Dark Creations: Dark Ending (Part 6) (3 page)

He brought a trembling hand to his mouth and slipped two fingers between his teeth then whistled for Yoshi.  Several moments later, Yoshi’s ATV idled beside his.  While he waited, his eyes had rested on the fallen men.  He kept reminding himself that they were collateral damage, nothing more.  They’d been designed to hunt human beings, to hunt him, too.  They’d stood between him and Melissa, along with countless other members just like them.

That thought rattled around in his brain and was only interrupted when Yoshi spoke.

“I should have come with you,” he said solemnly as his eyes scanned the dead men splayed on the ground.  “They were heavily armed.  You could have been killed.”

Yoshi was right.  He could have been killed before a word had ever been spoken.  He’d had the barrel of a gun practically pressed to his cheek.  But that did not matter, had not mattered.  He would not have even considered offering up Yoshi as a possible casualty in his quest to save Melissa, in his war against Lord Franklin Terzini. 

“They would have known you weren’t one of them before we even got close,” he said to Yoshi.  “I didn’t want to get you killed.”

“Why?  Aren’t there any Asian members in the new race?” Yoshi asked and arched a brow.  Gabriel shook his head and Yoshi added, “This Lord Terzini is a racist prick.”

Ordinarily, Gabriel would have laughed, but he could not find anything funny at the moment.  Yoshi’s face puckered with concern and he apologized.

“Sorry, man.  I shouldn’t be joking now, not with Melissa gone,” he said and lowered his eyes for a second.  When he lifted them, he looked directly into Gabriel’s eyes and said with certainty, “She is alive.  I can feel it.  We
will
bring her back with us.”

Gabriel did not respond to Yoshi’s bold optimism.  He would not dare allow himself hope of that magnitude.  Hope was a dangerous and futile emotion where Hunters and Terzini were concerned, especially since they were marching into the dark heart of danger.  The best possible outcome he would allow himself to expect was that he would take out as many members as he could once he found her body and, at the very least, ensure his friend’s safety.  He wished Yoshi would go back, wished he would leave and return to Jack’s camp and Alexandra.  But Yoshi had made plain his intention to stay with Gabriel, no matter what.  His loyalty all but guaranteed his fate, a thought that made Gabriel shutter with regret. 

“Thanks for coming,” Gabriel said in a voice thick with emotion.  “I wish you’d go and be with Alex and I think you’re a damn fool for staying, but thanks.”

“Now that I’m with Alex, I am used to getting insulted and thanked simultaneously, so I am choosing to ignore the
fool
part of that sentence,” Yoshi said and smiled wisely.  “You’re welcome.  And Melissa is my friend, too.  This is not just about you.”

Yoshi’s words hung heavily and Gabriel allowed their gravity to remain before saying, “You need to take one of their uniforms and put it on.  We need to hide the ATVs and take their motorcycles.  Have you ever ridden one?”

“You saw the rusted piece of crap I had back in Motuo County.  I used to ride that once in a while, but it wasn’t anything like these,” Yoshi answered and gestured to the powerful motorcycles before him.  He scratched his head then shook it thoughtfully.  “I don’t know if I could ride one of these,” he added. “I guess I’ll have to find out and learn really fast, won’t I?”

“The helmet will do double duty then,” he shook his head.  “Your head will be safe should you crash and, with it on, we should be able to move through town unnoticed, I hope.”

“Yeah, unnoticed,
right
.  I’m sure I’ll blend.  There are lots of members who are five-five,” he commented and referred to his height. 

“Well, we’ll have to drive by fast,” he replied and heard the smallest laugh escape him.  He caught himself and stopped immediately.  The sound, his happiness, no matter how fleeting, betrayed Melissa.

Yoshi laughed, too, but stopped as soon as Gabriel stopped.

