Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers

by Diane Capri

  Lito and Maria fled.

  Lena showed no interest in them.

  Nick tried to stall while trying to come up with a plan. If only his head wasn’t spinning so wildly. If only Lena didn’t look like a panther about to pounce on its prey.

  “You’ve been a bad angel, Nikolai.”

  “And you’re what, a good demon?”

  “Don’t insult me. I only work with demons when it suits me.”

  “So what are you?” He backed up toward the beeping detonator, keeping Hope behind him.

  “Nephilim, sweetie.” She stopped, just as he could retreat no further, and touched his face tenderly. And then she delivered a vicious slap—so hard flecks of light swam in front of his eyes. Had his angel powers not faded he’d have kept to his feet. But he lost his balance.

  As he fell to the floor, Hope leapt at Lena.

  “Hope, don’t!” Too late. Lena nodded to Serena, who lifted her hand and without even touching Hope, caught her by the throat and held her suspended in the air, gasping for breath. Lena stepped over to them.

  “You have no idea how much trouble you’ve caused me, Hope Matheson. You were ready to die, I made it so easy for you. Why didn’t you just go and do it?”

  Hope couldn’t speak. She just looked down at Nick, silently urging him to flee. He got up slowly, approached Lena and Serena.

  “Let her go.” He glanced over at the timer. Less than seven minutes left. But all that mattered now was to rescue Hope from Serena’s grip. “Don’t do this, Lena.”

  She turned to her other Nephilim, then pointed her chin at Nick.

  “Rip his limbs off.”

  Before Gunther got to him, the cartel members burst in, guns drawn.

  An idea came to him.

  A long shot, but worth a try.

  He cast a construct at the gangsters, causing Lena’s Nephilim to look like Lito, Nick, and Maria. Not only did it work, he was still able to impersonate Lena’s voice. “Kill them all, now!”

  Lena whirled around.

  Distracted, Serena lost her invisible grip on Hope and dropped her next to Nick. With his arms wrapped around her, he tried to cloak her with his invisibility, though it was uncertain to work against Lena or any of her half-angels.

  The automatic weapons fire opened up.

  Lena shouted for them to stop, but they couldn’t hear her.

  Before Gunther could react, a bullet hit him in the back. He turned around and plucked it out as if it were a burr. Then, like a bull with rage issues, he rushed the men who were still firing. Their rounds struck him but didn’t draw blood—some of the slugs just popped out of his shirt. He grabbed one of the men’s assault rifles and used it like a baseball bat. The gunman’s head being the ball.

  “What are you doing?” Lena cried out. “Stop!”

  Nick reached over to the suitcase with the bomb and the small black timer—a simple device, but the colorful tangle of wires more than made up for it. On its front panel, something resembling an infrared computer port lay to the left of the countdown clock.

  The retina scan.

  Lena and company could teleport away in a second. And if Nick were to have any chance of stopping the nuke’s detonation, he’d have to scan one of her eyes.

  The cartel members were still firing on the Nephilim.

  Serena growled. She didn’t bother shouting orders at the humans mistaking them for their targets and shooting at them. Instead, she turned to confront them.

  At once, they learned what her terrifying Nephilim power was.

  CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

  LENA HAD BEEN OFF BALANCE since the operation began. Morloch hadn’t checked in even once before the Cabrillo Stadium event. She wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not. And what about her every step being scrutinized by those agents of the Dark Dominion known as auditors?

  They were one of the few beings in all of existence she feared.

  Though she’d never seen one, she sensed they were near. They gave off a coppery odor, like blood, faint but just enough for her to notice. During her training years with Morloch she’d watched them in action, or rather activated by high-ranking demons against anyone over whom they had authority.

  They were here now, in the bowels of the stadium.

  She could smell them.

  Distracted by the bullets raining down on Gunther and Serena, it took Lena a moment to understand that those idiots wouldn’t listen to her and call off their attack. Just as she figured out what was happening, Serena metamorphosed into a huge canine creature.

