Dragon Devotion

by Amelia Jade

  The grisly job finished, he whirled in place to deal with the third guard. But Andre had that in hand. The man was currently on the ground, curled up. Ajax frowned as he saw the man shaking.

  “He’s still alive.” It was almost a question.

  “Yes,” Andre said. “I figured after he’s able to breathe again, he can tell us where the prisoners are.”

  “Good plan,” Ajax said, moving past him to the fourth limp body on the floor.

  Rolling Milos over, he pulled the dart from the man’s chest.

  “What do we do with him?” Andre asked.

  “He’ll be awake by the time we’re done questioning this one,” Ajax said.

  “And if he’s not?” Andre pressed.

  “Then we slap him until he wakes up.”

  “Wait, really?”

  Ajax nodded. “Yeah, it shocks the system. Just be careful, he’ll be pissed when he wakes up. The brain still knows what’s going on, it just can’t control anything and he won’t really be aware of it, but he’ll come to and be ticked off right away.”

  Andre just shook his head. “You’ve been through some shit man,” he said, crouching down beside the guard.

  Ajax’s expression darkened. “Yeah, I suppose I have,” he agreed, joining the other shifter.

  The guard was on his side, looking up at them.

  “Okay, we’re going to make this easy,” Ajax said before Andre could start. He reached out and grabbed one of the guard’s hands. Prying it open, he secured the index finger within his own fingers. The guard struggled but he lacked the strength.

  “Cover his mouth,” he told Andre.

  The shifter looked at him strangely, but did as he was told.

  Ajax snapped the man’s finger. The guard cried out in pain but it was muffled into nothing by Andre.

  Ajax sat back and waited for the man to come to grips with his pain.

  “Okay, so here’s the deal. Tell us where we can find the prisoners here, and all we’ll do is stab you full of tranqs. Lie to us, or refuse to tell us, and I’m going to break all the bones in your body, starting with the smaller ones and moving to the larger ones, until you tell us. It’s that simple. And if you make me do it the hard way,” he added calmly, “I’m going to kill you just for wasting my time. Got it?”

  The guarded nodded, sweat beading from his forehead as he cradled the wreckage of his finger.

  “Prisoners, now,” Ajax said, and motioned for Andre to remove his hand.

  “Down there.” The guard’s voice was shaking, and he nodded to the side passage they had emerged from. “Elevator. Next floor down.”

  “Then where?” Ajax asked threateningly.

  The guard shook his head. “The whole level is a prison. It’s the only place, that and the medical area, that we’ve fully moved in to.”

  Andre nodded at Ajax as their theory was confirmed.

  “Who are you? What government agency do you work for?” Andre asked suddenly.

  The guard looked at him. “Not government,” he said.

  “Who’s your boss?” Ajax figured they may as well get as much information as possible.

  The man shrugged.

  Ajax snatched the hand with the broken finger and brought it closer to him.

  “Wait! Wait!” the guard cried out. “I swear I don’t know. I only got the job three days ago. I don’t know any more than that. The only man I met is Mr. Levante, but I know he’s not the boss-boss. He just handles the guards at this location.”

  Ajax nodded. He knew who the man was. He had to be the same one Arianna had dealt with when they were captured together.

  “Where’s the control room?” Ajax asked, ignoring the curious look from the other shifter.

  “One floor up. First right hallway, first door on your right.”

  Ajax nodded and prepared to stand.

  “You’ll need the keycard. Rick had it.” The guard motioned at his downed companions. “The one with the long hair,” he added at Ajax’s curious look.

  Andre went searching for it.

  “You’ve been very helpful,” Ajax said, standing up.

  “So you’re going to let me—”

  The man’s voice died as Ajax emptied the clip of tranquilizer darts into his body.

  “Against my better judgment, yes, you’ll live,” he replied to the unfinished question.

  Andre returned, handing a magnetic swipe keycard to Ajax.

  “Go wake Milos up,” he said, a crazy idea forming in his brain.

  He stood still, filtering out the scene in front of him as Andre slapped Milos twice, then yelped and went stumbling backward as the third shifter started awake and tried to fight his friend.

  “Let’s go,” he told them a moment later, turning and heading down the passageway the guard had directed them toward.

  “Don’t you think it might be a trap?” Andre asked as they jogged alongside him.

  “It’s entirely possible it is. But if they knew we were coming, there won’t be much we can do to stop them. So, we just bull our way through the trap as best we can,” he said with a shrug.

  “I’d really rather not get tranq’d again,” Milos complained. “I feel like shit.”

  “You’ll be fine in another few minutes,” Ajax told him. “We burn through that shit so fast. You were out for less than five minutes. They only hit you with one dart. They clearly don’t know what they’re up against. They have the paperwork that tells them a dart will take down a shifter, but none of them realize how quickly we burn off stuff like that.”

  Milos nodded, and Ajax could already see some of the gray queasiness fading from his face.

  They rode the elevator down in silence.

  “Stay behind me, single file,” Ajax ordered as the elevator dinged softly to signal its arrival.

  The others listened to his command, the Alpha in him reemerging as he braced himself for whatever might be on the other side.

