A Shade of Vampire 25: A Clan of Novaks (4 page)

A
rwen
and I were in too much of a daze to even call to the others about what we had just found. We moved to the edge of the portal, gazing down into it.

My head spun. Where did this lead to? And the hunters, they had passed through it? And they also said they had dropped something through it from the other side. What other side? What had they dropped?

I whirled around to take in the small clearing better and that was when I spotted it. Only six feet away, partially obscured by trees, stood a cast-iron cage large enough to hold three men. At first I thought that it was empty, but then I saw the form of a man, slumped against the bars, cast in shadow.

Arwen’s breath hitched as I clutched her shoulder and spun her around. I dared shine my flashlight to get a better view of him as we neared. He had thick, wavy black hair, strands of which hung over his face. I couldn’t see his face much at all. His head lolled over his chest. But his body was tall, broad and muscled… too muscled for a human. He wore a tattered shirt, which I guessed had once been white, but was now so covered in bloodstains it was hard to tell, and ripped black pants.

Crouching down by the cage, I ventured closer and shone my light directly toward his face.

“Hello?” I breathed.

His head lifted slowly and I found myself staring into a pair of savage gray eyes framed by heavy brows… The face of a young man. I would guess no older than twenty. His jaw was chiseled, his mouth set in a thin, hard line as he grimaced.

“Who are you?” I whispered. Now that life had returned to his face, I realized just how fine a man he was. His features were noble, regal almost. He certainly didn’t look like he belonged in a cage.

He furrowed his brows and I wondered whether he might not understand me. Then he crawled closer to me, wincing as he moved. He was obviously in a lot of pain. His voice was deep and guttural as he rasped, “Please. Get me out.”

I exchanged a panicked glance with Arwen, who was looking quite lost as to what to do.

“Are you…
a werewolf
?” she stammered.

He nodded.

I’d known he wasn’t human, I just hadn’t been able to quite put my finger on it. But now I could see he had the characteristics of a wolf. That would certainly explain his physique and there was a wolflike quality to his ears and teeth, a subtle sharpness. But it was night time. If he was a werewolf, he should be in his beastly form now. Unlike dragons, werewolves had no control over when they shifted.

“Why haven’t you shifted?” I breathed. “It’s the dead of night. And why are you here?”
What are they doing with you? Why did they trap you in here? Where did you come from?
A dozen questions crowded my brain at once.

“No time,” he whispered, shaking his head. Urgency pulsed in his gray irises as he locked his gaze on me.

My heart hammered against my chest. Those hunters could come back any moment now, probably with a vehicle to transport this cage to headquarters. Without thinking further, I whispered to Arwen, “Free him!”

She looked at me in alarm. “What?”

“You heard me.” I didn’t know this man at all, but this… this just wasn’t right. The way they had him locked up in this cage, battered, cut and bruised—this wasn’t a humane way to treat anyone, be they animal, human, or supernatural. And every instinct told me that if he reached headquarters, he would never come out again.

“Okay,” Arwen said, her voice shaking.

She performed a spell to weaken five bars. Before she’d even finished the job, the wolf, even in his weakened state, gripped them and pried them open, finishing the rest of the job himself. He staggered out, his knees unsteady, before locking eyes with me again. His wintry gaze was so intense, I almost felt threatened by it. But then he bowed his head slightly and the next thing I knew he had turned on his heels and leapt through the portal.

About ten seconds later, Arwen gasped. She was pointing to the base of the cage, where a red light was blinking. A red light that definitely had not been there a minute ago. I swore beneath my breath.
Of course they would’ve installed an alarm.

“
I
’m worried
they aren’t back yet,” my sister said as she sat opposite me in the control room, her hands clasped together.

The first group of six had overshot their time allowance by four minutes. I was disappointed in Corrine. I had trusted that she would herd them back in time and not get carried away herself. Perhaps they had made a discovery, but still, that was not an excuse. They should have come back to inform us. I was about to uphold my word and go fetch them when, to my surprise, Ben and Lucas appeared in the middle of the room. Their foreheads were shiny with sweat, and the look of urgency in their eyes shook me.

