Authors: Carrie Vaughn
“We have to keep them in the basement. We can’t let them get out.” We’d probably have to shoot them, which made me angry. And hopeless. I turned to Tyler. “Can you go tell Stafford that Walters is here and Vanderman’s out?”
“Kitty, you should just go upstairs and wait for him. You can explain it all when he gets here,” Ben said.
“I don’t think Stafford would even listen to me. He’ll listen to Tyler.”
“He won’t have a choice. Would you please just go upstairs?”
Ben wanted me out of here—he didn’t want me to face down Walters and Vanderman. We looked at each other, and I saw so many unspoken words. So much fierce protectiveness. I had a sudden urge to throw myself at him and wrap all my limbs around him. My hands itched from wanting to grab him.
“Ben, you should go,” Tyler said. “Stafford will listen to you.”
“Like hell. I’m not leaving Kitty here,” Ben said.
“Kitty has the best chance of talking them down,” he said. “And if she can’t talk them down, there’s me. So you have to go talk to Stafford.”
“I hate to say it, but we’re way past talking,” I said. It wasn’t just Vanderman who’d be up on murder charges now.
“You have to try,” Tyler said. “It can’t be too late.”
He wasn’t worried about Walters or Vanderman; he was worried about himself. He had to believe it was possible for them to come back from that dark place. Because then it would be possible for Tyler.
Ben said, “I’m not leaving you.”
I grabbed hold of his collar and pulled him to me. He cupped my face in his hands. Our kiss tasted hot and anxious after all the cold and stress of the day. It melted me, just a little. Enough to keep going until we cleaned up this mess.
“I’ll be okay,” I said, a statement made mostly on faith .
Ben nodded, but his frown wracked his whole face. “There’s got to be a phone in one of these offices. Shout if you hit trouble.”
“Hell, yeah,” I said.
Ben trotted back down the hallway and ducked into the first unlocked office. I almost yelled at him to close and lock the door behind him—but he did so without me having to tell him. Couldn’t have anyone sneaking up on him.
Tyler and I continued, toward Vanderman’s cell, looking for the rogues.
“Where else could they go?” I asked in a whisper.
“There’s the elevator.”
The elevator was at the other end of the hallway, around the next corner. “They wouldn’t take the elevator, would they?”
Werewolves on the edge of wild, on the hunt, would follow the trails of human scent. Their animal sides at the fore, they might not think of taking an elevator—the scent trail would be cut off. And even if they did think of it, they wouldn’t want to get trapped in a tiny steel box. At least, I wouldn’t.
“I don’t know,” he said. “If they know the stairs are cut off because we’re here—yeah, they might.”
“So we should go lock the elevator.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It all seems so futile.”
“Don’t say that. Remember, we’re here to save Walters.”
We’re here to save you.
He shook his head. “Captain Gordon would have hated this. Hated what we’ve all turned into. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“I’m sure he was a very nice guy, but right now I’m royally pissed off at him.”
Tyler actually chuckled.
A crash rattled the hallway behind us, like a door breaking—I thought it was behind us, but these hallways looped back on each other, and with all the tile, they echoed. It might have come from the office where Ben had locked himself—or it might have come from around the next corner. Tyler and I were looking in opposite directions.
“That’s gotta be Van,” Tyler said.
“And Walters, right?” I said. “They wouldn’t have separated, would they?”
Or maybe they would. They were a wolf pack on the hunt—hunting us, the rival pack in their territory. They’d be moving to flank us.
“Go,” I said, and Tyler ran, back to where we’d left Ben.
So, either we’d split them up, or they’d split us up. We wouldn’t know which until it was all finished and we figured out who won. Except no one was going to win this thing.
Another crash sounded, and this time I was pretty sure it had come from the next hallway, where the elevator was. Maybe I could shut down the elevator. I stepped carefully, a Wolf creeping in this mad human forest—and smelled werewolves all around me, hunting, spilling blood. I had to listen, watch, smell, feel.
