CHAPTER 19

There weren't many places to hide on the stairwell, even with my wolf's talents. They were metal and lit so brightly there was no mistake about someone traversing them. Fortunately, there weren't any witnesses to my descent. They let out into a large storage facility, which was also brightly lit and contained stacks and stacks of different sized crates. On the far end what looked like a roadway was cut off by the wall which made me wonder if the wall folded up somehow. They had to get all the crates inside somehow and they certainly didn't pack them through the little electricity shed. Plus I could scent more people and a diesel vehicle of some sort.

There were eighteen people on the floor, mostly human, and all doing various forms of shuffling items around, some in forklifts and others by hand and all carrying weapons. I avoided them all by staying out of sight around a very tall pile of wooden crates. I studied the boxes, trying to get a feeling for what was inside, but they were unmarked giving no clue to their contents.

An alarm sounded, scaring the shit out of me until I realized it was a warning for the wall, which was, indeed, slowly folding up into the ceiling revealing an underground tunnel beyond with three military looking cargo trucks waiting. The bright white of the lights flashed to red and remained that way even when the alarm stopped ringing. The workers on the floor gathered around where the trucks entered and began loading something inside.

I had to get closer.

The next row of storage was arranged into shelves, the crates lined up on them were smaller, and metal. About the size of a duffle bag. Guns, I imagined, and if I wasn't trying to get closer to the action I would have taken the time to try and open one to confirm my suspicions.

Whoever these people were they had their hands in some very bad pies. And that was saying something, coming from me.

The ignition of the front truck shut off and the driver stepped out.

My heart slammed against my ribs, and I bent over with the force of emotion that swamped me, the scent of the man driving me right back to the night my parents had died. He'd been there. Not the wolf from the Silver Moon pack, but one of the others.

My hands shook against my sides as he walked around the side of the truck, giving directions for the loading. I memorized his features. He was tall and lanky, with a hawk-like nose and deeply tanned skin with dark hair cut so short it was nearly shaved.

My memory flashed to my parents' bodies. How they'd run, splayed out in their attempt at escape. I could still smell the smoke, still taste it. Tears sprang up beneath my eyelids as I struggled to breathe.

I wanted to kill him so bad. I could do it. I was fast, I would be on him before he even knew I was coming...and then I would die. Even as good as my wolf was, I would die. These people weren't packing just for show, I could tell from their movements they knew how to use their weapons. I might kill my target, but they'd gun me down before he even took his last breath.

My wolf writhed, the same emotions coursing through her, and I could feel something click, her power exploding, filling my limbs, my vision and hearing became even sharper, so much so I found the beating of my own heart too loud.

We stilled it feeling the pounding slowing, not entirely thinking, our thoughts no longer clear but wild and feral. Crouching, we watched him. Our prey. We could see the beads of sweat on his skin, hear the blood rushing in his veins. We'd never had such focus and we opened ourselves to it, our power expanding until it felt as though it might burst through our skin.

The driver whipped around, eyes searching the piles of crates around me. Three of the others, too, dropped what they were doing and stepped toward where I was hidden, weapons drawn. Whatever was happening to us it had overpowered our stealth abilities.

They wouldn't find us if I ran now. I knew it as a fact, but the burst of power we were still fighting to contain was acting like a beacon and there was something else I'd forgotten entirely. The scent that I hadn't been able to identify.

A body slammed into mine, lithe and slippery and we fell in a tangle of limbs and snarls. I ended up face down, my attacker on my back. A woman's hands gripped the sides of my head, preparing to give it a sharp twist and break my neck. I threw my head backward instead, smashing it into her face, She cried out and warm liquid sprayed my shoulders as I threw her off.

Behind me, toward the stairs I'd entered on, the facility rumbled and shook, the first pile of crates tipping, the tower crashing to the floor. I didn't have time to figure out what was happening because the gunmen had decided that there was, indeed, something in the crates to worry about and had begun shooting rapidly hoping to catch me off guard.

I ducked and started toward the stairwell, hoping to find more cover, but a hand flashed out from where the woman was now recovering, and gripped my ankle like a vice. Her pale hair was chopped roughly against her head, her eyes narrowed into slits. The lower half of her face was a macabre mess, but it was the fangs that threw me off.

Vampire.

When Aiden's pack had rolled the head onto the table at the Assemblage I had thought of the problem as a pack problem. It hadn't crossed my mind that I would be facing one personally.

She was small boned and frail looking, and bleeding...which I hadn't realized was possible. Obviously movies and tv lied.

I kicked out, trying to free myself, but her grip was like iron and she pulled me down toward her, her maw open, stretching unnaturally wide. The gunmen were shouting but I couldn't spare the focus to figure out why.

My wolf burst through tearing my clothes as she snapped into existence her black hackles raised, teeth clacking against open air where the vampire's hand had once been.

For a long second she stared at us in surprise, which I didn't really understand. What I did notice was our size. We'd always been large, for a wolf, but this change we were definitely bigger. What the hell was happening to us?

My wolf didn't know and she didn't care. She took the advantage of having our adversary stunned and leapt at her teeth closing on flesh and bone in a flurry of snarls and spittle.

In the distance guns fired, but it seemed like they were farther away from us now.

The vampire screamed as shoulder bones crunched beneath our teeth. One of the gunmen came around the corner and stumbled at the sight of us.

"Get her off! Get her off!" the vampire shrieked before she leapt upward toward the ceiling, taking us with her. We made it twenty feet off the ground before she did a little flip. We were still clamped to her shoulder, still pulling and tearing flesh, but now we were falling and she was bracing for impact.

At the last second my wolf released her prey, rolling so that we skidded along the concrete floor instead of impacting it directly.

The vampire landed on her side, but recovering instantly, impossibly fast. She was covered in blood now, her shoulder drooping where we'd destroyed it.

"Shoot her, for fuck sake," she snarled, and the gunman lifted his gun, aiming it at our head.

He was blown sideways by a silver streak, the gun firing wide before he disappeared behind another stack of crates.

"What the fuck are you?" the vampire growled at us. She dashed forward, this time too fast for my wolf to track and leapt onto us, clinging like a spider to our fur. We felt the fangs pierce the scruff of our neck and howled in rage, our heart racing at the implications. We smashed into the crates, breaking bones and tearing flesh against the metal and still she held.

A gun fired and we flinched, feeling the vibration of the impact. Our heart was pounding once more from fear and loss of blood. This was it. We were dead.

The Vampire's grip weakened and she fell off of us. We stood, swaying waiting for the pain, but it didn't come. We looked up at the gunman, but it wasn't the human we'd seen before, it was Darius.

He was covered in blood and completely naked.