No Such Thing As Werewolves (41 page)

Chapter 57- On the Hunt

Liz leapt silently atop a boulder on the hillside behind Trevor’s house, drawing shadow around her like one might clutch a jacket on a cold night. She studied the two men in their bulky midnight armor as they whirred and clicked their way toward the yard. They looked like something out of a Terminator movie, scent and heartbeat both muffled by the metallic shells. Each bore a rifle she didn’t want to be on the receiving end of, but if she played this right, they’d never see her until it was too late.
 

Yes, Ka-Ken. Strike and melt into the shadows. Such has always been the way of the wolf.

The urgent staccato of automatic weapons fire echoed through the valley, no doubt terrifying Trevor’s distant neighbors. Instead of lights going on, though, the few she could see were switching off. People didn’t want to be involved in violence of this scale. She did, however, spy a few people peeking through windows. One more way her new senses could prove useful.
 

Focus, Ka-Ken. There is death to attend to. Mother’s will, your pack will be safe. The male is strong, as is your blood kin. They must hold until we can assist them. Kill these two; then go.

“So you aren’t going to try making me kill them anymore?” Liz asked, low and under her breath. Did she even need to speak? This thing could hear her thoughts.

No longer, Ka-Ken. You have made your will known. I will acquiesce, though if the energy sickness comes again, your kin will not be safe.

“I’ll remember that,” she mouthed, making no sound.

Liz leapt from the rock, bounding silently through the shadows. She avoided the large shrubs or any patch of dirt. The impact could make noise or send up a cloud of dust, betraying her presence even in the darkness. How did she know that?
 

We are one, Ka-Ken. I grant the gift of memory. Through me, you bear the wisdom of ages.

Liz only half-listened, already focused on her target. One of the armored suits crouched in the shadow of a large boulder, mostly invisible except to her eyes. Its rifle was aimed at the house, and two boxy missiles jutted from a box on its left shoulder. She didn’t know what kind of hell they could unleash, but it was best if she never found out.

Let me guide your hand. Move as I move. I will teach you.

Liz relinquished control. She would trust the beast, at least until it gave her reason not to. Her body glided forward, circling behind the rock until she was one with its shadow. She lurked mere inches from her prey, yet it was unaware. She uncoiled like a spring, one arm wrapping around the soldier’s neck in an implacable grip. The other splayed her fingers outward, claws aligned like the teeth of some vicious saw. Her hand jabbed forward with incredible strength, piercing the soldier’s armor and driving into his spine just below the neck. Hot, squishy blood covered her fingers.

Just like that, the soldier was dead. She eased the body noiselessly to the ground as they melted back into the shadows. Liz’s abilities both awed and terrified her. These armored suits were so new she wasn’t even sure the military had them, but she’d dropped one with almost no effort. And there were hundreds of werewolves just like her out there now? It was chilling.

The other soldier had finally noticed his companion’s body. He paused, scanning the darkness. This one moved more carefully that the last. He seemed aware she was in the shadows somewhere, gaze never resting as he slowly walked the barrel of that massive rifle through her vicinity. Would the same trick work again? One way to find out.

Liz crept through the shadows, circling the armored soldier. He had his back to a large shrub, legs slightly bent and ready to move. She could still get the drop on him, but the bush would prevent her from attacking him from behind. He’d hear her moving in the bush before she reached him, giving him a chance to react.

So a frontal assault, then?
She thought. The beast undoubtedly had a plan.

Of course, Ka-Ken. This one feels our full fury.

She pounced, leaping thirty feet and coming down atop the armor. Their combined weight flattened the bush and sent them tumbling. Liz recovered first. She flipped up, knees pinning the soldier’s blocky shoulders as her claws wrapped around his helmet. She gave a roar and pulled with every ounce of her new strength. The metal groaned, but it didn’t pull free.
 

Then she was tumbling backward as the soldier’s legs wrapped around her neck. He used the incredible strength in his armor to hurl her against a neighboring boulder. The rock shattered, and she dropped to the ground, the wind knocked from her.