  Lena called out, “Serena—it’s all Nick’s construct, we just have to stop him!”

  Too late. Serena was now a wolf that even standing on all fours was at least six feet tall.

  Most of the men fled.

  The remaining few froze before the snarling wolf. With two strokes and a hideous snarl, she batted the men around, sending them crashing headlong into the concrete wall. Bones and skulls cracked with a sickening report. Blood-curdling screams had replaced the cacophony of weapons fire.

  Lena spun around, searching for Nick. Gone. And now Hope was missing as well.

  The nuke’s timer continued its countdown.

  6:53...

  6:52...

  6:51...

  Gunther was holding a gunman while the wolf tore off his flesh. All the Hernandez and Suarez men who hadn’t fled were dead, their body parts strewn throughout Locker Room C.

  “Gunther!” Lena shouted.

  He turned around, eyes blazing—Nephilim like him and Serena could not help but give into their craving for bloody carnage. Lena herself struggled to keep from succumbing to this powerful lust.

  She waited a moment for him to calm down enough to comprehend an order.

  “Go to Locker Room B,” she said. “Make sure that nuke is secured.”

  For a second he looked like he was about to attack her. Then he grunted and winked out of sight.

  Serena, still in the form of a giant wolf, snarled. Her knife-sized fangs dripped with blood, with scraps of clothing and flesh. She glared at Lena through the exact same blue eyes as in her human form.

  “Locker Room B!” Lena commanded.

  A low-pitched growl.

  “Get a grip, Serena. We don’t have time for this.” The coppery essence of auditors mingled perversely with the smell of fresh human blood and viscera.

  The wolf came closer, baring its fangs.

  Lena sneered at it. “Seriously, Serena?”

  She lifted her hand, which began to glow with the crimson hue of destructive energy.

  The wolf backed away and resumed her natural form as Serena, along with her attitude.

  “You’re weak.”

  “Then why haven’t you tried to kill me?”

  “Who says I won’t, later?”

  “Get down to Locker B with Gunther and find Nick and his people.”

  “You’re losing it, Lena. Watch yourself.” Serena punctuated her warning with a nasty laugh. As she passed by she bumped Lena’s shoulder, then vanished.

  “Presumptuous bitch!”

  The lights went out.

  In the utter darkness Lena sensed something in front of her face. Shuffling noises behind confirmed that she’d gotten distracted again. Furious, she lit up the room with fire from her fingertips.

  The suitcase had been tossed to the floor, its wires and components a mess. The nuclear device was in a shambles. The retina scanner was missing—detached. She clenched her teeth at the sight of the severed wires.

  The timer was frozen at 5:57.

  Nick was growing weaker, but he was still resourceful. He and perhaps Hope had killed the lights, scanned her retina in a split second while she found her bearings, and disarmed the nuke.

  “Dammit!” Lena roared, then focused her teleportation power on Locker Room B. There was still one more nuke, and she wasn’t about to let this entire operation fail because of one faltering angel.

  CHAPTER NINETY-TWO

&
nbsp; AS HE RAN WITH HOPE DOWN THE STAIRS, Nick considered the grim irony. Nephilim were real, after all. But they seemed disorganized and easy to confuse. Must be all that raging blood-lust that blinded them to Lena’s commands.

  “I can’t believe that retina scan worked,” Hope said.

  “There’s one more, which can only be disarmed by Serena.”

  “Is her being a wolf some kind of construct?”

  “I can’t really tell. She’s a Nephilim. They’re all Nephilim.”

  “I thought you said—”

  “I was wrong.”

  They reached the bottom of the steps and pushed open the door, expecting the worst. But the entire hallway was pitch black.

  Another wave of pain and vertigo struck Nick.

  “It’s happening—too fast.” He faltered and would have lost his balance had Hope not steadied him.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Becoming human. The pain will pass, but every time it happens I lose more of my powers.” He took in a sharp breath. “Take my hand.” Sliding on the cool concrete wall, his other hand found a door, slightly ajar. Just enough light came through to illuminate its placard: LOCKER ROOM B.