“We need to hurry.  I’ll grab their phones while you get dressed,” he said and climbed from the ATV and went to the utility belt of the man closest to him.  He relieved both men of their cellular phones, knowing fully that theirs would work.  Any calls he’d attempted on his own phone had been blocked so he knew his
was useless.  Lord Terzini was, if nothing else, thorough in his effort to seize a town.  All bases had been covered.  Blocking cell-phone signals was another meticulous step along the way. 

When Yoshi had finally dressed and their vehicles had been stashed in the woods beyond the town line, they started their motorcycles and headed toward the center of town.

Residential streets that were vaguely familiar to Gabriel rushed past him as he drove.  He remembered running as he held Jackie, racing against time and the looming threat of Hunters returning to claim their meals.  It all seemed so long ago, as though it had happened a lifetime ago, when in reality, it had been only hours. 

When a street sign that read Dearborn Boulevard flashed before him, it brought with it a surge of feelings that nearly knocked the wind from him.  Jackie, Hailey and Kyle had lived on Dearborn Boulevard.  He had left Melissa to save them, had left her alone and vulnerable.  Melissa.  Everything, his every thought, led back to Melissa. 

His heart felt as if it had ceased beating, as if the world had ceased moving along with it and time had stood still as he turned onto Main Street.  Everything was unchanged, at first glance, at least.  He saw the same sight he’d seen hours earlier, one he would not soon forget.  Restaurants with tables and chairs set up outside invitingly stood unoccupied.  A movie theater, quaint shops and boutiques, and markets of every kind lined the road as well and all were abandoned.  All were eerie reminders of a town that had been overtaken, its residents murdered.  Everywhere he looked, signs of death loomed like spectral reminders.  Downtown Taft was a ghost town.  The only thing that had changed since he’d seen it earlier was a deluge of dark shapes: members.  And they had gathered farther down the road. 

Gabriel gestured to Yoshi and both of them slowed their bikes considerably.  As far as Gabriel could tell, they needed to veer off of Main Street and avoid the rally.  It looked as though hundreds of members had assembled; a tide of black flooding the roadway.  He and Yoshi would never survive the surge. 

With that threat in his mind, he swerved right off of Main Street and onto a secondary street he hoped ran parallel to it.  At the end of the small street, he turned left and slowed only when the roar of a crowd rumbled over the drone of the motorcycle engine. 

Yoshi stopped close to a squat brownstone and cut his engine and Gabriel followed suit.  He climbed from his bike and took a few tentative steps toward the growling voice of one member who spoke through a megaphone.  He stayed close to the building, careful to hug its structure and avoid the creepy glow of sodium vapor lights that shined from streetlamps along the lane.  He thought he’d need to remove his helmet to hear what was being said, but realized quickly that neither he nor Yoshi would need to.  The person with the megaphone was nearly shouting as he addressed the group.

He peeked from the concealment of the building to get a better look at the speaker and his audience and his eyes widened in shock when he did.  He saw that his original estimate that held the group to roughly two hundred members was way off.  Thousands had inundated the town square, spilling and overflowing down side streets. 

“Group A, B, and C, you will head to the farm on the other side of the lake and kill everyone there.  The loss of our Hunters must not go unanswered.”

Yoshi tapped Gabriel’s shoulder and Gabriel spun to face him.  Even through his helmet, Gabriel could see that Yoshi’s usually serene face had contorted into a mask of fear.

“Okay, I need all groups who will storm the farm to gather here,” the voice boomed over the megaphone and snapped their attention toward it. 

They both watched in horror as more than two hundred bodies collected, armed with guns at both hips and with rifles draped over their shoulders. 

“
Oh my God,” Yoshi muttered.

“The rest of you will be sent to Eldon to claim the last town Lord Terzini has charged us with securing,” the amplified voice concluded. 

Gabriel turned from the gathering, sickened.  Not only had he left Melissa, thereby inviting her capture, he had also invited the death warrant of the rest of his friends.  He clutched his helmeted head in both hands and willed his swirling brain to be still.

“Gabriel,” Yoshi’s voice steadied him.  “We need to get out of her
e,
now,
without anyone noticing us.  We need to warn the others.”

