Nightshatter

by L. E. Horn

  Wallace yelled, his voice rising to a shriek as I wrenched the helmet off my head, gouging pieces of my skin along with it. The catheter yanked out of my arm, tubes and sensors became airborne as I swung the helmet in an arc and released, firing it into Wallace’s stomach. He crashed into the counter and curled up, moaning. The computer screen showed a menu with multiple buttons. I glanced at my guys—still rampaging and alive.

  My legs remained encased in steel. I struggled to repeat the arm exercise on them, watching as Lily dragged her father across the lab and pushed him out the door.

  “Leave him, Lily!” he protested as she whirled. “Scrub the servers—”

  “Dammit. You go. I’ll take the second bird. I have to scrub the servers and send the teams.”

  Her father nodded and dragged himself to his feet, heading down the hall. Lily kicked Wallace away from the console. She punched buttons, and the monitor came up on a barracks full of lounging wulfleng as she spoke into the microphone. “Beta team, engage enforcers approaching from the north. Protect the lab. Once clear, head for evacuation point Zircon.” Another menu, more buttons, the screen showed the familiar hall lined with cells. “Alpha team. Enforcers approaching from the north, engage. I repeat, engage through west exit.” A few mouse clicks, and the monitor showed doors opening, with wulves leaping into the aisle. Their howls, wild with madness, carried over the speaker.

  Dammit. Sam—mutants heading your way.

  Gotcha.

  Lily’s fingers flew on the keys.

  Wallace jumped forward. “No! All my research! You can’t!”

  “You are your research. Besides, everything important is uploaded. We have to sever the links or all your work will be for nothing.” She shoved him away and used the mouse to click a button. The lights throughout the building dimmed and an alarm sounded. A countdown appeared in the upper right corner of the screen as she called up another menu, and an image of Danny appeared.

  I snarled, and Lily flinched. Her fingers spasmed, sending the mouse skidding across the counter. I yanked my right leg clear of the restraints, leaving skin behind. The sight of me, almost free, galvanized Wallace, who leaped to his feet and grabbed her by the arm.

  “My Lady, we must go . . .”

  I tugged hard on my left leg, and it came partway out, before sliding back in. I reached down to grab my knee and pull.

  She cursed and made a final click before abandoning the computer, shaking Wallace loose as she followed him into the hall. A red dot now pulsed over Danny’s image. I glanced up at the screens to see Danny look upward as though he’d heard something. Nate was completely free now, hammering on his door. He’d obviously followed my lead on the shrinking appendages, as had Reese, who had slipped his manacles and stood as a human, staring at his door. Lucas and Travis were still chained but in wulf form, their clothes in shreds. I heard Lucas cough and my blood turned to ice. The gas was seeping into their cells.

  I snarled and yanked, and with a spray of blood, my left leg came free. I limped to the computer and studied the screen. There was a lot I didn’t understand. Danny’s image hovered in one corner, and below it, I spotted an option labeled “Containment.” I clicked—and another menu popped up. One button was labelled Gas. I hit it and the pulsing red dot disappeared. Below the gas button was one marked Locks and it took me to a sequence of cell numbers.

  I started pushing buttons, and shouts from the Nightshifters indicated I’d found the right controls. I whirled to view the overhead monitors, in time to see Nate enter Lucas’s room, his fists closing on the chains.

  “Danny!” I shouted over their yells of excitement. “She’s sent mutants after the enforcers.”

  “I heard,” he said, looking up into the camera. “We’re on it.”

  I cursed. This was exactly what I’d wanted to avoid. “Be careful. Tell everyone to keep your clothes on when you shift because it will identify you for the enforcers. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

  He nodded, and black fur chased across his face as he shifted to wulf.

  I turned away from the screen and swayed, as the first rush of adrenaline wore off and the drug made a grab for me. Not enough to take me down, but it removed my edge.

  Which wasn’t good—I had a lady wulf to catch.

  She’s no damned lady, snarled Sam.

  I know.

  * * *

  I lowered my wulf nose to the ground and followed the spicy scent out—or at least as far as the elevator, which required a key card or palm print to activate.