  But he could barely stand, even though that last wave had ebbed and some of his strength pulsated.

  “Hope, please. They almost killed you. Stay out here and wait.”

  “Try and stop me.”

  He looked at her in wonder. “You’re nearly as stubborn as me.” He put his arm around her, cloaked her with him under an invisibility construct, and prepared for the struggle of passing through the door. To his surprise, they slipped through easily. If his powers were going to leave him, they were going to drive him batty doing it so inconsistently. Though he was grateful now to be inconsistently re-blessed with the ability to teleport, and pass through solid matter—with a hitchhiker, no less.

  The sudden change of darkness to bright fluorescent lights stung his eyes.

  Hope gasped.

  Nick quickly covered her mouth.

  Then he looked up and saw it.

  The corpse of a man hung from the locker room’s ceiling pipes, eyes bulging, blue tongue sticking out. Thank God it wasn’t Lito!

  In the mirror, however, Nick caught his and Hope’s reflection.

  Not invisible.

  Blasted, unreliable powers!

  From behind a row of gunmetal lockers, Lena emerged. Then Serena, back in her human form, and finally, Gunther.

  Each of them with a hostage’s neck in a chokehold.

  “Running out...of time!” Lito grunted, looking to the timer on a suitcase in Lena’s other hand. In the crook of Gunther’s elbow, his neck looked ready to snap like a dry twig. Maria struggled in vain to free herself from Serena’s grip.

  “Aren’t you the brave fool?” Lena said to Nick. “Should have joined me while the offer was still open.”

  “You’re about to kill thousands of people, for what?”

  “I have someone important to impress,” she said. “In fact...let’s do this out in the open. High visibility and all—it’ll only take a few minutes.” She glanced down at the timer. “Four, to be exact.”

  In an instant, they were all standing on the artificial turf in the field. Most people had fled and were crowding into stands, while others shouted and otherwise contributed to the commotion. Occasional gunshots, whether warning or fatal, rang out.

  Suddenly, spotlights came on illuminating Nick, Lena, the Nephilim holding Lito and Maria just a few feet from them, and Hope, who looked more dazed than frightened.

  “Four minutes and fifteen seconds,” Lena said with a glance down at the digital clock. Of course she’d wait until the moment before the nuke detonated, then teleport away leaving the blast to complete her dirty work.

  Nick had to grab that suitcase.

  If ever he needed to draw upon every bit of supernatural power within him, it was now. He swung a fist straight into her face.

  Lena blocked the blow with her left arm. Judging by the surprise on her face, she hadn’t expected him to react so violently.

  Nick threw another punch, this time at her midsection.

  She caught him by the forearm and twisted.

  Searing pain.

  Jaw clenched, Nick ignored it. With his free hand he grabbed Lena’s hand—the one grasping the suitcase—and twisted it with all his might. The crimson glow of destructive energy enveloped them, pulsing like a star about to supernova.

  The suitcase fell to the ground between them.

  He was drawing from her power and feeding it back upon itself, like opposing magnetic charges forced into a confined space. Lena was becoming as immobilized as Nick.

  “You’re staying right here with the rest of us!” he said.

  For the first time since he’d met her, Lena’s eyes exhibited fear.

  “Serena!” she called out.

  For a moment, Serena didn’t respond. She and Gunther were staring at what appeared to be the eye of a cyclone, standing vertical some ten yards away. Tendrils of lightning flashed out from its center. Nick didn’t have time to wonder what it was.

  When Lena called out again, Serena released Maria, who fell to the ground.

  From over Lena’s shoulder, Nick saw Serena transform into a huge wolf again and charge at them. With his strength draining at an alarming rate there was no way he could keep his hold on Lena and withstand the creature’s attack.

  There was only one thing he could do, and he wasn’t at all sure it would work.

  CHAPTER NINETY-THREE

  JUST BEFORE THE WOLF POUNCED, Nick grabbed Lena by the shoulders, threw her to the ground, then grappled and tumbled around with her.

