Who's Afraid?, page 25
It was literally the only spot you could disguise something in this outfit and I strapped a sole dagger there. I cursed myself for not wearing a burqa tonight. I could have hidden Chuck Norris under there. I strapped the two daggers into sheaths on my wrists and a long knife into a belt around my waist. It pained me to leave the Hunga Mungas and crossbow in the car, but I couldn’t carry everything. With a machete in one hand and chains linked in the other, I made my way towards the only entry I could see. A small wooden door at the front of the warehouse was illuminated by a security light. The rest of the building loomed around it, grey and sinister in the silent night. Standing to the side of the door and pressing my back against the warehouse, I slowly unfurled the chain. I couldn’t take it in with me. I wanted at least one hand free, one hand that I could shift at a moment’s notice.
Straining my ears, I tried to hear what was happening inside. The thick concrete walls blocked out most of the sound. I could hear murmuring, somebody moving, and then a whimper. My skin prickled as I recognised the owner of the whimper.
I couldn’t delay any longer. The door was unlocked – I’d expected it to be – and the inside of the vast, empty warehouse was dark. The only light was coming from the very centre of the space where an industrial lamp had been set up. It was casting a pool of yellow on two unconscious figures tied to one of the pillars holding up the roof. My pulse quickened. They were slumped and seemingly unresponsive, with both of their heads resting on their chests.
Mari. Kane.
Anger pulsed through me as I moved, step by step, towards them. Steven was there too. I couldn’t see him, but my other senses told me he was just out of sight and he wasn’t alone. He’d made sure my vision would be tested by having no outside light sources. Yet I could see a rough outline of shadows moving around me, encircling me as I pushed closer towards my friends. I was trapped. I knew from the second I received his text that I would be walking into a trap. I intended to inflict as much damage on this cunt before the snare clasped shut. Breathing heavily, I tried to repeat some of Lorcan’s meditation exercises in my head to control my fear. It was working. Barely.
Stopping outside the circle of light spilling from the lamp, I tried to determine if Mari and Kane were alive. I didn’t want to expose myself for attack by rushing forward to their aid. I stood still and tried to pinpoint their breaths amongst the other bodies breathing around me. Mari’s head moved slightly and I felt a morsel of relief.
‘It’s good to see ya again, Tommi.’ Steven stepped out from behind the pillar.
‘And might I say how beautiful ya look tonight. That dress …’ He shook his head and licked his lips.
I tried not to shudder.
‘The weapons ruin the look. We’ll get rid of those in a minute,’ he continued.
Shirtless, he was wearing only a pair of black jeans and exposing as much of his tattooed skin as he could. My eyes caught on a black face tattooed on his left pec. Done in the Polynesian style like all his tattoos, the face was grimacing in a ferocious declaration of war with the tongue exposed and sticking out. The eyes were wide and black. A cold chill ran through me as I tried to tear my gaze away from the two coallike spheres. Steven’s bare feet brushed over the dust of the warehouse floor as he moved closer.
‘I’m glad to see you came alone.’
‘Like you asked,’ I said, through gritted teeth.
It was taking every bit of self-control I had not to become paralysed by fear. I wanted to utilise that other instinct I had, the one where I wanted to leap forward and rip this monster apart.
‘I did, didn’t I? Of course that doesn’t mean I came solo.’
With that a whirring sound kicked into gear behind me. Lights high at the top of the warehouse ceiling began clicking on, one after the other. I squinted as my eyes tried to adjust. Finally, I got to see my acquaintances. I counted nine, no, eleven other people here with us in the warehouse. They had loosely formed a circle around Steven and me. Including their leader, I was up against twelve. Most of them looked like bikies. One of them had a long, blond ponytail that was loosely plaited and fell to his waist (with a disgusting thick moustache on his face to match). A few looked older, in their early forties, and there was one boy who barely looked fourteen. I thought they were all men until a flash of recognition crossed my face. Bob girl was standing amongst them. Dressed in jeans and a tight black jacket, she had her arms crossed and was glaring at me. I was already out-wolfed, no harm going down with a last-minute jibe.
‘Did I break your pie?’ I asked.
