by Natalie Grey
“Weren’t you going to start shooting anyway?” Hirotoshi asked in an undertone.
“They don’t have to know that.” She looked back at the guys with a smile. “Come on, I’m perfectly harmless, there’s no reason to look so scared.”
“You’re… ah… um…” One of the server room guards gulped when Tabitha looked over at him. “You’re holding a gun.”
“And I won’t use it, unless you piss me off,” she explained. “Come on, that’s simple enough, right? You tell me what I need to know, and I don’t have to kill everyone painfully.” She smiled sweetly and arched her back.
Just a little.
Ryu and Hirotoshi exchanged a look. Painful death or not, every guard in this room was certain to die within minutes. They were here of their own free will, and had not tried to escape or fight their employer. Information wasn’t going to help them.
The guard who had spoken before was emboldened by his exchange with Tabitha. “What do you need to know?”
“How many laboratories does Hugo Marcari have?”
All of the guards looked away, suddenly evasive.
“Uh, no one knows.” The guard forced a smile.
“Oh, dear. And it was such a simple deal we had, wasn’t it?” Tabitha looked over her shoulder at Ryu and Hirotoshi. “I didn’t make it complicated, did I?”
Ryu shook his head.
“I thought not.” Tabitha sighed and shot the man in the kneecap. “Ow. You’re screaming very loudly, you know. Now, in the interests of your other kneecap, tell me about Hugo Marcari’s laboratories.”
“No one knows about all of them—it’s the truth, I swear!” The man clamped his hand over his leg. His eyes were wide with pain and terror. “I swear!”
“Okay, so how many people would we have to speak to in order to find out about all of them?”
“I don’t know!”
“Are you sure? Are you very sure?”
“Eight! There are eight!”
“Thank you.” Tabitha shot him in the other kneecap and looked around at the shocked and horrified faces of the other guards. “Okay, new rule. If I have to ask a question more than once, you’re going to regret it. Ah, ah, ah.” Another shot rang out, and a man near the right wall collapsed with a scream. “Try to pull that alarm again and I’ll kill you.” She tilted her head to the side. “Do you know about any of the facilities?”
This man decided not to take any chances.
“Three. Velingrad, Sofia, and Istaravshan.” He was panting, staring at her.
“Very good. Thank you.” Tabitha gave him a beatific smile and looked at the rest of them. “Okay. Show of hands, who here knows of a facility that isn’t one of those three?”
Seven hands went up.
“See, now you’re all getting the hang of it. You first, with the mustache. Which do you know about?”
The man swallowed hard. Tabitha’s gun was pointed right at him. “Naryn, in Kyrgyzstan. Naftalan—that’s in Azerbaijan. And Istaravshan, too.”
“All right, we’re up to five of eight. Who knows any other than those?”
A man raised his hand tentatively. “Khachmaz and Postojna. It’s in the mountains outside of it. I think the eighth may be here.”
“Think. Do you know?”
“I…” The man looked terrified. “I don’t know. I didn’t even know there were eight, I just wasn’t sure if you knew about the one here and I—”
“Oh, shut up.” Tabitha waved a hand. “Anyone else know of another location?”
Heads shook.
>>Those locations do line up with facilities we located from Gerard’s phone. I suspected there was one more than he had visited, and this information has helped me locate that one as well. We have the information we need.<<
“Well, then. It was nice to meet all of you.” Tabitha smiled. Behind her, she heard Hirotoshi and Ryu unsheathe their swords. “Now, I’m not sure how familiar you are with basic morality, but it is considered very, very immoral to stand by while a sociopath abducts families, tortures them, and forces them to kill one another.”
“But—” one of the men spluttered.
“It was just a job!” another one insisted.
“Wrong answer.” Tabitha shook her head at them, and then considered. “Of course, there wasn’t actually a right one. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to be quick about this, as I’m in somewhat of a rush.”
—
Gerard sat in a darkened conference room. He was alone. The guards had been forbidden from interrupting him. A few years ago, he had begun wondering what would happen if Hugo were ever to die suddenly—either violently, or simply by accident. It was not the sort of thing Gerard’s father would ever have wondered. Hugo’s father, Mateo, had married and had three sons in quick succession. Two had been set off to boarding school while Hugo was raised as a pampered only child. There had always been a backup plan if Mateo died young. Hugo had not only never married, he arranged to have both of his brothers killed as soon as he took his father’s place.
All of which led Gerard to begin wondering. He never spoke his thoughts aloud, and he rarely even admitted them to himself. It was considered treason to speak of the death of a king, and Hugo had considered himself a king. Therefore, Gerard never even brought the subject up with Hugo. He also knew Hugo’s thoughts on the matter. Hugo believed that close servants and wives should die with their master. It wasn’t a traditional Spanish custom, simply one that appealed to his pride.
Or rampant egotism, to be more accurate.
In fact, as Gerard did not even know for certain that Hugo was dead, he was sure that he was expected to break down a door, escape from this facility, and battle his way past whatever was in the castle to get to Hugo’s side—where, if he had failed to protect his master, he would be expected to commit suicide next to the body.
