Wolfen (6 page)

Connor hadn’t turned the gun far enough. The bullet had hit
the wall, ricocheted, shot
through
her, and grazed his side. After
walking away from a pack of Grays, she was going to bleed out on a dank parking
lot floor. Underground. In darkness.

Always the fucking darkness.

She was so sick of it!

Nate thrust a finger at Connor, then came over to see the
damage to Sinna for himself. He pried David’s hand away, releasing a rush of
fresh blood. When he pressed it back, Sinna almost passed out. Her vision
blurred, and she was beyond making sense of his words. Darkness descended,
until a sting in her cheek forced her to open her eyes to Nate.

No. I won’t die like this. Not like this.

Not fading like a goddamned shadow.

She panted a breath, and then another, deeper each time to
test her ribs and how painful each inhale was. Down to an annoying throb. And
it was getting cold. Nothing left to lose, then. She breathed in as deep as her
lungs would take, and let loose a screaming howl that echoed through the
cavernous space.

Her final, pathetic hurrah. The only mark she’d ever leave
on this messed up world. She screamed and screamed, carrying on like a
desperate wolf baying at the moon, until she finally ran out of air.

Then everything went dark.

California used to be one of the most sought-after
destinations in the world, back in the day. Now it’s a wasteland. No one in his
right mind would step foot across its borders. It was the first to be hit by
converts, and to this day, remains their stronghold.

That’s good for us. The coastal cities are a free-for-all
of things no one has the capabilities to make anymore. Aiden and I don’t want
the staples; we’re after other things. Microchips. Wires. Computing power is
what keeps the lights on and the air circulating back home. It’s what will save
the human race. If we choose to share.

With the bridges down, we had to take the long way
around, but the bountiful city of ‘Frisco is worth it. A handful of tech
company headquarters are still standing here, untouched by the mass napalm
drops the government attempted in Silicon Valley to stave off the convert
threat. Here, the streets are rife with possibilities, and our storage bins are
already filled to the brim with goodies our tech-heads are going to salivate
over. They’ve been whining about more RAM for months.

Aiden’s at the wheel today, navigating our sleek mule
with a surgeon’s precision. He’s watching the road, while I keep an eye out for
threats. Converts won’t come near Wolfen unless we engage, but who knows? It’s
been a hundred miles since we saw any trace of humans. The monsters are
probably getting desperate with hunger.

We’re driving west, taking the scenic route toward
Downtown before we turn south again to get to the mainland. Aiden has his heart
set on a souvenir cable car. The grid layout of the city is great, but hills
and valleys make it difficult to see far ahead. I’m on the truck bed, big guns
at the ready just in case, but there isn’t all that much going on.

Until I hear that howl.

~

Bryce slammed his hand onto the cab’s roof to get Aiden’s
attention, and the mule stopped. His claws curled down, and he had to force
himself to remove them. The mule might have looked half-truck, half-tank, but
it was a precise construction of some very delicate components which kept it
running on solar power and friction. Most of the time, it could run endlessly
on one or the other, but if Bryce damaged the solar collection paint, there’d
be no repairing it, and the brothers would be walking their asses back home.

By the time Aiden stuck his head out, the howl had faded
into silence. Alarm spiked through Bryce. He strained to hear more, scented the
air to catch a whiff of the creature capable of making such a sound. His
instinct screamed at him to find it—
now
.

There was only silence, and the ghostly whistle of wind. No
hint of life. He could make an educated guess at which direction it had come
from, but it was vague at best. Somewhere among the skyscrapers of Downtown.

When Aiden sent him a questioning look, Bryce had no
explanation and no time to waste. The longer they waited, the stronger the
sense of danger became, until Bryce felt like he’d run the distance on foot if
they didn’t move. He pointed the way, and pumped his fist in a sign to step on
it.

“Okey-dokey,” Aiden murmured and brought the mule back to
life, rumbling headlong down the street.

Good, but not good enough. With that voice still echoing
inside his mind, Bryce grinded his teeth, limbs tense for a fight that would
not be forthcoming. He knew what brought out a howl like that: pain. It was a
sound of pure anguish and torment from a creature breaking under its onslaught.