  There had to be another way out. She’d told the teams to take a west exit, and I expected the Nightshifters would follow that route. But if I was going to catch Lily before she reached the helicopter, I needed to stay with her.

  I was in full wulf form, but as I stood, I reinforced the muscles of my shoulders and back. The doors parted for me with a sparking shower of damaged electronics. I swung out onto the cables and climbed.

  The upper-level doors had extra locks and, dangling as I was over open air, it took a lot of grunting and muscle modification to open them. I found myself in a corridor with polished wood walls and a plank floor. I was in the main body of the resort. The thumping of rotors pulsed through the ground; my heart accelerated and my feet followed.

  Lily’s signature high-heeled shoes lay before me, abandoned in her haste. I tracked both her and Wallace’s scent down the hall and out the front door, just in time to see a helicopter disappear over the tree line.

  Dammit.

  But then I spotted a silhouette on the mowed grass and remembered Lily’s comment about the second bird. Two forms were climbing into the chopper still on the ground. The rotors were turning, but slowly.

  As I bounded across the grass toward them, Wallace pointed at me from his seat in the helicopter, and the rotors sped up. By the time the skids lifted off the ground, I was on them. A scream—Wallace, not Lily—as I called on my wulf, letting the anger and guilt run free. I lengthened my fingers and latched onto the skid before setting my toeclaws into the soil and giving a mighty heave. My shoulder muscles popped as they took the load and I pumped extra power to them. My toes ached and tore through the turf. I reinforced the long length of my spine and twisted.

  If it had been the Black Hawk, I wouldn’t have stood a chance. But this was a much smaller machine, so my weight on the skid was giving the pilot trouble. When I braced, sank my lengthened toeclaws deeper into the subsoil and yanked, the helicopter spun around me. The entire aircraft tilted, forcing me to duck, and then the rotors slammed into the soil and all hell broke loose.

  The machine bucked like a giant demented horse, the movement breaking off my toeclaws and throwing me a good twenty feet. I had a heart-stopping glimpse of spinning, shattering rotors as I flew by, before I hit hard and rolled many times, finally coming to a rest against a boulder.

  The world spun, but I tottered to all fours, my toes screaming as though every one was broken. Considering I’d had a helicopter wrench off my claws, they likely were. The chopper lay in a crumpled heap as forms pulled themselves from the wreckage—Wallace, clutching at Lily, who shook him off. Pale fur glinted in the light of the crescent moon.

  In a flutter of torn designer clothing, Lily shifted to a wulf so blonde it appeared silver. I took one agonizing step on my shattered toes and then another. I transferred my weight to my arms, while I reorganized my toe bones. I used the unbroken bones to support the shattered ones, fusing them together by wrapping them in ligaments and tendon. My mind dredged up an image—the lower leg of a horse, an animal whose toes had receded over time until it ran on the middle toenail. I selected an unbroken toe on each foot and expanded it, terminating it in a long, strong claw. A tweak of tendons to strengthen and support, and I had a functioning foot once again.

  I didn’t dare stop as I made the changes but continued to fling myself forward. The moment I completed the single claw, it thrust into the ground and drove me onward in pursuit of the silvery tail.
<
br />   I’d taken three strides when something slammed into me from the side. I had forgotten Wallace, who had somehow dredged up enough courage to run interference for his lady. I rolled with the blow, my half-human hand tightening around his throat. By the time I spun upright he squirmed beneath me, a small brown terrified wulf.

  I snarled into his face as the forest erupted into war.

  Images spun through my brain as the wulfleng of Beta and Alpha teams slammed headlong into the oncoming wave of enforcers, and it was instant mayhem. Howls and screams and the crack of gunfire echoed through the trees. I caught a heart-stopping impression of slashing claws and snapping teeth, then the signal from Sam dissolved into a whirling maelstrom of fur.

  Sam!

  Get her, Liam!

  The contact vaporized. I put my frustration and fear into my coiled fist and hit Wallace, hearing the snap of his jawbone as his head slammed into the dirt. I dropped his limp form and looked up for Lily.

