Chapter Thirty
One of the bear-men with guns–I assumed, from the amount of power radiating off of them, that they were the alpha bears–let out a loud roar, a signal of attack. A bear charged at me. Because of its bulk, and the need to conserve ammunition, I knew that each shot had to be a killing shot. I barely avoided its sharp claws as the bear swiped at me, then I planted a bullet right between its eyes. The bear collapsed in front of me and morphed into its human shape–I didn’t look. I didn’t need any distractions. Another one charged me. I shot at it, the bullet tearing a hole through one of its front legs. The skin where the bullet had touched sizzled. Still, it kept coming. I shot again, this time not missing. The bullet went through the bear’s eye. It fell. I felt one of them coming up behind me, I ran forward, leaping over the two corpses and using them as a sort of cover while I fired at my new assailant. This one I had to shoot in the head twice before it went down.
Trying to keep on the move, I left my spot of cover and stumbled over the body of the bear I had just killed. It wasn’t a bear anymore–it was a guy. He was a very average-looking guy. Brown hair, a hairy chest, nondescript body. He probably had a wife and two kids. And a dog. But, he had tried to eat me, and I just couldn’t forgive him for that. Wife, offspring, and Rover aside. Tripping over him, I fell to the ground, landing on my shoulder. As I did so, I landed a bullet between the eyes of another bear. It fell to the ground, rolling a few times as it morphed back into its human form. A woman this time.
I stood, and something hit my foot. I looked down to see that someone’s discarded gun had just bumped into me. Alarmed, I looked around to see where it could have come from. Morgana wasn’t too far away, fighting with a bear-man that looked like Triple H with fur. She was now gun-less. I loaded more silver bullets into my gun–I had pumped the last of the previous mag into the female bear (I refused to think of it as a woman)–and shot the bear in the back of the head. He fell to his knees in front of Morgana, and then hit the ground, shrinking back into his human form. She seemed surprised.
“A ‘thank you’ would suffice,” I said, picking up her gun and throwing it back to her.
“Don’t get cocky,” she answered back, and turned to face another bear.
I did the same; there were plenty of bears to spare, after all. Jesus Christ, where did Claudiana get them all? I wondered as two more came after me. One I managed to kill, but the other one I missed completely. It charged me; I didn’t even have time to shoot. I hit the ground, rolling to the side as it barreled past me. It turned, and from my spot on the floor I fired. I missed. The bullet clipped its shoulder, but that definitely wasn’t enough to stop the creature. It started running toward me again, and in seconds it had garnered the momentum of a small train. I thought, Oh, fuck, I’m going to die.
Out of nowhere a black wolf that was roughly the size of a Great Dane appeared, jumping over me and landing on the bear’s back. The wolf sank its fangs into the base of the bear’s neck. I can only assume the top of the spinal chord was severed. The bear went down. The wolf shook itself, and Morgana was standing in front of me. “A ‘thank you’ would suffice,” she said sarcastically. I flipped her off. She laughed. Neither of us saw the bear-man.
One of the guards with guns–from the feel of their power, I was pretty sure it was safe to assume they were alpha bears–was right there. He seemed really pissed. Both of us moved quickly. He fired one of the silver stakes at Morgana; she shifted just in time. It sailed above her. She ran for him. At the same time, I fired at him, hitting him several times, but always seeming to miss his head. God, my aim was getting bad. Morgana jumped at him, attempting to sink her teeth into his neck. He swatted her away. She flew through the air and landed in a heap, a dog-like whimper escaping her. “Shit,” I muttered as he stalked toward me. He fired another stake; I barely had time to avoid it. I reloaded with more silver and commenced fire. If I lived, my ears would be ringing so badly after this. It would have been so much easier if I could have abandoned the gun–seeing as my aim appeared to be equivalent to shit–and fought him hand-to-hand. Unfortunately he was about ten times bigger than I was, and hand-to-hand combat with him would surely result in my death, something I was most adamant to avoid. Also, even the tiniest scratch from one of his claws could result in infection, and if I had my pick of were-animals to choose, I definitely wouldn’t pick bear.
So fighting him head-on was definitely out.
I really didn’t want to waste one of my UV bullets, but if silver wasn’t going to work on him, maybe a burst of sunlight cooking his insides might. Drawing my other gun, I fired a round of the UV’s into him. As they expanded and released their harmful UV energy, he stopped and looked at me, as though he were shocked I had actually managed to defeat him. I smiled and waved, as he exploded. I filed that away for future reference–when shot with UV’s, vampires burned, but the living blew up.
Dropping my guns back into the hip holsters, I grabbed his discarded weapon. From the goo that was formerly his body I retrieved ammo. He still had a whole lot of silver stakes that were just waiting to be put to good use.
