Wolfen (39 page)

Oh, God, it’s happening!

Desiree couldn’t stop shaking. She could hear converts up
there, the horrible screams punctuated by rapid gunfire, and she knew it
wouldn’t last. They didn’t have enough ammo. Haven was overrun.

Her mind refused to wrap around that concept.

Haven was falling.

Without warning, without any hope of escape, everything
Klaus had built was being trampled into blood.

Those walls, made to keep converts out, now locked everyone in
with them. Voices blended together; there were too many, wave upon wave of
howling terror. And the beasts would come for Desiree next.

Raised to worship science, Desiree had never understood the
point of religion. Now, in the darkness of her worst nightmare, she clasped her
hands together and prayed. A hopeless, frantic litany of pleas slipped through
her lips on a whisper.
I want to live,
she thought.
I need to live.
Please God, get me out of here—

“You want Klaus…he’s that way.”

The roar of a Wolfen in full rage shook her cell door, and
Desiree shrank away, instinctively squeezing herself into a dark corner. Alpha
was out. He said he’d kill her. But Wolfen females were dying out there, too.
He would try to save them first, and maybe he’d never make it that far. There
was a horde of converts reaping Haven up there. They’d rip him apart in
minutes.

The thought should have brought her some relief, but it
didn’t. Right now, Alpha…Aiden was possibly the only being within a thousand
miles who stood a chance against those things, and deep down, where she rarely
braved to go, Desiree hoped he would make it. She’d rather die at his claws,
than in the clutches of converts.

Key in the lock.

No, no, no! Don’t open!
Not yet!

But it did.

“Move it!” Arik snapped, making her jump. He swung his head
left and right, looking for threats, finger curled tight around the trigger of
a semi-automatic.

Fear rooted Desiree to the spot. That metal door had been
the only thing keeping her safe. Now that it was open, she was exposed. The
damage was done, but even so, Desiree turned her head away, squeezed her eyes
shut, as if it would somehow make her safe again. If she just stayed still
enough, quiet enough, they wouldn’t scent her.

Arik swore and dragged her out by force.

Desiree screamed.

“
Shh!
” He whirled, trained his gun on the tunnel
entrance, shoving her behind him, then turned the other way, yanking her to the
side. He wrapped an arm around her waist, leaning her against his side, and
said, “Let’s go.”

With every footfall, Desiree’s prosthesis cut deeper into
her thigh. She wasn’t as tall as Arik; couldn’t keep up. He half-dragged,
half-carried her through the tunnels, breathing hard, but he didn’t let her go.

They were leaving the din of destruction behind, but
Desiree’s fear curled tightly around her heart, making it difficult to breathe,
let alone keep moving.

“We can’t outrun them,” she said.

“The hell we can’t,” Arik returned stubbornly. “Don’t have
to, anyway. Just have to outrun everyone else.”

The tunnel and its trail of torches ended at the edge of a
sharp, three-foot drop into the main cavern chamber. Arik lowered her down,
then followed, checking to make sure there was no one behind them. Satisfied
the tunnel was clear, he stopped to catch his breath, propping Desiree against
the wall while he dug a flashlight out of his pack. It was so old, the edges
were rusted, but when he clicked it on, a steady beam of light illuminated the
chamber ten feet ahead. The cave was as wide as all of Haven, but the ceiling
was barely eight feet high, with massive shoots of rock and stalagmites turning
it into a deadly maze.

“Which way to the cars?” he asked, swinging the flashlight
left and right for a path that wasn’t there.

“I don’t know,” she said. With the forest of stalagmites
obstructing their view, they could wander around for hours before they found an
exit. Assuming there weren’t more converts coming to meet them halfway in.

“You said you’ve been there!”

“Yeah, from the top,” she replied. “I’ve never actually used
the tunnels.”

Arik gaped.

Desiree moaned. “We are so dead—”

“
Shh!
” Arik brought his weapon up and motioned for
her to move away.

Somewhere to their left and deep inside the pitch-black
cave, a convert emitted a creaking groan. No animal on Earth could make such a
sound—unnatural, eerie, and in the enclosure of an underground cave,
paralyzing.

Desiree slapped a hand over her mouth, hardly daring to
breathe. Eyes wide, she tried desperately to see through the darkness, but the
sound echoed, making it impossible to pinpoint. A series of clicks and clucks
answered, moving closer. Then came a
whoop-whoop
and a snuffling snarl,
and Arik backed into Desiree, herding her in the other direction. He almost
bowled her over when she didn’t move fast enough.

