Chapter 62:
Wolf and Rose
Titus was on the prowl, hunting.
And being pursued in turn, hunted as well, among the cargo crates and helicopters and crumpled bodies of the mercenaries on the surface of the rig. For every step he took to track his enemy, she proffered a counter-move, both of them hunkered in shadows, trailing the other by instinct.
The initial fight hadn't gone well for him. Covered in cuts and gashes, his wounds burned where the woman's silver-coated knives pierced his hide. But these injuries weren't healing as fast as the others had and they continued to weep blood as he fled deeper into the rig's top level.
For a while he knew Rose was tracking him by his bloody paw prints, but he became wise to that, and began doubling back, leaving false prints, climbing up onto shed-like buildings or slithering down between crates.
He smelled her. She bled as well, Titus's claws left gashes in her body armor. He wondered if Rose trailed him by scent also. Slowing his breathing, hiding his rasping gasps, he sensed her approaching and scurried up onto a gangplank above.
Now injured, she hid it well with a swaggering walk, but Titus knew that one of his attacks damaged her leg; Rose masked a limp on her right side.
Or was she? Something in his predator's mind, the animal brain he always fought against, told him she might be faking it. Rose was used to fighting his kind. She understood they could hardly resist attacking a lame target.
"What pack are you from?" she said.
Did she know he was watching her? Was Rose losing her resolve? Or was she calling him out? "The Winter Walkers up in the north? The Dust Howlers? You might be a Dust. I thought you were all dead. Can't be one of the Whisperings. You're too American to be from the Whispering pack."
Titus shifted his weight and prepared to pounce from above. Without even looking at him, she turned and flung one of her silver knives. He almost dodge it, but the blade sang against his left thigh, a burning flash tore into him and boiled up more rage behind his eyes. Stay in control, Titus, stay in control . . .
He dropped down, slamming his jaw against the metal floor of the rig as his injured leg gave out from beneath him. The woman confronted him in a second, slashing with her other knife. She aimed for his eye, but missed, instead leaving a bloody line below his cheekbone.
Titus swatted. Rose danced back. She'd been faking her leg injury. Light on her feet, she continued to taunt him.
"I wonder if you're the last one," she said. "Wouldn't that be nice? To be the one who killed the last werewolf on earth. I think I've earned it."
Titus struggled to reach her, but his left leg buckled under again. She edged in closer, holding her dagger like a fencing blade.
Titus lunged forward, ignoring the pain. He caught her wrist.
Rose gazed at him with complete and utter shock.
"No," she said.
Titus pulled, ready to slam her against the nearest wall. She kicked him in the leg, a perfect shot to his wound. He howled and almost lost his grip on her wrist. Then, she lacerated his palm, not deeply, just enough to burn and bleed. Rose used his blood to wiggle free.
"Now we're simply playing games," she said.
She hopped up onto one of the nearby cargo crates, lighter than air, laughing when he limped and tried to scramble up to grab her. Titus felt like King Kong, pathetically trying to scale the Empire State building.
"What's the matter?" she said. "Can't reach?"
He shoved the cargo crate instead. The entire structure toppled, taking the woman with it. Titus leaped over the fallen crate, but Rose was gone. Her footsteps clanked against the surface of the rig. Limping, he circled around and down another row of boxes, on all fours, not caring if she could hear him. He pushed the crates over, battering them around like toys, creating chaos and destroying any cover she might find. Finally, he heard Rose let out a winded yelp when one of the crates landed on top of her. Titus tried to pounce, but couldn't find her among the spilled rations, supplies and broken cases.
Another knife whistled toward him, landing perfectly in his right shoulder. He howled, reached back, yanked the blade out his own back. He'd never felt this kind of pain before. Blood spilled hot and dark down his flanks, staining fur.
Titus hobbled toward the edge of the rig. He spied the storm in the distance, lightning continued to create pale veins in the surface of the clouds. The ocean smelled strong. Clean. Like the forest. A natural place. He peered all around, but couldn't see his attacker anywhere.
He jumped overboard.
"No you don't!" he heard Rose yell.
