The Beast Within (21 page)

He secured his grip on Carlos and leaned into the vacuum. His surroundings shifted in a quick, vertiginous flash, then he and Carlos were standing in Kapre’s lobby.

“You did it…” Carlos trailed off as they both took in the scene before them.

Bodies lay sprawled across the marble tiles. Agents, guns still in hand, lay oozing the last drops of blood from their bodies. Mauled shifters from both clans sprawled face down or on their sides, lethal bite and claw wounds marring their bare flesh. Carlos made pained sounds as they passed the bodies of his fallen pack members. Aaron recognized a number of them, as well. Burley Bill who had stashed the van that had delivered him from Kapre’s clutches lay with his guts spilling across the floor. A younger were with three parallel scars slashed across the left side of her face who had commiserated with him about their violent attacks and subsequent shifts had a mess of tissue and blood where her throat had been. An older lady—close in age to Director Braven—who had ruled as the stand-in alpha female for Carlos when visiting more traditional packs was mauled to almost unrecognizability. They all lay on the cold stone floor, their life, their identity as wolf, torn away. More than the nakedness of their bodies, this lack of fur and fang was the ultimate stripping of their dignity. They were pack no more. Only corpses.

Carlos, his face a mask of pain and disgust, moved toward the elevator. Aaron grabbed his arm.

“The elevator is a perfect trap. We have to take the stairs.”

Carlos nodded. His eyes were glazed, unfocused.

“You should stay here.”

“Cerberus and Six Rivers have killed my clansmen. I cannot let that lie.”

“Matthew is taking care of it.”

“Matthew?” Carlos’ voice was hollow. “If Matthew is alive.”

“He is. You heard his voice.”

“Yes, the last time you heard Tony’s,” Carlos answered. “I have heard nothing since. Have you?”

“They’re alive.” Aaron propelled Carlos to the back stairwell. “I’m going to get them. But you’re half dead.”

“I am on the recovering side of that half, however.” Carlos gave him a smile that was closer to a grimace. “I will see this to the end, whatever it may be.”

“Fine.” Aaron glanced up at the security cameras as he pushed Carlos through the heavy fire door. He couldn’t linger in the lobby, arguing. Even if Six Rivers didn’t have someone monitoring the camera bank, odds were someone would pass by the security station and notice them milling around downstairs. “We’ll go together.”

He had no intention of holding up to this promise. As Carlos struggled to make the first flight Aaron knew the alpha would not survive full combat. He would have to find a place to stash Carlos. He thought of op-tech. The agents had probably stripped it already. Even if weapons remained, Six Rivers, with Cerberus and his new ‘all natural’ philosophy, wouldn’t deign to touch them. He guided Carlos slowly up the steps, careful not to over-exert the wounded shifter, even though every nerve in his body was screaming for rapid action, for Tony.

The only other occupant of the stairwell was the body of a lone agent, badly mauled, neck broken from her topple down the steps. Aaron looked down at the woman. He didn’t recognize her face from the office. She was a night employee. So, where were his daytime co-workers? Still muddling around in the woods where Carlos’ man had stashed the van? Why had no one summoned them, or the other off-duty agents? What about the Thurisaz sigils? They should have raised alerts on their mobiles. Had Ellison blocked both electronic and mystical communication? Were the majority of his co-workers sleeping in their beds, unaware their office was under attack? Aaron hoped so. Watching his entire office get slaughtered again would surely land him in the psychiatric ward.

The question was, if Ellison had full homicide on his mind, why would he try to protect his co-workers?

He couldn’t think about that, now. Carlos was having an increasingly difficult time navigating the many steps. Aaron turned back. Carlos’ lips were blue, his skin pale. Before the alpha could protest, Aaron swept him up in his arms. Carlos gave him and admonishing look, but did not struggle or argue. He was out of strength and he knew it. Aaron carried him up the remaining flight and set him down on the landing. He didn’t want to risk making his face a target by popping it into the small rectangular window in the door, so instead he inched as close to the door as possible, relying on his other senses to paint him a picture of the corridor. The heavy stench of gunpowder and terror drowned out all other scents. His sensitive hearing relayed no sign of lingering presence in the hallway leading to the op-tech lab. He creaked open the door and listened for a moment more. No sounds of claws clicking on the tile, no footpads squelching on the floor, no weapons beings hoisted to heavily armored shoulders. The coast was as clear as it was going to get.