It went against every survival instinct Desiree possessed to
face away from him and a serious threat, but with her knee the consistency of
gelatin, she forced herself to move, using the stalagmites for support to
somehow keep going. She had no other choice but to trust Arik to keep her safe.

All the while, converts moved through the labyrinth,
sounding off to one another, each with a distinct voice and language. Desiree
struggled to keep her breathing soft, even while her body fought her on every
step. Communication meant intelligence. Converts weren’t supposed to be capable
of it.

Gathering around Haven could have been pure instinct;
mindless beasts drawn to the scent of possible prey. Group attacks could have been
triggered by outer stimuli that several of them responded to, riling up the
rest. But this was no fluke.

This felt like the rearguard ensuring no one escaped the
slaughter. They were loud, because their hearing was poor, but they would have
scented her and Arik from a distance. Like rats in a maze, they followed a
trail to a certain treat at the end, but unlike baser creatures, they spread
out, taking several different paths.

Not just communication, then. Strategy. Cooperation.
Planning and forethought.

That son of a whore Klaus had known it. He had to have,
otherwise he wouldn’t have needed an escape plan.

A loud screech made Arik curse under his breath. He
shouldered his weapon, and steered her sideways toward the cave wall, urging
her to move faster. More noises, this time rising in agitation as if they
argued with each other.

Desiree tried to look back, but Arik wouldn’t let her. “Keep
moving,” he whispered. They edged along the outside of the maze, circling
counter-clockwise. Arik kept the flashlight pointed down at Desiree’s feet so
she could see where she was stepping. Through the shadows, a draft of cooler
air ruffled her hair. Another offshoot tunnel. Desiree headed right for it.

The converts sounded farther behind now, so she risked a
glance back. The faint glow of the main tunnel’s torches seemed impossibly far
away. A shadow jumped up to higher ground, stood to its full, bone-thin height,
and stretched, screaming into the cave. Three others sounded off, then
scrambled into the lit tunnel after their leader.

“The scent trail must have confused them,” she whispered.
That tunnel had been guarded day and night. The converts might have smelled
humans in the cave, but they’d tracked them to the tunnel where the scent was
strongest, rather than deeper into the maze.

“There is a God,” Arik replied as the monsters lumbered off
toward Haven. “Come on. I’m not waiting around for more.”

Neither was she. With the path clear of obstructions, Arik
took the lead, Desiree holding onto his backpack for support. Her prosthesis
wasn’t strapped properly. She’d belted it up higher in the cell, and the socket
wasn’t aligned the way it should be. It squeezed her flesh, making her eyes
sting with tears.

She bit them back, clenched her jaw, and kept going. No
other choice. It was either that, or lie down and offer herself up as a
banquet. But as determined as she was, Desiree had no stamina to speak of, and
her body began to slow down on its own.

“Come on,” Arik said. “It can’t be far now. Just hold on a
little longer. You can do it.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Evil never dies, right? Heartless bitch like you, you’ll
outlive us all.”

“Yeah, funny how that’s not a compliment,” she bit out
through gritted teeth.

Arik stopped to let her rest a while. “Wasn’t meant to be. I
don’t need you flattered. I need you pissed the fuck off.” He caught her face
in his hands, and forced her to look at him. “I need you to fight, Dez, or
we’re both dead. Got it?”

She nodded. “Okay.”

The tunnel stretched on for miles, and as long as they had light,
Desiree was able to power on. Then the flashlight failed, leaving them in
pitch-black darkness.

Arik slapped the archaic piece of shit into flickering life,
but then it went dark and he couldn’t get it working again.

“Still feeling optimistic?” she asked, breathing steadily
through her nose to stave off a wave of nausea.

Arik blindly grabbed along her shoulder to her hand and
curled her fingers around the strap of his pack. “Hold onto me,” he said.

Step by slow step, they edged their way forward. Desiree
lost track of time. There was no way this was Klaus’ tunnel. Klaus would have
wanted a clear path of retreat; something he could walk with his eyes closed.
This was anything but—the floor was uneven, the walls sometimes so wide she
felt like they were in another cave, other times so narrow, Arik had to take
off his pack to squeeze through.

And then it happened.

Arik hit a wall.

Or rather, a mountain of caved-in debris. One minute, they
were on solid ground, and the next, rubble gave way beneath their feet, sloping
up until Arik hit his head on the ceiling.

He swore.

“So much for evil never dies, huh?”

Arik maneuvered her back down, positioned her shoulder to
the wall, and said, “Don’t move.”

Desiree heard the rubble shift in a small landslide, followed
by a lot of grunts and curses as Arik tried to move the bigger rocks. He huffed
and groaned, and then a boulder shifted loose.

