No Werewolves Allowed

by Cheyenne McCray

  Angel gripped the bars of the cage, the side of our cages that we shared. With the cuts across her face and her double black eyes, she looked like she’d been beaten even more than the last time I saw her. But she was lucid, her eyes clear.

  She reached through the bars and pushed my hair from my face in a careful motion, like I was fragile. Then she used her fingertips to wipe blood from my eyes and forehead before cleaning her hand on her bloodied jeans.

  I could see better now. We were in cages on the floor. I frowned when I looked at the cage bars. “Why didn’t you shift?” I squeaked out the words and I knew they were too low for anyone else to hear. I could barely hear them. “They’re wide enough that this shouldn’t hold you.”

  “We needed information.” Angel glanced to the side, toward the techs and interns. “I’ve been waiting for the right time.” She looked back at me. “I needed to know where you were and what plans they had for Kveta and where the pups are.”

  She continued with a note of frustration. “This place is always guarded. I could have taken out the techs and interns anytime I wanted, but I didn’t know where to begin to search for you. And I couldn’t leave Kveta.”

  “Smart,” I said. “So they don’t know your animal form?”

  “No.”

  Angel looked thoughtful. “Will you heal when you shift back?”

  I couldn’t shake my head even though I almost tried automatically. “Not much when I become human.” I sighed. “A little. Maybe enough to clear my mind or to be able to move my head. I think the wound on my skull might repair itself when I go human, but not my cheek, wrist, or knee.”

  “Fuck.” The curse word didn’t seem so strange coming from Angel right now, considering our situation.

  A situation that felt almost hopeless. But I had always believed nothing was ever hopeless, and I was going to hold onto that thought with everything I had.

  Nothing is ever hopeless.

  “You have no choice now.” I didn’t know if I’d get full use of my voice until I shifted back to Drow. “You have to take your Doppler form and find help. I’m pretty much useless for a while.”

  Angel frowned and looked out of her cage again, in the direction of the voices. “I can take them.”

  “I have something that might help.” I would have laughed if it was possible. “They didn’t check me for weapons. I’ve got a handgun.”

  “Sweet.” Angel’s eyes met mine. The diamond-brightness that had been in them before we were captured had dulled some, but her intelligence and determination was still there. “Close enough for me to reach?”

  “It’s going to be a stretch.” The thought of moving at all made me want to whimper. “The gun’s at my hip.” It still hurt where it had dug in when Sanderson had slammed that side of me against the wall.

  After checking to see if any of the interns or techs were looking, Angel reached through the bars. Her fingers were two inches from being able to draw the weapon from my pants.

  “Damn.” She settled back and grasped the bars.

  “Hold on.” I bit my lip to hold back any screams as I shifted my body forward, using my hips and thigh. As the screams threatened to rip from my mouth, I thought I really was going to lose consciousness.

  I forced myself forward enough that Angel could easily draw the gun from my pants after she checked to make sure we weren’t being watched.

  She brought the gun through the bars, careful that she didn’t hit the gun against the metal. When she had it she sat cross-legged with the gun hidden between her thighs. She studied the interns and the techs, cool calculation in her eyes.

  Angel raised the gun, holding it in a two-fisted grip as she aimed it at an intern. “Let’s see if we’ve got a full cartridge.”

  The shots were louder than I expected. But the screams weren’t.

  I ignored all pain in my body as I craned my neck to watch. With a deliberate intensity, Angel took each tech and intern down with a single shot to their heads.

  She eliminated the techs first, with the exception of one tech who flung himself behind a piece of medical equipment. Angel shot at the piece of equipment and I heard a scream of pain.

  I was amazed by the complete calm on her features as she took out the three interns before they even had a chance to take a few steps.

  The remaining tech peered from around the piece of medical equipment, pointing a gun at Angel. Angel didn’t make a sound as a bullet buried itself in her shoulder. She repaid the tech by putting a bullet in his head.

  “I’ll shift and get out of the cage and go for help.” Angel set the gun down, blood coating her shoulder. The wound would heal when she transformed, so I wasn’t worried.

  “Angel.” My voice was a croak as I panicked. My mind had been so befuddled from being broken and slammed against the walls. I told her about the pups, the serums. “And Olivia. They plan to kill her. This nutjob is a white supremacist and because Olivia’s not—”

  “They want to do away with her.” Fury shifted Angel’s formerly calm features. “No way is that going to happen.”

  “You’d better hurry, before backup comes,” I said. “Someone is bound to have heard the shots.”

  “I’m out of here.” She looked at the weapon. “I’ll shift back and take the gun with me so they don’t think it was you. Then I’ll ditch it before my next transformation.”

  I frowned. “Shifting from one form to the other so fast will weaken you.”

  “You’d better fake being out of it or they’ll think you’re responsible.” She ignored me as she balled her hand into a fist and slipped her arm through the bars. “Better yet, you’re better off unconscious.”

  I opened my mouth and widened my eyes right before she punched me.

  SEVENTEEN

  When I woke the pain was so great I almost slipped back into darkness. I was strapped to a gurney in the examination room. Again. It was quiet and I sensed I was alone.

