Burn the Night

Twenty

Calling up a brisk wind, Rowe and I flew easily to the top of the plain two-story office building that was home to the Daylight Coalition. The tan stone structure looked more like a fortress, with narrow slit windows coated in a black film so no one could see inside. I sensed at least a dozen humans, which was confirmed by the scattering of cars that filled the large parking lot.

I rubbed my eyes against the bright sunlight after I landed on the rooftop and pulled in my wings. I had become accustomed to sleeping during the day, and this job was wearing me more than a little thin. Rowe and I had taken turns sleeping, while Barrett drove the car. During the last half hour, the lycanthrope told us what little he knew of the building we were attempting to infiltrate. In his one and only communication with the Savannah pack, Daniel had been able to reveal that the first floor was filled with offices and there was a receptionist in front. A set of stairs at the far western part of the building led both to an underground basement and to the second floor. Daniel was unsure what was on either of the other two floors, but he hoped to infiltrate one of the two during the next few days. Barrett feared that the detective had succeeded in doing just that, and now we were there to rescue him.

“There’s two lycans inside,” Rowe murmured as he also drew in his wings and came to stand beside me. I nodded, a frown pulling at the corners of my mouth. I had sensed the same thing. It meant that our traitor or traitors were likely inside, but also that they could potentially sense Barrett sitting in his car a short distance off, waiting for us to signal him with the walkie-talkie attached to my belt. We needed to move fast before someone came out of the building to look into the matter of the unexpected lycanthrope in the parking lot.

Rowe stood on the roof and looked around the area with his hands propped on his hips. “Do you know how to take down the security system to the building?”

“Not a clue. I am assuming we can just rip out some of the wires sticking out of the building in the box over there. That should knock the power out, right?” I replied, pointing toward a large metal box with several thick wires running from it to power lines farther out in the parking lot.

Rowe shook his head and smiled at me. “You really haven’t spent much time in this world. Your suggestion is a good way to get yourself killed and potentially set off some alarms. How about a sudden spring thunderstorm?”

I gave a sweeping bow and threw out both arms to him. “I concede to your greater experience regarding the workings of human security systems and their destruction.”

Rowe said nothing as he stretched his arms toward the sky while his power filled the immediate area. I also tapped into the powers of the earth swirling about me and reached toward the clouds that were starting to churn. Adding my own powers to the mix, it took only a moment for black clouds to gather directly overhead. Lighting crackled as it jumped from dark cloud to dark cloud, followed by a deep rumble of thunder.

My companion lowered his arms long enough to physically move me away from the metal boxes and to the far end of the roof, while I remained concentrated on the storm we were creating. With one hand still resting on my shoulder, Rowe reached up with his free hand and called down a thick string of lightning. It pounded into the rooftop and caused the metal box holding wiring that led into the building to explode in a shower of sparks. A second lightning bolt slammed into the pole holding up some wires. The wooden pole split down the center in an explosion of shards of wood and sparks from the snapping wires. Standing on the rooftop, I could see the lights going out in the surrounding area as we succeeded in knocking out the power for many businesses and homes. It was a good start.

“Should we contact Barrett now?” Rowe asked, squinting at me as the rain finally broke in a heavy sheet, clinging to his eyelashes and running down his nose.

“Let’s get inside first and clean out some of the humans,” I suggested, and started to raise my hand to end the storm.

“Leave it,” he said, capturing my hand before I lifted it above my head. “It will act as a good cover when we enter and leave.”

“How do you want to enter?”

“Through the roof. We’ll work our way down, killing humans as we go,” Rowe said with a wicked grin.

“How will we know if we run into Daniel?” I asked. “We need to call Barrett so he can identify him.”

“And let the lycan give us away the second we enter the building? Not a chance!” Rowe paused long enough to wipe more rain out of his eye and slick back his hair so it wasn’t obscuring his vision. “We’ll just take our time and read their thoughts as we go. Anyone named Daniel gets to live for now. We’ll contact Barrett when we have the first and second floors under control. I’ve got a feeling that the basement level is where all the fun is going to be.”

I frowned. I had not hunted humans in a long time and wasn’t sure how I felt about it. When I had returned to Earth after my entrapment, I’d been indifferent about their existence. My main focus was on protecting Cynnia’s safety, and killing nightwalkers as I went.

Rowe grabbed my left shoulder and gave it a hard squeeze. “Stop thinking about them as helpless little animals. They are going to hunt us eventually. Let’s stop them before they get the chance. It’s just one more speed bump on the road to Cynnia’s vision for a peaceful existence.”

