Breeds 2 (31 page)

“And Bryce?”

The shadowed face looked at his pack leader.

“Don’t surprise me,” Carma warned, holding his gaze.

For a moment Kirk thought the big warden might have something to say to that, but after a few fleeting seconds, Ian Bryce broke the stare and followed Sam down the incline toward the cruisers, going the long way to avoid a deep drop-off.

“He has a reputation?” Nick quietly asked Janice.

“We all have reputations, but yeah,” Janice nodded. “He’s got a bad one. And by the way, Carma, would you say this is a fairly modern building?”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is they probably have security cameras. See those black knobs mounted on the walls? Just below the top of the roof?”

Kirk squinted and saw them, grateful for his heightened vision.

Carma sighed. “Power’s been cut.”

“You sure about that? They could have backup of some sort. Maybe even batteries.”

“Cover your faces then, until we get inside,” Carma said without hesitation. “Regardless, once inside, we go as wolves. Cameras will only see a bunch of big dogs taking down an unarmed man. We’ll be long gone by the time they realize what happened.”

Carma looked to Janice. “Wouldn’t happen to have ski masks on you?”

Janice glowered and shook her head. “Just sayin’ is all. Don’t bitch.”

“Point taken and noted.”

“We’ll go in without Morris,” Carma said in a low voice. “Much as I’d like to have him in there. We have a shrinking window of opportunity here. And remember, Bailey instinctively knows to go for the throat, so watch yourselves.”

Kirk sighed at the thought and glanced around the steep embankment, scanning the area for the Pictou warden. The mall’s parking lot looked like a concert setting in the distance, with spotlights and cell phone flickers. There was a short clatter of activity below, barely heard, bringing his attention back to the squad cars.

Sam and Bryce had done their jobs.

“Here we go,” Carma said and padded down the slope. The others followed, masked by the night, keeping their balance as they descended toward the mall. As they drew closer, some of them pulled their coats over their heads while others merely covered their faces with their hands. They met Sam and Ian crouched amongst the police cruisers. Kirk spotted six unmoving officers, their dark heaps piled into their vehicles, before following Carma and the others to the back wall.

Carma stopped at a lowered loading bay door that stretched from the base and up some ten feet. She pushed the barrier, causing it to buckle with a rattle. She looked up, coat pulled over her head, and padded over to where a security camera was mounted below the roof. She inspected the device before returning to her pack a minute later.

“Red light blinking. Keep your faces covered.”

Kirk buried his face in his straightened arms and pushed into the door, creating a sliver of a gap at the base. Bryce jammed an extended baton into the crack and heaved all of his considerable strength into pulling. The inside lock gave way with a metallic pop. Kirk and Ken lifted the door two feet, the sound like the subdued rattle of a locomotive.

The pack scurried across a threshold of cold concrete.

Once inside, Kirk placed his back to the loading bay door.

“Where are we?” Janice asked, standing amongst stacked shelving units of boxed goods.

“Unloading area for one of the main stores,” Ken Cyler reported. “Probably dry goods and shit.”

“Strip,” Carma ordered, quelling any further small talk. “Kirk, you’re on guard while we change. Don’t let anything in here.”

As she gave orders, Carma had already dropped her coat. Kirk turned away, not wanting to see her peel away her clothing.

The silver knives––the wardens’ badges––were placed next to each owner’s pile of clothing. They would use their jaws to kill Bailey. Outer and underwear dropped to the concrete floor in whispers and soft thuds. Kirk plodded along in the dark, finding the outline of a second door. He located a knob and gave it a turn, grimacing at the barest click. He put his shoulder to the metal surface and cracked the door just a sliver. The air smelled a little stale, but nothing sinister like a lurking
were
.

Grunts of pain erupted behind Kirk. Cartilage popped. Sinews stretched like bowstrings and thickened. Fleshly matter split and spattered the floor. A soft yelp pierced the air.

Kirk had heard it all before.

Growls rose behind him and a part of the Halifax warden sighed, longing to join and hating himself for even thinking it.
I’m not a monster, I’m not. I’m… I’m a peacekeeper. A protector.

