Witch Interrupted
Page 35
One was a woman on the ladder. A woman he loved so much he’d give everything he had to save her.
Alpha witch. Katie.
One was an old, sick man on the ground, screaming obscenities, fumbling in the bright, white spotlight for a gun, a spell pod, anything.
The old, sick man wasn’t Katie’s father. Zhang Li hunched over, enduring the wrath of the berserker magic.
Fucking Hiram Lars was alpha. That was Marcus’s last thought before his consciousness was overwhelmed by the magic.
* * *
It took Katie a stunned moment to absorb the scene. Marcus, amazing, incredible, inventive man, had funneled so much power into the berserker mix it broke the witch and wolf barrier. No one else could have done it—only him, with the cayenne burning up his lattices.
Wildness captured the other shifters and called forth the wolf inside them. Inside her too—but she experienced the magic as fury. Which might not be magic, because she was pretty fucking furious already. Her wolf stirred, as it did during sex with Marcus.
Her witch was stronger.
What would happen now? Was this a frying pan/fire situation or was this the miracle that would save them?
She had to act. Up the ladder or down? Two keepers above her whined and howled. Twenty below her writhed and tore at their clothing—including her poor father.
Would the berserker turn them all feral? Would they all try to kill her?
Movement of a different nature snagged Katie’s attention, and she spotted Lars. He was unchanged.
She’d once bemoaned that being the only convex alpha in existence meant nothing—but it would have meant a great deal right now. Too bad she’d been wrong. Lars, the other convex alpha in existence, pulled himself to his feet using a pipe bolted to the wall.
He saw her.
Shit. Time to evade.
Katie scaled the ladder and tumbled over the edge onto the tank. The shifters on top were preoccupied by their transformation. Should she…
One lifted his head to glare at her with a beady, bloodshot eye. He shook off his clothing and started to rise. His patchy fur bubbled with the rapid shift. She’d never seen the change take someone so grotesquely. Wolf shifters were part of the natural world, and their magical abilities were no more deviant than what witches could do.
What she could do.
Hard to believe this magic wasn’t destructive when it appeared to be excruciating. But the convexity of the keepers hadn’t protected them. They were powerless against the berserker spell. All these witches had just become the creatures they despised—and they would vent their frustrations on any two-legger left standing.
The wolf who’d noticed her steadied himself on shaky legs. Froth decorated his wrinkled, snarling muzzle. Death gleamed in his eyes.
Praying she could move fast enough, she kicked. He gnashed his teeth, barely missing her leg, which was already bloody. Her second kick caught him in the hindquarters. He tumbled over the lip and off the tank. The other wolf, who hadn’t finished transforming, was easier to punt.
He yelped as he struck the ground.
Okay. Okay. Channel Chang Cai. Strategize. Fight. She had a minute to plan. Wolves couldn’t climb ladders.
Except…
Gunfire. A bullet pinged off the access hole railing. Flakes of metal struck and cut her bare skin. Katie dropped to her stomach, protected from Lars’s gun by the angle. Chilly, deteriorating metal and rust scratched her stomach and legs. Her flesh goosebumped—fear, adrenaline, temperature. Across from her, on the second tank, Marcus crouched, snarling.
Was he…lost? Feral? Could she trust him yet?
Would he ever hurt her?
He saw her looking at him and barked, deep and throaty. Was that meant to be reassuring or a threat?
Not her primary concern. No wolf was as much of a threat as a lunatic with a gun.
“What have you done?” Lars screamed. “What is this perversion? I’ll tear you apart, you fucking animal. I’ll shoot you ten thousand times!”
Bullets peppered Marcus’s perch. He nimbly vaulted off the backside. Katie belly-crawled to the lip of her tank, where gaps had rusted through the rim, and peeked down.
Lars hobbled across the floor, kicking wolves. They whined. Cringed before him instead of attacking him. She scooched sideways to peer through the corroded holes. The closer Lars came to the tank, the worse his angle was for shooting her.
Unless, of course, the bullet blazed through the old metal. Or he hurled a spell bomb atop the tank. Calming mix. Sleep. Did he have anything besides monkshood?