The soldier flipped to his feet, a trio of wicked-looking blades springing from each gauntlet. He lunged forward, stabbing once, twice, a third time into her back. She felt organs rupture. That had been a lung popping. She collapsed to the ground in a shower of blood. Her insides were filled with hot glass.

Yet the healing had already begun. Liz scythed her legs around, knocking the soldier from his feet. She grabbed his calf, hurling his helmeted head into the same boulder she’d just rebounded off of. The armor gave a shower of sparks, but amazingly it held. Liz lunged forward, seizing him around the chest in a one-armed bear hug. She used the claws on her free hand to pry at the fissure between the helmet and the shoulder. Slowly, inch by agonizing inch, she twisted it open to reveal a man in silver sunglasses, with a goatee.
 

The familiar staccato sounds of a weapon sounded behind her. Pain flared in her back and leg as bullets punched through her. She staggered forward, dropping her quarry and disappearing into the darkness. She was bleeding badly. How much more could she heal before she ran out of energy?

Your strength wanes. Leave these fools and rejoin your pack. They will be in need of your aid. We are the protectors, Ka-Ken. The males are lost without us, children before the storm.

To leave the fight galled her. She burned with the need to kill the man she’d just fought. He was vulnerable without that helmet. Yet she had to find Trevor and Blair. She scanned the area around his house. A haze of smoke from the near constant spurts of gunfire pooled around the still-functional lights on the back porch. The haze lent the house a muted odor like that of a funeral shroud.
 

She had to get down there.

Chapter 58- Mind Ride

Wonder and terror mixed in equal parts surged through Blair. The indefinable wave crashed over him, jarring but incredible. He was more. Greater. A vast array of instincts overlaid his senses, a set of tools honed through hundreds of generations. He knew how to fight. How to kill. He became one with the beast for the first time, mingling his consciousness with that of the strange presence he had resisted for so long.

Blair blurred, whipping down the pathway next to the shattered house. His passage kicked up a wind that rustled rose bushes and gravel, thankfully drowned out by the whirring rotors of the helicopters and the occasional bark of gunfire. He couldn’t disappear like Liz did, but he stuck to the shadows with the grace of a practiced predator. Prey no longer. That distinction was important because it took away the fear. He would kill these soldiers, not run before them like a startled rabbit.

He dropped into a low crouch, sifting through heartbeats in the thick cacophony. Two in the house. Two more approaching from beyond the fence, somewhere out in the darkness. The latter were strangely muffled somehow, though neither he nor the beast understood why. It didn’t matter. They were still distant. That gave him at least a little time.

Blair blurred into the air, time slowing as he leapt through the space that the window over the kitchen sink had once occupied. He twisted his furry body, bringing his legs around so he could land in a crouch on the linoleum. A soldier stood within arm’s reach, mouth open comically as his eyes widened. The soldier made the next move in slow motion, the barrel of his rifle inching down toward Blair’s face as if the air had become thick jelly.
 

 
The man probably had thousands of hours of training, and he bore the physique of a devoted athlete. Blair’s hand shot out, seizing the soldier’s neck and slamming the man’s head into the refrigerator with a sickening crunch and a splatter of warm blood. A hot rush of need surged through Blair, fueled by the surety that feeding would increase his strength. That could come later. There wasn’t time.
 

Blair jerked the corpse away from the refrigerator, positioning it between him and the second soldier. This one was slightly shorter, with wide blue eyes and a smattering a freckles. Her rifle spun into position, coughing a trio of rounds in his direction. They impacted against the corpse’s Kevlar vest, sending vibrations up his arm.

A contemptuous growl rolled from his throat as Blair slowed time even further. The fourth bullet left the muzzle in a hot flash of burning powder, two inches of brass moving toward him like a rock tossed by a toddler. Blair’s free hand shot out, cupping the bullet in his palm. It was uncomfortably warm, but he only held it for an instant. Then Blair hurled the bullet in an underhanded throw.

