BULLETS BIT INTO THE COUCH, CHEWING THROUGH the steel and cushions. The world went white in a blinding flash. Thunder slapped my ears, shaking the brain in my skull. All sound faded. Derek jerked, clamping his hands over his ears.
A stun grenade.
Next to me Saiman trembled, hugging the floor.
Steel shutters dropped, covering the floor-to-ceiling windows--Saiman's defense system kicking into high gear.
The electric lamps on the ceiling shone bright, illuminating us. The couch wouldn't hold. We had to move.
To the right, the lab door gaped wide open. Twelve feet. If we had a distraction, we could make it. I looked around, trying to find something to throw. Clothes--no, too light--clothes, more clothes ... Table. The heavy glass-topped table.
I lunged for it and tried to lift it. Too heavy. I could heave it upright and maybe throw it a couple of feet. Not far enough, and they would cut me down while I struggled to lift it.
The roar of the gunfire penetrated the wall in my ears, soft like the noise of a distant waterfall.
A dark canister rolled into the space to the left of us, between the couch and a bar, and belched a cloud of green gas. Shit. I held my breath. Derek pressed his hand over his nose. Tears streamed from his eyes.
Derek's shapeshifter senses couldn't take it. We had to go now.
I grabbed Derek's shoulder, pointed at the table, and made a throwing motion with my arms.
He nodded.
"Saiman!" My voice was a faint echo. "Saiman!"
He glanced at me and I saw a familiar blank look in his eyes. He would snap any second. I grabbed his arm. "Run or die!"
Crouching, Derek grasped the table and hurled it at the muzzle flashes.
I jerked Saiman to his feet and ran. Behind me glass shattered in the hail of gunfire. I leaped inside and spun around in time to see Saiman pe through the doorway, with Derek a hair behind. Derek slammed the thick reinforced door shut and stumbled, like a blind man, his eyes wide open, tears streaming down his face. Blood gushed from his leg, staining the jeans inside out.
Slowly, as if underwater, Saiman locked the heavy metal door.
To the right, a decontamination shower loomed in the corner. I pushed Derek into it and pulled the chain. Water drenched him. He shuddered and raised his face to the stream, letting the water run into his eyes.
"How bad are you hit?"
"The bullet went through. It's nothing."
Bullets pounded into the door with sharp staccato. It wouldn't hold them for long.
If I had a lab, I'd have the fuse box nearby in case I had to shut things down in a hurry. I looked around and saw the dark gray rectangle of the fuse box in the wall between two cabinets. Perfect. I pried the cover open and pulled the main fuse.
The apartment went pitch-black. For a second I was blind and then my eyes adjusted, picking up faint light from the digital clock on the wall. Must be battery operated.
Next to me the sound of ripping fabric announced the werewolf shedding his clothes and human skin. Yellow eyes ignited six and a half feet off the ground, like two moons.
Saiman took a deep, shuddering breath.
"Hide or fight," I whispered to him. "Just don't get in my way."
The rain of bullets halted. Not good. They'd decided they couldn't shoot their way through the door. The next step was explosives. I dashed to the left side of the door and pressed myself against the wall in the corner.
Across the room the enormous shaggy monster that was Derek leaped onto the counter. A clawed paw swiped the butane lab lighter and raised it to the sprinkler. A tiny blue flame flared at the end of the lighter. It licked the sprinkler, once, twice, and then water rained down in a stinging spray.
Bye-bye gas.
A high-pitched whine tore through the quiet.
The explosion shook the door, slapping my ears. The metal door screeched and fell into the room. A flashlight beam sliced through the darkness, searching for targets. I squeezed the hilt of my saber. It felt so comforting, like shaking hands with an old friend. Water soaked my hair.
Derek sank his claws into the paneling, leaped, and crawled across the ceiling with terrifying speed, grasping steel beams for support.
The door burst open. I slid down into a crouch.
The first man edged into the room, his black handgun gripped in both hands in a time-honored shooter stance. The bulletproof vest made him appear almost square. The man spun right, spun left, turning the gun barrel two feet above me, and advanced into the room.
A second man followed, holding his flashlight and gun in a Chapman hold: the gun gripped in the right hand, the flashlight in the left, the hands clenched together. He turned, his flashlight sweeping the length of the room.
Come in, there is nothing to fear. You're big and strong, and your gun will protect you.
