by C. E. Martin
The former Nazi hunter screamed as the monster grabbed him and ripped him in two. But despite killing the old man instantly, the beast continued, pulling and ripping at Yadid's flesh as though he were made of clay.
Pam watched this all from the floor, were she lay, dazed, blood seeping from deep gashes in her stomach where the monster's clawed feet had knocked her flat. She was sure some ribs were broken as well, and possibly an arm.
Done with Yadid, the beast turned to Keegan. It bared its fangs once more, but not in any semblance of a smile. This was pure rage, pure hatred. Pam could see it in the beast's eyes.
"Fuck you!" Pam said, grimacing in pain as she forced the words out.
The monster reared back, preparing to rip her apart with one swipe of its enormous clawed hand.
"Hey, asshole!" a woman's voice called out.
The werewolf hesitated, then turned slowly around. As it did so, Pam was able to see a naked, soot-smeared Laura Olson standing just outside the doorway to the laundry room.
"I'm talking to you, you little bitch," Olson said, taunting the creature.
The werewolf lunged forward, intent on ripping the very ordinary-looking human woman to shreds. But Laura Olson simply vanished in the blink of an eye. She moved with lightning speed, ducking under the creature and coming up behind it. She leapt onto its back, driving her long nails into its thick skin and her fangs into the side of its neck.
Blood sprayed out in a long plume as she severed an artery. The beast howled, whirling around, trying to reach back at Laura. Then the blue energy of its lifeforce began crackling in the air, drawn out of the beast by the vampire clinging to its back.
The werewolf began to panic, and tried to crash backwards into a stacked washer-dryer unit in the laundry room to dislodge Laura. The machine crumpled and Olson threw her head back and laughed.
Blue energy now crackled around her hands as she continued to drain the creature's lifeforce. Tendrils of the same blue energy streamed out of the holes in the werewolf's neck, arcing and pouring into Laura's mouth while more energy was being siphoned out of the creature's back, into her hands.
The werewolf tried to stay on its feet, but it was weakening quickly. It collapsed to one knee, then the other. Finally it fell down, face forward.
Still, Laura clung to its back, draining the monster's life force. The furry beast began to wither and shrink, like a balloon deflating. When it was barely larger than a man, resembling a pile of furs more than anything else, Laura finally stepped off its shriveled body and wiped the blood from her mouth.
"Yuck," she said, spitting. "That's like kissing a dog's ass." She raked her fingers across her tongue. "I think I swallowed a hair."
Pam Keegan coughed. "You know, the Colonel gives me shit when my bikinis are too skimpy..."
Laura Olson knelt slowly by Keegan, examining her wounds. "Show him more next time," Laura said, smiling. She laid a hand on Keegan's bleeding stomach and another on her forehead.
Pam tried to sit up. "No—Yadid first."
Laura glanced over at the pieces of the Nazi hunter. "I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker."
Blue light crackled, pouring out of her hands, into Keegan. The FBI agent spasmed for a moment, then relaxed. Her wounds quickly healed and she felt her strength coming back.
Pam finally sat up and was about to say something. Instead she pointed, eyes wide in surprise.
The werewolf had reverted to human form—a middle-aged man, with blonde hair, tinged with gray. His face was pale, his fear showing. But only for a moment. In the blink of an eye, he was gone, racing down the hallway of the building at vampiric speed.
"Go!" Pam shouted, but Laura Olson was already chasing after him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In the parking lot, Chad Phillips was finally back on his feet—which were once more stone. His petrification had come back, only momentarily drained by the vampire, Laura Olson.
"Jacobson!" he yelled. "Stop playing patty cake and get your ass in gear! There's another one inside the tower!"
Isaac Jacobson stopped battering the bloody mass of fur and bone he was sitting on and looked to his team commander. His stone fists were dripping blood and the spray from his many blows was all over his face.
"Right, bo-" he started to say. He was interrupted by the werewolf underneath him.
In one quick, fluid transformation, the creature shrank in on itself, bones solidifying back into human shape, wolf fur vanishing. It transformed into a blonde-haired man in an instant.