She looked shocked that I had spoken directly to her and she flinched at the memory of my kick to her privates in the Ihis house. The bikie closest to me stepped forward.
‘You don’t talk till we tell ya to talk, bitch.’
He was holding a finger up at me in a threatening fashion. I was surprised he didn’t punch me. I assumed Steven had given them orders not to harm me until he could first. I tried to keep the knowledge of my impending doom off my face as I replied to the bikie coolly: ‘I’m so glad you put “bitch” at the end of that sentence, otherwise I would’ve had no idea who you were talking to.’
That tipped him over the edge and he made a move to grab me when Steven yelled, ‘Enough!’
Like a game of ‘What’s the Time, Mr Wolf?’ they all froze in their various positions.
Steven strode forward and slapped me. The impact sent me reeling on to all fours as stars danced in front of my eyes. I moved my jaw and tried to return to my feet, stumbling slightly. He was still standing exactly where he had been before I went down and the anger in his eyes made me feel it was worth the slap.
‘No more from your smart mouth or your friends will be making it out of this warehouse in pieces,’ he spat.
I heard a muffled cry and looked behind Steven to where Mari and Kane were.
Mari was awake and staring at me. I’d never seen a look of fear so potent as the one that was on her face. I’m sure it mirrored my own.
‘Mari,’ I whispered.
‘That’s right,’ Steven said, smirking.
‘I’m here now,’ I said, turning my attention back to him, ‘you can let them go.’
Steven chuckled and began walking back towards them. ‘I’m afraid,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘they won’t be going anywhere. They were just bait, Tommi. You’re here now. They fulfilled their purpose.’
Mari was quietly crying and I could see the tears spilling over the duct tape on her mouth. He walked past her until he was standing over Kane.
‘Hey,’ he said, suddenly looking back at me. ‘Do they know what you are? Do they know you’re a werewolf?’
Mari’s whimpers suddenly stopped as she swivelled her head between Steven and me.
‘No,’ he said, looking at her face. ‘They didn’t.’
Tearing myself away from Mari’s pleading eyes, I said, ‘They don’t have anything to do with this.’
‘Do they also know your flatmate isn’t quite human either?’
Placing a hand on either side of Kane’s face and lifting his drooping head towards the ceiling, Steven continued, ‘Hmm. It will make it even worse for you then, knowing your friends died because of your lie.’
I tried to ignore him. Mari and Kane weren’t here because I hadn’t told them I was a werewolf. They weren’t here because I hadn’t told them Lorcan was an immortal. They were here because Steven was insane. Still, there was no denying the look in Mari’s bloodshot eyes.
Betrayal. Disbelief. Fear.
‘Sha—’
Steven was cut off as the door to the warehouse was flung open with a metallic thud. Lorcan came flying into the space at a sprint, sword and gun in his hands. My half-brother glanced from me to him and back again, rage bubbling up under his skin. I returned my gaze to his face just as he made a sharp movement with his arms and broke Kane’s neck. The snap echoed through the warehouse.
‘NO!’ I screamed.
‘You lied,’ he hissed.
Mari began wiggling furiously in her restraints as the gang around us laughed and howled. Steven grinned, cold and evil, as he stepped back. Kane’s head slumped to the side with sickening freedom. My mouth was hanging open and I felt tears prick my eyes as I stared at Kane’s lifeless form. Dead. His dead form.
I looked at the people around me, grinning, laughing, whooping.
I wanted to kill them all.
Chapter 19
Slowly, I felt my grief begin to subside as searing hot anger took over. The rage built deep within my chest, stroking and teasing out my wolf. The bikie who had threatened me earlier was standing closest to me and had his eyes shut as he laughed. His friend behind him was paying more attention and saw what I was about to do.
‘Jake,’ he said warily, but it was too late.
Gripping the machete tightly with both hands, I leaped forward and slashed it across his throat. His eyes jerked open in surprise as arterial blood spurted outwards like a macabre sprinkler system. He took two unsteady steps backwards and made a move to bring his hands up over the wound. By the time they made it there, all that was left was a bloody stump as I hacked his head off with two more swings of the blade.