He’d made a sound like that himself once. It had been the
last thing his tormentors had heard. The memory of it—of what they’d done, and
how he’d retaliated—made Bryce clench his hands in feral wrath. He wanted to
sink his claws into something, feel tissue rip apart. It was causing a physical
change in him, making Aiden cast tense looks his way. He didn’t care. Aiden was
the logical one, the thinker and strategist, but Bryce was the intuitive one,
his instincts honed by pain into laser-like precision. Thinking took time, a
commodity you didn’t always have in the middle of a fight.

He scented the air again, closed his eyes to better sort
through the smells. Industrial materials, cement, steel, rust. Decay was
pervasive everywhere, but here, he smelled the ocean, too, as if the fog that
rolled in each night washed away some of the stench. The airflow patterns were different
from what he was used to. Scents came at him from all directions, mixing
together and muddling the trail.

“B, talk to me,” Aiden said. “Where am I going?”

He didn’t know. The howl’s amplification had suggested a
specific set of physical conditions, but the echo had obscured direction, and
he didn’t know the city well enough to chance a guess. He needed Aiden in his
head to make sense of it, to think it through.

Or, at the very least, he needed his brother to drive
faster.

Instead, the mule slowed, and then stopped.

What the hell is he doing?

Aiden got out, heavy silver chains clashing around his neck.
Wolfen and converts secreted pheromones which, under normal circumstances,
either cloaked or outright repelled the other so the two species rarely crossed
paths. In Wolfen, silver reacted with the skin, triggering a higher pheromone
production. It made for shitty accessories, but it saved countless lives.
Something humans had quickly learned to exploit.

Aiden held his hands out in a “What’s up?” gesture. “This
might be one of those times when you have to actually use your words, brother.
What did you see?”

Bryce shook his head.

“Was it converts?”

A wordless no.

“Humans?”

No again.

Aiden scratched his blond head, his thick rings catching sunlight.
He used them in lieu of brass knuckles. They weren’t very effective, being
pliable silver and all, but they sure did make a statement. Bryce’s
fashion-conscious brother had adopted a misguided Mr. T sort of look, complete
with a too-small-for-his-muscles black T-shirt and lots of chains. “Don’t think
there’s any Wolfen around here, B, and that kind of runs us out of options.”

Bryce spared him a half-snarl in answer, focused on the
streets. A hint of convert wafted on the breeze. That howl would have drawn
them in, even half-deaf as they were. It was something. He pointed to his nose
and jerked his chin in the direction of the smell.

Aiden scowled. “We’re going to work on that stubborn streak
of yours one of these days. Mark my words!” But he scented the air himself and
got back behind the wheel to drive them on. That was all that mattered.

Not two minutes later, Bryce spied the first hint of
movement ahead. Two converts staggering down the street, even more disgusting
than the ones inland, bodies covered in bite marks and wounds. Bryce had
wondered what would happen when the converts’ food supply ran out. The way they
were tearing through anything with a pulse, it was bound to happen sooner or
later. Now, he had his answer. Apparently the Grays, as humans liked to call
them, didn’t draw the line at eating each other. Although, by the look of it,
they had some sort of nibble-here, nibble-there thing going on. Disgusting
creatures.

Normally, Bryce wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet through
their heads, but right now, he had someone to find, and these two might be the
only breadcrumb he’d get along the trail. He eased off the trigger, keeping his
finger on it just in case. When he didn’t immediately fire, Aiden glanced back
at him with a raised eyebrow, but took the hint and slowed to follow them.

Around a corner, the two joined a horde gathering in front
of a parking garage entrance. Aiden stopped the mule and leaned forward on the
steering wheel. “Shit,” he muttered.

The sight of so many converts gave Bryce a hint of what lay
inside that garage, and he had to breathe down another wave of murderous fury.
Unfortunately, his deep inhale took in more convert stench: blood, guts, and
rot. Enough to make a lesser Wolfen faint, but it was a scent the brothers had
gotten used to long ago.

There was a reason humans had clawed their way to the top of
the food chain and stayed there for so long. They had a natural gift for
exploitation.

The scientists who’d created this mess had known from the
start the unique pheromonal differences between Wolfen and converts. They’d
raised their Wolfen children like battle dogs to protect humanity. At first
they were sent as guardians to high priority humans. Then they were traded to
villages and outposts to act as sentries and guards. Before long, humans
recognized the value of such unique assets and began to do what humans did
best: subjugate strength, dismantle the will to fight, destroy individual
thought. Wolfen became less than animal. They became a weapon to be used; a possession
to be bred, bought, and sold, or discarded when it proved no longer useful. If
you kicked a dog long enough, it would learn to fear its own bite.