Jacobson swung, but the man was no longer under him. The graying-blonde was a streak of speed across the parking lot. The man ran so swiftly the pumping of his arms and legs was a blur. Within seconds he was out of sight.
"Crap!" Phillips said, looking in the direction the man had fled then up at the sixteenth floor of the tower. He quickly made up his mind.
"C'mon!" he yelled, sprinting for the building.
***
The blonde man was fast—possibly faster than Laura. He sprinted down the hallways of the sixteenth floor at inhuman speed, then leapt through the splintered remains of an apartment door. Laura dashed in after him.
Inside the room, all was in disarray—the signs of an obvious struggle. But what caught Laura's eye was the large circle of white light, shimmering on the far side of the very cold room.
The blonde man looked back over his shoulder at Laura, then dove through the portal. She sprinted after him, but despite her speed, was too slow. The opening just simply ceased to exist and she smashed into the windows that had been behind it, almost falling through.
"Son of a bitch!"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"I want to know how this happened," Mark Kenslir said. He was seated at a large conference table, wearing a multicam uniform.
Around the table the remainder of the Detachment watched him nervously. Josie, Jimmy, Chad Phillips, Victor Hornbeck, Pam Keegan, Doctors King, Guerrera and Olson, Detective Sierra and Javi Wallach—all were present for a debriefing in the detachment's large conference room. A room with walls lined with wall-hanging televisions and work stations.
"I believe that the portal was similar to the one we found in Greece," Dr. King offered. He was in a fresh labcoat, his glasses once more concealing his one stone eye.
Kenslir looked up from the computer tablet he had been using to review building security video. "How did they even know to come here?"
"Maybe they tracked Mr. Greenberg here," Jimmy suggested. Like the Colonel, he was now in multicam uniform. "I might even be able to track the one who fled on foot," he added, touching a finger to his nose.
"Doctor Olson?"
Laura Olson, now wearing a dark green silk blouse, her hair styled and wearing makeup, sighed. "Who knows what these things' capabilities are. We shouldn't rule it out." She looked back down, going back to painting her fingernails a bright red.
"Who cares how they got here," Javi Wallach, now in a dark business suit said, hands palm down on the table. She'd kept quiet so far, but this meeting was a waste of time. Yadid Greenberg was dead and his killers had gotten away. Sitting wouldn't solve that. "We should be out there finding them."
"I'm with Ms. Wallach," Pam Keegan said. The tiny FBI agent was particularly somber and had worn all black, with her blouse buttoned up for once.
Mark Kenslir looked around the table. "Before we take these... creatures on again, we need to know what we're up against. Specifically, are they vampires or werewolves?"
"I think they might be both," Dr. Guerrera said quietly.
"The research wouldn't be so different from our own," Dr. King added.
"The Nazis did all kinds of stuff like that," Jimmy said, drawing surprised looks from around the room and a few rolled eyes.
"What?" he said. "They're murdering Nazi hunters, and they're some kind of vampire-werewolf hybrids. Sounds like Nazis to me."
"That's ridiculous," Josie said. She had changed into tan slacks and a blue polo shirt bearing the embroidered Depa
rtment of the Interior logo.
"We'd have encountered them before now," Chad Phillips offered. Phillips and Hornbeck were dressed like Kenslir and Jimmy in multicam. The green, black and brown pattern looked strange against their gray, stony skin.
"Perhaps they are from one of Stalin's programs," Dr. Guerrera added.
"No!" Javi Wallach said loudly, quieting the group. "Your werewolf must be right. It's the one common thread between all the victims."
"Nazis? Wouldn't they be ancient? World War II was like sixty years ago," Victor Hornbeck said.
Javi regarded the stone soldier and Chad Phillips beside him coldly. She made no effort to hide her dislike for the two men of stone.
"Hey," Laura said, breaking the moment of silence. "I'm sixty-three, and I look damn good." She blew on freshly painted nails to dry them and to emphasize her point.