The bright beam glided over lab tables, biting at darkness broken by streams of water. Left, right ...
The third man stepped into the room, covering the man with the flashlight. Classic.
The beam slid up. A nightmare looked into the light: a huge man towering eight and a half feet high, his colossal muscles bulging in hard ridges on his immense frame. His skin glowed in the light, pure white, as if he were molded out of snow. A blue mane cascaded down his shoulders, framing a cruel face, and on that face two eyes blazed, pure translucent blue, like ice from the deepest part of a glacier. Looking into them was like staring back in time, at a thing that was alien and ancient and very, very hostile. Saiman had taken his true form.
The men froze for half a second. They expected a man, a woman, and Saiman. They didn't expect their flashlight to find an enraged ice giant in the darkness and they gaped, just as the ancient Scandinavians had done ages ago, gripped by a paralysis of awe and fear.
I sliced the inside of the closest man's thigh in a sharp upward thrust, severing muscles and the femoral artery, stabbed him in the heart, pulled the blade out, and sliced the neck of the second man in a fluid easy movement--the blade was so sharp, the cut was almost delicate.
The man with the flashlight fired once. Saiman's enormous hand slapped the firearm out of his fist. Massive fingers clenched him and the man vanished into the darkness. A hoarse scream cut through the silence, full of pain and pure terror.
Derek dropped to the floor and bounded over the bodies into the living room. I followed him.
Behind us the man kept howling, no longer desperate, just hurting. A gun spat bullets to the right, wood snapping--someone firing blindly in panic. I waited four seconds until he emptied his clip, and then I ran across the room, stepped behind him, and sliced: one cut left to right, the second straight across the spine, just under the bulletproof vest. He went down.
Something moved behind me.
I spun, slicing, the man behind me a mere shadow in the gloom. Slayer crashed against a thicker blade. The man snapped an angle kick to my left side. His shin hammered my ribs in a burst of pain. A Muay Thai fighter. Fine. I spun with the impact, whipped around, and kicked him, heel to solar plexus, putting all of the power of my spin and my thigh into it.
The impact knocked him back. My knee crunched. Ow.
I chased him, leaping over boxes. The fallen man rolled to his feet in time for me to split his stomach open. I tugged Slayer free, sank the blade between the lower ribs of his right side, for good measure, and withdrew.
The screaming stopped.
"Cleearr," Derek's mangled voice said.
"Saiman! Flip the fuse."
A long moment passed. The electric light came on, sudden and harsh, like a sucker punch. Five bodies lay broken and twisted in the living room, their blood ridiculously vivid against the monochromatic backdrop of black floor and white furniture. The massive shaggy beast that was Derek straightened, scarlet dripping from his claws, and dropped a mangled body to the floor. He raised his muzzle. A long wolf howl rolled through the apartment, a song of hunt and blood and murdered prey.
Saiman emerged from the lab, stooping to fold his frame through the doorway. A thing dangled from his hand. It might have been a man at some point, but now it hung, limp and boneless, like a sack of human meat pierced here and there by shards of its bones.
"It's over." I kept my voice soothing. "Put it down."
Saiman shook his victim.
"Put it down. You can do it. Just let go."
Saiman released his victim. The body fell with a sickening wet thud. The ice giant slumped against the wall and slid down to sit on the floor.
I walked past the overturned couch to the man whose stomach I'd cut. He was still breathing, clutching at his wounds, his heavy tactical sword lying next to him. Thick blood wet his fingers in a dark, almost tar-like stain. Yep, hit the liver. A ski mask hid his face. I pulled it off. A familiar brutish face stared at me with pale eyes. Blaine "The Blade" Simmons. Blaine used to work for the Guild. About four years ago he decided the Guild wasn't hardcore enough for him and struck out on his own. Word on the street was, Blaine hired killers and liked wet work. The nastier, the better. Any gig, any target, as long as the money was right. That must've been his crew.
I crouched by him, my sword still bloody.
Blaine's breath was coming in quick ragged gasps.
"Who hired you?"
He wheezed, his fingers shaking.
"Who hired you?"
"Go to hell!"
Blaine's eyes rolled back into his skull. He went rigid and sagged down. His hands stopped shaking.
"I have a laaive one." Derek picked up a body off the floor. The man shuddered in his grasp. His right leg hung at an unnatural angle--broken femur. A huge cut gaped across his back, where Derek's claws ripped through his flesh. Derek turned him, so I could see his face. Pale, terrified eyes looked at me.