I turned the corner to find Vanderman throwing himself at a locked door. He was naked, as if he’d just woken up from shifting back from wolf and hadn’t bothered with clothing. He looked primal, his muscles flexing as he shouldered into the door, rattling it in its frame. Teeth bared, snarling, he grabbed the handle and wrestled with it, twisting, wrenching, looking for all the world like a dog with a chew toy.
The dead bolt cracked the frame; the door wrenched out of place. On the other side, two women
screamed. Their footfalls pattered as they scrambled away from the door, and two sets of heartbeats raced. Vanderman doubled his efforts to break in.
“No!” I shouted and ran at him. I didn’t think about it. If I had, I would have run the other way. Of course, then he would have chased me. Wolves love nothing better than chasing after prey. This way maybe I had a fighting chance.
He jumped away from the door and faced me down. His eyes lit. Tendons and muscles stood out as he sprang at me with hands outstretched. Claws grew—he showed a sheen of fur. I scurried, trying to change direction midstride. Dodging didn’t help. He tackled me, smashing me against the floor shoulder first. It hurt.
Kicking, clawing, I tried to get out from under him. My breath came out in a whine. I had to get off my back or he would claw into my belly, rip into my throat. An arm free, I swiped at him, catching his face, ripping my nails across his cheek. I didn’t have claws yet. In a few more seconds, I would, like him.
He put his knee into my belly, pinning me. He was so damn heavy. But I didn’t stop struggling. Pain throbbed in my shoulder; I could feel ribs popping under his weight. Panic tightened my lungs.
“This is all your fault,” he growled into my face. His breath was foul, tainted with old meat. “You come into my territory, you steal my pack. I’ll murder you, I’ll—”
“Van, no!” Walters’s voice echoed. He appeared at the other end of the corridor, behind Vanderman. Also naked, glaring, wild—as much wolf as human. He might have been looking for Tyler, where the hallway turned back around to the elevators. And where was Tyler?
Walters continued, pleading. “She’s helping us, she’s on our side. I came to get you so she could help you, too.” The submissiveness of his posture was painful to watch. He was groveling, his back curled, his limbs bent, almost on all fours, only daring to take quick glances at Vanderman out of the corner of his eye. If he’d had a tail, it would have been between his legs and tight against his belly. In another moment he’d be on the floor, his stomach to the ceiling.
When Vanderman faltered, I snarled and kicked, hitting his unprotected crotch. He took it with little more than a grunt. Raking claws down his sides, across his ribs, I got him to flinch. I rolled to my belly and pulled myself away—his knee went into my back. If I shifted, I could get out of this . . . I tried to steady my breathing, tried to keep it together. I heaved, growling, and rolled away. Jumping into a crouch, I turned to face them. Wolf stared out of my eyes.
Vanderman stared right back. Pure hate, pure challenge passed between us. It was okay, I could take it. Sure, he was big and scary. But the more I looked at him, the angrier I got. He’d ruined things for the rest of his squad. They’d all be alive now if
he’d been able to keep it together. I could blame him for the whole terrible sequence of events, since Captain Gordon wasn’t around to blame.
I tried to talk him down, as I told Tyler I would. Even though breathing hurt. “Sergeant Vanderman. You need to get ahold of yourself. If you expect to get out of this alive, stand down. In a minute this place is going to be filled with soldiers carrying rifles with silver bullets. They will shoot you. Please.”
“Van, come on,” Walters continued, backing me. His body acted on its own to give every submissive signal it could, at once. He fell to the floor, exposing his neck and belly even more, putting himself as low as he possibly could. He was trying to get the sergeant to stop and listen, to feel some compassion for this pathetic creature. To evoke some of an alpha werewolf’s instincts to protect the weaker members of his pack. “I came back for you—like we all promised. We’re in this together. We’ll get out. We’ll get away from here. They can’t stop us.”
Vanderman wasn’t listening to anyone anymore. The skin on his face furrowed as his nose wrinkled; his grimacing lips showed all his teeth. The expression was lupine. He was a very angry wolf. He stepped toward me, head leading, arms bent. On my hands and knees, I stepped backward. I just had to hold out until Ben or Tyler got here.
