Another Kind of Dead

Chapter Twenty-five

She didn’t protest, and I waited until we were in her Jeep and on the road before demanding to know what the fuck was going on.

“Adrian got a call from one of the trainers,” she said, voice shaking. “She said the creatures we’d collected from Olsmill started going berserk. They were enraged like nothing she’d ever seen before, some of them bursting out of their cages. The six hounds got loose, too. No one realized it until they got out of R&D and started tearing through the compound.”

I bit my lower lip hard. Six hounds, plus fourteen other inhuman beasts, loose in an enclosed compound full of trainers and half-skilled rookie Hunters. It would be a slaughter.

“Thackery,” I said. “He created those things; it makes sense he’d have some method of controlling them. Some switch we couldn’t see to set them off. A fail-safe.”

As far-fetched as it sounded, given what I now knew about Thackery, it also seemed perfectly reasonable. He could control his newest breed of hounds. He had a trained fucking wolf. Who was to say he couldn’t also control the other creatures in his menagerie? We’d taken them into our most protected, private facility, and now he was attacking our heart.

Bastard!

Kismet tossed her phone at me. “Call the apartment. Tell Milo and the rookies to get weapons and be ready for us to pick them up in five minutes.”

I did, not even bothering to explain, and points to Milo for not asking. At Kismet’s direction, I called four other Handlers and repeated an emergency code. Two teams were remaining in the city, just in case. Everyone else was scrambling to Boot Camp. She repeated the message to her team after we picked them up. Her rookies were all teen boys, fresh-faced and completely forgettable, and probably about to become cannon fodder.

God, did I ever look that young?

They passed out weapons. Apparently, Milo remembered my fondness for knives, because I was given three—one for my ankle and one on each hip, plus a gun loaded with frag rounds and two extra clips. Kismet’s gun and various rounds went on the seat between us.

No one talked, each of us absorbed in our own thoughts. I kept imagining the trainees being cornered and slaughtered by those creatures. Being hunted in their own safe haven by monsters that shouldn’t exist. As a trainee, I’d been able to reconcile the existence of vampires and shape-shifters and Fey because they’d been here long before humans. But the hounds? That thing with the fish fin? The skeleton cat? Nature had been raped and abused to create them, and now we were paying the price.

The city fell away, and a black sedan appeared behind us on the dirt road that wound up to Boot Camp. Kismet raced along the bumpy path, and I swear I heard a tire pop. At a bend, the road was blocked by a second Jeep. She slammed on the brakes. I braced against the dash, my seat belt snapping me back. Tires squealed behind us. Just beyond the first vehicle was the gate.

We tumbled out, joined from the rear sedan by Morgan’s team. Four figures had gathered next to the front Jeep—a Triad I didn’t know. They waved at us to take cover, and I finally realized why.

Three creatures prowled the front gate, on our side of the barrier. The familiar hulking shapes of two hounds walked on their hind legs, darting in and out of the decimated guard hut, daring us to try and get inside. Both of them were bleeding in half a dozen places, but seemingly unfazed by the wounds. The third shape was the oversized gray wolf—Thackery’s wolf, with the intelligent silver eyes. Silver eyes seemed to be a theme with his sidekicks.

The wolf watched me from the safety of the hounds’ shadows, ears perked. Surprised to see me alive, maybe?

None of them were attacking. Shit. They were stalling us. Keeping us out. I said as much to Kismet.

“Kis, Morgan,” the oldest of the unfamiliar foursome said. Had to be their Handler. “How much firepower do you have?”

“Plenty,” Morgan said. He and Paul were lugging a trunk forward.

“Mix up the frags and a-c’s,” Kismet said. “It kills them faster.”

“We don’t have time for this,” I said, and gave her a hard look. “There’s no barrier spell that I can sense, so I could try three.”

“Take Milo.” To the Handler, she said, “Sharpe, I need two of yours.”

Sharpe shot her a sour look. His close-cropped brown hair and deep-set eyes gave him an Italian mobster air that wasn’t dispelled by the way he drew out some of his vowels. “Greg and Scott, do what she tells you. Everyone else, switch out your ammo.”

I rolled my eyes. Fools must have been using regular rounds. Then I surveyed my temporary partners.

Greg and Scott were perfect opposites as Hunters. The former was short and stocky, with the bulk of a midget wrestler, while the latter was tall and lean and tight sinew. They were also armed to the teeth. Scott even had a short sword in a sheath across his back. Nice.

