In the Werewolf's Den (29 page)

Gus zigged and zagged. Twice, Danielle actually saw anti-armor rockets brush past the APC.

The machine gun fire cut off abruptly and Danielle realized that they were beneath the tower's firing angle. They were going to make it.

Then a warder calmly stood, pointed a shoulder-mounted missile at them, and fired.

Gus just ducked.

The missile smashed into the APC, bringing the vehicle to an abrupt stop, knocking Danielle to the floor, and plunging them into the dim red lighting of the battery backup system.

Gus recovered his chair, restarted the engine, then revved it. The vehicle spun in place. “Lost a tread,” Gus said. “We aren't going anywhere."

The weapons roar was even louder this time than the first and the APC shook under its force.

"Sorry I got you into this, guys,” Danielle told Gus and the others.

Gus started to nod, then slammed a fist against the APC's armor. “Great shot, Carl!” She hadn't really noticed, but Carl's cursing had suddenly taken a different tone. As she watched, the tower crumpled on itself.

"Sorry I'm a little late coming to the party,” Carl announced. “The worst thing is, we'll have to leave this baby here just when we got things going our way. They
really
didn't want anyone hacking that code. All sorts of traps in it."

"Let's go,” Danielle shouted. She reached for the hatch.

"Let me give those choppers something to think about first,” Carl said.

He was stroking rather than hammering the keyboard now, coaxing extra effort out of a friend rather than beating cooperation from an enemy.

The APC shuddered again as it launched a flurry of lead into the air.

"I put it on automatic,” Carl announced. “Anything that flies too close gets shot at. Might give us a bit of cover."

And it might not. Either way, it was time to leave the comfort of their vehicle and make a break for the questionable safety of the zone.

She popped the hatch, blurred, and flew up the ladder.

A couple of warders were halfheartedly popping at the APC with personal weapons. They scattered when Carl pressed a button on the keyboard and blasted the neighborhood.

"Move,” Danielle commanded.

Gus, the two other soldiers whose names she hadn't managed to learn, and finally Carl emerged from the battered APC.

"You'd better lead,” Carl said. “If three soldiers come barging into the middle of the zone, they're likely to get shot."

Danielle wasn't so sure why her reception would be any better than that for the soldiers, or why Carl got to play hero, but this wasn't the time to argue.

"Come on,” she shouted.

She blurred again, moving quickly ahead to ensure that the men weren't going to get shot at, and then letting them catch up.

Carl morphed into his wolf form and cleared the terrified remainder of the tower warders from their posts. Weapons that would have been effective against the onrushing APC were too slow and awkward against the fast-moving
Were
.

Danielle didn't see the black helicopter dropping from the sky until it was almost on top of them. It swerved to avoid the storm of computer-controlled fire coming from the now distant APC and descended.

A door opened in the chopper and a rope ladder dropped out. Danielle saw a group of camouflaged warders preparing to lower themselves down. Presumably they wanted to capture her since the gunship's huge cannons remained silent.

Carl howled and charged toward them, but he was too far away to catch them before the warders arrived. Not that he could do much when he got there. The warders would be equipped with silver bullets.

She'd picked up a handgun and fired a couple of shots into the helicopter, but the warders’ body armor protected them. Her automatic locked empty, ejecting its cartridge.

Well, damn. This wasn't the ending she'd been looking for.

"Keep running,” she told her adopted soldiers. “I'll hold them off as long as I can."

Which would be about half a second. Still, it was better than nothing.

"Bullcrap,” Gus answered. He reached into his shirt, and withdrew what looked like a flare gun, only larger and uglier.

"I always wanted to try this.” He fired directly into the open door.

The helicopter exploded into a fireball.

"Guess I really can't go back now,” he grinned, tossing the single shot weapon on the ground. “Hope you weren't kidding about the zone being open to us normals."

"Let's head there and find out,” Danielle said.

Carl had used the week she'd bought him through her hacking of the warder computers and the manhunt her escape had created. While Carl had been bringing her in, Mike the Vampire had focused zone defenses around the southern end.