Humans quickly discovered that Wolfen males were too strong,
too feral, eager to fight and vicious when cornered. But females, docile and
physically weaker with almost no combative attributes, were ideal for their
purposes. As natural life givers, their only defense made them priceless to
humans: they produced pheromones at much higher levels, enough to cloak
themselves and a brood of offspring, their family unit, or pack. A female
decked out in silver could potentially cloak an entire town, marking a vast
territory off limits to converts.

And why waste resources on bracelets, when you could make
shackles? Why make a necklace, when you could forge a chain and bolt it to the
wall? Why risk your people with unstable male guards, when you could keep one
or two breeding studs and a herd of females for them to impregnate?

The worst of it came when blood was spilled.

Converts hunted by scent, and Wolfen blood was still blood.
The hemoglobin called to converts like nothing else, but the Wolfen pheromones
confused them, made them gather in one place and wait, as if they sensed there
would be fresh meat for them to feast on once the pheromones had dissipated.
There was no better way to draw a horde out of hiding. And all it took was
sacrificing a Wolfen.

To draw so many here now, there had to be a lot of blood.
Bryce’s growl rumbled deep and long, and Aiden’s hackles rose in response,
aggression communicating between them without the need for words. One way or
another, they were getting into that garage.

Opening fire on the horde was too risky—violence would only
rile them up. Bryce considered their options and decided on a diversion. From
two blocks down, a group of three converts approached. He checked the silencer
on his sniper’s rifle, aimed, and shot one’s throat out. The creature took
three more steps before the wound registered in his prehistoric mind and he stopped.
The other two were on him before he’d even hit the ground, ripping flesh off
bones, getting covered in blood. The scent carried far, like a miasma of decay.
One by one, converts raised their heads to sniff, then turned in that
direction, while several screeched a message Bryce had learned to associate
with “
Food!
” and took off for the meal. The horde fell on the three on
the ground, not bothering to distinguish between alive or dead, and the feeding
frenzy began.

The parking garage entrance was clear.

Aiden drove the truck in, but with the low height limit, he
was forced to stop just inside. As soon as they’d crossed the threshold, the
scent of Wolfen blood and people hit Bryce like a punch in the nose. His
hackles rose and his shoulders bowed; his head canted low, lips drawing back in
a vicious snarl he had to make a conscious effort to check.

Aiden usually kept in better control, but when he stepped
out of the truck, Bryce saw the murderous gleam in his eyes.

They could have followed their noses with ease, but in this
place, they didn’t need to. Agitated voices carried so well, Bryce was amazed
the converts had managed to hold back, even with Wolfen pheromones thick in the
air. The brothers followed a ramp down one level, then another, then Bryce brought
his gun up. They had no problems seeing in the dark; the humans wouldn’t be so
lucky.

As they neared, the scent of blood grew much stronger.
Fingers cramping around the gun’s handle, Bryce sighted down the length of his
rifle’s barrel and picked out his target in the distance: a yellow X
spray-painted on the wall, centimeters over the shoulder of a man packing a
whole lot of blades.

One shot. Silent and deadly.

Dust sprayed up, but at first the blademan didn’t recognize
what caused it. When he did, he drew his knives, and a commando wannabe shot to
his feet, racing out of a blind corner and aiming an assault rifle at Aiden.

“Weapons down,” Aiden ordered, his voice more animal than
human.

Bryce saw the shock on the rifleman’s face. He lowered his
weapon immediately. The one with knives was slower to comply. Bryce decided to
kill him on principle. But not yet.

The smell of blood, both human and Wolfen, was overwhelming
and so close together, Bryce had trouble distinguishing between them. The knife
guy was bleeding, but where was the other? He couldn’t tell where the scent was
coming from.

“Who are you?” the rifleman asked. “Military? Marines? Did
you bring reinforcements?”

Bryce felt a dark chuckle coming on. He bit it back, searching
for the Wolfen. “Who howled?”

Aiden’s gaze flickered sideways to him. Bryce wasn’t what
Aiden liked to call “chatty,” so naturally, the first words to leave his mouth
in over two years would give his brother pause, but he covered his surprise well.

Neither human moved nor spoke.

“Answer him,” Aiden ordered.

“Are there more of you?” The pretty boy rifleman had to be
the leader. “We have wounded. We need evac, STAT.”