“Nicely put,” I muttered under my breath. I didn’t think he actually believed a word of what he said. He enjoyed killing humans.

Raising my hand toward the sky again, I called down a large bolt of lightning to slam down on the opposite end of the roof. The building trembled beneath our feet. I called down a second and a third bolt before I could see a hole finally appear in the concrete. The air smelled of burned ozone and smoke, but it was quickly overwhelmed by the rain that continued to come down in buckets.

With a knife in either hand, I paused at the hole in the roof to look over my shoulder at Rowe, who was holding a short blade and a knife. His gaze was narrowed on the opening into the building. Energy flowed around us both as we cloaked ourselves against the view of any humans. The room below me was pitch-black, but I could see that there was nothing below me but open floor. I jumped into the hole and landed silently in a crouched position, waiting. I didn’t expect anyone to attack, as I didn’t sense any creatures on the second floor, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

When I was confident we were alone, I moved away from the opening and stepped deeper into the room, allowing Rowe to jump down. My eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness, and I could make out massive piles of boxes lining the walls. The coalition seemed to be using the second floor of the building as storage. I walked over to one of the open boxes and pulled out a thick stack of pamphlets that decried a plague of nightwalkers and other dark creatures lurking in the shadows. They espoused the coalition’s ideology and included quotes from religious scripts in an effort to strengthen their argument.

“What is it?” Rowe whispered, looking over my shoulder.

“Leaflets and pamphlets for their cause,” I murmured, dropping them back into the box. “This floor seems empty to me.”

“Then let’s give them a reason to not return to it,” Rowe said, grinning at me.

“A fire?”

“Sounds good to me. All this stuff will go up easily.”

“Too easily. We have to get through the first floor and the basement. I don’t want to get trapped in the basement when we’re trying to get out of this place.”

“Just a small fire that will spread. The chaos will work in our favor while we get through the area.”

I shrugged my shoulders as I walked back over to the opening where the rain was pouring into the room. I placed my knives in their sheaths and lifted one arm and pointed at the opening while pointing with my other hand at a pile of boxes at the far end of the room. Closing my eyes, I summoned up another lightning bolt. However, this time the energy surged straight through me and exited my other hand to slam into the boxes. Paper and cardboard exploded in a shower of ash and flames.

“Holy shit!” Rowe gasped, surprising me. “I’ve never seen anyone do that.”

“Yes, I’m quite unique,” I bitterly muttered, letting my arms fall limp at my sides. That particular trick took a little bit out of me, but I was regaining my strength as the fire started to grow. Pulling my weapons back out of their sheaths, we jogged toward the door marked EXIT and quietly eased out to concrete stairs blanketed in thick darkness. I was forced to pause as my eyes struggled to adjust.

Sliding along the wall, we quickly descended to the first floor and stopped. I frowned, noticing a dim light coming from the basement level, when there should have been no light at all. There was a great deal of shouting going on from that level, but things seemed to be relatively calm outside the stairwell door to the first floor. I was tempted to say to Rowe that we should continue to the bottom floor, but I didn’t want to leave potential enemies at my back. We needed to clean out the first floor before moving on.

As I reached the door handle, an alarm went off in the building. I looked over my shoulder at Rowe in confusion. I thought we had taken out all the power.

“It’s the smoke alarm on the second floor,” he explained. “They’ll be calling the fire department soon if we don’t take care of the first floor employees.”

I nodded, pulled the door open, and was immediately faced with a tall, lanky man in a suit. He was staring straight through me with a confused look on his face. He couldn’t see me because I was cloaked, but was confused as to how the door opened on its own. Rowe reached around me and pulled the man into the darkness, plunging his knife into the man’s throat before he had a chance to give a shout of surprise. We left him gurgling on the stairs leading to the second floor before we tried again to enter the first floor.

Dripping wet, we stood in the dimly lit office building. The few windows that dotted the building had been blacked out for privacy, but it also left them blanketed in darkness when the power was out. I felt like another shadow lost in the darkness. Around us I could hear nervous voices raised as people huddled in various offices in hopes that being in a group would protect them from the darkness as they waited for the power to return.

“Take the right,” Rowe said, jerking his head in that direction. “I’ll go left. Kill anything that moves. We’ll meet up on the other side. Don’t let anyone make any phones calls. They could call up some assistance from the ground floor. I’d rather keep this a private party.”

“See you on the other side,” I said, clinking my knife against his raised blade before heading to the right, disappearing into the deeper shadows.