Still, as Danielle crouched in a newly dug slit trench, she wondered if it mattered. The invading warders had too much armor, too many helicopters, too many trained soldiers for her to believe that Carl's impromptu militia could do anything but make them angry.

The first wave of armor met a pathetic love-tap of fire as magical creatures opened up with what few weapons they'd been able to hide from the frequent warder raids. One APC bogged down, but most simply shrugged off the low-caliber fire.

Behind them, warder infantry moved in a gray wall.

This was going to be ugly. And Danielle knew it was her own fault.

Danielle looked around for something to use as a weapon and felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Stay down, honey.” Carl's voice sounded confident despite the limited damage his troops were having.

"This looks bad."

"It'll get better later."

"Will there be a zone left by later?"

Carl nodded seriously. “I hope so."

Danielle did too. The alternative was unthinkable. Unthinkable or not, though, she couldn't imagine anything the zone could do that would stop that incoming tide of equipment and soldiers.

The magics had cleared a kill zone of a few hundred feet inside the zone barriers, but the warders swept through it with minimal damage and plunged into the narrow alleys and ramshackle buildings of the zone.

That's when the miracle happened.

Trolls reared back and heaved brownies at the APCs, the small winged creatures flying so fast that the APC machine guns couldn't track on them. The brownies dropped grenades into open hatches, attached plastique explosives to closed hatches, and then flitted off.

Badly aimed automatic-fire shots from the warder infantry bounded off the trolls and only managed to take out the few warder officers who had survived the brownie attack and then opened their hatches to see what was going on.

The elves struck next.

Using elf camouflage, they had blended into the buildings and streets. With the APC crews distracted by the brownies, they now rose and planted explosives inside the APC track mechanisms.

One after another, the fearsome APCs ground to halts, their crews bailing to the relative safety of the line of foot soldiers behind them.

Mike's motorcycle-mounted vampire legion attack had to be one of the dumbest military plans since the charge of the light brigade. But when the already demoralized warder soldiers saw those vampires coming at them, their teeth bared and ready to suck blood, they broke.

A rush of werewolves turned the retreat into a rout. The invading warders streamed back across the borders, their helicopter gunships blasting any magical who tried to follow.

"Welcome back, Danielle,” Carl told her. “We missed you."

Danielle listened to her heart pound in the still darkness of the night. Making love with Carl only got better as they learned those secret spots that heighten pleasure and as they lost their inhibitions and experimented. During the few days since the warder attack had been beaten off, they'd tried to make up for the weeks of sexual tension that Danielle's now-shed prejudices had created. She'd abandoned her own room and moved into Carl's spacious suite in a recently opened hotel—his lab was still considered too dangerous to use.

She practically purred as she draped herself across his handsome body—and stopped abruptly. The pounding didn't come from her heart—or his. “I think we're about to have company,” she told Carl.

He grabbed for his pants while Danielle hunted for a weapon. She'd only come up with a broken off chair leg when their door burst open and a tactical team of warders poured in.

"Well look what we have here.” Joe Smealy, her ex-boss, ex-mentor, and now her enemy, strode into the supposedly secret room where she and Carl had gone after the zone-wide celebration of their victory over the warders.

"The zone is no threat to you,” she told Joe. “Why don't you just go back and let us live in peace."

He shook his head slowly. “You could have been one of the best, Danielle. But you threw it away for sex with an animal. Disgusting."

"We have ten thousand armed magics within a mile,” Danielle reminded him. “If you shoot, every one will be here."

"So if you'd just accompany me back to the chopper, we can dispense with killing all those animals. At least for now."

Beside her, Carl moved slightly. She clamped a hand on his wrist. If he transformed, the warders would shoot him down no matter what the danger to themselves.

"What happens if I come with you?"

Carl stiffened. “Danielle. No."

She ignored Carl's protest. “Are you prepared to offer a bargain?"