Desiree’s heart leapt. “What was that?”

“Fuck yeah!” Arik cheered. “
Woo!
” He set back into it,
wrestling rocks free of the pile.

Desiree’s heart beat just a little stronger, and she felt
her way closer, needing to do something to help. She dug her fingers into the
rubble and shoved it down, out of Arik’s way, digging down through rubble sharp
enough to cut skin, but she didn’t care.

“Yes, yes, yes!” Arik chanted. “We are getting out of
he-ere. I am
not
gonna die today—fuck that!” More grunts. He was making
a serious dent in the barricade.

But then something shifted wrong, and with a rumble of rock
and dust, the wall collapsed inward. Arik cursed, jumped out of the way, and
slammed into Desiree, driving her to the ground.

She shrieked, raised her arms to shield her head, but the
shower of rocks assaulted her from all sides like a barrage of low velocity
bullets. The smaller ones scraped against her face and neck, the bigger ones
buried her legs, pinning her in place.

When the cloud of dust had settled enough for her to take a
breath, Desiree opened her eyes and saw light. A gap had opened close to the
ceiling, barely big enough to fit a hand through, but on the other side was the
surface.

Arik groaned, dug himself out from under the debris, then
came to help Desiree. His pack was nearby, relatively unharmed, but the weapon
was gone, buried out of sight. They didn’t bother looking for it. Arik, more
careful now, widened the opening enough for him to slip through, then helped
her up and out.

Desiree had never been so happy to see the clear blue sky
above her head. She laughed with pure joy and relief, heedless of who or what
might hear her. When she looked back at Arik, though, his face was grave. “What
is it?” she asked.

He reached forward and brushed her cheek. His hand came away
stained red. “You’re bleeding.”

Once, years ago, I asked Bryce what it felt like to wolf
out the way he did. I watched his eyes turn bleak and haunted. Without words,
he told me there is no way to describe it; you have to feel it for yourself to
understand.

I see now. I get it.

I give in to the savage part of me screaming for blood,
and with that capitulation, I relegate my consciousness to a dark control room
inside my mind, effectively disconnecting from my body.

I see as if there are monitors in front of me, flipping
through channels. I see the mouth of the tunnel.
Click.
I’m out in the
open, a duotone world of crimson and gray.
Click.
I see the very first
rays of sunshine light the sky with shades of yellow and pink, and pan down to
the melee in front of me.

My ears feel stuffed. I hear as if I’m listening to
recordings through earphones. My own breath is louder than the outside world.
My head pounds with the beat of my heart like a steady bass punctuating the
music of slaughter.

My body moves, no longer under my conscious command. It’s
a machine, and I am nothing more than the code giving it a purpose, someplace
to be, a specific task to do. How it gets there, and what it does along the
way, is no longer up to me.

Before me is a chaos of writhing bodies, snapping fangs,
and spraying blood. In my mind’s eye, a decision tree forms. Three
prerogatives: Klaus, females, the child. I’m held immobile by the impossibility
of that choice. The beast I have become flares its nostrils, sucks air deep
into its lungs, and leaves it to me to sort the scents.

Blood. Fire. The stomach-turning stench of converts. And
undercutting all of it, like the softest hint of a familiar fragrance, Wolfen.
The beast strains its ears for their cries. There are none. It does not
understand this anomaly, but the pain it brings is enough to make the beast
raise a hand-shaped paw and rake its claws across its own chest, wailing a howl
to the sky.

The flow of time bucks. From an unnatural pause, it
springs forward much faster to catch up, and the beast moves, driven by
instinct to rend things. Converts rush forward, jaws unhinged to open their
mouths impossibly wide. As fast as they are, the beast is faster. It tears
through the monsters with its teeth and claws, its grief lending formidable
strength.

With a swipe of its claw, two converts fall. It catches a
third by the throat, squeezing until the flesh turns to pulp in its hand. A
band of them bear it to the ground, but it throws them off, tearing limbs and
spilling bowels. They don’t die. The beast doesn’t care. All it wants is to take
down as many as it can get its hands on.

I shout commands, I scream its name; the beast ignores
me, cutting a swath across the horde with a single-minded determination that
terrifies me. There’s no stopping it. It doesn’t care for wounds—its skin heals
in an instant. It doesn’t care for the dying—fodder for converts, a distraction
it can use to sneak up on them.

Humans scream and wail; the rattle of gunfire tapers off
as they run out of bullets.

Six more converts down in an instant, and the others are
beginning to take notice. They screech to each other in warning, but most are
too preoccupied with their feasts to care.