Lars seethed. Yelled. Katie sensed the pressure of something urging her to hurl herself off the tank to her death. She started to submit but stopped herself before she was exposed to Lars’s sight.
His alpha had a wide-area impact like a spell bomb.
Although…if he could do it, could she?
Kill him, she thought at the wolves.
Some growled. Hackles spiked. Lars lambasted them in earnest and cowed their rebellion quickly.
They were his pack. Slowly, emerging from their convulsions, squirming out of their clothes, they crept to their master. Their Sire. His influence curbed their reaction to the berserker. Heads low, they crouched around him. The wolf she thought was her father, who’d had white fur splashed across his muzzle, was nowhere in sight.
Insanity, rage, obsession—Katie had no idea which—consumed Lars. Spittle frothed on his chin as if he were rabid. His body shivered and trembled. He shot her tank a few more times before the hammer landed on an empty chamber.
Swearing, he hurled the gun at a small, dark wolf, who barked and ran. Three other wolves chased after it. Lars had no shortage of weaponry in his team’s discarded clothes. She wouldn’t be safe up here much longer.
She wouldn’t be safe down there at all.
The last time she’d been in this situation, she’d pitted the ferals against one another. That wouldn’t work. Lars was mostly in control of them, and the wolf lust she’d manipulated as a keeper was no longer generalized. She was in love with Marcus and wanted no other bed partner.
Her world crystallized into right here, right now. Live through the next two minutes. She needed weapons. The obvious ones were on the floor. Guns, spell pods, pipes, knives.
Wait. Her foot encountered cloth. The first man’s pants. She rolled quickly to the garment, grabbed it and rolled back to the shielding lip of the tank. Patting the material, she pulled out spell pods, a knife and a cell phone.
“I’ll shoot you down like a fox in a spruce. You’re trapped, Chang Cai. You can’t whore your way out of this.” Lars monologued his intentions, probably hoping to intimidate her. Gunshots—two at a time—flicked the corroded metal around her. He had two pistols now, and he knew how to use them.
Lars was right. She was treed. Where were the eagles when you needed them?
Katie thrust her legs into the pants. Some covering was better than none. She cinched the belt tight. Knowing Lars couldn’t see her from the ground, she crawled to the far side.
Twenty feet. She could land that if she were careful. She slithered over the side and let herself dangle. The overlong pants draped past her toes. Three, two…
A chorus of growls stopped her. She glanced down. A heavy body smashed against the tank beneath her. Wolves barked, tails wagging, leaping for her legs. Metal groaned on impact. Lars might not have heard her scuffles, but the wolves could.
She curled herself out of their reach. Good damn thing she’d maintained a semblance of an exercise regimen. Otherwise she’d never have had the arm strength to manage this. She swung a leg up and over, wincing when jagged metal shredded her baggy jeans and the skin beneath.
“Is she trying to fly away?” Lars’s voice rounded the base of the storage tank. Katie clutched the knife and silently, silently, eased to the opposite side of the container. Why couldn’t the dudes on the tank have had guns? Grenades? She clutched the knife and inspected the pods.
She sniffed the orange-red carefully, and her nose tingled from the cayenne-laced pepper bomb, a pod version of her cayenne spray.
What could she do with it? Not immobilize Lars, that was for sure. Would it work on wolves who’d been convex witches? Or would it refract off them and into the closest non-convex victims—her father and Marcus?
Where was Marcus?
The ladder poked past the rim of the tank. Aside from removing it to prevent Lars’s ascent, could she use it? Somehow? She shoved the pods into her pockets, the cayenne separate, and slithered toward the ladder. Bullets ricocheted through the storage area.
She flinched but kept inching along. Was Lars not bothering to aim? A wolf howled. Several yelped. Lars railed at her but had remained stationary. Why wasn’t he patrolling the bottom of the tank, looking for ways to hurt her? Perhaps he’d been injured when Marcus had shoved him.