Only Milo seemed to have some inkling of what we were about to do. I grabbed his hand, then took Greg’s. Milo reached for Scott’s. The other two men frowned.

“Take his fucking hand,” Kismet snapped before I had to.

“Don’t break the circle,” I said when they finally got over holding a man’s hand. “No matter what, because this is going to feel weird.”

I closed my eyes and ignored the sounds of clips sliding into place and Handlers shouting orders. I reached out to find my tap, then sought loneliness. With Wyatt gone, unreachable, untouchable, it wasn’t hard. The emotion flooded me, bordering on grief, and the Break snapped all around me. Around us. Someone shouted as we dissolved. I guided us through the familiar crackle of energy, toward the road just past the gate. A sharp stab of pain hit between my eyes. Warm wetness stained my upper lip.

And then we were out. Milo caught me before I fell, and I sagged against his chest, dizzy and nauseated.

“Holy shit, that was awesome,” either Greg or Scott said. The other asked, “She okay?”

A high-pitched shriek bounced off the trees from the direction of Boot Camp. “Go!” I said, and pushed Milo away.

The three took off down the road and disappeared around the first bend. I stumbled after them. Wouldn’t be very good in the battle today, but at least I’d gotten a few extra hands into the fray sooner.

An out-of-place whirring sound approached from the west, high above the trees. I gazed up at the sky as I half walked, half ran. A helicopter buzzed aloft, heading toward the heart of the compound. Airborne backup—that made me smile. Behind me, an eruption of gunfire added to the cacophony.

The trees parted. The smoking ruins of R&D lay straight ahead, burning from the inside out. Smoke stung my eyes. Two twisted, bloodied bodies decorated the sidewalk. Gunfire and screams still echoed from the rear, closer to the recruit barracks and training facilities. The helicopter was gone, and I hoped it had at least dumped a couple of capable bodies before flying away.

I dug up some energy reserves and ran. Rounded past R&D and tripped over another body, scraping my palms on the ground as I ate dirt. In times past, I would have used the momentum to tuck into a roll and come up gracefully on my knees. Instead, I belly flopped and looked back.

The girl was probably just eighteen. Her blond hair was streaked crimson, blue eyes wide and unseeing above a gaping throat. Her chest was likewise torn open, one of her arms missing. Strike that, not missing—lying a few feet away. She could have been me four years ago.

People were still screaming. Engines roared as the rest of our backup made entry. I hauled myself up and ran toward the gymnasium a dozen yards away. The doors were gone, and the bulk of the screams were coming from inside.

The interior of the gym was the size of a pro-football arena, divided up into smaller sections designated for specific activities. The largest of these was an obstacle course, and I turned in that direction. Past two more ripped-apart bodies of young trainees. Kids who’d come here for a chance at a meaningful (albeit brief) future and had died gruesome deaths.

Grief for them hardened into anger, and I latched onto it for fuel. It was all I had. Someone darted out of an intersecting corridor and slammed into me. Milo and I went tumbling to the ground. His shirt was coated in blood, but he didn’t seem wounded.

“I think we’re too late,” he said, panting, as we helped each other stand.

“No.”

He followed me into the obstacle arena. We were on a balcony overlooking the course, where our instructors had watched as we failed test after test. Below and halfway across the stretch of space, three battered trainees were high up on the climbing ropes. A single hound stalked them from the ground, swatting at the ropes, seeming not to know how to climb them.

Small favors.

Milo and I pulled our guns at the same time. “Frags,” I said, to which he answered, “A-c’s.”

Good. We opened fire on the hound. Its inhuman howl sliced through my eardrums. Four shots hit home before it dove for cover, but none on its soft underbelly. I bolted for the ladder that led down. The trainees had seen us and were shouting for help. I wanted to scream back to shut up, it’s what we’re doing.

At the ladder, I paused and scanned. A flash of black was moving toward us. I took aim at where I thought it was likely to dart next and waited.

Milo screamed as he pitched past me and to the floor below, a wriggling, snarling creature the size of a cat attached to his back. Skele-kitty, one of the first hybrids I’d seen in the Olsmill lab. Milo hit and rolled. I braced my wrist and aimed. He rolled again, shouting. I squeezed the trigger. The thing’s bald head exploded green gore all over Milo’s back. He looked up, panting, nose bleeding, and gave me a thumbs-up.

“The hound!” I said.