A child’s cry turns the beast’s head left.

Click.

Seven humans are by the wall, fighting converts, while three
more try to climb up to safety. The child is among them—a little girl with
brown skin and long black hair, her clothes stained with blood, her eyes wide
with fear. She’s frozen, clutching a doll as she watches her protectors die
around her; doesn’t move, even when the woman above pulls on her shirt. She’s
too far up to reach the girl unaided; she needs her to reach up, but the girl
is oblivious.

The beast knows the child. It recognizes the sound of her
voice, the scent of happiness and innocence now overlaid with fear. It
remembers the kindness of a loaf of bread.

With a roar, it charges the group, tossing gray skeletons
aside by their spines. Five out of the seven humans are already dead. The last
two don’t stand a chance. By the time the beast reaches them, they’re
quartered, torn apart, and shared among the monsters.

The beast fights through converts with a viciousness even
they understand. They don’t engage it anymore, backing away at its approach. It
aches to tear into them, but the first prerogative must be met.

The girl stares up at the beast, her thin body quivering
so hard the beast can see it, feel the vibrations against its skin. I slow its
approach so as not to frighten her, and for a moment, the beast brings me front
and center, and I am there. Heedless of the horde at my back, ignoring the
human woman who screams for the child, I watch her as I step up close. I want
to tell her it’ll all be okay, that I’ll keep her safe, but my control doesn’t
extend as far as talking.

Suddenly, her eyes grow wider, and she gasps. The beast
takes me over in a rush, spinning around to slap its paw over the face of a
charging convert. Its claws dig in, squeezing harder, harder, until the
convert’s skin gives way and tears off in the beast’s paw. The monster wails,
clawing blindly for the enemy. With a vicious kick, the beast takes it down.

When it’s done, it retreats again, leaving me to stare at
the sheath of bloody gray skin in my claw. I tilt my head at it, turn to face
the girl. When I lower my arm, the skin flops to the ground at her feet.

“Casey,” the woman on the wall screams. “Give me your
hand, now!”

I drag my gaze away from the girl to snarl at her.

The woman stares at me, looks to the child, weighing her
options. With her lips pressed together in a tight line, she scrambles up the
wall alone, leaving the child to fend for herself.

I hold my hand out to the girl, belatedly recalling the
thick, black claws that tip my fingers and the sticky blood coating my skin.

She doesn’t take it.

Instead, she sniffles a sob, clutches her doll tighter,
and raises her free arm to be picked up.

The beast is silenced.

~

Aiden lowered to one knee so she could tuck herself against
him, one arm around his neck, face turned into his shoulder to hide. She did it
without hesitation, displaying a level of trust that staggered him.

He stumbled getting back to his feet. The adrenaline rush
was fading, his body changing back as if the shift required a certain amount of
battery power and he’d just run out. It left him weak, disoriented, somewhere
along Haven’s perimeter with at least sixty converts standing between him and
the way he’d come.

Now what?

Some of the converts he’d taken down had started to get back
up. He couldn’t fight through them a second time. Not with a passenger. Aiden
looked up to where the woman had fled on top of the wall, and judged the
distance surmountable. “Hold on tight, baby girl.” Aiden bent his knees and
jumped up onto the roof of a small shack. From there, another leap would take
them to the top of the wall. The distance didn’t bother him. The height proved
to be the bigger challenge. With as much of a running start as the shack’s roof
allowed, Aiden launched and caught the edge of the wall, pulling his knees up
to shield Casey from the impact.

He climbed up and braced himself, before looking down on the
other side. The silver chains moored in the concrete wall hung empty. Not a
single Wolfen female anywhere, but the blood spatters and smears told him
there’d be no point in looking for them.

It hit him so hard, for a moment he couldn’t move, couldn’t
think about anything else besides the promise he’d made:
Be strong for me
just a little longer. You’re not alone anymore. I’ll get you out of here, I
swear.

He’d failed. Heart aching, Aiden pushed to his feet. “You
still with me, kid?” he asked, voice unsteady. His knees threatened to buckle,
but he forced himself to walk.

Casey nodded against him.

“Cool. Just keep holding on. I’ll get us out of here.”
Somehow.

A few yards farther on, the view opened up, and he could see
where the tunnel was. He spotted Klaus not too far from there, and his fangs
ached with a shot of renewed anger. Rather than fight with his people, the
leader of Haven was hiding in his flimsy wooden enclosure. Outside, Haven was
overwhelmed by converts, its people dying among the pathetic shacks they’d used
for shelter. There was chaos and death, and so much fear, it made Aiden sick to
his stomach. On the inside, the grass was green, and six armed men stood guard
around their leader, guns trained on the fence in case of a breach, but they
didn’t fire. There were too many people rife for killing beyond that magical
bubble for converts to bother seeking out more. Until the screams died down and
live prey ran out, Klaus and his commando troops were safe.