Aaron pulled the door the rest of the way open. The hall was littered with more bodies, the ratio of fallen ally to enemy a dismal one. Carlos followed him through, his lucidity slightly improved from his brief rest on the landing. His color, however, remained alarmingly wan.

“This way,” Aaron whispered.

He led Carlos down the hall, stopping at the wide double doors of the op-tech lab. The counters were stripped of all weapons, as was the cage of locked weapons at the requisitions desk. The only thing remaining in the room was Robert, the lone op-tech scientist, sitting cross-legged inside a silvery bubble floating four feet from the floor. He had a computer on one knee, a strange glowing tablet on the other and the black squiggle of an earpiece cord dangling from his head. He looked up when they entered. His mouth opened in surprise, then shut.

“Hi, Robert,” Aaron said. “You remember me from the other day?”

“The other day?” The distortion of the sphere made Robert’s voice burble as if underwater. “I remember you from everyone in the office wanting your head as a desk ornament.”

“And what about you?” Aaron asked, eying the tech’s fingers as they scurried across the mystical tablet.

“Wrongly placed blame,” Robert answered. There was no sympathy or commiseration in his voice, just bald truth. “Doesn’t add up. No one wants to hear it from me, though. I’m the geek. I’m supposed to keep my mouth shut and do geek things.”

“Like float around in a Sigurddessen Sphere?”

This time Robert did look up. “You know about them?” He was impressed. “I guess you agents think I’m weak for hiding.”

“I’ve read about them, yeah. And it was a good defensive move. The agents took away all of your weapons, which you undoubtedly know very well. Still, you have limited field training and shooting a target is much easier than shooting something sprinting toward you at forty miles an hour. If you were out running around with guns blazing, I’d be worried about you. Since those spheres are damn well impenetrable, I’m not.”

Robert flashed him a smile. “You seemed like an okay guy when we met.”

“I need a favor, Robert.”

“I can’t help you find a painless way to jump in the battle, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m throwing up containments like crazy and as quickly as I do Cerberus just jogs right through them. He has gummed up our mystical security systems and the electrical ones were never engaged. There’s not much left in the way of locked doors. This place is your candy jar, man. Stick your hand in. Just be sure where you stick it, or you might lose it. And the rest of the agents have been located and are on their way in, so try not to get a bullet from behind.”

“That’s all helpful information, but not what I was getting at. I was hoping you would look after my friend.” Aaron gestured to Carlos. “He’s the alpha of the Trinity clan. He was the one who warned me of Six Rivers coming into the area. We owe him for that.”

“I guess we do.” Robert gave Carlos a long look. “Unfortunately, I can’t let you in here with me. If you do know about Sigurddessen Spheres you know they can only be opened once. After that they dissipate, which would render useless my valiant attempts at not getting eaten.”

“I don’t need your protection. Only a place to rest.” Carlos turned to Aaron, defeated. “I’ve lost too much blood. I’m holding you back and endangering not only you, but maybe Matthew and Tony. I may not like it, but I know when I’m a total liability.”

“Maybe not total,” Aaron said. “Look around. You seem to know good ideas when you see them. There might be something in here that can help us.”

Carlos scanned the clean-picked room, his expression conveying nothing but doubt, but he nodded. “Yes, maybe.”

“Okay. Just lie low until I come back for you.”

“Most of the tech has been taken and detonated in this fight. I’m tracking it from here,” Robert said. “There’s one that hasn’t. A special little thing I’ve been working on since the portals started popping up all over town. It’s new and untested.”

“That disruptor thing Tony asked you about on my first day?”

“That’s the one. He made sure to get it from me when the rest of the Acqxterm knuckleheads were in here scrabbling for bullets and guns.”

“He still has it?” A flutter of hope came alive in Aaron’s chest.

“He does.” Robert tapped the screen. “And it is as yet undetonated. Get it and you have a much better chance of making it out of here alive. We all do.”

“I’ll do my best.” Aaron nodded at Robert. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Try not to get your ass chewed off.” The tech grinned. “From Cerberus, or Braven.”

