we should not engage in wanton destruction of property.”
Tabitha shrugged. “Well, it’s not valuable anymore. Anyway, you know the rule, be a mass-murdering fuckhead and the rest of us don’t have to care about breaking your shit.”
“However creatively phrased, that is a sound principle,” Hirotoshi admitted.
They came around the corner to see Stephen and two naked people.
“Jennifer!” Tabitha waved then looked Jennifer up and down. “Looking good.”
Stephen stepped in front of Jennifer with a glare at Tabitha. “Can I help you?”
“Oooh, how gentlemanly.” Tabitha stuck her tongue out at him. “Or priggish.”
He raised an eyebrow, “Priggish?”
She took a step backward.
Ryu leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “You’re on your own with this one.”
“Oh, that’s nice. I thought you were supposed to help me during fights.”
“Yes, but I don’t have a death wish.” He looked at Stephen. “And insulting Stephen’s manners is something you only do if you have a death wish. That’s common knowledge.”
Stephen cleared his throat.
“All right, all right.” Tabitha looked pointedly at the wall. “I’m not looking at your naked girlfriend. Will you tell me where the sub basement is?”
There was a pause.
“Down,” Stephen said.
&n
bsp; Tabitha rolled her eyes. “You know what I meant. Which way are the stairs?”
“Back of the building.” He pointed wearily. “One staircase goes all the way down. And just out of curiosity, why isn’t Barnabas here?”
“I’m useful too, you know!”
“Yes, but we need to get information out of these people that may not be in the computers, and Barnabas can read minds.”
“So can I!” Tabitha planted her hands on her hips.
Stephen exchanged a look with Ryu and Hirotoshi, both of whom also looked baffled. “You… can?”
“Well, no. But I can shoot people in the kneecaps until they tell me things.” Tabitha held up her pistol with a chipper grin. “And that’s almost as good. Come on, guys, let’s go get some information.”
Stephen watched as Tabitha walked off cheerily toward the stairs. “Just when I think I have the hang of talking with that woman.”
“It’s good for you,” Jennifer informed him. “Sometimes you are a prig.”
Stephen looked around, “Does no one appreciate me today?”
“It’s very endearing,” she assured him. “All right, where to?”
“Hugo, I assumed. Unless you’ve already killed him.”
“We did.”
“I hope it was painful,” Stephen said quietly. He didn’t like this streak of vengefulness—he preferred to act calmly and rationally, and the force of this hatred threatened to tip him into pure rage. On the other hand, if anyone had ever had it coming…
“It was. But not nearly as painful as having to listen to that stupid speech about us learning our place.” Jennifer gave Sergio a look. “Did he do that a lot?”
“You have no idea,” the other man said, shaking his head. “That wasn’t even the bad part. It was watching sane people go along with it. I even asked some of them why they did, when what he was doing was clearly sociopathic. They just wanted the salary—and they were afraid of getting on Gerard’s bad side.” He raised an eyebrow. “There’s someone else I wouldn’t mind a shot at.”
“Well, if we do the cleanup quickly, we might get to the other facility before Nathan kills him,” Stephen pointed out. “What do you say, sweep of the castle and then the courtyard?”
Jennifer nodded, “And they have their armored trucks out there, so we have a good way to get to the facility, even if they’re on alert.” She paused. “Wait. How’d you get here?”
“Bobcat brought me.” Stephen shook his head. “Although it’s hardly an armored car. And I think he’s working on the shoe pickup.”
—
It wasn’t even noon yet, and the clearing was baking hot. Eli Gotten plodded around the area with increasing annoyance.
Who, exactly, had decided that they needed to defend a patch of dirt?
His radio crackled. “Car.”
That was more like it. Eli scrambled up the hill to the lookout point and crawled up next to Sean. They squinted at the cloud of dust rising from the car.
“That’s not a military car.”
Sean gave him a look. “Yeah, but what’s it doing out here? This road goes nowhere.”
“Maybe a tourist got lost.” Eli shrugged. “Either way, it’s not—”
Eli’s observation came to an abrupt halt as they saw the guided missile streaking toward them.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Let’s hope this woooooorks!” Bobcat pressed the button on the guided missile system.
The whole car jerked with the force of it, but this was no ordinary launch system. Between the lightness of the missiles, themselves and the acceleration the missiles could pick up in the air—an adaptation of the Puck technology—the car didn’t flip or bounce seriously the way it would ordinarily have done.
“Good job!” Marcus called, over the sound of the wind.
William yelled, “Aren’t you worried they’ll shoot at us?”
In the backseat, Peter panted slightly as the wind caught his jaws. He hadn’t transformed until they were out of town, shedding his clothes while Marcus shielded his eyes in palpable discomfort.
These guys didn’t usually fight with them, so they didn’t understand the rather unique constraints posed by transformations. But these guys were looking forward to the fight, he could tell.