Dr. King leaned forward. "There could be something to this.
"A werewolf or a vampire could still be alive and healthy today, just like Doctor Olson."
"Why strike now, all these years later?" Pam Keegan asked.
Silence filled the room. Not even Jimmy, with all his many bizarre, internet conspiracy theories could come up with an answer.
"Maybe their handlers are dead," Detective Sierra at last suggested. He felt stupid bringing it up, but he'd seen it before. He brushed at nonexistent lint on the borrowed Bermuda shirt the Colonel had given him. He was reluctant to continue, but finally looked up and did.
"Gangs often act up when there's a power vacuum—before new leadership emerges. Maybe whoever was in control of them died recently. Of old age?"
Laura Olson winked at Alvarro. "Vampires do the same thing. Without a central leader, they'll act out, exposing themselves. Or at least they used to. Before we hunted them almost to extinction."
"This is too organized," Javi countered. "They're striking at precise targets—targets they shouldn't even have the identities or locations of."
"Let's not worry about the how and why," Kenslir said. "We need to locate and eliminate. That takes priority. Particularly for the one running around Miami."
"Assuming he hasn't already escaped through another portal," Dr. King said.
"Yeah, how does that even work?" Chad Phillips asked. "I thought there had to be a portal device at each end."
"Yes, the portal you discovered in Greece was paired to another device, according to Father Schuler," Dr. King said. "But I theorize that a portal could be generated from one end only, so long as there was a means to direct it to a specific location. Like a hyperspace wormhole, but created by magical means."
"And these Nazis have one," Josie said. "That's just great."
"Washington is concerned by this development as well," Kenslir said. "Location and neutralization—or seizure—of the portal device is our top priority after the more immediate hybrid threat is neutralized."
"So we have to split up," Phillips said. "Focus on our super werewolf here, and the one wherever that portal is."
"Überwolf," Dr. King corrected.
"Pardon?" Philips asked.
"An überwolf," Dr. King repeated. "The Germans were obsessed with creating the perfect soldier—a part of their efforts to create the Master Race. The Übermenschen—super men. These chimeras appear to be the next step in that process. A blend of Vampire and Werewolf to create something superior."
"Split up?" Javi asked as everyone considered Dr. King's theory. "Is that wise?"
"Not just yet," Kenslir said. "Until we can locate their base of operations, we concentrate on the one here." He thumbed the screen on his tablet and the monitors hung on the walls around the room flickered to life, showing a still image from the building's security cameras. The image was from the laundry room, of the überwolf that had killed Yadid Greenberg, transformed into human form.
"He looks just like the one outside!" Phillips exclaimed.
"Twins?" Josie asked, dreading the other possibility.
"I can get that out as an APB," Alvarro said. "With all our traffic cams in Miami, we might get lucky."
"Already being done," Kenslir said, then looked back up at the rest of those assembled around the table. "And they don't just look like each other."
Now the images shifted to the left and a new photo slid on screen. It was black and white for a moment before it was colorized.
"Hitler?" Jimmy said, astonished.
"No."
The image was of Adolph Hitler, flanked by two generals. The picture slid to the left, over the überwolf's. One general's face matched perfectly with that of the überwolf's.
"Heinrich Himmler, one of Hitler's inner circle."
"Himmler?" Josie asked, confused.
"It's a common misconception," Kenslir said, "that Hitler was behind the Reich's obsession with the occult. It was actually Himmler who guided the SS in that direction."
"The Ahnenerbe," Jimmy said.
"Ah-nenn-erb what?" Pam Keegan said.
"Ah-na-nerb-uh," Jimmy pronounced carefully. "Himmler's followers who-"
"They're clones of Himmler?" Alvarro Sierra interrupted. He wondered when he would stop being surprised by this military detachment. "How could they even do that back then?"