But if Hugo was not yet dead, he would be soon. Gerard had seen the way these enemies swept through the Velingrad facility. They had found Hugo here, at what should have been a protected location, within days. They were going to keep coming, and eventually, they were going to win. And when Hugo was dead, the empire he was building would collapse.
Which meant there would be nothing left for Gerard. Unless he took matters into his own hands. The question, of course, was whether he dared do that.
The sound of gunfire decided for him. Gerard stood up decisively, gathered the three flash drives that held all of the research, and slipped out of the room, running for the hidden staircase that was not on any of the blueprints. He wasn’t planning to go down with the ship, and he wasn’t planning to throw himself on his sword just because a noble was dead.
His lip curled.
Hugo’s talk of nobles and commoners had been embarrassing. The truth was, nothing mattered but power. And when Gerard had that power, the world would bow at his feet just as it had been prepared to bow at Hugo’s.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“ADAM says to go around to the back entrance.” Nathan looked around the corner of a nearby building. “Apparently, the guards are optimally spread if attackers come in the main doors.”
Irina grinned. “We’ll catch them unawares.”
“Not exactly,” Nathan explained. “I said they were optimally spread for that, but these guys actually are well trained. They’re ready to shift their positions and offer one another backup as soon as they know where we are. Which means—”
“Take them down quietly before they know we’re there?” Stoyan suggested.
“Exactly.”
The three of them eased around the corner and walked purposefully down the alleyway toward the back door.
>>Nathan, I’m trying to keep the power out and keep control of the computer systems, but there were failsafes built in to disrupt any sort of attack like this. I’m not sure how long I can hold the darkness, or the auto-locks on the doors; I think some of them have already been breached. This building has better systems than the castle.<<
Nathan told ADAM, “We’ll move quickly. Thank you for the warning.” He explained to the others what ADAM had said, and added, “This means that the Wechselbalg might escape and not know who we are. Be ready.”
“We are,” Irina said. “I remember that when the cages came open at Velingrad, we thought it might be a trap. We will move quickly, and hopefully by the time they are brave enough to get out of the labs, they will see that we are killing the guards.”
“Let’s hope so,” Nathan said grimly. He reached out and eased the door open.
The back stairwell of the building was bathed in red light. Their footsteps echoed upward as they made their way quickly to the door into the building itself, and paused to listen for movement outside.
>>They are around a corner from you,<< ADAM told Nathan. >>I think they are looking the other way, but my imagery is not exact enough to tell.<<
Nathan shed his clothes and transformed. He stood still, panting slightly, as Irina and Stoyan put on his armor. Stoyan also transformed, and Irina practically held her breath as she opened the door carefully and motioned the two wolves through. She followed, easing the door shut behind her, and transformed as well.
The wolves moved carefully and quietly through the halls. Even in human form, they had enhanced senses, but in wolf form, they could hear the quiet shifting of the soldiers around the corner from them. The men were wearing bulky armor and helmets, which meant that the sound of their tiny movements and their own breath kept them from hearing the faint sound of the wolves.
Nathan looked around the corner first. The soldiers were watching double doors in the middle of the hallway, half pointing away from them and half pointing toward them.
With one paw, he motioned for Irina and Stoyan to stay where they were, and he looped around the other way and through a side passage. If they attacked from both sides, they would cut off the avenues of retreat and sow confusion. It looked like there were only about a dozen guards here, which meant that there were twenty-four unaccounted for. Nathan moved carefully through the halls, watchful for noises and the hum of any electronics.
At the other end of the hallway, he took a moment to examine the six soldiers he was going to take down. The bulletproof vests were made to protect against human weapons. They had big gaps at the necks and arms, and their legs did not have plated armor.
There were a dozen ways he could kill someone wearing this armor, and it would hardly be difficult.
He crept around the side wall, chose his first target, and padded up silently behind him.
Whether the man felt Nathan’s breath on his neck, or whether he had some sixth sense that a predator was behind him, he turned quickly.
Too quickly, and without a plan.
Nathan raked his claws sideways across the man’s throat. Blood sprayed out over him and the man went down with a gurgle before he had the chance to scream.
It was enough sound that the men in front of him turned, but it was not gunfire or a yell—and the soldiers at the other end of the corridor did not realize anything was wrong until it was too late. They were still leaning forward, squinting into the dark, some fiddling with night vision goggles, when Stoyan and Irina attacked.
Then the screaming started.
The next soldier in Nathan’s sights had been peering at the fallen body of his friend. His eyes were looking at a human height, not at the height a wolf could crouch, and his already-flawed observation was further compromised when the screaming began. He looked over his shoulder sharply, trying to see what was going on.
It was the last thing he did. Nathan came up out of the crouch and leapt, teeth snapping across the man’s throat as they skidded into a group of three soldiers behind a barricade.
They began to turn at the noise, but not fast enough.
Nathan’s jaws snapped around a man’s upper arm and he thrashed his head side to side, digging into the arteries as the motion snapped the man’s neck. The second man stood up to kick him, as if he were an unruly puppy.