Minutes later, heavy paws padded on concrete, stopping behind him. A waist-high snout exhaled upon his hand. Kirk saw the transformed face of Carma, sleek and black and beautiful. There was no mistaking her, a supernatural gift of nature and a deadly wonder. She regarded him as the others formed behind her in a wedge. The wardens were huge in wolf form, three to four times bigger than regular animals, their mass doubled. Their jaws could crack open skulls and snap bones. Raw power on four legs.

Carma studied Kirk with Zen-like patience while the pack gathered behind her, panting with anticipation.

“Good luck,” Kirk whispered.

He got a sarcastic growl.

“Yeah, well, good luck anyway.”

He pulled the door open, revealing a midnight jungle of clothing stands and racks.

The werewolves surged past him.

The wardens streaked through the darkened clothing store, rustling boughs of shirts and jeans. A scent of blood drew them into a wide corridor littered with shopping bags and discarded purchases. The skeletal frames of metal displays, overturned as if gunned down, splayed themselves in between abandoned kiosks.

Carma padded through the clutter, the wafting hook of blood leading her. The others stayed on her flanks, watchful, waiting for her lead. She turned right and trotted through a wide walkway, following the wreckage left in the wake of a human stampede. The tang of blood, rich and wicked, grew fuller. Carma increased her pace and ran along the corridor, past the front of a deserted bank and a wall of dead ATMs. The werewolves followed, claws clicking on polished tiles, speeding past empty booths and eager to close with the arisen abomination called Bailey.

The dull splendor of an out-of-focus tempest on the very edge of a dream slowly materialized. The structure solidified into metallic stairs, looming over them in a ghostly spiral. Carma stopped with her paws upon the lower steps and gazed upward, testing the air. The others gathered around her, snouts lifted to the second level. Ian Bryce circled them all, his movements anxious and impatient. Carma ignored him, waiting seconds longer, before deciding to move. She climbed the stairs in leaps, Janice and Nick Dyer on her heels.

A skylight far above them framed a patch of night in a long rectangle as Carma reached the second floor and turned south. The smell of blood hung thick on the air currents like foul portents. Bailey had killed. The werewolf had killed many, judging by the powerful smell filling the mall’s upper levels.

She trotted along, on guard, attempting to discern other scents from the blood, trying to separate the individual spices already absorbed in a stew, and failing. So much blood. And it was only getting stronger. The others smelled it as well; its heady aroma quieted them.

Carma turned right at a juncture, the aroma intensifying, and she showed her displeasure in a confession of teeth. The wardens fanned out at her sides, just behind her, in a line of four-legged gunslingers. Their superior hearing picked up a sound, low but steady, like a muffled drum.

A heart.

Relaxed. Sated.

Carma led her wardens toward the ever-nearing heart of the slaughter.

And as the werewolf wardens picked up on Bailey’s scent and heartbeat, he caught theirs in turn. He lifted his face from the partially devoured slab upon the floor situated behind a wall of wood and glass. The overpowering fragrance of blood made it difficult to detect with certainty, but Bailey could sense danger approaching, different from the previous attackers, with their noisy pipes that stung. Bailey’s nostrils flared at the curious blend of flesh and bone and fur. The smell summoned a familiar yet indistinct memory from another time, one he believed he lived in and even ruled. A hazy hunch of long ago, where he’d hunted and killed with those similar to himself. Bailey stood, his jeans drenched in the life juices of the human dead. That time had been with friends, however. Those that approached were not friends. Certainly not like the female called Haley.

They wanted to hurt him.

Perhaps even kill him.

Like the others.

That split his mouth in a snarl. Marble eyes twinkled in the dark as he heard their soft padding, coming closer, invading his territory. Just like the others, showing no respect at all for what he was or what he’d done. Or what he could do.

Talons clenched into frenzied fists.

He went forth to greet his hunters.

The outer door rattled, jarring Kirk from a session of undiluted self-loathing. He turned and walked back to witness a pair of boots at the door’s exposed base. A figure dropped to the cement floor and Morris rolled through the gap.

“The fuck have you been?” Kirk blurted.

“They gone in?” the Pictou warden asked as he sprang to his feet.

Kirk shook his head in wonder at the balls on the
were
. “Yeah, they are.”