  Without looking I knew I had shifted to human form while I had been unconscious—I feel different as a human and unfortunately pain is more acute.

  Thank goodness for shifting while being out of it. I don’t know how I could have handled the additional pain of the transformation with the extent of my injuries.

  Not to mention the interns strapping me to a gurney in this condition. It would have been excruciating. Suddenly I was more than grateful to Angel for knocking me out. Even though I wanted to be on the front lines, I knew I’d have hindered her more than helped her in my condition.

  As I lay there, I identified each injury from top to bottom. My head felt a little better, as I’d thought it would as a result of the transformation. My neck still hurt, but the pain had lessened from where I’d nearly been strangled. I do heal faster than norms, but not from major injuries.

  Where pain nearly crippled me was in my cheek, wrist, and knee. The bones had not mended. If anything, the areas hurt worse, as if the shift had jammed the bones together. I’m smaller as a human than as Drow. Not a lot, but enough to make a difference in how I feel. I sure hoped I’d slept a good, long time so that evening wasn’t that far away. Right now I couldn’t tell.

  I was fortunate that I could turn my head in the direction of the area outside the examination room without rolling onto my cheek. I saw suited techs cleaning blood splattered on the floor and walls. Body bags housing corpses had been stacked to one side of the room. I couldn’t have been out too long if they were still cleaning up blood.

  Had Angel made it out okay?

  My heart leapt. What about the pups and the pregnant Were? I squinted at the cages and relief flooded me as I saw Kveta in her cage, her belly swollen with her children.

  The thought of anything happening to her and her babies shot sharp pains through my gut.

  I took a deep breath, then another. What now?

  At least my mind was clear so that I could search my thoughts for ideas on how to get us out of here. I would fight regardless of my injuries, but I had
to be careful how I did it. I could handle a gun—if there just happened to be one lying around.

  The only element available was the underground waterfall, which was filled with magic so powerful it sang to me. If I flooded the facility with just a few feet of water, that would put an immediate stop to the experiments and buy us some time.

  Yes, that would work. Did I have enough strength? Could I control it or would I be unable to, like when the burst of electricity still in my body had caused the landslide?

  Perhaps…if I was careful. I wasn’t strong enough to do too much. I started to call to my water element with my mind. To my surprise I felt it respond at once, ready to do what I wanted it to.

  Then I went still and let the element slide away.

  Kveta. I looked in her direction. She was cramped in a bottom cage and could drown.

  Pain shot through my cheekbone and head the moment I clenched my teeth with frustration and black spots flickered in my eyesight. Immediately I forced myself to relax. What could I do now?

  Hope that Angel had been able to find her way out of the facility and was getting help.

  “Little bitch.” A man’s voice was loud as he came into the area outside the examination room. “But I got it.”

  Sanderson. The big Neanderthal of a man lifted something by its tail.

  A squirrel.

  Angel.

  She was fighting with everything she had, sharp teeth and nails, but Sanderson swung her back and forth, keeping her off balance. He wore a thick work glove. Strangely, he still didn’t wear a suit. I wondered if Johnson would shoot him.

  “It won’t be doing anything.” Sanderson opened up a tiny cage only big enough for a small animal.

  No chance for such a petite creature as Angel in squirrel form to escape, considering the additional wire mesh around the close-fitting bars. Sanderson flung Angel into the tiny cage and used a padlock to secure the door. Angel looked as fierce and angry as I imagined a squirrel could look.

  Sanderson took off the thick glove and pocketed it. “It’ll just be waiting for someone to dissect it—alive.”

  Fury rushed through me. Anger at this entire situation and everything that had happened and everything that might happen.

  The men were all speaking loud enough that I heard them clearly through the glass examination wall.

  “I think we should just beat it, chop it into little pieces, and be done with it.” A small man whose tone was sharp-sounding from his suit’s microphone went up to the cage and poked his finger through the wire.

  In a movement almost too fast to see, Angel darted forward and bit his finger.

  The man screamed and blood poured from the missing tip of his finger.

  Angel lifted the piece of finger with one tiny paw and I could almost see a human expression on her little squirrel face as she dropped the small hunk of flesh down through the mesh floor and into an empty cage below.

  “I’ll kill it!” the man screamed. While holding his bloody finger to his chest, he lunged for Angel’s cage. “I’ll kill it!”

  Tiny squirrel Angel put her little paws on her hips and I knew she was smirking.

  Two big techs grabbed the screaming man and pulled him away from the cage.

  “Johnson will kill you, Barker,” one of the men said.

  “Might not be a bad idea to let him,” the other tech holding Barker said. “I won’t be too choked up about Johnson getting rid of this piece of shit.”

  Said piece of shit went still but continued to whimper as he cradled his arm to his chest.

  All of their voices came out almost eerie from their microphones in their suits.

  “Get out of here and get to the infirmary,” the first tech said. “The thing might have infected you because you passed through the barrier and you were bitten. Remember how Johnson took care of Lawson?”