He understood and scrambled for the ladder. The hound blurred toward him. He spun and we both fired, me from above, him from below. Blood gushed. My frags tore chunks of flesh away. It collapsed inches from Milo and lay still.

“Hell yeah,” Milo said.

“Stay up there as long as you can,” I shouted to the trainees. “It’s not safe for you yet!”

Milo stumbled to his feet and started climbing back up. More shouts and gunfire erupted around us, muffled by walls in all directions, intermixed with unidentifiable noises—things breaking, being shoved, shattered, I wasn’t certain. Milo’s head cleared the balcony.

One of the dangling trainees screeched: “Look out!”

How come they never yelled a split second faster and gave us enough reaction time?

A moving body slammed into me, and I pitched forward. Startled by the sudden spur into motion, I lost my grip on the damned gun. I braced for impact only to scream when four daggers pierced my right ankle and kept me from falling. No, I was moving and it wasn’t daggers. Upside down, I thrashed against whatever was holding my leg. Air beat around me, and we were flying above the obstacle course.

Flying?

Shit.

I plucked a knife from one of the sheaths in my belt and slashed at the winged monstrosity hauling me around. Dark-skinned, mottled with patches of black feathers, its wings were long and stretched like a bat’s. Or a gargoyle’s, only I’d never seen gargoyle wings that long—a full ten-foot wingspan—or one that had feathers. Good God, what had Thackery created?

My blade bounced off the thing’s thickly hided feet, and its talons tightened. Blood oozed from the small wounds in my ankle. I was getting light-headed from hanging ass over teakettle. Milo was shouting about not having a clean shot, and I’d lost my gun. The gar-bat-thing zoomed directly toward the far wall, and for one brief moment, I expected it to try to crash straight through. It veered sharply right at the last instant. My head and left shoulder smacked the wall, leaving me reeling.

As it spun me again, I noticed the trainees were off the ropes. Smart move, now that we had airborne enemies. Gar-Bat flew right toward the ropes, heedless of their existence. Or maybe it was having too much fun hauling me around like a bag of flailing potatoes.

I put the blade between my teeth and grabbed the rope with both hands as we passed, holding on with all my might. My palms burned. My ankle lost a little more meat, and I screamed, but Gar-Bat was yanked to a sudden halt. It turned its head and screeched at me—a head-splitting shriek that sounded like tortured baboons. Its face was unidentifiable—hints of different creature-features combined into one squashed maw that was more sea lion–ish than anything else. It was almost absurd.

No, it was absurd. A flying sea lion–bat was attacking me. Absurd didn’t even begin to cover it.

It beat its wings, trying to yank me off the rope. I waited for an upswing, the slightest drop in pull. Then I held with my left hand, took the knife with my right, and flung it at the creature’s chest. It struck center. It screamed and let go so suddenly I didn’t have time to grab the rope again. I plummeted to the ground.

There were no mats, just the hard Astroturf surface that covered most of the obstacle course floor. I hit on my back, knocking the wind out of my lungs in a solid, aching whoosh. My chest constricted. Tears stung my eyes. Every frail, unexercised bone in my body ached. I lay there, desperate to suck in some air.

I couldn’t see the Gar-Bat, but I could hear it, still screeching and wailing. On the other side of the climbing wall, maybe. At least I’d wounded it. It gave me a minute to pull myself together. I inhaled hard. Sweet oxygen filled my straining lungs, and I coughed. Inhaled, coughed out, inhaled again. My head started clearing.

I didn’t know of any shortcuts on the obstacle course. My only way out was to go through it to the end. And I was somewhere in the middle, down on the lowest level. During training, this was where each runner climbed the rope to get a flag tacked at the very top and held on to it for the rest of the course. The only way out from here was a rope ladder angled up at forty-five degrees, anchored on hooks so it swiveled with your weight.

I hated this one. Even when I was in peak physical shape and not sporting a chewed-on ankle, I had trouble and had fallen off more than once. I used the anchor post to stand up. My ankle cried at the pressure, and my arms were shaking. My vision blurred. Just terrific.

Claws scrabbled against the wall separating me from Gar-Bat. It was trying to climb. I guess it was too wounded to fly out.

I closed my eyes and felt for the Break. It was there, on the fringes of my mind, taunting me. Too far. And I was too upset. A tremor seized my spine and shook my entire body. Not the shock I got when a blocking spell was being used; this was my body protesting the idea of teleporting. No strength for it. Fuck.