He still hadn’t realized just how big a Wechselbalg was. Nathan stood up on his hind legs, paws closing in and down on the man’s shoulders and dragging him onto the ground. The last thing he saw was gleaming eyes and a long snout, and then Nathan’s claws took him in the throat.
A bolt of pain shot across Nathan’s back and he snarled. The third man had drawn his sidearm and fired. A moment later, a second shot from the last of the six men caught him in the other side.
There was a snarl and a scream as Irina took out the sixth. She pivoted and pushed off the floor, leaving the man’s dead body behind her as she jumped at Nathan’s fifth attacker. There was no reason to land softly, and so she let the momentum carry her heavily down and onto the ground, crushing his chest even as her claws sank into the spaces between armor plates.
She yipped worriedly at Nathan.
He shook himself and gave a noise halfway between a growl and yip—it hurt, but he was all right.
They all heard the sound of the door opening the next minute, and loped around the corner.
A single figure stood there.
As they watched, Peter transformed and shook out his fur. He opened his jaws in a grin.
“HOOOOPE III DIDNNNN’T MISSSSS THE FUNNNNN.”
---
When the power flickered off with a groan, Hsu felt her heart seize.
It was beginning.
She knew what she had to do, but it still took her a moment to force herself into motion. Below her, she heard the sudden yells of the guards.
They thought it was just a good opportunity to test their knowledge of the building in the dark. Hsu’s mouth curved into a smile. They might not even live long enough to realize they’d been wrong.
She didn’t care about them, though. She had a plan.
She strode out of her lab without looking back, even as the wolves whined and clawed at their cages.
She had plans for them, too.
Her steps led her quickly to a small room at the end of the corridor. She had found it a few days before, and realized that Hugo, in his paranoia, had provided her the perfect tool: a cache of weapons, meant to be accessed by the guards in case the experiments broke out, and protected only by a padlock.
She couldn’t see the numbers, and so she moved the dials one by one until she heard the faint click. In the darkness, she felt carefully for a pistol and a few spare magazines. She shoved them into her pockets, hoping that all of the pistols and magazines went together, and made her way to yet another room: the backup power.
The scientists here were also paranoid, and they, too, had given Hsu the best gift she could imagine: a private way into the system of radio waves that controlled the Wechselbalg.
She slipped the gun into her pocket as well, reached up, and hauled with all her might on the crank. It moved slowly with a terrible screech at first, and Hsu redoubled her efforts. She had to get it working before anyone found her here. She had to be able to start those signals.
—
The soldiers in the courtyard had realized within a few minutes that they could neither batter their way out the front gates, nor into the main castle. The building was old, eminently defensible from any brute force a human body could muster on its own, and its electrical system was faulty enough, having been wired into a building that wasn’t made for it, that ADAM’s control of the computer system could not be thwarted.
But the castle had been made for sieges, and that meant that there were stairs running up to the walls, and from there, into the castle itself. Soon, there were ten soldiers pounding up the steps and toward the shadow.
Which was when they saw Stephen.
And the wolf.
It was like something out a nightmare: a man in all black, with a young face but old, old eyes that gleamed blood red, and claws. A man drenched in blood. A man with no kindness in him at all, and no fear of the wolf that stood far, far taller than a wolf should be, blood on her fur and her teeth, and an unmistakable anticipation i
n her eyes.
The soldiers, to their credit, really did try.
They took shelter behind the jags of the walls that stood out to slow the flow of enemy soldiers into the castle, and they took aim and fired with weapons that were loaded and ready.
But before they had even seen him move, Stephen was among them, landing softly with a flare of his coat. He smiled pleasantly.
“You should never have agreed to guard Hugo. You should have cared why he had so many enemies. He earned them. And by standing between us and our duty, you will make us your enemies as well. This is your last chance to walk away.”
The men wavered, looking at one another.
Stephen stood quietly. He hoped they would take his offer. The bloodlust that was rising in him made him want to lash out at them, but they did not understand what had been done here, what atrocities had been committed. He had seen enough of the world, and enough centuries, to hold himself in check while he waited for their response.
Jennifer’s snarl alerted him, and Stephen turned and ducked in one fluid movement as a bullet shot by overhead.
It should have hit him in the back.
He’d given them a chance to make a choice, and they had.
They really had.
Stephen’s eyes glowed red as Jennifer leapt into the air. Her claws hooked into the fastenings of the man’s armor and she dashed his body against the parapet, against the stone walkway, against the barriers, until he was limp and her jaws were coated with blood. She looked up with a low growl and no one there needed any help understanding what it meant:
Hurt him, and I will make you pay.
To be shot in the back after offering parley was infuriating, but to watch the man you most loved in the world shot in the back after offering parley induced pure, unadulterated rage.
Jennifer wanted them dead, and she wanted them to know how badly they had misjudged before she killed them.
She watched as Stephen launched himself into the fight. He was a true warrior, poetry in motion, a marvel of simple, deadly movement.
