by Art DeForest
“Yes,” he said with a slight grin as he stood up to leave. “You seem to enjoy sneaking around too much on occasion.”
“A girl’s gotta have a hobby.” I said with a wink as I stood up beside him.
Abruptly, I found myself enfolded in his powerful arms. I tensed for a moment in shock, but then relaxed into his broad chest and lay my cheek against it, inhaling the smell of him. Leather and a slight pine scent tantalized my nose as we stood like that for a moment before he slowly backed away. “Don’t do anything rash.” He said as a shadow of concern flickered across his expression.
“Who, me?” I said with a wide-eyed, innocent expression on my face. “I never act rashly.” The sly grin that twisted my lips may have slightly ruined my little girl expression.
“Of course not.” He said, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. “What could I have been thinking.” He reached out and held my hand briefly. “Seriously, be careful.” He said before turning away and disappearing silently down the tunnel.
Once he was out of sight, I sat back down on the old stone of the tunnel and casually rubbed Fangs’ ears. “Gee whiz,” it’s like these guys all think I try to get into trouble or something.” I whispered quietly to him. Fangs expression seemed to say he agreed with them. “You too, huh?” I said as he flopped onto his side so I could rub his belly. “Hedonist.” I chuckled. “Well, I’ll show you guys. I can be as careful and cautious as anyone.” Fangs seemed unconvinced.
My new found resolve was sorely tested a short time later. A series of growls that seemed to be coming from a large dog was the first thing I heard. It seemed to be coming from the opposite direction of Mo Ping’s store. The growls were followed by the sound of metal banging on metal and a short command. “Shut up, ya mangy mutt!” said the voice from the darkness.
I put a gentle restraining hand on Fangs as he sat up at the noise. It didn’t take long before the shadowy form of two men carrying a metal cage between them by handles affixed to either end. One man had a short metal rod in his off hand. The other was carrying a long pole with what looked like a wire noose, hanging from one end. For the life of me, I couldn’t think why two dog catchers would be working down in some long forgotten subway tunnels.
The dog in the cage was hard to make out in the almost nonexistent light, but it was huge and dark, maybe a Mastiff of some kind. The big guy let out another low growl of warning and fear as his two captors approached the elevator. “I told you to shut up.” said the thug with the rod in his hand. The rod turned out to be a cattle prod. Which the soon to be dead guy put between the bars and pressed brutally into the helpless dog’s side.
The dog howled in agony as the sadistic bastard ground the prod into his ribcage. He tried to move back away from the attack, but the cage was just to small for him to seek any safety.
My inner beast rose up in rage at the torture. I saw red as I felt my fangs drop. The next thing I knew, I was streaking across the tunnel towards the dog’s assailant, my sword held low in my hand. There was no pretense of stealth. Fangs and I charged full out and his hissing warcry echoed down the tunnel as we approached.
The dog yelped again as the two goons dropped his cage to the stone floor and turned to face my direction. My suspicions that these two weren’t human was confirmed as their eyes went crimson in response to our charge.
I focused my attention on the guy with the cattle prod. I figured him to be the most dangerous of the two. Even a vampire will go down if you disrupt her nervous system with enough voltage. As I got within range my gladius arched through the stale air of the tunnel towards his neck. The guy was quick though and managed to get the stainless steel tube of the cattle prod up in time to save his miserable existence. My momentum carried me on into him however and we both went crashing down to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. The impact jolted the sword out of my hand and it went skittering on down the tunnel. “Damn it!” I thought. “I need to get a strap for that damn thing or something.” I thought furiously to myself.
My opponent tried to stick the cattle prod in my gut as we tried to disengage from each other. A sweeping down block with my left arm contacted the side of the prod and swept the dangerous electrodes sticking out of the end off to the side where it sparked off of the stone floor. The action gave me enough time to get out of reach and stand up.
Not wanting to risk someone above hearing a gunshot, I quickly pulled the kukri from the sheath attached to my chest armor. A quick glance showed that Fangs hadn’t managed to attack the other thug before he managed to fend him off for the moment with the snare stick in his hands. The two were circling each other. The vamp was desperately trying to get the noose on the end of his stick around Fangs’ neck. Fangs meanwhile was circling around him, trying to find an opening.
Seeing Fangs was okay for the moment, I focused once again on my opponent. “Are you from PETA or something?” He growled at me, taking a defensive stance. The cattle prod was now in a reverse grip, angling back along his right forearm.
“Nope,” I said with a sneer. “I just saw your ugly face, Quasimodo, and figured I’d put you out of your misery.”
He really wasn’t the prettiest fella in the world, but he did seem to get the reference. “Bring it bitch!” he hissed as his already rough features drew into a grimace of anger.
I’ve got to give it to the guy, he knew how to fight. I raised the kukri to draw his attention then stepped in with a front kick lead. He didn’t bite on the feint however and neatly sidestepped my kick while trying to bring the probe down into my thigh. I withdrew the kick back as fast at it had flashed out, however and he missed his shot.