“So why are you still here?”

“Waitaminute,” Kirk held up a hand. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Out walking. Thinking.”

“And you decided to join in now?”

“You rather not at all?”

“No time for this shit, man.”

Morris studied Kirk with an air of suspicion. “No time, huh? So why are you still here?”

“I was about to change.”

“Yeah,” Morris said. “I bet. You were all in a hurry. Guarding your girlfriend’s panties out here.”

Kirk rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You ready to go?”

Morris snorted. “Are you?”

“Yeah.”

“Then let’s get going.” Morris threw off his leather duster and ripped open his shirt. “They’re going to need it.”

“What do you mean?” Kirk asked.

“Something’s been bothering me this whole time,” Morris said, pausing. “I mean, this is pretty bad, right? What’s happening here. Really bad, right?”

The question hung on the air as Kirk nodded with impatience.

“I’ve been thinking about who Bailey really is. Whoever he is, he’s alone, so he must be pretty badass, right? If he was planning on killing me.”

“Yeah, okay, so?”

“Well, then, how come the elders only sent eight wardens to find this guy now that he’s reborn? Huh? Why is that?”

“Eight’s a fuckin’ army.”

“Eight’s not a fuckin’ army,” Morris groaned. “Eight’s a smokescreen. A show of nothing. The way the world is now? All widescreen and high definition and hooked to the interwebs? This town should be
crawling
with wardens. Wardens
and
wolves arriving on planes and driving up in trucks and cars. There’s been plenty of time to get them all here. Seriously. Should be a huge fucking convention here with everyone with their noses to the pavement, sniffing out Bailey’s ass. But there isn’t. Bailey’s been on the loose now for a couple of days and the wardens in that mall are all that’s coming. That’s it, Kirk. Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Because someone wants us to fail. The goddamn elders want us all to die.”

That struck Kirk cold and senseless. “What?”

“You heard me. I say Bailey was sent to kill me, and I think Bailey is still meant to kill me. These wardens? Enough to get us all motivated, but seriously, we’re hunting a fucking monster in there. A monster. The elders know it and they know Bailey is more than capable of killing all of us. Eight wardens? That’s nothing. All replaceable. Small price to pay and perfectly acceptable. Especially if it means getting rid of us.”

Kirk remained speechless, Morris’s rant making a lot of sense.

“That’s right, man,” the Pictou warden said. “I was right all along. The elders want you and me dead. And it’s because of what we did on the Rock. Because of what we ate and what we are. We’re something else now. Maybe like what Borland was. And whatever
that
is, the elders sure as shit don’t like it.”

All Kirk could think of was Carma, that she might be in danger.

He shrugged off his coat.

The pack edged closer to the fragrant cave known as the food court. The area reeked of death and cooling blood, blood enough that it almost left Carma dizzy. She couldn’t locate Bailey’s scent, couldn’t smell anything but the rich soup ahead. She’d thought she picked up on his trail but it had evaporated the closer they got to the food court.

A body lay before them, a grim lump marking the outer edge of the food court’s vast expanse. Carma slunk toward the carcass, her senses buzzing. A male, not long dead. She lifted her head and peered into the arena before her. Mauled bodies lay strewn about, in dark, unmoving husks, garnishing the place in morbid splotches. A black pool surrounded the body before her and her supernatural sight could easily distinguish where the outer edge of blood stopped and the floor began.

The others halted on her flanks and sniffed the air. Looked and listened. Nothing stirred. The temperature inside the building remained warm and the food court was a congealing tomb. She edged past the body, leaving paw prints in the tepid tar coating the floor. The others spread out behind her, and as a group, they drifted to the left of the ubiquitous tables and chairs and garbage dumpsters. Ian Bryce snuck by, closed in on the remains of a pair of armored police officers, and prodded their lifeless arms with his snout.

Ken Cyler hopped onto a pair of tables and inspected another dead police officer, his spine snapped. A second later he stood vigil and peered around the food court. Janice and Nick Dyer fanned out ahead of Carma, leaving an elegant, almost floral design in the blood underfoot. Corpses lay scattered everywhere, some sprinkled with discarded weapons. Automatic machine guns. Carma didn’t know the make.