The rope ladder swayed on its own, mocking me. Climb it and escape, or wait and see if Gar-Bat makes it over the wall. Both choices sucked.

I reached as far up the rungs as I could, looped my left ankle around a lower one, and lunged. The ladder swiveled upside down. I clung to the ropes, dangling. Hand over hand, foot over rung, I inched my way up the twenty-foot rope ladder. The floor below was more hardwood. The trainers put down mats the first two times you ran the course. If you fell after that, you ate floor.

Having eaten enough floor for one day, I concentrated on my ascent and nothing else. Sweat dotted my hairline and upper lip. The rope seared my scraped palms. My ankle was probably leaving lovely little blood smears behind. Up, up, up, until the top anchor post was just one lunge away. Urgency almost made me reach. The unwillingness to fall two stories and start over blocked that urge, and I inched my way up. Grabbed the post with my right hand and the floor with my left and hauled ass up to the platform. I hugged the wood, polished smooth with years of hands and bodies doing just what I’d done.

Gar-Bat screeched. Either he was getting frustrated by his own inability to climb the wall or he didn’t like my progress. Maybe both.

I had a better vantage point over the course from here, so I sat up. Heat whizzed by my cheek, slicing the skin. I jerked back. My knife was buried in the anchor post. Hell’s bells, the thing had thrown my own knife at me!

The next challenge made my heart sink. Six erratically spaced uneven bars were my only path to the next platform. Some trainees were gymnastically inclined and had excelled at this one. Me? Not so much.

I looked at my palms, both weeping and scraped. Then at the ground below. The air mattresses were deflated. One more time I tested my Gift. That same brittle distance filled me. If I tried, I’d probably end up inside of something or dead from my brain exploding.

“Fuck!” It came out like a plea and bounced around the open gym. Where the hell had Milo gone? He’d better be off saving lives.

Screw this. One wrong move on those bars and I’d break my neck. There had to be another way. I perched my toes on the edge of the platform and leapt for the nearest bar. My grip nearly slipped. I held tight and stiffened, stopping all motion. Inched sideways until I got to the support post, shifted my grip, and shinnied down to the floor.

The court was narrow and long, built up on all sides with two-by-fours nailed into thicker beams. Something slammed against the wall on my left. Gar-Bat was still at it. I worked my way along the opposite wall, checking for any sort of access or hatchway. The trainers had to have some way to get around this course. I just needed to find it.

At the end of the court, hope presented itself in the form of a square sliding door. I pried it up to reveal a crawl space barely large enough for a grown man to slither through. Good thing I was smaller than that.

Gar-Bat shrieked, this time above me. I looked up as a shadow fell. It was perched on the platform, braced to jump. I crawled through the rabbit hole and immediately sneezed. Didn’t stop. Seconds later Gar-Bat was scrabbling at the hole, too large to follow me inside.

I crept along the narrow path until it opened up into what looked like the interior of another raised platform. Judging from the wide spaces between the boards, it was another sort of climbing wall. I slipped through one of the wider slats and stumbled. My ankle was numb, making it difficult to walk. No sign yet of Gar-Bat.

I hobbled fast across another open floor, getting much closer to the end of the course. Two, maybe three, challenges lay between me and the end.

My frustration at being stuck doing this was nothing compared to my anger at not being outside, part of the ongoing battle. Had they killed the rest of the hounds? How many of Thackery’s projects were loose? How many had been captured or killed? How many of our people were wounded? Dead?

I dropped to my knee when the shadow fell, drawing the knife from my right ankle sheath. Blood dripped from above, viscous and bluish. Gar-Bat dive-bombed me. I pitched sideways at the last moment and thrust up, dragging the blade across its lower belly. More blood splashed on my hands and arms. Its rear legs lashed out and slammed me to the left even as it crashed to the floor. It thrashed and flopped, spreading its blood across the floor like a fresh coat of paint.

The raw-sewage odor turned my stomach. I crawled away, slipped, and finally got to my feet. The stink was on my hands. I wiped them on the seat of my jeans, then repositioned the knife so the handle was clasped between both hands. Gar-Bat’s thrashing had slowed. It lay on its stomach, wings folded close to its back, the pool of blood widening around it.

I almost felt sorry for it, whining in pain and paling quickly. It hadn’t asked to be created, and now it was paying the price. I thrust my blade down, directly into Gar-Bat’s skull. The impact jolted my wrists. Bone cracked. Matter oozed. My enemy lay still.

“Class dismissed,” I said.