Wolfen (57 page)

All except one.

The smallest girl was also the most unsteady. She kept
lifting her head to find her balance, and on one of those times, she happened
to look up at the exposed tunnel. Her hand froze halfway to a female’s mouth.
Her big eyes blinked at the hole in the wall and the Wolfen trio crouched
inside.

Oh, no.
Aiden shook his head, held up a hand to
soothe her.
No, no, no—

She gasped, then let out an ear-piercing squeal that rippled
the pod liquid with tiny waves.

The alarm had been sounded.

They were fucked.

The male—her “intended”—let loose a mighty roar that echoed
down the tunnels.

Sinna couldn’t feel her face. Her feet were rooted to the
spot. They wanted to breed her! And they told her up front, like it was some
great honor to have that…
thing
rut over her. To grow his mutant child
inside her—and, what?—let it chew its way out of her body?

Get out! Get out right this second! Doesn’t matter if
they chase you, catch you, eat you; it’s better than the alternative. Run!

She couldn’t. Not with Granny Gray watching her with that
creepy, messed-up smile, and her son—her
son!
—roaring to the ceiling. He
was tall and lanky, on the cusp of adulthood, but not quite there yet. Granny
reacted to his carrying on with something that might have passed for a defeated
sigh. He clearly wasn’t her first choice to sire any descendants, but he was
her son.

The male climbed the wall, and howl-roared again.

The hive swelled with noise, and the male hopped back down
onto the ledge to thump his chest, signing,
King.
He jerked his chin at
Sinna, huffing and snorting.
King,
he repeated. Then, he lowered to his haunches
and oh-so-slowly, watching her the entire time, climbed from the ledge into the
cave. He was aroused by the time his feet touched the ground, and Sinna moaned
her distress, edging away from him.

Granny Gray clucked.
No fear. No die.

Was she being sarcastic?

Three ways in. One possible way out. Sinna darted left, and
screamed when the king blocked her way. He chuffed, bobbing his chin in
amusement. As if this was a game, and he wanted to play. He didn’t touch
her—not yet. Sinna shifted right, but he was there again, too fast to
outmaneuver. No, she couldn’t run from him; she’d never get away.

Granny Gray sat on her bed, watching and waiting for her son
to get the show on the road. She gave Sinna an encouraging nod.

The king started forward, and Sinna flinched, tripped back a
step. Her shoulders hit the wall, but she pushed away instantly.
Can’t let
him corner me.

He did it again, chuffing a laugh when she twitched and
hunched her shoulders up.

On the third time, a high-pitched squeal from deep inside
the hive stopped him in his tracks and brought Granny Gray to her feet. Sinna
took the opening and went for the one weak spot she knew to exploit—she grabbed
the king’s privates, dug her claws into the soft flesh, and twisted, yanking
down.

The self-proclaimed king shrieked in agony, rearing away to
escape Sinna’s clutches, but she held on, giving another merciless twist.

Granny Gray screeched and lunged, but Sinna was ready for
her and dived out of the way, making a mad grab for the torch.
Got it!
Rolling to her knees, she swung the flaming thigh bone with all her might and
blasted the old hag right across the face. Granny screamed and wailed,
clutching her cheek. Some of the tar had come off on her skin and it was still
burning.

Sinna attacked her again, beat her twice more over the head
and back, until the old hag collapsed in a heap, still conscious, but helpless,
burning, and not smart enough to figure out how to put it out.

But Granny wasn’t alone.

Recovered, the king roared and came after Sinna. Twice
Granny’s size, three times Sinna’s strength, he knocked the torch out of her
hands and pounced, shoving her to the ground.

Sinna crawled backwards, scrabbling for a bone, a
rock—anything to use against him. He wasn’t smiling and chuffing anymore; this
was no longer a game. She’d pissed off a convert, and he was going to get his
due. He stalked her across the cave, ducked the rocks she threw at him. Quick
as lightning, he snatched her by the ankle and gave a hard yank to bring her
underneath him to pin her in place. Sinna screamed and clawed his face, and he
snarled, snapped his fangs at her. He squeezed her throat tight, tighter.
Sinna’s face grew hot, and she couldn’t take a breath. It was slow, methodical.
The king knew his strength and didn’t want to damage her beyond repair. She
might have taken down his mommy dearest, but he still wanted to breed her, and
he needed her alive to do it.

Growing lightheaded.

Losing strength.

So. Very. Tired.