  I caught the barest glimpse of silver blur vanishing into the forest, running south, away from the battle. All my instincts screamed to go to Sam, but if I didn’t catch Lily, everything we worked for would be useless.

  So I dropped my nose to the ground and launched myself forward.

  The perfume she wore wove throughout her natural scent like a beacon. My feet still stabbed needles at me with every step, but the merged bones functioned. It slowed the thrust of my running stride, so I strengthened my arms and took to the trees. The toeclaw provided me a means to hook into the bark, pushing me thirty to forty feet through the air with each leap, where my powerful arms grabbed branches to swing me to the next trunk.

  To follow her scent, I had to drop low to the ground every other leap, and suck the air through my nose and mouth. The spice was strong enough that I tasted it on the tip of my tongue. It led me to a trail wide enough for an ATV. Within seconds, I caught a flash of silver through the forest.

  My jaws opened, anticipating the mouthful of spice and silver fur, when the world erupted with thunder and lightning. Startled, I missed my branch and dropped to the ground, landing with a thump on the dirt even as my shocked brain put the pieces together.

  The other helicopter had returned to fire on me.

  I leaped for the trees in time to see the helicopter pitch upward, roll, and bank hard toward me. Smaller than a Black Hawk, it was the same model as the one I’d ditched in the clearing. A form leaned out with the long barrel of a gun swinging my way.

  The semiautomatic rained bark down on me as I twisted and dove into the needles. I snarled in frustration. Although the bush was too dense for the aircraft to land, any wulf could take to the trees and from there, leap to the helicopter. Be damned if after all this, I would let her get away.

  Crouched on my branch, my mind raced as the chopper swung around for another go. I dug in my toeclaws, and reached above, lengthening my fingers so I could latch onto a limb about six inches thick. I pushed on it, then pulled, back and forth. The living wood fought me, the branch creaking in protest. I focused and braced into the swaying motion, making the most of my limited leverage. Twice more and there was a sharp cracking sound, and with the next push, it snapped off.

  The sudden release almost sent me to the ground. I balanced the weight, tucked the broken end between my jaws, and climbed.

  I gagged on tree sap, and the needles snagged my fur as I ascended as far as the trunk would take me. The helicopter roared by twice, spraying bullets. Wood exploded, peppering me with shrapnel. By the time I found my position, I bled from a multitude of small cuts and a bullet had plowed a furrow along my ribs. I waited until the chopper made another pass, then dug the claws of my sore, modified toes into the bark and braced my back against the tree’s crown. Both hands gripped the end of the branch.

  Even in the darkness, the pilot had to see me perched near the treetop. The chopper’s thunder echoed as it came at me, dropping lower than before, and I waited. I ducked my head as the bullets ricocheted off the thin trunk I hid behind. It passed by, and I whipped my body around, dragging the branch with me like some giant hammer throw. I put everything I had into the momentum, and at the full extent of my rotation, I let my prickly missile fly.

  The helicopter moved away, but it still hugged the treetops. I had a moment’s appreciation for the pilot’s skill before the branch took out the tail rotor. The entire machine corkscrewed, hitting the trees with an arc of severed branches and flying bits of metal. My trunk shook as the helicopter crashed to the ground. Flames lit the night sky.

  As I slid my way to the ground, I realized a part of me waited for my internal critic, and my heart squeezed painfully when no such commentary came. Reaching for her, I received only a dim impression of the savage clash of tooth and claw, and a howl filled with madness echoed through me.

  I bared my teeth and began to run. I must find the ice-eyed princess before I could save my Sam.

  26

  A long, pain-filled shriek drowned the more distant sounds of fighting. Lily. When I burst through a mess of broken branches, I saw the helicopter had crashed into a small clearing, burning in a heap of twisted metal. Transfixed by the sight, I became aware of bodies lying around the machine.

  I frowned and sniffed. The smell of death permeated the clearing. And rot. The bodies weren’t fresh. The helicopter had crashed into a mass burial site. I trotted as close as I dared, sniffing around the pit. I stopped at the edge and stared down at monsters.