  The doors below opened to reveal a much darker shade of concrete, and more of the same gray steel walls they had seen everywhere else. Whatever these guys were, he thought, they were consistent.

  In front of them was a steel walkway that almost immediately split to the left and right. Ajax didn’t see anyone, so he crept forward. The room was a giant rectangle that went off to the left and the right. The steel walkway went around the perimeter, leaving the center completely open. Opposite of the elevator on the far side he could see a door and a room built into the concrete with windows overlooking the center pit.

  “Look,” Andre hissed.

  The shifter pointed into the middle of the room.

  Clustered in the middle of the room were groups of steel-barred cages, inside of which were human forms. Multiple forms.

  “There is more than one prisoner here,” he muttered, counting quickly. Almost a dozen.

  “We’re going to have problems getting them all out of here,” Milos muttered unhappily.

  “No we won’t,” Ajax said, thinking about the cargo truck that had been waiting at the loading dock. “You two, go deal with any guards in there,” he ordered.

  “Where are you going?” they asked almost simultaneously.

  “To free them,” he said, and leapt over the railing.

  It was a fifteen-foot fall, and he landed gracefully on one knee, using his hands to help absorb the shock.

  Rising up, he ignored the shocked comments of the shifters in the cages.

  “Benjamin Martin,” he said loudly.

  “Here.” The reply was tentative, but it came almost immediately.

  “Hello,” he said to the tall dark-haired shifter.

  “Do I know you?” the man asked cautiously.

  “No, but our mutual flying friend asked me to poke around and look for you while I was in the area,” he said wryly.

  “How nice of Valen,” Benjamin said with a wry smile. “The cells are all controlled by a terminal up there,” he said, pointing to the room Milos and Andre had disappear
ed into.

  As if on cue, the doors clanged open.

  Ajax flashed a thumbs up as he saw Milos’s questioning face appear in one of the windows, letting him know that whatever he did, it had worked.

  “Okay folks, let’s go, time to get you out of here,” Ajax said loudly and calmly.

  He wasn’t sure what he had expected from the imprisoned bunch, but he was caught by surprise when they immediately followed Benjamin’s lead as he exited his own cell. Interesting. He has taken control as Alpha over the others. Although the shifter was big, Ajax saw several others in the group who might have challenged him for the spot. None of them hesitated now, and the group as a whole seemed to have no issues putting Ajax in charge of the rescue attempts.

  They took the stairs back up, instead of trying to mimic Ajax’s entrance in reverse. Most of the shifters seemed in good care, but as he watched them proceed, it became clear that several of them were in rough shape and were only coming along because they were being helped by others.

  “What did they do to you?” he asked Benjamin softly as the pair of them brought up the rear, ensuring no one was left behind.

  Andre and Milos were leading, along with several of the other harder-looking men in the group. As usual there were no female shifters. They were such a rare breed it would have shocked Ajax if they had managed to actually find one, let alone catch her.

  “They took a lot of blood, plasma, and from some they took bone marrow, as best as I can tell.”

  Ajax nodded. “Those would be the ones having the hardest time of it right now?”

  Benjamin nodded.

  “Hmm, not good. Why are they not healing as fast as they should?”

  “Those ones were also injected with something. We don’t know what, but as you can see, our guess is that it’s some sort of agent to slow our healing.”

  Ajax looked at him sharply. That wasn’t good. If this agency could weaponize such a formula, it would render many of the shifter advantages moot.

  “We captured a guard at one point who maintained that this wasn’t a government agency,” he told Benjamin, eager to hear his thoughts.

  “I would agree,” the other shifter said. “Too organized and efficient, not to mention ruthless, to be government-operated. I was the only one in this prison until earlier today. Or yesterday. I’m not really sure what time it is. But the way they hustled in additional cages, wired them up, and filled them with prisoners was scary. These guys are professionals. They might have government backing financially, but they will have some sort of plausible deniability I’m sure. We’ll never know the truth there.”

  Ajax nodded. That explanation made sense, as did the information that whoever they were up against was using the current location as a newfound central staging point.

  They waited for the others to take the elevator.

  “We’re not going with them?” Benjamin asked.

  “First we have to make a side trip to the control center. I intend to shut this place down.”

  “Sounds like fun.” The other shifter rolled his shoulders to loosen them up. “It’s been a bit since I’ve been in a good old-fashioned fight.”

  ***

  The elevator doors clanged open with a much louder noise than they did on any other floor.

  With a glance at Benjamin, the pair exited the elevator.

  It took Ajax all of two seconds to realize something.

  The guard lied!

  The elevator didn’t open into a hallway. It opened directly into the control room!

  Heads turned to face the pair as both sides looked at each other in shock.

  Ajax recovered first and with a shout he charged into the room, calling forth for his bear.

  The massive beast announced its presence and glee at being set free with a earth-shattering roar that was amplified tenfold by the gray steel that formed the walls, floor, and ceiling here, like everywhere else.