"If you stay as is, you'll live. Tell me what I want to know, and I won't make it worse," I said.
The man swallowed. "I don't know! Blaine made the contracts!"
"What were your orders?"
"We had to sit on this apartment. If law or any PIs showed up, we had to hit it fast."
"Did you have specific orders to attack if you saw me or Derek?"
The man nodded. "You--yeah. But not him. Blaine had pictures of you and the blonde."
They knew who Andrea and I were, which meant they knew where the office was. If they'd hit us here, they'd target the office. I would.
"Why did you use a concussion grenade instead of shrapnel?"
The man gulped. "Blaine said the freak had money. He said nobody would care when or how he got dead, as long as he got dead in the end. We'd just hold him for a bit, get him to give us the money, and then terminate him. Blaine said it would be a bonus."
Nice. "Did you kill some people in Sibley?"
"Us and some other guys. We knew exactly when and where they would be coming from. We wiped them out. Shot them all to hell. It was easy." Mystery solved. "Drop him."
Derek opened his fingers and the man crashed to the floor.
I walked to the phone and dialed Cutting Edge. Julie's voice popped on the phone. "Good afternoon, Cutting Edge. How may I help you?"
"Hey, it's me. Put Andrea on the phone."
"She isn't here."
Damn it. "Where is she?"
"Some boudas came to talk to her. She said she would be right back and left."
Aunt B. Just couldn't wait, could she, old bitch, had to speak to Andrea right that minute.
"Joey is staying with us."
I struggled to put the name to a face. Joey, Joey ... My mind served up a man in his early twenties, his hair dark, nearly black. "Put Joey on the phone."
A young male voice said, "Why hello there, Consort. And how are you?"
"We're under attack. Bar the door, do not open it to anyone you don't know. Make sure the kids understand. I'll be there in half an hour. Stay put, do you understand?"
All mirth vanished from his voice. "Yes, Consort."
I hung up and punched in the number for the Keep's Guard Station. "I need access to Jim. Now."
"He's out in the city," a female voice began.
I sank enough menace into my voice to terrify a small army. "Find him."
The phone went silent. I waited. The Lighthouse Keepers had hired a crew of killers. Made sense; their own people were embedded and too valuable to risk. We had to assume they already knew that the attack on the apartment had failed and what little cover they had was blown wide open. They would be coming for Saiman.
The phone clicked and Jim's voice came on the line. "Kate, I'm a little busy here."
"There is an anti-magic secret society in the city. They have a bomb. When activated, it kills anything that uses magic in a radius of several miles."
Jim didn't miss a beat. "What do you need?"
"I'm at Saiman's apartment. We've been attacked; there are seven bodies, one survivor. I need to know where the attackers came from, who hired them, anything you can get. I'm sending Derek with Saiman to the western safe house. Saiman has the documentation describing the device, and he is now their primary target. I'm going back to my office. Julie and Ascanio are in the office and I need to get them out to the Keep."
"We're on the Southside, near Palmetto," Jim said.
Across the city. Great.
"I'm sending an escort now. It will be there in an hour."
"Is Curran there with you?"
"He's out in the field, but I'll get hold of him."
"Tell him ..." Tell him I love him. "Tell him I'm sorry we didn't see each other last night."
"Will do."
I hung up and looked at Derek. "Take Saiman and the documents to the western safe house. Keep him protected; we need the knowledge in his head."
Derek's muzzle gaped, like a bear trap swinging open. "Yeshh, Conshort."
THE MAGIC HIT ONE MILE FROM THE OFFICE. THE Jeep's gasoline engine faltered and died and I guided it to a slow stop at the curb.
The worry that had sat in the pit of my stomach since the phone call grew stronger and stronger until it blossomed into full-blown anxiety. Something was wrong; I felt it.
The kids were fine. They were in a fortified office. They had a full-grown bouda with them. Reinforcements were on the way.
I stared at the wheel. It would take me fifteen minutes to chant the water engine into life.
They were fine.
Screw it.
I jumped out of the car, locked it, and took off down the street at an easy jog. My knee protested, sending a warning spike of pain into my thigh with every step. A nagging ache gnawed at my ribs. It was a good kick, but in retrospect I should've punched him instead.
The streets rolled by. I was doing a seven-minute mile. Still faster than warming up the car. I turned onto Jeremiah, passing a couple of delivery trucks, blocking most of the street. Not too far now.