I heard a cry of pain. Turning, I saw Chase on the ground, a bear above him. There was blood on his leg; I wasn’t sure how much of it was his. “Hey!” I called. The bear looked up, the human inside it responding to the call. As it looked at me, I launched a stake at it. It went through its forehead, came out the other side, and fell harmlessly to the floor. The bear collapsed on top of Chase. I ran over and helped him roll it over–it shifted back in mid-roll. “Thanks for that,” he said.
Despite the semi-awkwardness of the situation, I knelt beside him and inspected his leg. “Bitten?” I asked.
“Claw-swiped,” he said.
“Sometimes that’s enough.”
“I think I’ll be fine. I mean, I’m already a wolf, what else can I really get myself into? See, it’s already healing.”
Rolling my eyes, I helped him stand. By the time he was on his feet, he was almost as good as new. “How do you know the bear infection won’t fuck up your wolf or something?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t.”
Chase retrieved his gun off the floor and held it up sadly. The bear had mangled it. “Here,” I said, handing him the stake-gun. “I’m out of weapon room anyway.”
I looked up just in time to see Claudiana and Cassie, along with the last remaining alpha bear, slip through the door that the bears had entered from. I frowned. After shooting a nearby bear in the face, I asked Chase, “Where does that door lead?”
“The catacombs,” he answered as he pumped a stake through a bear somewhere behind me. “This place is connected to the master’s lair, and other hot spots in the city.”
“Fuck,” I muttered, and started toward the door. Chase grabbed my arm.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.
“I’m not letting her get away!” I cried.
“Trust me, she’ll be waiting for you,” he said.
It was then that I noticed a lack of chaos around us. Looking around, I saw that there were no bears left. There was no way that the twelve of us, as strong as we were, should have been able to get rid of them all that quickly. Realization can sometimes be a bitch.
“Those were new bears, weren’t they?” I asked.
Stavros heard me, and answered, “Yes, they were.”
“Shit!” I cried, kicking the closest something, which happened to be Chase’s mangled gun. It sailed across the concrete floor into one of the bodies. Claudiana had infected people with the bear strand of therianthropy. Probably innocent people. Maybe she had grabbed them off the street. Fact was, she had turned them into monsters, simply to use as pawns in her fucking mind games. She knew they wouldn’t kill us–at least, not all of us–because they were new and didn’t have much control. She had just wanted something to slow us down. These bears had just been party favors. Whatever the real present was, we hadn’t met it yet.
“Is everyone all right?” Stavros asked the room. A series of semi-positive comments went up around the room; few had injuries to report.
“Feels like I tore a ligament in my arm,” Frithick called.
“I lost my arm,” Ardian said. Indeed, his left arm was nothing more than a bloody stump at the elbow. I had a feeling there was a bear with an arm in its stomach somewhere, and that said bear was very, very dead. Luckily, though, Ardian had already healed. Granted, he couldn’t grow his arm back, but the wound was rapidly taking care of itself.
“I’ve got a few broken ribs,” Morgana reported, in human form once more.
Chase took a few steps and grimaced; he walked with a visible limp. “I got clawed,” he said.
“Shadow’s hurt,” came Thorn’s voice. We all turned. If Shadow couldn’t speak for himself, then it was bad. Thorn was kneeling beside Shadow. We all moved toward them. As we got closer, I could see that his mid-section was torn up pretty badly. In fact, it was just a mass of red. Frithick got to Shadow’s side first, which was lucky, because he had gone to medical school–that is, before they kicked him out. Not promising, but he was all we had.
Thorn’s voice was normal, but there were tears in her eyes. “They weren’t all new,” she corrected our earlier assumption. “That alpha, the one that escaped with the child vampire bitch–he did this.”
Shadow was laying flat on the floor, his arms at his sides. I would have thought he was dead, except that his eyes were open, and he was taking short, gasping breaths. Thorn gripped his hand, but he didn’t grip back. “He’s going into shock,” Frithick announced. That didn’t bode well. If the injury was bad enough that a therianthrope would go into shock, well...
“Frithick, Thorn, Ardian, Winter, stay here,” Stavros commanded. “The rest of us go after Claudiana.” His voice was clipped. I shivered. I had seen my boss angry before. He had crossed over the realm of angry. He wasn’t even pissed. He was enraged. I couldn’t really blame him, though. There was no way to stop Shadow’s bleeding. Therianthropes couldn’t become vampires. Shadow was going to die. Winter reached out to Stavros as he passed; the master vampire brushed by his second without even looking at him. He was heading straight for the door. Those of us he hadn’t named quickly followed along.