  Ajax charged amongst the men, swatting them left and right, trying to get to them all before any could pull their guns. There were more men here than they had seen anywhere else in the complex. He let his bear do its thing, his human mind almost taking a back seat to the action as massive paws reached out and crushed people with disdain.

  To his right he saw Benjamin’s bear doing the same thing. His fur was a silver, almost metallic in color. Very unusual, he noted.

  The pair made quick work of the place, and then set about using their size to destroy the panels and computers in the room.

  One thing caught his eye, and Ajax shifted back as swiftly as he could.

  “Wait!” he shouted at Benjamin. “Just hold on a second while I read this.”

  He didn’t want the other shifters’ efforts to end up killing the power or anything to the terminal in front of him. It was set apart and above the others he noticed, looking around the room. This must be the command console.

  There was a note on it.

  Levante,

  The Order may be no more, but they gave us the funding to continue this project for decades, and I intend to see it through to the end. If you think the money we have now is something, imagine what we could sell these formulas for on the open market. Keep setting up our new base as ordered, and hunt down those two that escaped. I want them in our program. They must not be allowed to tell others that we exist. I am sending four more teams of men to join you, including our first Extremis squad. Do not fail me again.

  J

  “Come read this,” he said, waving Benjamin over.

  The other shifter ambled over, not bothering to shift. The bear tilted his head and it was clear he was looking at the screen. A moment later the eyes turned back to Ajax, and he tossed his head agitatedly.

  “Okay, smash it. I think we’re done here anyway,” Ajax said. He backed up while Benjamin reduced the computer terminal to pieces with two swipes.

  The pair swiftly got back in the elevator and then jogged the hallways until they exited at the loading dock. Andre was waiting for them, a pained look on his face when he saw Ajax.

  Ice formed instantly in his stomach. “Arianna?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

  Andre shook his head. “Truck’s gone, so is she. Rubber on the floor. I’m guessing she took off when someone spotted her.”

  “Okay,” Ajax said swiftly as his heart began to break into pieces. “We need to get these men to safety first. Get them in the truck, and let’s get aboveground. Once there, call Flint. He’s going to have to find a place to stash everyone.”

  “What about Arianna?” Milos asked from nearby.

  “What about her?” he asked angrily.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Ajax snarled. “I’m going to get these men to safety like I promised. Hopefully she managed to get away and will make her way back to Flint’s club on her own.”

  “What if she didn’t?”

  “Then I’m going to find the men who took her, and I’m going to kill them all one by one until they tell me where she is,” he promised, his expression dark.

  A shout from Benjamin, who had gone ahead to the cargo truck, drew his attention. He heard the engine try to turn over, but it didn’t start.

  “What is it?” Ajax asked, drawing alongside.

  “This thing is toast,” Benjamin told him, sliding out of the driver’s seat. “We aren’t using it to get out of here.”

  Ajax swore. “Okay, well there are two pickup trucks over there. We should be able to fit most of us into them. Some of us will have to go on foot.” He shrugged. “Assuming we can get them running.”

  Benjamin turned to the crowd. “Harry, you ever hotwire vehicles before?”

  The small shifter looked uncomfortable. “You know I’m not proud of that time in my life.”

  Ajax snapped, worry for Arianna pressing on him. “We don’t have time for that shit right now. Can you, or can’t you get them started?”

  The shifter nodded unhappily and jogged over to the vehicles. Less than a
minute later they were both running. Ajax and Benjamin, with Andre and Milos to help, loaded up their injured and wounded. The trucks didn’t have crew cabs however, and so the four of them were left without a spot. Andre gave directions to Harry, and the trucks screeched out of the parking garage.

  “Well gentleman, I guess we’re on foot,” Ajax said, and he started to jog up the ramp where the trucks had disappeared.

  They had just reached the top of the ramp when a van pulled out of oncoming traffic and screeched to a halt. The four of them looked apprehensively as twelve men piled out. They were dressed very similarly to the guards that he had dispatched earlier.

  Something about them was different, but he couldn’t quite identify it.

  “Not shifters,” Benjamin muttered.

  “They don’t have guns,” Milos said happily.

  Ajax noticed that, but he was seeing something else.

  “They aren’t nervous though,” he said slowly, comprehension dawning on him. “These men believe they can take us.”

  As the four watched, the squad of black-clad men fanned out in a shallow arc in front of them. The newcomers had arrived too late to block them into the ramp, and as they advanced, Ajax and the others continued to back away. Around them, pedestrians scrambled back, aware that some sort of showdown was going on.

  “Benjamin,” he said softly.

  “Call me Benji, will you?” the other shifter said as he stepped closer.

  “What do you want to bet this is the Extremis squad that note read about?”

  “No bet,” Benji replied unhappily. “Nor do I really want to find out how they earned that name.”

  “Agreed,” Ajax said, as they continued to back away.

  He wasn’t sure whether the men facing them had different priorities, or if the eye of the public on them became too much, but whatever it was, they seemed reluctant to pursue Ajax and company.

  “They’re stopping,” Milos said.

  Ajax didn’t waste any time. “Benji, fastest way to get back to Flint’s club. Now.”

  “The subway. This way!” he shouted. The four of them turned and ran.