It caught the woman in the knee with nearly the same velocity it possessed when fired, shattering bone and cartilage and spilling her to the kitchen floor. Blair tossed the corpse of her companion atop her, kicking her rifle away from her as he prepared to feast on the helpless soldier.

Light flooded into the kitchen from the backyard. Blair shielded his eyes with an arm as he squinted out. He crouched low, nostrils flaring as he sought the data his eyes couldn’t provide. The strangely muffled heartbeats were close now, four of them. The way the lights moved made what he was seeing clear. There were four of them, each affixed to one of the figures advancing into the backyard.

One of those figures took a further step forward, raising an arm. The lights vanished, plunging the yard into near darkness. Blair could still see his opponents clearly under the light of the moon. Each wore a bulky armored suit straight from Heinlein’s
Starship Troopers
.

Clearly the leader, the figure with the raised arm was a bit taller than the other soldiers. His faceplate locked on Blair. Then a familiar voice boomed from some sort of amplifier. “This needs to end, Professor Smith. We’ve already caused too much collateral damage, and I know you don’t want that. It’s time to return to Peru. This only has to be as difficult as you want to make it.”

Blair would know that voice anywhere. Commander Jordan. A torrent of emotion raged through him. Yet curiously the one he’d most expected was absent. Fear.

“I know you’re just doing your job,” Blair roared back, flexing his claws and taking a step closer to the window’s shattered frame. “You don’t have all the facts, though. Werewolves were created for a reason. Something bad is coming, Jordan. Leave now, or the lot of you are going home in body bags.”

“I like you, Smith. I don’t have any doubt that more of my men will go home in a box if we keep this up. Thing is, we’ve got you covered from the air, and I have even more backup on the way. There’s nowhere to run. I’m holding all the cards. Be reasonable. Why don’t you surrender, and we’ll head down to Peru and talk about it with the Director? If you have facts we need to know, then share them,” Jordan said, tone hardening as he moved the rifle resting against his shoulder into both hands. “You don’t want to make us come in there, Professor. I respect you. I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your new girlfriend. Liz, right? That’s her name, isn’t it? Liz Gregg, a medical doctor you infected.”

Blair’s resolve hardened. Jordan had brought her into this intentionally, hoping to goad him into rash action. A part of him very nearly obliged, wanting to leap out the window, heedless of the danger. The rest of him reined in. He didn’t suppress the fury, but neither did he give in to it.
 

“I respect you too, Jordan. You’re just trying to do the right thing, but ‘thing is,’ you’re inadvertently threatening the human race’s survival. I know you aren’t going to walk away, so let’s get this over with.” He said, pausing to give a low, deep howl. It reverberated through the night with all the power and fury he could muster. A war cry, fierce and undeniable.
 

Blair blurred, twisting through the window with feral grace. Motes of debris danced lazily through the air, spinning crazily under the weight of the rotor-driven wind. He landed next to the soldier on the far right, by the squat palm tree in the corner of Trevor’s yard. Posture was hard to read through the rigid suits, but this soldier was the most relaxed of the lot, clearly waiting for what he considered to be cornered prey. It was a fatal mistake.

A fierce bolt of clean blue energy arced from Blair’s hand, coruscating around the figure’s helmet. Blair had no true understanding of what he was doing, but he trusted the beast as it guided his actions. Only a very small part of him was surprised as he slipped past the man’s defenses and into his mind. Blair
was
the soldier. He could feel the man’s thoughts and memories, his horror at being a bystander in the passenger seat of his mind. It was a horror Blair understood intimately. He experienced a moment of guilt at inflicting such helplessness on another but tossed aside the regret.

The soldier spun to face his companions, rifle unleashing a hail of slugs even as the caps to the launcher tubes popped open. All four burst into the yard on fiery contrails, still faster than a baseball pitch even with Blair slowing time. The closest suit took the brunt of the damage, missiles blasting it into the closest companion. That actually worked in the second suit’s favor, providing a measure of protection from the blast. The pair landed in a heap, billowing smoke from the missiles mostly obscuring Blair’s view.