“What’s going—” I began.

“An alarm has been triggered,” Lucas said, wiping his brow with a tissue.

“An alarm?” Sofia gasped.

“They can detect fae now?” Rose asked, looking stunned.

Ben and Lucas eyed us with confusion.

“No,” Ben said, shaking his head. “I’m sure it wasn’t us. We thought it must be you. Kyle,” he yelled into the pilot cabin. “We have to leave. Now. The mutants are coming!”

“Wait!” I shouted, even as I cursed beneath my breath. “Your daughter’s out there!”

A
bout twenty seconds
after we noticed the beeping red light, something detonated silently at the base of the cage. Tongues of fire burst out, followed by a heavy smoke that blanketed the area with alarming speed and thickness. I could only assume that this punishment had been meant for the werewolf… or rather, whoever was stupid enough to free him.

Arwen and I staggered back, choking and coughing. The smog felt toxic to my lungs. My vision became disturbingly clouded and before I knew it, I could no longer even see Arwen. Corrine shouted for us, for me. I tried to call out to her, but I only ended up choking more; my mouth and throat had dried out from the noxious fumes. I could barely even let out a whisper. I fumbled around, trying to feel for Arwen. Failing, I dropped to my knees and crawled through the undergrowth, attempting to get away from the fog. My stinging eyes began to water, impairing my vision even more. I blinked rapidly in an attempt to clear them. No chance.
I have to get out of this.

As I sped up in a panic, my hands came down against the edge of a hole in the ground. Shivers ran down my spine. I’d reached the portal. And I’d almost lost my balance and gone toppling headfirst into it. I scrambled around the edge of it as I continued trying to escape the smoke. It was still surrounding me. Forced to breathe in this smog, I didn’t think I could remain conscious much longer. My head throbbed and dizziness was overtaking me.

Then, as if my fading mind didn’t have enough to deal with, high-pitched screeching drifted through the night air, making me stop dead in my tracks. I recognized that sound instantly.

The mutants were coming.

It had sounded distant, but with their supernatural speed, I knew we’d be lucky to have two minutes.
Oh, no.
Fighting to stand while my knees wanted nothing more than to give way and collapse, I forced my eyes open again in spite of the agony.

“Victoria!” Grace’s voice came from somewhere to my right.

Footsteps pounded toward me and then Grace and Heath arrived close enough for me to be able to make them out. Rushing to my side, Heath took my right arm and wrapped it around his shoulder, supporting me against him, while Grace took my left arm and did the same.

“Come on,” she wheezed. “We’ll get you out of here.”

I could only think that, being half-supernatural, they could bear this smoke much better than I could. Avoiding the portal, they began dragging me across the clearing… but we were too late to reunite with the others.

Two of the mutants crashed down into the undergrowth, blocking our path. They had fearsome hawk-like heads with razor-sharp beaks. They fixed their focus on us before letting out more deafening screeches. Their spear-like tails thrashed behind them as their deadly talons dug up the ground. And then came the fire. It shot from their gaping mouths and torpedoed toward us. If Grace hadn’t been with us to divert it with her powers, we would have been scorched to a crisp. At least, I would have.

This only angered the mutants and they jerked forward, forcing us backward until the backs of our feet were at the edge of the portal. The gun I carried in my jacket would not save us from these beasts. We only had one option left.

T
he three of
us thrust ourselves backward into the portal.

This was the first time I had ever traveled through a gate. It was the most bizarre experience, lurching into a gut-wrenching freefall through a seemingly bottomless tunnel, with no idea what we’d find on the other end. My parents had recounted to me on a number of occasions what it felt like, but nothing could’ve truly prepared me for it.

My stomach lurched, and I was sure that I would throw up before we ever reached the other side. But as we hurtled down, I could only feel thankful that the toxic smoke no longer choked my lungs, and we’d gotten away from those monsters. I had been afraid in the first few seconds of our fall that they would leap after us, but I managed to twist myself around and verified that they hadn’t.