Something lay in the street in front of the office. Something small and wrapped in fabric. My heart hammered. I sped up.
A child mannequin rested on the pavement, swaddled in a grimy sweater. Blood stained its clothes and plastic face.
The door of the office stood ajar. Ice rolled down my spine.
I pulled Slayer from its sheath and forced myself to slow down. I'd need my breath. The door was intact. Someone had opened it. I tested it with my fingertips and it swung, revealing the office. My desk lay on its side, a flurry of papers scattered on the floor. Red stained the wood, where someone's bloody hand had gripped it.
A nude body sprawled on the floor on my right. It lay on its back in a puddle of blood, its chest a forest of bone shards where someone had wrenched ribs out of their place. Male. A hole marred his neck and left shoulder. Something had bitten him with preternatural teeth. The head was a mess of blood and battered tissue. A chair leg protruded from the stomach, where someone had pinned the corpse to the floor like a butterfly.
I approached the body, sword ready, and saw a shock of spiky black hair on the right side of the corpse's skull. Joey.
An enraged growl shook the office. Something clanged, once, twice, a ringing of metal being struck.
I dashed to the back.
The door to the back room lay in shards on the floor. I leaped over it. A section of the wall had been ripped open, and through the gap I saw a female shapeshifter in warrior form. Huge, at least seven feet and sheathed with beige fur with dark spots, she was all claws and teeth, pounding the loup cage with the rest of the chair. Tufts of black hair crowned her monstrous ears. A lynx.
The pieces snapped together in my head. Leslie, the missing render that Curran had been hunting.
Inside the cage, a bouda in warrior form cradled something, shielding it with his body. Deep gashes scoured his back, marked with thick bloody smears. The shape in his arms trembled. Two legs stuck out, deformed and twisted. Muscle bulged in odd places, sheathed by human skin and patches of beige fur.
Leslie saw me and froze.
Ascanio turned and I glimpsed the thing he was trying to protect. A horrible face gaped at me, its lower jaw protruding, its face like a blob of melting wax, the eyes little more than tiny slits. It was the face victims of Lyc-V wore when the shapeshifter virus first infected their bodies.
The small brown eyes looked at me from the monster's face. Julie. Oh my God, Julie.
Leslie was trying to murder the kids.
I charged. Leslie roared and hurled the shattered chair at me. I dodged and stabbed her in the chest, aiming for her heart. Slayer slid off the ribs--I'd punctured her lung instead. Like poking a normal human with a needle. Claws raked my shoulder. I sliced across her stomach. She leaned back and kicked out with both feet. I saw the kick but there was no way to avoid it. The blow took me square in the chest. I flew into the main room, curling into a ball. My back slammed into the wall. The world swam.
Leslie leaped at me through the gap, claws raised, giant teeth snapping.
I dodged. She hit the wall full speed and whipped around, carving the air, her claws like daggers. I dodged, left, left, right. She swung too wide and I lunged into the opening, turning Slayer into a metal whirlwind. Left thigh, side, right thigh, left shoulder, chest ...
She snarled and backhanded me. I've been hit with a hammer. It hurt less. My head snapped back and she raked at me with her other hand. Pain cleaved my stomach. I stumbled back.
Blood filled my mouth. Leslie bled from a dozen places, but not enough to slow her down. She was fast, Lyc-V was healing her cuts, and my sword wasn't doing enough damage.
I kicked at her. She hammered a fist into my thigh. I swayed at the last moment and the fist grazed me. My femur screamed from the impact. She was aiming for my injured knee. I drove Slayer into her liver.
Leslie screeched and roared, "Die alrrready!"
I cleaved at her right arm, severing the tendon. Unless I won, the kids died. I would kill this bitch. I'd tear her limb from limb if I had to.
She grabbed at me with her left hand, clenching my shoulder, lifting me off the ground, and jerked me to her teeth. I pulled my throwing knife and stabbed her in the throat, quick, like hammering a nail. She gurgled, tore me off, and hurled me aside.
I hit Andrea's desk with my back, dropped to my feet, and started toward her. I hurt so much, the pain kept me from passing out.
Leslie grabbed a filing cabinet and hurled it at me. I dodged. She threw a chair. I ducked and kept coming. Leslie heaved a bookshelf. It would hit me; I had no place to go.