‘GAR!’ his friend strangled out the sound as he was shot squarely in the head. Lorcan was still running towards me as he made the shot and he quickly fired off two more, one of which struck a man in his upper shoulder and sent blood spraying across my face. Instantly, I dropped on to my knees and swiped the man’s feet out from under him. Landing flat on his back in a pool of Jake’s blood, his head made an unforgiving thwack on the concrete. Pouncing up, I drove the machete blade straight into his heart. I saw death cross his eyes almost instantly. One of the other men tackled me from the side and I went down. They were all faceless to me now as I hacked, clawed and bit my way free of them. Scrambling from the pile of men, I caught sight of Lorcan doing what he had spent multiple lifetimes doing: killing.
He engaged three people at once, his brow furrowed in concentration as he ducked and weaved his way free of their hits. One had his own sword and a sharp clang echoed through the warehouse as Lorcan struck it with his. The gun had been knocked away, but it didn’t seem to impact him. He pushed the man back with sheer strength and ferocity, as he delivered sword blow after sword blow until the final hit was so hard the man’s weapon flew from his hand. Without skipping a beat, he sliced right down the assailant’s middle, killing him instantly.
A thick, cube of a man jumped on Lorcan’s back and attempted to strangle him from behind while the other moved around to stab him in the front. Dropping low, Lorcan flipped the man over his shoulders, which pinned the other guy beneath him. Before either man could get a breath, Lorcan locked him between his thighs in what looked like an inescapable manoeuvre. He used his switchblade and, in a blurry stabbing motion, delivered three deadly hits. The man stopped wriggling slowly and his legs twitched as the last bit of life left him.
I had been distracted watching him move with lethal efficiency and it cost me. A knife was sunk into my calf muscle and I screamed with pain, rolling on my back to see the culprit. The completely bald man glared up at me, snarling, as blood poured from what had been his left ear. He still had his hand on the blade and he withdrew it from my leg preparing to strike again. I kicked him in the face with my good leg and screamed with the pain of the wound.
Arching my back, I could see that Steven had untied Mari and was attempting to drag her away with him. Letting go of the machete, I rolled on to my stomach and propped myself up with one hand and a knee. Quickly drawing one of the daggers from my wrist sheath, I took a second to aim before throwing it at him. It whistled through the air and landed between his shoulder and neck. Damn. I’d missed the artery. He leaped back from Mari, clutching madly at the wound. Bob girl and the teenage boy went to his aid, leaving Lorcan and I with the rest of the pack. I tried biting my lip to avoid screaming again, but the pain from my leg was excruciating. I rolled over and looked down at the wound. Thick blood was oozing from my calf and it looked as if the knife had gone right through to the other side.
Sensing movement to my left, I caught a glimpse of another man edging closer. I wasn’t going to be able to stand quick enough so I had to time this perfectly. Sliding my way over to my machete, I tried to make myself look as helpless as possible, like they had finally injured me beyond something I could come back from. I let out another pain-filled cry, which wasn’t hard considering the actual pain I was in, and the bald one was on me. In a completely non-human gesture, he crouched before launching himself through the air. When he was mere centimetres away, I swiped my werewolf claw across his face sending him screaming into a bloody pile at my feet. I quickly rolled on to my stomach and used my hands and one good leg to get myself upright. Grabbing the machete in the process, I barely had time to steady myself before two others ran at me. One held out a gun, which surprised me because guns didn’t seem to be a weapon of choice with these people. If they’d had one I figured they would have shot me earlier. With the Glock held out in front of him, he seemed to hesitate shooting me.
His mistake. Clenching my teeth I used my stabbed leg to pivot. I spun around in a flash and sliced his hand clean off below the wrist. Howling, he leaped back and grabbed his stump, trying to quash the flow of blood. The machete was knocked out of my arm by one of the other men who brought me down on my back. He pinned my human hand, trying to make sure I couldn’t get hold of the machete. I grabbed his throat with my werewolf claw, clenching tightly and trying to use its strength to pull him off me. His eyes started to roll back into his head as his face went purple.
‘Pl … ee—’ he tried to say.
My rage had no time for sympathy, no need for it. Without a second thought, I crushed his windpipe between my gnarled, clawed fingers. I felt a satisfying crunch and a release of tension as he collapsed on top of me, dead. A shot fired above and I barely had a second to register the sound before a hot fire spread from my shoulder.