Walters whined. He’d tried to stop him the best way he knew, but Vanderman was too far gone to
respond to the signals. So Walters attacked him. To protect me.
The smaller soldier jumped at Vanderman, and momentum shoved him over. In his next movement, Vanderman rolled Walters to the floor, pressing him down. The sounds they made weren’t human. Walters barely struggled, as if he knew this was how it would turn out, as if he believed he didn’t have a chance. Vanderman dived at Walters’s throat, teeth bared, releasing a guttural snarl. Hands with claws gouged into Walters’s belly. Blood spilled. Vanderman—partially shifted now, his face lengthening to contain wide, sharp teeth, capable of holding and ripping—clamped his jaw over the other’s throat and shook, tore, mangled, until red covered his face, chest, shoulders. Walters squealed, half human scream, half animal shriek of pain. He kicked, bucked, and tore at Vanderman with his own claws. But Vanderman had all the leverage—his claws were buried under Walters’s rib cage, digging for his heart.
I stayed out of the way, holding my aching stomach, favoring my hurt shoulder. Wolf knew better than to draw attention. Just stay calm, out of the way. I crouched low by the wall, one hand resting on the floor. But inside, I was crying out. Walters wasn’t moving anymore.
Tyler came up behind me. I glanced at him over my shoulder. He wasn’t looking at me, but at the
scene of slaughter ahead. His lips were parted, his teeth bared, a sign of aggression. But the expression in his eyes was anguish.
He settled into a crouch and aimed Ben’s semiautomatic, bracing in his left hand and sighting down the barrel. With no fanfare, he fired three shots. All three struck Vanderman in the chest and head. Vanderman didn’t make a sound. He twitched and fell, rolling off Walters’s body. Then he lay still.
I turned to Tyler. “I tried talking to him. I tried.”
Grief furrowed his expression, his whole face taut to prevent tears from falling. His breath was coming in gasps, near to hyperventilating.
Then he squeezed shut his eyes and turned the gun to his ear.
“No!” I shouted. I flinched back rather than trying to go for the gun, to wrestle with that massive, professional arm. I didn’t want to touch it and have it go off accidentally, doing as much damage as it would have otherwise. All I could do was beg. “No, Tyler. Please don’t. Please.”
He didn’t put the gun down. But he didn’t fire. “I don’t want to turn out like him,” he said, his voice a whisper. “Like either one of them. I’m too dangerous to be around you. Around anyone. I’m too dangerous to be.”
“No, you’re not like them, you’ve already come so much farther. Look at you—after all this you’re still you. You’re okay, you’re going to be okay.”
The hand holding the gun wavered, and my heart swelled.
“Please put the gun down,” I said. “Don’t waste all this work I’ve been doing with you. I need to save at least one of you.”
Slowly, the arm dropped. The gun rested on the tile floor at his side. Carefully, I put my hand on it and pulled it away from his limp fingers, sliding it to the other side of my body.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.”
I slid my hand up his arm, squeezed his shoulder, and pressed my face to his neck as I hugged him. With deep breaths I took in his scent, and with the language of wolves I tried to comfort him as he slumped into my embrace.
My ribs hurt with every gasp of breath. I didn’t know how damaged I was, but I trusted that my werewolf healing would take care of me. My Wolf was still poised to fight; she wouldn’t retreat. But she wasn’t on the edge of bursting free anymore. I tried to concentrate on comforting Tyler, letting my own pain fade by ignoring it.
I heard noises. The women behind the door ahead of us were still there. I could smell their fear, their sweat. Around the other corner, a door smashed opened and several sets of boots clomped on the tile, running toward us.
Tyler immediately pulled away from me and straightened. His gaze had turned grim, but determined.
“Don’t tell him,” he said. “Don’t tell Stafford I was going to . . .”
“But don’t you think you can get some help, some counseling—”
Shaking his head, he cut me off. “I do anything like that, it’s on my own. I don’t want to give him any excuse to lock me up.” Tyler drew a deep breath, gathering himself to get through the next few minutes. Then the few after that. And so on.