by John Conroe
Ignoring the wound, I finished pulling the weapon clear, then hit the gunman twice in his face with it. I hit him pretty hard. He flew backward, through the kitchen door, smacking into killer number three. A glance at the gun showed it was jammed, so I just wound up and threw it at Number Three, again following the pistol with myself, this time my fist. Bone crunched and blood spattered as his nose flattened and his eyes rolled back. The punch knocked him onto the body of the fallen cook, his hand opening to let a light gray cylinder roll free, a metal arming spoon flying off. My brain picked up the yellow band and the WP Smoke markings and again I was moving before I knew it.
I swear I heard Deckert’s voice lecturing on the four to five-second burn rate of most modern grenade fuses as I jumped over the downed attackers, kicked the white phosphorus grenade, and grabbed the cook’s limp body.
Then I was backpedaling out of the kitchen, towing the cook and slamming into another body behind me, the scent telling me it was Military Guy.
“Everybody out!” I ordered. “This place is going to burn.”
Kristin, responding to the Alpha tone in my voice, shoved open the door she had been standing next to and grabbed a woman tourist by her sleeve. Back in the kitchen, I heard the whump of the WP grenade going off.
“Take him,” I said to the man I had knocked down. He responded to the command in my voice and took the cook while I grabbed the first gunman by the leg and pulled him out.
The waitress, owner, and the other customers were all outside already. I turned and headed back in. Thick, choking white smoke that baffled my thermal vision filled the kitchen, forcing me to drop low and feel for the other two men. Fierce heat beat on my skin as I found first one and then the other. I threw one bodily through the door and almost into the arms of the military guy, who had followed me back in. Guy number three, the grenadier himself, I dragged by his legs, pulling him free even though I didn’t hear a heartbeat. The burned, raw flesh of his face and head told me he hadn’t survived his own weapon.
Sirens were already sounding as I made it back out onto the street, a crowd of people gathering to help or gawk.
“Holy shit you’re fast…” Military Guy started to say, but then took in my appearance and recognition flooded his features. My spell had failed to survive the brief battle.
A cop car screeched to a halt, followed by a second one, and then the heavy horn of full-sized fire engines sounded, clearing the traffic.
“You’re her… Stacia Reynolds,” the tourist lady said, loudly, which brought me a great deal of attention in a hurry.
“You’re hurt?” Kristin questioned, the young wolf right up by my side. Good instincts.
“She’s been shot!” Tourist Lady yelled out. The military guy put himself between me and her, his eyes going to the splotch of blood on my right side.
I pulled the bloody cloth up and while there was blood on my skin, the wound was already closed and disappearing. Probably just a ricochet.
A huge whump suddenly blew out the restaurant’s windows and flame blasted out and up, forcing everyone to duck and cover.
“Who’s upstairs?” a firefighter asked as the fire fully engulfed the dining area. I hadn’t even looked up at the top of the building, but now I could see it was three stories high and there had to be at least a few apartments up there.
The police moved the onlookers back, helped by the violence and heat from the fire, while the firefighters rushed forward, hoses spraying water into the violent inferno that mere moments earlier had been a busy restaurant.
Kitchen fires are vicious things, grease and gas combining to accelerate combustion in violent ways. This one was rapidly spreading upward, smoke already pouring out of a second-floor window.
Two windows to the left, the glass suddenly broke as a chair came flying out, only to be replaced by a panicky face. A young girl looked out, a tiny boy in front of her.
The firefighters started to unhinge the ladder from the back of one of their trucks and I was about to just climb the damned building when I felt him.
He was here… somewhere behind me… somewhere back in the crowd.
The fire suddenly went out—completely out. Roaring like the flames of Hell one moment, then just gone. Waves of heat rose in the air and then they too suddenly disappeared. The thick white smoke began to stream out of the second-floor window in a twisted cord like the body of a python, emerging from the building in a never-ending rope the color of soot.
The entire window frame where the children were standing suddenly ripped itself free from the building and shot off upward like it had been fired from a catapult. Before they could so much as blink, the two tiny children were just floating in midair, descending silently to the ground. I say silently because the entire crowd had gone quiet, firefighters and cops included.
The waitress rushed to the kids just as a paramedic reached them. I turned and looked behind me, back at the edge of the crowd. Most people were watching the building and the kids, but two of the cops holding the barrier line were clearly focused on the slim man and the giant black and tan wolf standing in front of them. The wolf and man, in turn, were both looking at me, one pair of black eyes and one pair of blue. Then they were moving, and the cops wisely didn’t attempt to stop them.
Declan wore a gray sweatshirt with the hood up, loose blue jeans, and flip flops. People noticed Awasos immediately, something about a pony-sized wolf commanding their undivided focus. The nondescript fellow following him drew very little attention—at first. But most New Yorkers seem to be proud that Team God Hammer lives in the Big Apple and this group figured out who he was in seconds.