  Bodies—some wulf, some human—most caught somewhere in between. One face, human with giant fangs, had twisted in pain as it died. Shock fizzed through me. I knew that face.

  It was the man who walked when Ace said he could. He had become a guinea pig for whatever cruel experiments Lily saw fit to order. The bitter irony was that if I’d walked with them, I would have been brought straight to the people I needed to find.

  But then some—maybe most—of the Nightshifters would be dead.

  I turned away to search for the monster at the heart of all this pain. My mind still fogged with horror, I raised my nose to search for spice above all the death.

  She nailed me from behind, a spinning fury of savage claws and snapping teeth. Her foreleg reached around to slice me wide open across the chest before I spun, pushed her over backward, and pinned her to the soil.

  Lily was like a beast possessed, raving, with foam flying from her clacking jaws. Her claws ripped hunks from my flesh, and it was all I could do to hold her against the soft earth, using my greater weight to keep her there.

  “Basturd!” she shrieked. “Yu killed my fathur!”

  Any guilt I might have experienced was suffocated by the smell of death from the men she’d so callously consigned to torture.

  Her claws caught me across the cheek, and I’d had enough. I picked her up by the throat and slammed her back to the earth, knocking the wind out of her.

  “Lie still,” I rumbled at her.

  Her eyes widened and she squirmed to get away. I repeated the lift and slam, and this time I lowered my head until I breathed across her face.

  “Yield.”

  With a final shudder, she lay still. Lily’s face took on a glazed expression, and as though against her will, she shifted her head beneath my hand. Baring the throat.

  Tears pooled at the corners of her eyes. “How—whut huv yu dun?”

  I didn’t answer her. When I removed my hand, she lay limp.

  “Rise,” I commanded, and she hauled herself onto shaking legs. She tried to look at me, but the wulf in her wouldn’t permit it, keeping her head low.

  I snapped at her hindquarters, driving her as fast as her legs could carry her back toward the resort and the sounds of fighting that had diminished to almost nothing. My heart ached for those that lay dead or dying, for the faces I might never see again.

  Liam? Faint, dripping with exhaustion and pain.

  Oh, God, Sam! My relief almost took the legs right out from under me. Lily glanced back over her shoulder, and
I nipped her rump, making her stumble but carry on.

  We need you, here. We have a situation.

  My heart froze and then resumed beating at twice the normal rate.

  Coming. Bringing ice princess.

  Sam’s snarl of hate vibrated through me. Fueled by adrenaline, I snapped at Lily to run faster.

  Good. She can answer for what she’s done. I caught a swift impression of a group huddled with their backs to the resort’s north wall. A small cluster of large wulves, clad in scraps of cloth.

  Hurry.

  The desperation in her mindvoice lent wings to my feet.

  My legs trembled with exhaustion, but I pushed for more speed, making Lily stumble in frantic haste to avoid my teeth. The fur of her hindquarters ran red with blood by the time we burst from the forest to see the cluster of forms against the walls of the resort.

  The first thing I saw was Wallace, strapped to a tree and blubbering to himself in fear-induced madness. His face was swollen along one side where I’d cracked his jaw. As I emerged from the bush, the clothed man next to him raised his gun to point it at me. A big hand knocked the muzzle skyward, and I recognized Malcolm, in human form. His naked body was streaked with blood.

  “Liam?” he asked. “Is that you? God, you look just like them . . .”

  I deliberately tripped Lily so that the exhausted wulfan rolled in a heap at his feet.

  “She’s ull yurs,” I roared.

  Then I growled and bounded away, heading for Sam.

  * * *

  Sam stood as a wulf with her back to the resort wall, her head and tail high, and lips peeled back from long, pointed teeth. On each side of her stood Chris and Garrett, and behind them were the Nightshifters.

  They faced down the entire group of wulfan enforcers, at least those that still lived. I slowed as I approached, heeding the guns that swiveled to point my way. Jason shouted something, and the crowd parted to let me through. I walked on all fours straight up to Sam.