‘ARGH!’ I screamed.
Somehow being shot was worse than getting stabbed. As the heat of the bullet passed through my flesh, it felt like I was being impaled with lava. I looked up at the shooter. He had prised the gun out of the fingers of his buddy’s severed hand and shot me through the corpse of another friend. I think he had been aiming for my head but the body on top of me had messed with the target.
That and his hands were shaking uncontrollably. He inched closer, step by step.
‘Don’t you move now!’ he screamed, panicked.
Spit flew from his mouth as he tried to regain control of the situation. Standing over me, he lined up a clear shot of my head. Even at point blank range, it was difficult to do with the sweaty, muscular body of a thug on top of his target.
‘Don’t you fucking move!’
Like I could move with this guy on me. As he started to wedge the body off with his foot, I willed my werewolf hand back into human form. I couldn’t move my right hand without aggravating my shot shoulder, plus my left hand was closer to the long knife still sheathed at my waist. Both of my daggers were gone and the machete was out of sight. I had one, make that two, seemingly minor weapons left. They needed to count. As he made another heave with his foot and the body rolled off me, I sat up and used the movement to thrust the knife into the man’s abdomen. I couldn’t get any higher from where I was sitting but it did the job. He made a gurgling cry and staggered backwards, lifting the gun above his head as he fell and firing two shots into the roof. The gun was still in his hand as he hit the floor, knife wedged in his gut. The barrel had been turning as he fell and, as a reflex action, he pulled the trigger, blowing his own head off in the process.
My head snapped in the direction of a roar and I had a mere second to register that a half-man, half-wolf was galloping towards me. He couldn’t shift himself completely but as his mouth arched open and I caught sight of his drooling fangs I realised that was more than enough to finish me. As if out of thin air, Lorcan appeared at his rear, leaping on to his back and spearing the man with his sword. The blade penetrated the man’s skull just behind his eyes and I gaped as he came to a shuddering halt centimetres from my own face. I could even see the silver of Lorcan’s sword glinting inside the guy’s open mouth, blood trickling down it.
Lorcan thrust the weapon out of the man’s carcass, kicking his body to the side as he crouched down next to me. Assessing my wounds, his eyes ran over my body in a flurry.
‘I got here as fast as I could,’ he started. ‘Are you—’
‘Later,’ I said, placing a hand on his chest. He nodded with understanding and we both froze as the warehouse was suddenly plunged into darkness. An argument had broken out at the exit as the bob girl attempted to plead with her brother.
‘Steven, please this has gone too far! I thought you were just going to sc—’
Steven slammed her up against the wall, pressing his hand to her throat as she struggled to get air.
‘Now is not the time to back out on me, wahine,’ he said.
‘P-p-please,’ she choked. ‘Qu—Quaid?’
The teenage boy simply shook his head, meeting her desperate stare with unsympathetic eyes. It was then that I realised this must be my other brother, the younger one Steven had mentioned while I was chained up in New Zealand. Wordlessly, Lorcan and I established a plan, and we had to make the most of the opportunity this family bickering had afforded us. Silent and deadly, Lorcan was nearly on top of the Ihi siblings while I was limping as quickly as I could towards Mari. She was lying motionless to the side of the group and I pleaded to any gods that might be listening for her to still be alive.
With relief, I noticed her chest was rising up and down with quick breaths. There were flecks of blood on her face from where Steven’s had spilled on her as the dagger hit. I placed a hand over her mouth to quiet any noise she might make. With a jolt, I noticed the scariest thing about her condition was the way she was looking at me.
Terrified. Horrified. She moved her eyes from mine and glanced in the direction of the massacre behind us. I could deal with consequences later. Right now, I had to get her out of here. I used my good hand to retrieve the dagger strapped to my thigh. I held my finger up to my mouth in a ‘ssshhh’ gesture and Mari nodded. Removing my other hand from her mouth, I began rapidly cutting the rope that had her two wrists pressed together. The movement of freeing her from the restraints was excruciating with my gun wound but time was of the essence. A cry came from behind me and I glanced back quickly to see Lorcan was attacking all three of them. The perfect distraction.