But that wouldn’t last long, and Klaus knew it. Already he
was moving out, guards holding tight formation around him like a living shield.

“Move,” Casey whispered against Aiden’s shoulder. “Move…”

Aiden growled and ran, keeping an eye on Klaus. The surest
way off of a sinking ship was to follow the fleeing rats.

Almost as soon as the commandos stepped out, converts
attacked, overwhelming the stream of bullets and taking down three guards
before they could reload.

With half of them dead in seconds, the remaining three
panicked, shouting at each other, dragging Klaus away from the danger zone.

On the massive clock face that was Haven, the front gate was
six o’clock, Aiden’s tunnel was two, and the cave, eight-thirty. The inner wall
cut through the mini mountain to make a circle. With the battle raging on in
the open center, the outer edges were fairly deserted. Once the troops had
ducked out of sight, converts found easier prey to sink their fangs into, and
the group made their escape.

It took Aiden two whole minutes after the last gunman
disappeared for him to reach the cave. He ran across the top and jumped down at
its entrance, bracing Casey securely against him. Taking quick stock of his
surroundings, he petted her hair. “How’re you doing, baby girl?”

She thumped her little fist against his back. “Stop
stopping!”

“I’m not stopping!” he argued. “Listen.” He backed into the
cave. Klaus and his men would likely be more focused on running forward than looking
back. “We’re going underground for a bit.”

Casey raised her head, her dark eyes big with fear. “Why?”

“Because it’s the only way out. I think—”

“No, we can’t! There’s no way out from there!” She was
working herself into a panic.

“Shh-shh, quiet. It’ll be okay—”

“We can’t go in there! What if there are more of them!”

Aiden covered her mouth, and squeezed her tighter. “Listen
to me. I am a hell of a lot scarier than any monster we come across. They won’t
hurt you; I won’t let them.” More promises? Because the last one worked out so
well? “We can’t stay here, Casey.”

She stared for a moment, but he could see in her eyes she
knew there was no other choice. Her guardians had left her, and everyone else
was either dead or dying. Aiden was all she had left, and when that sank in
through her fear, Casey squeezed her eyes shut and nodded, hiding her face into
the crook of his neck.

“Good girl.” He patted her back. With a final check outside,
Aiden headed deeper into the cave. “For the record, we stopped that time
because of you. Just wanted to point that out.”

She kicked his lower back, and Aiden grinned.

Klaus and his men had taken wall torches, but two or three
were still there to illuminate what was likely the sole reason Havenites
weren’t caked in mud and dirt—a complex of nooks and chambers where water had
seeped up from underneath to form pools. The deeper Aiden went, the hotter it
became, and the fewer torch mounts appeared in walls. Aiden didn’t need them.
Mist shifted and streamed out of stagnant areas toward the shadow of an
opening. Aiden approached it with caution, turning sideways to shield Casey, in
case something nasty waited for them in there. He could hear people running
farther ahead, and he followed a safe distance back from them.

“What are we doing?” one man said. “What the fuck are we
doing!”

“Shut up and keep going!” Aiden recognized that voice: the
big black dude who’d brought them all in that first day. Frankie something.

“What is wrong with all of you? Those are our people back
there!”

“You wanna go back and play hero? Be my guest.”

“I…w-wait, what are you doing?”

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat.

Casey flinched, and Aiden ducked down, senses on high alert.

Silence.

“Dissent will not be tolerated,” Klaus proclaimed. “Is that
understood? Move out.”

Down to two guards who now knew their boss didn’t give a
flying fuck about either of them. How long before they decided to kill him
themselves?

Aiden followed at a steady pace, keeping well back. A fallen
torch illuminated the guard they’d shot, and he stopped to search him. The
others had taken his gun and his ammo, but they’d left behind a couple of
knives and a machete. Aiden pulled a face at the blades; he hated close-quarter
weapons.

“Hey, Casey?”

She squeezed him in answer.

“Can you look at this for a second?” He held out a small
knife, sheath still covering the blade. “I want you to take this. Can you do
that?”

Casey peeked out. The death grip on her doll didn’t loosen
when she reached for the knife, and for a moment, she blinked at the two,
debating the conundrum of which was more important. In the end, her
white-knuckle hold loosened and she uncurled her fingers one by one. When the
doll dropped, she stared at her empty palm in rising panic.