"Aren't you the noble one, Danielle? I guess that was always your weakness. But of course I will. If you come with us, we'll leave the zone alone. Hell, we'll bring it food and medical supplies."

For an instant, she'd forgotten that Joe was a practiced liar. He'd keep whatever bargain he made exactly as long as it was comfortable for him to do so.

"We've reproduced the magic virus,” Carl said. “If you don't head back, we'll release it."

The warder commandos looked to Joe for direction, obviously intimidated by Carl's threat.

Joe slowly shook his head. “I don't think you'd do it. Maybe if we tried to wipe out the entire zone. But you wouldn't risk it to protect one rogue warder. After all, if the virus does get out, we'll nuke you back to the Paleolithic."

She looked from the man she'd admired half her life to the man she'd never heard of a few months earlier—but now loved. Both were strong leaders. Both believed that they had right on their side. But Joe was tangled up in a world of lies. Hatred had turned him rotten from the inside. That same hatred had nearly destroyed her.

"Danielle. You're under arrest for violation of the inter-species breeding ordinance 100007 and for failure to obey a lawful termination order."

A part of her wanted to obey. She'd spent her life obeying, ever since she'd broken the rules, snuck out of school, and, to her teenaged mind, been responsible for getting her mother killed. The sudden psychological insight helped her resist any effort to peacefully surrender, but it didn't do anything to resolve the problem. “Stay here, Carl. I'll go along with them.” She dropped the makeshift club she'd found.

"The hell!"

If she got Carl killed, she would never forgive herself. She stood from the bed and walked toward Joe. “You mean what you said about helping the zone, right?"

"Oh yeah. Sure."

How could she have believed him for all those years? The lie was in his face for any idiot to see. She must have been blind.

One of the warders reached out to her, plastic cuffs in his hand. From his overly controlled movement, she could tell that he was already in full blur.

Well, two could play at that game.

She blurred, sliced a knife hand to the warder's groin, and held on as she spun around.

"Shoot them both down,” Joe ordered. He fired a blast in her direction.

She had anticipated his move, though. She swept the first warder's feet from under him and then rolled forward over him toward Joe. The burst of automatic fire went high, over her head.

Their bed transformed into an explosion of feathers, foam rubber, and metal springs as two more warders opened up at where Carl had been moments before. Except that Carl had disappeared.

Good. He was safe. For now.

"You two go after the wolf. Alex, stay here and help me take care of the female."

Danielle faced the two men who separated, circled around. “Don't make this hard on yourself,” Joe urged.

His voice sounded perfectly normal to her—which had to mean that he had blurred as well.

He was good. The other warder feinted, distracting her just enough to let Joe slice in a crescent kick followed by a punch to her midsection.

Danielle reeled away fighting for breath.

She gasped in a hint of oxygen and concentrated on staying alive.

The two men teamed perfectly, attacking together, protecting one another when Danielle tried to strike back. She landed a few blows but took much worse in return.

Then, she faced Joe alone. Carl, who had somehow lost the team assigned to follow him, faced her other opponent, his slow motions belying his calm competence.

"This won't turn out well for you, Goodman,” Joe snarled at her. “The impaired can't be trusted. Ever."

He might be right, but that didn't make the magical anything but human.

"Maybe your wife didn't leave you because she was magical,” Danielle suggested. “Maybe she was just looking for anyone who wasn't you."

Joe's eyes narrowed and he rushed her, his hands grasping like a crab's claws. He was out of control and vulnerable.

Danielle sidestepped and hammered in a series of punches but Joe spun around as if he didn't even feel them. His rage added to the blur's endorphin overload and made him all but oblivious to pain.

"You're going down,” he growled. “Now,"

Danielle nodded. “If you're good enough."

Joe rushed her again. This time, though, he stopped abruptly when he'd gotten inside her guard, sucked it up as she landed three hard punches, and then grappled.

He was strong.

He grasped her close, choking her against his body armor, which deadened the kicks and punches that that she continued to throw.

"Say goodbye, Danielle,” he urged.