Katie raised a cautious hand and placed it on the ladder. When Lars didn’t shoot her fingers, she grabbed the other side and eased it into the air. The cheap, aluminum weight of the ladder wasn’t unmanageable, but it clanked. Loudly. Crap, crap, crap. Growls and claw tics spread out on all sides of the tank. Surrounded.
Throwing caution to the wind, she rose to her haunches and hauled the hell out of the ladder until she had it atop the tank. Before she ducked, she turned.
Lars stood in the middle of the aisle, aiming at her with a hunting rifle.
She hit the deck.
Buckshot screeched through metal around her, ripping and tearing. A ball cracked off the aluminum ladder and then her scalp. Katie bit her lip, silent and motionless. The glancing blow—thank Goddess it was a glancing blow—stung like fire.
Lars would get lucky eventually….if she continued to wait here like a nice little target.
Maneuvering onto her back, she eyeballed the ceiling where the round spotlight shone on the turmoil. She hefted the keeper’s knife—it was weighted well, better than she’d hoped—held her breath and stood up really, really fast.
She needed clearance. As soon as she got it, she flung the knife at the light. Hard. Lars fired at her. Missed. The recoil pounded him back a step. She wasn’t sad that Lars, in his old age, seemed to have become a terrible shot.
She wasn’t old. Or a terrible shot. Her knife struck the spotlight dead on, smashed the glass and plunged the storage area into darkness.
Buckshot, too close. She launched herself to the other side of the tank. When she hit the surface, the metal beneath her crumpled. Her lower half burst through it.
Katie scrabbled for a hold as the weight of her legs dragged her into the holding tank—and whatever the hell was inside. Chemicals? Bugs? She’d hoped the darkness would help her dodge Lars, but right now she couldn’t see to stop her fall. Her flailing hand found purchase on the ladder. The whole thing trailed behind her several inches, screeching on rust and metal, before it snagged on something like a grappling iron.
She panted, heart racing, eyes adjusting. Diffuse light snaked into the storage area from the main section of the factory. The silver ladder was braced awkwardly between the lip of the tank and the access railing.
Luckily she didn’t weigh much. Before the rusted metal cut her in half, she tugged herself to safety. Painful scuffs decorated her bare upper half; she didn’t have to see it to feel the raw scrapes. Her leg wounds throbbed. Hello, tetanus.
Lars had gotten his hands on pistols and shot blindly through the dark. As far as she could tell, no shots were coming close to her. Another wolf yelped. And another. Lars bellowed with rage.
Was he shooting the keeper wolves? She could only hope. He hated wolves with all-consuming passion. Which would win—his hatred of wolves or his hatred of her?
“Find me her father,” he ordered the wolves. That answered her question. “I’ll dismember him. That will bring her to me.”
Would the wolves do it? He’d been kicking, cursing, shooting and mistreating them, probably when they’d been two-leggers as well. How many were his offspring? That didn’t seem to matter to him.
Claws skittered on the concrete in several directions as they scampered to do Lars’s bidding.
Stupid wolves. She hoped her father was long gone. She could do nothing to help him if she couldn’t save herself first.
Katie gauged the distance between her tank and the one Marcus had been on. She could just make out the shadowy bulk of it. Ten feet?
Another quick check in Lars’s direction. No activity at floor level, but a constant stream of demands and threats, pinpointing his position. The metallic shick of a clip locking into a pistol interrupted his rant. Ugh. Well, if she could barely see shit, he’d be able to see less than shit.
She chucked the ladder across the empty space. The other end hit the second storage tank and bounced.
Stayed.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Lars, his face ghostly in the darkness, limped down the aisle between the tanks and pipes. Her ears told her he was wheezing. “I’m going to kill your father, you stupid girl, if you don’t come down here and trade yourself. That’s right. You wanted a trade. Come and get it.”
Katie eyed the ladder. Eyed Lars. Maybe, instead of plan A, she should…
“You’ve found the old man. Good.” Something—Lars’s foot—thunked against flesh. A wolf whined and paws scrabbled against the concrete. “Chang Cai, I’m going to kill your papa. Don’t you want to say goodbye?”
