Shattered (20 page)

Despite my
little planning session with Jack earlier, there were a lot of
potential issues with our plan that neither of us had bothered
bringing up simply because there wasn't anything that could be done
about them.

Addison was a
captive, which might mean that the vampires already know everything
there was to know about us shape shifters. If the vampires had broken
her then we couldn't guarantee that the vampires hadn't already
called contacts on the East Coast to let the rest of the vampires
know what they'd figured out about us.

We also
couldn't guarantee that all of the vampires in the gang were
currently holed up in the building that we had under surveillance,
which meant that even if we were successful in our assault there
still wasn't any guarantee that we would kill everyone who might have
access to whatever information they might have pulled from Addison's
mind.

Most of all
though, we couldn't control the age or number of vampires we were
going to face off against once we breached the building. Vampires
seemed to organize themselves in a hierarchical fashion, so it was
virtually guaranteed that one of the vampires would be older and
stronger than the rest, but that still allowed for a lot of
variation.

Best-case
scenario was that we were up against a bunch of neophytes who weren't
much over a hundred years. Worst-case scenario would be that one of
the vampires was as dangerous as the mentalist we'd killed in the
Caymans, but I didn't view that as being likely. There couldn't be
very many vampires out there with those kinds of abilities or they
would have taken over the entire world by now. Vampires that old were
basically unstoppable, so that was the only logical outcome if there
were more than two or three of them in the entire world.

No, the smart
bet was to plan on a lower level of resistance and hope that whatever
mentalists the gang might have were either too weak or too distracted
to sense the group of shape shifters scattered around the perimeter
of the building. If we were up against a vampire like the one we'd
killed in the Caymans then it didn't much matter what our plan looked
like—we'd still all end up dead.

All of that and
more flashed through my head as I took up my position opposite the
largest door. We'd briefly considered going in through the windows
for an even greater element of surprise, but in the end we'd
discarded the idea. We were hoping that complete darkness would be
more of a detriment to the vampires than anything else.

The gang had
probably picked this particular building because it was set back from
all of the other buildings in the area. The closest other building
was just over twenty feet away from their headquarters, which was an
impossible jump for a human, but it wasn't enough to stop us, so we'd
also decided to send in a group through the roof access.

James had
argued against being sent in via the roof. He wanted to go in via the
ground floor just like most of the rest of the strike force, but Jack
and I had told him that his only other option was to help Chloe's
parents shut the power down at the substation half a mile away from
where the rest of the action was going down.

Jack hadn't
even wanted to give James the option of going in via the roof, but
I'd convinced him that we were better off with James on the roof than
with two more wolves up there. Jack was right that James wasn't going
to be thinking clearly, but he was worth two or three times as much
in a fight as Chloe's parents and I was still nervous about what
exactly we were going to run into inside of the building.

Less than
fifteen minutes after everyone was in position, two gang members left
the building, presumably headed towards the drop site. Neither of
them seemed to be vampires, so Jack dispatched two of his wolves to
tail them and then put them down once they stopped and got out of
their cars.

As the time ran
down, I stripped down to my ha'bit, keeping one eye on the cheap
nightlight we'd purchased and plugged into an exterior power outlet.
Five seconds after the power was supposed to have been cut the
nightlight died and I shifted to hybrid form and sprang into motion.

Moving around
as hybrids and wolves during broad daylight was dangerous, but we
didn't have a choice and as I tore across the broken pavement I
salved my conscience by telling myself that we wouldn't be outside
and visible for more than a few seconds.

I ripped the
heavy metal door open and charged into a preview of hell. The gang
hadn't been taken off guard at all, they were waiting for us. There
was a smattering of gunshots, presumably from some of the humans, but
most of the glowing white figures were wielding swords, knives and
axes.

A bullet tore
past my ear, nearly nicking me, and then I was outside of the hall
that had been limiting my movement. As soon as I hit the central,
open space, I dodged to the left and scooped up a folding metal chair
so I could hurl it at one of the shooters.

The closest
gang member moved towards me, a massive two-handed sword at the
ready, and for the fourth time in less than four weeks I was fighting
a vampire. He was fast and strong, but I had an advantage this time
around that I'd never enjoyed before. I knew more than a little bit
about using two-handed swords.

I slowly
approached to within a fraction of an inch of what I figured his
usable reach was and then lunged forward with every bit of speed I
could muster. He was fast, but he wasn't quite fast enough to get his
weapon around before I was on him. I caught his wrists with my left
hand as I landed on him, and then I ended his life with one quick
swipe of my claws as he crumpled underneath my weight.

A whisper of
sound brought me around just in time to deflect a stab from a gang
member with some kind of rapier and then Jess took him from the side,
jaws closing around his neck. The next four seconds were a blur of
fighting. Everyone from our side other than James and his crew was
fully engaged in the large space that took up most of the interior of
the building, and the numerical odds were a lot worse than I'd
expected.

I felt a dull,
tearing impact as someone else shot me in the shoulder, so I grabbed
another gang member—a human, judging by the weaker stench
coming off of his skin—and threw him at the shooter with enough
force to break both their necks. It wasn't until after the human was
airborne that I realized he'd stuck a knife into my side.

That shouldn't
have been possible. A vampire could have disemboweled me as I picked
him up, but a normal human shouldn't have been fast enough to even
realize what was going on.

My wounds hurt,
but only with the dull almost-pain that my hybrid body used to signal
non-life-threatening injuries, so I kept pressing forward.

I saw Jasmin
take a sword to the side as she sailed in and ripped the throat out
of another human and realized that all of the humans were moving
quicker than they should have been.