Bobcat had been the chauffeur for any number of Bethany Anne’s missions, and the guys got to test out the different weapons made by the other engineers on the Meredith Reynolds. They wanted to get in on the action themselves. Thankfully, they had all agreed to wear body armor and not try any heroics.
Peter was here partially to make sure they kept that promise.
He had enjoyed seeing the soldiers scurry up to the overlook, and then scurry away again as soon as the missile launched. He was going to enjoy what was coming, too.
An open battlefield added some challenges, and these were apparently elite bodyguards. They knew the deal when they signed up for this job. They knew there was the chance that someone better was going to come along.
Hell, sixteen to one? Peter was giving them a real chance. Somehow, he didn’t think they were going to take advantage of it.
The clearing was ringed with hills and trees, making it pretty much invisible from the nearby town, even if someone had been watching with high-powered binoculars. It also made the approach into the clearing a blind one, but Bobcat wasn’t worried. He turned the wheel sharply and enjoyed the fishtail feel for a moment as the car skidded sideways before finding purchase on the dusty gravel.
Driving like this, out on country roads, pushing a car to the limits of its engineering—that was the thing he missed most. He could still do it if he wanted to, of course, but he didn’t like to ask Bethany Anne to take him back to Earth for something so small.
He was just going to enjoy the hell out of this now.
The car screamed into the clearing with Marcus and William crouched low in their seats. The convertible didn’t really offer much in the way of cover, and Peter suspected that if Stephen hadn’t been so focused on getting to Jennifer, he would have argued strongly for the guys to approach the clearing another way.
Peter didn’t wait for the car to stop. His muscles bunched and he jumped, landing partially on one dumbstruck soldier and pushing off again to take down one who was trying to run for the cover of the trees. He broke the man’s neck easily with a swipe of his paw and turned around to the other one. This one, operating on instinct, had managed to pick up his gun and point it, but he was holding it backwards and was shaking hard enough that he wouldn’t have been able to fire it in any case.
Peter batted the gun away and tore his head off with a growl.
Gunfire spattered into the dirt nearby and he took off, weaving through the trees. The brief respite from the sun was welcome—this reminded him of the west, in a way, where he’d learned not to sit in the sunlight in the summer. His fur was made for cold. He noticed, as he came around the edge of the clearing and into the open, that there was only one truck.
So, eight on one. Well, six now.
A few of them screamed to one another as Peter loped up the hill, and some bullets whizzed overhead, but they weren’t fast enough to seize the moment. He sprinted across the uneven terrain, moving faster than the enemies these guys were accustomed to.
A knot of four waited for him at the top of a hill. One went over backward as he approached, caught in the shoulder by a shot from one of the guys in the car.
There was the sound of a cheer from below.
Now the other three wavered. A giant wolf was bearing down on them, but on the other hand, men with guns had just shot their friend. Who to aim at?
They froze when Peter stopped. He opened his jaws in a grin.
“WHOOOOOO’S FIIIIIIRSSSST?”
They screamed, every one of them. They screamed in sheer terror, and with a laugh, Peter took two bounds to take the first one down, ripping his throat out before snapping his jaws around the leg of an escaping soldier and dragging him back. A swipe of his cl
aws ended the man’s screams.
The third one was running for the top of the other hill, the lookout point where the last two soldiers were. They were motioning him away, perhaps under the absurd idea that if he ran somewhere else, Peter wouldn’t notice them. However, with him running at them, they also didn’t dare shoot at Peter. The Bitches were going to have a good laugh about this when he got back.
Someone in the clearing below brought down the runner, and the last two soldiers panicked and tried to run. One of them caught himself in time, but the other stumbled and fell, realizing too late that there was nowhere to go. His scream pierced the air as he fell down the steep slope, and cut off abruptly. The other was dead a moment later, and Peter chuffed, wriggling his shoulder where it stung slightly. At least that one got a shot in. One out of eight wasn’t bad, he supposed. Some elite fighting force that was.
He loped back down the hill, gathering the bodies and dragging them to the center of the clearing before transforming beside the car and putting his clothes back on.
“We get these bodies taken care of, and you all should be ready for extraction. Although there’s a mystery truck out there somewhere.”
“I know.” Marcus crossed his arms and frowned at the van. “Is it at one of the buildings, do you think?”
“It could just be on a supply run or a break,” William pointed out.
Peter nodded. “They probably didn’t think there was any real reason to guard this clearing, so they half-assed it.” He shrugged. “Too bad for them. If they’d had sixteen, they might have had a shot.”
Marcus muttered, “Not against you.”
Bobcat swore from the edge of the clearing.
The other three men turned to see him putting his phone hastily back in his pocket.
“What is it?” Peter asked him.
“It’s nothing. It’s just, ah, I have to go back into town.” He nodded at Peter. “You want a ride to the lab?”
“That’d be great.”
“Right.” Bobcat swung into the driver’s seat. “I’ll be back soon. You two, ah hide those bodies, and see what sort of fun toys they have in the truck.”
