The Lycan Collapse (The Flux Age Book 2) (10 page)

“Just in shock,” Yasmin said, her voice shaking a little. “I froze in there, Jack. I didn’t know what to do.”

Jack nodded, glancing up and down the street. Satisfied it was safe, he held Yasmin in his arms.

“I’m just glad you’re alive. I love you so much.”

Jack’s stomach lurched as he was lifted into the air. He was held in a vice-like grip by a female aquilan. She must have swooped him from the roof of the pavilion. He still hadn’t learned to check the air as well as the ground.

“Jack!” Yasmin screamed from the ground.

But there was nothing that could be done. Jack flailed helplessly as the aquilan climbed high above the New York skyline.

“Where are you taking me?” he gasped.

“Nowhere,” the aquilan said casually. “I just wanna see you fall.”

And with that, she let go of him.

Jack tried to keep panic at bay as he free fell through the frigid night air. He wasn’t sure if his werewolf form could survive such a long drop. The roof of a grey building rushed up to meet him. His legs took the brunt of the fall, snapping immediately. A wave of pain flooded him and he almost lost consciousness. He tumbled several yards and lay motionless on the concrete. For a few seconds he simply looked up at the stars, which seemed to throb along with his pain. With a quick glance he confirmed he didn’t have a compound fracture, but both his legs were definitely broken.

Instinctively Jack dragged his shaggy body across the roof to the balustrade at the edge. He found a dirty old tarpaulin and hauled himself underneath it. For several minutes all he could hear was his own ragged breathing. At length he heard the faint sound of a swear word high somewhere above him. The aquilan had been toying with him and was now searching for him. She probably had orders to take him back to Hector where he could be finished off for good. Thankfully the aquilan had underestimated a lycan’s strength and resilience. Jack would wait under cover until his legs healed. For a werewolf, such injuries took hours to right themselves.

Jack hated the idea of cowering under a tarpaulin while his friends were attacked but there was nothing else he could do. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his legs, he used the time to think through this unbelievable, blood-filled night. It was quite clear that the aquilans were after the lycans’ dark tissue, which would allow them to survive beyond the Flux Age just beginning. Jack couldn’t begrudge the old, proud species from looking to safeguard their future, but the way they’d gone about things tonight was an abject disgrace. Clearly they intended to ask the Mother one last time whether she would freely part with some dark tissue. Judging from the devastating attack on the ballroom, probably with all the forces at their disposal, they never for one moment expected the Mother to agree to their demand. So they planned to take what they wanted by force.

There was one thing Jack didn’t quite understand. The aquilans rightly judged that they would need all their forces on hand if they wanted to subdue the other Flux leaders, some of which were clearly powerful. If all the aquilans were tied up at the Hadfield Pavilion, then how did they plan to assault the lycan chapter house under the city? Especially since Mother Aurora had insisted that most lycan operatives remained confined to their home quarters? One thing was certain - Jack had to get back home quickly. His heart screamed at him to go back to where he left Yasmin, but logic told him she had surely gone underground to evade the rampaging aquila. It was anyone’s guess when he would get to see her again. Now that war had begun, things were about to become very chaotic. It didn’t bode well for the several million people still living innocently in New York City.

After a while Jack threw the tarpaulin off his body to get some fresh air. Adrenalin still pumped through his wolf veins, as well as antibodies and healing cells working furiously to repair his broken bones and tissue. Over the next hour the pain in his legs dropped from agonizing to something very close to tolerable. Satisfied there were no aquilans in the sky above him, Jack took to the external fire escape and gingerly made his way down to the street. He wasn’t confident enough in his body yet to be leaping from building to building.

Jack tried to focus on his mission as he located a secret subterranean hatch deep in central park. The tunnel eventually terminated in a drop ladder that saw him into a network of tunnels that ultimately reached the ocean tunnel. He felt a sharp pang of anxiety when he saw that the entrance down here had been penetrated. The thick wooden door was in splinters.