My footsteps were silent across the carpet. In fact, the only sound I made was the occasional splat of water hitting the floor as it dripped down from my face and hair. The air was cool, raising goose bumps on my flesh, and I was forced to clench my teeth to keep them from chattering. With my heart racing in my chest at the thrill of the hunt, I knew my body temperature would soon rise.

I paused at one small office whose door was open. A man sat in a chair in front of a desk, while another man lounged in his leather chair behind the desk. Both were wearing white shirts and ties. I edged into the room and stood there in silence, watching them. It almost seemed wrong to kill them as they sat so innocently, but I reminded myself of the tenet that had guided the sword of so many naturi over the years: humans were destroyers of the Earth. And worst of all, these humans were going to be destroyers of my kind when they were given the chance, simply because we represented something different.

A low growl gave me away, but it wasn’t enough to give them a chance to protect themselves. I threw one knife, which buried up to the hilt in the throat of the man behind the desk while I turned my attention to the other man. Gripping the handle of the second knife, I plunged it directly into his chest, piercing his heart, while my free hand went over his mouth and nose, blocking any noise that would escape him. In one quick motion I jerked the knife free and slashed his throat. The spray of his blood across my cheek and arm somewhat warmed me while silencing the man. Retrieving my other blade, I slipped out of the room and closed the door behind me.

I was in and out of two more small offices in the same fashion in only a couple minutes. Blood was splattered across my arms and face and starting to take on a pink hue in my rain-soaked clothes. With knives still gripped in both hands, I turned a corner, heading toward the front of the office, when I heard a woman gasp in horror. She sat by candlelight at her large desk, her hands tightly gripping the arms of her chair as she stared wide-eyed at me. Confused, I did a quick scan of myself to find that I was indeed still cloaked. However, I discovered that I wasn’t the only one emanating energy. The woman was a witch.

Raising my hand to throw one of my knives at her, I saw her reach out with one foot and step on a red button on the floor. I knew that couldn’t possibly be a good thing. I flung the knife at her with all my strength, but she had already succeeded in throwing up a magical force field around her so my weapons couldn’t penetrate.

We have a problem, I said, reaching out mentally to contact Rowe.

What?

The woman at the main desk in the office is a witch.

The receptionist is a witch? His voice sounded amused in my head, and I felt the need to punch him in the arm so he would be serious again. You think they’d screen for such things since the coalition doesn’t like nonhumans.

This is serious. I think she alerted someone to our presence.

They still won’t be able to see us.

They will with her help.

Then make sure she can’t help them, he admonished before cutting off the connection between us. A part of me wanted to snap at him. It was as if we were back in training together with him issuing all of the orders. But in this case I knew that he was right. I had to get rid of the witch before she could assist anyone who might be banging up the steps from the basement.

“Wh-What are you?” she demanded, keeping her back pressed into her chair.

“The person sent to kill you for betraying your people,” I murmured as I walked toward her. I raised one hand and rested it against the bubble of energy that sizzled around her. I couldn’t physically penetrate it with my body or my knives. However, I suspected that magic would do the trick. I stepped backward again to give myself some room while I unhooked my whip from my side. Snapping it once, I flicked it at her to see if it would penetrate her bubble. She was smirking at me until the tail of the whip snapped around her knees, leaving behind a trio of long, deep scratches. The end of the whip was imbued with magic, allowing it to penetrate her bubble of protection.

Anger warped and twisted her features as she threw out her right arm toward the front of the building. The glass in the front door shattered into a thousand pieces, as if an explosion had gone off. Yet, instead of falling to the ground, the glass pieces hovered in the air in the door frame. The witch then pointed her extended arm, sending the shards flying directly at me. I had enough time to throw up both arms to protect my face. However, the rest of my body was exposed. I could feel a hundred little cuts across my body as sharp pieces of glass scraped along my flesh and embedded deeply. Little rivers of blood ran down my body and started to soak into my clothes. I was tempted to give a little shake and brush off the glass but suspected that would only push the shards even deeper into my skin. The pieces would need to be picked out one by one.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw her glance at the remaining window at her disposal. I snapped my whip and swirled it over my head once, sending a wave of pain screaming through me as I moved. I wrapped the length of the whip around her neck and gave a sharp pull, jerking her out of her seat and to the floor in a crumpled mess. She grabbed the whip and pulled desperately on it, trying to create some slack so she could breathe. I tightened my grip on it, wrapping a section around my upper arm as I took a step closer. The bubble of energy that had protected her was gone.