With his good arm, he caught the metal framework of the rigging below and, monkeylike, swung along the underbelly of the rig. Titus's injured arm screamed in pain, but he forced it to work, climbing along like a spider. Through the cracks in the walkway, he could see the huntress reach the edge of the platform and look down into the water.
"This isn't how it ends!" she yelled. "I'm not going to let you drown! You're mine!"
She paced back and forth above him, looking for the wolf to resurface in the water. His whole body shaking with pain, he climbed along the bottom of the rig's platform. Rose left her perch on the top level and he listened as she headed for one of the iron stairwells.
It was darker here, the lights more sporadic, the shadows deeper. He held on with every ounce of strength. She reached the bottom of the stairwell and began patrolling the edge of the second level, looking out into the ocean, still convinced he'd landed in the sea. The waves swelled. Great, monstrous things built up by the churning storm.
Slowly, Titus crept along the ceiling, handhold to handhold; his long back claws helped maintain balance and grip. Blood dripped onto the floor beneath him; he hoped she couldn't hear the splattering sounds.
Nearly above her, Titus took a deep breath. He prepared to drop down onto her, a predator landing the killing blow on its prey . . .
His maimed arm finally gave out and Titus fell from his hiding place, landing flat on his back onto the floor below.
The woman spun, pulled another knife from her belt — how many could she have? he wondered — and leapt on top of him. He batted her knife away from his face with his good hand but Rose still held the better position, and tried to deliver the fatal strike again.
"Why won't you just die!" she said, and raised her knife with both hands above her head.
Titus coiled both legs in front of her and kicked. His injured left leg roared with so much pain he saw blue and white dots; but both feet connected with her midsection and sent the woman flying. He wriggled to a sitting position fast enough to see her soar backward, almost land on her feet, but then hit the railing of the rig hard enough to make a ringing noise. She locked eyes with him for just a split second before toppling over.
Adrenaline kicking in, Titus staggered to his feet and raced to the rail. He hesitated, his one good arm ready to strike, and looked down, fully expecting to see the woman flip back onto the deck and stab him again.
Instead, he spied a shock of red hair drifting in the swelling waves below, struggling against the tide.
For one brief moment, he thought about jumping in to help her. She knew about his kind. Perhaps she knew more than anyone. Maybe he should save her.
But then the waves of pain began, the fiery screams of all the cuts and punctures she'd inflicted on him building up, their full impact finally hitting him as his adrenaline rush began to wane. The wolf's anger started to take over, and then something else, a pride of winning, the joy of living to fight another day.
He howled again. Only this time, it was not in pain.
Chapter 63:
Containment
They all heard it. Kate's voice on the transmitter.
The bomb was deactivated. Now was the time.
"Crap," Emily said. "Right now?"
"Emily," Jane's voice came through the receiver next. "Are you ready?"
Emily scanned the storm once again: bigger, horrifyingly immense, nightmare big.
"This is bad," Emily said.
"Now would be good, Em," Jane said. She sounded tired. "What do you need me to do."
"Um," Emily said. "I have a bad idea."
"Any ideas are good right now."
"Can you see the girl?" Emily said.
"I'm right near her," she said. "And we're not going to hurt her."
"I wasn't going to suggest that," Emily said. "You're the one who punches everything! I'm the pacifist on this team!"
"Emily from Kate," Kate said.
She sounded exhausted. Everyone sounded exhausted.
They're going to be very angry if this doesn't work, Emily thought.
"Kate from Emily, what's up?"
"What the hell are you doing up there?"
"Thinking!"
"We're doomed," Billy said.
He didn't sound exhausted. Rather, he sounded like he was smiling. "C'mon, Em. We have faith in you. Do what you gotta do. We'll be here to catch you."
Emily blinked. That was not a bad idea at all. "I need two things!"
"Hurry up," Jane said.
"Jane, can you send me a signal so I can see where you are, with the girl? Like a flare?"
"Just say when."
"And Billy, ah, just, like, be ready."
"For what?" all three of them said at the same time.
Emily started laughing.
"You'll know it when you see it. Now would be good, Jane!"
Below her, Emily saw a burst of flame like a tiny sun flickering within the storm.