As her eyelids began to close, all Sinna could think was,
At
least I won’t feel it.

A screech fell from the ledge; one with mass and claws. It
landed hard on the king, slashing at him, biting into his shoulder and jerking
its head to tear off chunks of flesh. With a howl, the king released Sinna, and
she sucked in a hard breath, fighting against a powerful wave of dizziness. The
king twisted and spun, grabbing for the feral thing attached to his back, but
the boy was clever, and he was fast.

When the king slammed him against the wall, the boy
scampered over to Granny still moaning and twitching on the ground. He hissed
at the king, took up the torch, and broke it in half. When the king charged
him, the boy ducked low and rammed the bottom half of the bone into his
midsection. Both went down, and somehow the boy ended up on top. He yanked the
bone fragment out and, screaming like a wild thing, brought it down on the
king, over and over again, until the male’s chest cavity was utterly destroyed.

But the king was still breathing. Or trying to—his mouth
opened and closed like a fish out of water.

So the boy slammed the crude weapon down one last time—onto
the king’s head.

Finally, the male lay still. Breathing hard, the boy turned
to Sinna, who pushed to her feet along the wall. The hive was buzzing with
agitation, but whatever had riled them up was somewhere else. With the king
dead and Granny Gray as good as, Sinna’s only obstacle was a boy-child convert.

Who’d quite possibly just saved her life.

What the hell was she supposed to do with that?

The boy looked from her, to the hive tunnel behind her, then
back to her. He huffed and pranced, left to right, bouncing on his toes; he
lunged and she jerked away. At once, he stopped. With a low whine, he backed up
and lowered to his haunches, ducking his head; a submissive pose,
nonthreatening. Then he glanced up through the fall of his hair, big, gleaming
eyes seeking her out before he ducked down again.

A slow, creeping shift forward. Check her reaction. Another
shift. Another check. As he edged in closer, he raised a hand to her, palm down
and knuckles loosely curled, reminding Sinna of a picture she’d seen long ago:
a gorilla asking for acceptance into the group from the silverback male.

His hand was covered in the king’s blood, evidence of how
ruthless a killer he could be if he set his mind to it. Sinna didn’t trust the
innocent act. She eyed the tunnel behind him instead. If she could get around
him, she could still make it. But he was smaller, and very fast; he could
easily scurry through that hole in the ground, and running might provoke him.

Five feet away, he stopped and waited, but he was agitated,
glancing repeatedly at the tunnel behind her. Something had spooked him.

The torch was going out. Without it, it would be pitch-black
in here. Sinna’s night vision might be good, but it wasn’t as keen as the
converts’. They lived in this darkness all their lives. She couldn’t afford to
lose that light, and she couldn’t afford to let a weapon slip through her
fingers.

The boy whined again—an urgent, pleading sound. Eyes to the
tunnel, back to her. That bloody hand still outstretched, waiting.

She could kill him. He’d only brought down the king because
of the element of surprise, but he wouldn’t get a drop like that on her. She
could get the torch back, or even a rock. As strong as he was, he was still
fragile in his child’s body.

But he’d saved her life. She’d never have been able to
escape the king without him, and her heart balked at repaying him with a bone
fragment in the back.

Goddamned sentiment.

What other choice did she have?

His earnest eyes gazed up at her, and he skewed his mouth
into that creepy smile as if to say, “Look how cute I am. You can trust me.”

Head said: kill it with a rock. Heart said: trust. The heart
won. Sinna huffed, annoyed at her own gullibility, and slowly raised her hand
to touch her knuckles to his.

He chirped and grabbed her wrist, shoving to his feet so
fast, Sinna gasped when he almost yanked her off balance. He snatched up the
torch and ran for the back tunnel, dragging her in after him.

Sinna turned her back on the queen mother and her degenerate
son, and squeezed through an opening just large enough to allow Granny and this
boy-child through, taking a risk that he was leading her to safety and not to
slaughter.

Then the underworld shuddered with a massive boom of
thunder.

Bryce lunged for the girl and snapped her neck, instantly
silencing her cry. But it was too late. The other three had seen him, and they
all reacted the same way. Aiden and Helena took them out fast, shouted retreat,
and ran back into the tunnel, but Bryce stopped at the edge of the boulder. The
females hadn’t changed position. They must have smelled the blood, heard the
cries, but they were still at their task as if none of it had happened. And
that
whump-whump-whump
still beat out a steady rhythm through his blood,
the same way it had in Randy’s bunker. He had a name for it now.