That wasn’t the end of his counter attack, however. As soon as the prod in his right hand missed, he immediately reversed it’s direction and sent the fist enclosing the handle, shooting towards my solar plexus. I had the edge in speed however and once again sent the strike out wide.
The inwardly curving blade of my kukri, sliced in hard and fast towards his throat, but he managed to jump out of the way and reset himself. As he resumed his stance, a smile creased his ugly mug. “Finally, a challenge.” He said as he came in hard and fast.
There was a furious exchange of blows and counterstrikes then. Each of us probing the other’s defenses and looking for an opening. The guy was good, but he wasn’t paying quite enough attention to my empty left hand as he should have been. I twitched my hips, faking a leg kick from my right side. He over-extended his blocking attempt just a hair too far and my left fist caught him squarely on the end of his chin, temporarily shorting out the signals from his brain to the rest of his body.
I started stepping in to finish the job, when a strangled hiss from Fang’s grabbed my attention. Goon number two had managed to get the noose around his neck and cinched tight. Fangs was shaking his head back and forth violently, trying to get free of the choking cable around his neck.
Instinctively, I altered direction and stepped around the cage that held the huge dog cowering inside it. Goon two’s eyes got round as he saw me coming and tried to step back, but his movement was limited by his attempt to control the furiously snarling mutant Savannah Cat trying to get away from the noose at the other end of the pole.
His own instinct saved his life then as he desperately raised his end of the pole upwards in a block that stopped my kukri cold. I stepped back to reset for another attack when suddenly my existence turned into agony. Fire flared from my neck just below my right ear and shot through the rest of my body, locking my muscles firmly in place. A few seconds that seemed like an eternity later, I collapsed, muscles spasming violently as the world went black.
6
Pain stabbed through my skull from the bright white lights as my eyelids fluttered open. White walls and white ceiling made the light glare at me from all directions it seemed. I was laying on some kind of hard cold surface. As my eyes became accustomed to the light, I realized it was a tiled floor. Also white.
My brain started to function as I st
ared bemusedly around the small 8’ X 10’ room. The floor I lay on, angled slightly down to a drain in the center of the room. As my brain started to engage, I realized that I was in a cell that was designed for easy cleanup with a simple hose and water. That didn’t bode well for my future.
Sensing something behind me, I jerked around defensively. Pain lanced through my skull again and I raised my hand to massage my temple. The wall behind me was made of very thick glass. There was a heavy looking metal door to one side with a small hatch in the middle of it, probably for passing food or whatever into the cell. “Sleeping beauty awakens. Good morning sunshine.” Said a gravelly voice that focused my attention to the person standing on the other side of the glass wall. The dog catcher with the cattle prod stood there nonchalantly, a smug smile on his face.
The spikes of pain had withdrawn, leaving a dull roaring kind of ache that suffused my head and most of my bodyparts. “Where the hell am I?” I asked dully. I know, a bit cliche, but what do you expect? It felt like my head was packed with cotton.
The dog catcher smiled down at me. He’d changed out of street clothes and was now dressed in pristine white scrubs. “Welcome to Neuri Biotech.” He said, waving a hand vaguely around in a circle. The is where I work when I’m not out retrieving...experimental subjects.” A smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth at the phrase.
“You interrupted my last hunt, but I’m so glad you did.” He said, the smirk turning into an evil grin. “My mistress, Antonella, will be quite ecstatic that I was able to bring you in when so many others have failed in the past.”
A cold lead weight settled in my stomach at his statement, but I tried not to let it show. Turning around fully to face him, I settled cross-legged onto the cold floor and stared at him for a moment. I didn’t think I was up to standing just yet, but my healing abilities were doing their job. It wouldn’t be long before I’d be ready to take this guy’s head off.
“I was wondering why there was a biotech firm in the middle of Manhattan.” I said trying to buy time and clear my head. “So it's just another Abandonado front. Probably some other twisted way for you guys to prey on humans.”
“Oh, it’s so much more than that.” He said with a glint of pride in his eyes. “We are going to create the next…” He cut himself short then. Well, that’s something that you don’t need to be concerned with for now.” He said as the smug grin returned to his face.
Another thought crashed into me as my head continued to clear. “Where’s Fangs?” I said, glancing around the cell once more. I couldn’t stop the hint of desperation that colored my voice.
“Ah, your cat. Fangs, you say his name is? Good to know.” He said in such a way that you got a vision of him rubbing his hands together evilly like some mad scientist from a B horror movie. “Of course,” he continued on. “We don’t assign names to our test subjects, only numbers.”
The lead weight in my stomach started expanding exponentially. The thought of my companion, tied up and helpless in the clutches of sadistic monsters who only saw him as some piece of meat to be cut and experimented on, threatened to overwhelm me. For a second I flashed back to my time with Darius and a shudder coursed its way down my spine.
The next thing I felt was rage. My eyes turned crimson and the next thing I knew I was flying across the cell and slamming into the unforgiving security glass that separated me from the future pile of dust I was going to make happen.