"No," Dr. King corrected. "Not clones in the traditional sense." He glanced at Kenslir. "After the war, we recovered a great deal of research from the Germans. They had perfected the means to suppress genetic information in fetuses—to suppress specific genetic traits—all part of their efforts to engineer the Master Race. Their research enabled them to force the development of a fetus, so that it possessed all of only one parent's DNA. They could also force a split of developing fetuses, in the same manner identical twins occur naturally. Modern cloning research is geared toward introducing foreign DNA into developing zygotes to overwrite their own DNA and create a duplicate—a doppelgänger."
"Yes," Kenslir said. "Enhanced duplicates."
"Werewolv-" Jimmy started to say, then caught himself. "Überwolves."
"How do we kill them?" Pam Keegan asked. "Silver didn't do squat."
"Nor did stabbing their hearts," Josie said. "The one we have here underground even survived flash freezing."
"Is he one of them?" Alvarro asked. "Eric Mosley doesn't look anything like them."
"Vampires and werewolves are able to pass along their curses," Laura said, looking up from her nails. "They can create more of their kind. It makes sense these Nazis can do the same thing."
Pam Keegan stood up and slapped both hands on the table. "Who cares? Who cares who they look like, or where they come from or how they made them? We need to know how to kill them."
"She's right," Phillips said, breaking the awkward silence. "These are tough bastards. Their regeneration is off the scale—I'd have to maintain a continuous current through them for Lord knows how long to completely kill their cells. Assuming that would even work."
Kenslir looked around the room, finally settling his gaze on Dr. Olson. "Doctor?"
"They're part vampire," Laura said, putting the lid back on her bottle of nail polish. "And part werewolf. The weaknesses each of those normally have were suppressed—but that doesn't make them invincible."
She blew on her nails, making everyone wait. "Fire will work. Curses or no curses, they're living tissue, and a hot enough fire will destroy their cells. No tissue, no regeneration."
The people around the table looked at each other, some mumbling under their breath as they considered the Doctor's suggestion.
"Or we could just cut their heads off," Laura said, smiling. "That usually works on most monsters. Separate the heads from the bodies and even if they can grow a new body from the head, it'll take time. Time we can use to incinerate them."
"What if they grow a new head?" Alvarro asked.
"Let's find out," Colonel Kenslir said, standing.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Colonel Kenslir was wearing a sidearm now, and his tactical glasses. Laura Olson was in a labcoat, over her green
blouse and black slacks. She walked beside the Colonel, down a long hallway in the sub-basement. Behind them, Phillips and Hornbeck walked along in full combat gear, cradling M60 machineguns. Both the stone soldiers were in black uniforms with assault vests, sidearms on one leg, large Bowie knives on the other.
"He might not be an überwolf," Laura said.
Colonel Kenslir paused at the door to a vault. "I thought you said-?"
"He's different—not a pure vampire, not like the überwolves that visited us. Maybe transitional—not yet all the way there."
"What are you trying to say?"
"I'm saying we can't trust these results," Laura said. "Those big nasties are stronger than a werewolf or a vampire. Meaning they're stronger than your boys." She nodded toward the two soldiers standing at the ready.
"They might be stronger than you. Faster too."
"What about you?" Kenslir asked.
Laura smiled. "Well, I've always been faster than you."
Kenslir pressed a palm against the scanner mounted in the wall beside the large blast door. Hydraulics in the walls could be heard working, then the door slowly cycled open. White fog poured out of the room, flowing across the floor.
"Watch your feet," Kenslir said, looking to Laura.
Laura leaned a hand on his shoulder and slipped off her bright red, stiletto heeled shoes. "Good call, I love these." She tucked one shoe in each pocket of her labcoat.
Kenslir walked in first, looking around the room quickly out of instinct. The concrete room had a single operating table in the middle, equipped with metal shackles. Several rolling carts full of medical instruments sat nearby. Along the back wall, spaced a few inches apart from each other, were open drums of liquid nitrogen. White fog hung over the floor, several inches thick, attesting to the frigid temperature of the room.
"Fries are done," Laura said, crossing to the first drum and pulling on a handle sticking out of the top. A wire mesh basket came up out of the drum of liquid nitrogen.
Laura turned and carried it to the surgical table and dumped the contents out.