Was it really her father or was this a fake-out? She could make out dark, prowling wolves, the taller form of Lars. At least she could see better than he could. The factory, windowless here, was pitch black near the ceiling, which wasn’t that many yards higher than the top of the holding tanks.
“You can’t get away from me.” Lars started blasting away at her tank again. When he reached the end of the clip, he scrapped the gun and disappeared.
The moment the bullets ceased, Katie slithered across the ladder to the other tank as quietly as possible. The ladder clanked and jiggled but she made it. She dragged the ladder after her just as fast. She’d need it for phase two.
Had he seen? Surely he’d seen. The ladder was pale, almost shiny, and she’d made a lot of noise.
Lars began shooting again.
At the first holding tank.
This was her chance.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
This was his chance.
The old man fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a penlight to flicker around the dark factory. He was trying to locate the woman. Marcus’s woman. The man was trying to kill her, which meant she was still alive.
Marcus crab-crawled under the tank, closer and closer to the two-legger and his guardians. He’d taken several wolves out already. Their blood tasted horrible on his tongue, salty and bitter.
He was pretty sure the man would taste worse.
That wouldn’t stop him from tearing open that bony white throat.
Marcus had never felt such anger, or such single-minded purpose, in his entire life. He had one thing to accomplish. One.
Kill the man.
His sharp eyes narrowed when a small guardian spotted him under the tank. The wolves’ vision wasn’t hindered by the low lighting. Marcus growled threateningly. The man couldn’t distinguish his voice from the others. The others would smell the blood of their companions on his fur and breath, letting them know what he was capable of.
He was better at being a wolf than they were. He was, after a brief period of confusion, the master of his body and actions. He doubted they’d challenge him.
When he inched from under the tank, the small wolf tucked her tail between her legs and bolted away from the man.
“Come back here!” The man aimed the flashlight and the gun in the direction of the fleeing wolf. Marcus could smell the rot of dying flesh from here. The two-legger’s arm dipped, and the shot missed. The wol
f disappeared.
While the man’s attention was on the escapee, Marcus slunk into the group that encircled their alpha. Several were bumping and menacing an older wolf with a white muzzle sprawled on the ground behind the two-legger. Marcus could feel the pull of the two-legger’s persuasion but overcame it.
Another alpha had his loyalty.
Suddenly, from the top of a tank, a ladder hurtled through the darkness straight at the man. It smacked him in the head, knocking him to the ground amidst his wolves. Bone cracked—frail, two-legger bone.
The man gargled and moaned. The scent of blood enriched the air.
Wolves teemed around their ruler, tails frantic, noses snuffling. The flashlight beam bounced off tanks, pipes, wolves, as the penlight rolled freely across the ground. In the chaos, Marcus became conscious of a new voice.
Alpha. Good alpha. His alpha.
Kill him. Kill him now. Kill him while he’s down. You hate him. He hurts you. Kill him.
Her demand urged Marcus forward. She was right. He did hate the man. His jaws gaped wide. His muscles bunched. The other wolves, scrambled by the directive from the powerful woman, growled and snapped at each other.
In the confusion, the old four-legger with the white muzzle dashed forward and bit the man in the thigh. The man screamed in agony, and his scrawny limbs thrashed every direction.
“Stupid fucking wolves. How dare you? Obey me!”
The wolves milled, emanating fear scent. They were in Marcus’s way. Waves of sickness, pain and rage enveloped the man. Caustic herbal smells marked him too, items Marcus would need to avoid biting. He shouldered another wolf aside, almost within reach.
This was going to taste very, very disgusting. He crouched, ready to jump over the last couple wolves.
The penlight’s beam steadied on the holding tanks. Movement up high, slithering down.
“You bitch,” the man howled. “She’s trying to get away. Kill her!”
Scrapes, clanks and complaining metal interrupted Marcus’s deadly intent. Rust particles rained on the concrete. All the wolves except him and the old one were pushed by their alpha toward the corroded tank, where Marcus’s woman dangled off the side. The flashlight’s narrow beam revealed her path.