The glass wall felt more like steel as my body crashed into it. There was no give at all and I found myself once more in a heap on the floor. A quiet chuckle came from the dog catcher on the other side of the glass through small holes that I hadn’t noticed before. “Throw yourself around all you want sweetheart. Badder things than you have tried to force their way out of this cell. They all failed.”
My eyes were still blood red as I looked up to stare daggers into his skull. “Hurt my companion and you won’t be able to imagine the hell I will bring down on you and the entire damned house of Abandonado.” I said, spitting the last word like an epithet.
Rather than be frightened by my promise to him, he just chuckled again. “Sweetie, what makes you think you’ll even get out of that cell alive?” He asked with raised eyebrow. Chuckling to himself, he turned and walked out a door in the wall across the room from my cell.
I turned and put my back against the glass wall and drew my knees up to my chest. I noticed that I still had on my pants and T-shirt. My boots and all my other equipment was gone though. “Well, at least the guy’s not a perv.” I thought to myself as I rubbed at my eyes with the palms of my hands.
Looking inward, I tried to find Fangs. My inner being quailed as I was met with silence. Taking a deep shuddering breath I tried not to panic. “They probably have him drugged.” I told myself. “No need to think the worst yet.”
Next, I tried to cast my thoughts outward. I knew Marcus would be frantically using our connection in order to find me. He, Deacon and Sara had to know by this time that I’d been captured. I thought maybe I sensed a fuzzy presence at the edge of my casting mind’s reach, but I couldn’t be sure. “Fangs is probably not the only one who’s been drugged.” I thought to myself. “It’s only a matter of time before they come to the rescue.” I thought, trying to console myself. “Still, god helps those that help themselves.”
Thinking that, I stood up. The cell swam around me for a bit, but quickly settled and I started a minute inspection of my surroundings, looking for any weakness. The cell was impressive. Solid concrete walls surrounded me on three sides. The floor and ceiling seemed to be made of the same. The weakest part of the room seemed to actually be the steel door and it’s surrounding steel frame.
Desperation started to wiggle itself once more into my animal hindbrain as I continued my survey. Finally I sat back down on the floor to consider my options. I could probably do enough damage to the door mechanism that the key would no longer work to open it, but I didn’t think I could open the door as there seemed to be heavy metal bars going into the floor and ceiling as well as the metal frame and concrete wall behind it. “What did they keep in here?” I asked myself. “Grizzly bears?”
The answer was probably simpler than that. They were simply designed to be able to stand the strength and tenacity of vampires and probably lycans. I sunk down to the floor once more. I just couldn’t find a way out and hopelessness threatened to engulf me. Then a presence wiggled to life slowly in my head. I concentrated on it, frantically trying to decipher who it was I was sensing. A wave of relief washed over me as I felt Fangs return to consciousness.
Fangs’ pain and nausea washed over me from the link we shared. I concentrated hard and sent a wave of reassurance and love back to him. I wanted him to know he wasn’t alone. The pain was mostly from around his neck from where the noose had been used to control him. I figured the nausea was from whatever they’d shot him up with in order to knock him out.
I slid deeper into his consciousness as he came back around fully. A sense of vertigo threatened to make me lose contact as I suddenly got, literally, a cat’s eye view of the world around him. It was like I was nestled into his psyche and looking out at the world through his eyes.
I got control of the vertigo and sat, enthralled as we looked around at our environs. Fangs enclosure wasn’t near as daunting as my own. He seemed to be in a stainless steel cage that was maybe two feet wide by four feet long. It was big enough for him to lay comfortably, but he wouldn’t be able to move around much.
A water dispenser that looked like something you’d see on a chinchilla’s cage was wired to one corner. It was bigger than what you might use for the fuzzy little guys, but the principle was the same. I encouraged Fangs softly to get a drink, hoping it would settle his stomach. He considered the strange contraption for a moment. He’d never been forced to drink from such a thing before, but he could smell the water and it wasn’t hard for him to figure out.
I felt his inner sigh as his rough tongue lapped at the ste
el nozzle sticking through the cage. He lapped up the refreshing liquid for several moments, a little irritated that he wasn’t getting as much water with each lick as he would have gotten from a bowl.
When his thirst was quenched, he sat once more, looking around and sniffing at the air. The overpowering scent of harsh cleaners was ever present in the room. It was interesting to me that Fangs didn’t really consider smells good or bad, simply different. The smell of the cleaner was a source of irritation for him only in the fact that it was hard for him to sense and categorize the more subtle smells in the room. It wasn’t impossible however.
He smelled the vampire that had strangled him with his long metal arm. It was the freshest scent in the room, but his attacker wasn’t physically present. He also caught the scent of other predators, coming from the other cages surrounding his. They didn’t seem to be in the room either.
I gently nudged Fangs then, trying to get him to look closely at the door and locking mechanism of his cage. With his brawn and my brain, maybe we could figure out a way to get him free. Fangs rose once more and turned to face the front of the cage. To him there wasn’t much difference between the cage wall and the door, but with a little coaxing I was able to get him to focus on the latch in the upper corner of the door itself.