It was a call to gather—one that traveled through the earth
itself, reached far and wide to any convert within range. They’d keep coming to
answer the call. They’d come from all corners like moths to a flame. And they’d
change, like the ones already here had. In numbers, they’d learn from each
other, get smarter, stronger.

They’d take over.

He had to stop it.

Eight females humming their siren call.

Bryce drew his machete.

Footsteps came fast down the other tunnel.

Better make it quick, then.

He swung, and a head fell.

Sensing a void, one of the four sleeping females raised up
to join the seven and make them eight. He cut her down. And the next, and the
third, and finally the fourth. Seven sirens left, but they sensed something was
wrong. One stopped her song to screech at the ceiling. Bryce cut off her head.
Converts poured into the chamber, but they bottlenecked, blocking the tunnel,
and Aiden and Helena made sure it stayed blocked.

When the last siren’s head fell, silence swallowed the cave
despite the angry snarls of a monster stampede. The call was no more.

Not enough. If they’d put all this together once, they’d do
it again; the hive was too sweet a spot for converts to give up.

“Get out! Go!”     

Bryce slid past the boulder, Aiden and Helena hot on his heels.
They ran through the maze, turning here, ducking there, over and under, and
‘round, and ‘round, until Bryce didn’t know which way they’d come.

“Left!” Helena ordered.

He turned left. The tunnel opened slightly. He caught the
scent trail they’d left behind, coming in from the other way.

“Right, over there!”

Bryce went right, and nearly fell into a crack in the earth.
“Jump!” he shouted, leaping over it. He turned to catch Aiden, to make sure he
didn’t trip, and then Helena. She took point, leading the way, letting Bryce
cover the rear. The horde was gaining, and they were not happy.

Suddenly, Helena stopped, and Aiden slammed into her. “We
have to split up,” she said.

“Not a good time,” Aiden snapped. “Move!”

“No, listen, we need to end this.” She drew her sword. “We
came from that tunnel there; that’s the way out. That way was the hive, and
over there the pod things. That means Sinna’s gotta be down that last tunnel.”

Aiden shook his head. “You don’t know that. We don’t
separate. Now
move!
” He shoved her toward the way out.

Helena punched him—hard. “You hit like a girl,” she said,
eyes gleaming wild and dangerous in the darkness. “Can’t stop me, hoss. So go
do your thing, and let me do mine. Get your girl. I’ll buy you the time.”

Aiden grabbed for her, but Helena twisted out of reach.
Bryce knew better than to get in her way. She was not wrong. “Get a move on!”
she yelled as the horde began to show their faces. Screaming at the top of her
lungs, she went at them, and it worked. The horde was so focused on her, they
completely ignored the brothers.

Aiden swore, started back, but one look at Bryce stopped him
in his tracks. They stared at each other. Tough choice. Bryce knew exactly what
Aiden was thinking. Helena still had a chance; Sinna, for all they knew, was
dead. They could be chasing a ghost, and even if she were still alive, these
caves were a labyrinth. They could be wandering around underground for days and
never find her.

The logical choice was to help Helena.

That was the choice Aiden was supposed to make; the one his
clever brain insisted he
should
make.

He didn’t.

“Let’s go,” he said hoarsely, shoving at Bryce to get him
moving forward. Away from Helena. Because he wouldn’t let them split up
again. 

Bryce closed off the part of his brain that called him out
for leaving a female behind and took off at a run, heedless of the uneven
terrain. He didn’t care when he slammed his shoulder into an outcropping, or
when a raised boulder tripped him. He bashed his head a good few times, but he
kept going, farther, deeper. Up, down. Always forward. He didn’t stray from the
main tunnel, trusting his instincts to lead him true. All life followed the
path of least resistance, and this tunnel would lead somewhere, he was sure of
it—

The tunnel spit them out into a cave thick with steam. It
hit Bryce in the face, closed around him like a stifling wet blanket he
couldn’t claw off. He slowed, stopped, squinted through the mist to make out
the terrain, find his next step.

Behind him, Aiden swore. “Oh, fuck. No. B, this isn’t
right.”

Bryce turned on him, a cold fist squeezing around his heart.
“What?”

Aiden swallowed hard. “It’s the baths. We’re aboveground.
We’re in Haven.”