  But he’d cast a construct taking on her exact likeness, and apparently it had worked. When the wolf landed on them it seemed confused, the growl rumbling in her throat barely audible. Nick held still.

  Hope watched in terror, her eyes moving from the struggle in front of her to the swirling vortex. Lightning crackled around its opening, sending a jolt through the stadium.

  The wolf turned to look at it, then back to the two Lenas. With a hideous snarl, it lunged and clamped its jaws around the real Lena.

  “Wrong one!” she cried out.

  The wolf either didn’t believe her or didn’t care. It picked her up like a rag doll and shook her from side to side.

  Nick rolled out of the way and opened the suitcase. Not realizing that his construct had disengaged and he no longer looked like Lena, he fumbled with the controls, trying to get to the retina scan module.

  Gunther threw Lito down and rushed over to leap at the wolf, who released Lena and raised its head. It caught Gunther in its jaws, hurled him toward the vortex, then ran from it as fast as it could. What happened next took only a second or two, but the sight of it was horrific. The outline of Gunther’s physical form remained intact while his spirit essence was ripped out of his body and pulled into the vortex, leaving a shriveled mass that fell to the ground like mummified remains.

  Nick found the retina scanner.

  The timer on the briefcase read: 3:00...2:59...

  He got up, but a heavy blow to the head knocked him off his feet.

  The scanner fell out of his hand.

  Lena stood over him, breathing heavily. Bloody gashes scored her clothes and skin. She kicked the suitcase aside and jabbed Nick’s chest with her sharp heel. She glanced over to the vortex, which howled like the frigid winds of Siberia. “I don’t believe this,” she muttered.

  Another power-draining pulse hit Nick. It would result in a short surge of supernatural abilities, followed by more of its loss. But it began with overwhelming pain and nausea. He was too weak at the moment to move under Lena’s foot.

  A large hunting knife appeared in her hand.

  She glanced around, then back at Nick as she prepared to plunge the blade down.

  “Such a pity...”

  She thrust the knife straight at Nick’s throat.

  He
anticipated the cold penetration of steel into his neck.

  A flurry of gray and white fur flashed before his eyes, instead. The wolf knocked Lena away and pinned her down with its forepaws. She grabbed the wolf by the neck, undeterred by its bared fangs, and threw a punch straight into its snout.

  The wolf staggered, its jaws snapping.

  Lena sent another blast of destructive energy into the wolf’s body. It began to tremble as though it were being electrocuted.

  Chest heaving, Nick sat up and called to Hope, who was crawling over to him.

  “The suitcase!” She picked it up and tossed it to him.

  The wolf rolled over onto Lena, then got up and clamped its jaws around her midsection.

  “Why are you doing this, Serena!” Lena cried.

  Again she sent another jolt of energy at the wolf. It snarled and dropped her.

  Right in front of Nick.

  Nick set the suitcase down, picked up the knife that had fallen from Lena’s hand, knelt and held the blade to her throat. On the ground, gasping for air, barely moving, she was too weak or stunned to teleport away, or she’d have done it by now.

  “Do it, Nikolia!” Snarling, the wolf loomed so close he could feel the heat, smell the blood emanating from her canine breath. “You’re finished, Lena.”

  Lena strained. “It’s just a matter of minutes before that nuke—”

  “Do you think Morloch cares about the bodies, the carnage? He wants their souls.”

  Lena’s eyes widened with fear. “You’re the auditor?”

  “Don’t move,” Nick said.

  “Lena, you’ve failed to stop Hope Matheson,” the wolf said. “The accounts must be reconciled.”

  One hand on the knife, the other on the suitcase, Nick had to try and get the retina scan over to Serena, though he wasn’t sure it would work on a wolf’s eye.

  “Slash her throat open, Nikolai.” Serena said. “Before her strength regenerates. Kill her and I’ll disarm the nuke.”

  A quick glance at the clock.

  2:20...

  2:19...

  2:18...

  CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR

  NICK PRESSED THE KNIFE AGAINST LENA’S NECK. Its handle felt warm in his hands.