Emily dove, in as much as her airy flight could really dive, and prepared her most important bubble of float ever.
Kate's message caused Jane's stomach to curl into a knot.
The bomb was gone. The girl was free. And, the storm clearly understood somehow. The whirling winds in the eye of the storm churned up, violently, darkening, now almost black as smoke, hardly resembling clouds at all.
They looked like rage.
"Doc?" Jane said, quietly, triggering a private channel to Doc's receiver. "Are you out there?"
Silence.
Jane waited, anticipating further attacks by the winged creatures she'd fought, but they never returned. Doc had stopped the attacks somehow. She had to have faith in that.
But he hadn't sent a message, hadn't let them know. Hadn't said goodbye.
"Doc? You okay?"
Nothing.
Then she heard Emily's nervous chatter over the general line, and she tried to regain her focus. She could worry about Doc later; right now, there was everyone else to take care of. She gazed at the girl in the storm, the gray, almost featureless face, the huge, luminous eyes, the alien way the lightning danced across her frame.
You'd better be worth it, Jane thought.
Emily asked for a flare.
Jane, still buzzed with the energy she'd soaked up from the sun earlier, obliged her. The flash of light illuminated the eye of the storm, creating strange shadows in the clouds. For a moment, she almost thought she saw a face there, the face of a furious girl, of elemental rage.
"Emily? Now would be good!"
She felt Emily's approach before she saw it, the thrum of the world going sideways, the way reality stopped working properly in her presence. Then she saw it, Emily's antigravity field, like the bow of a ship, parting the black clouds, pushing them away and out of existence. There was Emily, in her ridiculous costume, goggles down, that bizarre scarf fluttering in the wrong direction in the wind.
Emily's bubble crashed over them, engulfing Jane and the girl like a soap bubble.
The second, the very split second, Emily encased the girl in her antigravity field, the world changed. It was as if the storm collapsed upon itself, the clouds expanding and lashing out like hands with too many fingers, then sputtering into a mist. The rain stopped in the bat of an eye. The rumbling of distant thunder silenced.
The sun splashed on Jane's face.
Emily reached for the girl and grabbed her by the hand.
She smiled.
Then, Jane began to fall.
Billy watched Jane in freefall, a half mile away. Her cape was gone. She plummeted backward, not even attempting to fly, arms and legs loose as she dropped toward the ocean.
She got caught in Emily's weirdness field, Dude, he said.
She did.
I gotta catch her.
Go!
Billy held both arms out in front of him, trying to streamline his body, to become a rocket in flight. A few seconds later, he realized he wasn't planning this right, that he was aiming not for where she would be but where she was. He tried to course correct, to aim himself lower to match her trajectory.
I've never been good at math, Dude!
You can catch her.
I have to.
You will. Don't worry.
A swell of power hit Billy, a dizzying strength he hadn't felt before. No longer just flying, he broke the sound barrier.
You've been holding out on me, Dude.
I was waiting, Billy Case.
For what?
For you to act like a hero. Now save your friend.
Billy poured on the speed, no longer worried about predicting where she would fall but knowing, just knowing, he would be there. Closer and closer, he saw things more clearly than he ever had before, the alien energy let him feel like he could see molecules move. He fixated on her right hand, those nails painted with a faint gold polish.
I never noticed her nails before.
Another time, Billy Case.
I know.
Billy reached out. He caught her wrist. Her small, strong hand snap shut around his own. The tug of her weight against his shoulder. He grabbed her other arm. Without thinking, he pulled her into his arms.
"That's three," she said.
"Told you," he said.
Jane laughed.
"You're glowing, Billy."
"I'm what?"
"Literally glowing," she said. "You can let me go now."
Billy released her, and Jane took flight on her own again. He glanced down at his hands. He really was glowing, and not just the usual signature of blue-white light he projected when his protective shields were active. He glowed from the inside.
Dude?
It will pass.
Pass?
It is a side effect.
Side effect? I have side effects?
It will pass.
We need to discuss this later, Billy said.
"Are you coming?" Jane said.
"Where?"
"To find out what our Emily is doing with a storm in a jar."