The catacombs were dark and cold. Nick, Cassandra, and I brought out flashlights. Even vampire slayers didn’t get the luxury of night-vision. There were steps right inside the door, leading down into the stone passageways that had been built at the same time as the city above. The first stretch of the catacombs was a pretty straight shot–it was a few minutes before we came to our first decision. Our choices were right, left, or straight ahead. Why couldn’t they just have one straight path from A to B? Why did they always have to make it so damn complicated?
Stavros looked back to Chase and Morgana, silently asking which way was the right one.
“Not left,” Morgana said quietly. “Left leads to the housing. It doesn’t really matter which way you go otherwise; they both loop back to the master’s lair, although right is quickest.”
“I’m glad someone remembered all of that,” Chase muttered.
Stavros moved to the opening on the right. “I, along with Kayla and Chase, will go this way,” he said. “The rest of you, take the other tunnel.”
My little group started off down the tunnel on the right. It was damp, smelled like decay, and it was cold. Stavros and Chase walked ahead of me, surefooted in the darkness. I stumbled along, flashlight in hand. Jesus, it sucked being the only human.
We had been walking for several minutes when we heard a scream in the distance–distance here meaning, over in the next tunnel. I couldn’t tell if it was Cassandra or Morgana who had screamed, but it had definitely been female. Probably Cassandra. Morgana didn’t seem the type to scream. At least, not in fear. I took a step as though to go back the way we had come; Stavros put a hand on my arm. “We cannot turn back,” he said apologetically. I nodded. I knew he was right. I didn’t like it, but he was right.
We started back down the tunnel. It was then that the beam of my flashlight hit something that practically glowed; whatever the thing was scuttled out of the light almost before I was even sure I’d seen something. “Christ!” I said, startled.
“So you saw one, did you?” Stavros asked. They both kept walking.
“What is it?” I asked nervously. I had always hated the dark, and having the fact that there were things creeping in it confirmed did not make me a happy camper.
“It is a nest of starving vampires,” Stavros said. “We are walking right into it.”
“What?” I cried.
“Don’t worry, they won’t attack until we are past the nest,” Stavros explained, in a tone that implied his words were supposed to make me feel better.
“Yeah,” Chase added. “The starving ones like to play with their food.”
The tunnel emerged into a large circular chamber. Shining my flashlight around, I counted at least twenty of these starving vampires. Those were only the ones I could see; I could sense more. There were probably fifty of them surrounding us. They were horrible-looking. They were all like skeletons with skin stretched right over the bones. Their eyes were milky, their lips thin and dry, their hair brittle. Starving vampires are, for those of you who don’t know, sort of like “Hollywood” zombies, with a few exceptions: they are faster, stronger, and a hell of a lot smarter.
We walked slowly through the chamber. The vampires looked at us like they had found their next meal. If they got a hold of us, it would be a feeding frenzy. Some of them were hanging off the ceiling like giant bats; I hadn’t thought vampires actually did that. Others were crawling the walls. Most of them, though, were right beside us, having made a path barely large enough for us to walk through. We reached the other side of the chamber, and the doorway to the other half of the tunnel, much too soon. As soon as we were there, they started advancing on us.
I had a plan.
“I have a plan,” I announced. “Boss, do you think you can hold them off?”
“I will try,” Stavros said. He threw his power out into the other vampires, lowering the temperature of the already-cold room even more. The vampires all stopped moving; they didn’t look happy about that.
Quickly, I holstered the gun I had been using, the one with the silver bullets, and grabbed the one with the UV’s. As I loaded a new clip into the gun, I said to Chase, “I need you to change into your half-and-half form.”
“All right,” he said, and started to pull of the T-shirt he wore.
I put a hand on his arm. “As much as I’d like to see that, we don’t have time,” I told him. “You’ll have to just live with killing your clothes.”
He smiled at my first comment. “Does this mean we’ve made up?” he asked.
“They are weak, but not so weak that I can hold them off forever,” said Stavros, his subtle way of telling us to hurry up.
“Just shift,” I said to Chase. He nodded, and changed effortlessly into his wolf-man form. His clothes ripped. Oh well. If we lived, I’d buy him a new pair of jeans to make up for it.
“Can you run while holding me?” I asked.
“Don’t ask stupid questions,” was his reply.
“Great.” I put my arms around his neck and jumped up. He caught me immediately, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, which was sort of hard to do, since he was considerably bulkier as a wolf-man than he was as a human. I used his broad shoulder to brace my arm, and aimed my gun at the starving vamps, who were starting to break free of Stavros’ power. “I’ll shoot,” I said, “you two run.”
“Are you insane?” Chase asked.
“I think I am,” I answered. “But my plan will probably get us to the master’s lair in one piece.”
“She’s right,” Stavros said. “I cannot hold them any longer.”
I braced myself against Chase, really hoping that this would work and not get us killed. I took a deep breath, then cried, “Run!”