“It’s the latter I’m more worried about, but I’ll do my best.” Aaron gave him a wave then pulled in Carlos for a quick hug. “Be careful. If they come in, get to a high place. Until then, save your strength, maybe find yourself a lab coat or something. You’re distracting, standing here naked.”

“You mean disturbing,” Robert chimed in, not looking up from his screens.

“As are you,
mi hombre
.” Carlos smiled. “But I suspect you will be shifting soon.”

“As soon as Cerberus is in my sights, yeah.” Aaron flexed his hands, already feeling the claws that would rend flesh. “We’re gonna have an old-fashioned dog fight.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

The Price of War

The gunshots were growing sparse, distant. The lupine whines and human cries of pain were clearly audible in the pockets of silence. Aaron ran down the hall toward the sound. He couldn’t differentiate the noises, couldn’t tell if one of them belonged to Tony. But there, in the place where he had started work two short days before, was an abundance of misery and death. Aaron knew it because the dark thing inside him was urging him toward it, driven by the delicious scent of spilt blood and fading life. Aaron snarled menacingly at the part of him he had once loathed. Even now, despite his disgust at the desires of the creature squatting in his chest, he couldn’t deny the truth of its usefulness, nor of its inextricable oneness with him. Just as the demon had once controlled him, he would now control it. Any blood it tasted would be by his command alone. Happily, there were several mouthfuls of blood he would gleefully let it relish—especially if Tony was suffering.

The lights flickered as a wash of magic flowed through the hallway. Robert had summoned another spell, maybe to keep Cerberus trapped inside, maybe to help Aaron reach the demon unchallenged. He let the power sweep him forward toward the main offices, toward the smell of death.

The corridor from op-tech and the back stairs led to the heart of Kapre. The door, which usually required a passcode and a fingerprint scan, sat ajar. Aaron eased it open and slid into the narrow hall. Flanked by the broom closet and the staff break room, Aaron cautiously checked first one opening then the other. He closed off the corridor as he cleared the passageway Twenty feet and a pair of reinforced steel doors separated him from Cerberus. He could feel the demon on the other side, hear his chest rising and falling with the fiery gasses that filled his lungs—which meant Cerberus could hear Aaron, too. He was waiting for him. Aaron had no weapons save for the elongated teeth and nails that accompanied his partial transformation. He considered fully shifting before bursting through the entryway and thus providing himself with a greater degree of protection, but if it were locked it would require fingerprints to open, and he would be forced to shift back. It was better to pass through as a biped, then quickly shift once inside, if needed. Aaron turned the handle. It swung freely on its axis. He shoved open the door and faced utter devastation.

Lights flickered. The fluorescents dangled from wires, the frosted Plexiglas lay shattered out of its housing. Overturned desks served as inadequate cover for the mauled agents sprawled behind them. Bullet casings littered the floor. The air wavered with the energy of a dozen spent mystical devices. Naked shifters lay in pools of blood, their spinal cords blown out of the backs of their necks. Here, the number of werewolf bodies outweighed those of acqxterm agents. It seemed the tide had turned in favor of Kapre. The fight had clearly moved on, most likely the rallying agents driving the weres into the main front hallway and down the stairs to the waiting agents outside. In the center of the grisly scene sat Cerberus, all three of his heads fixed on Aaron.

Fear and anger waged war for supremacy as Aaron stepped forward. Cerberus gave another of his gravelly chortles and wagged its massive heads. He pawed at a bloodied mass of black rags beneath his foot. The mass moaned, and Aaron’s heart dropped.

“Tony?”

The bundle shifted at the sound. Aaron caught sight of a crimson-slicked shock of hair. Even through the blood he recognized that thick, dark crop as the same he had run his hands through just a few hours before.

“What did you do to him?” Rage boiled inside Aaron. It felt as if it would burn the blood through his veins and flood it to the surface of his still blackened skin. He lunged forward.

Cerberus snarled, shook his heads, and pulled Tony’s limp body beneath his with a massive paw. Tony groaned.

“Okay, okay.” Aaron pulled up short, hands in the air. “Ease up on him. What do you want from me?”

The room grew hot. The air wavered and a burst of flames appeared at Cerberus’ flank. The fire shifted like the parting of curtains, revealing the profound blackness of the void. The demon inclined its head.