"The
humans are fast, not vampire fast, but faster than they should be. Be
careful."

There was no
way of knowing whether or not my warning would save any lives, but it
was the best I could do. I blocked a sword blow from the vampire on
my right at the same time that I stepped forward to get inside of the
arc of the axe strike from the human in front of me.

My claws tore
through ribs and muscle like they weren't even there and then the
human was on the ground dying and it was just the vampire and me. He
was fast, faster even than most of his kind. He recovered back into
position while I was killing the human and attacked again before I
could finish turning to face him.

His sword took
me on the outside of my right arm, but I got my claws into position
enough to rob the blow of most of its force or I would have probably
lost the limb altogether. He slashed at me again, but this time I saw
the blow coming and he never had a chance. I blocked his sword with
my left hand as I stepped into him and put my talons into his chest.

As my latest
opponent crumpled to the ground, one of the low, four-legged shapes
that had entered through the far door turned into a pillar of fire
that lit up the entire warehouse. I tried to pick out the vampire
responsible for the fire, but there just wasn't any way to know for
sure which one was the powerful pyromancer. The only thing I knew for
sure was that it had to be one of the vampires facing away from me.

In the time it
took me to dispatch another human and for Jasmin and Jess to
double-team another vampire, the pyromancer struck again and another
of Jack's wolves was incinerated. Given just how badly they
outnumbered us, it was a loss ratio that we couldn't possibly
sustain. As I was desperately searching for a way to isolate the
pyromancer, things suddenly took a decided turn for the worst.

"Enough!"

The voice
wasn't one that I recognized. It had an odd accent that I'd never
heard before; it wasn't one of my people, so I wasn't at all inclined
to obey it, only it didn't seem as though I had any choice. The
fighting ground to a halt in less than a second. The vampires and
humans stopped out of obedience, we shape shifters stopped because
there was
something
inside of our minds that forced us to
stop.

The pyromancer
wasn't the most powerful vampire in the gang—they had a
mentalist and he was at least an order of magnitude stronger than the
mentalist we'd killed in the Caymans. The rational, human part of me
knew that there wasn't any hope of resisting such a powerful vampire,
but my beast went absolutely crazy.

The mentalist
must have slowly been inserting camouflaged probes inside of our
minds as he waited for his minions to trim our numbers to the point
where he could take us all over at the same time. Now that he was
actively using his ability to short-circuit our voluntary nervous
system there wasn't any way to keep his tampering hidden and I was
astonished at just how much damage my beast was doing to the inky
tendrils I could feel violating my mind.

For a moment I
felt the mentalist's control over my mind start to waver. He'd
misjudged just how much fight a shape shifter was able to put up, and
now that all of our beasts realized what was going on, his constructs
were being destroyed almost faster than he could reinforce them.

I felt a single
ray of hope that we might still have a chance at breaking free of his
control and then he opened his mouth again.

"Samuel,
kill another of the wolves."

A heartbeat
later another of Jack's wolves burst into flames and all hope was
shattered. The balance of power inside my mind had swung irrevocably
back towards the vampire.

The lights
flickered back on and I finally had indisputable proof that we'd been
played. The mentalist had been reading our minds the entire time we
were setting up for our attack. Not only that, he'd had enough people
outside of the building to set up an ambush of Chloe's parents at the
power substation.

There was only
one other group of shape shifters that was still unaccounted for, one
other possibility of rescue, but I was doing my best not to think
about James so as not to tip off the mentalist. I shouldn't have even
bothered.

The mentalist's
voice rang out again. "Don't kill them, but knock the wolves
unconscious so that I can deal with the three who came in through the
roof."

Vampires and
humans alike waded into the few surviving wolves with fists and the
hilts of a variety of weapons. Five seconds later Jasmin and Jess
were bleeding and unconscious and it was only Carson, Jack and I that
were still on our feet, not that it was doing us any good.

I heard a door
open, but I didn't have enough control over my body to force my head
around where I could see what was happening. It didn't matter though
because the vampire marched James and the rest nearly to within arm's
reach of himself before stopping them.

"My master
will be exceedingly glad to have so many specimens to study. Samuel,
have the others go get the cages. Even I can't hold these creatures
indefinitely and the sooner we get them properly restrained the more
energy I'll have with which to begin interrogating them."

Samuel, the
pyromancer, was just inside of my visual field and I could see that
he wasn't happy about the order.

"Master,
perhaps we should simply knock the others unconscious while we wait.
It would limit the amount of strain upon your gift."

The mentalist
casually backhanded his henchman into a nearby crate that turned out
to be full of what looked like cocaine.

"They
aren't any good to me unconscious. I need them awake or in a natural
sleep if I'm going to get anything useful out of them. Now send the
others out for the cages."

It was an
impressive display of strength, yet another sign of just how old this
particular vampire was, but that wasn't the thing that had captured
my attention. Carson's eyes were closed and I seemed to be catching
the fringes of what he was doing because I was suddenly fighting back
anger that my beast was sure was coming from somewhere external to
us.

As Samuel waved
the various humans and other vampires out of the building, I sent out
a silent prayer to who or whatever might be listening that Carson's
ploy would work, that he would be able to force the two remaining
vampires into fighting each other.

For a split
second it almost seemed like it was going to work. The air inside the
warehouse was getting hotter in step with Samuel's anger, but right
before it seemed like the lesser vampire was going to act on the
inferno raging inside of him, the mentalist turned towards Carson and
hit him with a telekinetic blow of force that made Carson's knees
sag.