Boris, Jack’s homeless friend who often found shelter in the ocean tunnel, call out from the darkness.

“They came in numbers,” was all he said. “Wave after wave, Jack. Like the apocalypse.”

Jack frowned and ventured inside the chapter house. The lower halls were quiet and undamaged. Barely able to breathe, Jack made his way through the spartan hab cells. The rooms which were usually at the very least alive with music, snoring and laughter. Right now they were deathly quiet.

Choosing a cautious approach, Jack took a back passage that led to the mezzanine level of the Assembly Hall. Silently he crept to the rail of a balcony that overlooked the cavernous space. The same balcony from which his tutors looked sternly down at him for so many years.

The Hall was dark save for the flickering light of a few open fires. The power must have been cut at some point earlier in the night. Jack’s eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, and what he saw unfolded like a horrific dream.

There were several creatures on the Hall floor, split into a number of small groups. The way they carried themselves and moved around was quite distinct. Yes, there was no doubt about it. He had never seen one in the flesh but had learned about them from his lycan masters. Disgusting creatures that… no, they couldn’t possibly be.

Jack held a hand to his mouth when he realized what the ghouls were doing. They were tearing flesh from the several corpses on the Hall floor. His friends, the lycans he called his family, had been eaten alive.

There weren’t many ways you could kill a lycan. Silver bullets and blades were one way. Overpowering them through sheer force and consuming them was another. It would’ve taken hundreds of ghouls to overpower all the lycans present here at the chapter house. There was nothing more ferocious than a lycan protecting his home. The foul stench arising from the Hall suggested that many, many ghouls had died in their ultimately successful attack on the lycans. Jack knew that fire and decapitation was the only way you could kill a ghoul. That would explain the charred nature of the stench rising up to meet him. His home would’ve been a raging inferno just hours earlier. And now, with the irrepressible ghouls victorious, they were dining out on their victims. Ghouls were actually one of the few creatures who matched up well against werewolves due to their preference for live, raw meat.

Feeling sick to the stomach and fighting back tears, Jack considered his next move. He had never felt so powerless in his centuries of existence. It was foolhardy to attempt revenge on the ghouls down below. They would overwhelm him eventually and he would suffer the same torturous fate as his brethren. There was still the issue of dark tissue.

Jack backed away from the balcony, resolving to check the cercarium. He crept through dark, shadowy tunnels and reached the cercarium without incident. What transpired there made him wish he’d left immediately.

The glistening, moist walls of dark tissue had been defiled in the worst possible way. It was if something had come through and clumsily scooped the tissue out and left all the resident lycans to rot on the floor. Old friends Jack had mourned long ago, bodies ripe and disfigured from their time enriching the dark tissue, were now tossed to the side like rotten chunks of meat. Jack wandered amongst the damaged pillars, eyes wide with shock and sorrow. This chamber had been the heart of lycan power for centuries. Now it was nothing but a stinking, debased ruin.

Filled with despair, Jack sank to his knees. The Lycan Society as he knew it had come crashing down in the space of a few hours. He had no doubt that the other chapter houses across the world had been attacked also. A voice in the back of his head suggested that the Berlin Club had plenty to do with this kind of attack. Which meant that the aquila had cut some kind of deal with the hated enemy. But Jack didn’t want to think about politics right now. Overwhelmed with grief, he wanted to mourn. Soon enough grief would turn to anger, anger to rage, rage to cold resolve. That’s when revenge could be contemplated.

Jack was about to leave when he heard a heavy, slithery, meaty sound from the back of the cercarium. He stood behind a pillar and peered around the edge. There was a long, grey creature back there. It was sliding through the pillars slowly, and hadn’t yet detected Jack’s presence. The creature’s body was slug-like, and pulsed with a strong heart beat. Two small arms dangled from the thing’s upright upper torso. It was the head that caused Jack to break out into a cold sweat. The creature was clearly female, and its hair was a mass of live vipers. Its face was stony and severe, with sickly eyes that glowed yellow in the darkness.