“As soon as we’re out of sight, we have to try their phones,” Gabriel said as his mind fought to balance itself. 

“Let’s go,” Yoshi urged him.

Gabriel and Yoshi climbed back on their bikes and backtracked along the path they’d just taken.  He did not know where they would go once their friends had been warned, what would become of them.  He prayed for their safety and knew he ought to be there fighting along with them, protecting them from the harm headed their way.  But there was a time to fight and a time to run.  If Jack and the others wanted to survive, they would have to run.  And he would fight until he found Melissa.

Chapter 3

Melissa’s life had flashed before her eyes several times in the last two hours.  The visions she’d seen had not consisted of glowing images in muted colors with edges softened by hi-tech camera lenses.  It had not been at all similar to the way television or movies portrayed the experience.  Hers had been tangled in the golden mane of a monstrous fiend, flickering and flying in a flurry of knotted fur.  And it had been terrifying.

Her
entire body ached and smarted from being carried in the massive maw of the bloodthirsty beast.  Angry red welts with puncture wounds at their center covered her torso and her T shirt was soaked in blood and saliva.  She did not know to whom the blood belonged, whether it was hers or belonged to the last person the Hunter had eaten, and frankly, she did not care.  All she cared about was surviving. 

Despite living through the nightmarish trip from Jack’s camp to wherever the hell
she was now, Melissa felt anything but alive.  In fact, she felt half-dead and more frightened than she’d ever felt in her entire life. 

She’d witnessed many horrific scenes since meeting Gabriel
years earlier, had endured circumstances that surpassed what she believed her mind capable of withstanding before it fractured irrevocably.  But all that had changed.  All of that had happened before she’d been captured by a monster. 

T
he last two hours of her life had been the worst she’d lived through.  The pain she’d experienced, the fear, both had been unbearable.  Both had threatened to break her.  She still did not know whether Gabriel was safe, whether he’d returned to the camp with Amber and the family he’d gone to rescue.  How could she know?  She’d been trapped in the mouth of a monster and carried like fallen prey to a foreign location she guessed was a couple of hours from where she’d been abducted. 

Her sense of time had faltered, facts had blurred, and reality seemed to swell and recede like a tide, tugging her in
, then setting her adrift in a blackened sea of horror.  She knew there had been an explosion in the town of Taft, and that shortly after the explosion, Jack’s camp had come under attack by a legion of creatures so vile, so bloodthirsty they could have easily been mistaken for a fleet of demons that had fled the pits of hell.  And while Jack and his men had fought bravely and thought they’d killed all of them, one had lived.  He had been her captor.  He’d taken her and tore off into the night.

Though the beast had raced, the trip seemed to have lasted forever. 
She’d passed out intermittently as he’d galloped through woodlands, scaling rocks and brush as he skirted the lake.  Each time he’d leaped or lunged to avoid an obstacle, his teeth had dug deeper into her flesh.  The pain from it, along with the stabbing pain produced near her spine as she was jarred and jerked about like a ragdoll, had made her cry out and nearly vomit.  Losing consciousness off and on had been a merciful godsend, for when consciousness returned to her, her thoughts had swirled, ebbing and flowing around ghoulish, nightmarish images; her new reality.  

That nightmarish reality worsened tenfold when t
he beast had stopped unexpectedly during their journey.  He had dropped her to the rocky ground and rolled her with his muzzle back and forth, as if he were toying with her, playing with his food.  He’d licked her bleeding wounds, quivering and shaking violently, and hovered over her, his enormous jaw poised to clamp down.  His eyes had held no mercy, just hunger, and she’d been certain in that moment that he’d kill her, that she would never see another human being’s face again.

Melissa
saw faces now, though she was not sure whether they could ever be considered human by any definition.  She knew they were tools, instruments of murder, despite looking human enough.  They were made of flesh and bone, breathed air and walked and talked like every other human being.  To anyone else, they looked like a group of exceptionally attractive men dressed identically who just so happened to be heavily armed henchmen of humanity’s apocalypse.