When we arrived at the other end, I was totally unprepared. I hadn’t even known we’d been approaching the exit since I had been facing the other way. The three of us rocketed out and landed on cool, damp soil. The smell of wet bark filled my nostrils. I coughed, raising my head slowly. It was dark, and we had landed in some kind of… forested enclosure. The trees loomed so high, I couldn’t even see the top of them through the canopy of leaves. They were breathtakingly tall, taller than any redwood I’d seen in The Shade. Directly in front of us was a towering metal fence spiked with barbed wire.
An electric fence?

Then my eyes fell upon something far more shocking. Three large, square, steel buildings with wide tinted windows—signature architecture of the IBSI—loomed behind us.

The sight sent my head into a tailspin
. What? Where are we?
Grace and Heath looked equally bewildered. We looked at each other, wide-eyed and nervous.

“What is this place?” I whispered.

Heath shook his head darkly, before breathing, “Wherever we are, we need to stay hid—”

“Intruders!” a male voice boomed through the enclosure.

We spun in its direction to see five men in IBSI uniforms racing toward us through the trees, a mutant on a leash pounding in front of them.

“Run!” Heath roared, and although we had no idea where to run to, being trapped in this enclosure surrounded by electric fences, we scrambled toward the other side of the fence. I was still so weak, I fell behind and it killed me when the other two slowed down to keep me with them.

Running was futile, of course. We made it about eight feet before the hunters released the mutant and it came hurtling after us. Attempting to withdraw my gun while quickening my pace to a speed my body simply couldn’t handle, I lost my footing and fell, dropping the weapon. A sharp pain shot through my ankle. I was sure I had just sprained it. I crashed to the ground, expecting to be engulfed in flames any second as the mutant arrived next to me, blocking me off from Grace and Heath, who’d tried to rush back for me.

But instead, letting out another bloodcurdling screech, it decided to go after Grace and Heath instead—perhaps seeing its battle with me was already won. The hunters seemed to share the same thinking as they too averted their attention to Grace and Heath—but not before collecting my gun.

Using what little strength I had left in my arms, I pulled myself across the ground toward a nearby tree. I gazed helplessly toward the mutant circling Grace and Heath. Heath exhaled a burst of fire, even as Grace made it spread and swirl around the mutant, but it simply shot upward in retreat before unleashing a plume of its own flames down on them.

I craned my neck in anxiety as they backed away behind a thicket and… I didn’t have a chance to see what happened next.

With a dull thud, something dropped down from the tree I was backed up against. Before I could look up, a thick, steely arm snaked around my waist and hauled me upward. My feet left the ground. Something, someone with incredible strength and speed was swinging me up the tree.

Craning my neck even as my stomach lurched at the sheer height I suddenly found myself at, I realized I was staring up at… that man. The werewolf we had freed.

Crap.
He was climbing the tree with the power of a single arm while the other kept me bound tightly against him… suffocatingly tight. But at the speed he was traveling, he couldn’t grip me tight enough to make me feel secure.

A round of shouts came from beneath us. I was too afraid to look down now, but as gunshots fired, it was clear they had spotted me escaping. We’d reached the top of the tree by now, and with a leap that made my blood run cold, the wolf man lurched toward a neighboring treetop. And then he jumped again, and again, and again, like a wolf incarnation of Tarzan, from branch to branch, tree to tree, until we had reached the trees that stood outside the boundary.

He paused to catch his breath, but he did not stop here. My heart felt like it was going to give way as he continued to create distance between us and the hunters. Only when the screeching and shouts faded did he swing to lower branches before eventually landing on the ground with stunning grace, as though he were born to climb trees.

The dense wood had become so eerily quiet I could practically hear the blood pounding in my ears. Still gripping me firmly, he lowered me to the ground before standing over me. His cool eyes bored down into mine, his lips parted slightly as he breathed.

There were a hundred questions I could have asked in that moment, but the first one that came to my lips was:

“Why did you do that?”

He furrowed his thick brows, head cocking slightly to one side. He scrutinized me as though he found my question curious. “You helped me,” he replied in a low voice. “Now… I have helped you.”