“You hurt?” he asked, eyes locked on my bloody spot. ‘Sos checked for himself, big black nose pushing the military guy out of the way as he sniffed for damage.
“It’s nothing,” I said. Declan’s eyes studied mine as our bond hummed. He was calm, super calm, deceptively calm. He hugged me, hard and tight.
“Why did you burn down the building and shoot yourself?” he asked, pulling back to look in my eyes. He was also ignoring the police detectives who were approaching us with intent expressions. They had arrived in an unmarked car a few minutes ago and I had seen them inspecting the dead grenade guy while paramedics worked on the wounded cook and the other two shooters.
“Wise ass,” I said.
“What happened?” the first cop asked, stepping in close, sharp eyes taking in every detail.
Military Guy pulled a credential case from his back pocket and held it up to the detective, whose eyebrows rose as he read it.
“This have something to do with you… Agent Calhoun?” the cop asked, his partner looking over his shoulder at the creds.
“Likely. I suspect Miss Reynolds and her associate were just here by happenstance, as they seemed to be in disguises,” the newly identified agent said, looking my way to see how I would respond.
“Just here for the pad thai,” I confirmed.
“And I suppose you just got here?” the second cop asked Declan. Gotta love the cojones of New York cops.
“I was awakened by Omega. He transported ‘Sos and me here.”
“Yeah? Supercomputer woke you up and delivered you across Manhattan? Let me guess, Amazon package delivery?” the first cop asked.
“Omega drone,” Declan said, pointing upward. The round orb of an Obliterator-class drone hovered silently over a building across from the restaurant.
“And then you just put out the fire?” Detective One asked, eyes still locked on the black deadly aircraft that suddenly shot straight up into the clouds, disappearing without a sound.
“Yeah.”
The cops looked at him for a moment or two, struggling manfully to keep their expressions unimpressed.
“And the kids?” the other one asked.
“She was about to start climbing,” he said with a nod my way. “Seemed like a good way to keep everyone on the ground.”
“Yeah?” the second cop said, glancing around at
the second floor of the burned building. “Where’d the window go?”
“Up,” Declan said.
Both cops’ brows rose and they shared a glance. “And should we expect to see it come back down anytime soon?” the first asked, politely sarcastic.
Declan shook his head. “It’s gone. Nothing but ash.”
They both just looked at him, as did Agent Calhoun. My witch was quiet for a moment, then he shrugged. “It made a handy target for dumping some of that heat energy,” he said, raising his right hand. Smoke rose from his fingertips, which glowed an inhuman red. Gradually the color faded back to pink and the smoke dissipated.
Even New Yorkers have limits. In the face of the unbelievable but undeniable, they had no verbal response. Instead, both cops nodded and turned to the agent. “Perhaps you could step over this way and help us understand why the DoD was involved with some kind of organized hit, Agent Calhoun?” Detective One asked.
Calhoun looked back at me and Kristin, nodded at Declan, and finally glanced at ‘Sos, who was sitting almost on my right foot in guard position. Then he stepped over to the cops, all three angling their bodies to keep us in sight.
“You alright, Kristin?” I asked.
“Me? I’m fine. I didn’t do anything. It was like you just exploded and then you were shoving everyone out of the building,” she said.
“Omega?” Declan asked, holding up his left wrist. What looked like an iWatch suddenly spoke in quiet, well-modulated tones.
“Agent Terez Calhoun is Department of Defense. There has been a sudden burst of electronic communications activity happening as we speak. This has something to do with a joint operation of the US State Department and the DoD regarding recent political events in Taiwan and China.”
“Any indication at all that the attackers knew of Stacia and Kristin’s presence?” Declan asked.
The watch shifted slightly, just a tiny sort of reshuffling of its structure. Hmm, new tech that I didn’t know about.
“A meet was set between Calhoun and a Taiwanese foreign national who never showed up. There seems to be significant alarm that Stacia was present.”
As Omega spoke, I was simultaneously listening to Calhoun explain to the cops that he was engaged in a sensitive US operation and that the person he was to meet had either been killed or ghosted after sensing the trap.
“Other federal agents are inbound to take charge. As are, I might add, various news agencies. It might be time for you to all leave. Security driver Stevens is approaching from the west in a Demidova vehicle.”
I looked to the west in time to see a black Volvo XC-90 pull to the corner of the nearest intersection.
“Go ahead; I’ll just speak to the detectives for a moment,” Declan said.
I only went because I knew what kind of a media circus it could turn into and I knew I could listen to what he had to say to them.
Awasos took that as his cue, clearing a path to the SUV by the mere virtue of being three hundred pounds of moving wolf.
“Excuse me,” I heard Declan say to the officers behind me, always the polite one. “I’m taking the ladies back to Demidova Tower.”
“We don’t have their statements yet,” Detective One protested.
“Well, you’re welcome to come to the Tower and meet with them,” Declan said.
“Listen, kid,” Dectective One said, a note of temper in his voice. “We tell you where we’ll interview them.”