Kneeling on the ground behind her, I tightened the whip around her neck again, slowly choking the life out of her. I watched as her lips turned an ugly shade of blue and her eyes began to bulge from their sockets. Her long red fingernails clawed at the leather whip before finally dropping limp at her sides. I remained on the ground, holding her tight until I heard her heart stop beating at long last.

Unwrapping the whip, I stood, letting her fall to the ground in a heap next to her chair. She was hidden behind her large, tall desk and would go unnoticed at first glance. But I was running out of time. As I replaced the whip at my side, I could hear heavy footsteps pounding up the cement stairs toward the first floor.

Coming out from behind the desk, I continued toward my right to finish off the last of the offices so I could meet up with Rowe. Unfortunately, the doorway to the stairway exploded open and men with guns poured into the office building. I paused where I was, trying to decide whether I should continue with my extermination or stop the men who offered the greater threat. Rowe could undoubtedly finish off the office workers without a problem or help from me. I needed to cover his back so he could work quickly.

Pressing my back to one wall, I waited for the footsteps to get closer. I clenched my knives in my fists, sending another streak of pain through my hands from the shards of glass still embedded there. Blood dripped from me, staining the carpet in a motley spotted pattern. As the first man appeared around the corner, I swung both of my arms out. One knife buried deep in his muscular gut while the second one hit him in the throat. I continued to rip through his body, pulling the knives free as he collapsed to the floor in a convulsing, quivering mass of spurting blood.

The man behind him paused in horror. Like the others who had just burst in from the stairwell, he was dressed differently than those men I’d encountered so far in the office building, with their white shirts and striped ties. These men wore black pants and shirts in an effort to blend in with the darkness. Weapons were openly strapped to their bodies, as if they were the ones selected to wage the coming war against the different races. If they were looking for a war, then I was willing to give it to them. Placing my hand over that of the man who clutched a gun, I forced it up to his temple and pulled the trigger, blasting his brains against the opposite wall. He gave one last scream of terror before he slumped at my feet, dead, drawing more attention in my direction.

Flashlights flicked on, bright spotlights through the darkness, in an effort to spot their attacker, but I pulled back around the corner. While still cloaked from their view, I was dripping blood onto the carpet, which was bound to give me away eventually. Wiping my knives clean on my pants, I ducked low and swung around the corner. I took down one armed man after another. Gunfire filled the air as they frantically searched for the creature killing their men with amazing speed. A couple bullets skipped across my leg and another plunged through my shoulder, clipping my collarbone before I managed to finish them off.

Rowe appeared a couple minutes later, covered in blood, to find me sitting against the wall in the middle of a hallway filled with dead bodies. I once again wiped my knives clean on my clothes and shoved them back in the sheaths on my body. Most of my wounds had healed, but I was moving a little slower than I had minutes earlier. I had lost a lot of blood, and the glass still needed to be removed from my skin. I felt bruised and more than a little worn from the fights, but I would be able to manage as we headed down to the basement level. Below us, I could still sense a pair of lycanthropes, which I knew would be of interest to Barrett.

Smoke was starting to hang in the air on the first floor, and the temperature was steadily rising. The fire we started on the second floor had grown and was now determined to make its way down to the first floor. While it had set off a panic among the humans, giving us the ability to easily sneak up on them, it was now cutting our time short.

“I think it’s time to call in Barrett,” I said as I slowly eased back to my feet by sliding my back up the wall.

“You’re hurt?” Rowe asked, looking more than a little surprised.

I shrugged and immediately regretted the action, as my collarbone was still struggling to mend. “It was a narrow hallway and they got in a few lucky shots.”

“And the glass? You’re sparkling in the light,” he said.

“The witch got in one spell before I could kill her. You have any problems?”

“Nothing worth mentioning. The humans are dead and the naturi are alive. Just as it’s supposed to be,” he said with a wide grin.

“Don’t get too excited,” I growled. “We still need to get down to the basement and see what the coalition actually knows. The witch could see me, but she didn’t know what I was. It might mean they don’t know about our people yet. We need to be sure before we leave this place.”

Rowe turned serious as he pulled the little black walkie-talkie off the waist of my pants and pressed the button. “Any problems?”

“None.” Barrett’s voice came back scratchy but easily understandable. “However, smoke is pouring out of the roof. I imagine that the fire department is going to be here soon.”

“Then you better haul your ass in here fast so we can get this done. There are two lycan waiting for you to play with.”

“I’m coming,” Barrett replied. And with him would be the entire fury of his pack.