A black dog the size of a pony burst through the doorway. Grendel, you stupid magic poodle.
The dog hit Leslie in the chest like a battering ram. The render went down, knocked off her feet by the impact. I ran at Leslie. This was my chance.
Leslie clenched Grendel by the scruff of his neck and flung him aside. He crashed into the wall with a snarl.
Leslie leaped to her feet and bared her teeth at me. Blood dripped from between her fangs, stretching in long red threads to the floor. Don't black out. I just had to stay conscious.
"Osanda." The power word left my mouth, tearing out a chunk of my magic in a flash of pain. I didn't care. I sank everything into it. Kneel. Kneel, you bitch.
She gasped. The bones of her shins snapped like toothpicks and she crashed to her knees. I swung Slayer. The sword's pale blade smoked, feeding off my fury. I cut, severing the spinal column. Leslie's head dropped to the side. I chopped at it again. It rolled to the floor. Her headless body toppled toward me. I kicked her head into the corner and dragged myself to the loup cage.
Julie whimpered in a thin tiny voice, her breath whistling through the space between her mangled jaws. Ascanio lay on his back. His eyes looked at me, flashing red. Still alive. They were both still alive.
I grabbed onto the bars. God, my chest hurt. "She's dead. It will be okay. It will be okay. Give me the keys."
Ascanio cried out and flipped onto his side. A rib had pierced his chest, sticking out. His hand opened, the key a gory bloody mess in his palm. He shut his eyes.
I thrust my hand through the bars, grabbed the slick, warm key, and unlocked the cage.
"Help us," Julie whispered. "It hurts, Kate ... It hurts."
"I know, baby. I know." I had to get them to Doolittle. A quarter of Lyc-V's victims didn't survive their first transformation.
Tears slid from Julie's eyes. "The boy's dying."
I looked over Ascanio. Broken ribs, torn-up back. I touched Ascanio's neck. Pulse. Weak, but steady pulse. He opened his eyes slowly. "I trrrried."
"You did great."
The roar of an enchanted engine thundered outside. Jim's backup. I forced myself upright.
"Don't leave me!" Julie sobbed.
"Just to the door. To get help. I'll be right back."
I ran out into the living room, wrapped in my pain like a cloak, and saw a gray van pulling up in front of the office. The Pack didn't own gray vans.
I sprinted to the door.
The van door opened. An older man stepped out and leveled a crossbow at me. A tiny green spark winked on the end of the crossbow bolt. An exploding arrow head.
I slammed the door shut and barred it. The explosion shook the building.
I pulled the internal shutter on the left window closed and dashed right. The crossbow bolt got there half a second before me and bounced off the grate, falling back. I pulled the shutter down. The burst of magic energy was like a wrecking ball. The walls groaned but held. A couple more direct hits and they would come down.
The kids couldn't move, not fast enough to outrun a vehicle.
Grendel limped to me. I hugged his shaggy neck and ran my hands along his back. Nothing was broken.
I had enough juice for one power word. It would buy us a couple of minutes, but I would pass out, and with the kids immobile, we were trapped.
"When the shit hits the fan, you hide, you hear?"
Grendel whined.
"Don't be a hero, dog."
I slid the cover in the door aside, exposing the narrow viewing window. The door of the van was open. Inside, the man in the tactical vest slowly, methodically loaded another explosive bolt into his crossbow.
We were done.
When they blasted through the wall, I would take a few of them with me. That was all I could do.
The crossbowman raised the bow.
A gray shape leaped off the roof. A massive beast, a meld of human and lion, landed on the roof of the van, crushing it.
Curran.
The giant claws gouged the top of the van, and he ripped the metal sheet away, as if opening a can of sardines. The crossbowman looked up in time to see the huge paw just before it cracked his skull like an egg. The enormous jaws of the leonine head opened and a deafening roar blasted forth in a declaration of war, drowning even the noise of the enchanted engine. The beast dipped his massive head inside, pulled a kicking body out between his teeth, pinned it with his paws, and ripped the top half of the body off.
He had come for me again.
Curran's body flowed, snapping into a more humanoid form. He plucked another man from the van, snapped his neck, hurled the broken body aside, and dove into the vehicle. The van rocked. Blood sprayed the windows, someone screamed, and he emerged from the van, bloody, his golden eyes on fire.
I unlocked the door. It swung open and he clenched me to him. I threw my arms around his neck and I kissed him, blood and fur and all.