“My mate is wounded. Do you have a medic qualified for lycanthropic medicine? Also, I’m still carrying most of the energy from that fire. I need to discharge it soon. Would you rather I did that here and melt the street, or at the Tower, where I have means of containing it?”
My wound was gone, the ricochet, which is what must have happened, going straight through the side of my abdomen. Hard to tell because even the red spots of entry and exit were gone.
But the cops didn’t know that. Kristin and I got to the car and slid into the backseat, while ‘Sos jumped under the remotely opened tailgate. Stevens nodded to me in the rearview as he pressed the button to close the back of the SUV. I looked out the window to watch the negotiations that I could still hear.
“Detectives Trevano and O’Neill, this incident is under federal jurisdiction,” Agent Calhoun said. “I’ll take responsibility for releasing Miss Reynolds and her companion.”
That was the first time I had heard the cops’ names.
“We gotta have clearance from our… what the hell?” Detective One said, stepping away from Declan, who wore a slightly sheepish expression as waves of heat rose visibly around and off him. “Oh,” the first dectective said, realization flooding his features.
“Yeah, you just go ahead and take those ladies home,” Detective Two said, his tone polite and slightly urgent as he too backed away from what was clearly uncomfortable levels of heat.
My witch nodded and turned toward the car, a sly grin on his face as his eyes met mine.
The crowd parted for him on its own, although sadly no magic was involved. Just old-fashioned fear.
Suddenly the waitress who was clutching her children yelled something in Mandarin and moved toward him, burdened by her kids. He stopped and turned, surprised, as she rushed up, speaking mostly Mandarin but with the English words thank you mixed in.
He had been calm and determined the whole time, confident yet displaying his normal resignation to normal public reaction. He was surprised by her gratitude, thrown off his stride. He pulled his act together enough to smile at her and the kids, nodding shyly before continuing on toward us… toward me.
The onlookers let him through, more than a few using phones to video him, but they didn’t pull back as far as they had before the waitress’s display. A few moments later, he was at the car, hopping into the front passenger seat.
Stevens pulled out before my witch even had his seatbelt buckled.
“What happened?” Declan asked as the car turned toward the Tower.
I gave him a blow-by-blow of the events in the restaurant. The car was quiet when I finished, but I could feel Declan thinking through our link.
“It was so fast,” Kristin said.
My witch turned and looked over his shoulder at her, waiting to hear more.
“I heard… something. A sharp snapping sound, sorta. And she was gone… and the table with her. Everything else took just seconds. Then we were running from the fire, which bloomed up as fast as everything else.”
“It’s shocking, isn’t it?” he asked her. “How fast violence can happen. Which is why we train and train. To condition responses that are useful, rather than bad.”
“Attacking a gunman is useful?”
“Better to go head-to-head than take a bullet in the back of the head,” I said.
“If you decide to go to Arcane, and I hope you do, you’ll have a crazy werewolf for a self-defense instructor,” Declan told her. “Jenks will expect you to attack and keep attacking at least until you can safely run away. With you sitting there, Stacia had to attack. Plus, people who use suppressors to kill in broad daylight in a public restaurant probably need to be stopped.”
“That agent fellow would agree with you,” Kristin said. I noticed that she wasn’t nearly as shy as she had been just a few hours ago. “I’m pretty sure those men were there to kill him.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked, although I completely agreed with her.
“The first guy through the door never even saw the table you threw at him, he was so focused on the agent,” she said. “At least, I think he was. It happened so fast.”
I had seen the same thing and I trusted that even though it seemed fast to her now, as untrained as she was, her werewolf senses would have likely been pretty accurate.
“So, it was just coincidence?” Declan asked, frowning.
“Is that so far a stretch?” I asked.
“With us? I kinda think it is. Omega, were you aware of Agent Calhoun or his attackers at any time before the action s
tarted?”
“No,” the shifty watch said. “There are hundreds of active intelligence operations, law enforcement investigations, and criminal activities under way in New York alone. I monitor for anything that impacts Earth’s defense but have been leaving the politics and day-to-day struggle in human hands. My resources are currently focused on seeding the solar system with enough active assets to detect and deter any approaching Vorsook threats.”
Kristin looked a little shocked. “Contrary to popular opinion, he’s not omniscient, just close,” I told her. “The early warning and active defense network he mentioned is hella important.”
Her pretty face scowled and she started to open her mouth but closed it.
“What? Go ahead and ask… it’s okay,” I said.
“How do you put an alarm on the solar system? It’s beyond ginormous!”
“I start with stationary platforms above and below the sun at least in relation to the orbital plane of the planets. Then I put several mother drone units in orbit around each planet, each of which leaves a trail of subunits behind it as the planets continue their path around the sun.”
“But that will take years?” she asked. “Do we have that long?”
“Excellent observation. The answer is that no one knows, so all I can do is build and push systems outward in concentric spheres of detection and protection. We started with Earth itself and its Lagrange Points. From there, the problem grows exponentially.”