A medusa. The kind of thing Jack never believed when he heard about them in class. His heart hammering wildly, Jack allowed the thing to slither down the far side of the chamber and back towards the only entrance. He kept the wide pillar between himself and the medusa at all times. If the old tales were true, this thing would be able to turn Jack to stone with a single, direct look. He still couldn’t believe he was actually spying on a medusa, here in the familiar grandeur of the lycan cercarium. It just seemed like all his nightmares had manifested in one night. Jack darted a quick glance in the creature’s direction to ensure that it was on the way out. The medusa had its glistening back turned on him, but several of the vipers on its head seemed to see Jack all at once. The resulting hiss caused the medusa to spin around.

Jack stepped back behind the pillar, his heart sinking into a deep pit of terror.

“Well, well, well,” he heard the creature hiss. Its voice was a croaky, wet, reedy horror, a voice from the darkest swamps of the world. “A prodigal son returns home to die.”

Jack could hear the medusa approaching carefully through the center of the cercarium. No matter which way he went he would expose himself to the monster. The creature that had led the ghoul attack on the chapter house.

At the last possible moment Jack rolled to the right, grunting at the pain in his legs. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the medusa make a beeline for him. It moved surprisingly fast for such a long, heavy creature.

Filled with panic, Jack rushed for the entrance but tripped on the slug tail that whipped out to stop him. He fell forward harmlessly, but was compelled to swat at the head that lunged over his shoulder. One of the vipers struck at his shoulder and he turned around in a reflex action.

The medusa’s glowing eyes confronted Jack and the world was filled with darkness.

7 - Julian

New York City, USA

A lycan’s instinct was to be trusted. Without it, a lycan was not in tune with the energy of the earth. Or so Julian had been warned by Hector Caliri. Right now Julian fervently hoped that Florence’s instincts were capable of reading the situation for what it was. If she let her emotions overwhelm her, he was as good as dead.

As soon as all hell broke loose at the Hadfield Pavilion, Julian’s first instinct was to stand and fight. Several guests were being cut down by gunfire right before his eyes. The identity of the attackers was a minor footnote in the back of his mind. All he saw was carnage and he wanted to stop it. But Julian Banes was very good at reading the play. There was no chance of victory here, just death.

The aquilan literally swept Florence off her feet and soared through a plate-glass window. Instead of climbing into the night sky he swooped into a rubbish-strewn cul-de-sac where he let a furious Florence down.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t tear you to shreds right now,” she growled. “Those gunmen were all aquilan.”

Julian looked at her intently, his thoughts crippled with fear and shock. His apparent shock was probably the only reason Florence hadn’t torn his throat out.

“Tell me what the fuck is going on!” she repeated.

“I don’t know!” Julian said. He was humiliated and ashamed to admit it. He still couldn’t comprehend what had happened at the Ball. He’d seen his brethren step forward and kill innocents in cold blood. But then it hit him, and he knew there could be only one reason for such senseless violence. “I think Hector has made a play for the dark tissue.”

Florence looked into his eyes, perhaps searching for the truth. She seemed to accept that his logic, as painful as it was, seemed to fit. No one had expected the aquilans to attack so boldly, so mercilessly, but there was certainly a clear motive.

“I need to get back in there,” Florence spat. “I’m sworn to protect the Mother.”

And with that, the tawny werewolf prowled back into Fifth Avenue and toward the main entrance.

“Florence, wait!” Julian called after her. “There’s nothing you can do!”

Julian cursed under his breath as he followed her. Lycans could be so stubborn!

As he turned the corner he could see Florence being approached by two aquilans from the air.

“Halt, lycan!” one of them roared. It was Dennis Maygar, one of Julian’s close associates. They’d studied together under Hector’s tuition as soon as they’d been divined. The other was Rindell Jones, an aquilan he’d met a few times. Both were his kin.