Bryce shook his head. No, there were no converts in Haven;
he’d seen it from the hill. The place had been razed, leveled. Nothing inside
but debris and ashes. Sinna wasn’t here.

But she wasn’t back there, either. Four main tunnels, and
they’d seen all of them. The cave, the hive, the pods, and now this. Four main
tunnels, and God only knew how many smaller ones branching off. An ant hill
maze.

Check outside,
a small voice told him.
This isn’t
the end of the tunnel. You need to check out there.
Forward or back? His
instincts pulled him in both directions at the same time. He wanted to send Aiden
ahead and go back down himself, but he couldn’t. They had to stay together.

And Bryce needed to check outside, to silence the little
voice that said Sinna’s head was mounted on a spike in Klaus’ backyard, her
body being picked over by convert scum. To make absolutely sure she
wasn’t
there.

Leave no stone unturned.

One foot in front of the other, he made himself walk toward
the light ahead. He had to check, to see for himself. When the numbness came,
he welcomed it. Better than the crushing guilt. He’d left her, let her be
captured. He’d taken the wrong path, lost her trail. What fucking good was a
blood bond, if it couldn’t lead him to her?

And Helena…she might die down there. All for nothing.

They’d failed.

Step by step, he emerged into the light of day. The ground
was charred black, with jagged pieces of wood and metal lying strewn in piles.
The fence hiding Klaus’ cottage was gone, the garden trampled. Haven was a
ghost town, lost souls wailing on the wind, and Bryce strained his ears for the
one he needed to hear.
Call to me,
he thought, desperately willing the
prayer to her, wherever she was.
Call to me, tell me where you are.

Outside of the walls, a howl went up. Too low, too deep to
be Sinna’s, but for a moment, his heart leapt, and he started for the front
gate.

Aiden’s desolate voice stopped him short. “Trey,” he said.

Another howl.

“And that one’s Morgan. The dogs are out there, holding them
off.” He sounded hollow, defeated. “We should go to them.”

Bryce didn’t move. “How did you get out?” he asked,
raw-voiced and beaten. It had been nagging at him since the moment he’d heard
Aiden’s howl among the horde. Bryce had put everyone in danger for his brother,
when all this time Aiden had been safe and sound. He’d escaped all on his own
just as Bryce should have known he would. It had been Sinna’s choice to attempt
a rescue, but he’d agreed. Unfair to put the blame on Aiden’s shoulders, but a
dark, toxic kernel of resentment grew inside of him, insisting it was his
fault. And he needed to know Aiden had paid for it somehow, that he’d hurt
along the way, lost as much as Bryce had; that they were still brothers, in
blood and in pain. That it hadn’t been as easy as Bryce suspected.

“A human let me out of the cell. I escaped through another
tunnel in the baths. One way, straight out through the bat cave.”

The resentment grew. “How did you get past
them
?”

Without even looking, Bryce knew Aiden shrugged. “They
weren’t there. By the time I made my escape, they were already in here, picking
off the humans. And anyway, that’s not how they came in.”

Bryce faced him, and Aiden’s eyes went wide.

“They came in through the dungeons!”

Bryce remembered being back in that cell with Aiden and
Sinna, planning their escape.

These tunnels could be all over. Probably an emergency
exit strategy, which means they might lead out somewhere far from here.

Pass.

Yeah. Agreed.

What are you talking about? That could be our way out of
here!

Yeah. Or it could spit us out in the middle of Convertlandia…

That was exactly what they’d done. The hive could have been
right underneath Klaus’ feet this whole time, just waiting for the right moment
to strike.

It also meant they had another way in, a different path they
hadn’t checked yet.

Hope.

As one, they turned for the other tunnel, running at full
tilt toward one last chance. Bryce skidded in the dust when they reached the
entrance, tripping on the smooth incline into the tunnel, and almost took a
dive the rest of the way down as a massive explosion shook the ground, raining
rocks from the ceiling, kicking dust up from underground. The passageway shook
and shuddered, a dull roar climbing up from the depths, closer, faster.

Aiden cursed and grabbed Bryce’s arm to haul him back up the
incline as the tunnel collapsed. They fell to the ground outside, coughing,
blinded by a plume of dust, but, thanks to Aiden, whole and unharmed.

“Helena must have set off Big Bertha,” Aiden wheezed.
“Goddamn psycho!”

When the dust cleared, Bryce stared at the pile of rubble at
his feet.

The tunnel, the cave…the hive. His one last chance.

Buried.