  “I’ll—I’ll be okay. I’ll go straight go to the infirmary.” Barker scuttled down the hallway, stumbling as he ran.

  Sanderson, the hulking mass of a man, headed in the same direction.

  More techs showed up. By the blue armbands, there were four. Five interns and the techs turned their attention from Angel and looked through the glass of the examination room to stare at me.

  “It looks so human now,” I heard someone say as I glanced at Angel. I didn’t try to pick out whose voice belonged to whom. “It was purple with blue hair.”

  The squirrel looked around her cage in a calculating way. Every direction including above and below. She moved the few inches she could and started exploring each side of the cage.

  “Unbelievable,” another tech or intern said. “The fangs were hideous.”

  I didn’t let the comment bother me as I continued to watch Angel. She tugged at the wire mesh, testing it, then used her tiny paws to pull at the bars that were far slimmer than the bars of the larger cages. For a human, her bars might be easy to bend, but for a tiny animal, likely impossible.

  “I said it before,” a voice spoke up. “It’s nothing but a freak.”

  Angel stood in the middle of the cage again, hands on hips, now studying the backs of the techs and interns who were staring at me.

  “It looks so innocent now.” The words of the female surprised me even as I watched Angel. “And pretty.”

  A flash of what Angel might be considering went through my mind as a brief vision. She was going to shift inside the cage and tear it apart with her much larger body.

  “Give me a goddamned break.” Harkins’s voice was so familiar I didn’t have to even think about who was speaking. “It’s a fucking thing. Just like the dogs.”

  What would it do to Angel to try that? She could seriously injure herself, maybe fall off the other cages. She’d already shifted three times that I knew of. Twice before we were captured and the one time here. She had to be exhausted.

  “And that other creature,” a man said. “Turning into a squirrel? How freak-assed is that?”

  Everyone looked at Angel, who went still but looked back at all with a contemptuous squirrel expression. I was getting really good at reading squirrel.

  “Ought to fry it up.” One man laughed as they all turned their gazes back on me and I forced myself to look away from Angel. Whatever she had planned, I didn’t want to tip them off. “After you put some holes in this one.”

  “We’re going to do better than holes.” Harkins’s laugh was snide. Mean.

  The thumping of my heart picked up as she went through the procedure to open the sanitation room. She started putting on a red suit while other interns with red armbands followed her and did the same. Red. Like blood.

  Adrenaline pumping through my body made me feel like I might combust. With no outlet, no way to use that adrenaline, I felt like I’d probably go crazy. The only benefit was that my injuries didn’t hurt as much—my body was too charged to care.

  A sound like a small explosion.

  From outside the examination room.

  I jerked my head in the direction of the sound.

  Angel crouched on the floor below her shattered cage.

  Blood poured from cuts on her face and forearms. Her T-shirt was ripped.

  Angel rolled forward, straight for a tech, just as a shot rang out.

  Stone chips exploded from the spot Angel had been in.

  She slammed her fist against the tech’s groin. He screamed and dropped his handgun.

  Angel caught the gun. She was on her knees. Aimed and shot a tech.

  She stretched out her body and rolled. Chips of rock exploded from the stone floor just behind every one of her movements.

  No place to hide.

  On her back, her knees bent and shoulders raised, Angel shot another tech.

  A shot was fired from one of the men.

  The bullet buried itself in Angel’s neck.

  Kveta screamed from her cage. “Angel!”

  Shock at seeing Angel shot almost made me stop breathing.

  But she kept going. She pulled of
f another shot and a third tech dropped.

  The tech she’d taken down by the balls now had another weapon.

  He turned the gun on Angel, who had blood flowing from the wound on her neck.

  She put a bullet into him and dropped him for good.

  Angel grabbed a second gun from the floor and stuffed it in the front of her jeans.

  She lunged to her feet and pointed one weapon at the interns, who had locked themselves in the airlock.

  “Stop!” a woman shouted beside me, and I started. I’d been so focused on watching Angel that I hadn’t realized the woman had come up on me from my side. A wicked-looking syringe with a long needle was in one of her hands. She gripped the syringe like a dagger and held it a foot over my heart.

  Angel came to a stop. Then raised one gun. The first shot shattered the examination room window. The second buried itself in the intern’s heart.

  The intern dropped, the clatter of the syringe somewhere close to her.

  Angel faced the remaining interns.

  Like an avenging angel, she showed no mercy. “Join your hateful Gods.”

  The airlock’s glass window exploded with one bullet. Four more shots, and all that remained was a heap of red suits and crumpled bodies.

  Angel tossed aside the weapon she’d been using and then grabbed one from a dead tech’s hand. Then she found two knives on the second and third bodies she checked. She ripped the gun sheaths from the belts like paper. All the while she kept her eyes on the hallway behind the area we were all in.

  Keeping low, she stuffed both sheathed daggers into her back pocket and went for Kveta.

  Relief yet a continued sense of fear for all of us went through me. Strapped to the gurney, I was absolutely helpless and useless.

  “Please hurry,” Kveta said, her voice filled with panic. She was wearing a simple dress that was dirty and stained over her swollen belly.